From: msmith01@flash.net
Subject: SNET: Bush wins new recount
Date: 4 Apr 2001 15:39:55 -0400
To: Mark 


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How many times do sore losers have to be 
told this before they understand ?!



http://www.freep.com/news/politics/vote4_20010404.htm

Bush wins new recount

Papers' review helps answer nagging question 64,248 ballots in all
Florida counties examined

April 4, 2001



BY MARTIN MERZER
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS


MIAMI -- President George W. Bush's victory in Florida, which gave him
the White House, almost certainly would have endured even if a manual
ballot recount stopped by the U.S. Supreme Court had been allowed to go
forward.



A comprehensive review of 64,248 ballots in all 67 Florida counties by
the Miami Herald, its parent company, Knight Ridder, and USA Today found
that Bush's official 537-vote victory margin would have increased to
1,665 votes if ballots had been counted by the less restrictive standard
demanded by supporters of his Democratic rival, Al Gore.

The newspapers' recount, conducted by the public accounting firm BDO
Seidman LLP, was designed to answer a question asked by many Americans
and certain to be examined by historians:



What would have happened if the U.S. Supreme Court had not halted the
sweeping manual recount of so-called undervotes ordered by the Florida
Supreme Court on Dec. 8. Undervotes are ballots on which voting machines
detected no presidential vote.

The answer under almost all scenarios: Bush still would have won the
presidency.



Indeed, in one of the great ironies of the bitter 2000 election, Bush's
lead would have vanished if the recount had been conducted under the
severely restrictive counting standards that some Republicans had
advocated.



For Gore to have won, the review indicates, two improbable things would
had to have happened:



First, there would had to have been a statewide manual recount of all
undervotes in all counties, which wasn't what the Florida Supreme Court
ordered.



Then, election authorities across the state would had to have used a
very liberal standard for judging a voter's intent -- essentially
counting every mark, dimple, pinprick or hanging chad. The standard used
most widely in recounts around the United States is stricter and would
not have given Gore the Florida election.



When the Florida Supreme Court ordered a statewide manual recount, it
excluded Broward, Palm Beach and Volusia counties and 139 precincts in
Miami-Dade, where manual recounts already had been conducted.



The newspapers' recount examined only the state's undervotes. The Miami
Herald, USA Today, and Knight Ridder, which also is the parent company
of the Free Press, as well as several other newspapers also are fully
reviewing at least 110,000 overvotes -- ballots for which machines
recorded votes for more than one presidential candidate.

That project should be concluded within a month. Its results will not
affect the conclusions of the undercount review, however, because the
Florida Supreme Court did not order counties to recount overvotes.

Here's what the ballot review found in the counties that were included
in the state court-ordered recount, depending on which standard was used
to judge ballots:

STANDARD: Every dimple, pinprick or hanging chad on a punch-card ballot
was considered a valid vote, the most generous standard.


+RESULT: Bush would have won by 1,665 votes.

STANDARD: Dimples were counted as presidential votes only on ballots
that had dimples in other races, suggesting a fault with either the
machine or the voter's ability to use it.


+RESULT: Bush would have won by 884 votes.

STANDARD: A vote was counted only when a punch-card chad was detached by
at least two corners, perhaps the most common standard applied
nationally.


+RESULT: Bush would have won by 363 votes.

STANDARD: A vote was counted only when a hole was cleanly punched, the
most restrictive standard.


+RESULT: Gore would have won by 3 votes.



+CAVEAT: Gore's advantage -- 0.00005 percent of the 5.9 million votes
cast by Floridians -- would have been so tiny that it still would have
left the outcome in question. In addition, it is produced by a highly
unlikely scenario because the most generous and the most restrictive
standards are rarely employed.

But the review also found that the result would have been different if
every canvassing board in every one of Florida's 67 counties had
examined every undervote, a situation that no election official or court
ordered. Gore called for such a statewide manual recount, but Bush
rejected the idea and there was no mechanism in place to conduct one.



Here's what the review found in all Florida counties, including those
that were not part of the court-ordered recount:

STANDARD: Every dimple, pinprick or hanging chad on a punch-card ballot
was considered a valid vote.


+RESULT: Gore would have won by 393 votes.

STANDARD: Dimples were counted as presidential votes only on ballots
that had dimples in other races.


+RESULT: Gore would have won by 299 votes.

STANDARD: A vote was counted only when a punch-card chad was detached by
at least two corners.
+RESULT: Bush would have won by 351 votes.





STANDARD: A vote was counted only when a hole was cleanly punched.


+RESULT: Bush would have won by 416 votes.

On Tuesday, both parties claimed that the review validated their
positions.



"The president believes, just as the American people do, that this
election was settled months ago," said White House spokesman Ari
Fleischer. "The voters spoke, and George W. Bush won."

But Doug Hattaway, a former Gore campaign spokesman, said: "If you count
every vote, Gore wins. This study confirms that Florida's election
system failed the voters."



For more details on the vote review, see www.miami.com/election.



Contact Nation/World Editor NANCY M. LAUGHLIN, who edited this report,
at 313-223-4743.


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