Alaska senate race recount has begun

by : Joe Sonneman   Bellaciao   15 December 2004

http://alaskarecount2004.org/

Exit polls showed Tony Knowles winning (50 - 47 %) http://www.politicalstrategy.org/archives/000738.php, but in the results he lost by a significant margin.

The recount has begun. Precincts to be counted by hand were randomly ed from regions and districts all over the state. Twenty optical scan machines will do the full recount of the state. These machines have been specially reprogrammed for doing this recount, so they do not contain the same programming as was used on election night. Report One from Alaskans for Fair Elections chair, Joe Sonneman

Excerpts from Joe Sonneman?s report - Monday night, December 13 Well, the Recount has begun! It was quite an impressive sight, to see 50-60 ballot ?feeders?, 4 Election Supervisors, various assistants, 20 Observers from our and other groups, and the Admin Supervisor, plus some ?security?, and to realize that we made all this happen in order to check the accuracy of the voting machines. Thanks to everyone who contributed!

To decide which precincts to recount by hand Elections officials grouped machine-counted (on election night) precincts by district, put all precincts for one district in a basket, and let us pick one from the basket, sight unseen. Nina Mollett picked the very first one; I picked the rest of the first 20. We only started 20 tonight.

The first 20 were the 20 picked for later hand count, so that, as soon those were machine counted, they could get them next door and begin hand counting them. But few were finished in our 2 hour session, because: a) the first hour was Observer orientation, and b) the Directorwho alone can make final decisions on ?intent of the voter?was not present, having gone to Anchorage for Electoral College activities and had not got the plane she?d hoped to return on, but she should be in tomorrow. Our experience this afternoon shows: 1 person can watch 3-5 machines at a time. Much of the information we are collecting, is available off the tapes, off machines that don?t move [serial numbers], etc. So it seems like the main thing is, to watch when an operator signals [with a yellow card and raised hand] that they want a supervisor or Director to review their results. Differences between the Recount and the Election, we can look at overnight. Any significant differences they will take up on a case by case basis, and may order an extra hand count. Tuesday, as precincts start being finished and new ones start being counted, ballots will go into the hand count room for hand counting.

There are over 300,000 ballots total; they have 20 machines and estimate 800-900 ballots per hour per machine, so that?s about 16,000 per hour, about 20 hours minimum. And then they will count all the absentee and questioned ballots, only after all ?regular? ballots.

We are already feeling a bit short of staff to keep up with 20 machines on a full ?audit trail? level, but may be able to keep up with following Director decisions. If we can get more volunteers willing to help, that?d be great, but we did have about 14 people at today?s event, and about the same at the followup potluck/rehash.

Now, I have to sleep, more tomorrow, early!! It may not be the exact style of Recount some may have wanted, but it appears more or less OK so far, with minor reservations....But we will try to stay aware .....