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To: flatsville who wrote (36478)	11/11/2000 6:19:58 PM
From: Don Lloyd	Respond to of 436258

flatsville - One piece of analysis I've heard reapeatedly in regards to Palm Beach is that there were some very unusual demographics at work in this election in that county. Republicans may have lost the edge in this county that they expected to have due to a large number of wealthy, Jewish voters who may have flipped parties this election with Lieberman on the Democrtic ticket. This might explain why less people voted for Bush than there are registered Republicans in the county. It's a possibility, I suppose, but I wouldn't think the office of VP is nearly enough of a prize for a registered Republican, even in a prior life, to stomach Gore. As CB implied, the cause of the double count Presidential ballots in Palm Beach County can be determined if we knew exactly which two Presidential choices were made on all the double count rejected ballots. If the cause is voter confusion, most of the double count ballots will be either Gore-Buchanon or Bush-Buchanon. If the cause is ballot tampering by punching out an additional Gore vote to suppress all non-Gore votes, then most will be Bush-Gore. I know of no information that is available to answer this question. Nor of any indication that anyone outside of the Democratic Election officials has had any significant opportunity or incentive to examine the double count ballots. Regards, Don

To: flatsville who wrote (36478)	11/11/2000 9:16:37 PM
From: wsringeorgia	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 436258

Flatsville, Here, from a technical cardreading standpoint is what happened in those majority Democrat districts: Here in my precinct in GA we have a fairly new RETRO-REFLECTIVE PHOTOELECTRIC ballot reading machine that works by infared reflection off the small black line the voter makes on the ballot with a precinct supplied black marker. Essentially there NO ADJUSTMENTS polling officals can make or need to make as the machine has a "self nulling' or "auto -zeroing" function built into the system. It works by essentially reading the difference in reflectance between a PRINTED band on the ballot and and a BLANK area on the ballot. Any reasonable mark made by the voter will be read and it "self-adjusts" without any "operator" input to prevent TAMPERING. Now, in other precincts here, usually in cities, as they are MUCH OLDER systems a different method is employed, similar to the one in Palm Beach FLA and other contested areas there. There the PHOTOELECTRIC principle is TRANSMISSION or THROUGH-BEAM as was used in punch card readers years ago. In fact it is the same machine, called a HOLERITH CARD READER. Now this machine has plenty of operator adjustments: Multiple GAIN adjustments and BANDWITH adjustments, depending on the age of the machine. For example if GAIN is reduced then for any given random sampling there will be fewer "reads"; conversely turn up GAIN or expand BANDWIDTH and the number of "reads" for the same sample is increased. Now; do you begin to see why the Dems want a manual count? Probably on the original setting Bush lost a few votes, but Gore lost alot more because these were majority Gore districts; remember that a setting change would change the count. And without a doubt the Bush (Shrub) team knows this all too well and this explains why they are fighting like hell against a manual count. Most likely up in the Florida panhandle the machines are the more modern RETRO-REFLECTIVE type card readers and hence much more difficult to tamper with. And why would they want too anyway; after all they won there. So a manual recount there if done properly would not help them. Another thing that might have happened: whoever who ordered the paper stock for the South Florida ballots could have ordered stock that would help make fuzzy readings. The SHRUB team is screwed. WSR