How do you sample a counter with the total vote cast for a candidate?

You don't. You sample the votes to see if they agree. That is, you
compare the electronically reported tally of a set of voting machines
with the mechanical (paper?) ballots corresponding to that same set of
voting machines. It doesn't matter who is ahead or behind, just that
the paper and electronic ones match.

If they don't match, something's wrong.

Jose
--
You can choose whom to befriend, but you cannot choose whom to love.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.