Poll: Was the 2004 election rigged?

[arildno]

not at all pot-kettle; you are simply obfuscating because you love Karl Rove's close buddy so much.

 

[BobG]

Hey, did you hear that NASA is covering up the existence of a second moon around the earth? Ask them and they'll deny it...

Which one are they denying covering up, Cruithne or J002E3?

 

[The Smoking Man]

What most people don't like about electronic balloting is the "black box" part. The name says it all - "black box": you can't see in it, so you should fear what is going on inside. That is a human failing, not a flaw inherrent to the machine. People don't trust machines. That's gradually going away as people who can remember life without computers die, but the fact that people are afraid of machines is not an indication of a flaw in the machines.

No, what most of the people hate about these machines is that they were made by an overt Bush supporter.

They can also be faulted for not having a paper trail.

There were problems during the election and some results were presumed lost until there was a download done to some machines ... Should that be allowed, by the way?

Nobody is allowed to be alone with an unsealed ballot box for fear of tampering and yet we have people at the company who manufactured these products able to dial in and download to them??

Now, with manual systems, paper can be counted and recounted as needed.

In the case of allegations of electronic fraud on an automated terminal ... what do you count.

Manual systems record the intent of a person by taking a physical impression of that intent on a computer card or piece of paper which the voter can then verify before putting into a box. To tamper would require the disposal of thousands of paper ballots and the substitution of the same number of ballots in the other direction. Logistically a hard task to achieve.

A computerised system merely accumulates to a total and by the nature of a secret ballot, allows a very easy method of tampering. Hidden self deleting code can supply an algorythm that will fix it ... or a dial up.

 

[pattylou]

Thank you for coming back to this issue, Russ.

See, the thing I like about electronic balloting (in theory) is the potential for zero error for the balloting mechanism. No manual form of balloting even has the potential for zero error in the casting and counting of ballots.

Me too.

What most people don't like about electronic balloting is the "black box" part. The name says it all - "black box": you can't see in it, so you should fear what is going on inside. That is a human failing, not a flaw inherrent to the machine. People don't trust machines. That's gradually going away as people who can remember life without computers die, but the fact that people are afraid of machines is not an indication of a flaw in the machines.

Not me. A very important aspect of voting has been lost with these machines.

With hand counted ballots, you have members of both parties involved with the counting process. I don't know specifics, but I recall the Ohio recount had three people from each party present.

With machine counted ballots, you have a Secretary of State (partisan appointment) certify a vote counting method. If this method is a machine, then the method is partisan as well in our present situation.

Members of both parties look at the tallies to make sure they are ... acceptable? ... but are not part of the counting process, have no access to the code; basically the safeguard that was built into hand counted ballots (having both parties participate in the counting) is completely gone.

I'd be far more comfortable if members of each party could acces the code and memory cards of the machines at any point to make sure the count was going as it should. This would be far more analogous to hand counted ballots than what is presently used, in terms of safeguards, and would still allow the superiority of machine counting to ---- reduce costs, time, and errors, etc.

The study done by Berkeley (iirc) misused the exit poll data for the purpose of spreading a conspiracy theory. And bitter Democrats bought it hook-line-and-sinker.

I hadn't heard that before. I am aware of (IIRC) four documents going back and forth over the last ten months - two by edison and mitofsky (polling organisation, explaining the Ohio exit poll discrepancy) , and two by the "berkely group" (statisticians? claiming the explanations don't hold up.)

Your quote sounds like an opinion. If you have a reputable source ("evidence?") showing that the motives are to spread a conspiracy theory -- ("evidence" might be something like an admission by one of the authors, or some such) I'd appreciate it. Otherwiuse, i don't think you can distinguish this sort of statistical analysis from any other; and any weight it is given should depend on whether it was done properly or not.

If the quote reflects your bias or opinion only, I'd appreciate some sort of nod to that effect.

 

[SOS2008]

The issue of election reform has become a very big issue for very real reasons. Comparing this to far-fetched conspiracies that we never went to the moon is ridiculous--Please!

 

[arildno]

The moon comparison is a typical example of such obfuscation.
It is an undeniable fact (belittled and waved away by apologists) that exit polls are, in general, extremely accurate, both in Europe and in the US.

This IN ITSELF should have warranted a thorough investigation of the marked exit poll discrepancy.
That was actively discouraged from Republicans in key positions, and such attempts were quashed at the very start.

