Berkeley Researchers Analyze Florida Voting Patterns

empraptor writes "Researchers at UC Berkeley have crunched numbers and determined that 130,000-260,000 excess votes went to Bush in Florida. They have held a conference and posted their findings online. You can find articles on their research from CNet, Wired News, and many other sources. While the research used statistical analysis based on past elections and demographics, how else do you verify that a paperless voting system is working properly?"

Comments

Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[garcia]

"Without a paper trail, statistical comparisons of jurisdictions that used e-voting are the only tool available to diagnose problems with the new technology," the researchers stated in the report.

WHY WERE THERE NO PAPER TRAILS? Why are we allowing voting to go on in a system that has NOT been proven safe? We aren't allowed to view the code, we aren't allowed to audit our vote except via what is shown to us on the screen, and we have to invest an enormous amount of trust in two large entities that have proven they are NOT worthy of our trust.

Were people permitted to use paper and pencil/pen or more trusted/tried solutions instead of these machines? I certainly would have opted against using one of the e-voting machines knowing what I know and being the paranoid individual I am.

Until the voting machines and their code are open to the public for audit and there is a paper trail I will refuse to use them. This MUST be an option for everyone. I don't see why it can't be the case.

Some places are requiring a paper audit trail by 2006 but that doesn't help the fact that there could have been some hanky panky going on right here in THIS election.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[amalcon]

Technically, yes, people were permitted to use pen-and-paper ballots -- but they had to be absentee ballots. That option was probably not convenient enough for all voters, but some almost certainly exercised it.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[meganthom]

Generally speaking, you could always vote absentee to avoid using the computer system. Then there would be a paper trail. The problem is that the absentee ballots often go uncounted unless the election is otherwise too close to call. I imagine that if they implemented the ability to choose between paper/pen and computers on election day, the results would be similar. With our desire for instant results, only the computer results would be counted automatically, with all the paper ballots reserved for close races.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[wealthychef]

You're nuts. Paper and pencil are NOT more reliable than computers. Haven't you ever heard the term "ballot stuffing?" Physical media such as paper are also fraught with security concerns. They boil down to the same thing as computers: do you trust the election officials running them? Who has physical access to the vote once it has been cast? Etc. I'm not saying they are the same, but c'mon, all of a sudden the old paper method is the gold standard? No way.
The trouble with voting security is that it requires authentication, anonymity and ability to verify later. The verification necessarily must be done by the voter himself, or else somebody else will know how you voted.
Here's my idea: after you vote, you get a random ID and password associated with your vote. Later, you can log onto a website and verify that your vote is as you cast it, without divulging your identity. Make the process for getting votes from the machine to the central data repository open-sourced, open, open open, totally so that we know exactly what is happening.
Hey, it's a start. But I'm in favor of these voting machines. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[liquidsin]

Fuck! I wish I was on the fucking blacklist goddamnit!

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[PoopJuggler]

Why are we allowing voting to go on in a system that has NOT been proven safe?

The problem is that once we have voted a senator or representative into office, they can do whatever they want. It takes A LOT to get them out, so they can do stupid shit and people really don't have much immediate recourse. A politician can do all sorts of fucked up things before he is finally removed from office. And the voting machine companies have deep pockets.

I think there needs to be a system to allow state residents to vote on every single bill. Not to replace the existing system but to supplement it. For instance, if a bill is about to pass and if the citizens voted 90% "nay" on it then the bill has to go through another round of scrutiny or something. Similarly if the bill was about to fail and the people voted "yea" on it, it needs to be looked at again. Obviously this would require some extra (electronic?) infrastructure to accomplish but I think it would help stop politicians from doing what THEY want instead of what the PEOPLE they represent want..

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[Ironsides]

You assume that people have been using only paper trails voting machines before electronic ones came about. The ones in my area were Mechanical and made by Diebold. Mind telling me how we were supposed to do a recount?

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[Kenja]

"Why are we allowing voting to go on in a system that has NOT been proven safe?"

Becasue we have no say in the matter.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[plalonde2]

Let's try this again. There is only *ONE* effective way to run an election:

Vote on Paper

Count each ballot box separately

Count the ballot box at the voting site

Allow every party to have an observer there. Parties that can't pony up a counter/observer per ballot box have deeper problems The advantage is that wide-spread fraud would require widespread efforts, unlike the US's system of centralizing voting processes (central counting machines, central code source bases for voting machines, shipping ballots to counting locations).

Distributed systems are much more robust to fraud.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[Catfisherman]

Hanky Panky goes on in EVERY election, always has and always will and thats one thing i'm sure of. Where i'm from (born) you can still vote several times and get paid each time you vote. Been that way since before I was and will be after I go.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[zxnos]

yes, there is a choice. it just depends on how paranoid you are.

i could steal a bunch of paper/pencil ballots, hire some people to fill them out in my parties favor. then substitute the forged ballots for the real deal. there where 3 workers at my polling station, two blue hairs and a dude w/ the vote recorder. wouldnt be too hard to bribe someone, or register as a poll worker as party 'a' while actually suporting party 'b'.

just because bush won, people in his party cheated? perhaps the people supporting kerry didnt cheat hard enough? perhaps both parties cheated equally well?

i want to see paper trails too. i want a receipt for me to take home and one to turn in. after i voted into the black box, i felt really disatisfied, like i didnt even vote.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[MindStalker]

Actually we do, luckly the vote isn't federalized, so local election boards made these bad decisions. The choices of these local boards can be heavily effected by local outrage. Sadly the outrage either didn't happen, or happend too late to change anything. For all those calling on a federalized popular vote, what would happen when the federal government votes itself corrupted voting machines. We would be screwed. Of course people hopfully would revolt, but they might not.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[KlomDark]

OMFG! She met with some (ack!!) COMMUNISTS!! Oh Shit! Oh no!

Dude, time to catch up. Your reasoning is so 1960s. Communists are no longer the official bogeyman, Bin Laden and the Muslims are.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[Kenja]

No they cant. Not realy. Here in CA there was enough outrage that the state is sueing diebold. However we still used their systems for the vote because some one higher up in the state gov' decided it was a good idea (no idea if palms where greased here).

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[kmankmankman2001]

Hey, if you don't like the system then vote to change it!!! Oh, wait, ummmm . . . . never mind.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[phloydde1]

you know, in washington state, it doesn't matter what the people vote for. We've voted for the monrail 3 times so far. And after each time, they either a)stall the process in some comittee, or b) find another little loophole which could derail it and demand the people vote about the loophole.

ALSO, in washington the people voted against a stadium, but the thing was built anyways....

However, having things pass just by popular vote is very dangerous...
Think about it.. If you were in a voting booth, and there was a provision for a "clean air act", would you vote for it? Unless you were really up on the issues and knew that clean air act actually allowed an increase of pollution, you'd probably think that yeah, clean air is a good thing and vote for it. So now you have a bogus bill getting passed that does the opposite of what people think it is going to do.
Sorry, I trust the intellegence of my fellow citizens less than I do the morals of my elected leaders -- sad but true.
_phloydde

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[MindStalker]

I'm pretty sure congress people are legally allowed to meet with any leader of any nation. As long as the meeting is not kept secret.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[Anonymous Coward]

Berkeley ranks in the top ten in several fields. UC Berkeley ranks third in computer science behind MIT and Stanford and just above Carnegie-Mellon. It also ranks third in Sociology, after Chicago and Wisconsin. (1995 National Research Council Report on Quality in Ph.D. Education in the U.S.)

Secondly, Barbara Lee did nothing illegal. Your logic seems to be:

• The Grenadan government was Communist
• Barbara Lee's job was to deal with the Grenadan government
• ?????
• Therefore, Barbara Lee is a Communist traitor

Maybe you started your life as a South Park underpants gnome, but in the real world, this type of argument doesn't work.

The rest of the material on this subject I can find only deals with the report on the airstrip having been read by Grenadan officials before submission. I don't think you realize this, but if they had done a report on a Grenadan airstrip and NOT let the Grenadan government look at it, that would be an act of war. It would be spying. In the U.S., we would execute that person. As officials acting in a diplomatic capacity, neither she nor her superiors could risk inciting the anger of the Grenadan government.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[plalonde2]

But then your bribe would change *ONE* ballot box. To make a real change in the outcome you would have to bribe too many people too keep it quiet.

Decentralized vote counting is more robust to fraud because you have more volunteer observers and counters. It scales well because it's local; again, if a party can't find an observer for a ballot box, then that party has deeper troubles than fraud at that box.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[MindStalker]

Hmm Direct Democracy, but as a balance, interesting idea. Some thoughts.
Of course the cost of having polls be open all the time is astronomical I guess it could be payed for by a local poll tax.
Either way you have 2 ways this can be done.
1. Computer voting, please remember the digital divide. Yes most everyone can access a computer occasionally, but not everyone has access on a regular basis.
2. Poll voting, not everyone has the time to drive down to the polls on a regular basis.

I actually wrote up a system a while back that these problems could be overcome, for a term paper. Not gonna bother looking for it. Either way I'll break it down for you.

We set up a system of proxies, whereby if an individual doesn't have time to vote however your proxy voted is how you vote. This of course could only be handled well through computer voting, but we obviously could set up "polling" stations with free use of computers for this purpose.
The proxie could be your best friend who you trust and has a good mind for politics. But you may feel that the best proxie would be someone who spends all of their time researching the issues so you would need some people who make it their job to be proxies. These people could campain in a simular way as our current representatives campain but they arn't elected, just choosen as a representative by the people under their proxy system. You could even have a system of taxes that would pay proxies some small amount of money per person so as to allow that person to make it their fulltime job.

DREW of Slashdot proxy!

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[CausticPuppy]

Were people permitted to use paper and pencil/pen or more trusted/tried solutions instead of these machines?

In light of the 2000 election, how do you define "tried and trusted?"

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[MindStalker]

Of course my system was for True Direct Democracy, I don't really see the reason to set up a large Direct Democracy infrastructure, if its simply going to be used as a check and not to get anything done.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[cduffy]

Here's my idea: after you vote, you get a random ID and password associated with your vote. Later, you can log onto a website and verify that your vote is as you cast it, without divulging your identity.

...except that your boss (or that fellow who offered you $5 for your vote) insists on looking over your shoulder while you log onto this website.

Vote selling and related fraud has a very long history; part of the point of a good system is not to enable it.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[Lac]

This is exactly how we do things in Canada, by the way, and it works wonders. Of course, TV-wise, it is much less interesting: we have a projected winner one hour after polls close and have the final and definitive results for all counties two hours after that. A party can ask for a recount without being accused of "hurting the country" and said recount happens in days. On the up-side, we do save money on exit polling. When the electoral system works, who needs exit polling?

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[fenris_23]

Distributed systems are much more robust to fraud.

Chicago 1960.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[feed_those_kitties]

we have to invest an enormous amount of trust in two large entities that have proven they are NOT worthy of our trust.

You mean George Bush and John Kerry, right?

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[615]

Here's my idea: after you vote, you get a random ID and password associated with your vote. Later, you can log onto a website and verify that your vote is as you cast it, without divulging your identity.

i've been doing a lot of thinking about our voting problem and that is exactly the solution i've come up with.

OK, here's the deal: you've got a database with four tables. one table contains a list of national issues that are up for vote. another table contains a list of registered voters. a third table records which voters have voted for which issues, but does NOT record any actual votes. that's done in the fourth and final table. that table records the issue that was voted on, a yes or no vote, and a random string. the random string is returned to the voter at the time of their vote so that they can manually verify that their vote was tallied. this database would be publicly accessable, so that the universities, for example, could download it and run tests, similar to what Berkeley has done. oh, and voting would be done through a website (say, vote.us) using a satisfactory authentication scheme.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[Ralconte]

Seems to me people want the exit polls, just so they have something to argue about after the election. That's pretty much what happens time and time again since the 2004 election. Some registered Democrats, or people from predominately Democrat couties in predominately Democrat states: Voted for Bush. They did not want Kerry. They did not want Gore. They voted out Democrat senators. That should be a hint.

I gotta stay away from these political threads, its just the same thing over and over.

I just came here 'cause I was hoping someone could explain the 99.9% sure statistic, thats not something I hear often in chemistry, and I want to know how human nature is so much better locked up.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[MindStalker]

Yes, but local boards still could have bought systems but they didn't. I'm guessing it was a matter of not enough time rather than corruption.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[Rei]

The 1960s called. They want their Red Baiting back.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[toddestan]

Here's the difference between computers, and paper and pencil: The ease and number of people involved.

With networked computers, a handful of people, or maybe even just one person (say, a programmer in Diebold, who is clever enough with his obfuscated cade to fool his coworkers) could throw an election. Not to mention the chances of getting caught are somewhat low, as this could be done at the comfort of one's home computer, and with no paper trail and closed source software.

In order to throw an election in several states using ballot stuffing, you would probably need several hundred people, spread out over a large area. Futhermore, I would expect atleast a few may be caught, in which case you better hope the whole scheme isn't uncovered.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[Anonymous Coward]

uhm... that's pretty close to how we did it, here.
admittedly, no one told me where i had to go, to vote -- i had to find out, for myself (a flyer, or sign would've been nice). turned out that the place was ~2min walk from my place (~15min drive -- damn suburban street plans).

anyway... the ballot was similar to those old multiple-guess test forms that you use for standardized tests (e.g. ACT, &c.) -- but with bigger ovals to fill in (~0.5 x 1.0cm). filled them in with a black pen, in a privacy booth, carried them to the ballot box, verifying that i was happy with my vote (could'a asked for a new form, if i screwed up -- AABACADABA...???), tore off a receipt-type-tag, and fed the ballot into something that looked suspiciously like a modern, high-volume, paper shredder (no shredding noises ensued, however).
not to say that i'm pleased with the overall outcome of the election -- but my district voted pretty much the same as i did (~62%, depending on if you count local board members, &c.), and i'm pretty sure that someone had/has a key to unlock those boxes, and pull out the forms. with the size of those ellipses, even a centenarian with glaucoma could tell how a vote had been cast (no 'dangling chads').

OTOH, just so long as at least 1 vote is reported as being like mine, and all of the rest are 'secret', how am i to know that everything's on the level? take things a bit further -- say that n ppl voted; assume that it's unlikely that more than a couple of hundred of them will ever get together and compare detailed notes, and you don't really have to count the individual votes. just wait 'till the poles close, and say that the tally showed (n/2+m) voted for 'A' and (n/2-m) voted for 'B'. w00t! -- 'A' won by a margin of 2m votes!. ppl who *did* vote for 'A' feel like winners, and ppl who voted for 'B' think that they almost made it... maybe next time. - heh.

there are good, and bad things to be said about a 'secret' ballot.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[HungWeiLo]

One thing to think about, though. With hundreds of billions at stake for many individuals and entities on a presidential election, it can get pretty complicated to prove "enough" election integrity.

So the public gets to see the code...then...how about the CRC of the compiled executable? Then...how can you be so sure when you execute the CRC checker, that it's not just spitting out some hard-coded CRC value? Once you get to see the code for the CRC checker, then how do you check the CRC of the CRC checker? (head explodes)

The point is - if the election is important enough to have been stolen, it already was.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[grmoc]

... You still have to aggregate the vote counts, and it seems easy to have the reporting of the numbers be different from their actual values. ... also... Counting the votes at the site is a bit scary in small towns, as the local election officials would likely be able to figure out who (or what group) voted for what (based on what they know about the community). This is anti-productive to people voting without fear of reprisal.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[Rei]

Interestingly enough, Allende's Chile was working on a Direct Democracy system, and had made huge progress when the US-sponsored coup put Pinochet in power.

Darn, I can't seem to FGI the article that I read previously about it. The headquarters of the voting administration looked like the bridge on Star Trek ;) The idea was to have "voting boxes" scattered across the country, and each person with a national ID card that would be read by the voting boxes, along with a code. Anyone could vote on any issue simply by going to any voting box, seing what issues were up, and casting their vote. The system was to be completely automated; the results fed back into the central station, which was to control what issues were on the "ballot", and certify the results based on what came back. Of course, it was made using old tech, but the system was almost done when Allende was overthrown.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[elmegil]

Which doesn't remotely counter the fact that they are MORE robust.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[Squareball]

I voted for Bush but I agree with you. I live in Florida, but in my county (Orange) we do have a paper trail. Our votes are made on a ballot that is then scanned into a computer that tabulates the votes. Our ballots are very easy. You just complete the arrow for the choice you want.

Now I know that a lot of people scream that there were so many democrat registered voters in a lot of areas where Bush won. Although true, these counties traditionally still go to Republicans. They are conservative democrats. Another point is that I know of 4 college students who all registered at our college and didn't know any better or different and just registered as a Democrat. After talking to them about the election and them watching the debates they voted for Bush. This isn't an isolated thing either. They all had friends that did the same thing. A lot of college age people I know voted for Bush and like I said some of them were registered Democrat.

Although I'm a Libertarian so I'm not registered under a party because FL only cares about the 2 major parties.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup... just so happened that democrats in other counties with no e-voting didn't switch over at the same rate.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[ezzzD55J]

This violates the requirement that voters can't be coerced, threatened, bought etc. You can't be able to prove to someone else what you voted for.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[mallumax]

This is how things are done in India - The world's largest democracy.India uses electronic voting machines but they are much simpler than their american counterparts and is less susceptible to damage.

Here's a slashot articlediscussing the indian voting machine vs Diebold.

