Sound Politics - Recount Madness
Today's Associated Press story confirms what we learned from Sec. of State Sam Reed two weeks ago: Snohomish and Yakima Counties will conduct their hand recount by printing out paper records of tens of thousands of electronic votes for which no original paper existed, and then counting all of those pieces of paper by hand
Starting Wednesday, election officials will begin downloading the data to create a computer file for each ballot, saved in portable document, or "pdf," format, [Snohomish County official Carolyn] Diepenbrock said.
The ballots will then be printed out, each on its own sheet of 8 1/2-by-11-inch paper.
"We are going to have five different computers with five printers, and they are going to be printing for five days," Diepenbrock said.
...
Diepenbrock said she isn't convinced the hand recount will be more accurate than the machine recount.
"Humans make errors," she said, "and as soon as you put a human element into any sort of process, the potential for error goes up."
No wonder the Democrats demanded a hand recount. Without introducing massive sources of human error, they have no other possibility of overturning the two counts that legitimately determined that Dino Rossi won the election. |
