by Warren Stewart

A Buzzflash Reader Contribution

12/29/2004

"That can't be what they really call them!" I exclaimed in amusement. But Lowell Finley, legal counsel for the Green/Libertarian recount effort in New Mexico, assured me that 'phantom vote' was indeed the common legal term for the puzzling phenomenon I had uncovered in looking at the state's canvass report. A phantom vote occurs when the number of votes recorded exceeds the number of ballots cast. Mathematically, phantom votes are merely the inverse of undervotes. However, while undervotes can be accounted for more or less persuasively in one way or another, I have yet to come up with any acceptable explanation for phantoms. Much less, 2,087 of them statewide in New Mexico, just about one third of the margin of victory that determined the selection of that state's presidential electors.

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http://nov2truth.org/article.php?story=20041229114342975