Now, the most probable explanation of this course of events is..."to be filled out by russ watters"

 

[loseyourname]

There IS ample evidence of fraud, russ watters.
It is you who have the burden of proof:
YOU must bring valid reasons for why exit polls have been a perfectly reliable indicator
earlier, but suddenly was wildly inaccurate.

You are simply actively choosing not to take upon your responsibilities, because it suits your own, narrow political interest.

http://www.mysterypollster.com/main/2004/11/the_freeman_pap.html

Absent further data from NEP, you can choose to believe that an existing problem with exit polls got worse this year in the face of declining response rates and rising distrust of big media, that a slightly higher number of Bush voters than Kerry voters declined to be interviewed. Or, you can believe that a massive secret conspiracy somehow shifted roughly 2% of the vote from Kerry to Bush in every battleground state, a conspiracy that fooled everyone but the exit pollsters - and then only for a few hours - after which they deliberately suppressed evidence of the fraud and damaged their own reputations by blaming the discrepancies on weaknesses in their data.

Please.

http://mayflowerhill.blogspot.com/2004/11/mayflower-hill-exclusive-warren.html

One possibility he was able to rule out, though, is touch screen voting machines that don't leave any paper trail being used to defraud the election. To prove this, he broke down precincts based on the type of voting machine that was used and compared the voting returns from those precincts with his own exit polls. None of the precincts with touch screen computers that don't leave paper trails, or any other type of machine for that matter, had vote returns that deviated from his exit poll numbers once the average 1.9% non-response bias was taken into account.

Perhaps the above can at least put to rest the idea that this had anything to do with electronic voting machines, something the Berkeley paper never addressed.

There is also the CalTech/MIT (institutions with far less bias than Berkeley) voting project study that concluded no evidence of fraud could be found by statistical analysis (I posted this for Ivan last time, but he still seems to think Berkeley is more trustworthy). I cannot seem to find that anymore, but if you actually read the post on Mystery Pollster that I linked to, his previous post discusses the voting project. He notes that it may come to a different conclusion because it seemed to have used the exit poll data after it was weighted to reflect voter turnout and the Berkeley paper seems to have used the raw data, pre-calibration. Note that Mitofsky (the head of the NEP) says that raw data uncalibrated is no good and should never have been released in the first place.

 

[SOS2008]

Let's not become too derailed from the main points. Is there anyone who argues there is no need for election reform, for example, is there anyone who feels a paper trail is not a good idea? We know there were complications in key/swing states such as Florida in 2000, and now in Ohio in 2004.

Perhaps conservatives are having difficulty with the concept that many people do not feel the recent elections of 2000 and 2004 were conducted appropriately--on many levels. Perhaps the same way liberals can't understand how people still believe there were WMD, or the photo e-mailed to me today of soldiers in Iraq standing in a formation that reads: "9-11 We Remember" -- Aarrgh!

I believe Wikipedia to be as reliable a source as any, and this is the source I provided. According to this source there has been controversy about these elections. And as a result, election reform is a big topic. Fair elections are in the best interest of everyone, so why can't we get some consensus on this?

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I'm in the middle and think there was electronic tampering on both sides. I don't think the fact that Bush won means that he rigged anything and I don't think the fact that Kerry lost means that he didn't.

Now I want to know how you intend to find people who are impartial to make these voting machines and to run voting booths. I think that would be pretty unlikely don't you?

 

[The Smoking Man]

Now I want to know how you intend to find people who are impartial to make these voting machines and to run voting booths. I think that would be pretty unlikely don't you?

There is a big difference between making the device that records the vote and running the centre containing the voting booths.

I'd rather have an old conservative granny checking my name off the list than a young Neocon programming the software, in other words.

 

[Skyhunter]

Doesn't Diebold also make ATM machines?

I have used a bankcard almost everyday since their introduction and have never had a problem occur.

Since ATM machines are reliable and they are made by same company, why is there such a problem with voting machines?

Could it possibly be that they were designed that way?

Just wondering.

 

[loseyourname]

Well, I found us some more stuff about voting machines and Diebold, though I guess this deviates from the main topic. (Nonetheless, I'm sure anyone who is interested will find it to be useful information, and none of it comes from a partisan source.)

First off, the CalTech/MIT report I was looking for earlier:

http://www.vote.caltech.edu/media/documents/VotingMachines3.pdf

You'll notice, in particular, that the two most hotly contested states, Pennsylvania and Ohio, only had electronic voting machines in 26% and 15% of precints, respectively. Florida had 53%, and they also had no punch card machines this time, which were all the rage in 2000.

