You may or may not consider this a minor point- but please don't forget that
the "nationwide popular vote" (aside from being irrelevant) is never
actually counted.

The FEC doesn't even have standards or a process for counting the "popular
vote."

This is in addition to the margins of errors for balloting. Ballots are not
counted- that's right, thrown away- if the tally from those ballots won't
affect the electoral votes in play.

This undercount (generally assumed to be proportianally representative of
the counted ballots; a major flaw in the theory ref absentee ballots which
are generally the ones tossed) is in addition to the undercount referred to
in the literature as "residual ballots" which are cast, but unscored, votes.

Overall what most people (yourselves included) refer to as the "Popular
Vote" [sic] is only a very rough, and not even representative, estimate of
only those votes actually tallied- which are themselves subject to error.

There is no such thing as the "national popular vote" except in a
theoretical sense.

Being a polisci guy Ed Rasimus knows more about this than I do, but for
starters check out a good summary report National Buerea of Standards report
500-158 "Accuracy, Integrity, and Security in Computerized Vote-Tallying"
compiled by Roy G. Saltman http://www.itl.nist.gov/lab/specpubs/500-158 and
then track back to the CalTech/MIT studies etc. Also check out the FEC
standards for vote tally accuracy (standards have been "proposed" but are
not yet in force) and machine testing for a discussion of the mechanical
error issues involved at http://www.fec.gov/pages/vssfinal/vss.html for a
good "Apologia" from the government side.

I found it particularly hilarious to read about how "these results should be
treated carefully lest the public lose confidence in their government!"
Yeah, right.

Steve Swartz


Steve Swartz



"Steven P. McNicoll" wrote in message
ink.net...

"Raoul" wrote in message
...

Didn't Bush win a majority of the popular vote in 1988?


The numbers are sometimes skewed a bit by third party candidates.
Especially true in 1968 when the Wallace vote took lots of the vote
which might have gone to Humphrey and, no doubt, a few which would have
gone to Nixon, too.


But there was no "third party" candidate in 1988. Bush won 53.4% of the
national popular vote.