# votes
**URL:** http://discourse.iapct.org/t/votes/15372
**Category:** CSG2000
**Created:** [December 16, 2000, 10:43pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/votes/15372 "2000-12-16T22:43:34Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Bill\_Powers1](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/Bill_Powers1)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2000, 12:57pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/votes/15372/21 "2000-12-19T12:57:48Z")
[From Bill Powers (2000.12.19.0445 MST)]
Bruce Abbott (2000.12.18.1105 EST)--
> The "subjective bias" in the counting machines reflects the voting standard
> their use assumes: it is a vote if, and only if, there is a hole there.
> That is the standard they were designed to meet, and they do so with great
> accuracy. It is also the standard voters were warned in the polling places
> had to be met if their votes were to count.
You're idealizing the way these hole-punch machines actually work. When you
push with the stylus, there is resistance until you push hard enough, and
then (if you do push hard enough) the resistance suddenly gives way and the
stylus goes all the way in and bottoms out. However, this does not
guarantee that "there is a hole there," because nothing guarantees that the
chad drops completely away. If the chad is now a flap held by one or two
corners, the hole can look open on visual inspection from the top, yet
close up again when the card slides into the counting machine. Also, when
you pull the card out to look at the holes (assuming you really do that --
but who really does?) all you see is a pattern of punched and unpunched
rectangles, with no indication of which \_should\_ be punched. All machines
of this kind that I have used have a fixed booklet under which the card
slides, so all you see is the printed booklet on one side, and a column of
guide holes on the other side, at the right. The card itself is not
visible. I don't think a voter inspecting the card could possibly tell what
presence or absence of a hole in any given position meant.
> No, I'm saying that if a dimpled chad counts as a vote, then to be
> consistent, a ballot with a dimpled chad for one candidate and a hole for
> another candidate competing for the same office would have to count as a
> double-vote and rejected on that ground.
I would expect that to happen, since observers from both parties were
present (in Illinois, the law required it) and could challenge any judgment
of a valid or invalid vote. This was not a case of Democrats deciding which
ballots were valid or invalid and just chucking out the votes for the other
guy. There are a lot of hawk eyes on both sides watching every ballot
during a manual count.
The system is not based on trust.
Incidentally, these punch-card systems require that the card be slid under
the ballot booklet and the top edge, when it appears, be lifted enough to
slide over two pins that then engage registration holes in the card. If the
voter stops feeding the card in when it first stops, the top edge of the
card could be butting against the registration pins. This would displace
\_all\_ the holes relative to their proper positions, and all votes would be
other than what was intended. When the card was pulled out, there would be
no indication that this had happened. There is no printing on the cards to
indicate the meaning of any given punch hole.
> Do you know that by far the most typical experience with recounts is that
> they make little difference -- only a few votes one way or the other,
> tending to cancel out?
That's easy to say when there is a single uniform voting system and the
candidates are essentially tied, but it's clear that the most errors
occurred in places where the cheapest machines were located. If that
happened to coincide, for whatever reason, with places where the most votes
for Gore were cast, then one would NOT expect a recount to favor both
candidates equally. Picking up intended votes from apparent no-votes would
favor the candidate for whom the most votes were being cast.
Anyway, you're overlooking the \_extremely small\_ difference in the votes
for the two candidates, so close to a tie as to be statistically
indistinguishable. The difference was "only a few votes one way or the
other." Even if the errors were random, a recount could easily have either
increased Bush's lead, or swung the election the other way. Gore, who was
behind, was willing to take the chance that Bush's lead might increase.
Bush, who was ahead, was not willing to take the chance that his lead might
decrease or vanish. The chances of either outcome of a recount, I would
guess, would have been around 50:50.
> I really would like to know how you would be talking
> now if the situation had been reversed, with Gore ahead and the Bush team
> calling for a recount only in highly populated Republican strongholds,
> precinct workers finding votes in dimple chads, and uncharacteristically
> large (compared to typical recount experience) gains for Bush being
> announced from partial recounts in progress withing Republican held
> precincts. Think about it. Wouldn't you have been screaming that Bush was
> trying to steal the election? (Sound familiar?)