Also:

If we look at the 51 separate exit state polls, we see that 30 predicted more votes for Kerry than he actually got, while 21 predicted more votes for Bush than he actually got. Therefore, at the state level, the polls favored Kerry less than the sum of all the polls aggregated up to the national level. Furthermore, if we do a statistical test to see whether the differences between the exit polls and the official returns are significant, only three out of 51 are.

In the footnotes you will see that three states that showed a statistically significant difference between predicted results and actual results were Rhode Island, New York, and Oklahoma. None of these were 'battleground' states. Rhode Island and New York were won easily by Kerry; Oklahoma was won easily by Bush.

The addendum to this report:

http://www.vote.caltech.edu/media/documents/Addendum_Voting_Machines_Bush_Vote.pdf

Here is an article from the http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20050214-1340-electionchanges.html discussing another report by the CalTech/MIT project (I cannot find the original report) regarding residual, or 'lost' votes:

It was one of the fundamental problems of the 2000 voting stalemate and a focus of subsequent reforms.
. . .
In 2000, the national residual vote was 1.9 percent of ballots cast for president. The report found a significant improvement this year, with the residual vote falling to 1.1 percent. The analysis examined 37 states and the District of Columbia; figures were unavailable elsewhere.
. . .
Florida, the scene of the 2000 postelection stalemate, and Georgia had the biggest drop in residual votes. Florida went from 2.9 percent to 0.4 percent; Georgia went from 3.5 percent to 0.4 percent. Both underwent comprehensive reform, with Georgia putting in electronic voting machines statewide, Florida scrapping punch cards and both launching ambitious voter education campaigns.

Remember what they were saying in 2000 about wanting every vote counted? Well, they certainly got a lot more of them counted this time.

Regarding the evil diebold, that company that is so blatantly part of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, look here:

http://verifiedvoting.org/verifier/map.php?topic_string=5estd&state=Ohio&county=Cuyahoga

If you remember, Cuyahoga County in Ohio was the site of most of the accusation this time around about election-stealing. The voting machines that were used in Cuyahoga County were not made by Diebold.

And about the paper trails:

http://verifiedvoting.org/article.php?list=type&type=13

You'll note that on 05/07/2004, six months before the election, the state of Ohio passed H.B.262, mandating a paper trail for all voting machines.

I guess we can't blame either of those boogeymen.

 

[loseyourname]

Doesn't Diebold also make ATM machines?

No, but they do make the Agilis software that can be used by ATM machines. The software was first certified on 04/23/2003. If it is installed on any machines you use, it hasn't been for very long. Diebold does provide and has long provided maintenance services for ATM machines, though.

 

[Burnsys]

i am from argentina and some of the ATM machines (30% of them) has a Label: "Diebold"

 

[loseyourname]

i am from argentina and some of the ATM machines (30% of them) has a Label: "Diebold"

My mistake. They actually make the Opteva model.

http://www6.diebold.com/nasadmk/images/dm_atm_big_opteva740.jpg

 

[Burnsys]

Ok. now that we know diebold build atm machines, which needs the most higher standards in security. just imagine what a bug or a flaw could do in an ATM machine...unthinkable.. I wonder why don't they follow the same security standards when they designed the voting software... it dificult to think it wasn't on purpose...

 

[loseyourname]

Does nothing I posted mean anything to you people? Does it not matter that both the CalTech/MIT voting project and NEP confirm that there was no greater statistical difference between predicted results and actual results in states with machines v. states without machines? Does it make no difference that many Diebold machines were withdrawn before the election and that they didn't provide the machines to the most disputed county in Ohio? Does it make no difference that Ohio and Pennsylvania did not even use voting machines in most parts of the state? Does it make no difference that the most hotly disputed state in question - Ohio - had paper trail legislation and that lack of a paper trail is mostly what everyone is complaining about?

Really, do you even bother to read what I post? I don't know why ATM machines are so perfect and voting machines still have some bugs. Maybe it's that ATM machines have been around for fifteen years and the bugs have been worked out. Maybe ATM machines do still have security problems, but you don't hear as much about them. Maybe it's that ATM machines are not used by several hundred people in the span of an hour. Maybe it's that ATM machines record one transaction at a time, whereas a voting machine counts however many votes are taking place in that county (probably anywhere from 30-50) with each transaction. Or, maybe it's that Diebold is run by sinister neo-conservatives that brainwashed all of their programmers into writing self-deleting code into the system so that one percent of votes for Kerry would actually be counted as votes for Bush. And, golly gee darn it, they managed to steal that election even though they only made a quarter of the machines in three contested states that only used voting machines (many with paper trails) in less than one-third of their total precints.

