Dear Scumbria:
The only thing that is ambiguous is your reading skills. Another part says that the Canvasing board shall obtain enough teams and equipment as needed to finish by the deadline. They did not do this. That is their fault, period.
Each team could have made to separate the ballots into four piles, no objection Gore, no objection Bush, no objection No Vote, and objected ballots with sub-piles for the number of corners attached (disputes go into the higher sub-pile). Obviously, dimples and pimples go into the 4 corner sub-pile. Machines could count the cards in the first three piles. All cards from the five other piles (0 to 4 corners attached) are reviewed by a number of trusted teams again separating the ballots into corners attached no objections Gore, Bush, None, and Objected groups. The last goes to the board itself for final determination. The first three piles would go quickly, the three corner attached more slowly, and the last really slow. If the standards were set well in the beginning, the first part could be done at a rate of 10 to 20 per team minute. In 24 hours, a team could (may be separate teams but one count station) separate 14K ballots. Thus, 100 counting stations could complete even Miami Dade in 11 hours. Only about 1 to 2% would be disputed, for phase two to look at, 10 trusted teams of two well respected counters, a lawyer for each candidate slate, and a pair of clerks for the results and procedures. The rate here would be more like 2 ballots a minute for an elapsed time of another 11 hours reducing the disputed pile to 0.05% of the ballots. Phase three would take the board about 2 a minute (from Palm Beach and Broward videos) and take another 2 days max. All in all, just two days (it can be done concurrently) plus one to set it up.
That is assuming that the legislature meant for a manual recount in such cases and that is a BIG IF! Clearly, it can be done in under three days much less seven under the law even for Miami Dade! All talk to the contrary is due to no procedures in place (fault of the board) and no standards (ditto!). Using method above, the standards could be applied later as what would constitue a vote (beyond generally agreed practice (two corners rule being something all can agree on)). By showing the vote with no corners attached (no chad), plus vote with one corner attached, up to the lowest common standard. The extra votes by a looser standard could thus be added when a decision by the board is made to pass which as the final count. And the count could be ammended as required during the contest phase, if needed, without redoing the manual count.
Personally, my reading is for clear machine error or human error (by the election staff) like reversing the cards being fed into the readers (doing it twice can find these errors). If any recount is ordered for any other reason, the whole election challenged must be counted by hand during the contest phase (plenty of time here (24 days (from overseas ballots to Dec 12 drop dead date)) per judicial orders (here they can change method to speed things up plus easier to obtain resources required (from state, if necessary)). But, here, they must prove a problem exists (a far higher standard and rightly so).
My take is that the State legislature will redo the law to make it clear for everyone what is to be done in this situation, with all the debate required to get everyone to agree on whatever it is.
Pete |
