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West Virginian Mayor Might Defy Popular Vote
gleam writes "A maverick Republican mayor in West Virginia is reportedly considering not casting his vote in the Electoral College for Bush, even if Bush wins the popular vote there. South Charleston Mayor Richie Robb says, 'I know that among some in my own party, what I'm discussing would be considered treasonous, but I'm not going to cheerlead us down the primrose path when I know we're being led in the wrong direction.' It wouldn't be the first time a West Virginian Elector defied the popular vote: In 1988 an Elector cast her vote for Michael Dukakis's running mate, Lloyd Bentsen, even though Dukakis won the state's popular vote."
um.. what happened in the 2004 primaries? or are you talking about the 2003 general election? I'm confused...
note: before you think i'm confused, i want to remind the parent that there are more than just presidential elections. the cover more than just the federal government.
Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
http://www.venezuela-referendum.com/
***Slashdot rejected this story so here it is***
Edward W. Felten, Department of Computer Science, Princeton University
Aviel D. Rubin, Department of Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University
Adam Stubblefield, Department of Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University
Summary
After the August 15 referendum in Venezuela on whether or not to recall president Chávez, opposition groups examined the polling data and made accusations of fraud due to statistical anomalies in the reported election results that they claim could not have occurred if the election were run fairly. However, our analysis of the same data, based on simulations, did not detect any statistical anomalies that would indicate obvious fraud in the election.
We emphasize that a lack of statistical evidence does not imply the absence of fraud. Rather, it rules out certain classes of fraud. In any case, the fraud that is alleged is not the type that we would expect a cheating government to employ. In particular, we believe that the forms of election fraud that are most likely to succeed, such as voting machines silently switching some fraction of Yes votes to No votes inside the computer, would not produce observable statistical anomalies.
Electronic voting is more susceptible to widespread fraud than less automated mechanisms. The fact that the opposition is highly suspicious of the outcome is due, in part, to the choice of electronic voting machines in a simple Yes/No election. While we did not find any statistical evidence for the claims of caps on the machines or other specific accusations of fraud, we are concerned that wide scale unobservable fraud is much easier to realize in electronic voting machines than in, for example, precinct based paper systems.