IP: Re: Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2001 09:41:23 -0500
> From: Richard Fritzson <fritzson () cs umbc edu>
>
>
> Dave,
> This is a pretty outrageous headline for this story. If you read the 
> article, you find that
>
> Paragraph 4: If you had counted all the votes in Florida, Gore probably 
> would have won.
>
> Paragraph 5-6: The bad ballot design in Palm Beach resulted in 113,000 
> overvotes being cast (ballots for two candidates). Of these 75,000 
> included Gore and a minor candidate and 29,000 included Bush and a minor 
> candidate. There is no correction factor you can apply to this 46,000 vote 
> difference which renders it unimportant.
>
> Paragraph 14-15: Includes this sentence. "An approach Mr. Gore and his 
> lawyers rejected as impractical -- a statewide recount -- could have 
> produced enough votes to tilt the election his way, no matter what 
> standard was chosen to judge voter intent." This, the story says, adds 
> irony to the fact that Gore was pursuing the wrong post election tactics. 
> Because the counties he wanted to have recounts in were insufficient. We 
> needed an accurate count of the state to find out that Gore received more 
> votes than Bush.
>
> Paragrphas 16-17: These point out that 680 overseas absentee ballots were 
> counted even though they didn't meet Florida standards. And "The vast 
> majority of those flawed ballots were accepted in counties that favored 
> Mr. Bush, after an aggressive effort by Bush strategists to pressure 
> officials to accept them." The Times statistical analysis shows that Gore 
> would have picked up a net of 290 votes if these had not been counted. 
> Enough to tip the election to Gore under some of the counting scenarios 
> they studied.
>
> At the end of the story, we get the real result:
>
> "If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards, 
> and combined with the results of an examination of overvotes, Mr. Gore 
> would have won, by a very narrow margin. For example, using the most 
> permissive "dimpled chad" standard, nearly 25,000 additional votes would 
> have been reaped, yielding 644 net new votes for Mr. Gore and giving him a 
> 107-vote victory margin.
> ...
> "Using the most restrictive standard -- the fully punched ballot card -- 
> 5,252 new votes would have been added to the Florida total, producing a 
> net gain of 652 votes for Mr. Gore, and a 115-vote victory margin."
>
> "All the other combinations likewise produced additional votes for Mr. 
> Gore, giving him a slight margin over Mr. Bush, when at least two of the 
> three coders agreed."
> ---
> These are the numbers they ran under the headline " Study of Disputed 
> Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote" and in 
> front of which they put three paragraphs pointing out that if you only 
> recount the particular counties which had made it through the legal appeal 
> process at the time the Supreme Court intervened, then Bush would have won.
>
> An innaccurate paraphrase of the headline is now circulating on Reuters 
> ("Study of Florida Ballots Shows Bush Won 2000 Election").
>
> Rich Fritzson


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