Here's the original articlereferenced in the slashdot discussion above

PS:the votes are counted at district headquarters and not at voting site.Still good enough.With an election as huge as India's it's not possible to count the votes at the voting site

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[Dejohn]

See my comments over at K5 on this topic over a year ago . I believe electronic voting machines can be safe, secure, reliable, and trustworthy. The problem appears to be that election officials and secretaries of state do not understand information technology, much less information security and cryptographic methods that can be used to solve these problems. It seems that certain manufacturers are intent on getting by with the lowest common denominator product.

In short, these systems can be useable and safe, and because they can, they should be in ALL cases. Anything less is gross negligence and incompetence and leaves the door wide open for massive undercover voting fraud, which leads to the wrong people taking positions of power, only to continue the cycle.

I'm not sure if people in charge of these elections are just not listening to the technology people or if the vendors are telling very different stories, but it saddens me that there isn't more homegrown competition in the market to help bring these issues front and center.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[mallumax]

Sorry, I forgot to add this.
(a slashdot comment from this article ) In India at every polling station, there are usually representatives of all parties and/or independent candidates besides the Election Commission's (EC)representatives, who have with them the voter list for that constituency.

Every voter has to produce a proof of identity. Upon verification, his/her name is called out, and all the representatives go through their individual paper lists, as well the EC representatives, and they mark that person has cast a vote.

After you cast the vote, an indelible ink mark is put against the fingernal of the index finger (or other fingers if you have any handicap), which takes a few days to dissolve and disappear.

The number of people that cast the ballot is then verified against the number of people who have been marked as "voted" in these individual paper lists at the end of the polling day.

On the final counting day, of course the EVM provides the actual votes cast, but the count of votes is re-verified against EC representative's list.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[agraboso]

This is how we do it in Spain too and there's never been any suspicion of and election being stolen since the beginning of democracy in 1975.

Well, almost. Although I am not American and I have never seen a ballot in this country, I keep reading about filling out and punching ballots. As cryptochrome points out, Paper ballots [...] can be tampered with (turning a valid ballot into an overvote is as simple as a surreptitious mark/punch from someone handling the ballots in most designs).

In Spain, you cast your vote by putting a pre-printed paper with the name of the party, candidate, etc. of your election in an envelope, and that envelope in a box. That means that there are different papers for different options. No marks, no punches. No possibility of tampering with.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[jinxidoru]

All you needed to do was click the little "pi" symbol at the bottom of the screen. That would have given you all the auditing information you needed, including access to the FBI mainframe. Just don't push ESC. That would be very bad.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[Just Some Guy]

Modified idea: it's accessible only in a particularly well-controlled venue, such as at an official polling place that's being staffed by neutral observers (or even better, multiple opposed strongly partisan observers) to ensure that only the voter can physically see the display. In other words, make the audit process analogous to the way that the elections themselves are held.

Maybe you could have an official "Audit Day" on the day following an election, so voters could visit the same location staffed by the same people and check their results on the same equipment they originally voted on.

Any thoughts?

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[cryptochrome]

That is a terrible idea. Let me extrapolate that for you.

"I just want to make sure we voted the same way. Don't you question me! Yeah, just fill out that field and press enter. Oh you fucking whore!" *SMACK*

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[plalonde2]

It should be *easier* (compared to centralized counting) to count the votes at the voting site as the election gets larger: the number of politically interested people correlates closely to the number of required voting stations.

Political parties are already using such distributed systems to "get out the vote" and so forth; adding a burden of a counter per ballot box is not much.

I do agree that there is still possibility of fraud regarding tallying sub-totals, but again, the counts from every ballot box can be made public, and so be trivially verifiable, again by the same volunteer who were at the box and know the counts.

Many hands make light work, and are harder to bribe.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[beeplet]

I think having an ID tied to both you and your vote is a bad idea in general. It opens up possibilites of people being bribed or strong-armed for their vote.

Without an identifying number, someone can tell you how to vote, but there's no way for them to verify if you voted for who you said you did. If there were a voter ID, someone could conceivably force you to give them your number and password, and then go check that you voted the way they wanted you to.

Even if they asked for government-issued ID at the audit, someone who is a registered voter could get in and then pull up someone else's record. You could get around that by having a poll worker bring up your record after you give your ID, but that would mean your vote is directly tied to your name, which would completely undermine the secret ballot... I just don't see how it could work.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[gnuorder]

There is a paper trail of sorts in the form of a roll of paper that can't be read by the voter. The problem is there is no way to assure that it is an accurate printout of the votes or a printout of the recorded votes after any kind of error or manipulation has occured.

Scary as that is, those rolls are also being mishandled to say the lease as documented by Bev Harris.

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see why it can't be the case.

I'm assuming that your statement was retorical(sp), but just in case it wasn't.. The answer is easy. It's because you, I, your neighbors let them get away with it. Obviously, you and I wouldn't let them, but we are two out of 250 million. Even if we were two million, we could have no effect. It has become too tiresome to try to convince the neighbors to be aware of what they are voting for. Each person will simply have to see for themselves and act accordingly. Unfortunately, most voters aren't evolved enough to disregard the FUD that comes from the other side, especially since it appeals to one's most basic animal instincts. Like the old BIC pens, it works first time-every time.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[cookd]

Correlation != Cause

More often than not, correlation means two things are caused by the same factors, not that one causes the other.

In this case, which counties switched to touch-screen voting? Why? Could the factors that led them to switch (population density, demographics) have also been factors that led the voters to swing similarly?

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[rho]

Your method misses an important step:

Ensure that the person voting is a legal voter.

Nobody ever discusses this, because it's laced with bad historical context: black disenfranchisement and the like. But, let's be honest, there are a lot of dead, fake, or duplicate votes that go on in an election, on both sides. Eliminating that is equally important to having a paper-trail.

Of course, the real issue here isn't about ensuring a fair election. It's not about universal suffrage, or anything like it. It's about keeping George W. Bush out of office at all costs.. Are you sure you want to recount Florida? There's a lot of Florida to recount, including the Panhandle; and let's not forget to check voter rolls--some tens of thousands of voters double-registered in New York and Florida, for instance. Or the corpses voting in Illinois, or a number of other electioneering stunts performed and perfected over many, many years.

I suggest that it's best if Democrats stop hating Republicans with all their heart and soul. You'll have a happier life, and you won't give yourself an ulcer every four years. Republicans weren't thrilled with a Clinton victory, so instead of questioning the vote (skewed by Ross Perot), they worked on their platform and got a majority in the House--the first since, basically, forever. Democrats could do the same. Well, except for that unfortunate fact that a majority of people do NOT cotton to the more wingnut portions of the generic Democrat platform.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[ErikZ]

What puzzled me the most, was that even after the Democrats lost in the 2000 election, there was no publicised drive to improve the voting process.

Al Gore? Looks like he was happy with things the way they were.

When Nixon lost to Kennedy in the Illinois elections due to rigged voting, he went and fixed it.

So, this means one of two things.

1. The level of corruption with voting is small enough not to worry about.
2. The Democrats don't want an honest voting system.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[grotgrot]

Your verifying of the vote later step has a huge issue. It allows for votes to be bought. The person paying can sit with you as you login to check that you ended up voting how they paid you to.

Votes can be bought through cash or through intimidation.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[Anonymous Coward]

Authentication? When the voter enters the voting hall, they show their registration card, their name is looked up to verify they can vote, and ticked off to say they've voted.

Anonymity? No name or details are put onto the paper, the voter just crosses the box for the option they're voting for. No one knows who voted for what, just that a vote was cast for X.

Verification? The paper ballots can be counted and compared to the ticked-off list of people who voted. This way you can compare the number of people who voted to the actual number of votes.

Paper voting has worked for hundreds of years, it's only the latest 2 election which has "experimented" where you find the 2 most untrusting elections. There's no need for e-voting (just as a side note, how hard is it to wipe some anthrax or whatever onto the screen - when you're getting hundreds or thousands of people to touch it?), there's no need for punch cards (I don't understand how this could possibly be an improvement upon paper ballots in ANY way, it's ridiculous).

There's no improvement upon paper ballots.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[fenris_23]

Yet they are EQUALLY susceptible to vote tampering. That was all I was hinting. I still think that we should have a more robust system as you said as it is easier to catch the tampering.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[plalonde2]

I think that you're making the common error of believing that anybody who complains about electoral irregularities is doing so only out of partisan spite.

Instead of making accusations, work on making sure that your elections are (and look) procedurally flawless in the future.

The problem is not that Democrats hate Republicans, it's that there is (at least the appearance of) systematic abuse of the system that should decide who will make decisions that have radical impacts on people's lives. That's not a place where even the appearance of irregularity should be tolerated, much less the actual irregularities reported.

As a non-american, I don't really give a rat's ass about who governs the US. I do however, as a believer that democracy is less bad a system than most others, care that the most powerful nation on earth elect its president with the due care and dilligence that so many less powerful nations manage to use. And I do care about how US foreign policy affects my life and much of the world's, but again, that's not the issue here.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[320mb]

waaaaaa waaaaa, you liberal whinning crybabies.........you people lost........get over it.........of course.......you'll still be crying 3 years down the road.......Kerry was a Coward just like Clinton was..........

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[Anonymous Coward]

There were paper trails, kind of...
Not that it helped:

http://www.opednews.com/hartmann_111904_in_the_a ct .htm

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to point this out to the tin-foiled hats out there but Bush WON Florida by some 380,000 votes. Even if the analysis were to be true, Bush still would of won.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[TheGadgetGeek]

There was a paper trail in Florida -- just a real obfuscated one. The only real paper trail was the sign in/confirmation sheets

Here's Interesting Fact #1 -- many people I know who participated in early voting were still listed as available to vote on those sign-in sheets.

Interesting Fact #2 -- many people were sent to different polling places or totally confused as to their polling place because of strange changes just before the election.

Interesting Fact #3 -- most of the absentee ballots never got to the people who requested them ...

Interesting Fact #4 -- I happened to be a poll watcher in a South Florida precinct and I noticed (and complained about) the fact that there were 771 signatures recorded in those books yet 796 votes cast for President...

Incidentally, the independent "clicker" counted about 769ish. As further backup, there was 771 votes (exactly) cast for a hotly contested senate seat...

An interesting concept -- that's 3% more votes. Another precinct pollwatcher told be they were off by 7%.

If all that is true -- and those EXTRA votes all went to W -- it is no wonder that the close Florida election went to Bush, by 5% (according to CNN) that would be about the average difference between 3-7%.

If you pulled that in democratic counties, noone would even notice. Anyone looking would just attribute it to the increased turn-out and say "hey, the democrats won that county; just not as much as we thought". In the republican strongholds noone was even looking...

Thanks to his brother -- Gov. Jeb Bush -- putting in these GREAT machines and systems good ole' W will be around for another 4 -- say 'goodnight' gracie...

"Okay, so ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking, yeah?"

George W. Gems...
"They misunderestimated me."

"See, free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don't attack each other. Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction." [Oct. 3, 2003]

"The legislature's job is to write law. It's the executive branch's job to interpret law."

"I am mindful of the difference between the executive branch and the legislative branch. I assured all four of these leaders that I know the difference, and that difference is they pass the laws and I execute them."

"Education is not my top priority"

"I think the American people--I hope the American--I don't think, let me--I hope the American people trust me."

Oh boy... :-(

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[Anonymous Coward]

The question is not "why was there no paper trail" (the answer is obvious: to make fraud easier and more untraceable) but why did the Democrats let these easily hackable, paper-trailless electronic voting machines get installed when they very well knew that the election could get stolen through their use?

And, why is the Democratic leadership want to be so quiet now about the evidence of fraud? Why are they so eager to sweep it under the rug and "get on with" pushing the Democratic party further to the right?

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with?

[wealthychef]

Then the requirements cannot be met. It is seemingly impossible to assure anonymity, make it impossible for an individual to verify his vote, and still assure accurate and fair elections. Hmm. Maybe some crypto-genius can come up with a way to verify something without knowing its contents? Some sort of checksumming that is independently verifyable?

Two things

[Anonymous Coward]

A. They neglect to factor in the "Hurricane effect." The President's visits and aid raised him popularity in the area.

B. They performed the same study on Ohio and found no irregularities.

Re:Two things

[Anonymous Coward]

If this were true then how would you explain counties with a paper trail being the ones within statistically expected error but without a paper trail there were much more votes for bush?

Re:Two things

[helix400]

They also neglect Nader. He was a big variable between changes in 2000 and 2004 election results.

Re:Two things

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

They neglect to factor in the "Hurricane effect." The President's visits and aid raised him popularity in the area.

From glancing at the numbers, I think you are wrong. Why would a hurricane, cause there to be more discrepancy between who people said they voted for, coming out of the polls, and who actually was given the votes? You are looking for explanations, and there is nothing wrong with that, but I don't think the one you give makes any sense. The only sort of things I can think of, that might account for such a discrepancy, are people not wanting to admit, to people doing polling, who it was they voted for. Perhaps if the persons polled felt intimidated, or ashamed of their votes. Even that, however, is really iffy. I think technical errors, or voter fraud, are the most likely culprits for this statistical anomaly.

Re:Two things

[pommiekiwifruit]

A. Because Floridans are saying "Yeah Global Warming... let's get me some more of that!" :-)

Re:Two things

[Chagrin]

RTFA

Only counties using electronic voting machines showed the increase. Are you claiming that electronic voting machines increase the effect of Bush's post-hurricane visits?

Re:Two things

[killjoe]

When the UN monitors elections it relies mostly on exit polls to determine if the counts are being manipulated.

In this case the exit polls showed that people were voting for Kerry but the counts showed otherwise.

Now what? How do we know which is true?

You know what the sad thing is? The sad thing is that we even have to ask that question. I for one don't trust the machines or the voting process, I am not the only one either. That's sad.

Re:Two things

[extremecenter]

The authors state flat out: "Electronic voting raised President Bush's advantage from the tiny edge held in 2000 to a clearer margin of victory in 2004."

No self respecting scientist would state such an absurdly strong conclusion based on a simple correlation. At most, it could be claimed that there was a correlation between the use of electronic voting machines and Bush's margin.

The authors go on to show that Bush's percentage increased most over 2000 in the heavily Democratic counties. In other words, Republican counties stayed loyal to Bush, and he picked up some votes in Democratic counties. What's surprising about that? That's the nature of elections. People make choices that are often different from the way they voted last time or their party affiliation. That's why we have elections instead of just counting the number of voters registered to each party.

Re:Two things

[Anonymous Coward]

..or perhaps the previous paper ballot system disproportionately increased votes for Gore?

Re:Two things

[eclectic4]

Bzzzt! Wrong.

Studies have constistently shown that areas effected by natural disasters slightly shift democratic. 4 hurricanes should have had the opposite effect. Bushy's "visits" were merely matter of course.

The same studie showing no irregularities in Ohio actually underscore the premise. Thanks for including that.

Re:Two things

[Ralusp]

As a resident of central Florida, I can attest that the three counties singled-out as having the largest irregularities, were not counties that received a large amount of hurricane damage this year. They were only lightly hit.

Re:Two things

[ryanmfw]

Yes. whenever they voted for Gore and accidentally put in Buchanan, it *really* helped Gore out.

Re:Two things

[Anonymous Coward]

But the counties in question have been trending Republican for many years now. Even though most people in these counties are still registered Democrat.

Re:Two things

[ThosLives]

Okay, I'll jump in here to address one simple point:

Exit polls cannot accurately represent actual polls because the total population does not have a known distribution. You can only project the results of a sample to the entire population if you have a known distribution (i.e., random, normal, etc.) of the entire population. If you don't, you need to "sample" the entire population (which is what a general election does - otherwise you'd only have x% of the population vote and use those results). It is expected that exit polls would be different than the actual polls. Of course, I don't know what percent of actual voters are polled in the exit polls. If it's not high enough, then this could explain a ~3% difference between exit and actual polls.

This is why we have elections - because if you only poll 5 out of 15 people (33% sample rate is HUGE), and all 5 of those go one way but the other 10 all went the other way (or even went 8 and 2) then your poll would predict one way but the actual results would be the other. If nothing else, all this paper does is show that voter behavior is non-deterministic.

Re:Two things

[Billly Gates]

Ohio?

One country which is heavily democratic got 100,000 more votes than people who live there! PS It went for Bush.

Suspicious?

There was a recount in which democrats and the press were locked out of ordered by Tom Ridge according to some internet rumors.

Re:Two things

[Anonymous Coward]

Only counties using electronic voting machines showed the increase.

Which suggests that Bush-leaning counties were the first to get electronic voting machines, while democratic/Kerry ones drag their asses and couldn't do it in time.

Re:Two things

[Anonymous Coward]

Jezus Fucking Christ.

I fucking *HATE* Bush and voted for Kerry, but at the same time, sick of the fucking freaks in my own party...no wonder the Republicans call California LaLaLand and act like we are a bunch of fucking nuts and imbiciles. They might have the inbred, but for gawds sake, we have genetics on our side...use your fucking brain...

"In this case the exit polls showed that people were voting for Kerry but the counts showed otherwise."

"Now what? How do we know which is true?"

Exit polls showed Kerry leading early in the morning. The Dems got out and got off their asses for once and voted enmass. Unfortunately, later in the evening, the polls showed an opposite turn around. They showed the voters leaning heavily towards Bush.

Generally the votes towards the evening don't count for much...but then again, generally polls aren't released to the public early either to avoid getting one side or the other riled up to do last minute pushes. Who were the big stars in the exit polls and releasing them on their sites before anyone else? It wasn't FauxNews for once...it was the Leftwing 'Journalists' hidden under the guise of being bloggists. Even larger named pollsters that were aiming for Kerry -- Zogby is probably the biggest and he predicted a blowout.

