🚀 go-pugleaf

On 29 Nov 2000 05:33:37 GMT, Merlin Dorfman <dorfman@rahul.net> wrote:

>    To paraphrase somebody or other, "Depends on what the
>meaning of 'correctly' is."  If you make a nice clean punch,
>and make sure nothing is hanging on the back of the ballot,
>the odds are pretty good that the machine will count it 
>correctly.  But not 100%.  And nowhere in the voting 
>instructions does it say to check that the back of the ballot
>is clear.  (But it will from now on...)  If you don't make a
>clean punch and don't check the back of the ballot, then the
>machine may reject your ballot.  Thus a manual count is
>always at least as accurate as a machine count, and may be
>more accurate.

A rather biased evaluation when millions of votes are cast.  There are
many scenarios - ticket splitting, not voting in a selected race. Try
this one, you intend to vote for Bush, accidentally punch Gore's chad,
then see your mistake and go back and attempt to vote for Bush and
leave a `dimpled' chad.  Ballot will be counted by machine for Gore in
all probability, or if hand counted, folks in Miami will conclude that
your intention was to vote for Gore and you almost made a mistake, but
then punched the right chad.  Determinations of a voter's intention
are pure unadulterated bull shit. 
The voter must know how to vote, take some pains to do it correctly,
then let the machine tabulate the results and the chips fall where
they may.
Summary - GW Bush won in Florida by almost a thousand votes not
counting the military votes that were not counted.