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Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ANSI_X3.4-1968 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-From: "Robert Blohm. Reply to: rb112@columbia.edu . Ignore:" <blohm_r@yahoo.com< X-To: <blohm_r@yahoo.com< X-cc: X-bcc: X-Folder: \Steven_Kean_Dec2000_1\Notes Folders\All documents X-Origin: KEAN-S X-FileName: skean.nsf URL is http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/responses.html?article_id=65000777 ? [IMAGE] WSJ.com OpinionJournal [IMAGE] [IMAGE] [IMAGE] [IMAGE] Contents On the Editorial Page Reader Responses [IMAGE] Hail To The Chief [IMAGE] contents on the editorial page today's featured article also on wsj.com best of the web today e-mail updates opinionjournal briefing political diary peggy noonan media log reader responses journal opinion how others see u.s. our favorite sites columnists robert bartley thomas bray Pete du Pont paul gigot mark helprin collin levey seth lipsky peggy noonan claudia rosett kim strassel t. varadarajan about us our philosophy who we are terms & conditions contact us subscribe wsj how to advertise [IMAGE] [IMAGE] ?search ? ? OpinionJournal ? go WSJ.com ?[IMAGE] ?go directly to ?Select a PageEditorial PageLeisure & ArtsFront PageAsia ViewEurope ViewMarketplaceWeekend??JournalMoneyTech CenterWine subscribe to wsj subscribe to wsj.com [IMAGE] [Advertisement]?? Reader Responses Time to Move On BY JOHN FUND Democrats Mistook Static for Votes Robert Blohm - Princeton, New Jersey Last Saturday's Miami-Dade court-recount, under a strict standard, reportedly favored George W. Bush. In other words the higher quality the vote, the relative greater likelihood it was for Mr. Bush. This accords with testimony a week earlier before Judge Sauls by Gore's Quebec statistician, Nicholas Hengartner. He depicted that "new" votes "recovered" in the Broward County manual recount of rejected ballots were, even under that county's less strict standard, biased toward Mr. Bush relative to the votes before the manual recount: Mr. Bush had 34% of the new (i.e. "recovered") votes, versus 31% of the votes before the manual recount. The three Florida Supreme Court wise men last Friday fixed on two tradeoffs: speed vs. accuracy, and (higher) margin of error vs. (lower) margin of victory. When it's hopeless to pin down an exact number, the trend becomes everything. And the trend, the stricter the standard, has been toward Mr. Bush. You had to include overvotes in any statewide recount, which includes optical ballots as well as punch-card ballots. While punch ballots have a higher undervote rate than optical ballots, it's the reverse with overvotes. Why? If you only touch both candidates' spots with the stylus (leaving no mark) or a pencil (leaving a mark), what registers as an undervote on a punch ballot registers as an overvote on an optical ballot. Undervotes can be non-votes, or low-quality votes which may vary in quality with the voter's mental ability. There is a level of mental ability below which voting behavior is noise, unintelligible, unpurposeful. The issue was where you set the cut-off point, and ignore incompetence. The Democratic Party has a practice of assigning no cut-off point, as if rounding up derelicts to cast meaningless votes. It's as if Mr. Gore was trying to get elected by assigning purposefulness to incompetents, in the face of evidence that competence was biasing votes toward Mr. Bush. ~~~~~ ?HOME ??? VIEW ARTICLE ??? TOP OF PAGE [Advertisement]?? [IMAGE] [IMAGE] December 13, 2000 5:49pm EST [IMAGE] [IMAGE] view article [IMAGE] [IMAGE] [IMAGE] [Advertisement] [Advertisement] [IMAGE] ?? dow jones
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