You stupid fucking morons give the Democratic Party a bad name. We lost, they won...they won as fair as anyone wins these days...

Mod this the fuck down...I'm posting anonymously and I just want the freaks that are convinced they are right and will be reading at -2 anyways to read this, so it won't be fucking lost on its target audience anyhow.

Re:Two things

[tji]

A. They neglect to factor in the "Hurricane effect." The President's visits and aid raised him popularity in the area.


Obviously you didn't read the article. The hurricanes effected most of Florida, not just the precincts that used electronic voting. Essentially what they are saying is that if you look at all the voting results for each county, comparing the historical voting patterns you see an increase for Bush across the board. But, the unusual thing is that the precincts using electronic voting increased at a much higher rate than those using manual ballots. They are saying the correlation between the unusual increases and electronic voting is much too broad and consistent to be an anomoly.


B. They performed the same study on Ohio and found no irregularities.


I did not know that. It didn't state this in the article (which you didn't read anyway). But, if true, this would be a strong supporting point for the case of voting fraud in Florida. If the unusual pattern was seen nowhere else, it just makes the results in Florida seem even more suspicious.

Re:Two things

[arivanov]

There is one more variable missing. It is the most obvious regression variable:

See this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3959307.stm

and this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3973197. stm

The missing variable is plain and simple: CHURCH

Re:Two things

[Obfuscant]

Why would a hurricane, cause there to be more discrepancy between who people said they voted for, coming out of the polls, and who actually was given the votes?

Who people said they voted for means nothing. If you read the Constitution carefully, you might find that "exit polls" are not listed in any form as a means of electing the President. Why not? Because exit polls can (and are) wrong, are based on non-validated data, and are done by biased individuals using private selection criteria.

Who gets asked? Whoever the pollster thinks will give a useful answer. Did that person actually vote? Who knows? They might be paid policital workers bringing other people to the polls.

I think technical errors, or voter fraud, are the most likely culprits for this statistical anomaly.

If you read the paper, you'll note that this "statistical anomaly" starts with the assumption that there was fraud, not proves it. Of course, a liberal university does a "recount" on electronic voting machines, starts with the assumption that there was fraud, and FINDS IT! What an earthshattering bit of news.

Re:Two things

[Life2Short]

Actually, the article doesn't have anything to do with polls. They're analyzing recorded votes.

Re:Two things

[The-Bus]

Plain and simple, repeat after me: Exit polls showed Bush winning .

The only exit polls which showed Kerry winning were early results from the National Exit Pool, and were only reported on sites like DrudgeReport. The problem was that taking a sliver of the NEP is completely inaccurate. There's a reason major news organizations are very conservative with the data. It's just not 100% accurate. Less so early in the day.

Of course someone will say that late at night Bush's exit poll numbers suddenly jumped up. This too, was caused by a server failure in the NEP which hadn't updated the exit poll information.

Bush did not win by mass conspiracy. There is no cover up.

Either way, the system needs to be changed.

Re:Two things

[rseuhs]

They performed the same study on Ohio and found no irregularities.

Let's make a new rule:

For an election to be official, the winner has to show that he did not cheat in at least one state. Oh yeah, "no irregularities" in a statistical analysis is all the proof we need.

Re:Two things

[krunk7]

The amazing thing about statistics is that there are all sorts of rules that take account of thest things in the formulation of what is called "significance levels". In your tiny sample example, the error would be exceptionally high leading to a distinct possibility that any result gathered from it would not extensible to any large population.

In other words, statistics agrees with your point and factors that into it's summation of significance. . .

for reference and a better working understanding of statistics refer to Stats In general though, the key terms you wish to research would be: validity and reliability.

Re:Two things

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

exit polls can (and are) wrong

True. But so are the official vote counts. The question is not, "which is authoritative." The question is, "are we being accurately represented." Don't you think that is a valid and important question to ask?

you'll note that this "statistical anomaly" starts with the assumption that there was fraud

Umm, there was fraud. There is always fraud and honest mistakes. The conclusion of the paper was the aberration was non-random, not that it was fraud. And the anomaly is tied to the electronic voting machines. Electronic voting machines are provably inaccurate. There have been dozens of verified cases now of numbers that cannot possibly be correct because the totals don't add up.

Re:Two things

[Brandybuck]

Exit polls are composed of a self-selected population, and thus mean nothing. I'll throw out a few points illustrate the problem.

1) People who vote in the morning are a different demographic than those who vote in the afternoon or evening. It is normal for the percentages to change significantly over the course of a day.

2) The employed are a different demographic than the unemployed and retired. These are also the people most likely to deselect themselves from an exit poll because they have to get to work. Since voting follows the pocketbook, the employed who aren't polled are the most likely to have voted for the incumbant.

3) People will answer incorrectly in a poll due to intimidation. Yes, intimidation. If you're in a heavily Democrat district you're less likely to publicly admit you voted Republican.

4) If you're "on a mission" you're more likely to select yourself for the poll. You've just spent the last year on mission to elect/de-elect someone, you're still going to be gungho after voting.

5) Most exit polls have built in assumptions that are frankly wrong. Their purpose is to generate news stories, not to be scientifically accurate. For example, "let's heavily poll Miami/Dade and then extrapolate for the rest of the state."

Re:Two things

[Hussman32]

And a few more

• Kerry basically said he would raise taxes on the rich, and those counties are very rich.
• Kerry did not have a Jewish vice-presidential candidate.
• Bush's bigotry on anti-gay marriage is quite popular among the heavily Catholic Latin community (yes, I know that the study 'compensated' for the Latino population).
• Kerry was rather slippery in his comments about nuclear power, and Florida Power and Light has the Turkey Point and Saint Lucie power plants. Quite a few people would be concerned for their jobs.

I'm not for the e-machine only option either, but I think Berkeley's 99.9% confidence was a bit overstated.

Re:Two things

[learn fast]

Any of the "other variables" proposed here need to satisfy two criteria to better explain this correlation:

1. It must correlate even more strongly with added Bush support
2. It must ALSO independently correlate with the presence of e-voting machines

I've seen a lot of theories that meet ONE of these criteria, but not both. What about, say, the abortion issue, why didn't the study take that into account? Are people who voted on abortion also disproportionately drawn to using e-voting machines? You need BOTH.

Re:Two things

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't just RTFA, but look at their DATA!

According to their data, on average, the counties that used paper ballots increased their votes for Bush by .02%. The counties that used the "e-touch" as they call it increased their votes for Bush by .01%

Where's the conspiracy?

Re:Two things

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

And your points one through five are more likely to occur (with 99.0% certainty) in places with electronic voting machines because? You address possible reasons for the discrepency, but not for the discrepancy only occurring in places with electronic voting machines. I think you missed the point of this analysis.

Re:Two things

[slcdb]

Perhaps the parent did read the article.

What he said, was that the study failed to factor in the hurricane, which, indeed it did fail to do. There's an outside chance that the counties hardest hit by hurricanes were largely the only ones using the new voting machines, isn't there? Did the researchers ask this question? Apparently not.

The parent's hurricane argument stands valid.

Re:Two things

[Dante333]

No not realy if you know the facts. Absentee ballots for the state where tallied in one county.

Re:Two things

[Anonymous Coward]

The only sort of things I can think of, that might account for such a discrepancy, are people not wanting to admit, to people doing polling, who it was they voted for.

I nominate, the above post, for most commas, used per sentence, ever posted, on slashdot.

I think, we could, all use, a grammar lesson.

Re:Two things

[lseltzer]

And another thing about exit polls: they're self-selecting. I've never been exit-polled, but my sister (in Delaware) was this year. There was a table outside of people and they asked her if she would answer some questions and she did. Not everybody would I'm sure. What is the effect of that? And how do the exit pollsters decide who to ask?

Re:Two things

[tbannist]

Blackboxvoting.org says otherwise, and their most recent posting shows that there seems to be deliberate voter fraud going on. You don't refuse to show citizens the signed copies of the vote tallies and then try to give them ones that are unsigned that have different totals, and dump the original copies into the trash all by accident.

There's also this report and the report that shows a significant and consistent difference in voting patterns in counties using Diebold electronic scanning machines. That's three different sources confirming that something is wrong based on three different investigative measures. How different ways does someone have to show that the totals don't add up?

Re:Two things

[tbannist]

Not quite true, exit polls are one of, if not the, primary methods of verifying election results in UN monitored elections, they are usually very accurate, for instance the percentages were spot on in the majority of states in the U.S. with only a handful of states being off by 1% or more, and as I understand it, in all of those states the exit polls favoured Kerry. That's is a statistical abnormality, not impossible but highly unlikely. If the polls are inaccurate they should represent errors on both sides of the actual vote.

It's possible that there was systemic bias in the polls, but I would like to see proof that the bias is in the polls and not the election results. It should be important enough to investigate.

Re:Two things

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I nominate, the above post, for most commas, used per sentence, ever posted, on slashdot.

I'm flattered, but I hardly think four commas is the record. Nor were any used inappropriately. There is no grammar lesson needed, although perhaps I should stop following the guidelines set down by the Chicago Manual of Style. It might be a bit wordy for a blog. ,,,,,,,,,,,,

Re:Two things

[Anonymous Coward]

You know... When these allegations first came out, the first thing I did was look at the results for the named Florida counties going back several elections. They're online, on the Florida State election results website. Unless they've been using identical voting machines since 1980, and been sneakily getting away with cheating all this time, the results are perfectly in line with expectations. I didn't bother looking farther back than that. (Not sure if they went back farther, for that matter.)

Re:Two things

[Anonymous Coward]

The exit polls now posted on CNN were 'recalibrated' after the actual results were released. These new exit polls are completely meaningless. The original uncalibrated exit polls did NOT show Bush winning.

Re:Two things

[davidescott]

CNN's exit polls do correlate very well with the final results. However this is because CNN changed their model as the day went on. The percentages you see are not the actual percent of respondents as you might imagine. To arrive at a proper exit poll one has to take the percentages and then weight them by the number of people from that area who showed up to vote.
So if you have 1 worker in Cleveland, and one in rule ohio then you dont say 90/100 votes for Kerry in Cleveland and 10/50 for Kerry in Rural farmland = 100/150 for Kerry overall if there are 10 Cleveland polling locations and 100 rural voting locations. Once you know that you say there are 900/1000 for Kerry in Cleveland and 1000/5000 for Kerry in farmcountry so there are 1900/6000 for Kerry overall.

As the day progressed and CNN and the networks got better estimates of turnout at their representative polling locations they changed their estimates. You can see this by comparing the exit polls at CNN to those of say CBS (This is the same poll different models) say for the state of Ohio:
CNN (updated 2:06pm) 2,020 Respondents
Male (47%) Bush 52% Kerry 47%
Female (53%) Bush 50% Kerry 50%


To CBS: Sample Size: 2020 Last Polled: 01:01 AM
Kerry Bush
Male 45 48
Female 55 52
CBS
CNN

Re:Two things

[VocabularyNazi]

the, comma, is, your, friend, isn't, it, ?

Re:Two things

[Brandybuck]

My points have as much relevance as your two do ("technical errors, or voter fraud").

Re:Two things

[shimmin]

The early exit polls also assigned more votes to Nader among late-deciding voters than he actually recieved from the entire electorate. Exit polling becomes flawed when pollsters, whether deliberately or subconsciously, become selective about whom they poll. The accuracy of the poll is dependent on the pollsters sticking to a methodology that selects people coming from the polling place as accurately as possible. Take short cuts, and the poll becomes quickly flawed.

Re:Two things

[plebius]

Exactly. No amount of hurricanes could cause there to be an interaction between type of voting machine and the vote percentages from the last election.

A more likely culprit is a lack of variance in type of voting machine in the high end of the distribution.

Re:Two things

[Anonymous Coward]

According to their data, on average, the counties that used paper ballots increased their votes for Bush by .02%. The counties that used the "e-touch" as they call it increased their votes for Bush by .01%

I don't see those numbers in the data. Where are they?

Re:Two things

[The-Bus]

Again, they were only "recalibrated" because NEP's servers came back online after a 4+ hour downtime. During that downtime, exit poll information changed. Can we apply Occam's Razor to this? What is more likely, that a server went down, or that hundreds of pollsters across the nation cooperated with other people and allowed some shadowy nefarious sysadmin to change all the exit numbers?

Re:Two things

[Anonymous Coward]

exit polls change

You can get unadulterated exit poll information. Use that.

Exit polls are changed to match vote counts *as a matter of standard procedure*. Makes you wonder what the point is. Maybe not intentionally to be used as a validation tool.

You are pointing to the adjusted exit poll information.

Re:Two things

[Anonymous Coward]

You tool.

CNN does not show the raw exit poll numbers! Their statistics have been adjusted by the "actual" vote counts. See:

http://www.mysterypollster.com/main/2004/11/exit _p olls_what.html

and

http://www.mysterypollster.com/main/2004/11/exit _p olls_what_1.html

Some thoughts

[daveschroeder]

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=239735 (video)

Doug Chapin, a nonpartisan election analyst, finds the claims to be baseless. "There were no problems that would lead me to believe that there were stolen elections or widespread fraud," he said.

"There was no overwhelming reason to cast doubt on the outcome of this election," seconded Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, the campaign manager for Al Gore's 2000 campaign. "George Bush got more votes this time."

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/11 /10/internet_buzz_on_vote_fraud_is_dismissed/

Much of the traffic is little more than Internet-fueled conspiracy theories, and none of the vote-counting problems and anomalies that have emerged are sufficiently widespread to have affected the election's ultimate result.

Kerry campaign officials and a range of election-law specialists agree that while machines made errors and long lines in Democratic precincts kept many voters away, there's no realistic chance that Kerry actually beat Bush.

''No one would be more interested than me in finding out that we really won, but that ain't the case," said Jack Corrigan, a veteran Kerry adviser who led the Democrats' team of 3,600 attorneys who fanned out across the country on Election Day to address voting irregularities.

''I get why people are frustrated, but they did not steal this election," Corrigan said. ''There were a few problems here and there in the election. But unlike 2000, there is no doubt that they actually got more votes than we did, and they got them in the states that mattered."

''I think it's safe to say that on the votes that were cast in Ohio, Bush won," said Dan Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University who is working with the ACLU to challenge Ohio's use of punch-card ballots. ''If the margin had been 36,000 rather than 136,000, we would have seen another post-election meltdown."

http://www.sacbee.com/state_wire/story/11436220p-1 2350492c.html

All three said their networks had set up investigative units to review any claims of voter fraud or problems with electronic voting technology this year, but that nothing significant had appeared anywhere to affect the election's outcome.

"A lot of the allegations we've looked into, they're just not true," Shapiro said. "Believe me, I'd love a juicy story about the election as much as anybody. Florida was a great story, but it's just not there this time."

A frequent charge levied after the 2000 election was voter disenfranchisement and ballot spoilage due, in large part, to antiquated, malfunctioning, or broken mechanical voting equipment. Legislation was introduced guaranteeing a minimum standard for the equipment and processes associated with voting in all jurisdictions. Since we are living in the 21st century, electronic systems were specified. $3.9 billion was set aside under HAVA to replace all mechanical punch card systems with electronic systems by 1 January, 2006. The goal is to ensure a consistency and fairness in the appearance and operation of the voting systems, both for voters and local election officials.

After the 2000 presidential election, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA):

To establish a program to provide funds to States to replace punch card voting systems, to establish the Election Assistance Commission to assist in the administration of Federal elections and to otherwise provide assistance with the administration of certain Federal election laws and programs, to establish minimum election administration standards for

Re:Some thoughts

[Saltine Cracker]

Well said. I wish I had mod points.

In many respects I think the bottom line here is accountability. The problem therein is that you can't please all the people all of the time. You also not create a fraud free system, as we know with the hacker culture, rules/systems/processes/et al. are meant to be bent and sometimes broken, and anyone who has the desire to attack the system can do so with enough effort.

I do find it very ironic that we have two distinct crowds, largely both in the Democrat leaning arena which desire to challenge the election results. There are those who want to challenge the electronic voting and those who want to challenge the paper voting. Each group implies the other system is the better system. You can't have it both ways.

No one likes to loose, and I'm not trying to rub a nose is someone's defeat. There are a many people out there who supported Kerry and who have just as deep convictions for his agenda as I do for Bush's. An old coach of mine used to say loosing builds muscle (because after a loss he'd basically kill us with PT) and character (because it should teach you to have dignity in your loss and to make sure you work hard enough not to loose the next time). I sincerely hope for the Democratic party that this election loss does both.

Re:Some thoughts

[killjoe]

There were some claims that have been argued against but none of what you are posting applies to this study. This study seems very solid.

Re:Some thoughts

[johansalk]

Doug Chapin, a nonpartisan election analyst, finds the claims to be baseless. "There were no problems that would lead me to believe that there were stolen elections or widespread fraud," he said.

What exactly is his methodology and how did he draw his conclusions? and who examined his data and methods?

Re:Some thoughts

[micromoog]

In many respects I think the bottom line here is accountability. The problem therein is that you can't please all the people all of the time. You also not create a fraud free system...

However, you can create a better system with more accountability. Which we failed to do.

Re:Some thoughts

[lucabrasi999]

Doug Chapin, a nonpartisan election analyst,
What exactly is his methodology and how did he draw his conclusions? and who examined his data and methods?

That's what I thought. Kind of like saying "Mike Hunt, a noted standup-philosopher stated that Plato was full of shit."

And, on top of that, the original article said nothing about "fraud", so I don't know why the Poster gave us about 10 paragraphs on voter fraud. And, he was modded "interesting"! I wonder if the moderators actually read either the article or the text of this poster.

