Word: balloters
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...course of five and a half hours, the GOP called five witnesses. Three discussed the alleged irregularities they personally observed during the Miami-Dade recount process - including dropping ballot boxes, fanning the ballots like cards, doing pretty much everything short of taking the ballots along with them to the bathroom - apparently hoping to establish the fallibility of human hands when it comes to counting ballots and to discredit the idea of recounting once again...
...Beck walked Ahmann through a litany of questions, trying to establish the relative delicacy of the ballot. Ahmann admitted that even normal handling can dent, dislodge or dimple parts of the ballot, let alone the vigorous handling inherent in repeated hand counts. You see, Beck seemed to be saying, if even the expert here believes there are marks on the ballots that are in absolutely no way related to voter intent, how can we ask non-experts to differentiate inadvertent marks from intended marks...
...Gore attorney Stephen Zack, who is possibly the most irritating and sycophantic lawyer to surface over the past four weeks, cross-examined Ahmann vigorously, asking the expert if perhaps the ballot manufacturers were not aware of the rigors a ballot might go through during an election process - implying there was no reason to believe the ballots were so weak they'd just fall apart and be unable to serve their express purpose just because voters and counters were holding them...
...Ahmann was stuck now defending an imperfect machine, whose potential problems suddenly took center stage. After a few direct questions from Judge Sauls, Ahmann even acknowledged a particularly damning flaw: That a small light could show through on a ballot and the machine might not register a vote...
...direct went forward and Grossman told the court more than they'd ever wanted to know about the composition, strength and chemical qualities of the rubber t-strip that's placed under the ballot in a Votomatic machine, testifying firmly there was no way the normal use of a stylus (the tool used to punch chads) could affect the composition of the underlying rubber. This was an attempt to discredit Brace, who'd claimed that overuse can cause the rubber to harden and make it more difficult for voters to punch through chads correctly...