10/27/2003
2000 recount recounted again
A lot is being made on the Web about a vote-counting machine malfunction in Volusia County during the 2000 election. To set the record straight, let me make a few observations, since I was at the recount:
The first indication that we were in for a long night came when Precinct 216 in DeLand gave weird results. Suddenly, the running tally showed that Gore lost votes, something not possible. This was public knowledge within an hour or so of the numbers being transmitted.
It turned out that a malfunctioning circuit card caused Gore to get negative 16,022 votes (-16,022). What's more, a rather conservative precinct gave Socialist Workers Party candidate James Harris 9,888 votes to outpoll Bush's 8,642 votes. Nader also received negative votes, -2,415.
These were darken-the-circle ballots. Each marked paper ballot was locked in the counting machine after the machine counted them. The malfunctioning counter was brought to the elections office, was unlocked, and the paper ballots were fed into another machine. The total was corrected that night.
Then, in the weeks to come, Volusia County counted every ballot by hand, in view of the press and witnesses by both parties. A ballot committee ruled on every ballot where the intent of the voter could in any way be questioned. The hand count came up with extra votes for both Bush and Gore because ballots that were marked in nonstandard ways were discovered and counted wherever voter intent could be discerned. (You'd be amazed at the number of people who underlined or circled the names of their candidates, something the machine could not detect but a hand-count could.)
The results tended to affirm the accuracy of the counting machines countywide.
Why the card malfunctioned is anyone's guess. But the mistake was instantly noted and quickly corrected. And because of the remarkable effort to count every vote by hand before the deadline, Volusia had some of the most accurate results in the state. And yes, Gore won the county 97,304 to 82,357. (Nader got 2,910.)
The first indication that we were in for a long night came when Precinct 216 in DeLand gave weird results. Suddenly, the running tally showed that Gore lost votes, something not possible. This was public knowledge within an hour or so of the numbers being transmitted.
It turned out that a malfunctioning circuit card caused Gore to get negative 16,022 votes (-16,022). What's more, a rather conservative precinct gave Socialist Workers Party candidate James Harris 9,888 votes to outpoll Bush's 8,642 votes. Nader also received negative votes, -2,415.
These were darken-the-circle ballots. Each marked paper ballot was locked in the counting machine after the machine counted them. The malfunctioning counter was brought to the elections office, was unlocked, and the paper ballots were fed into another machine. The total was corrected that night.
Then, in the weeks to come, Volusia County counted every ballot by hand, in view of the press and witnesses by both parties. A ballot committee ruled on every ballot where the intent of the voter could in any way be questioned. The hand count came up with extra votes for both Bush and Gore because ballots that were marked in nonstandard ways were discovered and counted wherever voter intent could be discerned. (You'd be amazed at the number of people who underlined or circled the names of their candidates, something the machine could not detect but a hand-count could.)
The results tended to affirm the accuracy of the counting machines countywide.
Why the card malfunctioned is anyone's guess. But the mistake was instantly noted and quickly corrected. And because of the remarkable effort to count every vote by hand before the deadline, Volusia had some of the most accurate results in the state. And yes, Gore won the county 97,304 to 82,357. (Nader got 2,910.)