Re:Some thoughts

[daveschroeder]

The point isn't whether or not there was some fraud. There has been fraud in every election since the beginning of time. I'll but the argument that unaccountable electronic systems with no paper trail make the fraud "easier", but it still has to be done on a county-by-county basis, and executed maliciously by the very same people who have always been entrusted with our elections.

Whether there was fraud or not, or in Bush's favor or not, there wasn't enough to change the outcome of the election, nor any state's electoral votes. So, while people are certainly welcome to specifically and individually prove cases of distinct fraud, it would seem that the most reasonable thing to do is to FIX THE SYSTEMS so we won't have these same discussions in November 2008.

Also, consider that Berkeley isn't quite known to be unbiased. I'm not saying they're "lying", but I doubt any of the authors of that study are, shall we say, "Bush supporters".

Re:Some thoughts

[ryanmfw]

I do find it very ironic that we have two distinct crowds, largely both in the Democrat leaning arena which desire to challenge the election results. There are those who want to challenge the electronic voting and those who want to challenge the paper voting. Each group implies the other system is the better system. You can't have it both ways.

No, no, no. Sure, some people think that the different system is better, but most people who have problems with the system do not. Even people who have a problem with electronic voting machines do not want to get rid of them, they just want to make sure that they *work*, instead of giving their vote to someone else. Paper ballots aren't too good either. When you have a candidate *surprised* about how many votes he got in a country, and many people say they accidentally voted for that candidate, you can't say they're just trying to change their vote, there really *was* a problem.

Re:Some thoughts

[daveschroeder]

If it isn't "fraud" that the Berkeley paper is alleging, then what, exactly, are they alleging?

The single quote that the grandparent picked out was just that: a single quote from an ABC story. There are plenty of other people, not the least of which would be John Kerry's 2-year, $300 million, 3600 lawyer campaign, the entire DNC, every journalist with the major media outlets who ravenously covered the Florida 2000 debacle, etc., who don't believe there was any level of fraud relevant enough to even have any possibility of altering the outcome of the election. If you want to believe those people are just shutting up "for the good of the country" or some other bullshit, be my guest.

Re:Some thoughts

[umshaggy]

I do find it very ironic that we have two distinct crowds, largely both in the Democrat leaning arena which desire to challenge the election results. There are those who want to challenge the electronic voting and those who want to challenge the paper voting. Each group implies the other system is the better system. You can't have it both ways.

No offence, but this is oversimplifying the situation, and assumes that the only choices are "paper" vs. "electronic".

Nobody (as far as I know) is against a verifiable paper trail, or the concept of a paper(physical) ballot being cast. The problems that people complain about with the old system was not that it was paper based, but thatthe paper system being used was cruddy. Likewise, people complaining about the electronic voting are complaining about the quality of the system (and lack of auditable trail). It is entirely possible to have a non-cruddy paper system (e.g. my county in MI used optical scan paper ballot, which I quite liked and thought was very simple and easy).

It isn't an issue of paper vs. electronic. It is an issue of cruddy vs. non-cruddy. When one complains about cruddy implimentation A, and it gets replaced with cruddy implimentation B, one has every right to also complain that B is also cruddy.

Re:Some thoughts

[lucabrasi999]

Who don't believe there was any level of fraud relevant enough to even have any possibility of altering the outcome of the election. If you want to believe those people are just shutting up "for the good of the country" or some other bullshit, be my guest.

And, what about my post makes you think that I believe there was any significant fraud in the election. If you re-read my post, you will find that I did not inlcude an accusation of voter fraud in my post. Please do not put words in my mouth.

My point was twofold:

You Assumed that the Berkley study was calling 'Fraud'. It does not call fraud. It points out what appear to be statistical anomolies that have a strong correlation to the use of electronic voting machines. That is not saying 'Fraud!". You read it and assumed they were screaming fraud. They weren't. If they did, they would be performing a disservice to the profession of Statistical Analysis.

You pulled a series of individuals to back up your defense of the election without providing any evidence that these people actually reviewed the election evidence in detail and, if they did, if they used scientific methods to back up their statements. Simply appearing on ABC news does not make a person into an expert.

Now that you have me started, let me point out that your support of two particular Bills before US Congress is admirable. I agree that there should be a paper trail. But, Congess did NOT provide significant funding for the new machines during the 2004 election (most States had to pick up the tab themselves). If Congress is going to require a paper trail, they damn well better provide the funding.

Re:Some thoughts

[ryanmfw]

When you have a candidate *surprised* about how many votes he got in a country, and many people say they accidentally voted for that candidate, you can't say they're just trying to change their vote, there really *was* a problem.

Well, I meant country, and I'm referring to Buchanan saying he was shocked to have such a large amount of votes in a primarily Jewish county(Miami-Dade or something?). The problem was that many people, with bad eyesight particularly, thought they were punching in Al Gore, and instead got Pat Buchanan. Not sure if this is the actual case, but it's pretty suspicious.

Re:Some thoughts

[ryanmfw]

Same typo over and over again, I meant county. God darn my fingers(I've been typing an essay on the US, so my fingers have "country" memorized in their muscles). ;-)

Re:Some thoughts

[learn fast]

Uh, what, are we just going to have to accept the fact that we're always going to do worse at electronic voting machines?

"You also not create a fraud free system, as we know with the hacker culture, rules/systems/processes/et al. are meant to be bent and sometimes broken, and anyone who has the desire to attack the system can do so with enough effort."

Yes, there will always be some fraud. Does that mean that any given amount of fraud is acceptable? When there is fraud, am I supposed to sit back, sigh, and say, "Oh, well. There will always some fraud." There will always be some wrongness in the world. So, I suppose I shouldn't care when some wrongness occurs?

"I do find it very ironic that we have two distinct crowds, largely both in the Democrat leaning arena which desire to challenge the election results. There are those who want to challenge the electronic voting and those who want to challenge the paper voting. Each group implies the other system is the better system. You can't have it both ways."

All butterfly ballots are paper ballots, but not all paper ballots are butterfly ballots. Draw a Venn diagram, if it'll help you. It is quite possible to have a ballot that is both not electronic and not a punch-card butterfly ballot. This is an obvious false dilemma.

Re:Some thoughts

[LS]

What's with all the hand waving trying to turn this into a psychological problem? The study done by Berkeley is purely statistical, and the facts speak for themselves. It has nothing to do with being sore losers.

LS

Re:Some thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you support Bush?

Re:Some thoughts

[edp927]

No one likes to loose[sic]... An old coach of mine used to say loosing builds muscle ... and character (because it should teach you to have dignity in your loss and to make sure you work hard enough not to loose the next time).

I know it's been said before, and I understand that this is meant as a metaphor, but even as such it really disturbs me. Democracy is NOT a goddamn sport! Its not a spectator sport, and its not a fucking football game.

In games, it is acceptable and good that a team might lose based on arbitrary or error-prone judges or referees. This is beacase games are for fun and entertainment, and its more fun if we don't have to stop the game every five seconds to analyze judging. Also, it underscores the fundamental lack of seriousness of games. Note that, IMHO, any games which do stop every five seconds to watch video tape are about as fun as watching cspan on a slow day.

By contrast, our election process is not intended to be fun to particpate in, or entertaining to watch. It is intended to determine grave matters of governance. We need to be firm about this, because the much of media (right-wing, left-wing, too-dumb-to-care-wing) is making a concerted effort to turn not just these elections, but our whole polotical structure into a televised sport. This is bad for america, and thereore (poor slobs) bad for the rest of the world.

Let me be clear. This is not the media's fault. we pay them to do this to us, and we need to stop. They may be "hurting america", but as long as there's a major market for it, there will always be televsion willing to stoop to our level. Especially in these times, when the seriousness and legitimacy of our democratic process -- if not our whole government -- is being eroded, we need to reject sportsmanship and spectatorism in politics. It demeans us and our government. Contesting an election, and looking into possible fraud is not going to destabiilze the government, or threaten democracy, the constitution itself acknowledges that an election is a complicated process, and has built in time (and lots of it) to figure it out before inauguration day.

Someone won this election. By most accounts, it would seem to have been Bush. The fact of the matter, however, is that there are a lot of people who dispute this, and who rightly suggest that we should probably be absolutely sure of who won the election, before we inaugurate a president. Not addressing this problem is surely a much bigger threat to the stability and legitimacy of the government

There needs to be some paper trail

[letxa2000]

I am 100% behind electronic voting and I think it can be made secure and very tamper-proof. But it has to be open source, with the code verified by both parties before the election. And there has to be a way to audit the votes without giving up secrecy of individual ballots.

Re:There needs to be some paper trail

[Anonymous Coward]

with the code verified by both parties before the election

I'm not in either party you insensitive clod!

Re:There needs to be some paper trail

[dafz1]

I agree. There has to be some type of paper trail. This is how I would do voting:

1. Voters swipe a state/government issued ID card on the voting machine, which checks eligibility(and stops multiple votes). The machine then creates a number(it could be sequential to show how many people voted on that machine).

2. Using an ATM touch screen-type interface, the person must pick one option per position race(e.g. president, senator, representative, etc.). Each race has a 1 - 10(depending on how many candidates there are, it could be 100 like the California Gubernatorial Recall election) number assigned to each candidate.

3. After all selections are made, the numbers of each candidate/issue selected will be printed after the voter number on a cash-register type tape. That way there is a paper trail.

4. After the polls close, the results are automatically uploaded to a central server which sends a printout back to the precinct tabulating the number of voters. The voting machines print out the total number of voters at the end of the tape, and this is compared to the printout.

This system, in my opinion, would be the easiest to deploy, easiest to error check, and most importantly, elimnate any "hanging chad" or other voting irregularities. It would also cut back on the number of poll workers, as the verification of eligibility would be done with the swipe machine at the polls. You would only need workers to watch so the tapes don't run out, as well as any voters who aren't registered properly.

Re:There needs to be some paper trail

[Reducer2001]

Voters swipe a state/government issued ID card
Whoa whoa whoa, stop right there.

Re:There needs to be some paper trail

[urlgrey]

"with the code verified by both parties before the election"

Open source code is really only a part of the battle, IMHO. Let's:

- review the code before the election
- throw some CRC checks for use before, at runtime, and post-election into the mix to give some surety to the binaries being untampered with
- put some real authentication in the vote tabulation process, i.e. there have been too many stories of people walking / driving memory sticks to another location to tabulate the votes. Ick.

This reminds me of the most important lesson I've ever learned in security: NEVER, EVER allow yourself to say: "It's not like...."

As soon as you say, "It's not like [insert bad thing here] would happen" or "It's not like [xxxx] would possibly switch out the memory sticks with bogus ones," you open yourself up to that very impossibilty becoming both possible and worse still, probable.

----

Re:There needs to be some paper trail

[brandonY]

Voters swipe a state/government issued ID card Like the man said, stop right there. Each race has a 1-10 Write-in candidates? Also, the idea is alright, but you have to assume the paper ballots won't be counted except in unusual circumstances. If you just change 1 in 20 votes for #2 for #1, there's a 5% change, the totals check out, etc, etc.

Re:There needs to be some paper trail

[fallendragon]

add a 5. for the paranoid:

display the results uploaded to the central server on-line so that anyone can login and verify that their sequentially numbered receipt (anonymous) shows their selections.

that way i can see that my vote was registered and that it was registered correctly. plus anyone and everyone can download all the votes and recount them at will to independantly verify them.

Re:There needs to be some paper trail

[xstonedogx]

with the code verified by both parties before the election.

You mean the Libertarians and the Greens, right?

Re:There needs to be some paper trail

[grmoc]

You're missing the possibility of program(i.e. voting program) contamination.

The best way is:

0) verify the voter is elegible, by whatever means
is allowable.
1) Vote on ATM style screen
2) ATM-machine prints out human verifiable paper result, which is behind glass.
Same paper has machine-readable results encoded.
3) Human verifies paper by looking through glass
4) Human pulls lever which allows paper to drop into ballot box.

You can substitute whatever mechanism you think is most likely to not break for step 4.

You -need- to have the voter do the verification of the vote, else the machine can simply lie about what it is printing.

Re:There needs to be some paper trail

[grimwell]

What don't you like?

If you drive, you already have a state issued ID card(aka driver's license). If you have traveled outside of the USA, you probably have a Federally issused ID(aka passport). If you have an above-board(legit) job, you have a federal tag in the form of a social security number. And are you ready for this? The social security number comes on a... card. Ooooo lookie there its a federal id card.

So, really you are already tagged by both the state & federal governments.

When you go to vote, you have to sign off next your name in the registar.

So, why does swipin your driver's license get your undies in a bunch?

Re:There needs to be some paper trail

[Reducer2001]

The social security number comes on a... card. Ooooo lookie there its a federal id card.

The issuance of a single, unique number to Americans raises the risk that the SSN will become a de jure or de facto national identifier. This risk is not new; it was voiced at the creation of the SSN and has since been raised repeatedly. The SSN was created in 1936 for the sole purpose of accurately recording individual worker's contributions to the social security fund. The public and legislators were immediately suspicious and distrustful of this tracking system fearing that the SSN would quickly become a system containing vast amounts of personal information, such as race, religion and family history, that could be used by the government to track down and control the action of citizens. Public concern over the potential for abuse inherent in the SSN tracking system was so high, that in an effort to dispel public concern the first regulation issued by the Social Security Board declared that the SSN was for the exclusive use of the Social Security system.

Social Security numbers have been perverted from there original use. I see the same thing happening with voter ID cards. That, and I just have a problem with the government forcing something on me.

Re:There needs to be some paper trail

[letxa2000]

It's really not that hard to do.

1. Eligibility is a separate issue. It could be done as-is, could be some kind of government ID card (I don't like that), but whatever. Let us assume that by some mechanism a valid voter is established.

2. Voter votes. A unique "voting ticket #" is assigned to the ballot. The vote is saved on a hard drive, it is printed behind the machine for a paper trail, and an ATM-type receipt is given to the voter which indicates his or her voting ticket # and his or her vote for each issue/race.

3. At the end of the day each precint does a complete dump of the votes where each voting ticket # is printed along with the votes of that person. This is posted at the precinct and/or published on the web.

So anyone that wants to verify that their vote was recorded correctly can look at the posting or the website and see their voting ticket # and see how it made a difference. If the data shown does not coincide with their vote they can protest it by taking their printed voting ticket. Anonymity is achieved but everyone can verify their vote was recorded correctly.

The only problem with this, of course, is the possibility of organizations offering $X for each vote for their candidate. You take your voting ticket to them and show you voted the "right way" and they pay you $X. That's a major problem.

I think the solution could be to print the ticket but with the actual vote encoded rather than printed in plain English. You know how you voted and if what you see published doesn't coincide with your vote you take your ticket to the election officials where their machines could decrypt the voting ticket # and see whether it coincided with what was published or not. But a normal idiot paying $X per vote wouldn't be able to look at the ticket and verify who you voted for.

Of course they could look at the published record and look up your voting number. In that case I think the solution would be enforcement. Investigate anyone that seems to be checking an unusual number of votes at the precint.

Re:There needs to be some paper trail

[Anonymous Coward]

Both of those are opt-in ID's. If you choose not to drive, you need not get a driver's license. If you choose not to work, you need not participate in social security. You might have a hard time eating...

I think we should have a federal ID, used for purposes such as voting and international travel. But we should have a national debate about it rather than shoehorn other ID's/numbers that were specifically guaranteed NOT to be ID numbers when they were designed. Also, federal highway money should be used for highways only. Not to blackmail states into nationalizing id's and drinking ages.

Statistical?

[LEgregius]

So they used demographics and past elections to show that Bush got too many votes? Wouldn't counting the actual votes be the way to tell if he got too many votes? Perhaps it should say that Bush got 130-260k more votes than expected?

Re:Statistical?

[arodland]

Read the abstract, if not the actual paper; it's a little deeper than that. It says that Bush got more votes than expected, and that the counties where he got larger-than-expected numbers of votes are the same counties that used electronic voting, to a statistically significant level.

Re:Statistical?

[garcia]

Wouldn't counting the actual votes be the way to tell if he got too many votes?

Tough to do that when the votes were counted by machines that have no paper audit trail. If you are saying that we should trust the data "gathered" from the machines themselves then you have missed the point.

I do agree that their methods were silly and pointless but the fact that we SHOULD have had paper audit trails AND the option to NOT use these machines is inexcusable.

Re:Statistical?

[BlacKat]

Yes, counting ALL the votes would be a great way to tally up an election to ensure the winner, well actually WON.

However, there is a small problem... see, the nice new "e-voting" machines have one fatal flaw... THERE IS NO PAPER TRAIL... period.

So, when you want to do a recount, you just have to *trust* the numbers the machine gives you are right. :(

Ah well, unless someone actually gets a clue expect to see many more presedintal appoint... erm, elections.

Re:Statistical?

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's impossible to count the actual number of votes. The only data available is a number in a database supposedly coming from the election machines. Do you see the problem?

Re:Statistical?

[LEgregius]

Yeah, I RTFA, but the slashdot article didn't suggest that at all. I have no answers about what why that occurred. If it were a conspiracy, it could just as easily be that people in the punchcard areas threw away bush votes as it could be that the Electronic voting machines were tampered with. So could it be that Bush got too FEW votes?

Re:Statistical?

[Anonymous Coward]

For something that claims to be a statistical analysis, a statement like this screams of bullshit.

"We can be 99.9% sure that these effects are not attributable to chance."

Err....and how do you arrive at this 99.9% confidence? Oh yeah, that's because you are extreme left wing Bezurkley.

