I'd buy that it was probably calibration, but it seems to me that this is gross incompetence at work here if that was the case. This isn't a local election for the county school board or something, this is the presidential election, this is prime time. I would think that having a machine not calibrated correctly on election day is completely unacceptable and someone should be losing their job over that, there is no reason those things shouldn't have been perfect before the election.

Calibration is essential to a fair vote if the touch screen's are made available as a voting option.

Actually this lead's alot of way for deciept.

1. Who make's these machines as they could easily report the wrong vote, more so if they do not produce a paper trail.

2. Who is authorized to calibrate these computers as it could be very easy to calibrate it in a way in which favors a certian candidate.

Though I still believe these touch screen's are a good option, but only after adressing these problems.

My solutions.

All touch screens will produce a paper reciept.

Observer's highered from all parties are allowed to view the source code.

Observer's highered from all parties are allowed test the machine's before the vote take's place.

Any problems reported by the observer's should be reported and investigated before voting takes place.


As it stand's it's to easy for fraud.

Below is some interesting information on the Florida voting, comparing e-touch voting and optical scan voting



So the voting for e-touch was very close.

But the voting for optical scan gives Bush a difference of more than 45% while Kerry only had a difference of 1%.

This is too much of a difference to be IGNORED

Also

http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm

For instance the official election results from all the counties shows a discrepancy between e-vote and optical scan.

A good example for optical scanning is Liberty county:
Registered voters were Republican 7.9%, Democrats 88.3%
Actual results were.......Republican 1,927, Democrats 1,070
another example ....Lafayette county:
Registered voters were Republican 13.2%,Democrats 82.8%
Actual results were.......Republican 2,460, Democrats 845

One more example....Calhoun
Registered voters were Republican 11.9%,Democrats 82.4%
Actual results were.......Republican 3,780, Democrats 2,116

So my question is what is the explanation for this skewed abnormal voting results.

These 3 counties (there were many more) were extremely democrats but voted on the average of a 2 to 1ratio for the Republicans.

If anyone can explain that,then I will completely agree that the election results in Florida are true figures.

This looks like a dishonest election, and it stinks to high heaven. I hope to God that someone does something about it. I have contacted both Michigan senators and asked them to look into it.

What in hell is going on? And don't tell me it's "whining"--you'd do the same thing if it were your candidate and your party that were affected detrimentally. The more you deride us for "whining," the more honor-bound I feel to see that this election is thoroughly investigated, so deride away! We shouldn't feel intimidated as a result of heckling or name-calling, anyway--we're older and (hopefully) wiser than that.

If you on the Right are interested in seeing some healing in this country, don't deride the Left when they see the appearance of malfeasance in the election and want the truth to be made known to us and to the nation! After all, we should all be for knowing and publishing the truth, shouldn't we?

(Edit: If George W. Bush won this election honestly, then the election results will hold up to scrutiny. If not--why conceal them? Should G.W. Bush be President if the results are dishonest?)

Looks to me there were the usual irregularities on both sides, and that it was not decisive. That isn't definitive of course; I haven't looked into it in detail, nor do I care to take the time to do so. The results were not far off from the final poll results from Zogby and Rasmussen, the two pollsters with the most accurate track records, and that's enough for me.

But by all means investigate any and all signficant irregularities. I wouldn't want anyone to lose confidence in the election system because that wasn't done.

Note however that Kennedy may not have "really" won the 1960 election because of the dead voting in Illinois, thanks to Daley and maybe Giancana. Nixon had more than sufficient grounds to contest the election but declined to so because he felt it would tear the country apart. Do you think Nixon did the right thing?

I've seen this website cited by a log of blogs, and decided to do a little homework. These totals look a lot less suspicious when you consider that, in the last election, these counties also voted decisively for Bush. I suggest that this source that put together the table with "registered" repubs and dems may need to do a little disclosure of why the numbers are so different, rather than implying that there is out and out fraud. Maybe the nice people at US "together" really want us believe that these counties are "extremely" democratic, but the counties don't seem to actually vote that way.

From "Fraud Factor", who argues that Gore won Florida - hardly a pro-Bush website.

Year 2000 presidential results for counties referenced above:

Liberty 1,316 1,011 Bush 56%
Lafayete 1,669 788 Bush 68%
Calhoun 2,873 2,155 Bush 57%

Just in case it's a Bush problem, (George / Jeb) I checked the 1996 elections, which of course Clinton took in a landslide. In this case, in the three "extremely" democratic counties, it was pretty close.
policydata.org 96 results florida by county

Year 1996 presidential results for counties reference above:

Calhoun Dole 1717 Clinton 1774 Dole 49%
Lafayette Dole 1166 Clinton 829 Dole 58%
Liberty Dole 913 Clinton 868 Dole 51%

So, in closing,
- A source has been cited "ustogether.org" that refers to some un-sourced "registration" numbers by party for Florida counties.
- 3 counties have been cited as "extremely" Democratic, who suspiciously voted for Bush in 2004.
- These same counties voted for Bush in 2000, and 2 of 3 voted for Bob Dole in 1996.

