Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com

Marketplace \| Services \| Contact Us \| Community \| Arts & Entertainment \| Local Guides

Published by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. CLICK FOR NEWSPAPER DELIVERY

Monday, November 12, 2001
Election 2000 Q & A

   Q: Why go back and look at the Florida ballots?
   A: The state's presidential election was contested in litigation involving the Gore and Bush campaigns, and finally settled by a 5-4 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. After the decision, people still questioned whether the outcome was correct.
   The review sought to examine all uncounted ballots and provide information on voting systems and voting mistakes.
   Q: What was done?
   A: Journalists analyzed a database of more than 175,000 Florida ballots that were never certified during the 2000 presidential election. The ballots were either undervotes, on which voting machines were unable to detect a choice for president, or overvotes, which machines read as containing more than one choice.
   Q: Who was involved in the project?
   A: In addition to The Associated Press, the group includes CNN, The New York Times, The Palm Beach Post, The St. Petersburg Times, Tribune Publishing, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.
   It cost about $900,000.
   Q: This project took a long time to complete. Why?
   A: We entered into this in January to do the most comprehensive review possible of the roughly 175,000 disqualified ballots. We expected to release the findings in mid-September, but journalists involved in the project were pulled off to cover the Sept. 11 aftermath.
   Q: Who handled the project?
   A: A nonprofit social science organization, the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, hired workers to view each ballot and record what they saw. Researchers and data-entry clerks then produced a database describing each ballot in detail. Reporters and editors at the news organizations then examined the data.
   Q: Who decided how ballots were awarded to each candidate?
   A: Reporters and data editors for the media consortium - drawing on arguments made by the two campaigns and on definitions used or contemplated by county election officials - created sets of standards by which to judge each ballot.
   Q: How can I view all the results?
   A: The raw data are available on the NORC Web site: http://www.norc.uchicago.edu/.

| Talk about this story | Next Story | Home |

[ Printer-friendly version ]
[ Subscribe to newspaper ]

SEND THIS PAGE TO A FRIEND