The graphic in the article breaks down the various standards, and describes the “Most restrictive” standard as “a complete punch for a punchcard or a completely filled oval for optical scan. Pencil marks on punchcards are also accepted.” The only scenarios that have Bush winning are ones that exclude certain counties and/or exclude “overcounts,” which does not contradict my initial claim.
One co-worker, however is not totally convinced. He says the “most restrictive” standard may not be restrictive enough (remember, I said “any” standard). Specifically, he questions the inclusion of “Pencil marks on punchcards.”
Does anyone know anything about why they would have included Pencil marks in the most restrictive standard?
I think the AP article is getting its data from here: http://www.norc.uchicago.edu/fl/ . In one of the Readme.txt files, they say, “Pencil marks on a chad, unless explained as negations in the coder-comments field, are treated as affirmative marks equivalent to a clean punch. These appear as a code ‘9’ in the data file or once coder-comment overrides are applied.” I presume this is what the above table is referring to when it says “pencil marks on punchcards.”
So, I guess I’m looking for one of two specific pieces of information to prove my case: (1) Florida law unambiguously allows chads marked with a pencil or pen, or (2) Gore would still win, even if “code ‘9’” data is removed.
“With numbers that tiny, experts said it would be impossible to interpret the survey results as definitive.”
It’s a shame journalists aren’t better at statistics. It sounds like you cannot win your argument, inasmuch we can infer from the above quote that the signal is smaller than the noise. At least that way you can’t lose, either!
Good question. Even hand counting is going to produce errors. If they count and recount they’re going to get varying results. This is from the methodology section of that NORC website you provided:
I couldn’t find any data on the sizes and whatnot of those variances–it may be included in the raw data, which would take time to analyze. It notes explicitly that “even hand classifications have some variability from pass to pass, as some people will see some ballots differently.” Errors will certainly play a role as well. It does concern me that they made no statement about that, or about the size of the variance of the hand counting either.
It’s my understanding that having multiple inspectors actually increases mistakes, as a result industrial quality control will use only one inspector instead of a team.
That’s why I took the remark I quoted as indicating that the error from counting is greater than the margin in the election. I suppose if we recounted those 175,000 ballots repeatedly and consistently came up with Gore winning by a handful, then we might be justified in saying that he got more votes. But that doesn’t account for the error inherent in the other few million votes that weren’t part of the study because they were certified mistakenly.
I’m not saying that your two questions, which I haven’t even attempted to answer, aren’t interesting or worth while. I think they are. It’s just that right now it looks to me that the is essentially unanswerable because the election was just so close.
[slight hijack]One thing that bothers me is that after the 2000 election, nobody seems to have noticed that we had essentially no violence, riots, beatings, or murders as a result. I tend to think that our response to the election shows just how mature and responsible we really are as a country, and just how committed we are to democracy and the rule of law.[/slight hijack]
There’s an excellent book out put together by the Miami Herald, which reviews the possible standards for accepting recounts of undervotes and overvotes, and shows what the tally would be for each. Step-by-step descriptions of how the results were achieved are done for a moderate-sized and a small county to show the process.
Net result: if any restrictive standard other than “absolutely no recount” is used, Gore wins the state, by varying small pluralities. But, and this is the ironic kicker, if the least restrictive standard, where anything that might possibly be construed as an indication of a vote is counted as one, Bush has a miniscule plurality.
The popular vote does not elect presidents. The electoral vote does. Therefore, the Florida popular vote may have tipped in favor of Gore, but the Electoral votes could have still swung in Bush’s favor. When you’re talking a hundred among many thousands, you’re walking a very thin line.
If nothing else, this past presidential election will insure at least two things. First, all those who rested on their laurels expecting their candidate to be a shoe-in and therefore didn’t vote, will be out en masse for the next election. Second, people will take the time to insure their ballots are punched correctly instead of shrugging their shoulders and walking away.
Huh? The party that wins the state–even by a single vote–gets to have his slate of electors for the whole state, except for a couple of freak states like Nebraska and Maine. It’s possible to win the popular vote in the whole country and not the electoral vote, but not possible to win the popular vote in a state and not get your slate of electors, unless the legislature or courts decide to monkey around with it.
