Methodology
Although the NORC study was not primarily intended as a determination of which candidate "really won", analysis of the results, given the hand counting of machine-uncountable ballots due to various types of voter error, indicated that they would lead to differing results, reported in the newspapers which funded the recount, such as The Miami Herald (The Miami Herald Report: Democracy Held Hostage) or the Washington Post.
The recount covered 175,037 of the approximately 6,000,000 ballots cast in the election. In principle these were the ballots that were recorded with no vote or multiple votes in the machine counts. However, since the machines were not designed to separate ballots as such when originally counted, the identification of these ballots can only be approximate; the totals do not match.
NORC reported "exceptional" circumstances in three counties. In Volusia county, the ballots presented as overvotes and undervotes "bore no relation" to the number reported in the machine count. In Orange County, county officials recounted all ballots separate from the NORC process. In Broward County, officials did not attempt to produce the ballots reported as undervotes or overvotes by the machine count; instead, they presented the ballots that remained as undervotes or overvotes after the official county recount, which had given Gore a net 567 additional votes, and which had been conducted under loose standards, including counting as legal votes ballots with "dimpled" chad. The Broward and Volusia recount results (567 and 98 net Gore votes respectively) were thus locked in under all NORC scenarios.
Read more about this topic: Florida Election Recount
Famous quotes containing the word methodology:
“One might get the impression that I recommend a new methodology which replaces induction by counterinduction and uses a multiplicity of theories, metaphysical views, fairy tales, instead of the customary pair theory/observation. This impression would certainly be mistaken. My intention is not to replace one set of general rules by another such set: my intention is rather to convince the reader that all methodologies, even the most obvious ones, have their limits.”
—Paul Feyerabend (1924–1994)