Re:Statistical?

[general_re]

It says that Bush got more votes than expected, and that the counties where he got larger-than-expected numbers of votes are the same counties that used electronic voting, to a statistically significant level.

Why assume that 1996/2000 is somehow "correct"? One can equally well explain such a discrepancy by positing that problems with paper/mechanical balloting in 1996/2000 caused "excess" votes for Democrats in those counties, a phenomenon that was corrected by the deployment of electronic balloting.

There's no real control group here, and assuming that one election forms a true baseline which you can use to judge subsequent elections is just that - an assumption, unsupported by any real evidence.

Re:Statistical?

[adamh526]

Wouldn't counting the actual votes be the way to tell if he got too many votes?

Yes, I'd think that would be a better method. I don't know how many people are aware since this hasn't been in the mainstream news, but they ARE having recounts in Ohio and New Hampshire.

Re:Statistical?

[kovarg]

Maybe the ignorant, impoverished Democrats couldn't figure out how to use these new-fangled electronic deals.
C'mon leave FL alone. We were the ass in 2000. Enough Democratic reitrees have died since then and we were able to have a reasonably fair election this time. Shouldn't we be picking on the buckeye farmers or something?

Re:Statistical?

[HitSkyn]

How about the counties with electronic voting are wealthier which often means they are more likely to vote republican.

Re:Statistical?

[Entrope]

There is one hell of a big difference between saying "statistically significant correlation" and "causal relationship." There are a large number of other significant variables that they have not and cannot control or account for: Nader, population of these counties, differences in turnout, other demographic effects, the alleged "hurricane effect" and more. It is grossly irresponsible for them to jump from finding a statistically interesting discrepancy to implying (as they do in their synopsis) that Bush should not have gotten hundreds of thousands of votes.

Bush got a significant number more votes in 2004 than in 2000. That correlates with how long he spent in office, and some of his biggest gains were in states that went for Kerry this year. That does not establish any kind of causal relationship; it does not mean that Democrats who voted for Nader or Gore in 2000 voted for Bush in 2004 because they decided he was a nice guy after all.

These statisticians would be much more useful doing something besides counting coincidences: They could look for real evidence of vote fraud or work on a better e-voting system.

Re:Statistical?

[killjoe]

This study seems to show that the election was not "reasonably fair".

Re:Statistical?

[bnenning]

How about the counties with electronic voting are wealthier which often means they are more likely to vote republican.

Yeah, what he said. This is silly. Almost every poll up to the day of the election showed Bush with a slight lead. The exit polls showed Kerry with a moderate lead, and the actual votes ended up with Bush in a slight lead. The outlier isn't the final vote count, it's the exit polls.

Re:Statistical?

[Daeyin]

No, they used demographics and past elections to show that in counties that used electronic voting there was a statistically significant trend towards a larger number of Bush votes than Kerry votes

In a nice, random system there should have been no noticeable pattern to vote distribution in regards to electronic vs. paper ballots. That is to say: in some places where electronic voting was used Bush got a similar number of votes, in some places a lesser number of votes, and in some places a larger number of votes compared to last election's results.

This statement would also be true when comparing paper based ballots: in some places where paper based voting was used Bush got a similar number of votes, in some places a lesser number of votes, and in some places a larger number of votes compared to last election's results.

Statistically, this is what you would expect to happen if paper and electronic voting systems do the exact same thing (i.e. accurately record who a person voted, record no more votes than were placed for a candidate, and record no fewer votes than were placed for a candidate).

The fact that there is a paper based voting showed this randomness trend, but electronic did not is extremely disturbing for anyone interested in the will of the people being accurately carried out by the system.

This basically means that if you were to pick, at random, an electronically placed voted it's chance of being for Bush is higher than it's chance of being for Kerry when compared to the smaller subgroup (paper based votes) or when compared to the larger supergroup (all votes placed in Florida).

All this does is a show a trend and cannot offer an explanation. The trend alone is enough, in my mind, to want some way of independently verifying vote results.

Re:Statistical?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, there's a control group you can use:

Count the number of party registrations vs cast ballots. Compare the percentages. They don't add up in some Florida counties.

Why do you think Gerrymandering works so damn well? You *know* how people are going to vote and where they live, engineering elections is *insanely* easy knowing this.

The best part is that these allegations take time to investigate. And by the time it's proven true, everyone has accepted the outcome and been group-think'ed into believing it was a kosher election.

Re:Statistical?

[kovarg]

I believe the election in FL is as fair as the Berkley analysis of said election.

Re:Statistical?

[Anonymous Coward]

And I believe calling you an ignorant fool is as fair as say, a study saying McDonald's is bad for you. You're point? :-)

Re:Statistical?

[Anonymous Coward]

"ignorant fool"

"You're point?"

Who's ignorant?

Re:Statistical?

[kovarg]

I love living in a country that allows freedom of belief. I believe I would like to kick you squarely in the groin!

Re:Statistical?

[general_re]

Count the number of party registrations vs cast ballots. Compare the percentages. They don't add up in some Florida counties.

That doesn't tell you anything, and it certainly isn't evidence of fraud or wrongdoing. In a lot of respects, each election is a unique event unto itself - the state of the world, current events, particular controversies, and the caliber and character of the candidates all come together to influence the eventual outcome. Yes, there are detectable trends some of the time, but it's a wholly unwarranted assumption to think of those trends as being fixed and immutable - nothing is written in stone, and four years is a long time in politics.

Re:Statistical?

[Life2Short]

"It says that Bush got more votes than expected, and that the counties where he got larger-than-expected numbers of votes are the same counties that used electronic voting, to a statistically significant level."

The only troubling thing I see in the study is the fact that the dependent variable is "the change in percent voting for Bush by county from 2000 to 2004." At first this makes sense. You're looking for places where Bush got more of the vote than you would have expected. But a potential problem is that the dependent variable here is relying on the belief that the recorded 2000 vote was accurate. We already have a reason to believe that those numbers were screwed up. For example, people were recorded as voting Buchanan when they meant to vote Gore. The findings suggest that electronic voting is the culprit, when a competing hypothesis might be that the counties who "screwed up" in 2000 (with "hanging chads," etc.) were more likely to implement electronic voting as a solution to their woes, and it's their screwed up 2000 numbers that are responsible for the difference found between the 2000 & 2004 results. We also need to consider that according to numbers found on Wikipedia and CNN, about 1.5 million more people voted in 2004 (7.5 million) than 2000 (just under 6 million). That's an increase of 25%. That's a pretty big deal.

Re:Statistical?

[ryanmfw]

No, actually, the day before the election, they had Kerry winning 298 to 231. That was *before* the exit polls. How is that a slight Bush lead again?

Re:Statistical?

[ryanmfw]

Yes, why analyze the system when it works out perfectly for your candidate?

Bush got a significant number more votes in 2004 than in 2000.

So did Kerry(well, got a significantly larger vote than Gore did). That's not much of a point. Really, your post doesn't go against anything the study showed. It's just hand waving. :-)

Re:Statistical?

[ryanmfw]

They couldn't count the votes again, as they were electronic ballots! You can't recount the same number. There was no paper trail to tally up again. This is the only method that you can really use, besides an analysis of the machines, which is what blackboxvoting.org is trying to do.

Re:Statistical?

[rseuhs]

Why assume that 1996/2000 is somehow "correct"? One can equally well explain such a discrepancy by positing that problems with paper/mechanical balloting in 1996/2000 caused "excess" votes for Democrats in those counties, a phenomenon that was corrected by the deployment of electronic balloting.

Wrong, because it affected only the electronic counties of 2004.

Re:Statistical?

[theonetruekeebler]

So maybe all that proves is that it was Republicans that were having trouble with paper ballots back in 2000. At any rate my understanding is that despite there being more Democrats than Republicans registered in these counties, they have nonetheless gone to Republican Presidents since Eisenhower.

The Republicans' secret weapon has always been that despite there being more registered Democrats, Republicans are more likely to vote. Conservatives in general are more likely to vote---you can chalk this up to whatever flamebait-accusation you want, that youth don't vote, that liberals are to busy smoking dope and enticing minors to get to the polls, whatever. And when the pollster calls and asks "are you likely to vote", everybody says they're a "likely voter." The road to hell is paved with good intentions and skipped elections.

Folks, as fun as it would be to put quotation marks around "President" when referring to Bush, he won this time. And chances are he won in 2000 as well. Sucks, maybe, but there it is.

Re:Statistical?

[general_re]

Wrong, because it affected only the electronic counties of 2004.

Exactly so - you didn't really read what I wrote, did you? ;)

That's the whole point, and that's why it's an equally good explanation - it only affected the electronic counties in 2004. Let me spell it out - the problems with paper/mechanical ballots resulted in excess votes for Democrats in lots of precincts in 1996 and 2000, but only the electronic precincts eliminated those errors in 2004. So only the electronic precincts show the discrepancy, and the rest of the precincts still reflect the problems with paper/mechanical ballots in that existed in 2000. Get it?

And the nice thing is, there's just as much evidence to support that explanation as there is to support the explanation that there was a problem with the electronic ballots - none whatsoever.

Re:Statistical?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, there are detectable trends some of the time

Sorry, but please inform yourself and go read up on Gerrymandering. It's been on /. a few times (before there was even a politics.slashdot.org) and really needs to be more known by the public.

Yes, 4 years is a long time in politics. HOWEVER! Lets evaluate voting habits:

#1. The chances of a person moving between dwellings within a 4-year period is actually fairly low (this varies, of course, from county to county. 'higher class' counties with established families, etc, are very unlikely to change a lot in this respect)

#2. The chances of a person voting the same as their party registration is VERY high. These party registrations are very well known.

#3. Even if you aren't registered with a party, you are quite likely to vote the same between two elections. There are a variety of ways to tie your vote to your address, even without a party registration (exit polls, telephone surveys, etc).

These trends, and others, are amazingly useful for understanding and predicting elections. There is a sector of the software industry that specializes in developing models of voter habits, and uses those models to show you where to redraw voting district lines for YOUR benefit. Let me give you a realllllly quick math example:

1000 voters, divided into 10 voting precints of 100 voters. Currently, all voting districts are exactly 50-50 D-R. If you can redraw the lines so that the numbers look like this:

1. 60-40
2. 60-40
3. 60-40
4. 60-40
5. 60-40
6. 60-40
7. 60-40
8. 27-73
9. 27-73
10. 26-74

Add the totals up, you still have 500 D's and 500 R's (I won't say which is which, else people will accuse me of partisanship, when both parties have been known to do this). However, you've just managed to turn an entirely divided electorate into a 'landslide' (7 vs. 3 counties).

Yes, I know I'm talking about Gerrymandering when the topic was electoral predictions. However, they are based on similar principles. Understanding prior voting habits is one of the cornerstones of modern politics. It's why we have 'battleground' states.

Re:Statistical?

[plebius]

If you look at the graph, there are only a few counties at the upper range, so I wonder if the results are just a statistical artifact due to range restrictions and/or a lack of variability in voting methods in counties with more democrats.

In other words, even though statistically significant, they might be violating an assumption of regression analysis.

Re:Statistical?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that in Florida and other southern states it is well known that a lot of registered democrats vote republican.

Re:Statistical?

[skids]

Well, so far the only direct evidence we have suggests that the votes the people in the punch card states were throwing away belonged to Kerry, not Bush. So so much for that theory.

See blackboxvoting.com's Tuesday news article.

Re:Statistical?

[skids]

Damn! I pulled a Cheny! blackboxvoting.org .ORG. And I was so proud of myself for never having done that before.

Re:Statistical?

[scot4875]

Except that in Florida and other southern states it is well known that a lot of registered democrats vote republican ...

... whether they like it or not!

--Jeremy

Re:Statistical?

[Entrope]

My point -- which you apparently missed entirely -- was that the study doesn't show anything useful. It makes an observation. It does not explain the observation and it does not attempt to explain the observation, but the synopsis implies that somehow Bush stole hundreds of thousands of votes in Florida. At least you realize the study is just hand waving.

Re:Statistical?

[CrowScape]

Have you ever heard of a Dixicrat before? These are people who have been registered Democrats all their lives who have been consistantly voting Republican for the past few decades. They probably don't even realize that they're still registered as Democrats. Guess what? There's a hell of a lot of them in those Florida counties.

Also, it should be noted that in the Miami area, which is where Berkley is wasting (hopefully non-taxpayer) money "looking into" the votes, is one of the few places in the country where the results actually matched the exit poll data (which, nationally, favored Kerry).

Sorry folks. Nothing to see here.

Re:Statistical?

[MechaStreisand]

Statistically, this is what you would expect to happen if paper and electronic voting systems do the exact same thing (i.e. accurately record who a person voted, record no more votes than were placed for a candidate, and record no fewer votes than were placed for a candidate).

Except that that would only happen if the electronic voting systems were placed randomly - and they were very much not. So the fact that randomly chosen votes are more likely to be for Bush if electronic than if not doesn't mean anything, unless you can account for that placement.

Re:Statistical?

[killjoe]

Feel free to believe anything you want. You probably believe that lettign gays get married is threatening your marriage.

Re:Statistical?

[Anonymous Coward]

For example, people were recorded as voting Buchanan when they meant to vote Gore

IIRC, Buchanan got 20,000 votes in 2000. The discrepancy was 130,000 votes.

The high turnout is certainly a good point. However, high turnout typically favors Democrats. Also, you need to look at turnout as it relates to counties with electronic versus non-electronic voting machines.

Re:Statistical?

[vkevlar]

One other point that you've missed; they can't count the actual votes in those counties that show the largest statistical deviation from their exit polls, as the machines used have no paper trail.
Say it with me: the only records in those counties, other than the exit polls, are in the machines believed to be fraudulent by design.

Re:Statistical?

[Alsee]

it could just as easily be that people in the punchcard areas threw away bush votes as it could be that the Electronic voting machines were tampered with.

Either way it would be rate a priority 1 investigation and having the people responsible thrown in pound-you-in-the-ass federal prison.

And to go back to your earlier post:
Wouldn't counting the actual votes be the way to tell if he got too many votes?

Good idea. Except that the machines in question have REMOVED the ability to do any such recount in those counties.

-

Re:Statistical?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we all know that proof never comes out of observation. Of course, would you say Fox News was hand waving with it's implications of Kerry's "frenchness"? Of course, observation is the first step towards explaining something. The synopsis explained a possible cause of the observation. Is that hand waving? If it is, then so were all of the WMDs in Iraq.

Neat idea!

[gtrubetskoy]

Totally the way to put all the electoral college debates to rest and to eliminate all issues relating to electronic voting security once and for all! Just calculate the election outcome using the ordinary-least-squares regression model (OLS) with and without robust standard errors, exactly as the paper says. Why couldn't we think of this sooner?

Re:Neat idea!

[idontgno]

Well, I for one welcome our new statistically-selected overlords.

At least it seems likely that I do.

Re:Neat idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out some of the short stories in Isaac Asimov's Robot Dreams. Very similar idea there with the Multivac deciding elections.

Re:Neat idea!

[dedeman]

Statistical evidence shows that in Democratic Florida, the vote casts you!!

Re:Neat idea!

[helix400]

Well, if you wanted to take it one step further, you could weigh the variables!

Now before you say "Whoa! That's crazy talk! Weighing variables to take population size into account? That's too hard!" Don't worry, our Berkeley students who are masters of statistics, pulled it off! It wasn't easy though, the said it was a "complicated" procedure...

Re:Neat idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone else find it interesting that in MATLAB R14 documentation there is an example for the Curve Fitting Toolbox:

Example: Robust Fit

This example fits data that is assumed to contain one outlier. The data consists of the 2000 United States presidential election results for the state of Florida. The fit model is a first degree polynomial and the fit method is robust linear least squares with bisquare weights.

In the 2000 presidential election, many residents of Palm Beach County, Florida, complained that the design of the election ballot was confusing, which they claim led them to vote for the Reform candidate Pat Buchanan instead of the Democratic candidate Al Gore. The so-called "butterfly ballot" was used only in Palm Beach County and only for the election-day ballots for the presidential race. As you will see, the number of Buchanan votes for Palm Beach is far removed from the bulk of data, which suggests that the data point should be treated as an outlier.

To get started, load the Florida election result data from the file flvote2k.mat, which is provided with the toolbox.

...

Coincidence? Or do students now find that lifting documentation examples is a great way to generate publicity ...?

UC Berkeley

[ruiner5000]

We are lucky that these results come from the most non partisian and level headed learning institution and region in the nation.

Re:UC Berkeley

[antiMStroll]

Disproof by ad hominem? It doesn't matter if Kim Jong-il penned the study, all that does matter are the numbers on the paper. Anything else is worthless.

Re:UC Berkeley

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, its not like berkeley is the #2 research university in the world or anything reputable like that.

Oh, wait. They are.

Re:UC Berkeley

[Brandybuck]

Nonsense! It's called "bias". No matter how correct the numbers in the paper are, they are not ALL the correct numbers.

And before you object, "bias" is not synonymous with "lying". You can be 100% accurate and truthful and still be biased.

Re:UC Berkeley

[LS]

Yes, I know you are joking, but how does it feel to be a robot? I've read several articles that predicted jokers like you would come out and make light of the fact that the study came out of Berkeley. If you are not aware, so did BSD. Is BSD some flakey project built by partisan nutcases? NO, and your perpetuation of a stereotype does nothing but muddle the truth.

LS

Re:UC Berkeley

[wondafucka]

It's not that UC Berkely is Partisan, it's that the Left is firmly based upon science and learning and the Right is based upon...well self serving principles of circumlocution.

