Word: voter
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...UNDERVOTES What are they? Undervotes are ballots that contain votes in some races but not all. 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...
...problem with that charge is this: Hand recounts have been the most trusted response to close votes in this country for a century - that is, as long as machines have been around to louse things up. The law has always enshrined hand counts as a more accurate reflection of voter intent than machines...
...court's decision is about justice and small-"d" democracy, and not about a court with an ideological axe to grind. They must also attempt to persuade the public that manual recounts clarify rather than muddy the vote, and that they are the tried-and-true method of protecting voter intent...
...Florida legislature-derived standard for those counts - where the "intent of the voter" is evident - that is not only subjective but more stringent than the all-vote manual counts in Volusia and Broward counties that cut George W. Bush's lead in half. It has appointed the very judge it rebuffed "in part" with Friday's ruling - N. Sanders Sauls - to do the very job he couldn't bring himself to do. (Sauls immediately recused himself...