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

To: Knight who wrote (112455)	12/12/2000 3:29:16 PM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

1) A chad where no corners are detached (e.g. a "dimpled" or "pregnant" chad, or a "tri-chad") shall not be counted as a vote unless the ballot contains a pattern of dimpled chads. (If the voter punched chads all the way through in some races, they demonstrated that they knew how to properly vote; hence, you cannot assume that they intended to vote in the presidential race if they didn't punch it all the way through. The voter's intent was not clear.) As a hypothetical, if a voter started by pushing firmly, but not firmly enough to dislodge the chad but eventually broke through, wouldn't that voter be inclined to continue pushing through from that point on? My point being, there will be some problematic ballots that deserve arbitration, or the opinion of the chief judge or something. It might be easy to say the chad must bulge by X-micrometers, but what if the chad was pushed back into position by running through the card reader. Again, humans can see these things and arbitrary rules and machines cannot. TP

To: Knight who wrote (112455)	12/12/2000 3:29:55 PM
From: donjuan_demarco	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Knight, a uniform standard would be illegal. As I have posted, current Florida statutory law leaves it to the discretion of the county canvassing officials to determine whether there is a sufficient expression of voter intent. That power is not granted to any court or legislature. Therefore, any attempt by a court or legislature to usurp that power would be illegal. A lot of people don't like the current laws, but the law is the law and we should stick to them. "I agree that counting all the votes in the same way would be the best way to add legitimacy to the election (at least from a PR point of view). I would add, however, that the standard must be stated in an objective way and must meet the Florida standard to count the vote "when the intent of the voter is clear". This standard requires (at minimum) the following rules:"