 

[pattylou]

THanks for your searches, LYN.

ES&S is the other major vendor of vote machines. ES&S is also partisan to the GOP.

Chuck Hagel was CEO of ES&S until two weeks before he announced his candidacy for Senator. He won the election in an pset victory over the incumbent, and the votes were counted on ES&S machines. I haven't dug around much on these machines, and I am just stating information here, not accusing Hagel of cheating.

Does it not matter that both the CalTech/MIT voting project and NEP confirm that there was no greater statistical difference between predicted results and actual results in states with machines v. states without machines?

I haven't seen that report except for your description and I'll look into it.

Does it make no difference that many Diebold machines were withdrawn before the election and that they didn't provide the machines to the most disputed county in Ohio?

Was Cuyahoga County using ES&S by chance?

Does it make no difference that Ohio and Pennsylvania did not even use voting machines in most parts of the state?

No. It was a tight race and either candidate could have theoretically swung it with only a small percentage of counties.

Does it make no difference that the most hotly disputed state in question - Ohio - had paper trail legislation and that lack of a paper trail is mostly what everyone is complaining about?

No. THe paper trail isn't used to count the votes, except in a recount, and may not even be seen (I'm not sure) by the voter. I believe it is stored (of course) by the machine. Paper trails are very necessary. The recount in Ohio had some shady stuff goiung on, according to 'conspiracy' websites---

-The ballots weren't picked randomly
-The votes weren't kept securely before the recount (they were in an unlocked office the weekend or night before the recount.)

I expect to have my vote counted. I expect I live in a democracy. The magnitude of "wrongness" of having an unelected man sitting in the whitehouse --- Of the United States of America--- it's outrageous! And although in general Russ's earlier comment about who needs to prove what, may stand - in *this* case (Democracy, the basic building block of our country) it is *entirely* reasonable for the populace to demand the right to know that their *vote* is properly recorded. Democracy! Diebold refuses to have open source code, they are a black box not because they are a machine, but because they cloak themselves in secrecy (no opne source code, instructing employees to lie --- and when the memory card hack was demonstrated they didn't say "We'll get right on that," but instead they *sued* the people who demonstrated the hack for exposing the weakness of their system!)



Some good news: Diebold has not been certified by California (whew!) despite the fact that the governator appointed a guy to Sec of State, who was friendly with the Diebold company. (I was very depressed when that appointment happened!) Apparently the model had a 10% error rate. (!)

When California demanded a paper trail some years ago, seventeen other states followed suit. We hope that California's refusal to certify one of Diebold's models, has a similar effect.

Distrust of the current process is fueling scrutiny into how these machines work. I had a brief email correspondence with a guy who testifies on these machines to Senate panels and whatnot. (He's been involved in over a hundred field observations of these sorts of machines.) He agrees there are insecure machines (in use) that should not be used. He maintains electronic voting *can* be secure.

I agree.

 

[pattylou]

INow I want to know how you intend to find people who are impartial to make these voting machines and to run voting booths. I think that would be pretty unlikely don't you?

As I mentioned earlier, you allow both parties access to the counting process at any time. Like in the good old days. It's fine to have a GOP friendly manufacturer, as long as dems can look at the code, the tabulator, the memory cards, ---- before, during, and after the election.

This would be more in line with how things used to be done (have both parties involved in the count, even if one party was responsible for the paper and pencils used to vote with.)

 

[loseyourname]

ES&S is the other major vendor of vote machines. ES&S is also partisan to the GOP.

Chuck Hagel was CEO of ES&S until two weeks before he announced his candidacy for Senator. He won the election in an pset victory over the incumbent, and the votes were counted on ES&S machines. I haven't dug around much on these machines, and I am just stating information here, not accusing Hagel of cheating.

You're digging is what you're doing. Name me a major manufacturer of anything and I'd guess there's a 90% the CEO is a Republican. That doesn't mean he's part of a conspiracy.

Was Cuyahoga County using ES&S by chance?

Yes, in the 15% of precints that used e-machines. Do you have dirt on them now too?

No. It was a tight race and either candidate could have theoretically swung it with only a small percentage of counties.

You do realize that neither anyone at the federal or state level, or anyone from any of the voting machine companies, had any say in which precincts had machines certified in time. Are you honestly alleging that this goes so deep that the officials in each county were in on this? The accusations keep getting wilder and wilder, patty. No offense, but it sounds like you're just being a sore loser here.

