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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E who wrote (80327)	11/17/2000 8:57:33 PM
From: American Spirit	Respond to of 769667

Absentee ballots: Most are being thrown out and they're about even so far. Bush picking up a few hundred votes maybe. That's all. Wow. Where is all this military support? Or were many too ignorant to get a witness to sign it, or sign themselves? No offence to miltary people because many are sharp (and better be) but I flew over from Europe recently with two gals in the Navy who had been in the Persian Gulf. They didn't even know much about the election and hadn't heard of anyone trying to get their fellow Navy personnel to vote. Everything I asked them about went right over their heads. As far as they were concerned the election wasn't even happening. But the Israelis for Leiberman might be a different matter. Maybe.

To: E who wrote (80327)	11/17/2000 9:25:51 PM
From: E	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 769667

Speaking of hand counting votes, chads, human error, etc... Here are the opinions of some of those who make and sell the machines. Excerpts from a front page article in today's NYT: Alas, Vote-Count Machines Are Only Human By FORD FESSENDEN and CHRISTOPHER DREW One of the central arguments that Gov. George W. Bush has made against the hand recounts in Florida is that machines are impartial and much more reliable than humans. The people who sell the voting systems... say the machines can be, in ideal conditions, 99.99 percent accurate... But in Florida, that tiny error rate alone could have misread 345 votes — which happens to be more than Mr. Bush's current winning margin. And that is under the most favorable conditions, with the machines perfectly maintained and whisked free of all those bits of loose paper known as chads. The maker of one type of card reader said the accuracy rate of his machine would be 99.9 percent, which could mean 3,450 votes were misread in Florida. Another manufacturer says that, under realistic conditions, the machines' error rate can be even higher, 1 percent or more, a potential misreading of 34,500 votes. Theoretical accuracy rates aside, a 1975 study for the Federal Election Commission found that only 99.5 percent of the ballots read accurately when the card readers were used in a Los Angeles County election. Ultimately, industry officials said, the most precise way to count ballots is by hand. "The important thing here is that there may be no way to get a 100 percent accurate count by a machine," said Mr. Swartz, whose card readers are approved by the Federal Election Commission for use in punch-card voting systems. "It is totally reasonable that the most accurate way to do it is a carefully run recount."... "There isn't a voting technology you'd be able to say, Gee, this is perfect," Mr. Urosevich said. And in close races, manual recounts are the way the machine's imperfections are resolved. "A manual recount can be extremely accurate," he said. nytimes.com