''Such differences demand an explanation.'' (UPDATED)

"I am a statistician. When I testified about electoral tampering in Martin County, Florida, in November 2000, I focused exclusively on the fact that the number of disputed ballots would have changed the outcome. That was shortsighted. As U.S. newspapers have written about the Ukraine, an election's outcome may be less important than how it was conducted. Democratic elections must be verifiably fair. Snohomish County, Washington, also used non-verifiable touch screen voting in all precincts (polling locations) on election day 2004. Among about 100,000 touch screen votes in the famously close governor's race, Republican candidate Rossi had an 8,000 vote advantage; while among about 200,000 paper (absentee) ballots, Democrat Gregoire had 2,000 more votes. Some voters spoke of the touch screen machine changing their vote. Countywide, there were 19 formally reported instances of machine switching; every one favored the Republican. Could these be random errors, equally likely to go either way, like tosses of a fair coin? Well, fair coins just don't come up the same 19 times in a row! However, Rossi did not have a "touch screen advantage" everywhere. Among 90 precincts with no reported machine problems (vote switching, machine freeze-ups, or repairs within two weeks of the election), 44 had touch screen vote counts more favorable to Rossi than paper ballots, while 46 had a touch screen advantage for Gregoire. However, among the precincts with reported voting machine problems, Rossi had a touch screen advantage in 56 out of 58 (96.6%)."-from the article by Arlene S. Ash, Ph.D. on truthout.org. Yesterday, a certain Senator from Massachussetts boldly revealed the following: "Thousands of people were suppressed in their efforts to vote. Voting machines were distributed in uneven ways...In Democratic districts, it took people four, five, 11 hours to vote, while Republicans [went] through in 10 minutes. Same voting machines, same process, our America..." Update: "Reed, who said 20 of the state's 39 counties had problems, cautioned lawmakers not to expect perfection in a state with 3 million voters and the inevitability of a small error rate by "human beings working their hearts out. This is a very, very human process."-from Tuesday's P-I story, "Senate panel hears of vote woes" covering yesterday's Senate committee hearing in Olympia. I'm hearing a prediction of modest reform, at best, in this report.