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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (85254)	11/12/2000 8:15:44 PM
From: Night Trader	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 132070

SB, I've been looking at the Florida recount data and there's something very strange about how in certain counties they heavily favor Gore. In Palm Beach, for example, there were 859 extra votes found for both candidates. Now from the election results one would expect Gore to receive around 550 of these with a standard deviation (apologies for the non-scientific) of 14. He got 751, which assuming randomness (the sample is large enough to do this) is pretty much impossible (it produces a z value of 14) i.e. the recount in some way systematically favored the Democrat. Perhaps there is a practical and innocent explanation for this? If not I think there is a basis for a lawsuit.

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (85254)	11/12/2000 9:10:32 PM
From: Terry Maloney	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

SB, the high road only leads to political oblivion these days <ng> I don't see what's so bad about invoking the rule of law ... isn't that what your constitution is all about? It's a great soap opera! As Barb pointed out, I think, the Florida guy may have trumped the demicrats after all ... 5:00 pm Tuesday's going to be a hard nut to crack. Who knows? Who cares? One clown or the other is going to win ...

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (85254)	11/13/2000 11:44:14 AM
From: benwood	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

I agree, Skeets, than recounting all punchcards by hand would be the only fair solution at this point. However, that is not all the state, as at least Polk County uses scanned ballots (and perhaps others -- I haven't the slightest idea). I haven't seen anything about the 26k tossed ballots you mentioned being tossed in a republican district except in the form of rumors, and I just checked a variety of news sources. Lost in the noise of re-reporting by now perhaps ... Is there a URL from a reliable source that's been posted here regarding those 26000? I wonder if that number represents the number of Presidential votes excluded from a district (due to errors), or the total number of tossed votes from ballots (due to errors)? If it was never explicitly stated, then I'd assume it was total of every measure, which produces a more frightening number but which can actually be typical for every election from that district. In Palm Beach County alone, 23000 ballots were tossed in just the Presidential (19000+) and Senatorial (3000+) election combined (0 or 2 or more holes punched), not including tossed votes from all the other races. At this point, I'm beginning to feel there should be a coin flip -- it would demonstrate to all Americans and the rest of the world that our system of voting in a close race is no more accurate than pure chance. Even using better ballots has it's pitfalls as Polk County discovered Sunday. gopbi.com