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

To: E. T. who wrote (202188)	11/13/2001 10:25:43 AM
From: DMaA	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Is this how you intend to spend the day?

To: E. T. who wrote (202188)	11/13/2001 11:31:11 AM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 769670

You left out the crucial sentence:" Hand recounts can be reliable, but only if the rules are clear".....It was the absence of a universal standard that led to the SCOTUS decision.....

To: E. T. who wrote (202188)	11/13/2001 11:51:15 AM
From: goldworldnet	Respond to of 769670

Chad-maker says 'dimples' made up Printer of Miami, Broward ballots 'never heard' of term before now By Paul Sperry © 2000 WorldNetDaily.com Wednesday, December 13, 2000 WASHINGTON -- Ever wonder how a chad could dimple? Printer Randy Stiles makes chad for a living, and he wonders the same thing. "It would basically be impossible to do that," said Stiles, a production manager at the printing plant that made the controversial punch-card ballots for Miami-Dade and Broward counties. He says his own machines don't produce any dimpled chad as they perforate the thousands of ballot cards used by the Florida counties and others around the country. Stiles, a 12-year employee of Election Systems & Software Inc. in Dallas, says dimpling is a new phenomenon. "There's some new words that have come up. You know, 'dimpled chad,' 'pregnant chad.' I've never heard about those before this election," he told WorldNetDaily. "I guess they came up because the election was so close and it brought a lot of scrutiny," Stiles added. "But it's the first I've heard of them." Because of machine-made cuts around the chad, he says he's skeptical a voter could insert a stylus and fail to poke through the paper. "If you look at the way the chad is made and look at the way it's attached to the ballot card itself, there's just four tiny holding points at the corners," Stiles said. "Each one of those cut marks between those holding points is made by sharp blades." Stiles, who's in charge of quality control at the plant, inspects the cut marks to make sure they're "clean." If they aren't, the ballot sheets are "scrapped" and the cutting tools are replaced, he says, while the old blades are "resurfaced." Hanging chad, however, can occur, Stiles says, if the perforated squares -- 312 per card in Miami Dade and Broward (compared with 228 in Palm Beach County) -- aren't lined up over rubber-lined punch holes in the vote recorders. Dull styluses can also cause chad to break off from one side. But chad that doesn't break away from either side is virtually unheard of -- until now, he says. Nonetheless, Broward County was able to gin up more than 500 net new votes for Al Gore by counting what Democratic officials dubbed dimpled or pregnant chad in ballots. Earlier this month, the Bush campaign filed a complaint against Broward's canvassing board for allegedly tampering with the ballots during its hand recount. Gore also wants 9,000 Miami-Dade ballots with undervotes for president examined by hand for dimples. The U.S. Supreme Court has stopped the recount to review its constitutionality. Stiles says all chad punched with a stylus leave a kind of fingerprint: A pinhole and a vertical crease from where pressure was applied in the middle of the square piece of paper. Any dimpled or pregnant chad would most likely also show a pinhole and crease, he says. If they don't, chances are they weren't made with a stylus. Stiles says he's baffled by Democrats' claims of voters having problems piercing through ballots -- using sharp, pointed styluses -- to vote for Gore. "According to what we saw," he said, "everything worked right election night." Stile's company, which is based in Omaha, Neb., supplies punch-card ballots to several Florida counties in addition to Miami-Dade and Broward. Palm Beach County, a one-time client, is not one of them now. worldnetdaily.com * * *