I am skeptical of the source, to say the least. Before posting the vendor of the voting machine by county, the ustogether.org people may want to spend 20 minutes on Google to find the actual previous voting results in these counties, which may cause them to retitle their page as "votes in FL about as expected" rather than the current "Surprising Presidential Election Results in Florida."

Edited to add - feel free to completely agree

Great post, carlitoswhey.

We all know (well, at least we think we do) the results of this election. But what we don't know is whether the base line numbers being used as a comparison (i.e. 28,000 registered democrats, 26,000 votes for Bush!) are even real, but they are good enough to get you stirred up, or whether historical data is any indicator.

Take for example, me. I'm a registered republican that voted democrat. I'm sure I'm not a rare case. But how hard is it to believe that many democrats think the war in Iraq is directly part of the war on terror, and Bush is the right guy to have in place? How hard is it to believe that your average American is very, very resistant to change? And how many people have not changed their party affiliation over the years?

The point being, we see the results compared to possibly bogus numbers and jump to all the wrong conclusions. We KNOW what the results are, but do we know anything about what the results are being compared against or "framed" with?

Ummm..no. carlitoswhey's post clearly indicated that premise.

The tin-foil hat wearing leaders make their living off of "irregularities". Their websites are funded by people who believe in them. Their books are being bought by people believing in them.

It's easy to float numbers out that pump the poison into the system they need to make a living. As stated yesterday, Bev Harris - THE leading evoting critic - floated out the story that a major news anchor told her off the record that the industry was "locked down". Meaning, not only where they not allowed to report the fraud they were all aware of, but they weren't even allowed to talk about it in private.

Her website was flooded with traffic and constant donations. I'd hate to think how much money she's made since election day. but yesterday was a banner day for her when she floated that line of crap.

But what happened when Keith Olbermann reported the story last night? What happened when Imus talked about it this morning? Where's that "lockdown"?

It doesn't exist much like most of the other crap we hear.

Was there fraud in this election? Of course..somebody will always try to cheat the system. But there was no systematic fraud, no widespread fraud, no treasonous actions conspired by the big three evoting companies, and no stolen election. If you take out Bush's win, the republicans still gained 4 seats. You can't ignore that message.

Kerry (the guy I voted for) got his butt whupped by the worst president in history. The democrat's best got beat by the worst ever. They should be concentrating on how to reverse that instead of concentrating on crackpot theories fed by people making money off it.

The exit polls I looked at during the election indicated that there was a decent percentage of party switch-over from both sides. I want to say between 10 and 20% as an average just as an FYI.

But you are right, it is important to know if these numbers are actually relevant. However...

You keep repeating this DR, but I have yet to see you refute anything I posted previously on voting errors.

I would very much agree with you that there could be more to the story when you are comparing registered voters (from some unknown source) to the vote turn out. But there is pretty clearly a problem when a machine loses 4000 votes or when a machine records more votes than there are voters.

So keep repeating the "conspiracy theorists" line all you want, but there is eveidence out there and so far you have not cared to do anything but dismiss it.

And no one is citing any opinion by Bev Harris here, none of her articles are posted in this thread (that I'm aware of), so I'm not sure why she keeps coming up except as some kind of diversion from the facts at hand. She may or may not be a nut, I don't know much about her. But assuming that anyone who holds similar opinions is equally nutty just doesn't follow logic.

I dont think the result's are inaccurate, though inconsistancies will always occure during any election. Reported fraud and actual fraud are two different things. Given the fact that im a computer techie I can see how calibration of these e-machines could be a problem though.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,137910,00.html

Who knows? Would Kennedy still have been alive for his kids if Nixon had contested the election and it was found that he had won? Would there have been a Watergate break-in? Would the Vietnam War have escalated into the mess it was during the Johnson administration; would Nixon have continued to send "advisors" in?

In addition, the 2000 election, because of all the disenfranchized voters who should have been able to vote, left more than a few of us suspicious of what one political party (or the other for that matter) would do for our "own good" and, incidentally, to promote their own careers.

Thank you for respecting the viewpoint that if something wrong was done, it needs to be investigated and exposed.

It should be kept in mind that none of the election results are final.

Results are still officially being tabulated.

Voting "irregularities" which are caught now are being corrected before the results are finalized. These results, then, are not wrong or fraudulent.

Now, irregularities or fraud discovered a month from now would be a different story.

The fact remains that this is the most closely monitored election in our history and none of the irregularities in this thread would have changed the results.

