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Well, it wasn't worthy of publication. It's pretty simple to do. I had made some code available in the past, which used a variation of it to avoid abuses of message boards.

I'm not really looking for fame or fortune, so "father of...[anything but my kids]" doesn't interest me much.

But like I said, it's not rocket science. Did someone with the same identifier [username, cookie id, IP, etc, etc] vote the same way over a threshold for the same item? If so, disregard all their votes during tabulation. It does require all the voting information to be used during tabulation, not just a historical tabulation against the current numbers.

For example, I've seen voting that just does the following (in pseudocode)

$total_votes
$total_score

$total_score = $vote + $total score;
$total_votes++;

$current_score = $total_score / $total_votes;

That is fine and dandy until some schmuck has a script hit your voting script 100,000 times with the same vote. Now you can either purge the voting information, or let it ride.

The alternative is to record every vote with whatever identifying information you can. There are circumstances where you may not even record a vote, but that would only be obvious ones like if wget or curl were in the USER_AGENT string.

Now you can see if the same identifying information did the same action too many times. If you allow exactly one vote per user, disregard all the votes from any user who exceeds that threshold. To be polite, you may want to allow say 5 votes. Someone may click twice, but if they come back and do it 5 times, it's probably abuse.

Likewise, if you are confident that particular identifiers are bogus, you can prune those completely. For example, if you see inbound clicks from http://ballotstuffers.example.com/ automatically add those user identifiers to the list to disregard.

Hmmm.. There were a couple other methods. I can't remember those offhand, and I haven't had access to the code for a few years.

It could be said that this is sampling, but really it's just avoiding abuse. We aren't taking a percentage of the samples, we're taking all the votes from people who aren't likely to be fraudulent. If you take 1 in 10 samples for voting, and you have 11,000 votes (10,000 from ballot stuffers, 1,000 from legitimate voters), your ballot stuffers will still have the majority of the votes. If you automatically exclude 100 voters, who account for 10,000 of the 11,000 votes, you will likely have a fairly accurate vote. if you go with the IP as the user identification, you'll likely trim out AOL (who needs 'em) or any other group of people behind a common proxy or NAT. You'll still have the majority of voters being counted.

In real-world political elections, this would be obvious if say 10,000 residents in a district returned 110,000 ballots. Sadly though, that happens, and none of the votes are excluded from the tabulation. Here are some examples. You can go find more on your own.

The real solution to this, if you needed accurate votes, would be to require authentication for each voter, and only provide them with credentials once they proved that they are truly individuals. You may still have some fraud, but it would then be based on the fact that people will give away their votes. This is true of proxy votes. A bunch of people and I

I did give actual arguments. Which you address below.

Sorry, I meant actually VALID arguments. You instead threw out obvious, and total, fallacies. What you said about the editorial pages and the NYT publishing AP stories were straw men, and non sequiturs besides. They had nothing to do with my arguments. And you had no other "arguments."

Wha?? One of the first thing you learn about the media is that all news is biased. Anyone who thinks that something like the AP is completely neutral and without bias is just kidding themselves.

Again, a straw man and a non sequitur. I never said anyone was completely neutral: in fact, I implied precisely the opposite when I said "the AP ... is significantly less [biased] than the NYT." "Significantly less" does not necessarily imply not-zero, but in this context, it's the obvious connotation.

You contended that Bretibart is less biased than the NYT, so go ahead and prove it, chucklehead.

I ... already did. Unless you believe the AP news stories are as, or more, biased than the NYT news stories. Most people who actually, you know, read news ... they know this without me having to demonstrate it. I suppose you could claim that Breitbart is more biased in its story selection, but a. I doubt it, and b. that's a lot less important than the bias in the writing of the stories themselves.

What, anyone that gets wire copy is suddenly a journalist?

I never said or implied such a thing. Once again, you're just making things up. Are you just being dishonest, or are you really that bad at reading? I have a degree in journalism and wrote many stories, conducting many interviews, for various publications before I turned to computer programming.

And here is where the FAIL train arrives at its station.

Oh good. Let's see your point!

I know it takes a bit of research to know these things

Not for me, no. (See the first hit I found in Google, comment #16 1.5 years ago, for example, in which I refer to FY 2007 beginning in October 2006.)

