Tripleshot - I think that Palm Beach County was the same one with the 19,000 ballots tossed out for double punching. It still isn't clear if this includes spoiled ballots where the voter was given a new one to vote. I hope that there is a full reconciliation of the number of voters who signed in to vote (I'm assuming that happens, I've never voted in the US). Double voting is very common, it happened in many other places in Florida without the same type of ballot. I find it hard to accept that this was an "irregularity".
The count problems in Valusia County seem to be the same kind as occurred in NM. A mistake by the counties in question. This seems to be an automatic grounds for a full reconciliation and restating of the count, which was done.
The ballot design in Palm Beach County was made by a Democrat, advertised before the actual vote, and has been declared legal by the State Election board. It may have not been the best design and thus merited a heightened awareness by Democrat (and poll) workers to ensure that the voters were as informed as possible. The possibility of human error was definately increased because of the design, but I don't see how it is an "irreguality" in and of itself. It seems that the vast majority were able to vote properly.
The statewide recount was automatically triggered by the close margin. At the end of the count, the Bush lead was significantly cut back, but a full recount was completed. At some point, someone decided or pushed for a manual recount.
I am still unsure about the statute for recounts. I think that there is at least a good argument that the machine counting in Palm Beach County was accurate. There will be minor variations in the count because the machine design does leave room for error and it appears that some additional ballots were included that were erroneously not included during the first count (again, common in all elections and it does not apear to be such a large number that it becomes suspicious). So the manual sample count proved that the machine count worked. During the manual count, the local County canvassing board invented criteria to define what a vote would be. This criteria was defined in a manner that the voting machine, which only counts fully punched ballots, could never have counted some of them as votes. Now, the humans involved in the vote now had to discern voter intent where a clear vote had not been made and interpreted even one corner being punched as being a vote. The criteria seemed to have changed during the manual counts as well and it appears to have been made even easier to count something as a vote (the light shining through method must have eliminated many of the votes that were counted under the at least one corner punched ruling).
It does not appear that Florida has specific instruction/guidlelines in their statutes on how to manually count punch card ballots even though it allows for manual counts.
Based on the results of the manual recounts, the board voted to manually recount all the votes in the County. Since it is impossible for them (and other counties) to finish before the deadlin established by law, there is a suit being filed to extend the deadline.
I see two arguments that can be made for and against extending the deadline. The argument for would say that the machine recounts were inherently inaccurate and a manual recount is the only method that would accurate enough. Therefore, enough time must be allowed to complete a lawful and supervised recount.
The argument against would say that there was sufficient time to complete a recount and that one was performed. Nothing in the manual counts has shown that the machine counts were inherently inaccurate. The manual counts are based on subjective criteria and the evidence they presented is not compelling enough to make the manual recounts the only accpetable recounting method. This is supported by the fact that there are three options under the statute and the State board would argue (based on the comments I heard on CNN last night) that there is not a requirement to perform a manual recount. The counties would be welcome to do so, but if they miss the deadline their votes would not be counted.
Thanks for your opinion, and I'm curious about how you feel about my post above? I see arguments for both sides.
Michael