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Erm, What's that number?
Dec. 21st, 2006 03:49 pmI was catching up with the news on Google and ran across this NPR story about the Buchanan/Jennings race in Florida. I did a bit of a double take at the following synopsis posted on their site. See if you can catch what got me:
Politics
Jennings Asks Judge for Codes to Voting Machines
Listen to this story... by Greg Allen
All Things Considered, December 20, 2006 ยท Six weeks after Election Day, one House race remains in dispute. In Florida's 13th District, which Republican Katherine Harris vacated to run for the Senate, Republican Vern Buchanan was certified the winner by a narrow 369-vote margin.
But Democrat Christine Jennings is challenging the results, both in court and in the House, which will soon be in Democratic hands.
Questions have been raised over the ballots of some 1,800 voters who apparently showed up at the polls but failed to vote for Congress.
In court Wednesday, Jennings asked a judge to order the release of the software and codes of the touch-screen voting machines that Democrats believe malfunctioned on Election Day.
______________
What made me jump was an error of an order of magnitude. The discrepancy in votes is 18,000, not 1,800. I know, it's just a zero. But in this case, it's ten thousand votes worth of zero. A person unfamiliar with the story could compare the 1,800 with the 369 vote margin and come to the conclusion that there is no real cause for concern. Given this is a contentious issue, NPR needs to get this right.
ETA: I got a response from NPR.
"Thanks for writing. I've fixed the typo on the Web page."
*wipes hands* my work is done here ;-)
Politics
Jennings Asks Judge for Codes to Voting Machines
Listen to this story... by Greg Allen
All Things Considered, December 20, 2006 ยท Six weeks after Election Day, one House race remains in dispute. In Florida's 13th District, which Republican Katherine Harris vacated to run for the Senate, Republican Vern Buchanan was certified the winner by a narrow 369-vote margin.
But Democrat Christine Jennings is challenging the results, both in court and in the House, which will soon be in Democratic hands.
Questions have been raised over the ballots of some 1,800 voters who apparently showed up at the polls but failed to vote for Congress.
In court Wednesday, Jennings asked a judge to order the release of the software and codes of the touch-screen voting machines that Democrats believe malfunctioned on Election Day.
______________
What made me jump was an error of an order of magnitude. The discrepancy in votes is 18,000, not 1,800. I know, it's just a zero. But in this case, it's ten thousand votes worth of zero. A person unfamiliar with the story could compare the 1,800 with the 369 vote margin and come to the conclusion that there is no real cause for concern. Given this is a contentious issue, NPR needs to get this right.
ETA: I got a response from NPR.
"Thanks for writing. I've fixed the typo on the Web page."
*wipes hands* my work is done here ;-)