No. THe paper trail isn't used to count the votes, except in a recount, and may not even be seen (I'm not sure) by the voter. I believe it is stored (of course) by the machine. Paper trails are very necessary. The recount in Ohio had some shady stuff goiung on, according to 'conspiracy' websites---

You'll note that I made a very strong effort to only post reports and data from reliable, non-partisan sources, and I checked the methodology of each and even reported the errors that some may have made. I can only hope you'd do the same if you start referencing some of these claims.

I expect to have my vote counted. I expect I live in a democracy.

Well, good. I expect the same. Then again, my vote didn't count, because I live in California, and no matter how I voted, Kerry was going to carry the state, by a wide margin.

Either way, you should be happy that lost votes decreased dramatically from the last election, especially in states that used e-machines.

Diebold refuses to have open source code, they are a black box not because they are a machine, but because they cloak themselves in secrecy (no opne source code, instructing employees to lie --- and when the memory card hack was demonstrated they didn't say "We'll get right on that," but instead they *sued* the people who demonstrated the hack for exposing the weakness of their system!)

I'm not saying it makes me feel great as a consumer, but you have to know this is standard practice. Even petty little retail salespeople are instructed to overplay the strengths of their product and ignore its weaknesses. What you call lying, they call making a sale. As for suing the hacker, what would you do if someone publicly demonstrated how to break your system? This reminds me of an old episode of Oprah. She once had on a guy that demonstrated on her show how to break into people's houses by exploiting weaknesses in door security. If your house was broken into the next day by some guy that had seen the show, how would you feel?

Again, I'm not necessarily making an evaluation of their decision. I'm only trying to show that there are reasons for their actions that are standard to all business. Whether or not it makes them an ethical company I'll leave up to you, but it doesn't make them grand conspirators in stealing an election that the non-partisan experts seem to agree shows no evidence of being stolen.

Distrust of the current process is fueling scrutiny into how these machines work. I had a brief email correspondence with a guy who testifies on these machines to Senate panels and whatnot. (He's been involved in over a hundred field observations of these sorts of machines.) He agrees there are insecure machines (in use) that should not be used. He maintains electronic voting *can* be secure.

I agree.

Sure they can. They can much more secure than paper ballots. We did, after all, see the mess that paper ballots can make in the 2000 elections. Of course, everyone must realize that e-machines won't be perfect right off the bat.

You should really take a look at that verified voting website. They log every complaint made in each election by precinct. Just looking through very quickly you can see that there is still every manner of problem, very few of which have anything to do with machines. They mostly have to do with long lines and bad poll workers (they are, after all, barely-trained volunteers - even I was a poll worker once).

 

[russ_watters]

Me too.



Not me.

I honestly don't get how you can hold both of those opinions at the same time, pattylou - they are mutually exlusive. Ie:

A very important aspect of voting has been lost with these machines.

With hand counted ballots, you have members of both parties involved with the counting process. I don't know specifics, but I recall the Ohio recount had three people from each party present.

But didn't you just agree with me above that manual counting is a bad thing, not a good thing!??

Any time you have people using their judgement, there exists the potential for error. That was the whole issue with the Florida "pregnant chad" fun in 2000: error cannot be completely removed from manual balloting. It doesn't matter if 3 people from each party were present (were there 3 people from the Green party?) or if 50 people from each party were present - its still humans making a judgment call instead of the unequivocal, unbaised recording of a machine.

With machine counted ballots, you have a Secretary of State (partisan appointment) certify a vote counting method. If this method is a machine, then the method is partisan as well in our present situation.

That simply doesn't follow. A counting method cannot be partisan. Again, there is the example of the "chads" from the 2000 election. Whether you count only a "pregnant chad" a "hanging chad" or a "partially detatched chad" does not make the counting process biased in one way or another.

The reason there was debate in 2000 was the accuracy of these counting methods: ie, a more accurate count in a pro-Gore district provides additional votes to Gore. Such an issue would not exist, however, if every district had the same voting method.

With electronic balloting, it would work a lot like an ATM. Hit the button for your candidate and the vote is recorded. Such a machine either works or it doesn't - there cannot possibly be any bias in it.

I'd be far more comfortable if members of each party could acces the code and memory cards of the machines at any point to make sure the count was going as it should. This would be far more analogous to hand counted ballots than what is presently used, in terms of safeguards, and would still allow the superiority of machine counting to ---- reduce costs, time, and errors, etc.

