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To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (23576)	12/9/2000 12:05:01 PM
From: t2	Respond to of 65232

Experts Say Gore May Not Gain From Florida Recount dailynews.yahoo.com Saturday December 9 11:54 AM ET Experts Say Gore May Not Gain From Florida Recount By David Lawsky WASHINGTON (Reuters) - At first glance, the Florida Supreme Court (news - web sites)'s decision to order a manual recount of thousands of ballots looked like good news for Al Gore (news - web sites), but a fresh analysis of voting data on Saturday showed that the Democrat actually may lose ground to Republican George W. Bush (news - web sites). ``Gore may not be clearly advantaged by the statewide recount of the undercounted ballots,'' Harvard University professor of government Jasjeet Sekhon told a group of fellow academics in an e-mail after crunching numbers into the wee hours of Saturday morning. A copy of the e-mail was provided to Reuters. Sekhon is one of a group of government and statistical experts from Harvard, the University of California at Berkeley, Cornell University and Northwestern University who have closely followed voting irregularities in Florida's 67 counties since the Nov. 7 election. Sekhon and others analyzed data and distributed it via e-mail in light of a decision on Friday by the Florida Supreme Court requiring a statewide recount of ``undervotes,'' which are votes that machines were unable to count but a person may be able to discern the voter's intention. The latest conclusion: It's anybody's ballgame, although the pattern suggests Bush may gain more votes than Gore. Data from Duval county, calculated earlier, showed that more Gore ballots were spoiled or undercounted than Bush ballots. But data from Palm Beach and Broward Counties, the only two that have done full hand recounts, shows that when ballots were examined by hand Bush gained more votes than Gore. Gore's Chances Less Than 50 Percent A recount has never looked good for Gore, according to this group of experts. ``It's been the situation so far ... that if Gore gets his recount the chances of him winning are still less than 50 percent,'' Sekhon said in an interview on Friday before crunching the numbers again. Before the latest analysis, the group's work showed that 49 counties had an unusual number of spoiled ballots because they used obsolete punch-card machines or poorly made optical scanners. One of those counties -- Broward -- counted votes by hand and had its totals included by Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris (news - external web site) on Nov. 26 when she certified Bush as the winner of the presidential election in Florida. A second county, Palm Beach, had its hand count added to the statewide total on Friday on orders of the Florida Supreme Court. A third county, Miami-Dade, partially completed a hand count last month and its votes, too, were added to the total by the state high court. The addition of Palm Beach and the partial vote from Miami-Dade sliced Bush's certified lead of 537 votes down to just 154 out of nearly 6 million cast. But that leaves 47 counties including the rest of Miami-Dade with an unusual number of ``undervotes'' due to flawed voting equipment, according to the experts. The Miami Herald also reported on Saturday that its own precinct-by-precinct statistical analysis suggests that Gore may not reap enough votes across the state to overcome Bush's lead. The Herald said that by a conservative calculation, the recount ordered by the state Supreme Court could boost Bush's lead by about 40 votes. In addition, if disputed ``dimpled'' ballots were counted as votes, Bush could win the state by 278 votes, the Herald added. Machines Have Limitations Whatever happens, the professors believe that the count should be done because it is the fair thing to do. ``It's a close election, and in a close election we know that the machines have limitations and miss obvious votes,'' said Henry Brady, professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley and director of that university's Survey Research Center. ``It gets down to a fundamental thing about human intelligence versus machine intelligence,'' he said. ``Humans are much better at matching patterns than machines.'' The same group of academics served as consultants for a group of voters in Palm Beach county who contended in court that the county's ``butterfly ballot,'' whose design was deemed confusing by some voters, caused them to spoil their ballots or accidentally vote for the wrong candidate. The court case was rejected. Harvard's Sekhon said their methodology showed that Gore lost a minimum of 4,500 net votes because of those problems in Palm Beach county, and possibly as many as 9,400. Either total would have given Gore the state's 25 electoral votes, enough to clinch the presidency. Email this story - View most popular \| Printer-friendly format Archived Stories by Date

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (23576)	12/9/2000 12:15:39 PM
From: Dealer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 65232

Last update: Saturday, 09-Dec-00 03:53:10. E-mail this story to a friend. Recount Undervote Glance By The Associated Press Latest results from the recount of undervotes in the presidential race in Florida. Republican George W. Bush now leads Democrat Al Gore by 193 votes in the statewide vote, which includes new unofficial vote tallies reported by some of Florida's 67 counties that were ordered by the Florida Supreme Court to recount disputed ballots. The AP county-by-county tally is an unofficial survey of ballots. The vote totals are the subject of federal legal challenges. Election returns certified by the state late last month showed Bush leading by 537 votes. < County Bush Gore BushChange GoreChange < Alachua 34,135 47,380 - - < Baker 5,611 2,392 - - < Bay 38,682 18,873 - - < Bradford 5,416 3,075 - - < Brevard 115,253 97,341 - - < Broward 177,939 387,760 - - < Calhoun 2,873 2,156 - - < Charlott 35,428 29,646 - - < Citrus 29,801 25,531 - - < Clay 41,903 14,668 - - < Collier 60,467 29,939 - - < Columbia 10,968 7,049 - - < Dade 289,704 329,165 130 298 < De Soto 4,256 3,321 - - < Dixie 2,697 1,827 - - < Duval 152,460 108,039 - - < Escambia 73,171 40,990 - - < Flagler 12,618 13,897 - - < Franklin 2,454 2,047 - - < Gadsden 4,770 9,736 - - < Gilchris 3,300 1,910 - - < Glades 1,841 1,442 - - < Gulf 3,553 2,398 - - < Hamilton 2,147 1,723 - - < Hardee 3,765 2,342 - - < Hendry 4,747 3,240 - - < Hernando 30,658 32,648 - - < Highland 20,207 14,169 - - < Hilsboro 180,794 169,576 - - < Holmes 5,012 2,177 - - < Indianrv 28,639 19,769 - - < Jackson 9,139 6,870 - - < Jeffrson 2,478 3,041 - - < Lafayete 1,670 789 - - < Lake 50,010 36,571 - - < Lee 106,151 73,571 - - < Leon 39,073 61,444 - - < Levy 6,863 5,398 - - < Liberty 1,317 1,017 - - < Madison 3,038 3,015 - - < Manatee 58,023 49,226 - - < Marion 55,146 44,674 - - < Martin 33,972 26,621 - - < Monroe 16,063 16,487 - - < Nassau 16,408 6,955 - - < Okaloosa 52,186 16,989 - - < Okeechob 5,057 4,589 - - < Orange 134,531 140,236 - - < Osceola 26,237 28,187 - - < Palmbeach 153,291 270,257 327 503 < Pasco 68,607 69,576 - - < Pinellas 184,849 200,657 - - < Polk 90,310 75,207 - - < Putnam 13,457 12,107 - - < St Johns 39,564 19,509 - - < St Lucie 34,705 41,560 - - < Sntarosa 36,339 12,818 - - < Sarasota 83,117 72,869 - - < Seminole 75,790 59,227 - - < Sumter 12,127 9,637 - - < Suwannee 8,009 4,076 - - < Taylor 4,058 2,649 - - < Union 2,332 1,407 - - < Volusia 82,368 97,313 - - < Wakulla 4,512 3,838 - - < Walton 12,186 5,643 - - < Washngtn 4,995 2,798 - - < Totals 2,913,2472,913,054 457 801 < AP-NY-12-09-00 0136EST<