Bush, Kerry each gain votes

[lovuian]

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041218/NEWS01/412180370

Bush, Kerry each gain votes
Hundreds of hanging chads fall off in recount

By John Nolan
The Associated Press


Sally Castleman and Richard Talerico check the rotation of presidential names on ballot booklets Friday at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections in Cleveland.
The Associated Press/Tony Dejak
Zoom
Hanging chads that came loose when punch-card ballots were handled again or rerun through tallying machines explain most of the additional votes President Bush and John Kerry are picking up in Ohio's recount, election officials said Friday.

With 45 of Ohio's 88 counties reporting final recounts Friday, including the large urban counties of Cuyahoga, Hamilton and Franklin, Bush has gained 303 votes and Kerry has gained 443 votes.

Neither campaign expects the recount to change the outcome.

The Republican Bush won Ohio's 20 electoral votes by a margin of about 119,000.

more...

Ok interesting hopefully we will see if Fraud has taken place but no news outta Warren County!!!

[DoYouEverWonder]

1. So if Kerry picked up 443 more votes

from recounting just 3% of the already counted votes, how many more votes did he really get? Keep in mind this does not include any of the so called undervotes or the 1000's of provisional ballots that have not been examined.

Houston, we have a problem.

[rainbow4321]

4. Little TOO perfect...

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0412/S00205.htm


Giving new meaning to the adjective ''Orwellian," just hours after the Ranking Minority Member of the House Judiciary Committee asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate allegations that two electronic voting-machine manufacturers -- Triad Governmental Systems and Diebold, Inc. -- not only tampered with voting machines in Ohio, but also (as to the former, and possibly the latter) instructed county elections officials on how to make a hand recount match a machine recount, countless Ohio counties (all of which are opposed to conducting any countywide recounting) have done exactly what Triad Governmental Systems allegedly instructed Hocking County (OH) elections officials on how to do: match preliminary hand and machine recounts perfectly in order to avoid a state statute requiring a countywide manual recount if a 3% sample of county ballots uncovers even one mis- or un-counted ballot.


So, today, The Advocate celebrates those Ohio counties whose elections officials -- having publicly decried the recount effort and expressed their determination to avoid any countywide manual recount -- have done such a "double-plus-good" job on their preliminary recounts that, conveniently, they've made their own dearest wishes come true: Butler, Lucas, Richland, Sandusky, Seneca, and Summit counties, who, all told, recounted well over 23,000 ballots without uncovering even a single mistake in tabulation.
Not even one.

Of course, in none of these counties were recount observers allowed to stand close enough to elections officials to actually see any of the ballots being counted; every county in which an observer asked to inspect an actual electronic voting machine rebuffed such request; one county, Delaware County, continues to refuse to even conduct a recount; and, as mentioned above, it would be a great surprise if Diebold and Triad representatives hadn't visited all the counties mentioned above, because the presidents of those companies seem to admit that they did -- the only question remaining, then, being whether those "visits" also involved criminal election fraud, as was reportedly the case in Hocking County. Perhaps the elections officials in Butler, Lucas, Richland, Sandusky, Seneca, and Summit counties, none of which welcomed a recount, were less forthcoming regarding their "interviews" with Triad/Diebold representatives than was Sherole Eaton, Deputy Director of Elections in Hocking County?
If the F.B.I. continues to be the only investigative body on the case, the world may never know.


The Green Party of America is reporting, however, that many Ohio counties are pre-selecting -- as opposed to randomly selecting -- precincts to recount, possibly in contravention of Ohio statutes. The intent of this pre-selection process, according to Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb, is to ensure that the smallest number of ballots is actually recounted -- that is, to target specific precincts which, when taken together, will comprise precisely or near-precisely 3% of all ballots cast countywide, rather than taking a random sampling of precincts whose total ballots reach the 3% threshold, i.e., ceasing the random-selection process as soon as sufficient precincts are selected to achieve the desired number of ballots. Moreover, an update recently entered on the Party's website alleges that there are an increasing number of "tales of ballot-prepping (to allow the hand count and the machine count to match)..." This assertion is consistent with data being compiled and disseminated by The Advocate in this article and others.

[Must_B_Free]

2. Is this the right math?

_3%_Pct_100%__Net
b 303 .41 10,100
k 443 .59 14,766 4666+
t 746

[mulethree]

5. no, this isn't 3% its 74%

Edited, to reflect the 74% from the nashau article instead of my 75% guess


This Bush+303 Kerry+443 is not a 3% hand recount, it is a 100% recount done by machine.

They did a hand recount of 3% to validate the machines, and then counted 100% by machine.

It's 45/88 of counties but includes some of the most populous counties, its 74% of the votes.

__74%_Pct_100%
b 303 .41 409
k 443 .59 598

[rainbow4321]

3. Data On Associated Press Tally Of "New" Votes

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0412/S00207.htm


In an article slated for release at 12:01 A.M. on Saturday, December 18th, the Associated Press will report that, with 74% of votes recounted from the November 2nd, 2004 election, 949 new net votes have been uncovered.

While it is impossible to calculate what percentage of these new votes were uncovered via manual recounts, and what percentage from machine recounts -- the AP claims, in general terms, that the new votes were engendered by "hanging chads that came loose when punch-card ballots were handled again or rerun through tallying machines" -- if these 949 votes came primarily from the 3% hand-recounts, a statewide manual recount would be expected to accumulate approximately 42,320 new net votes. While this total could be much lower (if machine-recounts, not hand-recounts, also loosened many chads) or much higher (if ballot-prepping and precinct-targeting make the 3%-of-ballots recounts conducted thus far unrepresentative of the state as a whole) in the judgment of The Advocate this estimate seems to be a well-grounded, middle-of-the-road figure..


In short, it cannot be presumed that every vote gained for Kerry was lost to Bush, or vice versa, and that therefore "net votes gained for each candidate equals gross votes gained for the two candidates together." Those with much greater faith in ballot-counting than our Staff may wish to reduce The Advocate's estimated statistical disparity between net and gross votes and allow, therefore, that a statewide manual recount would "only" result in 60,000 or so new gross votes -- not enough to swing the election in itself, but, when combined with other voting irregularities and an existing crop of 92,000 undervotes, perhaps still enough to do so.