These sources need to be identified and fixes made, but let's be reasonable about the effects on the election.

I confirm Amlord's basic observations. This does not seem to be a repeat of 2000 with a heavy catalog of voting problems that likely turned the results of the Florida vote to the Bush side. (Sorry, that is very likely NOT something Amlord would agree with) This election was closely watched and I like the fact that it is being subjected to scrutiny. With this scrutiny, the irregularities seem to be regular. I would love to see more exchanges like the one between Popeye and Carlitos. That is healthy and informative debate.

First of all, let me say that I certainly am in favor of any mechanism to improve the process of voting. I also agree with Amlord that there is a certain amount of voting inaccuracy that will occur--that can't be avoided. So, the question becomes how much happened, and what could be done about it.

I have not delved into any of the stories of voting issues this election, so cannot discuss them on a point by point basis. Wertz, you say there are lots of stories out there, and I will believe you. The issue then become where does reality fit in amongst the stories. [Wertz] posed a couple of rhetorical questions, in response I have one of my own, which gets to this issue. Both sides filled the voting places with their observers, and teams of lawyers examined the process from every angle. If voting issues were really that prevalent, why is nothing being said about them, on a very formal level? It would seem to me the Democrats would be screaming to high heaven, if not to contest the results, then at least to raise the issue so as to avoid such problems in the next election. However, that's not happening....the reasonable explanation, for me, being that such issues must be relatively minor. This isn't to say it couldn't have happened...and, if it did, I do hope the problems get resolved.

Oh Please.

In 2000, We democrats counted the votes ourselves about 15 times and we still lost every time, and that's WITHOUT counting the military votes.

If they count the provisionals in Ohio - I REPEAT PROVISIONALS, AS IN YOU DIDN'T REGISTER OR YOU SHOWED UP AT THE WRONG PLACE OR YOU'VE GOT A CRIMINAL BACKGROUND! - democrats still wouldn't win in Ohio.

This kind of negativity and divisevness is exactly the reason our party is failing.

And now you've got Al Gore, John Edwards, John Kerry, and Hillary all saying they want to run in 2008, and Howard Dean may be the next DNC chairman.

Talk about a mess.

I do hope our voting system is fixed though, give liberal democrats something elsee to whine about.

Take a read of this post Hobbes, which I posted back on page 2. At the very bottom I had edited to add something which directly addresses your question. 3 House Democrats have filed a formal request for an inquiry with the General Accountability Office.

Good! Hopefully this inquiry will shed light on what the real issues are, and how best to solve them. (I will throw out there that this could just as easily have a political motive, but only for considerations sake...regardless of the motive, such an inquiry should be a good thing).

I was going to add to my post (but you were took quick for me), as I have on the evoting thread...the important point to consider is not whether eVoting is perfect, but whether it is better than the other alternatives. For the various issues I have seen listed here, I could easily draw scenarios where similar things, or much worse, could have occurred with other systems. This doesn't imply the process shouldn't be improved...it should. Perfect should be the goal...it's just not one we should assume will be achieved else we scrap the system.

For the programmers out there (which I used to be, a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far, away)--it would seem that appropriate checks and balances could be built-in in an electronic fashion. In essence, these are pretty much the same checks and balances that every financial and accounting system on earth must use (imagine the chaos if companies couldn't verify any of their transactions that seemed suspect). So, I don't think we should assume paper trails are necessarily the answer...they may be, but a fully electronic system might in fact be the best solution.

A couple more interesting points.

First, Josh Levin took the conspiracy theory to task with this piece and has shown that either the results have been reproducible when compared to the 2000 election, or you'd have to believe the republicans stole the last election through fraud and nobody's found out. And he rightly calls that idea "crazy".

Which leads to another point that Olbermann just briefly touched on in jest during an interview. Where are the allegations of democrats trying to rig an election? I think the the reason nobody is stepping all over this story is because even though the voting machine companies are run by republicans, all their employees and all the poll workers aren't republicans. If something could be cracked, wouldn't it go both ways?

edited to add:

Hobbes, they are there. If anybody monkeys with the numbers, it's easy to detect as the results are stored in a double-entry type system. You just can't add or delete votes from one location in the database. There needs to be "parity".

But the evoting cynics have moved away from that (for the most part) and now claim the problem is at the central tabulator - where all the data is uploaded to. They claim a person could run a script to alter the results or just manually edit the database if they wanted. Bev Harris, the leading evoting cynic and owner of www.blackboxvoting.org, even had a chimpanzee delete an important log file (actually, I think it was the log table in the database - I have the database being passed around the internet) during a demo which opened up the door to all kinds of nefarious behavior by a highly skilled programmer. Of course, that corrupted the database and made it unusable, but it sure looked cool.

