Today I had lunch with Professor Philip Stark (Department of Statistics, UC Berkeley).  He’s an expert witness for the Democrats in Nassau County, New York, where a close race (difference of 451 votes, out of about 85000 votes cast) held the New York State Senate in balance until Saturday.  The Democrats were seeking a full recount of all optical scan machines because apparently the 3% post election recount showed that some ballots were not counted –there were more ballots in the box than counted by the machine.  However, according to news reports Republicans argued that the court should use the electronic results regardless  unless the machine broke down.  Professor Stark’s prepared remarks, who in the end was not allowed to testify but some of his remarks were read into the record,  can be found here and several other stories can be found here and here on the matter.