On Fri, 10 Nov 2000 10:28:06 -0500 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> My admittedly limited understanding of this process is that some of the
> older technology like punch cards are unreliable but not predictable. In
> other words, if you do a recount using the same set of ballots and the same
> machine to count them, you will likely get a different count but it is not
> necessarily more accurate. Unless the machine has more trouble reading some
> patterns than others, you would expect multiple runs to cluster around a
> mean that would approximate the true count. I did notice on the Palm Beach
> ballot, the punch holes were right next to each other for the various
> candidates (i.e., 4,5,6,7,etc.). In my precinct we also use punch cards but
> the choices are spread further apart (e.g. Bush might be 5 and Gore 10). Is
> it possible that having them so close could have led to some choices
> "bleeding" over into the next either through a punch being too large or a
> slight misalignment when it is run through the counting mechanism? This
> might explain the high number of ballots being read as having two punches.
>
There shouldn't be much of a problem if the readers were
properly designed and built. The holes on the old 80-column IBM
punch cards were closer and the read process was conducted more
quickly.
Ken
----------------------
Kenneth M. Steele [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Associate Professor
Dept. of Psychology
Appalachian State University
Boone, NC 28608
USA