In my case, probably, especially if I were as drunk as some of those
protesters looked. But such paranoid objections overlook the fact that both
parties, as mentioned above, keep a sharp eye on the other side during
manual recounts and do not let a single disputable decision get by without
loud objections. If both sides agreed that there was a clear indication
that the voter \_tried\_ to poke a hole through the card, then of course the
suspicion of cheating by one side would be groundless. And as far as I
could tell, that is how it worked: both sides had to agree. Also, my
impression was that people were trying to be impartial even if they favored
one side. People do tend to rise to the occasion, and a national election
is a somewhat solemn occasion.
> I like your reasoning (surprised?), but would like evidence that there were
> problems with the machines. Thus far no one has brought forth a machine
> which demonstrates the problems that have been alleged.
I wonder whether you're ever actually used a punch-card ballot. I don't
think your imagination is giving you an accurate picture of how they
actually work. There are problems with \_all\_ punch-card machines, of the
nature I described above.
> And it isn't the
> counting machines that were the problem, if there was one, it was the
> punch-card ballot device, which supposedly made it difficult in some cases
> to punch out a chad. I am unwilling to reason backward from the result to
> the supposed defect, and then use the supposed defect to explain the result.
> If there was such a problem, it should be easy to demonstrate.
The problem was demonstrated: hanging chads, pregnant chads, and all the
similar stuff that opponents of the recount were loudly making fun of. And,
if anyone had thought to look, displaced holes due to failure of registration.
[This from Rick Marken]\>\> My guess is that most of
> > the uncounted votes in those counties were from the cheap punch
> > card machines in the Democratically inclined precincts of these
> > majority Republican districts.
You made that one up, Rick. I think that the same machines are used
everywhere within a given county.
> Is the Brookings Institute going to recount every county in Florida? In the
> counties using the punch-card system, what will be counted as a vote?
> Unless the answer to the first question is "yes" and a uniform standard is
> used in the recounting, the "actual" count will be no more meaningful than
> any of the previous "actual" counts.
Don't forget that a statistical fluctuation of about 0.00004 of the total
would be enough to throw the result the other way. If that happened, Gore
should not be given the Florida electors. Neither should Bush if the
opposite happened. Either the election should be declared inconclusive, or
the electoral votes should be split. The fact is that it's impossible to
deduce the will of the voters in Florida. The signal was drowned in noise.
> Everything else
> aside, this election has provided great stuff for my statistics class to
> mull over in the Spring semester -- like how a giant spike for Buchanan in
> Palm Beach turns out on analysis to be much ado over nothing.
So you say. I have yet to verify that. I think you need to get confirmation
of your analysis from an independent source before you start spreading it
around. The plot I saw on TV suggests otherwise: if the Buchanan spike was
ten units, I didn't see any other spikes on the county-by-county plot that
looked as high as three units. Of course I didn't get a really good look.
Is there a county-by-county tabulation anywhere?
This could really go on forever. I agree with you that we have more
important things to talk about, now that all arguments are moot.
Best,
Bill P.
---
### Author:  [@Abbott\_Bruce](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/Abbott_Bruce)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2000, 1:36pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/votes/15372/22 "2000-12-19T13:36:33Z")
[From Bruce Abbott (2000.12.19.0835 EST)]
> Shannon Williams (2000.12.18.1105 CST)
> > Bruce Abbott (2000.12.18.1105 EST)
> > \>No. We already knew why Bush was worried about the fairness of the
> > \>recount. A fair recount was likely to show that Gore won by a
> > \>considerable margin (possibly more than the 20,000 predicted
> > \>by the Miami Herald).
> > How do you know what Bush was worried about?
> > Do you know that by far the most typical experience with recounts is that
> > they make little difference
>
> Bush spent four million dollars preventing a manual count, which in the
> end even the Supreme Court agreed was the fairest way to conclude the
> election. What was he controlling for?
