Black. Box. Voting. In. America: your vote goes in, tyranny comes out.

sardus_pater · Nov 20, 2004

Mel Brennan said:

Friday, November 19, 2004 - In the nation's first academic study of the Florida 2004 vote, University of California, Berkeley graduate students and a professor have found intriguing evidence that electronic-voting counties there could have mistakenly awarded up to 260,000 votes to President Bush.

The discrepancy, reported Thursday, is insufficient by itself to sway the outcome of the presidential race in Florida, but the UC Berkeley team called on Florida elections officials for an investigation.

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If they were mistakenly awarded to a candidate I guess they should have been awarded to another...

So let's say all those votes were to be awarded to Kerry... the effect is Bush (+260k) and Kerry (-260k) producing a 520k gap.

190k mistakes could be enough to change the result. So theoretically if 260k is the correct number of errors, if 73% of those errors were "kerry->bush" ones it could be enough.

Since I cannot believe those ppl didn't take into account all this... what am I missing?

sardus_pater · Nov 20, 2004

a big list.

http://www.politicaonline.net/forum/showthread.php?postid=1602953#post1602953

DutchOven · Nov 20, 2004

Mel Brennan said:

Study finds Fla. 'ghost' e-votes
Results showing a Bush boost may help stop future snags

By Ian Hoffman
STAFF WRITER

Friday, November 19, 2004 - In the nation's first academic study of the Florida 2004 vote, University of California, Berkeley graduate students and a professor have found intriguing evidence that electronic-voting counties there could have mistakenly awarded up to 260,000 votes to President Bush.

The discrepancy, reported Thursday, is insufficient by itself to sway the outcome of the presidential race in Florida, but the UC Berkeley team called on Florida elections officials for an investigation.

"This is a no-vote-left-behind kind of project, not a change-the-president project," said UC Berkeley sociology professor Michael Hout, who oversaw the research. "We're as interested in the next election as the one just over."

Broadly speaking, the UC Berkeley team found that Bush received tens of thousands more votes in electronic-voting Democratic counties than past voting patterns would have suggested. No such pattern turned up in counties using optical scanning machines.

The UC Berkeley report has not been peer reviewed, but a reputable MIT political scientist succeeded in replicating the analysis Thursday at the request of the Oakland Tribune and The Associated Press. He said an investigation is warranted.

"There is an interesting pattern here that I hope someone looks into," said MIT arts and social sciences Dean Charles Stewart III, a researcher in the MIT-Caltech Voting Technology Project.

Stewart isn't convinced the problem is electronic voting. It could be absentee voting or some quirk of election administration. But whatever the problem, it didn't show up in counties using optical scanning machines. Rather than offer evidence of fraud or voting problems, the UC Berkeley study infers they exist mathematically.

Frustrated at the lowbrow, data-poor nature of allegations of election fraud flooding the Internet, three Berkeley grad students decided to apply the tools of first-year statistics class.

"We decided, well, you might as well test it properly instead of sitting around speculating," said first-year sociology grad student Laura Mangels. She and two colleagues downloaded voting and demographic data, ran them through statistics software and in the first night had results that produced a collective "Wow" among the students, she said.

They shopped their results to faculty and finally to Hout, a well-known skeptic who is chairman of the university's graduate sociology and demography group.

"Seven professors later, nobody's been able to poke a hole in our model," Mangels said. "Our results still hold up."
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Who are the Republicans in conspiracy with?

The Knights Templar?
Masons?
Skull & Bones?
Author of the Da Vinci Code?

Mel Brennan · Nov 20, 2004

sardus_pater said:

a big list.

http://www.politicaonline.net/forum/showthread.php?postid=1602953#post1602953
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Missing one.

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=395&row=0

sardus_pater · Nov 20, 2004

Mel Brennan said:

Missing one.

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=395&row=0
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purojogo · Nov 20, 2004

ElJefe said:

Frankly, I don't know if there were shenanigans involved. Maybe not, and even if there were, who knows if they enough to influence any elections.

However, when I read reports about election officials' stonewalling, misleading, and otherwise not being open with the electorate, it does make me wonder. If there's nothing going on, then being open with rabblerousers shouldn't be a problem, right?
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That's precisely the point...No one is going to change the outcome of the elections..But if India, with a much larger population and voter turnout can have their votes counted more accurately than we do (and they have many more parties, and electronic machines in use) then why can't we help our voting system get better...Isn't democracy in America deserving of it? For example, we might already have monumental debt, but that does not mean we cannot outfit all our machines with paper printout , am i right? I think we can still afford paper, last time i checked.....

BenReilly · Nov 20, 2004

sardus_pater said:

Since I cannot believe those ppl didn't take into account all this... what am I missing?
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The hysterics of sore losers who deep down have contempt for the American people.