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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: hmaly who wrote (128662)	11/16/2000 8:50:44 PM
From: Petz	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1579697

harry, re:<all of Fla. should be re-counted> Even if the machines missed 10,000 votes, 1 in every 60, it is extremely unlikely that the results would change by more than 200 votes. That's just the laws of statistics, sorry harry. In fact, I did a spreadsheet simulation, and in 30 trials the biggest gain for Gore was 210 votes. But if only 3 in 100 'counters' were biased, it would change the vote by 300, and therefore also the outcome of the election. Can you guarantee that level of accuracy? The fact is, a random sample of 99% of the electorate is more accurate than a biased counting of 100%. Imagine if every ballot in Florida were recounted by hand. A single dishonest worker would change the election. Some other facts to consider: 1. The observers cannot keep the counters honest. Only the workers, not the observers can touch the ballots. If the observer decides to ignore chad in punch hole #3 (Bush), no one will be the wiser. 2. In Palm Beach, anything with a dimple is considered a valid ballot. What about the guy who was applying slight pressure deciding whether or not to vote for Gore. At the last second he decides not to punch it through, but the canvassing board changes his vote. 3. If dimples on the card are valid votes, then all Gore ballots should be checked for dimples in the Bush, Nader, etc. columns. If there's a dimple, Gore's vote gets erased. After all, dimples are valid votes. Is the board checking for this? No, the rule is "If the machine decides its a Gore vote, it's a Gore vote." 4. The county precinct that claimed a 50-vote summing error looks extremely suspicious. In my opinion, the '1' was changed to a '6' after the fact. That's the wierdest looking '6' I've ever seen. 5. Chad on the floor - this is proof there is no auditing of results going on. In fact, it is tantamount to destruction of evidence and the worker should be jailed. 6. Its not clear to me whether they are only recounting ballots that were indicated to be blank, or all ballots. Either way is problematic. If they are only counting the ballots that the machine indicated were voteless, then a. They are letting the machines pick which ballots to count. If the machines are inaccurate, how can they be used to select the ballots? b. How do they know whether the machine picked the same blank ballots as the last recount? c. The machine will be skipping double punched ballots where one of the double punches is a dimple or a piece of chad. These ballots should be invalid but they will never be counted. 7. OTOH, if they are recounting ALL the ballots, the presence of one dishonest worker would change the election; also, this would mean they do not have a running tally of how many votes changed. Therefore, they must just be counting the flawed selection of voters decided by the flawed machines, and objects a,b,c above are valid. 8. I have seen no evidence that the number of ballots has been compared to the number of signatures at each precinct. 9. Some people turned in ballots which they realized were punhced incorrectly and voted again. The local boards kept these votes and are recounting them. Petz