George,

I have had further thoughts about the chad count, and want to register my formal protest and call for a recount.

My reasoned estimate was 4001 and Ron's wild guess was 4500. He beat me by a narrow margin, and maybe that is within the margin of error for chad counting. After all, if the true count was 4,250, I would have beaten him. That means an error of just 119 chads, or just 2.7%, would have swung it my way. Don't the good people of our community have the right to know who the real winner is? Is there no grounds for an appeal and recount? Here are the important scientific and technical issues:

1) How reliable are your chad counters? What training and certification did they receive? Are any of them lawyers, who might be biased in favor of Mr. Tweel. Most importantly, did you do a scientific study to calculate their reliability and margin of error? If the margin of error is greater than 2.7%, there may be a serious problem with your announced results.

2) How can you be sure that all of the chads are really complete chads? Maybe some of them are partial chads that were torn into pieces of subchads during the collection or counting process. This would mean that the chad count was actually lower than the count of 4,369. I think the best way to resolve this is to examine each chad or chad piece under a microscope and see if it appears to be torn in a way that matches another piece. We need to convene a committee to set up a task force to investigate this issue and give us a report.

Waiting for the truth,

Dewey Cornell (electronic mail, June 10, 2002)