Reply #37: You have an admirable faith.

[MrUnderhill]

I don't share it. Though, like Santa Clause, I desperately would like to. :-)

The "spoiled minority punch cards" is the same argument we made prior to the provisionals. We just "knew" that all those provisionals were black Democrats who had been kept from voting correctly... and that they would break heavily (HEAVILY) for Kerry. In the end it looks like they were about 5% more likely to be Kerry votes than other ballots from the same precincts. That faith that 90% of the ballots would be valid and they would break 80%+ for Kerry was simply untrue.

That's comforting to me in a small way. I happen not to like the unspoken assumption behind your argument (that minorities are stupid/gullible).

Based on the provisional statistics I'd estimate that of the 93,000 spoiled ballots there are fewer than 5,000 net Kerry votes to be gleaned.