"Additionally, Democratic officials said they had found 6,000 ballots in Broward County that were punched but not all the way through, so the machines didn't pick them up. A Gore adviser said the campaign had won authorization for a recount by hand in Broward County."
Broward County went heavily Democrat (68% vs. 31% Republican). A hand recount will pick up these votes. Assuming the same percentage hold true (68% vs. 31%), roughly 4,000 votes should be for Gore and 2,000 should be for Bush.
posted on November 10, 2000 01:38:18 PM new
To the subject of manual recounting:
heavily Republican Seminole County Florida was the last to finish its mandatory recount. The margin was down to
about 229 and Seminole County votes added another 98 (net) to Bush. The reason for Seminole County's delay is that they voluntarily provided the complete recount,
INCLUDING REJECTED BALLOTS, sought in Palm Beach etc. Yesterday Afternoon local TV news carried pictures and an interview with a member of the Seminole
County election board (Supervisor of Elections?) and local REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN DAN MICA who was present and interviewed. They were running each
individual ballot through the voting machines. ANY BALLOT THE MACHINE REJECTED WAS THEN EXAMINED BY HAND, AND IF THE "WILL OF THE
VOTER" COULD BE DETERMINED. THEY PREPARED A NEW BALLOT TO REPLACE THE ORIGINAL REJECTED BALLOT AND ADDED THIS NEWLY
CREATED BALLOT TO THE COUNT. Naturally in a county Bush carried almost 2-1 this resulted in a net increase of Bush votes. Now in the Republican Seminole
County Florida, under the leadership of CONGRESSMAN DAN MICA (R-Fla) acting on behalf of Bush.. The REJECTED VOTES WERE EXAMINED AND ADDED TO
THE OFFICIAL TOTALS. If the Bush camp thinks that it is proper to examine by hand the rejected votes in Republican Seminole County Florida, AND to
SUBSTITUTE NEW BALLOTS FOR THOSE REJECTED, how can this possibly be PROPER when done in Seminole County Florida and then be IMPROPER when
done in Palm Beach County Florida?"11/10/00
posted on November 10, 2000 05:25:15 PM new
As if discovering a ballot counting machine Tuesday night showing a Gore deficit of 16,000 votes was not enough, while moving the ballots to another building to get
ready for a full hand count tomorrow, officials discovered three unsealed ballot bags, one with the paper votes actually spilling out. Unofficial results in Volusia show
Gore with 97,063 votes and Texas Gov. George W. Bush with 82,214. It will be interesting to see what tomorrow will bring in this district that supposedly voted for Gore
over Bush by 15 thousand votes. At the very least, as Republican Seminole County demonstrated, Volusia County counters should be able to decide the "will of the
voters" in a substantial number of ballots rejected by the machine. Anecdotal reports from Palm Beach County have indicated that on some of the double punched
ballots that were rejected there, the "will of the voter" was indicated with hand-written circles and arrows over the correct punch of the double-punched ballot. With
only 1% of the votes being hand-counted, one would hope that such ballots won't be missed.
posted on November 10, 2000 07:37:41 PM newKRS,can you provide a link for your report? I would be interested in seeing it. I live in Seminole County, Florida and I have not seen anything like you report in the local papers or media.
posted on November 10, 2000 07:49:21 PM newKRS, I read that article this morning, I was referring to your account of the vote counting methodology in Seminole County.
posted on November 10, 2000 08:01:25 PM new
krs -- how 'bout your source for the first item, about the manual recount in Seminole Co.? Verrrrry interesting. Thanks.
posted on November 10, 2000 08:04:10 PM new
Oh. You might have said so. That's from Bush watch and is a response to James Baker's claim of an impartial recount by Florida Republican party poll administrators.
As the first item says, local broadcasting of an interview with this Congressman Mica is the real source. I'm finding it pretty unreliable to watch Florida television from here. It keeps locking up my browser, Bush probably directed that it do that.
posted on November 11, 2000 05:38:18 AM newDoctorBeetle - I heard about the manual recount in Seminole yesterday. (Unfortunately, I was at work and don't recall exactly *where* I saw it.)
But no one is implying the Seminole officials did anything wrong - they did exactly what they're supposed to.
In a regular re-count, the ballots go through the machines again. Sometimes - if a hole wasn't completely punched through - a tiny piece of paper will still be hanging on. This can cause the machine to not read the ballot the first time. In a re-count, many of these tiny pieces of paper will have come off (just because of increased handling), and these ballots will now be read by the machine. Normally, the overall number of votes should increase (in a regular recount).
In a 'manual' recount, each ballot is fed through the counting machine individually. If it doesn't register, an individual then looks at it. If they can determine what the voter 'meant' to do, they fill out another ballot correctly and feed it through.
Seminole county ended up with a plus 94(?) votes for Bush because of this - it's an overwhelming Republican county and - statistically speaking - the additional ballots now counted should reflect the same distribution as the first vote.
From everything I've read, there's NOTHING suspicious about the new numbers coming from Seminole County. They just went ahead and did what the Gore camp is asking 3 (or 4) other counties to do.
posted on November 11, 2000 07:32:42 AM new
I wanted a link to this information so that I could see it for myself. There have been way too many hearsay reports and rumours posted on these boards for me to take anything at face value.
In another thread I posted information that I later found I couldn't substantiate. I didn't like that. So I have reached the point where I won't post any items (other than pure opinion) that I can't provide a link for so that others can decide for themselves.
There is a significant amount of spin being applied to the "facts" that are being posted and at this point I am going to reverse standard jurisprudence and judge most reports guilty until proven innocent.
posted on November 11, 2000 08:01:24 AM new"I wanted a link to this information so that I could see it for myself. There have been way too many hearsay reports and rumours posted on these boards for me to take anything at face value."
I've become very cynical on the internet message boards and I've begun to accept information that is only 3 levels from the source. If a friend of a friend of a friend is the source I consider that valid and certifiable information. I've decided not to accept information that comes from a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend. I feel 4 levels from the source allows for too many typos to taint the information or the information is dated.
BTW, what does everyone think of the proposal of the postal service on 5 cents per email? I'm hopping mad over that!
