Recent history bears him out:
•In the 1988 Democratic primary in Delaware, a keypunch error gave Samuel Beard 2,800 votes more than he received in a race against incumbent Lt. Gov. S.B. Woo. Although Beard had claimed victory, the error was not discovered until two days after the primary and reversed its result, putting Woo ahead by just 71 votes.
•The initial count in New York's 2001 Democratic mayoral primary gave Mark Green a roughly 30,000-vote lead over Fernando Ferrar, but an "official machine count" conducted a week later reduced that margin by 18,029 votes after election officials discovered 42,000 votes that had been counted twice. The final official count narrowed Green's margin to just 15,981 votes.
•Unofficial returns in the 2002 Alabama governor's race showed incumbent Democrat Don Siegelman narrowly defeating Republican challenger Bob Riley. But a late-night recount conducted by Republican officials in Baldwin County revealed what they described as a "computer glitch" that gave Riley a statewide lead of 3,195 votes. Although Democrats suspected foul play -- the recount had occurred after Democratic party observers had gone home for the night -- Siegelman ultimately dropped efforts to obtain a statewide recount.
•Folllowing New York's 2008 presidential primary, a New York Times review found "about 80 election districts among the city's 6,106 where Mr. Obama supposedly did not receive even one vote, including cases where he ran a respectable race in a nearby district." A formal review later found hundreds of small anomalies in vote reporting in individual districts. The Times reported election lawyers representing both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton agreeing that it is "not uncommon" to see such mistakes "made by weary inspectors rushing on election night to transcribe columns of numbers."
