Posted on 12/11/2004 11:11:38 AM PST by JosefK
Saturday, December 11, 2004 · Last updated 9:34 a.m. PT
Man or machine? Rossi-Gregoire recount prompts dispute over accuracy
By DAVID AMMONS AP POLITICAL WRITER
OLYMPIA, Wash. -- Humans versus machines?
No, it's not an old Schwarzenegger sci-fi flick, but a high-stakes dispute in the often strange world of Washington politics.
With the governor's race hanging in the balance, an unprecedented third vote count is now underway in the state's 39 counties - by real live human beings this time. The two previous tallies, both by machine, showed underdog Republican Dino Rossi to be the winner by the tiniest margin on record, 42 votes at last count.
Democrat Christine Gregoire's allies plunked down $730,000 to secure an unprecedented second statewide recount, by hand this time.
All of which raises the timely question: Which method is more reliable and accurate? Human or machine?
And, ultimately, who really won? Can we trust the results? As one newspaper headline put it: "Top vote-getter? We may never truly know."
The experts tend to favor the machine recount, although some key election-watchers, including the secretary of state, find compelling arguments on both sides and acknowledge that any vote-counting system has a tiny built in error rate.
That means any election is an approximation - usually reliable enough to keep candidates and voters happy. But in a contest this ultra-close - both got 48.87 percent - even the method of counting has become grist for debate.
The two sides in the governor's battle-from-hell are quite opinionated. Republicans see human counters as error prone - and possibly hanky-panky prone. Democrats believe the two previous counts have been flawed and that only human judgment can truly determine voter intent.
There is agreement, though, that the country's largest hand count is a hellacious low-tech task and that auditors are doing their darndest to get it right.
"This is something that happens only once every 40 or 50 years in this country," says Dick Smolka, editor of Election Administration Reports in Washington, D.C. "It doesn't matter how many times you count, you'd probably always get a different answer. It's very difficult to count that many votes and be definitive if they're that close. Luckily, Washington election officials are as good as you're going to find in this country."
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THE PARTISAN DISPUTE...
Washington moved away from hand counting paper ballots decades ago, and has used machines and computers to tabulate the votes that are cast in a variety of ways - by punchcards, fill-in-the-oval optical scan, or ATM-style touch-screen.
The first count took several weeks because of heavy use of absentee ballots. At the end of the machine tally, Rossi was ahead by 261 votes - enough to trigger an automatic machine recount, but not quite close enough to mandate a hand recount.
The first recount ended with an amazingly close 42-vote gap. Rossi earned the title of governor-elect-for-now.
State law allows the losing side to call for a third count, and the Democrats did just that, ponying up $730,000 to defray costs.
The Democrats have an another unprecedented move up their sleeve. They're asking the state Supreme Court on Monday to require election officials to reconsider several thousand questioned ballots that were disqualified in the earlier rounds.
If Republicans are leery of the reliability of the hand count, they're livid about what they perceive as changing the rules of the election in midcourse.
Democrats say it's all about counting every ballot, and that the hand count is the better method.
"Only through a human audit will errors ... be flushed out," says Democratic state Chairman Paul Berendt. "We're not fearful there was fraud out there, but there were errors, we believe.
"When human hands get to examine those ballots, people get to see if they should be counted. Only human eyes are able to figure out voter intent sometimes. Machines aren't capable of deciphering."
Further, the machine manufacturers acknowledge a small, but very real, error rate, Berendt says.
"Machines really have taken over the world if we think they can do better than human beings in counting ballots," he says.
Republicans counter that technology, training and consistency of rules have vastly improved in the last decade, making it a bit more reliable than a hand count, particularly with such a large number of ballots.
Former Secretary of State Ralph Munro says hand-counting, be it cars on the freeway, birds and whales, or votes, inevitably leads to mistakes.
"Take a ream of paper home, take some pages off the top and then pass it around the dinner table and have everyone take turns counting the stack," Munro says. "I'll bet you'll get four or five different answers. People lose track, pages stick together, people get bored or tired."
