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[Michael S Czeiszperger <czei AT webperfcenter.com>]

On Thursday 09 November 2000 14:25, you wrote:
> on 11/9/00 2:02 PM, Steven Champeon wrote:
>
> So, if this is correct, out of 14,000 registered "Reform Party" folks in
> Palm Beach County it's not too far out of the question for about 3500 of
> them to vote for Buchanan there... Curiouser & curiouser, and this whole
> thing is likely to drag on for quite a while.
>


I agree that there's nothing immediately obvious about the number of votes 
cast for Buchanan that would indicate something was amiss. Even if mistakes 
were made by people voting, there's nothing illegal about it as long as the 
ballots were legal. I'm sure people make mistakes on ballots in every 
election no matter what the ballot looks like, and that's no reason to 
invalidate an election. Bush's representative in Florida, James Baker, is 
arguing that as long as the election officials complied with Florida law than 
the results are valid.

A more important issue for me is the personal interviews with people who 
claim that they weren't allowed to change their vote after making the 
mistake, which would be a violation of election law by an election official.

Another twist on the ballot question in Palm Beach County is MSNBC is 
repeating the assertion by a lawyer that Florida State Law requires that the 
mark voting for a candidate be to the right of a candidate's name, which 
wasn't the case with this ballot. The board of elections in Florida is 
arguing that the ballots have been used for years, and therefore are legal. 
My non-lawyer guess is that *if* the lawyer is right, and Florida election 
law does require a certain placement, then the ballots are illegal. Whether 
that invalidates the election in that county is anyone's guess, and this is 
just hearsay at the moment.

In terms of numbers, its far more important to me to look at the 19,000+ 
presidential votes in the county that were invalidated because both the 
Buchanan and Gore holes had been punched. Its clear that the ballot wasn't 
intentially misleading, and the people who ran the election process in the 
county intended to have a fair ballot, and the ballot was in fact legal. 
However, if the number of invalidated ballots is very much larger than in 
other counties I wonder if that would be grounds for any type of invalidation 
of the election? 

-- 
Michael S Czeiszperger | czei AT webperfcenter.com
Web Performance Inc.   | http://www.webperfcenter.com