WA Governors Race
Brian Crouch who runs the excellent
Medved Fan Site fact checks the Democrat's claim of voting machine accuracy and come up with some interesting data - he writes at
Sound Politics:
bq. We have a clarification on the Democrats' claim (see the
post below) that "The error for voting machines is somewhere between 1 and 2 percent".
bq. This is from the Assistant Elections Director for Voter Services:
Mr. Crouch,
The statement that the error rate for voting machines is between 1 and 2 percent is not correct.
The Federal Election Commission standard for error rates on voting machines is one mistake in 1,000,000 ballots read by the machine. This is the standard used in Washington State for certification of voting systems.
It is the human error rate that is higher.
It is generally accepted that 1 to 2 percent of the VOTERS fail to mark their ballot so that the machine can read it. Many of these were captured during the original count or the machine recount, as the machines are set to outsort ballots that the machine cannot read. The procedure for that is that if the machine rejects the ballot, the canvassing board will determine the voter intent from the marks on it and then duplicate or enhance the ballot to reflect that determination.
If I can help with any other questions, please let me know, or contact our voting systems specialist, Paul Miller at pmiller@secstate.wa.gov or 360-664-3442. Thanks for checking with us!
Pamela Floyd
Assistant Elections Director for Voter Services
360-586-4173
bq. Just to reiterate Gregoire's claims:
Let me put this race in a little more perspective. Out of nearly 3 million votes cast, only 42 votes separate my Republican opponent and me. That's a difference of 0.0014 percent. The error for voting machines is somewhere between 1 and 2 percent, or 1,000 times as great as the vote difference.
bq. So. We are being asked to reject the accuracy rate of
1 in a million errors, for a manual recount with an expected error rate of
1 to 2 in a hundred errors.
What gets me is that Gregoire wants to cherry pick the counties counted. She wants King which is Democratic leaning and she does not want recounts in counties with Republican leaning. This is turning into an interesting election...
Posted by DaveH at December 1, 2004 4:21 PM