Each candidate has the option of assigning a representative to each precinct who must sign off on the results before they are reported to the state.
But the result — a series of scores assessing each precinct's partisan behavior and volatility — was a marvel to campaign operatives who had been reliant on ward bosses and precinct captains for such intelligence about their turf.
At a news conference, Mr. Lugar, who is 80 and in his sixth term, reminded supporters that only a handful of votes in each precinct would be enough to sway the outcome.
When the Social Club's representatives tried to raise grievances with him, Curtis set up his own grievance committee to handle management-employee disputes, based on the election of representatives from each precinct house by secret ballot, and it met just once.
The system also records the number of corruption allegations and civilian complaints of police abuse in each precinct, which along with community relations are important indicators of how a department serves the people, according to Mark H. Moore, a professor of criminal justice policy and management at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
The combination of reassigning one officer from each precinct, and the transfer of the narcotics and street crime detectives, will increase the staffing in every detective squad in the city by two investigators, the official said.
The pilot program is set to begin next month and will involve the 67th Precinct in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn and the 43rd Precinct in the Soundview section of the Bronx, where the police received more than 7,000 reports of domestic violence in each precinct last year.
But a precinct-by-precinct analysis shows that, in the unlikely event that the uncounted ballots were counted and turned out to have been voted in the exact percentages of the vote within each precinct, Mr. Gore would still carry this new vote, by an even greater margin.
That's an average of 908 voters at each precinct in 2004.
