"In other words, the odds are less than 1 in a billion that the original vote was a fair count."

November 10, 2000 5:12 PM

"In other words, the odds are less than 1 in a billion that the original vote was a fair count." OJR asked Dr. Lynn Miller, a professor of communications and expert on statistics at the USC Annenberg School to comment on what she found at CNN.com regarding the Florida Situation.
posted by th3ph17 (4 comments total)

Isn't there also a 1 in a billion chance that the re-count was a fair count?
posted by smackfu at 7:37 PM on November 10, 2000

Does it seem out of the question to say that we should be able to count and re-count the votes from here until Tuesday and it should come out the same every time? Shouldn't the vote counters spit out the questionable ballots (can't be determined) to be counted by hand? Why is this such a mystery? If this is just crazy talk, someone please point me in the right direction...
posted by internook at 7:55 PM on November 10, 2000

Unfortunately no. In any count, there will be human and machine errors. ANd counting from now till the end of time will likely never result in the exact same count twice. In fact, the more we continue to count [with the true results presumably being approximately 300 votes apart], the more it becomes likely that each successive count could yeild a different winner - simply because the level of error required to reach that point is so small.
posted by schlyer at 11:56 PM on November 10, 2000

Go read the Privacy Digest piece I linked; it discusses this stuff exactly.
posted by baylink at 8:07 PM on November 12, 2000