The contention from the headline (and presumably the Bretibart article) was that the Obama Administration denied all the FOIA requests in Fiscal year 2009. Well, for almost 4 months of Fiscal year 2009 (Oct 1, 2008 - Jan 20, 2009), the Obama Administration DID NOT EXIST.

OK. But you threw that fact out as though it was TO ME. Why?

I am not categorically opposed to a system like what you describe. (i.e., where we only have private insurance companies, but the government helps the poor buy into those private plans.) This sounds to me like the dutch model. But I think the plan would be better with a public option to help keep costs down for members of private plans. Since, in many markets, there is only one health insurance provider, we need to do something to break up the monopolies and bring the competition back to the market to keep prices down. (though I might be open to other ways of breaking up the monopolies as well)

It is not true that the center that the health bill would set up would be for the purpose of chosing who gets what care. In fact, the bill says explicitly that this body will not have the power to decide what is covered. See here: http://www.newsweek.com/id/211981

It is also simply not true that the HR bill outlaws private plans. See, for example, here: http://soundpolitics.com/archives/013108.html. In fact, a great deal of the bill is designed to regulate private plans.

These are both widely propagated, but thoroughly debunked myths.

Yeah, well, in the new green religion, when the facts don't fit the theory, you fire the scientists. Welcome to politicized science.

Yeah, well, in the new green religion, when the facts don't fit the theory, you fire the scientists. Welcome to politicized science.

Are you just going to post that and everyone takes it as fact or do you have some links to back it up? Plus http://soundpolitics.com/archives/011155.html

This is the MOST retarded post I've read about OIL POLICY. Did you know that an article to be published in the Energy Journal about how drilling would immediately lower prices was denied because the conclusion was so obvious that it didn't merit publishing?

Read more about it here:
http://soundpolitics.com/archives/011155.html

The liberals are the ones who choose to go on vacation when their own country is facing an ongoing crisis. Of course Drilling is NOT an energy policy. NOBODY is saying it is. In fact Republicans pushed a comprehensive energy policy that included drilling, alternative energy, nuclear, etc. etc. and Pelosi BLOCKED IT FROM EVEN BEING DISCUSSED!

Well, well, the honorable Judge Eiler does not like it when litigants represent themselves. See http://www.soundpolitics.com/archives/003709.html

Well, well, the honorable Judge Eiler does not like it when litigants represent themselves. See http://www.soundpolitics.com/archives/003709.html

Clean the rolls, and I bet 99% of all "election fraud" issues go away... I'd say force everyone to reregister, nation-wide. Proof of citizenship and proof of residence must be provided, or you don't get to register. Provisional ballots? Throw them out... Mail in ballots? Unless you're physically incapable of making it to the polls (medical condition or overseas), you gotta get your butt down to the polling station - no mail in ballots for you. And you have to provide proof of identity at least as good as if cashing a check at a bank - two pieces of ID, please.

The power of the vote is one of the most important powers that citizens have. It should be protected and cared for at least as vigorously as the Bill of Rights. The fact so many scream about supposed infringement of their "rights" but are lackluster at best towards voting is truly the scary part...

If anything, the fact we're STILL finding double votes, dead voters, illegal registrations, votes "found in open boxes a few weeks after the election", and other serious crimes relating to our elections confirms that the current County administration simply doesn't care about votes. Yours or mine.

I'd suggest reading some of the threads and information over at http://www.soundpolitics.com/ - see what's been dug up since information is FINALLY getting pried out from the County offices. This information - and the continuance of new violations of State election laws - was sent to McKay and ignored. That is what got him fired - he simply didn't check into hard, documented crimes.

Argue how you will, but when you're shown photographic proof that people are double-voting, it's hard to argue that there aren't election law violations going on...

Oh, and for proof? Explain just this ONE example of hundreds. Here's hard PROOF of someone double-voting. It's well documented, but getting the Secretary of State to address it is nearly impossible - he's beholden to his job. And the fact that the US Attorney refused to consider such information is simply unacceptable.