Good God, no! The entire point of using automatic/electronic ballots is to remove humans from the process. The more people who have access, the more potential there is for error and fraud! The machines should be thoroughly checked both before and after the election to ensure they are/were working correctly, but during the election, there should be no human intervention whatsoever.

For those who are wondering why electronic voting machines have issues, there it is: government bueracracy causes these errors. What you end up with is an electronic copy of paper balloting where you get all the problems of both paper and electronic balloting.

Your quote sounds like an opinion. If you have a reputable source ("evidence?") showing that the motives are to spread a conspiracy theory -- ("evidence" might be something like an admission by one of the authors, or some such) I'd appreciate it.

It is an opinion. It is based on the tone of the report (which doesn't seem to be available online anymore) and the disposition of the authors. The quick jump to the conclusion of fruad without really considering the possibility of error is indicative of the desire to see fraud.

Further, the results of the study were, 130,000-260,000 ("or more" ) extra votes for Bush. I'm not sure if those were "swing" votes or just extra votes. Bush won the election by 381,000 votes. If those votes were "swing" votes, that's a difference of 160,000 to 510,000. So wait - that data does not allow for the positive conclusion that the election went the wrong way! It isn't accurate enough! Saying that this data shows that the election went the wrong way is exactly the same as what crackpots are doing when they say the Michelson-Morley experiment succeeded in measuring an ether drift!

And if these votes were not swing votes, just "extra" votes, then they support the positive conclusion that Bush was the rightful winner of the election.

 

[russ_watters]

I'm still waiting for someone to post the details of the crime. If I have time tonight and no one has provided any details, I'll invent a story of my own. Right now I'm considering several separate story-lines:

-Diebold programmers under the direction of Bush pre-program the machines to multiply every Bush vote by 1.1, thus giving him 10% more votes than he should have gotten.

-Several thousand members of a vast conspiracy tamper with machines in polling places in Florida.

-Several dozen election officials in offices somewhere go into the Access databases of polling results and change the results before they are submitted to the state.

If anyone has any preference on which story I should fabricate, I'll take requests. Better yet, if I got lucky and hit on what actually happened, please feel free to provide the evidence to support the appropriate story. Or if it happened another way, please feel free to explain exactly how it happened (preferrably with evidence...)

 

[pattylou]

LYN: You asked if all the things you said put the matter to rest. You seemed to want to indicate that through the sheer *number* of items that you mentioned, that the whole issue should be put to rest. I was trying only to point out that several items on your list are entirely beside the point. Thus, the "sheer number of items" shrunk, considerably. The only item that I thought was pertinent was the MIT study, and I appreciate your lead on that.

I am not saying there was electronic tampering. I thought that was clear. When a dsicsussion reaches the point that the same people are saying the same things again and again, it gets a bit frustrating. I may take a break from this!

I didn't understand everything you said. I am sorry you seem to think I am a "sore loser." You seem to want to "shut me up" or rather "shut up" the discussion in general. You may find it tedious, and you may wish to withdraw from the conversation (I do)...

But are you really trying to imply that 59% of the PF participants in this poll are card-carrying members of the tin foil hat brigade? (That's how it sounds when one side starts calling names like "sore loser.") Isn't it *more* likely that the very significant distrust (59%) of the electronic systems, among PF members that participated in the poll, represents discomfort with electronic voting which should be addressed in a level headed manner and not "shut up?"

Whether Bush or Kerry or both cheated, and who should have won, is also beside the point. I would hope if Kerry had won, and I saw the irregularities that were reported, that I would still be as invested in voicing my concern for fair elections.

 

[cronxeh]

if the CEO is a Republican then the engineer who made the machines is a Democrat - it balances out, you know

 

[pattylou]

I'm still waiting for someone to post the details of the crime. If I have time tonight and no one has provided any details, I'll invent a story of my own. Right now I'm considering several separate story-lines:

-Diebold programmers under the direction of Bush pre-program the machines to multiply every Bush vote by 1.1, thus giving him 10% more votes than he should have gotten.

-Several thousand members of a vast conspiracy tamper with machines in polling places in Florida.

-Several dozen election officials in offices somewhere go into the Access databases of polling results and change the results before they are submitted to the state.

If anyone has any preference on which story I should fabricate, I'll take requests. Better yet, if I got lucky and hit on what actually happened, please feel free to provide the evidence to support the appropriate story. Or if it happened another way, please feel free to explain exactly how it happened (preferrably with evidence...)

