Absolutely they BETTER be watching. After all the WI dustup - at end of day, 74% of recount will be by hand. So the dynamics change where the Lib counters can for the 1st time get their hands on the actual ballot and make ‘judgement calls’ - they won’t miss this last oppt’y. 3M votes at 74% = 2.22M votes. Flip 13,600 from DT to HRC...that’s 0.006%. They ARE gonna go for it, and the R’s better have observers big time.
Jill wouldn’t have paid 3 1/2 mil if she didn’t have hope for a fraudulent result no matter how they count.
I’m not too concerned after listening to Jim Troupis, who pretty much wrote the recount procedures a few years ago when the first statewide recount in over 100 years had to be conducted. And they’ve modified and improved it since then.
Here is a 30 minute interview, skip to 3:20 for the beginning:
http://wiba.iheart.com/onair/vicki-mckenna-29300/everything-you-need-to-know-about-15341178/1
As he says, the number of ballots cannot change. There will always be machine read errors, but statistically they will be spilt among the candidates in the same proportion as the overall vote. A hand recount MAY find some discrepancies but they will not be significant, according to those who have tested and calibrated the optical scanners.
As an old quality assurange manager once (finally) got me to understand, human inspection is on average 80% accurate at best. I had to do the job myself for 20 minutes to realize I was just as capable as the regular operators were at passing a bad part, or making a wrong identification. But the process will guard against that through the granulatity of the count, which will have multiple people looking at each ballot as a cross check.