John:
The "30 lighning strikes" analogy is only valid if there is no
significant differences between the methods of counting. And we have
seen that there IS a difference between the 40 year old IBM punchcard
style machince counting they do in PB county and hand counting.
But which one is more accurate? I have no idea, but it seems to me
that the machine count is inherently inaccurate...every time you run
the ballots through you'll get a new number, and processing the ballots
degrades them. I have no idea how accurate the hand count can be.
It now looks to me like Gore might win. A hand count is likely to
discover ballots that the machine count missed. And since the machines
were used in pro-Gore areas, it is likely that there were more missed
Gore ballots than missed Bush ballots.
But it seems that we might have a compromise. The entire state might
be recounted by hand. The news is saying that Gore will abide by the
recount (with no lawsuits) if Bush will agree. This seems the only
way. Recount the entire state, and the candidate who had the most
votes cast for him will win.
=====
Darryl
Think Galactically -- Act Terrestrially
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