John Conyers (D-MI) and Gore Vidal have both outlined scenarios containing "details of the crime." I suggest you start with their bare bone stories. A google on 'vote fraud' and their names might get you started.

 

[russ_watters]

But are you really trying to imply that 59% of the PF participants in this poll are card-carrying members of the tin foil hat brigade? (That's how it sounds when one side starts calling names like "sore loser.") Isn't it *more* likely that the very significant distrust (59%) of the electronic systems, among PF members that participated in the poll, represents discomfort with electronic voting which should be addressed in a level headed manner and not "shut up?"

Whether Bush or Kerry or both cheated, and who should have won, is also beside the point. I would hope if Kerry had won, and I saw the irregularities that were reported, that I would still be as invested in voicing my concern for fair elections.

Just to clarify my position, I think people who believe there was electronic tampering that led to the "wrong" guy winning the election are buying into conspiracy theory. But the poll doesn't ask that.

 

[pattylou]

I honestly don't get how you can hold both of those opinions at the same time, pattylou - they are mutually exlusive. Ie: But didn't you just agree with me above that manual counting is a bad thing, not a good thing!??

Any time you have people using their judgement, there exists the potential for error. That was the whole issue with the Florida "pregnant chad" fun in 2000: error cannot be completely removed from manual balloting. It doesn't matter if 3 people from each party were present (were there 3 people from the Green party?) or if 50 people from each party were present - its still humans making a judgment call instead of the unequivocal, unbaised recording of a machine. That simply doesn't follow. A counting method cannot be partisan. Again, there is the example of the "chads" from the 2000 election. Whether you count only a "pregnant chad" a "hanging chad" or a "partially detatched chad" does not make the counting process biased in one way or another.

The reason there was debate in 2000 was the accuracy of these counting methods: ie, a more accurate count in a pro-Gore district provides additional votes to Gore. Such an issue would not exist, however, if every district had the same voting method.

With electronic balloting, it would work a lot like an ATM. Hit the button for your candidate and the vote is recorded. Such a machine either works or it doesn't - there cannot possibly be any bias in it. Good God, no! The entire point of using automatic/electronic ballots is to remove humans from the process. The more people who have access, the more potential there is for error and fraud! The machines should be thoroughly checked both before and after the election to ensure they are/were working correctly, but during the election, there should be no human intervention whatsoever.

For those who are wondering why electronic voting machines have issues, there it is: government bueracracy causes these errors. What you end up with is an electronic copy of paper balloting where you get all the problems of both paper and electronic balloting. It is an opinion. It is based on the tone of the report (which doesn't seem to be available online anymore) and the disposition of the authors. The quick jump to the conclusion of fruad without really considering the possibility of error is indicative of the desire to see fraud.

Further, the results of the study were, 130,000-260,000 ("or more" ) extra votes for Bush. I'm not sure if those were "swing" votes or just extra votes. Bush won the election by 381,000 votes. If those votes were "swing" votes, that's a difference of 160,000 to 510,000. So wait - that data does not allow for the positive conclusion that the election went the wrong way! It isn't accurate enough! Saying that this data shows that the election went the wrong way is exactly the same as what crackpots are doing when they say the Michelson-Morley experiment succeeded in measuring an ether drift!

And if these votes were not swing votes, just "extra" votes, then they support the positive conclusion that Bush was the rightful winner of the election.

If I ever thought you were female posting under a male name, you have removed all doubt with this post!

I'm happy to go through this if you want - but you sound considerably aggravated. I don't see any reason to go back and forth under these conditions...? It's pretty clear we're not connecting here.

I would repeat what I said to LYN. If something is suspected by such a large percentage of a group as is indicated in this (very biased, very small - sample) poll, berating the majority may not be the best course of action. If you feel you're right, and you aren't getting through, you might want to spend more time on details of why specific scenarios (e.g. the 4,000 extra votes that went to Bush in some county or other) are above-board.

If nothing else, I hope that you have a greater appreciation for how much potential distrust *may* be present in the general population. Even if it is only 20%, and if that distrust splits 3:1 to democrats (or republicans), that means that the *distrust alone* could influence voter turnout and election results. We should address this, no?

Also, you argued earlier that distrust of machines will go away as people who have grown up with them, become a larger percentage of the population. How old would you guess the average respondent is, in this poll? I would bet that many of those who distrust the machines, "grew up with them!"

