Word: punches
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Sometimes undervotes are intentional: The voter simply couldn't decide on a candidate, so that part of the ballot was left blank. But sometimes the machine reading a ballot misses a vote that was cast. That can happen when, for example, a chad isn't fully dislodged from a punch card. Florida has more than 61,000 undervoted ballots from this year's presidential race, a large but not shocking number for a state that uses old Votomatics...
...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...
...most of the undervotes come from Gore-majority areas? Basically, yes. Of the 42,000 undervotes yet to be examined, more than 35,000 come from the 25 punch-card counties. Punch-card machines are less reliable than the pricier voting technology used in more Republican areas. Brevard County, for instance, which went 53 percent to 45 percent for Bush, uses optical scanners. "There are no dimples, crimples, pimples or anything else to interpret," says election supervisor Fred Galey. That's good for him but - if the hand count resumes - bad for Bush, since Brevard's 277 undervoted ballots probably...
...possible to have ballots standardized at the state level. The Republicans' argument that manual recount standards are uneven is exacerbated by the fact that the types of ballots and voting systems can vary widely from county to county. Some areas, such as now-infamous Palm Beach County, still use punch-card systems from the mid-1970s, while others have long since switched to more reliable optical scanner technologies. A standard system will encourage uniform procedures and heighten confidence in the outcome should manual recounts again be necessary...
...running time of about 30 minutes, seems calculated to reflect on television programming as a whole. But as in television, this time constraint leads to limited character development and a rather programmatic plot. Moreover, the dialogue in Split Confusion seems forced by time limitations to quickly culminate in a punch line, just...