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To: carl a. mehr who wrote (118542)	11/20/2000 11:28:12 AM
From: Amy J	Respond to of 186894

Hi Carl, based upon Saturday's filing by Dems which contradicted her filing (which I guess was on Thur or Friday?) they (Dems, on Saturday) provided the following contradictory information (to Friday's ruling), which boils down to terminology and several historical legal rulings on what is meant by: "Voting tabulation error" vs. "Voting tabulation equipment error". It is significant, because it is a second core argument for why Bush thinks FL should ignore Statute 102.661 5(C). This statute states that if a "voting tabulation error" is significant enough that it could change the outcome of an election, then the canvassing boards shall (mandatory) manually recount all ballots, and include these counts into the total. In plain English, this means: if the error is big enough, you have to do a manual recount and include them. However, if you interpret "voting tabulation error" to be "voting tabulation equipment error", only as equipment failure (which is how Harris interpreted it, after being corrected by a Rep Judge that she couldn't arbitrarily ignore this statute, as she was doing per the first order), then you could conclude (as she did) that if there is no machine failure, all votes must be certified by the deadline, regardless if the error of probability will result in a changed outcome, and regardless of any manual recounting that is in progress. This potentially makes sense, except when you consider undervoted ballots (and maybe something else that I have forgotten from their briefings). There is information in Texas Statutes which implies that undervoted ballots which were failed to be read by machine, should be manually recounted, which points to indications that FL Statutes didn't mean the interpretation to only apply to "equipment failure" (as in kaputz). (Her definition of equipment failure, was essentially about equipment that was always kaputz). So far, all the historical legal cases imply (so far) that "voting tabulation errors" does not only refer to "voting tabulation equipment failures." If it did, this might exclude manual recounting for undervoted ballots, to which other states, like Texas Statutes include through their "will of voter as indicated by indentation" statute states (something like that). The interpretation of "voting tabulation equipment" as only equipment failures could violate the "will of the people." However, if you interpret "voting tabulation errors" to be any errors in the voting tabulation, then you could conclude that a manual recount is mandatory when the errors are significant enough to change the election, which means you must do a manual recount (prior to certification), which is how the Dems (and several historical legal cases) interpret this. However Harris stated she felt "voting tabulation errors" only meant equipment failures when referring to section C. However, Harris has not yet to substantiate her point with a prior legal case. This is what CNN meant when they said the Dems said her interpretation was new and narrow. It still leaves unresolved in the FL Statutes the issue of errors due to the errors of probability of machine inaccuracy that are significant enough to change the outcome of an election, which is different than machine failure. However, several rulings in other states (like Texas) all show that manual count is the preferred method over machine count for accuracy. Basically, FL Statutes could have avoided all of this mess, by simply stating which definition it meant, "any voting tabulation errors" -or- "voting tabulation errors only due to equipment failures", rather than just "voting tabulation errors." Regards, Amy J Edit: I have a busy day, so I won't know what happens until tonight. Please let me know how they ruled and if they decide to let the manual counts continue. thanks.