I mean, sometimes officials can state with a fair bit of certainty that 1) it very important to make a choice... you can split the baby in half, and 2) with statistical certainty, that either outcome is equally prefered. In this case, such a procedure is appropriate even in law or elections.

Which is why the majority of WA voters don't believe Christine Gregoire was elected governor.

There were repeated requests for basic information, but the King Co. elections department (run by D's) either didn't provide the information or covered it up or even openly lied about it, all this while an important trial is being held to uncover who was really elected. Based on admissions by the elections department, they manufactured votes and counted votes that should not have been counted.

What's even sadder is the Sec. of State (an R) promised to clean up the rolls with a statewide database, and promised that database to be online Jan 1. Except even now, nobody seems able to obtain a copy of that database, and the Sec. of State says it won't come out until February. We'll see if it really does.

For more information, go read the research Stefan Sharkansky has been doing at http://soundpolitics.com./ It'll give you great insight into how elections departments should act versus how they do act.

I'm an R, but I don't tolerate this kind of crap, not in Alaska, not here in Washington, and not anywhere. We must have a publically accountable voting system, or we'll have people who say the only way to affect change in government is through violence. I don't want another civil war, particularly if it could've been prevented by people running elections openly and honestly.

Which traditionally votes 100% democrat.

Not always.

Mrs. Witte's obituary describes her as an active Republican

Here is a Timeline for the events (with an obvious conservative slant).

Man says votes from illegal immigrants
He culled list of voters for names that 'appear' foreign
Jim Camden
Staff writer
March 31, 2005

A Soap Lake man is challenging the voting credentials of hundreds of Washington voters, saying he thinks they're illegal immigrants who registered and cast ballots illegally.

But Martin Ringhofer may have a hard time proving the challenges he has filed in Spokane and 10 other Washington counties.

For one thing, there's the methodology of his research. Ringhofer said he obtained a list of people who registered to vote when they obtained or renewed a driver's license, then culled the list for names "that appear to be from outside the United States," particularly those that appeared to be Hispanic or Asian.

"We eliminated names that clearly sounded American-born, like John Smith, or Powell," he said Wednesday.

For another, there's the fact that many of the people on his list are citizens. In fact, The Spokesman-Review contacted a dozen of the 161 people on Ringhofer's Spokane County list, and all of them are citizens.

...

"I was well aware of the fact that there would be errors," he said.

But he doesn't see that as a problem because people on the list who are citizens can simply tell county officials that they are citizens and provide some proof. It's not his responsibility to correct those mistakes, he insisted, but the job of county elections officials.

...

Sound Politics is the place to go if you want to learn more about the election.

From SoundPolitics.com

Been spending more time analyzing the newly posted precinct canvass of the King County manual recount, and the differences with the canvass of the machine recount.

The story seems to be that at every opportunity where new ballots were somehow introduced into the mix, Gregoire benefited disproportionately.

As mentioned in an earlier post, 266 ballots seemed to disappear, while 325 magically materialized. Again, these are not just a matter of reinterpration of marks on paper, these are entire sheets of paper that either vanished or appeared out of thin air. Christine Gregoire added a net 47 new votes to her total, Dino Rossi lost a net 12 from his.

Dig deeper.

There were 238 precincts that found new ballots, 291 precincts that lost ballots, and 2087 precincts where the ballot count didn't change from the machine count.

In the precincts where the ballot count didn't change, new votes were added to/subtracted from the candidates counts by reinterpreting the undervotes and overvotes. In these precincts, Rossi gained +23 and lost -27; Gregoire gained +47 and lost -36. (1 was a Rossi that flipped to Gregoire) Out of the under/over-votes reawarded to a candidate, Gregoire won 68%, significantly more than her 59% share of the vote in King County overall. Of the candidate votes that were reinterpreted to be under/overvotes, Gregoire lost only 58%, slightly less than her share of the vote.

In the precincts that discovered new ballots, but didn't change the number of under/overvotes, Gregoire won 131 (69%) of the 200 newly added ballots. In the precincts where ballots vanished, but the number of under/overvotes did not change, Gregoire lost 108 (58%) of the disappeared ballots.

When ballots disappeared, they disappeared proportionally from both candidates. When ballots appeared, they appeared disproportionally for Gregoire.

Oddly enough!