Word: chadli
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...camera is unfailing in reducing whatever it observes. Nearly everyone in this constantly televised drama has been diminished: the Florida Supreme Court, the state legislature, the lawyers, the candidates. Why, after 24/7 TV coverage of chad counting by microscope and horoscope, even the belief in the very process of counting votes has been irreparably damaged...
...butterfly ballot flew away with the presidency this year, and it is well nigh time for election procedure to enter the 21st century along with the rest of the country. The signs of the time demand attention: The word "chad" has replaced "confetti" as the popular term for "small piece of paper" and thousands of votes, in counties from Palm Beach in Florida to Cook County in Illinois, were discarded due to appropriately labeled "voting irregularities" and double punching...
...tell if an undervoted ballot was intended by the voter to register a vote? With most undervoted ballots - three-quarters, perhaps more - there's simply no indication of a vote. These ballots are true undervotes. But on punch-card ballots, even if a chad is hanging by only a corner or two, the counting machine might push the chad into its original place and wrongly call that ballot an undervote. You can tell only by looking...
...them? Usually no one looks at undervoted ballots because there aren't enough of them to change the outcome. Because election officials so rarely examine them, they haven't set uniform standards for how to count them. Clashes occur when some counters say a mere dimple in a chad - even though the chad remains attached on all four sides - should be counted as a vote...
...that why Bush's lawyers have fought hand counts of undervotes so doggedly? Yes, but they have valid reasons for opposing the counts - chiefly that there is no single standard for them. They also say handling the ballots "spoliates" them, a lawyerly way of saying counters can push chads through accidentally. Bush lawyer Phil Beck wanted Lewis to rule that only a chad with a stylus imprint could count, not one pushed through, say, by a finger. Lewis dismissed that request for now, but in the end his decision may not matter...