-Patty

p.s. It has nothing to do with who won. This is not sour grapes. Sour grapes may have gotten me into it (I don't know - I think it was more *shock* that got me into it, as Kerry had been told during the election that he won Ohio...and I believe Bush was told he lost... Only to have the prediction swing late in the day by several points. That was shocking.) Anyway, it isn't sour grapes, it's a recognition of this issue being widely of concern, and a desire to understand the details and facts and machines used, in more detail. This is good, yes?

 

[Burnsys]

You're digging is what you're doing. Name me a major manufacturer of anything and I'd guess there's a 90% the CEO is a Republican. That doesn't mean he's part of a conspiracy.

Noo. no conspiracy. is just they found that if they get a place in the congress they can pass laws who help their corporations to make more profits...

 

[pattylou]

Noo. no conspiracy. is just they found that if they get a place in the congress they can pass laws who help their corporations to make more profits...

Not only that, but now that I am back on this issue for the moment...

My point *wasn't* that the CEO was republican...

My point was that the CEO of the company that counted the votes... was the candidate for the senatorial race!

LoseYourName: Can you see why this is a little bit different, than what you responded with?

 

[russ_watters]

John Conyers (D-MI) and Gore Vidal have both outlined scenarios containing "details of the crime." I suggest you start with their bare bone stories. A google on 'vote fraud' and their names might get you started.

All I could find on John Conyers was a letter detailing several (about a dozen) specific "irregularities" (his word, not mine). He does not assert that there was any fraud (in fact, he says explicitly that he doesn't know) and none of those "irregularities" were anywhere big enough to cause the election to have turned the wrong direction. Sorry, there isn't even the framework from which to build a good fictional story there.

I haven't been able to find anything specific by Gore Vidal - just a bunch of talk-show transcripts where he makes vague offhand allegations, such as "All of the plots that were in line during the 2000 election are still there, from the purge list of supposed felons to computer touch screen voting and so on." -- Gore Vidal" But that doesn't help me any - how, specifically, was touch-screen voting used for fraud? Sorry, nothing to go on there either.

 

[russ_watters]

If I ever thought you were female posting under a male name, you have removed all doubt with this post!

? Huh?

I'm happy to go through this if you want - but you sound considerably aggravated.

No aggrivation, just incredulity. Trust me on this: I don't get aggravated. My friends make fun of me for it all the time.

 

[pattylou]

If you want specifics on how touch-screen voting used for fraud... re-read the Black Box report that was put out at the end of May. (You said you had discussed this (?) several times already?)

In my understanding, the machines are checked before the election. Also in my understanding, a memory card can be swapped into the machine (before or during? I'm not sure.) that tells the machine how to count. For example, it may say: "Start Bush at negative 100 votes, and Kerry at plus 100 votes. Count from there."

So say you get 800 votes on that machine, and they would have split 400:400. Because of the card - they will instead split 300:500. You check the final tally, it adds up to 800, if you re-run the same data you get the same result, and this hack was demonstrated as "doable" by two people. Not a conspiracy of thousands. Two. This is my limited understanding of the BlackBoxVoting report in May.

Put aside for the moment that BBV may be wacko. If this demonstration is right, we need to change the machines! So - there should be some interest in finding out if this is right.

There should also be some interest from Diebold in having their memory cards audited, but I believe they resist this.

And the claim is that you will only see the hack, if you look at the memory card. It leaves no trace anywhere else. (This is why I think the paper trail may not always be viewable --- BBV was clear that you don't see the hack except on the card.)

I am not a programmer and the code they posted is unreadable to me. Do you want a direct link?

~~~~

If you want feedback straight from the horse's moputh on your story, you can post it also on the BBV forums. I visit there only rarely, and I am sure that they would be able to point out any misconceptions that might arise in your fabrication.

 

[pattylou]

? Huh?

Your manner of communication is very "masculine." i.e. in this case, you seem more interested in expounding your views than dialog.

Check some of the female contributors. This style is not common.

This is not an insult, and I realize I am calling myself sexist, after a fashion. I am glad you don't get aggravated. You might find yourself less incredulous if you spent more time trying to understand what I am saying (dialog), than telling me that I am inconsistent. But it's no biggie.

 

[pattylou]

Russ: Do you have any societal/policy based comments on the fact that 60% of respondents in this poll think there was electronic tampering?

Do you think this is a cause for concern?

Do you think a fabrication (I assume you will try to ridicule through it) will ease concerns about voting?

Ediot: Nevermind. I see your response above.

 

[Anttech]

One of the problems with using electronic polling (touch screen method) is that its impossible to have a 'recount'... Only thing you can have is a 'reprint'

Therefore if you have any error in the vote data its just going to be replicated