Smolka says people at his card game don't always agree that there are 52 cards in a particular deck.
Former Republican Gov. Dan Evans adds, "Can you imagine 300 newly hired, ill-trained, overworked people counting by hand with people looking over their shoulders and getting accurate counts? It's ludicrous to think that this hand count will be anywhere near as accurate as the machine count just concluded."
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THE EXPERTS ...
The state's chief elections official, Republican Secretary of State Sam Reed, says both sides make good points, and that one method isn't provably, consistently more reliable to a statistically significant degree.
"Machines have the advantage of being totally objective - they are not Democrat or Republican machines," he says. "They don't have a bias to make sure a person's vote count."
Machines carry a small error rate, generally about a hundredth of a percentage point, Reed says. That means out of 2.8 million ballots, they would be accurate to within 280 votes, ordinarily pretty close to perfection, he says.
Hand counting also carries a small error rate, probably never calculated, he says.
"Two people can count and come up with the identical wrong answer," he says with a laugh.
"But hand counting has some advantages over a machine, such as being able to see when a punchcard chad falls back into place and a machine couldn't `see' that vote. Humans can see things that machines can't in the area of voter intent."
A hand count, double-checked against each precinct's tally from the earlier recount, should be trustworthy, Reed says.
"Human beings are undoubtedly more prone to mistakes, but a hand recount may not be that much different if both are done well," agrees elections consultant Don Whiting.
Many, but not all, county election directors tend to believe machines are a bit more accurate, says Corky Mattingly, Yakima County's Democratic auditor and head of the state auditors' association.
"We all know machines make fewer errors than humans - and they don't need food or water, either, or a break!" she says. Machine counts became the default system for counting ballots for good reason, she said.
"Do we really need this third count? I think we have to come to the point where we accept the computers' count."
King County elections director Dean Logan says the hand count is daunting because so many people will be handling the county's 900,000 ballots, applying fallible human judgment.
Political scientists say they haven't solved the debate.
Smolka says either system should be fairly accurate, but that the consensus is "you would bet on machine over hand recount. The error rate would probably be less. But that's no guarantee. And congressional researchers say every system is capable of doing a good job if used as intended."
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BITS & PIECES...
-FAR-FLUNG INTEREST: Monday afternoon's live TV coverage of the Supreme Court recount case, carried on cable and the Internet by TVW, will be airing on C-SPAN.
-LANE'S LEGIONS: On conservative web logs, admiration for Dino Rossi's spitfire of a spokeswoman, Mary Lane, runs high. They even have a fond nickname for her, inspired by Donald "Rummy" Rumsfeld: Secretary of Defense Marummy Lane.
-ISAKI'S VENTURE: Paul Isaki, one of Gov. Gary Locke's closest advisers, has a new gig lined up: He'll become the Port of Seattle's trade director. His best job, though, was vice president of the Seattle Mariners during their glory days.
-LOCKE'S PARTING SHOT: Locke, who leaves office on Jan. 12, assuming we have a new governor by then, had some advice for the Democratic Party this week in an op-ed piece for the New York Times. He urged his out-of-power party to start over by getting back to its roots, offering progressive policies on "families, jobs, environment, health care and the economy" and by paying more attention to the views of state and local leaders.
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David Ammons is the AP's state political writer and has covered the statehouse since 1971. He may be reached at P.O. Box 607, Olympia, WA 98507, or at dammons@ap.org.
Not hard to figure out, the experts are non-partisan, the SOS is no doubt extremely partisan
A prediction on the Washington Governor's race recount of the recount of the count. Christine Gregoire will "win" and be certified before Christmas.
Yeah, but which human? Report is that in Dem King County, ballots for Rossi were tossed out if they were clearly marked for Rossi but had a pencil dot on the margin next to GregGore's name. That was during the machine recount, where ballots were reviewed manually. Hanky panky to the max, and they haven't finished monkeying yet.