Oh, and before you rip on socialism, just remember all the aspects of life that the right wing wants to control.

In relation to your sig, whenever you hear Bush speak, replace "Freedom" with "American Imperialism" and it all makes sense.

Don't even bother replying or modding, I am well aware of my spelling and grammar errors, and how stupid I sound.

Re:UC Berkeley

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that BSD came from Berkeley does nothing to help your argument. The quality of computer operating systems and the quality of a highly partisan political paper have little or nothing to do with each other...unless you use the Slashdot population as some indicator...which would definitely support the original claim that Berkeley is biased towards the democratic party.

How can you even think up an argument this flawed?

Re:UC Berkeley

[El]

In relation to your sig, whenever you hear Bush speak, replace "Freedom" with "American Imperialism" and it all makes sense. No argument there, Bush uses the word "freedom" as an empy buzzword with apparently no connection to it's real meaning. However, you are taking the quote out of context -- Dick Cheney said this in the context of questions about gay marriage, in essence defending his lesbian daughter's right to marry whomever she choses. In other words, he disagrees with the President and does NOT support a federal constitional ammendment designed to restrict the rights of certain individuals. I despise Cheney as much as you do, but in this case he said something that actually made sense. And by the way, "The People's Republic of Berkeley" is a long-standing joke in California, particularly amongst Stanford University students...

For the record, I'm a Libertarian, not a Republican, and I didn't vote for Bush. That means I agree with some of the right's ideas on personal responsibility and fiscal conservative, while at the same time agreeing with leftist views about personal freedom. The political spectrum isn't as one-dimensional as most people try to make it.

Re:UC Berkeley

[LS]

My gosh, I can see why you posted anonymously, because your brain damaged logic abilities are showing clearly. Here's my point for the logically challenged: Just because a place is partison in general doesn't mean that the individual at that place is of the same leaning. What evidence do you have that this paper is a "partisan political" paper? It's simply stating derivations based on cold hard data. If I write a paper stating that 65% of voters in Arkansas are Republican, does that mean I'm a Republican? No, you illogical dick-weed.

Re:UC Berkeley

[KarmaMB84]

They assume that people are robots and have no free will and no choice but to follow past trends?

Re:UC Berkeley

[ruiner5000]

Funny, all of my web servers run FreeBSD, since 1998 we have used it. Try again won't you?

Re:UC Berkeley

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a good scientist does not make you suddenly non-partizan and unbiased.

Idiot.

Re:UC Berkeley

[ruiner5000]

wow, generalizations are suited so well to posts that will be forgotten as soon as it falls off the front page.

Re:UC Berkeley

[strike2867]

No, being a good scientist makes you against Bush

Re:UC Berkeley

[Anonymous Coward]

If they let a non-partisan group do the "research", that would have the appearance of being "fair", and as we well know, liberals don't want anything to do with "fair".

Just look at how they gripe about Fox News because it's "fair and balanced". Yes, you bed-wetting faggots, Fox is FAIR. It only seems unfair from your far, far, far, far, far, left position.

It's a damn shame

[ThomasFlip]

that mainstream media won't cover this, or make a big deal out of it.

Re:It's a damn shame

[Zygote-IC-]

Yeah, that damned conservative media always causing problems.
Remember that time CBS used forged documents to try and smear Kerry's military records?

Ooooh...wait...nevermind.

Re:It's a damn shame

[adamh526]

I'm not surprised our (liberal) mainstream media won't cover this. I bet the Democrat's hands are just as dirty in this election as many claim the Republican's to be. First you say the Republicans cheated. They fight back and say the Democrats cheated. Turns out, they're both right. Now everyone knows our political system is beyond corrupted. The whole thing goes to hell. Rest assured though that enough people are making a big deal out of it that it can't go totally unnoticed.

Re:It's a damn shame

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember that time CBS used forged documents to try and smear Kerry's military records?

Or how about that time that Karl Rove used CBS to smear the media into looking like a bunch liberal nincompoops?

Bad source.

[JavaLord]

Researchers at UC Berkeley have crunched numbers and determined that 130,000-260,000 excess votes went to Bush in Florida

If it came from a less biased source I might believe it. Also 130,000 to 260,000 is a large gap for a statistical study.

Re:Bad source.

[dema]

If it came from a less biased source I might believe it.

And if electronic voting came from a less biased source I might believe it.

Re:Bad source.

[Anonymous Coward]

reading the analysis, they clculated up to 130,000 votes less than expected- possibly reflecting those votes counted for bush, or 260,000

Re:Bad source.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you bother to read this, it says that 130k too many went to Bush, creating an error of 260k if you assume that the 130k too many that were attributed to Bush were actually votes for Kerry.

Also, check out http://www.recountnow.com/ for a couple of interesting graphs.

Re:Bad source.

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA you dolt. 130,000 is for extra votes not from an actual voter whereas 260,000 is for votes for Kerry counted as votes for Bush.

It's not enough to be skeptical... you also need to investigate.

Re:Bad source.

[Wizzo1138]

Even if you assume they are correct, if Bush lost 300,000 votes, he still won Florida by 100,000 votes.

Re:Bad source.

[rev063]

Also 130,000 to 260,000 is a large gap for a statistical study.

This is, simply put, a stupid statement and shows that the poster has not idea what a "statistical study" is.

The size in the error of the prediction can be "large" or "small" in any statistical study. It simply depends on the sampling error and the amount of error explained by the covariates. To say that the error is "large" here is simply stating this fact. I'm making no judgement about whether this study is good or not, but simply noting that the error is large is no basis for making that judgement.

And yes, I am a statistician.

Re:Bad source.

[Life2Short]

Less biased? How so? They publish the source of all of their numbers. They are sources that are readily available to anyone with a web browser and a library card. If you think they cheated, go check the numbers. They publish the raw data on the site and tell you the tests they used. If you think they're cheating, do the calculations yourself. As far as the "large gap for a statistical study," again, how so? According to CNN there were 7,507,727 votes cast in FL. The difference between 130,000 and 260,000 gives us a gap of 130,000. Relative to the data set that we have here, that would be a gap of less than 2% (1.73 to be more precise) of the numbers we're talking about. In what sense is that a "large gap for a statistical study?" If you've got a specific criticism - great! let's hear it.

Re:Bad source.

[kovarg]

I clicked on your link and I found nothing indicating bias on that page. Got a link to something worth reading? Oh and please not that same tired old quote about delivering the votes for Bush

Re:Bad source.

[b-baggins]

Because, of course, we all know that Diebold was allowed to manufacture the voting machines, write the software and set up the vote tabulation systems without any government oversight or any adherence to Federal Elections laws at all, that no audits were done, and that all government regulations concerning contracting sensitive software were completely ignored, because, well, you know, Bush was selected King by the Supreme Court in 2000. But, you see, he's a really stupid king because he held an election anyway and only won 289 electoral college votes and squeaked a bare majority in the popular vote despite being King and having all the voting machine companies in his back pocket.

Re:Bad source.

[dema]

I clicked on your link and I found nothing indicating bias on that page.

Bingo. To call either biased is purely speculation, niether I nor the parent provided any facts to back the statement up. The point of my reply was to emphasis that for the mods, and it apprently worked now that parent is +1 instead of +5 (:

Re:Bad source.

[skids]

"Also 130,000 to 260,000 is a large gap for a statistical study."

You have to RTFA to get this point -- they didn't study the Kerry side of the equation. As such, they didn't know whether the alleged error/hack/whatever in the e-voting machines simply added votes to Bush, or for each vote added, also subtracted votes for Kerry. So saying "130,000 to 260,000" is an oversimplification. What they mean is, 130,000 *or* 260,000.

Re:Bad source.

[skids]

Erm, apologies. I guess there are plenty of -1, redundant points deserved for many of us here :-)

Re:Bad source.

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah if you were going to rig an election you should make it so you get all the votes!!! not only 289! no one would suspect you then! 289 is teh suck

retard

Why Berkeley?

[mikeophile]

Berkeley has a fine school and all, but don't you think that it's liberal reputation (deserved or not) might provide the argument that the research is partisan?

Re:Why Berkeley?

[notcreative]

A liberal reputation does not "prove" anything about the argument. Read up on "ad hominem" logical fallacies. Their evidence is publicly available and the research paper makes a statistical analysis. If you want to attack their conclusion, please make a comment relevant to the analysis or its assumptions.

Re:Why Berkeley?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oops! I bet they forgot to uncheck the "partisan" box in SPSS before they statistically analyzed the data.

Re:Why Berkeley?

[eyeye]

All schools are liberal because intelligent people work and visit there.

Dumbasses are generally republicans.

Re:Why Berkeley?

[iceperson]

Did they run out of crap to freeze?

Re:Why Berkeley?

[ifwm]

How long have you been with the GOP? Sounds like you're a lifer to me.

Re:Why Berkeley?

[iceperson]

Actually it's because the livelyhood of the people who "work" there depends on government funding.

Re:Why Berkeley?

[dhakbar]

This attitude is why the slightly more liberal John Kerry lost.

Good job, fucking it up for the rest of us, you arrogant prick.

Re:Why Berkeley?

[mikeophile]

I'm quite familiar with the ad hominem logical fallacy. But to assume that my posting is a form of attack is a non sequeteur to my point.

You and I understand logic, but logical thought apparently does not preclude assumptions.

If logical thinkers were in the majority in America, Bush would almost certainly have lost.

Re:Why Berkeley?

[pherris]

Because Berkeley is one the best schools in the world. Yes, there are "Berkeley" politics in and around the community but for the vast, vast majority of the time their scientific research is nonpartisan and beyond reproach.

Re:Why Berkeley?

[bfields]

Berkeley has a fine school and all, but don't you think that it's liberal reputation (deserved or not) might provide the argument that the research is partisan?

The liberal reputation may well be deserved. So what? If the only people allowed to do research on questions of political import are people with no political opinions whatsoever, well, that's not going to leave us with many qualified researchers.

The linked-to paper tells exactly where they got all their data and how they analyzed it; I don't see any reason you couldn't reproduce every step if you wanted to. They've done their homework; now if you're skeptical (as I think you should be--I am too!) you need to do yours. If the liberal reputation is what motivates you to take a closer look, fine, but now you need to dig into the research and figure out what's actually wrong with it. I'm sure you understand this, but just to make it completely clear--"they're probably liberals" isn't in itself a meaningful argument.

--Bruce Fields

Re:Why Berkeley?

[ruiner5000]

This is the exact level headed and tolerant views that 48% of America possesses. Attitudes like this will surely help leading us to the new UNtopia of the coming decades as they begin their new Oil for Peace program. As conservatives, as independants, and libertarians, let us all kneel down before our humbly superior Democratic brethren and allow them to show us the way.

Fuck! When, Lord when? When's gonna be my time?"

Re:Why Berkeley?

[Anonymous Coward]

err ... you do realise that The University of Berkeley (a CA state institution) and The City of Berkeley (a city in its own right) are different entities right? maybe you're confusing the names - it's a bit like confusing UCLA and LA and thinking they are the same thing

Re:Why Berkeley?

[Rimbo]

I realize you're trying to make a joke, and that a number of people will find this funny... people you might not expect, and for very different reasons than you think.

Your joke reinforces a belief most Americans have: That left-leaning people think they have all of the answers and that anyone who disagrees with them are idiots. I've had a friend even honestly admit as much to me: That anyone who disagreed with him was either stupid or evil.

Not does arrogance not win you any friends, it doesn't win you any votes. Not winning people's votes is deadly in Democracy.

People who voted for Bush were not ignorant of his faults, nor did they vote for him because of his faults. Nobody likes a know-it-all, and voting for Bush was a protest against the actors and rock musicians and college professors who told them that they were idiots if they liked George W. Bush or his policies -- that getting rid of Bush was more important than who we replaced him with. It doesn't matter if they ARE idiots. By telling them they are for even considering it, the people trying to get rid of Bush doomed themselves, exactly the same way the people trying to ditch Clinton doomed themselves in 1996.

So your joke is funny, but it is Karl Rove who is laughing, all the way to the White House, Congress, and soon the Supreme Court. You're playing right into Rove's hands.

Stop making this so easy for him, so that maybe we can avoid turning into a permanent one-party State.

Re:Why Berkeley?

[GreatBunzinni]

Statistical analysis isn't like politics. It is mathematics, which is an exact science. If you suspect that the research is biased there is a way for you or anyone which is interested to confirm the results.

Re:Why Berkeley?

[spacey]

Right... the government is paying for grants universities because they don't get weapons, medicine, science and more out of it. They're just throwing money at rich lefty elites who like to look down at folks. Unlike the stand-up folks in private business like haliburton, global crossing, enron, and other down-to-earth right wing pillars of our society.

You jackass.

You know, there's this thing called the internet that some people "work"ing at universities came up with. I hear its kinda helping the economy.

-Peter

Re:Why Berkeley?

[Obfuscant]

If you want to attack their conclusion, please make a comment relevant to the analysis or its assumptions.

The "analysis" is gobbledygook and starts with the assumption of fraud. It uses meaningless numbers (such as: how many people voted for Dole, who didn't happen to be running in this election) and came up with meaningless numbers.

It's not as if anyone can point to one critical failure in their logic. The entire process they went through was designed to come up with the answer they got, because they cannot imagine any reason other than fraud for why their candidate lost.

Re:Why Berkeley?

[Anonymous Coward]

A liberal reputation does not "prove" anything about the argument.

Why did you put the word "prove" in quotation marks? Maybe you should re-read mikeophile's post again.

mikeophile wrote: "Berkeley has a fine school and all, but don't you think that it's liberal reputation (deserved or not) might provide the argument that the research is partisan?"

Now, where do you see anything about proving or proofs of any kind?

Perhaps you should try reading (not skimming!) a post before replying to it --- especially if you intend to take up such an accusatory tone.

Re:Why Berkeley?

[Kaboom13]

Just because it can be part of an ad hominem attack doesn't make it worthless. In the lack of the knowledge of statistics neccesary to directly critique their work, Berkeley's famous liberal leanings can provide context for the work. Fox News is known for it's conservative bias. Do you automatically trust everything they report? Or do you wait until it is confirmed by their peers. This is the same situation. There is a logical reason to distrust the accuracy of their work, and 99% of people lack the statistics background neccesary to check it. If Stephen Hawking cam forward with a paper proving Albert Einstein was the second coming of Jesus, using advanced theoretical physics, I would not believe it. Although the known liberal bearing is not evidence in itself, it is cause for suspicion. To point out that known liberal bias is not offtopic. Bias in academia is very real, the system of peer review is to help weed it out, but this paper was produced by students and sent straight to the media, without any review.

Re:Why Berkeley?

[slcdb]

Berkeley Researcher #1: So, we've proved that President Bush received a disproportionately high number of votes. Now what should we do?

Berkeley Researcher #2: Let's drop some acid!

Berkeley Researcher #1: Okay!

You're telling me that's not relevant?

Re:Why Berkeley?

[Just Some Guy]

Indeed. Every time I decide that the talking heads on TV are the only ones who really believe themselves mentally superior to Republicans, some jackass like this comes along and makes me want to choke a Democrat.

On behalf of annoyed conservatives everywhere, thank you for your strong and quick response; it's reassuring to hear that those condescending beliefs aren't universal. I'll cheerfully debate ideas with a peer, but I have nothing but contempt for people who call me an idiot because of my political stance.

Re:Why Berkeley?

[r00t]

A logical thinker doesn't jump from the frying pan
into the fire just to try something new. Bush may
be awful, but that doesn't mean Kerry is better.

If logical thinkers were the majority in America,
the choice wouldn't have been Bush or Kerry.

Re:Why Berkeley?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you stop something that's so ingrained into the Liberal mind? It would take a big overhaul in thinking for a Liberal to change their ways. Rove just played on Liberal weaknesses. Live and learn.

Re:Why Berkeley?

[Rimbo]

It's hardly a liberal thing. Political "Rope-a-dope" was also Rove/Bush's strategy to get elected governor of Texas, and other than Austin he didn't have to appeal to any liberals; instead, he was going up against the most successful Texas governor of the second half of the 20th century. But her campaign made the same mistake; they tried to portray him as a buffoon.

Remember when millions around the world took to the streets to protest the Iraq invasion? Bush publicly praised them.

This guy thrives politically on the hatred of his enemies. He is the master of political judo, of making people's insults and criticisms come back and hurt them. And in two governor's races and in two presidential races, he's done it.

Shoot... if he's so dumb, and the people trying to remove him are so smart, why are the smart ones all on the outside looking in? Perhaps they aren't so smart after all.

Re:Why Berkeley?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha, and if you really believe this, you're the prototype /. dumbshit. You must live in some ideal world. Math can be made to "say" pretty much anything you want (just look at creative accountants for everyday examples). Much like computers, it's pretty much garbage in, garbage out. So, depending upon where you get your numbers for a proof and how you "chose" to interpret them may lead someone else to entirely different conclusions. My god moron, think with your head, not your ass.

Re:Why Berkeley?

[lew3004]

From: http://www.workinghumor.com/quotes/ronald_reagan.s html. The quote was in reference to the bombing of Libya, I believe. "The last bunch of pickets were carrying signs that said 'Make love, not war'. The only trouble was that they didn't look capable of doing either." Makes sense to me and funny to boot!

Re:Why Berkeley?

[emerald_glitter]

I'd agree with the statement that most people don't understand statistics well enough to independently evaulate this information. I'll also agree that an awareness of bias is not offtopic.

However!!
Distrusting data simply because of it's source IS ad hominem. It is not logical, as you mentioned. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure that's one of the the DEFINITIONS of ad hominem.