But she's been laughed out of these meetings because she can't answer a couple fundamental questions:
1. Why would democrat poll workers allow someone to be alone with election results (on a systematic basis)? How would a monkey be allowed access to the system?
2. Why would Microsoft Office, the tool needed to manually modify the database (or run scripts) or a custom application be loaded onto a machine that doesn't require it, and induces risk? Why would democrat poll workers allow it?

And finally, why isn't there even ONE person out of all these questionable precincts all over America coming forward as a witness with details how this fraud was accomplished? Is this conspiracy that perfect? Not one person is willing to sell his/her information to the highest bidder? Not even one?

Thanks Carlitoswhey for a very informative rebuttal.

Since you are one of the few on AD that is willing to debate intelligently instead of make SNIDE IMMATURE REMARKS I would like for you to explain to me why there is more of a discrepancy when comparing the registration rolls in Florida to the e-vote and optical scan machines results.

The e-vote results showed less of a precent change from the registration rolls then the optical scan results from the following website.

http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm

The optical scan ballots(from what I have learned) can be recounted manually if there is such a uproar in Florida. Wouldn't it be worthwhile to have all the optical scan ballots counted manually with 3 people(1 democrat,1republican,1 independent) supervising the counting. Then that would be proof to everyone that there were no shennigans involved.

Instead of people being teed off about the results, everyone should be happy with the manual count. I know I would.

I do take this seriously,as anyone that is concerned about the current conditions should. And some of our amateur Comedians on AD would fit in nicely on SNL.

Well, please allow the immature one a chance to respond with a few more facts.

Here is an article that once again, handedly dismisses the "we wuz robbed" theory. The Kerry campaign, who just might have a slight interest in the accuracy of numbers, have dismissed this whole rigged election crusade in this article..

Now, an MIT mathematics professor, who might know a little more about this subject, has written here to say there is no significant variance between evoting and paper. Obviously, his page is flooded by people sticking their fingers in their ears and screaming "LA LA LA LA LA" at the top of their lungs. He tries to explain how mathematically, evidence of fraud doesn't exist, but I think he got tired of defending the facts.

And finally, Salon checks in with their story here . Unfortunately, you'll have to watch a 30 second commercial to get a free day pass, but it's a great read. It picks apart the biggest fraud stories and even has discovered the bugs in how some of the numbers being repeated have added to the hysteria. Now I may be mistaken, but I can't remember salon being a notorious right-wing source.

So, there is not one shred of evidence anything was rigged, not one witness has come forward to share their fraud stories for the millions of dollars I'm sure they would receive, and not one educated person that says Kerry coulda/shoulda won - including Kerry and his entire staff and family.

But there is an abundance of evidence that this election was not perfect, contained mistakes, but reflected the proper outcome in terms of the will of the people. I'm as disappointed as anybody, but this is why America is America. The majority spoke and the majority won.

So, there's this baby seal....and he walks into a club....

Thank you, thank you...I'll be here until Friday. Make sure you try the shrimp...

I did some back of the envelope math, and yes indeed those counties also voted in higher numbers than registered repubs for Bush. The one word explanation - Dixiecrats, who are registered Dems, but would always vote for a pro-defense, pro-family yada yada Repub president. My emphasis added below.

The longer answer is found in the Salon article - exerpting

There is really only one good question:

If the mistakes were innocent, and not fraudulent, how come the fraud didn't benefit John Kerry half of the time?

Statistical evidence, plus a dollop of reason, points to fraud.

2004 Election Results (Muskegon) was the source of several interesting bits of data which I have been playing with:

This data kind of fascinated me though:



I can't seem to copy a spreadsheet well, but the long and short of it is, there was a total of 80431 votes for President in Muskegon County listed at the top of the report, while at the bottom of the page is the data for how many ballots were counted...

PollBook Total 80107

That's 334 Presidential votes above and beyond the "One man, one vote." guideline, and Kerry did very well in our County!

Yes, I am pursuing this. My first instinct though, is that somewhere a programmer entered a line which reflected the Democratic complaint, "A vote for Nader is a vote for George W. Bush." (as well!)

I wanted to add in this latest - for anyone who might be interested. It turns out that both David Cobb. and Michael Badnarik are going to file to demand an Ohio recount.



Now, maybe there's something to this, or maybe there's not, but I am heartened to see the Greens and the Libertarians coming together as 'outside parties' here. Indeed, this entire election cycle has had some of its few positive moments in the level of cooperation by these 'fringe' parties:



Cheers to the Greens and Libertarians!

And the mystery deepens...

Looking for data from other counties, I found the election data reported to the Secretary of State in Lansing, here.

Lansing has a total of votes counted for President in Muskegon County of 81939, which is 1,832 more votes for President than the number of ballots counted by the County Clerk...

