The odd sequence of events led to speculation that there must have been errors in the tabulation of the three riders' victory totals, giving them an illegal break in the weights.
n The plain language of section 102.166 5) refers to an error in the vote tabulation rather than the vote tabulation system.
The opinion ignores the plain language of the statute which refers not to an error in the vote tabulation system but to an error in the vote tabulation.
An error in the vote tabulation means a counting error in which the vote tabulation system fails to count properly marked marksense or properly punched punchcard ballots.
Mr. Butterworth, the chairman of Mr. Gore's statewide campaign here, argued that the relevant law refers "not to an error in the vote tabulation system but to an error in the vote tabulation," and that under Mr. Roberts's interpretation, disputed votes "would be rejected even if a human review of the ballot revealed the voters' choice among candidates".
Therefore, an "error in the vote tabulation" includes a discrepancy between the number of votes determined by a voter tabulation system and the number of voters determined by a manual count of a sampling of precincts pursuant to section 102.166(4).
Some network officials have attributed the miscues to errors in the tabulations by the Voter News Service, a joint operation of the networks and The Associated Press that conducts exit polls and collects raw vote totals.
The issue in dispute here is the meaning of the phrase "error in the vote tabulation" found in section 102.166 5).
The moment an individual's vote becomes subject to error in the vote tabulation process, the easier it is for that vote to be diluted.
The Division opines that an "error in the vote tabulation" onlymeans a counting error resulting from incorrect election parameters or an error in the vote tabulating software.
Taken together, these sections suggest that "error in the vote tabulation" includes errors in the failure of the voting machinery to read a ballot and not simply errors resulting from the voting machinery.
