I don't really think it's even a plausible mistake. Remember, to make the mistake, you have to retain the original raw vote total, but discard the original raw per-candidate totals, then recompute them from the rounded percentages and the retained original total. That doesn't make sense, for reasons having nothing to do with my level of trust in the election authority. It's several steps of extra effort for a result, read live on television by the election authority, that instantly destroys the credibility of the election.
I explained in another comment that these are the two most important numbers in an election and the two numbers everyone cites. Moreover, you might naively assume that they capture all the information about the election because, especially if you are not a STEM major and maybe even then, you might think you can just multiply the numbers to get the per-candidate tallies. And actually for most purposes it might be fine, you rarely need to know the tally to a tenth of a percent accuracy.
Just to be clear: across the thread, you can watch the video of the election authority reading these specific numbers, with great ceremony; it's not like this is a number that bounced through reporters at news outlets or something.
I don't really think it's even a plausible mistake. Remember, to make the mistake, you have to retain the original raw vote total, but discard the original raw per-candidate totals, then recompute them from the rounded percentages and the retained original total. That doesn't make sense, for reasons having nothing to do with my level of trust in the election authority. It's several steps of extra effort for a result, read live on television by the election authority, that instantly destroys the credibility of the election.
I explained in another comment that these are the two most important numbers in an election and the two numbers everyone cites. Moreover, you might naively assume that they capture all the information about the election because, especially if you are not a STEM major and maybe even then, you might think you can just multiply the numbers to get the per-candidate tallies. And actually for most purposes it might be fine, you rarely need to know the tally to a tenth of a percent accuracy.
Just to be clear: across the thread, you can watch the video of the election authority reading these specific numbers, with great ceremony; it's not like this is a number that bounced through reporters at news outlets or something.
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