Curmudgeon, if you look at the county results as posted on CNN right now, you will see a total of 81,939 votes for Muskegon County. This is the same as the official secretary of state results here.
- Is it possible that Muskegon county has no interest in updating its webpage after the initial ballot count since the Sec of State is doing it?
- Couldn't this be a case of absentee and provisional ballots being counted?
- Who counts absentee and provisional ballots - the county clerk or the state?

Any answers to your inquiries on this?

edited to add - for example, it's now 60,480,957 Bush votes, vs. the total 59MM announced on Nov. 3...

There have been quite a few developments on this recently. First, here is a statement from Kerry's lawyer:


Secondly, a recount in Ohio is going to happen, the Green party has raised enough cash to make it happen:


So I guess we shall soon see if those of you that chided us for "tin foil hat theories" will be right or wrong. It appears the battle is just beginning here.

CJ,I have been following this closely and what pains me in the rear is that the 2 third party candidates got the ball rolling in the recount. Where is the Democrat party with all the millions that they spent on 30 second ads. Do you mean to tell me that that they don't have a measley $115,000 left in the treasury.

It disgusts me that Kerry and the rest of the DNC have dropped the ball and let someone else do this. Maybe if a recount shows any illegalities maybe Mr. Cobb or Mr. Bednarik should reap the benefits.

My interest is not the sole purpose of having Kerry win or Bush lose, but to have a election where all votes are counted accurately. It is an insult to any American and his right to vote, that anyone would desire to commit acts of fraud or make it harder for some people in a slum area to cast his vote then a suburban area.

Everyones vote is equal whether it is poor or rice,city slum or rural, black or white, young or old. The fact of having too few voting machines in certain areas and a extremely long waiting line is not what I would expect in a democracy.

I received a letter from the County Clerk yesterday, telling me that the posted results in the County were still unofficial, and to expect updated results today. So far, they are also unofficial, but show some significant changes:

It was interesting to note, that with an increase in the total number of ballots counted, both major candidates lost in the total number of votes counted for them. and the note at the bottom indicates that these are still unofficial results, two weeks after the election...

Some good news this morning, the GAO will launch an investigation into the allegations of fraud in the 2004 election - source:


All I can say at this point is - it is about time! I wonder if this official inquiry will do anything to change the minds of those in this thread that have basically been arguing that those of us concerned with fraud are all wearing tin foil hats.

Steven F. Freeman | The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/111404A.shtml

The above article was assigned out to my research methods class to read. It deals with exit polls and their validity. I found the information found in the article to be disturbing, and would like to see what you guys and gals would make of this, especially in light of the discussion that is already underway.

We all know voter fraud happens. To pretend otherwise would be sticking our heads in the sand. I also agree with those out there who think it is awful that Kerry conceded before all of the votes were in. I don't think the candidates should be under pressure to get the issue decided amongst themselves before the count is official -- it makes me uncomfortable and seems to give the finger to the American public who got out and voted.

The reason for this supposed discrepancy is that the exit poll models are based upon predicted voter turnout. While the Democrats had a good turnout, the Republicans had even more, especially in these states. This threw the models off, and explains the discrepancy between the exit polls and actual results, since Bush voters would have been underrepresented in the model. As quoted in his article, this is, my dear Watson, elementary.

It is worth noting a couple of other interesting caveats in the article:



Hmmmm...can you say 'biased'?



That's....convenient.



Again, how very convenient.


I'm reminded of the adage there are liars, damned liars, and statisticians. Not to disparage the character of the author, as I know nothing about him, and he does have impecable credentials. However, it seems pretty clear he had the end result in mind before starting the analysis...which renders the results just as predictable as he claims exit polls should be.

Hi Pallas Athena. Welcome to America's Debate.


I have been interjecting various notes in this thread on the difficulty of getting an agreement between the local Election Results, and the State of Michigan Election Results as posted by the Secretary of State. As of yesterday, the unofficial state results, last updated Nov. 4 at 4:32 PM still showed 1,630 more votes cast for President in Muskegon County than the Poll Book total showing the total number of voters who voted in Muskegon County.

Shego will be eleven on the 29th. (Yes it is related.) While she tends to micro-manage her day to day activities, it is usually Thanksgiving day before she starts to lobby for a birthday party. This year, one of our church members offered "Host your party in our home." as a fundraiser auction item. We negotiated on a time for an overnight party for six children, and submitted a bid. We won.

Shego had an early party Saturday night, while her friends were still in town.

While we were there, the photographs of previous guests in the home were very prominent. Among them were Governor Granholm, Senator Stabenow, Senator Levin...

