Reply #6: That's because there is often no other evidence.

[Bill Bored]

The system in Ohio 2004 was designed not to produce evidence. You know that as well as anyone. Once those punch cards were cast in the wrong precincts, there was no way to recover those votes. (Perfect crime.)

But where statistics can play a vital role is in determining how many votes to count by hand to see who won with very high confidence. It's true that not everyone wants to hear about that though. So they end up making crappy laws that count a small percentage of the vote by hand no matter how close the elections are, and the lemmings in our movement accept them like crumbs falling off the table, because they're too timid to even ASK for anything better.

Also, there is a LOT of willful ignorance about this on the part of just about everyone involved, except the hard core who are trying not to depend on software for election results, as opposed to those who just SAY we shouldn't depend on it! (Talk is cheap.)

It's a pretty sad state of affairs.