Which is why Kerry should not have conceded. He needed to highlight all the irregularities in Ohio. He could have done this with dignity. He could have even said, "I believe that Mr. Bush has won the election. However, it is not up to me. It is up to the voters, and there seem to be considerable problems, in addition to the outstanding votes. And so we must wait until all the votes are counted, and all the irregularities examined. This is not about me at this point. It is about ensuring the integrity of the democratic process."

But, then, if Kerry knew this much about framing, he would have won the election by 3-5 points, minimum.

And ballots DO degrade when touched by hands. In Florida after the 2000 election I can tell you first hand that as the stacks of ballots were compiled, counted, re-stacked, separated, examined, and put to the side - the counting tables were literally littered with chads.

Now - in that case, neither the Democratic nor Republican observers ever touched the ballots - it was the mere handling of them that jarred all those hated little chads out. But still - clearly the ballots were in a different state after the hand count.

A machine count is more precise than a hand count.  Multiple machine counts vary by a smaller amount than multiple hand counts.

However, a precise count is not necessarily an accurate count.  A machine may misread the same ballot every count, rendering a precise count that is not accurate.  A human, at least, won't suffer from many of the failures that machines do; they won't neglect to read a ballot because it has a stray mark, or because it's stuck to another ballot, of for other trivial reasons.  Thus a hand count should be more accurate, given honest counting, if not more precise.

The upshot: simply because a machine can't read a ballot doesn't mean a human shouldn't.

Republicans know they're on thin ice.  They know - well, maybe not the freepers, but the elite know - that a hand count could produce a Gregoire victory.  Legitimately.  If they didn't, they'd welcome a third count, because they'd be confident  that the outcome would favor them; they'd say, "Bring it on."  Instead, they're begging Gregoire to let them be.

Presumably, the only votes that need be counted by hand are those which can't be counted by machine. The accuracy of the machine readable votes is not therefore in any way jeopardized. What remains is to achieve the maximal accuracy on the REMAINING votes, and any number of standard counting techniques can do this (by choosing, for example, a specific minimum number of detached corners on a chad).