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Random commentary and senseless acts of blogging.
The first Republican president once said, "While the people retain their virtue and their vigilance, no administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can seriously injure the government in the short space of four years." If Mr. Lincoln could see what's happened in these last three-and-a-half years, he might hedge a little on that statement. Blog critics Gryffindor House Slytherin House Ravenclaw House House Elves Beth Jacob Prisoners of Azkaban Muggles
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Monday, November 04, 2002
The Broward Numbers There are 5265 available machiles according to this. 5765, which appeared in Pandagon's election blog and on Eschaton is a typo that overcounts it by 10% - maybe Atrios is lobbying for a job counting Republican votes in Florida! The estimates I've seen for how long voting takes are 13 minutes or 15 minutes (first article linked). Averaging to 14 and figuring constant use for the 12 hour election period, 51 votes per machine can be cast, or 268,515 for the county. And that is including unrealistic optimistic assumptions: that every machine is in use the minute polls open, and every machine runs for the whole day with 0% breakdown. It's estimated that 80,000 ballots have already been cast in early voting or by absentee votes. Total possible ballots 350,000 out of 978,000 registered, which is just under 36% turnout.
In 2000, 575,000 votes were cast in Broward. Dropping the vote by 225,000 while keeping the same percentages would have given Bush an extra margin of 81,000.
A more optimistic assessment of Broward's preparedness is here, but that article doesn't address the ratio of voter to machine or how many voters the county is ready to handle.
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