Discerning Voter Intent in the Minnesota Recount

[Wilms]

Discerning Voter Intent in the Minnesota Recount

By Ed Felten

November 21st, 2008

Minnesota election officials are hand-counting millions of ballots, as they perform a full recount in the ultra-close Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken. Minnesota Public Radio offers a fascinating gallery of ballots that generated disputes about voter intent.

A good example is this one:



A scanning machine would see the Coleman and Franken bubbles both filled, and call this ballot an overvote. But this might be a Franken vote, if the voter filled in both slots by mistake, then wrote "No" next to Coleman's name.

Other cases are more difficult, like this one:



Do we call this an overvote, because two bubbles are filled? Or do we give the vote to Coleman, because his bubble was filled in more completely?

~snip~

http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/felten/discerning-voter-intent-minnesota-recount

[elocs]

1. Just think, the kind of voters who cast those ballots are people you might enounter

while driving on the highways. Filling in an oval is not rocket science, but here in WI we have people who cannot manage to simply connect 2 lines. I just cannot understand how people can screw up something so simple.

[LiberalFighter]

2. The top one does show the intent. The bottom one is questionable as to the voter's intent.

My thought is that it is for Coleman but I wouldn't be 100% sure that was the voter's intent.

[Bill Bored]

3. The finger is clearly pointing to Aldrich!

Those who cast the votes decide nothing! Those who count the votes decide everything, right? :)

[emlev]

9. Beautiful. n/t

[BeFree]

4. Heh

So anyone with a pen can fill in an oval at anytime later? And make ballots overvote?

Problems galore. And what's up with taking so long? Have they ever heard of sort and stack?

It's been what, 5 days of counting? Have the ballots been moved? Stored properly?

Or is it a sinister plot to make sure a hand count never takes place again?

[eridani]

5. Sort and stack is not fast, whatever claims have been made for it

The slow step is deciding which stacks the ballots should be in. The 2004 gubernatorial recount in Washington State took about a month.

[BeFree]

8. Which stacks?

How hard is it to make the four separate stacks? Not hard.

Then just run each stack through a paper counter. Not a vote counter, a paper counter, just like the banks do. Fast as heck.

So what, in your mind, makes making stacks so hard?

[kster]

6. Just the opposite

(Or is it a sinister plot to make sure a hand count never takes place again?) The Sinister plot is, they want to make us believe that there is some sort of hand count in place to secure us that the optical scaMMed ballots get hand counted, it isn't working, but it is fun to watch the crooks work..

Get the procedure in place, NOW, that if a voter wants to Hand Count ALL the ballots in a polling place H/She can do it. NO QUESTIONS ASKED!

DREs, Levers automatically ILLEGAL because there is nothing to Hand Count at the polling place.

Georgia....You will ABIDE by the election machine results, why? there are no paper ballots for you to hand count GET OVER IT!

Get the procedure in place, NOW!

PEACE :)

[BeFree]

7. Yep

They are so sinister that they make like a hand count is gonna show that the machine count was correct so that we give up.

We do need a hand count at the precinct procedure set in place just as you suggest.

What bothers me is the ordeal they have constructed here, there, and everywhere. And that there are so few complaints!