-Caveat Lector-
LR company sold software that created Florida ballots
CHRISTOPHER SPENCER ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
Paul Nolte of Little Rock knows a lot about chad -- the little
pieces of paper left after a punch-hole ballot is cast -- but few
people cared about it until Wednesday.
Now the president of the small Little Rock company, Election
Resources Corp., is being interviewed by such big-media players
as The New York Times, National Public Radio and MSNBC.
Nolte's company sold the software that created and counted the
punch-hole ballots in Broward and Palm Beach counties in Florida,
where Democrats are seeking hand recounts of ballots cast to
elect the next U.S. president.
The Palm Beach County ballot, which is under extreme scrutiny for
its listing of candidates, was designed with Election Resources
Corp. software, Nolte said.
The so-called "butterfly ballot," which Nolte said is not a
common term in the industry, is being disputed because some Palm
Beach County voters claim that the ballot card is confusing and
caused votes for Al Gore to be miscast as votes for Pat Buchanan.
Such designs are coincidental, Nolte said, not intentional.
"It's not something that someone consciously decides to do,"
Nolte said. "It's not a bad ballot design, but it always results
from space limitations."
The same style ballot was used in Saline and Hot Spring counties
and wasn't a problem, Nolte said.
Also critical to a manual recount are the hanging chad -- paper
that remains attached to the hole of punched ballots. It can
cause errors in the election results when tabulated by automated
vote-counting equipment, officials said. "You will never get the
same numbers," said Rebecca Mercuri, a professor of computer
science at Bryn Mawr College. "If you run thousands of these
cards through again and again, you will continue to get different
numbers that are coming up.
"An error rate of 2 percent to 5 percent, believe it or not, is
considered acceptable by most election officials... if the error
is evenly distributed across all of the candidates."
Nolte admitted that hanging chad is a problem but said that most
ballots instruct voters to check both sides of the card to make
sure all holes are cleanly punched -- putting the responsibility
on the shoulders of the voter.
Information for this article was contributed by The Associated
Press.
This article was published on Sunday, November 12, 2000
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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