In either case, as you mentioned, peer review is generally very good at weeding out bias. One of the reasons for that is scientific peer review is pretty conservative, in the non political sense of the word. I'm pretty sure this study will be subjected to stringent peer review, like most anything including politics and statistics does. It's hard to tell which way the media will go. Larger news sources in the USA tend to be conservative, in most senses of the word. You don't gain and keep the trust of people with speculation. I doubt we've heard the last about this issue, but I also doubt that much will be said by the media about this until others have done more investigation.

Re:Why Berkeley?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read up on "ad hominem" logical fallacies.

Sounds like you're the one who needs to read up on ad hominem. A person's bias goes to their credibility, and is admissable in a court of law. Ad hominem is when you just call someone names.

Re:Why Berkeley?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the vast majority of the time their scientific research is nonpartisan. The only exception being when it involves politics.

Not out of character

[Augie De Blieck Jr.]

Wow, a UC Berkeley study that's AGAINST a Republican? What's next? MicroSoft releasing a survey that shows Linux doesn't have any market share?

Re:Not out of character

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, a slashdot comment that completely ignores ANY purported facts or analysis and instead resorts to prejudicial sarcasm!

At least it didn't have any unintentional spelling errors.

This is a great development!

[brian6string]

Maybe we can eliminate eVoting and voting entirely and have some university researchers tell us who will win. That would save everyone a lot of hassle.

Re:This is a great development!

[mveloso]

"When the statistics and reality disagree, trust the statistics."

If you substitute "priests," "scientists," "referee" for the word "statistics", you'll see how ridiculous those statisticians really are.

Re:This is a great development!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe we can eliminate eVoting and voting entirely and have some university researchers tell us who will win.

Yeah, but then to validate the results we'd all ahve to go out and vote. Or something.

Re:This is a great development!

[interiot]

Okay, now you're just trolling. The researcher's aim was not to develop a model that could predict the winner of the election. The aim was to see if there was a significant correlation in size of the model's descrepencies between e-voting counties and non-e-voting counties. They did find a statistically signficant correlation. They're not trying to and don't want to prove that their model is 99.999999% accurate instead of simply 95% accurate.

Non-statisticians sometimes make unsupported conclusions from the results of statistical studies and that might be rediculous, but statisticians aren't themselves rediculous.

Re:This is a great development!

[micromoog]

Actually, the scientists are typically right in these situations. For example:

• the earth isn't flat
• molecules are not the smallest things in the world (and neither are atoms)
• the moon is not made of cheese, or a god

Re:This is a great development!

[Girckin]

Maybe we can eliminate eVoting and voting entirely and have some university researchers tell us who will win. That would save everyone a lot of hassle.

Yeah! Or better yet, we can just have some Supreme Court justices tell us who won. Oh, wait...

Re:This is a great development!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not priests vs. scientists....

Scientists vs. reality.

In that contest, reality always wins.

Re:This is a great development!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not? we gave supreme court judges a shot. Next year, give it to the basement-dwelling teenagers. It'll be Naders best chance.

Re:This is a great development!

[Jerf]

Actually, the scientists are typically right in these situations.

That's only true for established science.

In the field of particle physics, for instance, the vast majority of people proposing Theories of Everything are wrong. In fact it is quite likely all of them are wrong.

What you can be reasonably assured of is that if such a theory is possible, science will eventually come up with it. However, in a situation like this, on the "cutting egde" of this particular domain, with no consensus built and no history, scientists are just guys with slightly more math scribbled out than the next guy, and these particular scientists are to be accorded no special respect, but their ideas are to be examined strictly on their merits.

To sum up, in the situation as discussed in this article, scientists are typically as wrong as everybody else and your statement is false. Science may eventually arrive at the right answer, but not because of any special rightness possessed by any given scientist.

Ohio would be better

[WindBourne]

I really do think that Florida went to Bush.

The question is Ohio. It has been a stuanch Democrat state. It lost 10's of thousands of jobs under Bush. And it voted for him in a close election? So why are these researchers looking at Florida?

Re:Ohio would be better

[Megaweapon]

It has been a stuanch Democrat state

Huh? I live in Ohio and I can tell you it isn't "staunch" for the Democrats.

Re:Ohio would be better

[mgs1000]

The question is Ohio. It has been a stuanch Democrat state.

It wasn't in 2000.

Re:Ohio would be better

[NardofDoom]

What's wrong with you? Jobs and war and the economy aren't as important so making sure two dudes can't get married.

These freakin' liberals, man. No freakin' priorities.

/sarcasm

Re:Ohio would be better

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, maybe we should just ask you who YOU THINK every state went to and save the time it takes to vote.

Re:Ohio would be better

[johansalk]

What's wrong with you? Jobs and war and the economy aren't as important so making sure two dudes can't get married. These freakin' liberals, man. No freakin' priorities.

Ha ha ha. Mod this guy up, please, he's right on it!

Re:Ohio would be better

[YrWrstNtmr]

Ohio is doing a full recount anyway

Re:Ohio would be better

[daniil]

Jobs and war and the economy aren't as important so making sure two dudes can't get married.

I know you were being sarcastic, but this is dead on. Wars and recessions have always come to pass, whereas cultural changes don't (or if they do, then only in long term). And many people are cautious of such changes, for they have reason to believe that changes are always for the worse.

Re:Ohio would be better

[NardofDoom]

Yes. Now let me go dance the Charleston, have sex with my young apprentice, and then post to Usenet about it.

Re:Ohio would be better

[Frobozz0]

It's a major fault to look around yourself and assume the people you know or the place you live in accounts for the rest of the country or state.

Ask those of us in Manhattan. We know. We're part of the United States of Canada now. :-) Upstate votes highly republican and downstate is 80%+ Democrat. That is, for presedential elections.

But, it seems that as of late (with the exception of Clinton), the republicans have won Ohio overall. Clienton won in both elections but the republicans have won 4 more elections than the democrats since 1940 in Ohio:

http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/results/index.htm l

Re:Ohio would be better

[Anonymous Coward]

The question is Ohio. It has been a stuanch Democrat state.

Two words: the Amish. Amish voter turnout was at 100% in many areas, and one would imagine that they voted almost entirely for Bush. Amish turnout was not significant in previous elections.

Re:Ohio would be better

[NeoSkink]

To quote the article on this in today's Daily Cal:

While the study "almsot perfectly" predicted the outcome in Ohio, where e-voting is also used, and in the majority of Florida's counties, Bush garnered far more votes than expected in Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade counties.

Seems they beat you to it.

Re:Ohio would be better

[dheltzel]

So why are these researchers looking at Florida?

Umm, maybe because when the analyzed Ohio votes it didn't give them the numbers they were looking for?

These aren't rocket scientists, folks, they are statisticians with an agenda to push. If they didn't find the numbers they were looking for in Florida, they would have kept looking other places. I'm not faulting their motivations, as good Berkley liberals, they are obligated to publish such things. We, however, are not obligated to believe them.

Re:Ohio would be better

[drewness]

Having lived in Columbus,OH my whole life (26 years) I can back up the other statements that the state is not "staunch Democrat". Look at CNN's election map for Ohio.
See the blue? That's where there is either a fair sized city or a big college town (Athens county). The red is for the most part rural with the exceptions of Dayton and Cinncinati, which are both just slightly red.
But those red areas add up, and I don't think from what I remember of past elections and growing up that the map is at all unusual for Ohio. If anything is weird at all it's that Bush only won by a narrow margin. Believe me, I hoped Franklin, Cuyahoga, Hamilton, and Clark would go Dem and outweigh the rural parts.

Re:Ohio would be better

[Anonymous Coward]

Jobs and war and the economy aren't as important so making sure two dudes can't get married

Yeah, but what if it were two chicks? HOT!!!! I think the people in the pro-gay-marriage groups really dropped the ball by not exploiting the "hot lesbian action" angle.

Re:Ohio would be better

[Anonymous Coward]

Wars and recessions have always come to pass

Tens of thousands of noncombatants dead in Iraq. Possibly more than one hundred thousand.

You disgust me.

Re:Ohio would be better

[daniil]

Millions have died in past wars. Tens (or even hundrends) of millions died in the two world wars. Those that died in these wars are all but forgotten now.

Presently, numerous wars are being fought all over the globe. Noone knows exactly how many people have died in these. Yet, even they will be forgotten one day.

Re:Ohio would be better

[dfenstrate]

Of course, you assume that people who voted for Bush think Kerry has any credibility in the arenas of Jobs, war, or the economy.

Does saying it's all about gay marriage make you feel any better about your side's solid loss?

Re:Ohio would be better

[NardofDoom]

The plurality of people who voted for Bush voted for him because of his "moral values," which is code for "he won't let two dudes get married, and he won't let women have operations."

So, yes, saying that it's all about two dudes getting married *does* make me feel better. As does saying most people who vote for Bush *or* Kerry are deluded in the fact that they think the government is to blame for most of their problems.

Re:Ohio would be better

[mdfst13]

Ohio has a Republican governor and reelected the Republican senator by a larger margin than they reelected Bush. Staunch democrats they are not.

It's also worth noting that Ohio has voted with the overall popular vote from 1964 on. I.e. from 1964 through 2004, Ohio voted for the winning presidential candidate every time. If Kerry had won Ohio while losing the popular vote, that would have broken the trend.

Keyboard error?

[mortram]

Probably just a stuck "enter" key for a Bush ballot...

verb agreement..?

[dustinbarbour]

What the hell? UC Berkeley publishs papers with typos in it?

In our research we used ordinary least squares and more sophisticated linear modeling approaches to assess the statistical properties of e-voting. In particular we develop models that predict both the percentage of the votes registered for the incumbent - President Bush - and the amount that percentage changed between 2000 and 2004.

English majors these guys are not!

Re:verb agreement..?

[dustinbarbour]

And before you go thrashing me.. yes, I have noticed the typos in my post.

Re:verb agreement..?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tense agreement. Ooops. Sentence fragments. Silly pedant.

I'm glad this is happening.

[Jucius Maximus]

Making people realise that paper audit trails are necessary is a lot more important than having your choice of Kerry or Bush for the next 4 years.

Re:I'm glad this is happening.

[GigsVT]

Slashdot rendering problem in FireFox: Press Ctrl+ , Ctrl-

I've known this workaround for a while.. but the question remains, Why don't they just fucking fix it!?!?!

It would take them all of 15 mintues to validate the goddamn HTML.

Re:I'm glad this is happening.

[Jucius Maximus]

"I've known this workaround for a while.. but the question remains, Why don't they just fucking fix it!?!?!"

Write a patch and submit it. They may accept it.

Re:I'm glad this is happening.

[Telastyn]

I disagree. At least as far as 'important' only applies to my lifetime. While the prospect of voter fraud and election buying is certainly a dreadful prospect, the possibility of multiple Bush appointed Supreme Justices ruling on my civil rights for a decade or two seems to be something which will have a far greater impact over the next 60 expected years of my life.

Re:I'm glad this is happening.

[Wildfire Darkstar]

They have fixed it: they eliminated the damned thing from the trunk build back in June. As for why this fix never got integrated into the branch build in time for the 1.0 release... who knows. Stupidity, I guess.

In the meantime, there's this extension which takes care of the problem pretty well.

Re:I'm glad this is happening.

[William Tanksley]

Not likely -- Bush's stated intentions (which are consistent with his record) are to appoint judges who believe in limiting the federal gov'ts authority, based on the Constitution. In general, you may see some reduced civil rights and some increased civil rights -- but only at the federal level. The states will retain the right to change all of those (since by definition those powers are not explicit in the constitution).

-Billy

Re:I'm glad this is happening.

[GigsVT]

The whole situation is insane. No one has explored the fact that it's only triggered by Slashdot's very poorly written, invalid HTML.

Sure, it may be considered a mozilla bug, but personally I'd hesitate to call any rendering problems on invalid HTML a browser bug. If they fix their HTML and it still happens, then call it a bug.

Re:I'm glad this is happening.

[Telastyn]

As opposed to his other appointments, which are stalwarts of libertarian ideals...

Based on past elections and demographics

[overshoot]

Bush rigged every district in every State. Including the ones with paper trails.

This was the highest turnout election in decades, and contrary to Democratic expectations (one might almost consider it an article of faith) the increase didn't favor them. This, according to exit polls.

Something is funny about this last election no matter how you slice it.

Re:Based on past elections and demographics

[Anonymous Coward]

No, actually, you're wrong.

When more voters turn out, it's not an automatic win for the Democrats. You see, more voters voted, but out of the "higher" amount, more Republicans came out and voted too. I don't know why all you Dems assume that when you get "more voters" they will all be Democrats.

Look at it this way:

If you had X voters in 2000, and we had Z voters in 2004, the difference would be Y. So:

X + Y = Z

Now, if Y is the difference, Y is not going to be all Democrats. If you think the Republicans didn't work just as hard to get people out to vote, you are nuts. If Y = even 50% Republicans, and 50% Democrats, then it turns out that Y is a big help to the Democrats.

But, as it turns out, Democrats don't actually think that things might not go the way they want them too. More voters turned out, but a lot of them voted Republican. There were those people who wanted to make sure that 2004 was not a repeat of 2000 by MAKING SURE THAT THE PRESIDENT WAS THE CLEAR WINNER THIS TIME.

But yet Democrats just can't fathom something like that.

Re:Based on past elections and demographics

[SengirV]

Somehow I doubt he rigged Chicago and it's vast undead population that went overwhelmingly for Kerry. And don't forget the busloads of folks from New York to Philly to vote for Kerry as well.

Whatever delusions you need to sleep at night don't necessarily make it true.

Re:Lies, damned lies and statistics

[stratjakt]

The people who are legitimately concerned about the voting systems would still be concerned.

Slashdot wouldn't care, though. Just like they aren't concerned with DRM or product activation or trusted computing when Microsoft is doing it, and they wont be concerned with the MPAA's sprawling evil or Lucas' disregard for his fans when the next Star Wars hits theatres.

They're never going to give up, are they?

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Kerry conceded.
2) The controversial state this time was Ohio, not Florida. Let's stop living in the past. ;)
3) Bush won the popular vote handily, even without the "contested" Florida votes, so all you whiny crybabies who were so quick to point out that Gore won the popular vote last time don't really have a leg to stand on.

Bush won. Get over it.

Re:They're never going to give up, are they?

[NetNifty]

We shouldn't stop investigating e-voting just because the elections are "finished for now" - if theres controversy over it now theres a significant chance it'll happen again next time, whoever the voting machines decide wins then.

Re:They're never going to give up, are they?

[PktLoss]

RTFA They are NOT suggesting that Kerry won, they admit rather early in each of the texts I read that the vote descrepancy was not enough to change the result of the election.

They are over it.

Re:They're never going to give up, are they?

[jerzee_devil]

I find it amazing that when democrats question an election they get called "whiny crybabies" but when it's republicans doing it, it's their "constitutional right"! If Bush had lost under these circumstances every other word on AM radio would be "re-count". btw - It has been noted many times that a concession is not legally binding. Although I am sure Kerry will not be our next president so that should not be a concern. The whole point of this discussion is to ensure that each and every vote is counted appropriately and that no candidate gets votes they don't deserve. You may not care now but what if the next voting machines are designed by a known Democratic supporting company instead of the current Republican supporting one. Then you will wish for accountability. I hope I'm here to call you a "whiny crybaby" when the time comes.

Re:They're never going to give up, are they?

[Tyndmyr]

Im a registered republican. No, I didnt vote for Kerry, either. I voted for Badnarik, making me slightly more impartial, I guess.

However, when you automatically assume that anything that calls the integrity of a portion of our voting system into question, that we only care about election x, or party x, or some part thereof. I swear, this has been posted dozens of times before, but I see at least a score of posts proclaming "bush won! get over it", or some variation thereof in every election related race.

News Flash: We know.

If positions had been reversed, and Kerry'd won, Im sure everyone would know about it too. Yes, there would be more rep watchdogs than democratic ones speaking up... why? They have a motivation too. Yes, you should keep it in mind, but that doesnt automatically mean its wrong.

I swear, do people ever think before they reach for the reply button?

Re:They're never going to give up, are they?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't like Bush in office for another 4 years, but what is done, is done. The real issue now should be solving the problem: people don't trust the e-voting. Now is the perfect time to put partisian politics aside and aim for something everyone, ok..ok... most people, can feel somewhat secure about.

We all know there are better ways of handling the e-voting. How can we make it better for everyone?

Re:They're never going to give up, are they?

[ifwm]

"but when it's republicans doing it, it's their "constitutional right"!" I'm willing to listen, give an example of such a situation.

Paper trail not enough

[downward dog]

The problem is that if a voting machine is programmed to cheat, it is easy enough to fake a paper receipt. I could cast a vote for A, have the screen verify that I am voting for A, receive a printed receipt that tells me I voted for A, and STILL have that vote count for B within the black box.

The paper trail is a red herring, if you ask me. What is really needed is publicly-available source code that anyone can view.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[garcia]

The paper trail is a red herring, if you ask me. What is really needed is publicly-available source code that anyone can view.

What's to stop them from changing the code on enough of the machines to win? We'd never know what happens after we inspect the code. In the right area they COULD possibly win with only a handful of doctored machines.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[greechneb]

And who is going to watch to make sure the same exact code is going to go on the machine?