Winning, of course (as was Gore). But beyond that, I have made a case for
why the Bush camp may have felt that the recount process as it was being
implemented was unfair to their side. I have shown, for example, that there
were some very strange things going on with the recount that would not
ordinarily be expected to occur in the course of a fair recount. Both sides
spent an enormous amount of money defending their positions, so the fact
that the Bush side spent four million defending their own position in the
matter can't be counted as evidence that Bush was trying to thwart the
democratic process. You ask your question as if the answer is obvious -- in
your opinion he was controlling for cheating. As I think I've made clear,
the answer isn't obvious at all, and your version has to be maintained by
ignoring the points I've raised, which you don't even mention, let alone
provide any sort of cogent argument against. Admit it, Shannon. You made
up your mind a long time ago and you're not going to tolerate any
conclusions that conflict with your opinion.
Notice that in your reply above, you completely ignored the point I made and
instead launched a different argument. Are you even listening? The point
was that the Bush camp would have had good reason to suspect that the
election was being stolen from them by a fraudulant recount process. That's
why they wanted it stopped. But you prefer your far more sinister
intepretation -- that the Bush side was plotting an anti-democratic takeover
of the Presidency. Perhaps I am naive, but I don't believe that for a
minute. That view is far too paranoid for my tastes.
> Here are a few opinion pieces that discuss Bush's strategy:
> [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16797-2000Dec16.html?GXHC\_gx](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16797-2000Dec16.html?GXHC_gx)
\_session\_id\_FutureTenseContentServer=f71f5ff97364054b&referer=email
> [http://www.tnr.com/122500/chait122500.html](http://www.tnr.com/122500/chait122500.html)
> [http://www.latimes.com/news/comment/20001217/t000120315.html](http://www.latimes.com/news/comment/20001217/t000120315.html)
> [http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/election/774355](http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/election/774355)
Thanks -- I'll read them. No doubt in the interests of fairness you've
included some opinion pieces with a viewpoint congenial to Bush's side as
well as some congenial to your own view, to balance out the argument. Right?
> Shannon Williams (2000.12.18.2245 CST)
> > I am the first to suggest actually looking at the
> > \_data\_ as opposed to merely engaging in heated, one-sided rhetoric.
>
> If your "data" examination efforts had preceded
> everyone else's, then you would have been telling us
> about URLS rather than asking for them. You were
> not the first to look at the data, you were
> the last.
I don't recall you or anyone else citing any of that evidence or making
reasoned arguments from them. I offered arguments and then suggested
looking at the evidence (vote totals). This is a cleaner way to proceed
than looking at the evidence and then constructing arguments to fit them.
Before I entered this discussion, all I was hearing was extremely biased
partisan polemics of the nastiest, most mean-spirited sort. The rhetoric
sounded more like a lynch mob than a scientific forum -- I kept waiting for
folks to break out the torches and pitchforks. Did I miss your reasoned
arguments from the data you evidently were carefully examining before I
mentioned them? If so, I apologize.
> BTW- Bush and Gore are not much alike (judged by
> my reference points.) Had the Bush-Gore positions
> been reversed, Gore would not have attempted to prevent
> the manual counts ( and the courts would never have been
> involved in the election.)
I believe that you believe that. I rather doubt that it's true, but we'll
never know. You want me to believe that if selective manual recounts of
heavily Republican strongholds were producing unprecidented shifts in the
count to favor Bush, that Gore and his team would have stood idly by,
whatched it happen, and abided by the result. I don't believe that for a
minute.
> Perhaps you can neither understand nor recognize the
> goals that would make a person do this. That would explain
> why you cannot see a difference between Bush and Gore.
Yes, Shannon, perhaps you're right - I'm just stupid and immoral. That
would explain everything.
On that note, I really am getting out of this discussion.
Bruce A.
---
### Author:  [@Richard\_Marken2](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/Richard_Marken2)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2000, 4:02pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/votes/15372/23 "2000-12-19T16:02:22Z")
[From Rick Marken (2000.12.19.0800)]
Bruce Abbott (2000.12.18.1105 EST)--
> How do you know what Bush was worried about?
I don't know if Bush personally was worried about it. I think
most of his worrying is done by others, like Baker, et al.
> I really would like to know how you would be talking now if
> the situation had been reversed
If Gore were ahead by a few votes and Bush called for a statewide
manual recount I would have expected Gore to accept or I would
have lost all respect for him. When Bush (by proxy) rejected
Gore's proposal (just a couple days after the election) for a
statewide count of the uncounted ballots, I lost all respect
for little guy.
