Miami newspaper sends in SAS to find 'the real US president'

The Miami Herald intends to recount every one of Florida's six million ballots, and has already discovered that 445 convicted criminals used their vote - something they are prevented from doing by law in Florida. It also claims over 400 ballots were cast illegally in Broward County, mostly by unregistered voters.

According to Geoff Dougherty, computer-assisted reporting editor at the paper, the discoveries would have been impossible without data analysis technology from SAS Institute. He told silicon.com: "Particularly with the statistical analysis stories, SAS software has been the key."

With just a few hundred votes making the crucial difference in George W Bush's favour, the Miami Herald plans to recount every ballot - paying close attention to the estimated 60,000 spoiled papers.

The newspaper hopes to be able to publish the results of the full recount by the end of January, once the data has been fully checked. "Accuracy is more important than speed," Dougherty added. "After all, that's the whole point of the exercise."

In 1997, the Herald held another election investigation, this time into the suspicious circumstances surrounding Miami's mayoral elections. Using SAS software, the paper built a database of voters and scanned for anomalies in the system.

The investigation led to 26 arrests, an overturned election result and a Pulitzer prize for the Herald.

Dougherty expects the results to be less dramatic this time, but added that the paper's previous investigation allowed reporters to react quickly this time. "It's very handy to have a system run by code. Because I'd done similar data analysis before, the system only needed small changes so I was able to make the quick turnaround the story needed," he said.