Doctaah:
The implication of Brian's comment is that, for example, Palm Beach County went for Gore by a 70/30 margin, that is, of those ballots that have been legally machine counted, the law of probability says that a further recount of the all the votes, including those not previously county, should yield new qualifying votes in favor of Gore by the same 70/30 margin.
Of course, we know that the law of probability is based upon statistics, or a series of outcomes of a given event, so anyone one outcome may or may not fall in line with the predicted outcome. Any single recount would not necessarily be 70/30 in Gore's favor, or even in Gore's favor, period. But, on average, if the recount was done hypothetically 100 times, not in sequence, but as mutually exclusive independent events (i.e. separate universes) probability says Al Gore, on average would come out ahead by picking up 70 votes to Bush's 30.
Whether such a scheme rises to the level of intent as expressed by the adverb "deliberately" is another question. I don't know what the breakdown in PBC was. If Al Gore took the county by as much as 95 percent, then one could make a strong argument of intent to skew the results. But if Gore's vote is only 65/40 to Bush's take, then I would say such a breakdown in the vote would not rise to the level of "deliberate." Calculated? Yes. But deliberate? No.
JMO. |
