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Politics : Piffer Thread on Political Rantings and Ravings -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Original Mad Dog who wrote (655)	12/8/2000 12:21:06 PM
From: jcky	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14610

MadDog, <I guess my question is, the burden of proving what? That the ballots were not counted? Or that the ballots, if counted, would change or probably change the outcome? For me, it is enough that they were not counted. Every vote deserves to be counted, and demands to be counted....even the ones for Gore.> I am not a lawyer, so here' my common sense approach to the problem. I am also a realist and I have concluded that half of the 104 million voters who showed up to the polling booths will be pretty pissed, regardless of who wins the presidential race. All votes deserve to be counted. Sounds pretty simple, right? But no one has proposed a fair process of counting all the votes to date. The Bush camp refuses to acknowledge there may have been undercounts or overcounts and the Gore camp only wants to count their votes. And to confound the issue, the courts have refused to clarify the definition of a legally casted vote and has left that discretion to the local canvassing boards. So let's count the 10,000 votes for the sake of argument. Then what? If the Gore camp gains the votes the Democrats are seeking then the Bush camp will demand a statewide recount under equal protection of the law. If the Gore camp doesn't find the votes, they will still demand a statewide recount for the sake of fairness and completeness since all votes must be counted. Just counting the 10,000 ballots in Miami-Dade County solves nothing. Another fallacy perpetuated by the media is the concept that a manual recount is always more accurate than a machine count. The answer is maybe. A manual recount is a false prophet of hope for those individuals expecting a resounding finality to the election count. I know many people believe statistics and probability is hocus pocus but the concept of inherent errors (standard deviation) built into any counting system must be included in the final analysis of any form of a recount. When we are talking about 500 votes as a margin of victory among 6 million ballots, there is no counting system capable of reproducing a perfect count unless God is personally involved in the ballot count. All that one can conclude is that one can be more confident of the result as more recounts (ideally approaching infinity) are undertaken under a uniform and consistent manner. As far as I'm concerned, the current arbitrary system of machine counting is just as accurate as any other arbitrary system of manual recounting as long as consistent standards are applied within the system. There are just too many variables and this race is too close for a confident vote of a perfect count, irregardless of the system implemented. Regards,