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Politics : Ask Michael Burke

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To: Freedom Fighter who wrote (85196)	11/12/2000 2:25:27 PM
From: wsringeorgia	Read Replies (1) of 132070

Wayne, you are right and I have no way of knowing if there has been any tampering and I have heard of no evidence of any either. But it may be more subtle than that; from what I know of the more modern systems tampering would be very difficult, even for a dedicated "Super McGuiver" type and hence unlikely. The error rate there would be most likely very low and the threshold for rejection of a ballot (in the event that the voter made too light a mark with the precinct supplied marker) would be VERY definite; any reasonable visable mark would register. On the older systems, well there IS by nature a need for at least initial setup adjustments and maybe a need for field adjustments later on. As time passes the light source may become weaker and a bit of dust collects on the source and the photoreceiver. Maybe in handling, moving and storage the thing gets a shaking and minutely affects allignment of the source and receiver. Depending on the age of the thing, onboard compontents, especially capacitors change in value a bit over time and would reduce sensitivity. As I see it, all these things would have the effect of reducing the percentage of "reads" in any given sample. Also paper stock selection, humidity and handling of the ballots could play a role. Like I said earlier similar systems were used in banking and data processing years ago but with an important difference; there the holes were machine punched with a solenoid driven hard steel or carbide punch and a perfectly alligned sharp edged die producing clean sharp punches. Even so there were problems; remember in the 50's EVERONE reconciled their checkbook. It would seem to the me that for any given level of machine sensitivity (original "factory" setting reduced over time for reasons given above) or "field adjusted" up or down and for whatever reason or motive that there will be in any given sample a percentage of rejects of reasonably clear punches due to "chads" fuzz or whatever. Take that SAME SAMPLE and compress it or stir it around and you will probably RAISE the reject rate on a second reading (unless you manually remove the "chads"). As the sample will show some rejects for Bush, it should show more for Gore just because in these conteseted districts he is the majority candidate. Now you know that BOTH parties have people who are master experts on all of this; who probably know the technical characteristics of every system in use everywhere. This will be interesting to watch! WSR

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