Depends on your definition of "tiny", but yes, in the real world, the universe of reasonable human beings, it is (or was) a reality of life that there are no perfect processes.
The old opposition to the Star Wars missile defence: chuck it because it is not 100%. Same crowd, same mentality. Ignorance triumphs.
I am willing to bet the farm that in the last 20 years, the total criminal votes far exceed the unavoidable ones inherent in any human system. By a whole bunch.
These delusional clowns better be very careful what they wish for.
I would expect whoever made that decision to be doing some serious jail time... soon.
The only way I would trust a hand count would be if they gave different teams the same group of ballots and certify the count only after the teams independently reach the same tally. The problem then would be preventing the first counters from tampering with the ballots. Could they scan SAT type ballots and give everyone copies to count, keeping the originals locked away?
"The People Have Spoken, Their Voice is Clear."
"Let Us Begin The Healing Process."
"A New Governor, And A New Mandate for Change!"
And if a Republican so much as utters a "but, but...," it'll be a full-throated chorus, from the lowest elementary-school librarian to the anchors of the major networks:
"How Dare Those Republicans Drag Out This Process Any Longer!"
"They Are Trying To Win In The Courthouse What They Couldn't Win At The Ballot Box!"
"Whose The Sore Loser Now? GOP Bigs Lawyer Up To Steal Election"
(steely)
It won't take very many more of these shennigans and Gregoire will be over the top. I believe the county is doing a good job to try to make this fair, but the possibilities for hanky pank are probably more than a dishonest Democrat can resist. There are 80 teams at counting tables, and if just ONE Rossi vote is switched per table (as above) in the next two weeks, to Gregoire, it's all over. The first thing I look for is to make sure Dino's votes aren't going to Gregoire, Then and only then do I start counting.
By the way, "somebody" turned in my Democrat partner, and she was fired.
Great to of of your diligance, keep up the good work
All fearfully accurate ideas for headlines...
Oh and because it's outta the baggie: "While the conflict is well begun, it has only begun—we are still closer to the beginning than the end." SecDef Donald "Rummy" Rumsfeld
TAKE THAT, BAGHDAD BOB BERENDT!
(Beat Back Berendt, anyone?)
cool
God Bless You!
You are a true Lane Legionnaire!
Make sure you call campaign HQ at 425.646.7202 and tell them what's going on...
If the stupid party lets the RATs steal this one, they'll do it every time there's a close vote.
If the stupid party lets the RATs steal this one, they'll do it every time there's a close vote.
That's the scary thing and why I respectfully believe the lack of intensity from the Rossi campaign let things get so close...
I mean, if most Washingtonians knew that Gregoire's office (links to my blog will end at a place where I have cited sources):
*Argued against transparent gov't and got in trouble for failing to disclose documents - http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002071957_gregoirepda25m.html
*Argued for the 7E7 deal that was against the state constitution - http://www.effwa.org/highlighters/v14_n2.php
*Lied about the true nature of an investigation - http://josef-a-k.blogspot.com/2004/10/gregoire-spins-some-more.html
*Disregarded and disrespected a whistleblower - http://josef-a-k.blogspot.com/2004/10/rossi-to-gregoire-stop-trashing.html
Oh and Candidate Gregoire campaigned with a LOT of uncosted promises - I did the research at http://josef-a-k.blogspot.com/2004/09/top-5-reasons-why-governor-gregoire-is.html
Betcha if more people knew that, they'd realize that Gregoire's another Deborah Senn. If they did, then woo-hoo!
Friendly ping
Good grief! Even if we pretend to believe these were honest mistakes, with this rate of error, how will they manage to convince anybody that the hand count was more accurate than machine?? If no one trusts the final count, will it still stand?
Good on "somebody" for turning the cheater in.
I just posted your allegation at http://josef-a-k.blogspot.com/2004/12/news-tribune-responds.html
Any witnesses? And will you PLEASE call the Rossi campaign (425.646.7202)?
Thanks. Josef
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