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To: Charles Tutt who wrote (37808)	11/15/2000 11:45:24 AM
From: Jim McMannis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

RE:"I'm saying every vote in EVERY county should be counted. Why is that a problem?" The problem is human interpretation of "chad" on a ballot designed for machine count.... This can be fixed for the next election. To try and fix it now is crazy... Jim

To: Charles Tutt who wrote (37808)	11/15/2000 1:06:23 PM
From: cheryl williamson	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 64865

Hi Charles, After an exhaustive recount of all the 6,000,000 or so votes cast in Fla. what would you do if the vote totals were wildly different than the existing machine counts??? Do you take the machine counts or the hand counts???? Another thing to think about is fairness. If we are all so disposed to making sure that "every voice is heard" in Fla. then what about all the voices in the rest of the USA???? The beauty of an initial count is that it is being done at the same time all the way across the country, before anyone is fully aware of the totals. That means there is less of an incentive (though stuffing the box does happen) for mischief or outright fraud than there is now. If you are looking for a "true" count, I doubt you are going to get one at this late date by re-counting everything in the state by hand. What bothers me is this: I see this as an engineering problem, not a political or legal one. Yet, the whole thing is being run by lawyers & politicians. Once, just once, I would like to see a software engineer come on TV & explain why there is a problem & what could be done to fix it. We have used punch card systems in this country for decades and there is no reason to believe that they could not be trusted to accurately tally a bunch of ballots. It's a little late now, but, what they should be arguing about in court is what constitutes a vote on a punch card and what doesn't. Once a "standard" has been set, then the votes could be run through the punch card counties (again) by machine. It's easy to batch test the machines before each run with a test deck to verify accuracy. This is data processing 101. We don't need all this hurly-burly going on and on and on. The catch is after the tallies: everyone would have to accept the results. period.

To: Charles Tutt who wrote (37808)	11/15/2000 1:14:56 PM
From: JDN	Respond to of 64865

Dear Charles: I am sorry but that is NOT what is happening. In fact when someone brought your very idea up that Daley said something like, well, they had their chance to request a recount and it has now expired. I will be honest, what I would like to see is an ENTIRE REVOTE of Florida with GUARDS at every voting station, the media FORBIDDEN to make ANY COMMENT untill all votes are received and sealed for count and of course with a standard ballot design. I would exclude the absentee ballots and just use the ones we get since there would be no reason to go through that again. Could be done in a matter of days and count could occur right away. But that is just a wish, not gonna happen. I just hope that at least we get a standard to judge these hand counts by and that Bush is allowed to open whatever counties he wishes since he was playing under what he percieved the rules to be, no handcount if machines are properly functioning. JDN