Aaron Brown doing election story now w/Bev

We have no reason to believe the election was not fair. But oddly, we have less than perfect confidence that the votes were counted accurately. No one expects 100% accuracy in such things, but how much error is too much error? But perhaps a better question still: will we ever know?

Bev Harris is a citizen activist who first brought national attention to the problems of voter software is now in Florida pursuing internal computer records for what she calls a forensic audit.

Bev Harris: I think we can talk till the cows come home about about what might happen and what could happen and what's theoretical, and the best thing we can do is just go get the records and see what did happen.

She's not alone; a number of experts are now looking, and looking hard. And not only fraud, but the possible effects of simple computer error. The kind of dumb mistake that ruined the Hubble telescope and sent Mars missions astray.

So how accurate was the 2004 vote count?

Rebecca Mercuri: Basically 80% of our votes we really don't know. We haven't taken the time to look into it.

Some examples: in Franklin county, Indiana, a programming error was applying Democratic votes to the Libertarian party. After recount, the winner on Election Night, is now the loser. In North Carolina, over 4000 ballots are gone forever, lost when a voting machine passed it's arbitrary limit. In South Florida, election officials were horrified to see vote totals start counting down as they hit 32,000. But what is even more disturbing, a statistical study done at UC Berkley, that there could have been similar counting problems in all Florida counties that used touch screen voting machines.

Rebecca Mercuri: The type of testing that you need is really being done at election day, as opposed to being done before Election Day.

In Washington today, in an office so new you could still smell the carpet glue, the Federal Election Assistance Comission admits it is only beginning the process of creating national standards.

Deforest Soaries: Every electronic voting machine that was used this year was certified against standards that were 1990 standards.

The Chairman promises intensive federal audits. Audits to guarantee, eventually, voter confidence.

Deforest Soaries: We're going to go down to the ground on this, much further than we've ever gone before. I don't take the opinion, and neither does my comission, that what you don't know won't hurt you.

AB: And the debate will go on...