> Is the Brookings Institute going to recount every county in Florida?
> In the counties using the punch-card system, what will be counted
> as a vote?
I assume they will recount the machine rejected votes only (about
40,000 ballots). I also hope they sort the counts into 3 or 4
piles, each representing different standards; one pile being
"punched through clear, a second being "hanging chad" a
third being "dimpled chad", etc. Then the result could be
successively integrated for the different counting criteria, from
strictest to most liberal. You'll probably find a result like:
Gore wins by 10,000 by standard 1 (most conservative), by 15,000
by standard 2, etc. Someone may do that, if they get the funding
from some institute that studies democratic processes.
> You say that this conclusion [abot the US Supreme Court's
> decisions] is "based on the evidence." What evidence?
The vote totals were converging and approaching a reversal point
just as the court issued its stay. And the court itself said it
had to stop the count because it might should Gore the winner.
> The Florida Legislature \_publically\_ declared that they would void their
> slate of electors (had they actually produced one) if the Florida Supreme
> Court-mandated recount turned out to show that Gore had won.
That's very nice to hear. I never heard that. What I did hear (from
every Republican spokesperson I heard on TV at the time) was that,
if the US Supreme Court had ruled in favor of Gore, they would have
gone to the legislature and gotten the Republican slate elected.
Given what I've seen, I have no doubt that this would have happened,
no matter what the Florida legislature said it would do. It also
said that a manual recount should be done using the standard of
determining "voter intent". It didn't keep that promise; why should
it keep an ambiguous promise about an outcome its operatives were
doing everything to proven.
> By the way, I'm going to end this here
Sounds like another Republican promise to me 馃槈
Bruce Abbott (2000.12.19.0835 EST)--
Ah ha. It was 馃槈
Best
Rick
> **路路路**
>
> --
> Richard S. Marken Phone or Fax: 310 474-0313
> MindReadings.com mailto: marken@mindreadings.com
> www.mindreadings.com
---
### Author:  [@Bruce\_Gregory](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/Bruce_Gregory)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2000, 9:15pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/votes/15372/24 "2000-12-19T21:15:09Z")
[From Bruce Gregory (2000.1219.1615)]
> Bruce Nevin (2000.12.19 14:14 EST)]
> In general, folks, wouldn't it be good to try to find out the facts before
> spouting your prejudices? This isn't the
> rec.opinion.relatedsomehowtoPCTbecauseIsayso newsgroup, after all.
I see you are taking your cue from the Florida Supreme Court and changing
the rules after CSGnet has been in operation for years.
BG
---
### Author:  [@bnhpct](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/bnhpct)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2000, 10:15pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/votes/15372/25 "2000-12-19T22:15:24Z")
[From Bruce Nevin (2000.12.19 14:14 EST)]
The amount of misinformation and factual error in this discussion is dismaying, given the intelligence and education of the participants and the presumed commitment to a science of behavior. I can't chase down and document all of them, but here's one that I mentioned off-line to Bruce Abbott, and he asked for more info.
Bill Powers (2000.12.19.0445 MST)--
> Bruce Abbott (2000.12.18.1105 EST)--
>
> \>I [...] would like evidence that there were
> \>problems with the machines. Thus far no one has brought forth a machine
> \>which demonstrates the problems that have been alleged.
I don't remember the source -- could have been NPR (listened to a lot of Juan Williams' Talk of the Nation, for example), or a NYer article, or the Boston Globe -- but one of the inventors of the Votomatic punch-card system said that he had been arguing for years that it should not be used. Unless the stylus is inserted precisely straight, it can jam. The matrix underneath gets stiff with age, and can be of different materials, different rubbers and plastics, depending upon its maintenance history, and the holes in it tend to fill up with chads, including some chads descending from the hole above (which would further differentiate Bush at the top hole and Gore in 2nd or -- for butterfly ballot -- the 3rd hole).
