[E-voting] Re: [European-evoting] Interesting ....

[Dr J Pelan]

On Mon, 21 Jan 2008, Fergus O'Rourke wrote:

>   Clinton Optical scan 91,717 52.95%
>   Obama Optical scan 81,495 47.05%
> 
>   Clinton Hand-counted 20,889 47.05%
>   Obama Hand-counted 23,509 52.95%
> 
> The percentages appear to be swapped. That seems highly unusual, to say the 
> least." (Bradblog)

Seeing patterns or coincidences in data sets without any rational 
consideration of their likely correlation, or lack thereof, is pure 
numerology. How can assertions like 'highly unusual' and 'remarkable' be 
justified without some quantification of a chance occurrence?

In any case, reporting stories many times removed from the original source 
can lead to delays or distortion and indeed a check of the EDA website 
shows that their data was updated a week ago and the so-called 
'remarkable' coincidence subsequently disappeared - more votes were 
optically scanned than first thought.

http://www.electiondefensealliance.org/new_hampshire_2008_primary_analysis

--
John P.