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Is hand counting better? Maybe not
By AMY WIMMER © St. Petersburg Times, published November 13, 2000 Which do you trust: human or machine? As the nation watches Florida's struggle with the election recount, some election experts say that hand recounts aren't nearly the panacea you might expect. They might not necessarily be more fair and precise. "Hand counting is not always the most accurate indicator of voter intent," said Democrat Pam Iorio, supervisor of elections in Hillsborough County and president of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections. Vice President Al Gore's campaign is seeking hand recounts in at least five Florida counties, saying the machine tabulation is fraught with error. They point to thousands of votes that might have been missed in the presidential race, and thousands of other ballots that showed voters punched holes for two presidential candidates. But George W. Bush's campaign disagrees. Bush adviser James A. Baker, in announcing a lawsuit that will be heard today to block the hand count, pointed out that "machines are neither Republicans nor Democrats." Yet the trouble with manual counts goes beyond the personal biases of the tabulators, says Richard Smolka, a political scientist at American University who publishes a newsletter called Election Administration Reports. "Hand counting is really mislabeled because it's not a matter of counting. It's a matter of examining and determining voter intent," Smolka said. In court disputes, Florida judges have urged elections supervisors to pursue "the intent of the voter," Iorio said, though judges have given elections officials few guidelines. Each county canvassing board establishes its rules for counting. Before a hand count begins, the board sets criteria for deciding which votes count. Most often, those criteria involve deciding whether a voter intended to punch out a "chad," the rectangular sliver of paper beside a name. Should partially punched chads be counted? What if a ballot contains a partially punched chad beside one candidate and a fully punched one beside another? In counties that use optical scanners to count ballots, canvassing boards face similar uncertainties: Should a vote count if the voter circled an oval instead of blackening it? What if the voter used red ink instead of No. 2 pencil? What if the voter simply placed an "x" beside the name of the candidate? "If every voter voted his or her ballot correctly, you probably wouldn't even need a recount," said Deborah Clark, a Republican and Pinellas County supervisor of elections. Clark said she thinks a statewide hand count of ballots might be necessary to ensure consistency, pointing out that Gore is requesting such counts only in heavily Democratic counties. Susan Gill, a Republican and supervisor of elections in Citrus County, said hand counts have their place, but too many could be "frivolous." Said Gill: "How many times are we going to count these things?" - Information from Times wires was used in this report.
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From the Times election desk From the AP national wire  |
