Re: Stats on Palm Beach votes

[SteveKern]

> The complaint from the Democrats was that there were 
> 19000 spoiled ballots indicating that there was a 
> problem with the form. In 1996 there were 14800 
> spoiled ballots. The percentage of spoiled ballots 
> is roughly the same.

Actually, the percentage from the 2000 election is about double the
percentage from the 1996 election. This is because the 14,800 spoiled
ballots were discarded because of =two= reasons: overvoting and voting
for no candidate. The 19,000 spoiled ballots from the 2000 election were
for overvoting only. When the discarded ballots due to voting for no
candidate are added, the total discards in 2000 is about 29,000, which
is the apples-to-apples comparison to the 1996 figure of 14,800.



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