I've been following the proceedings quite closely on CNN.
Those 19 000 ballots are, I believe, the subject of a voter lawsuit.
There are two components to the Buchanan error. One is the 3400 or so votes
he got in a county (Palm Beach) that even he doesn't claim are his (not all
of them, anyway). The other is the 19 000 or so double votes you mentioned.
The issue, regarding the "butterfly" ballot is not as simple as many make
out. The sample ballots were 2-dimensional (and, even then, not quite the
same as the final ones). With the perforated strips (through the holes of
which the voter pokes the stylus) attached, the ballot becomes 3-dimensional
and subject to a number of visual problems, not the least of which is
potential parallax error. When the voter uses the ballot, it is more or less
horizontal. The degree of parallax error would tend to be inversely
proportional to the height of the voter.
In addition to the parallax problem, there is the problem of the
quick-thinking voter who says, "Ah, first name, first hole; second name
second hole." With the left/right alternation, it's not immediately obvious
that the name on the top right follows the name on the top left. The legal
issue is that Florida law requires the names to appear in a certain
sequence. Without going into the details of why, it turns out that Bush's
name was required to be first, and Gore's second. Counting from the top and
disregarding the left/right alternation, Buchanan's name came second. That,
of course, is central to the lawsuit.
My own suspicion is that the double punching resulted from wishful
thinking -- "Oops, I think I poked the wrong hole. Maybe I didn't poke it
all the way, so now I'll poke the right one and hope for the best."
Now, why wouldn't someone simply ask for another ballot? Other than shyness,
feelings of embarrassment and other kinds of reticence, many (maybe most) of
them may have thought they were unique and that nobody else would have made
the same mistake. Thus, it wouldn't occur to them that their own little
error would affect the outcome. Apparently, the more assertive voters who
made that mistake did ask for another ballot.
The Republicans are, of course, arguing that, since the ballot was designed
by a Democrat, Democratic voters shouldn't complain. Obviously, to an
impartial observer, that is nonsense. Another of their lines is that such
voters must be stupid. My response to that is that I believe that I could
make the same mistake (not the double punching, but the inadvertent voting
for Buchanan).
In any case, given that the cards with the push-out chads and the card
readers used in counting them date from not very long after you and I were
at Air Canada, Joe, it's about time those counties (and many other,
throughout the US) replaced them with something more reliable and
predictable. Even their manufacturers admit that the error rate can
sometimes be as high as 5% -- close enough for a landslide (e.g., Clinton
versus Dole, in 1996), but not for a cliffhanger.
Incidentally, Joe, you'll remember that you and I (and everyone else) used
to call the material formerly occupying the hole on a punch card a chip. The
term "chad" was used to describe the disk-shaped piece removed from punched
paper tape. Paper tape was referred to as chadded (for the tape where the
hole was punched out fully) or chadless (for the tape where the chad was
deliberately not detached). The latter type offered simpler housekeeping, as
there was no need for a chad bucket under the paper tape punching mechanism.
Bill Potts, CMS
San Jose, CA
http://metric1.org [SI Navigator]
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
> Behalf Of Joseph B. Reid
> Sent: November 20, 2000 17:56
> To: U.S. Metric Association
> Subject: [USMA:9277] Re: US metric and integers
>
>
> This is an off-subject question for Bill Hooper. I was under the
> impression that the Palm Beech count found 19 000 ballots punched for both
> Buchanon AND Gore. I haven't read what has happened to them? My
> deduction
> is that those were meant to be votes for Gore.
>
>