I mentioned the problems I had with the vote counts. I was asked why it was important. "If Kerry hadn't won, we'd be taking a more serious look at the numbers." I explained that Kerry had more likely conceded based on numbers from 50 state websites than on numbers from 83 County Web sites in Michigan, etc. Further, I pointed out that if there was widespread hacking of optical scanners, it would have happened in states that he won as well as in states that he lost. I pointed out that in Muskegon County, absentee votes for Bush took about a 4% shift from votes in the precinct on election day. "If you're not interested in a close look, maybe you could pass my data on to someone in the party who likes to play with spreadsheets." I dropped off copies of my e-mail correspondence, posts on AD, and anything else which dated the changing data at the County web site.

This morning, I was trying to e-mail my sister, explain what I was doing, and ask for a Poll Book total from her County. I went to link to the Secretary of State's web site and discovered:


The County has official results posted as of Nov. 16, and the state website is finally in agreement with those results.

My thanks to all of you who patiently read (or ignored) my saga of the data from a single county. In the end, I am uncertain that our Republican Secretary of State would have seen a reason to update the state spreadsheet to reflect the official Election Results that took two weeks to certify. After all, Kerry had won the state, but conceded the general election. There was nothing to look at there...

That is incorrect Hobbes, the official investigation is being launched for the following reason:

Many of these things have been cited already in this thread and some of them while new to the thread have been making their rounds on the blogosphere but I just got tired of posting them here due to the tin foil hat comments.

There are several problems they intend to address with this investigation, none of them have to do with exit polls.
- Accuracy of voting machines: myself and several others have reported numerous incidents where voting machines lost, overcounted or undercounted votes. There is a good post a few pages back in this thread. Bev Harris, not held in high regard by many in this thread has really been working diligently on this.
- Distribution and Allocation of voting machines: In Ohio specifically there have been reports that voting machines which could have been deployed early in the day were held till later in the day causing long lines in major urban (democratic) areas which disenfranchised voters as they waited for hours to vote and had to give up and go to work.
- Counting of Provisional Ballots: this is more of a ensuring all votes are counted type of thing, I'm not aware of any fraud in this area.

Absolutely none of this has anything to do with exit poll data, what has cued most people in is the fact that there were often times more votes counted in certain areas than there were registered voters.

Then, it would have nothing to do with my post then , as I was only responding to the methodology (or lack thereof) in the cited article discussing the discrepancy between exit polls and actual results. In general, I don't have issues with the GAO investigation (assuming it is non-partisan)...exposing any issues in our voting procedures is to everyone's advantage.

CR, I agree that such discrepencies point to vote-count fraud. The tendency is for the number of registered voters to be above those who vote for a couple of reasons:

1) Some people won't vote even if registered.

2) Some people have left the area, but the county clerk hasn't yet updated the voter registration records -- and may very well never get notification that updates are needed for some of the people who left.

Either way, the number of actual voters, in a perfectly accurate county, should equal -- never exceed -- the number of registered voters.

BTW, CR -- great news that the GAO is investigating. Think that the GAO should be involved in every election from now on -- just to keep the vote counters honest. Maybe issue gov-spec cat-o-nine-tails?

Ah, another possible alternative career path! Where's my boots and mask?

Hey, PA! Thanks for the link to the statistical analysis of available voter numbers. It looked interesting to me and represents the first academic study I've seen on what the heck happened back there on the 2nd.

So far all I've come across are, as the statitician doctor points out, only hypothesizing without evidence, like more Repub voters turned out than Demos. How does anyone know this? It's just a guess, a stab in the dark, and assumes no fraud was going on.

Think I'm heading toward the idea that fraud happened, at least seeing the possibilities.

Also -- CR, you make it sound like tinfoil hats are something wrong

And I am clueless as to the number of registered voters locally... Where I could find such numbers, the voter turnout varied from precinct to precinct. A quick glance at Kenty County, for instance, shows a low turnout below 40% to a high turnout over 88%; with neither number reflecting accurately the number of absentee voters, as they are reported separately from their precincts.

My complaint was with the Poll Book Total vs. the votes cast. In each county in Michigan, a count is kept of how many people actually voted. It is not always easy to determine that number, however... Kent County's official Election results for instance give a summary of the 290,891 votes cast for President of the United States, but not a total for the Poll Book. The Poll Book tally is reported only on a precinct by precinct basis.

Muskegon County reported the Poll Book total for the entire County. That is, the number of voters who actually voted. Until 12:32 PM yesterday, the number of votes for President from Muskegon County that was being reported on the Secretary of States web site exceeded the number of voters who went to the polls in Muskegon by about 4%. Since nationally, the election was determined, I keep hearing, by about 1% of the electorate; a 4% overvote allowed for quite a bit of tampering or fraud. It is because the Election was conceded based on such inaccurate results reported from the Secretary of State's office prior to a certification of the results at the local level that I have been chewing on the numbers.

votergate video

the website has a video called votergate. i dont know if anyone has seen it yet - its a 30 min documentary done by a non-partisan person about the electronic machines (diebolt in specific). it showed there was no paper trail and that it was ridiculously easy to change the votes (literally a click of a mouse). therefore how can you expect anyone to trust the election, especially after the person in charge in ohio or the diebolt president (sorry i forget which) guaranteed a bush win.

