At today's Leon County trial involving a manual recount, the statistical
expert testified that the undervote in Florida counties that use punch
cards is significantly greater than in counties that use scan cards.
Part of the crossexamination ignored this conclusion and focused on side
comments written by the statistical expert about the 1998 election in
Palm Beach County.
Evidently, in 1998 the Palm Beach vote for US senator was significantly
less than the vote for governor. The statistical expert was told that
the senate candidates were in the first page (column) and the
gubernatorial candidates on the second page (column) of the ballot.
Consequently, the expert concluded that this data may provide evidence
to support the claim that some voters may have been unable to punch the
chad in the first column, thus indicating some type of problem with the
vote-a-matic machine.
The Bush lawyer presented a copy of the 1998 Palm Beach ballot showing
that both sets of candidates were on the first page--the senate at the
top, the gubernatorial in the middle. I don't see how this could
possibly weaken the witness' conclusions about the punch cards and scan
cards. Moreover, the 1998 discrepancies could indicate a machine problem
between the top and middle of the first column.
Domenico Rosa
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