Please explain what "auditing" a sample of the paper receipts
establishes since the only thing that matters is the total votes cast
for each candidate.

An election isn't a production line making a gazillion identical widgets
per day where sampling will tell you something about meeting
specifications. A election produces a different product for each
candidate on the ballot. The only way to know how many votes each
candidate got is counting every single vote.

Early in the day 2004 exit polls predicted a Kerry win only to be proven
wrong by the actual votes since the sampling was apparently biased to
only asking Kerry voters.

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...
"sfb" wrote in message
news:Nj3tf.8766$3Y3.2508@trnddc02...
[...] you have learned absolutely nothing about the correctness of
the total vote.

So what? The random audit isn't intended to tell you anything "about
the correctness of the total vote.