Being an IT tech myself that employs programmers this may be true. However their is a way to track the vote within the program itself (given the key) despite the lack of a paper trail. It would not be a simple process to eliminate the original vote entirely from the memory though possible. When you delete a file from your computer it only allocates the space to be written over. Given the data remains it is possible to retain it (that is how the recycling bin on your computer works) but you can re-write over it many times and cross data over it in an attempt to black out the data but it is a time consuming process and not done by the simple "click" of the mouse. In short it would take a skilled programmer with knowledge of data "destruction" to accomplish it because they dont have hard drives (in which it would only take a magnet).

Ok well maybe not a "skilled programmer" but someone with alot of computer knowledge.

hopefully that will be investigated but at the moment it doesnt really seem like anyone cares enough to do that. have the democrats challenged any of the states yet?

Honestly I havent read the entire thread but it does seem that is the case. There has been a recount demanded by the Libertarians and the Greens.

Actually there have been recounts in other states such as New Hampshire but the off vote count, so far has only been by 15 votes.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/



That article I provided will give you all the information about voting irregularities. Dont worry, they are being addressed.

BTW I like your signature.
"One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic"

EDITED TO ADD :

First of all I dont claim to have any insider knowledge of how these voting machines work, im only giving information of how popular OS's work.

When information is written into memory on a computer running Windows XP it is given a header which includes security information, time and date stamp, etc... So even if they changed the votes with the "click" of the mouse. If someone had the key to open up the source code to the program they would be able to account for any fraud given the information was not cross written as to where it would not be available in which would have to be targeted cross writings and that is why it would not be simple to "void" specific votes without intimate computer knowledge. You could easily void many votes, but if your objective is to target only "Bush" or "Kerry" votes that would take alot of computer knowledge and would be time consuming. Also if they simply "changed" the vote that could be easily traced. Everything you do on your computer is marked otherwise the computer wouldnt be able to output the information.

i dont know if you saw what i saw but they said that u simply access the database through the program folder and change the numbers. thats what i meant by it being so simple. i dont think that each individual vote is recorded in the computer.

Which would leave a time and date stamp that's easily traceable. They would have to do it while the elections are taking place to get away with it which means it would have to be connected to a network. Im not saying it's impossible but it would be complicated to get away with... on a mass scale very complicated.



What on Earth are you talking about? Of course every vote is recorded otherwise how would it tally the vote? Does it only register the Bush votes? Then how do explain the Kerry vote's that where recorded? Maybe it only register's some of the Kerry votes? That would be easily discovered by looking at the source code.

OK it seems you misunderstood me. What I meant was that the program adds up all the votes as they come in and do not necessarily keep a log of each vote. please feel free to watch the votergate video (its about half an hour long) and then argue about how the votes are recorded. thanks.

I understand what you are saying though you seem to misunderstand what I am explaining. It may be easy to manipulate the votes. Though it would be difficult to get away with.

Do you know something the restof us don't? One of the major complaints about electronic voting was, there was a high degree of secrecy associated with the computer programming of the voting machines. As I understand it, the source code is still a highly guarded trade secret. The argument that was made, was that if the source code was open to public scrutiny, it would be easier to hack.

Of course they cannot release the source code publicy. That would make it much easier to hack.

However if the source code has not been reviewed by independent and with a by-partisan panel of knowledgable computer programmers I would be highly suspect of any result's produced by the voting machines.

If the code has not been reviewed by such a panel I dont see how it would even be able to make it to the voting booths.

If the source code has not been reviewed by such a panel then the entire election can be thrown into doubt easily by just that alone.

From what I can tell, most of these hacking theories assume that someone has unfettered access to the voting system to do as they wish to the equipment. That is an absurd premise and why the evoting cynics are having no luck.

Bev Harris, the women pimping cash through her website www.blackboxvoting.org (not .com - she's been disavowed by literally every other anti-evoting organization), did a demo in California where she had a chimpanzee delete a log file thereby clearing out audit capabilities. One person there (forgot her name) brought her in as a supporter, but after the demo, the supporter turned into an adversary. And why?

Two problems.

One, the system simply doesn't allow unfettered access to evoting equipment and processes. People from all parties are present to ensure integrity. Bev Harris could not explain how she could get a monkey into a position to delete a file. In fact, she couldn't explain how to get a HUMAN into a position to do that.

