"Alas, Vote--Count Machines Are Only Human"

["Steven G. Brant" <trimtab@sprynet.com>]

As a follow-up to Tom Nolan's post re: the election process, here's an
interesting article on what sort of accuracy rate can be expected from
machine counts (from today's NY Times)...

(I'd rather have humans doing the Red Beads Experiment than machines.)
(smile)

Steve Brant
----------
From: "Steven Clift" <clift@publicus.net>
Organization: http://www.publicus.net
Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 10:24:03 -0600
To: florida-recount-announce@egroups.com
Subject: [FRA] Vote Counting Accuracy - NYT


See:
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/17/politics/17MACH.html

November 17, 2000  

Alas, Vote-Count Machines Are Only Human

By FORD FESSENDEN and CHRISTOPHER DREW

ne of the central arguments that Gov. George W. Bush has made against
the hand recounts in Florida is that machines are impartial and much
more reliable than humans. The people who sell the voting systems
that tallied 3.45 million votes in the contested state, as well as
election officials across the country, say the machines can be, in
ideal conditions, 99.99 percent accurate.

That sounds an awful lot like 100 percent.

But in Florida, that tiny error rate alone could have misread 345
votes — which happens to be more than Mr. Bush's current winning
margin.  

And that is under the most favorable conditions, with the machines
perfectly maintained and whisked free of all those bits of loose
paper known as chads.

The maker of one type of card reader said the accuracy rate of his
machine would be 99.9 percent, which could mean 3,450 votes were
misread in Florida. Another manufacturer says that, under realistic
conditions, the machines' error rate can be even higher, 1 percent or
more, a potential misreading of 34,500 votes.

Theoretical accuracy rates aside, a 1975 study for the Federal
Election Commission found that only 99.5 percent of the ballots read
accurately when the card readers were used in a Los Angeles County
election.  

"If you have 400,000 cards and not a single error, somebody has faked
the results," said Robert Swartz, president of Cardamation, which has
been making punch-card readers for 25 years.

See URL for full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/17/politics/17MACH.html