Professor Bill Rouvenol and Joseph Harris (deceased) invented the Votomatic "punch card" voting machine, so it must have been Rouvenol who was interviewed. I believe he was among those who testified on the Gore side in Florida, but am not sure. (Knowing the above, I said to myself, how could he not be?) There was reportedly (Monday, November 20 email at [http://www.egroups.com/message/florida-recount-announce/296](http://www.egroups.com/message/florida-recount-announce/296)) a story by Jerry Abejo in the Sunday West County Times (Contra Costa Times), "Roots of Ballot Chads Are Here," but I have not been able to find it on their web site [http://www.contracostatimes.com/](http://www.contracostatimes.com/)
Maybe one of you can have better luck, or Rick, maybe you can contact the paper directly for copy. (I am ending a 2-week business trip, still on the road, with holiday travel followed by more Chinese curses -- um, that is, "interesting times".)
In general, folks, wouldn't it be good to try to find out the facts before spouting your prejudices? This isn't the rec.opinion.relatedsomehowtoPCTbecauseIsayso newsgroup, after all.
Bruce Nevin
> **路路路**
>
> At 05:57 AM 12/19/2000 -0700, Bill Powers wrote:
---
### Author:  [@bnhpct](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/bnhpct)
#### Post date: [December 20, 2000, 12:36am UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/votes/15372/26 "2000-12-20T00:36:55Z")
[From Bruce Nevin (2000.12.19 16:37 EST)]
Bruce Gregory (2000.1219.1615)--
> **路路路**
>
> At 04:15 PM 12/19/2000 -0500, Bruce Gregory wrote:
>
> > > Bruce Nevin (2000.12.19 14:14 EST)--
> >
> > > In general, folks, wouldn't it be good to try to find out the facts before
> > > spouting your prejudices? This isn't the
> > > rec.opinion.relatedsomehowtoPCTbecauseIsayso newsgroup, after all.
> >
> > I see you are taking your cue from the Florida Supreme Court and changing
> > the rules after CSGnet has been in operation for years.
>
> Aren't we in the legislative branch?
>
> Bruce Nevin
---
### Author:  [@Sand\_Dollars](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/Sand_Dollars)
#### Post date: [December 20, 2000, 3:22am UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/votes/15372/27 "2000-12-20T03:22:56Z")
[from Shannon Williams (2000.12.19.2100)]
> [From Rick Marken (2000.12.19.0800)]
>
> I assume they will recount the machine rejected votes only (about
> 40,000 ballots). I also hope they sort the counts into 3 or 4
> piles, each representing different standards; one pile being
> "punched through clear, a second being "hanging chad" a
> third being "dimpled chad", etc. Then the result could be
> successively integrated for the different counting criteria, from
> strictest to most liberal.
That looks like what they are doing. BTW- they are finding
overvotes where voters picked their candidate and then wrote
him in also. These voters tend to favor Gore too. No one
has yet analyzed if the ballots in these precincts tend to
be less user-friendly, whether the voters simply do not
do well on tests, or what other factor might be moving them
to write-in their candidate.
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24199-2000Dec18.html?GXHC\_gx\_session\_id\_FutureTenseContentServer=6f2aa031fb9e2648&referer=email](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24199-2000Dec18.html?GXHC_gx_session_id_FutureTenseContentServer=6f2aa031fb9e2648&referer=email)
[http://orlandosentinel.com/news/local/lake/orl-recount-12192000-story.story?coll=orl-home-headlines](http://orlandosentinel.com/news/local/lake/orl-recount-12192000-story.story?coll=orl%2Dhome%2Dheadlines)
> \> By the way, I'm going to end this here
>
> Sounds like another Republican promise to me 馃槈
Ok.
Shannon
---
### Author:  [@Bryan\_Thalhammer](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/Bryan_Thalhammer)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2000, 4:19pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/votes/15372/28 "2000-12-17T16:19:43Z")
Hi Bill,
Hi Mary,
I had downloaded the butterfly ballot and then did a little Photoshop magic
to see what it looked like when either of two things were going on while a
voter did their thing.
1. Visually impaired correction, which may have created a situation where
only the center of vision was clear.
2. The voter's attention was directed to the lines on the left and the
apparently matching holes in the center to be punched.
Hopefully this is unlike the analog thing I once sent you (sorry!). It was
taken from the Democratic Party web site.
Bry
(Attachment ballot.jpg is missing)
(Attachment voter.jpg is missing)
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