Second, is the method of "hacking". Let's say for the sake of argument that you could manually edit the database without corrupting the results (you can't because of the double-entry method, but I'll concede this point for the sake of argument). What would you use? Microsoft Access?

The software on evoting equipment is custom made by the vendor and uses a Microsoft Access database. However, it does not require Microsoft Office to be installed on the equipment. I write software everyday that uses Access databases and the only time I ever touch Access is to design the tables. After that, it is not required.

So, why the heck would somebody even be installing Microsoft Office on voting equipment that did not require it? In fact, the ability to run scripts via VBA is non-existent. This would have to be installed by these "hackers". as well.

I'm not convinced they can even do that because I don't believe the central tabulating equipment (I'm sure the evoting terminals don't) even have disk drives. I asked Diebold this question via email, but they haven't responded because they probably assumed I'm just another crackpot.

This whole "hack-the-vote" is so implausible, it's laughable to still believe in it. The Miami Herald just did a recount in Florida and verified the machines were right. Ohio has some votes in question but you know what? Almost all those in question are by optical scanning equipment - not evoting equipment. So, they're redirected that conspiracy theory to another type of machine to make the theory fit.

But I have a couple fundamental questions that should put this in perspective. First, why is nobody offering millions of dollars for ONE witness who can verify the vote was hacked? Everybody has a price. Where is Michael Moore and his millions putting up a cash reward for a witness? Why isn't the democratic leadership offering up immunity for a witness to come forward to let everyone know how the vote was hacked and let them write a Woodward-Bernstien type book? They don't because it's laughable.

Secondly, Bev Harris floats out a new "news release" and gets flooded with money, but has not shown one shred of actual evidence of fraud. Not even one. She keeps claiming she has it but "the time isn't right" (or some other such garbage). She's playing a pretty big section of the democratic party as the biggest bunch of suckers ever in existence. Give them a morsal and a cause, and she gets well-funded. She can't make money if there's no fraud. Well, duh!

Yet, we have enough video from a third-world hellhole called the Ukraine to fill a library full of examples of fraud. But here in America, where everybody has a camera and a price, where Michael Moore parks film crews in front of polling places, we can't find even one true example of fraud.

I voted for Kerry and hoped and prayed he would win. But he lost because more people voted for Bush. It's that simple.

First, why is nobody offering millions of dollars for ONE witness who can verify the vote was hacked? Everybody has a price. Where is Michael Moore and his millions putting up a cash reward for a witness? Why isn't the democratic leadership offering up immunity for a witness to come forward to let everyone know how the vote was hacked and let them write a Woodward-Bernstien type book? They don't because it's laughable.

I voted for Kerry and hoped and prayed he would win. But he lost because more people voted for Bush. It's that simple.

I have to agree with you that it seems the Democratic leaders are just being silent on this issue. It may well be true that Bush got more votes than Kerry in this election. However, it does bother me when there are reported problems of voter fraud and some people just want to brush it off as "its over, the guy won".

Sorry that won't do it for me. I want perfection. If there is even one incident of voter fraud reported, it SHOULD BE INVESTIGATED. Period!!! After all, this is what people who live in democracy are supposed to do.

If I was Kerry, I would have at least made a play for the recount in some states.
If people want to call him a sore loser, so be it. The American people have already shown on Nov. 2 they are ignorant of the problems facing them in this country.

I would never suggest that fraud never happens. Of course it does. People have been stuffing ballot boxes for ages. But systematic fraud as being paraded around now is another matter. And that's he problem some of us have. bush didn't win by fraud.

If you want this election to be perfect or the next election to be perfect, you will be sorely disappointed. It's impossible. But our system is designed to minimize this by putting the multi-party officials and processes we have in place to prevent it. Yet this is the entire part of the "fraud" theory people leave out - mostly Bev Harris, Andy Stephenson, and the rest of the leading hysteria whores. And you can't leave that out. Not every voting official is a felonious republican and that's what this conspiracy theory presumes. As if one smart honest democrat couldn't figure it out. Which is why no matter what the anti-evoting people say, more evoting is being incorporated - not less. Their fraud theories simply are impossible .

But they rake in donation after donation and are filing Qui Tam lawsuits that mean under the right conditions (they fund the lawsuit and win it on their own), they can recover 30% of the awards. And 30% of a a couple hundred million dollars would have me getting people to believe in these monsters.

Kerry didn't ask for recounts because he knows everything I've stated here. The margins were too wide for a recount unless he was willing to pay for it. It defies common sense to litigate an election without one shred of evidence of systematic fraud. Otherwise, every election from here on out will be determined by the courts...not by the people. By both democrats and republicans.

The system is not perfect and could never be perfect. You need to get your brain wrapped around that before you can start accepting this loss.