from SLATE: >USA [TODAY] describes its Florida vote findings as "a blow to Democratic >claims that Gore would have won the election if a hand recount had >occurred." But: 1) the paper waits until the very end of its Page 3 >follow-up to report that its study also discovered that in Miami-Dade, >"Gore might have lost hundreds of votes" from misaligned ballots caused >by voters mistakenly punching ballot chads not assigned to any candidate; >2) Today's stories do not mention that by limiting its attention to >undervotes--ballots where there is, at best, evidence of an attempt to >perforate one chad--the study has chosen to ignore another type of >disputed ballot that might well have given Gore a big edge in a hand >recount: overvotes, ballots where there is evidence of an attempt to >perforate more than one chad. Specifically, there is no mention that a >post-election study conducted by the Orlando Sentinel of Florida's Lake >County ballots that included overvotes found net gains for Gore, because >the overvotes included ballots where cleanly punched regular votes for >Gore were accompanied by cleanly punched write-in votes for him. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
