[EL] Request to the List from Aborad

[Rob Richie]

FairVote has looked at every statewide recount in 2000-2012. It has one
particularly relevant finding.

A full report for 2000-2009 is here: http://www.fairvote.org/recounts / We
did a short update, looking at recounts in 2010-2012:
http://www.fairvote.org/statewide-recounts-remain-scarce-zero-in-201 .

During this period, there were 19 statewide recounts (meaning 99.5% of
statewide races were determined without recounts), including three that
reversed the outcome (meaning more than 99.9% of statewide races were not
changed by a recount in this period).This chart lists each of the 19
recounts and the change in margin and total votes:
http://www.fairvote.org/assets/FairVote-Recounts-2000-to-2012-Table.pdf

Recounts on average shifted the margin by less than 0.03% percent, or by
just a few hundred votes, with a median change of only 0.015%. Only one
recount changed the margin more than 0.08% -- that was the Vermont
auditor's race, where the shift was 0.11% and one that also reversed the
outcome.

Instructively, that count initially had been done by hand, and there were
errors -- the biggest ones being in the recording of the tally.Here is a
link to a story about it, with a couple excerpts:

http://www.wcax.com/story/5831383/recount-over-upset-in-auditors-race
Recount Over: Upset in Auditor's Race
Montpelier, Vermont - December 18, 2006

..."iIn each of the cases, what happened was there was a clerical error.
People put numbers in the wrong columns or people added incorrectly," said
[Secretary of State Deborah] Markowit ...It appears most of the election
day errors occurred in rural towns that still use paper ballots that are
counted and tabulated by hand. For example, votes for Salmon were
mistakenly assigned to Liberty Union candidate Jerry Levy."


- Rob Richie


On Sat, Mar 9, 2013 at 10:37 AM, Charles Stewart III <cstewart at mit.edu>wrote:

>  I don't have the cite in front of me, but Ansolabehere and Reeves wrote
> an article that analyzed recounts in New Hampshire.  They compared paper
> and optical scan ballots which were then recounted.  Hand-counted ballot
> counts were less accurate than the op-scan ballots.  This would seem to be
> the perfect cite.  I don't know of any other similar research.
>
>  -cs
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Mar 9, 2013, at 8:26 AM, "Gaddie, Ronald K." <rkgaddie at ou.edu> wrote:
>
>   Dear Colleagues-
>
> I was contacted this morning by a former student who now lives in
> Austria.  A political party he is involved with lost a state parliamentary
> seat by a single vote, and is petitioning the courts for a recount.  They
> are also seeking any support in crafting a brief in support of their
> request.
>
> It is a paper ballot, hand count election and would obviously be a hand
> count recount if conducted.  As he noted to me, in asking if I could help
> them with a brief (which unfortunately I cannot): "There is just no one
> over here who can do it, this has never happened before, and there is no
> provision for it in the law."
>
> In particular, I think they are seeking opinions regarding the error rate
> in paper ballot counts.
>
> Thank you,
> keith
>
>
>   Ronald Keith Gaddie, Ph.D.
>  Professor of Political Science
> Editor, *Social Science Quarterly*
> The University of Oklahoma
> 455 West Lindsey Street, Room 222
> Norman, OK  73019-2001
> Phone 405-325-4989
> Fax 405-325-0718
> E-mail: rkgaddie at ou.edu
> http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/G/Ronald.K.Gaddie-1
> http://socialsciencequarterly.org
>
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