As a member of the Democratic Party and a political science major at Ohio State, I was embarrassed to read Sarah Topy’s piece about Vice President Al Gore and his “justified” desire for a manual recount of the votes in Florida. Apparently Ms. Topy was more interested in bashing Gov. George W. Bush, than backing up her statements with solid facts.Gore has asked four predominately Democratic counties to do manual recounts. The problem with this scenario is that it unfairly tips the accuracy of the count to Gore’s favor.Whenever a machine counts ballots, there will always be a percentage of votes that are not counted correctly. When this happens, each candidate shares the counting error. In other words, votes for both Bush and Gore are not counted correctly.The problem with recounts in largely Democratic counties is that Gore will benefit more when these errors are discovered by manual recounts. If Bush were to request manual recounts in largely Republican counties, he would gain the same advantage.Bush has not asked for these manual recounts. Instead, he wants the vote to stand as it was at the end of the second machine count.Ms. Topy mentions the 23,000 votes in Palm Beach County that were disqualified for various reasons, such as voting for two presidential candidates because of confusion with the ballots.I agree that there are some problems with the ballots in Palm Beach and that Pat Buchanan probably received more votes than people intended for him to receive. However, the fact remains that these problems will not be changed by a manual recount in Palm Beach County.Ballots with two candidates selected will still be invalid, and unintended votes for Pat Buchanan will not be changed. A Florida judge can only correct those problems.There are two fair solutions to end this election.Accept the final vote results at the end of the first recount or manually recount the entire state. Either solution maintains the statistical accuracy (or inaccuracy) that each candidate and our country deserve.
Aaron WolfSeniorPolitical science and economics