Re:Paper trail not enough

[beeplet]

The point of paper receipts is that you don't keep it, you verify it and then put it in a regular ballot box. That way if there's any question about the electronic tally, there can be a manual recount.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[NetNifty]

Yes but at least if there is any controversy over the result, a count of recipts would show that the voting machine isn't counting correctly. Open sourcing voting software would help slightly, but its still difficult to show that the code running on the machine is the same code being displayed publically.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[morcheeba]

The point of paper trails is that you keep them -- if there are any questions later, you count those by hand and see if the machine is correct. And, like other have said, you can't tell if the code running on machines is actually the publicly-available source you can view (even if you compile it yourself on the machine before you vote - the compiler could be tainted)

Re:Paper trail not enough

[j0nb0y]

Certainly recount if there's a problem, but the machines should be randomly audited as well...

Re:Paper trail not enough

[gUmbi]

I could cast a vote for A, have the screen verify that I am voting for A, receive a printed receipt that tells me I voted for A, and STILL have that vote count for B within the black box.


The printed receipt should be returned to the voter, who should check that it contains the correct info. and then deposit it in a traditional ballot box. The ballot boxes should remain sealed except in the event of a recount.

Jason.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[BW_Nuprin]

There should be digital signatures on all voting machines that confirm that the code is the same code as on all other voting machines. Either that or do a binary comparison of the ROM after the fact on machines that are suspected of being tampered with.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Tibor the Hun]

The point is that paper ballots can be re-counted if there's a need.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

The procedure with a paper trail would be to vote on the electronic machine. See the paper to verify who you voted for. Put the paper in the box on the way out. At the end of the day the machine's results are given as "unconfirmed" and the paper is counted (as before) to see if it matches the machines results. This will allow for the "want" for quick results and security against either the machines being hacked or paper fraud.
I guess what happens when the numbers don't match is something to be determined (and maybe depends on how big the discrepency is?).
J

Re:Paper trail not enough

[tmbg37]

What if you had a paper ballot printed out, verified by the voter, and then stored in a secure location so in the event that the e-voting machines screw up, you'll have physical ballots that can be counted by other more trustable means?

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

What is really needed is publicly-available source code that anyone can view.


That's assuming that the source code you see is the same source code that is installed on the machine.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Qzukk]

YOU DONT LEAVE WITH THE RECEIPT.

In a "paper trail" situation, the receipt is the ballot! The only purpose of the machine is to give the people who can't punch a hole properly a chance to have their vote count, and maybe you can plug all the machines in at the end and get a quick count, but in the end if something smells fishy, you pull those paper ballots out.

If the machine recorded a vote for A and printed out a vote for B, then this would be caught either when A wins by an unexpected landslide, or by chance by random sampling.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

do a binary comparison of the ROM after the fact on machines that are suspected of being tampered with.

Except there is no ROM - the voting machines in question were running Windows (no, I'm not kidding) and the DB was just Access.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[bheading]

Your point "if there's any question about the electronic tally" implies that there are some way to say whether the electronic vote is sound or unsound.

That is of course wrong; there is no way to say whether the electronic vote is questionable or not. What you then end up with is a situation where the losing candidate can simply question the vote, and there's no way to defend that.

This means that there is no point in having an electronic vote to start with. Trust me guys - pen and paper is the way to do this. It's always verifiable, the count can be observed by the candidates and by independent observers. There's no basis for bugs, security breaches or hacking, or any of that other nonsense.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[dustman]

This can still be messed with. When the binary is read (to do the byte-compare, or to compute a digital signature), the machine can return the "correct" binary, while it was actually running a hacked binary.

You still need a paper trail. The ballots can be counted, doublechecked, you can use 2, or 3, or N groups of people with whatever affiliation. This is where vote security lies.

I live in New Hampshire. When I voted, my local voting place was using a Diebold optical scanner vote box. Just like any other paranoid slashbot, I don't trust Diebold. But I do trust optical scan ballots, because when the numbers become contested, real people can do a recount.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[SonicBurst]

I agree with you totally on this point. If they can write "You voted for liar #1" on screen but actually write something else to storage, why wouldn't they do the same thing on a paper receipt.

I do think that Open Source is the way to go for these machines, though I have that nagging worry in the back of my mind that there will be a flaw found by a black-hat (perhaps a hired one) that is held close to the chest, so to speak. Hopefully, there are enough honest code reviewers out there that would catch and report the same vulnerability. That's how the process works now for other FOSS projects, but I wonder with the stakes as high as a US election if that would still be the case.

I also have to laugh at these people who say they don't trust e-voting machines that they can't view the source on, but who will then walk in to a funny colored mechanical booth, push some buttons, then open a lever, and somewhow feel secure in their vote without a receipt and without knowing who the hell all those gears, cogs, and twiddlybits actually just voted for.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[shadowpuppy]

The way I would think you could come close is.

1. Put the software on bootable CDs.
2. Ship an excessive number of CDs to each polling location.
3. Boot the machines using CDs choosen by random voters.
4. Allow voters to take home and verify the excess CDs

Re:Paper trail not enough

[cduffy]

I agree with you totally on this point. If they can write "You voted for liar #1" on screen but actually write something else to storage, why wouldn't they do the same thing on a paper receipt.

Because you drop the paper receipt in the flipping' ballot box, where it can be used in the event of a recount.

Is it really that hard of a concept?

Re:Paper trail not enough

[MindStalker]

Really whats the point. Few are going to check this. Also you can doctor the punchcard or optical scan machine also. But as long as there is a paper ballot that you manually put into a paper ballot box so that the totals can be compared. Why care if the machine is tampered with. This would quickly get discovered in spot checks, and be plainly obvious if a statewide count got done because of discrepancies.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[micromoog]

As our good friends at MIT have demonstrated, open source isn't a silver bullet for security. At some point you always have to trust someone's work.

A verifiable paper trail, however, is trustable (in the sense that it can later be audited WITHOUT the machine's involvement).

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Grishnakh]

I disagree. Electronic machines are faster and more accurate, if they're working properly.

If everything is done by pen and paper, 1) it'll take forever to get the election results, and 2) the losing candidate can still question the vote.

The idea with the electronic machines, with paper backup, is that the losing candidate can question the machines, and the votes in a sampling of precincts can do manual recounts, to verify the machines were accurate. If they are, then there's no reason to do a complete recount. But if there is a problem, showing the machines to be untrustable, then an entire recount can be undertaken.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[misleb]

A paper trail is enough. Nobody is suggesting that the same machine that counted your electronic vote would also (re)count the paper reciepts. The paper could be counted by hand, if necessary... completely independant of the machines. Why is this not good enough? Are you worry about the black box implementing a post printing mechanism to change the piece of paper that you verified with your own eyes?

-matthew

Re:Paper trail not enough

[sammy baby]

I agree with you totally on this point. If they can write "You voted for liar #1" on screen but actually write something else to storage, why wouldn't they do the same thing on a paper receipt.

Because after the machine prints out a paper receipt, you get to look at it prior to putting it into the ballot box. And if it's wrong, you raise hell, and they correct the matter. Just like you would with a normal paper ballot.

I also have to laugh at these people who say they don't trust e-voting machines that they can't view the source on, but who will then walk in to a funny colored mechanical booth, push some buttons, then open a lever, and somewhow feel secure in their vote without a receipt and without knowing who the hell all those gears, cogs, and twiddlybits actually just voted for.

Or those antiquated punch ballots where each candidate choice has a number that matches a number on the card... that you can check by... oh, wait.

Nevermind.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[LetterRip]

A paper trail allows a random auditing of machines.

You audit x% of the machines and see if it turns up invalid errors. If so then you do a full audit. While it is possible for the software authors to get cheat and get away with it. A reasonable possibility of getting caught is likely to reduce the odds of them doing so.

LetterRip

Re:Paper trail not enough

[tji]

I'm not following your logic... The point of the paper trail is that the printed ballot/receipt states who I voted for. I use that as the last confirmation of my intent.. the printed ballot says "Kerry" in the president box.

I then drop that paper ballot/receipt in the box, and if there is a recount, that paper ballot that says "Kerry" on it is counted by hand.

Where is the problem there?

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

I say have the machines spit out a recipt that's both human- and machine-readable, so the person can see that the vote is what they intended, then tally the recipts (by hand if need be, but a separate counting machine could do it as well) rather than (or in addition to) using the machine's internal tally. Best of both worlds, in a sense.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[stienman]

Take this one step further, to prevent changing on the day of the election, then changing the code before the post election audit:

Print a hash on each voter receipt.

-Adam

Re:Paper trail not enough

[micromoog]

That's pretty good, but it still doesn't guarantee that the machine's firmware isn't tampering with the code after it's in the machine.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Minwee]

But source code can be a red herring too. If a voting machine is to be programmed to cheat it is easy enough to load it with different code.

If you were particularly clever you could even have the "cheat code" designed to run once, rig the election results, and then erase itself leaving only a copy of the original, sanctioned code for the auditors to find.

Unless the people trying to fix the election were slightly too stupid to qualify as villains on "Scooby Doo", then open source code won't make any difference at all. You need the procedure to be completely transparent at every stage, and I believe that a verifiable paper trail which can be confirmed by the voters and recounted by hand is the best way to do that.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Zeal17]

No no no....The main advantage to an e-vote is that it gets counted automatically. When you have an e-vote with a paper receipt, you can vote electronically, the number gets beamed to a central DB, AND you get a paper ballot you can visually check and put in a box. Sure there won't be any faster recounts, but once the technology has been around for a while, people will trust the data. The whole state of Nevada was like this during the last election, everything got counted fast, and if there is any questions about the outcome, it's easy to double check by counting the receipts.

The REAL question is why are there electronic voting machines that DON'T have a paper trail?

Re:Paper trail not enough

[beeplet]

That is of course wrong; there is no way to say whether the electronic vote is questionable or not.

I have to disagree. Isn't the point of this story that there are ways to identify suspect vote counts? Just because you don't have any a priori way of knowing what the outcome will be doesn't mean you can't look for anomalies by comparing the results from different regions against each other. (And that applies to all methods of voting, including pen and paper.)

The losing candidate can always question the vote, no matter what the original counting method was. But I don't think that's a mark against electronic voting. There are a few obvious circumstances which would make it reasonable to ask for a recount, such as a very close result, a vote count that is different from the number of registered voters, or an outcome that is suspiciously different from other similar areas. This isn't any different than it was before voting machines came along.

Even for all the controversy, I think e-voting machines (with paper trails) have the potential to offer the best of both worlds - a quick first count and a reliable way to get a recount. Ideally, with the paper trail machine printed and voter-verified, there would also be far fewer spoiled ballots.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[CrkHead]

What is really needed is publicly-available source code that anyone can view

Which could be "patched" quite easily on the machines. No reason to put the tinfoil hats away.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[multipartmixed]

> That's pretty good, but it still doesn't guarantee that the machine's firmware isn't
> tampering with the code after it's in the machine.

You could allow each of the N parties to supply Required/(N+1) PCs to run the voting software, and the electoral commision would supply Required/N+1 PCs of its own. The software records which machine was used and a firmware hash of some kind on the voter's receipt.

Then statistical analysis could be used to determine if one or both parties are cheating; it will be easy to detect and VERY hard to do.

You could also hash the running total on the voter's receipts, along with timestamps. That might also prove to be very interesting.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[arivanov]

Who cares about the code. It is data that should be signed and countersigned at every step and travel by at least 2 or more parallel pathways which are crossverified as well as the signatures. I am sorry, but 5th world country like Bulgaria has been doing this for nearly 10 years now. India has done it in the last election. It is time for the US to actually get a clue and learn how to run an election or import the Bulgarian or Indians who designed the election data flow (note the architecture, not the code) for a short H1B stint.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[the_2nd_coming]

you idiot!!! the paper receipt could be used in audits, which should be mandatory on computerized voting machines.

the best solution to this problem is a machine that prints out a human readable optical ballot and is then sent through an optical reader for the counting.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[TiggertheMad]

What is really needed is publicly-available source code that anyone can view.

This is true, as it would be trivial to say, only throw 1 in 50 votes to Bush if the date was november 2nd between 8am and 6pm. Prior checking of the voting machine will prove NOTHING. Of course, an untrained inspector would not know this. You could even write a TSR that swaps the .exe that has been compiled and certified with a 'fixed' .exe for the duration of the election, and then destroys the evidence afterwards.

The code MUST be public. The machines must be imaged from a single source iso that is publicly available to anyone for inspection, OS and everything. They must have any interfaces sealed for the duration of an election in such a way that no tampering can occur. Until this happens, democracy is not safe.

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance", is a quote that is often used when speaking of external threats to the country, but it is equally true for issues such as this.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[GreyPoopon]

I could cast a vote for A, have the screen verify that I am voting for A, receive a printed receipt that tells me I voted for A, and STILL have that vote count for B within the black box.

The way it is supposed to work is that you see the screen, receive the receipt and put the receipt into a separate box. That way, if a manual recount is demanded, your vote for A will be counted correctly.

What is really needed is publicly-available source code that anyone can view.

This will be helpful, but it doesn't really keep them from letting you view the source code and then putting a slightly altered binary on the voting machine....

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Phisbut]

f everything is done by pen and paper, 1) it'll take forever to get the election results, and 2) the losing candidate can still question the vote.

1) Pen and paper doesn't take forever to count. In Canada, we can get federal election results approximately 3 hours after polls close, and they're all pencil and paper. Just because the US has a larger population doesn't mean it'll take longer, just hire more people to count and that's it.

2) If the losing candidate questions the vote, he and his opponent can both witness the recount. One can hardly question again after having witnessed the recount.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[divisionbyzero]

I agree, but how do you know that the source code that you have is the one installed on the machine?

Re:Paper trail not enough

[grub]

The paper trail is a red herring, if you ask me. What is really needed is publicly-available source code that anyone can view.

You can't guarantee the code you look at is what's in the machine. In my city of ~680K people in .CA we have a paper ballot for the elections. ANY CITIZEN LEGAL TO VOTE is able to sit in and watch the people open the sealed boxes and count the paper ballots. It only takes a short while as there are a lot of polling stations.

Electronic voting is a solution in search of a problem, it's a bunch of crap.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[forevermore]

What is really needed is publicly-available source code that anyone can view.

This comes up time and time again on /., and personally I don't care if the code is open or not. The touchscreens should ONLY be used for input. They can also be used to provide a preliminary (ie. UNOFFICIAL) count, but would print out a machine- and human-readable paper ballot, which the user can verify and then drop into a ballot box to be counted.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[pqdave]

"voter-verifiable". Paper in a format that the voter can read, saying who he voted for. He reads (hopefully) and if it's wrong, he calls a pollworker. If it's right, he puts it in a ballot box. If there is a question on the machine's accuracy, there's now a way to check.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[kiltedtaco]

Your point "if there's any question about the electronic tally" implies that there are some way to say whether the electronic vote is sound or unsound.

That is of course wrong;

Did you even look at the subject line of the story you're supposed to be commenting on?

Re:Paper trail not enough

[DrStrange]

What is really needed is publicly-available source code that anyone can view.

Why would that help? By the same basic reason you put forth against a paper receipt: just because they give you source code listing A doesn't mean they actually use source code listing A in the machine. There's nothing to stop a malicous entity from publishing one set of source code and using another for the actual machine. Unless you plan on compiling and running the source code at the voting booth source code is just as useless as a paper receipt.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[SonicBurst]

Do you really think that the people who have the power to rig an electronic voting device can't steal/alter some paper in a ballot box? I don't.

PopSci (I think) did a piece on a secure 2 part receipt that could work (you kept a part, the box kept a part), but then a verified count would involve getting those second parts back from everyone who voted, IIRC.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[drakaan]

Umm...if you have a printed reciept, that's a real, tangible, physical ballot that can be hand-counted. Hardly a red herring.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Monkelectric]

You know that the diebold machines use ACCESS as their "central DB"? If thats not scary, nothing is.

The reason they dno't have paper trails is they were designed from the begining to be tampered with from the begining.

Think about how *perfect* everything went for the republicans. They won the presidency, they emasculated the democrats (won key senate seats, tom daschle, etc). And they did it by rigging the system, and *NOBODY* can prove it. There's no paper trail. Without a paper trail you can't prove anything, can't get to court, can't even get the machines replaced so it doesn't happen again!

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

It allows for a manual recount, but more importantly, it allows for automatic recounts by more than one entity:

http://shiflett.org/archive/62

This could be a standard part of the tallying process, so that discrepancies that can possibly affect the outcome can be further scrutinized, so that the margin of error cannot realistically change the outcome of an election.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Canada and I agree with you. However during a federal election we vote for one person. From what I understand an American ballot is a little more complex than this.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[ductormalef]

A paper trail does not have to mean a paper reciept. A valid paper trail is a hard copy of the vote that is placed in a ballot box. These can be used for a recount AND audit (or in this case, to do demographic research on electronic voting machine users).

Re:Paper trail not enough

[tjstork]

And you can screw up paper trails. Paper trails succumb to the "counters" themselves. Paper can be lost, marked up, altered.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

So, what if they gave you some source code?
How will you know that what they gave you
is what is being run on the machine?

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

You make the paper vote the REAL vote. If your receipt says you voted for "A", then you did.

The electronic version is just to make it easier to count.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Conspiracy Theory! What about all the New Yorkers who own residences in Florida and cast absentee ballots from New York? All of it is FUD anyway.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[tbannist]

Well, usually, the paper ballot are supposed to be dropped into a collection device, like a voting box, so that if someone questions the legitimacy of the results, they can be counted and verified against the machine totals.

The idea is that a) you can verify the unchangable piece of paper registers your vote, and b) you give that to the election officials so that they can check against the computer totals.

Ideally, random audits will also be performed across the state to determine to catch any systemic differences between paper trail and electronic results.

That last part is why the voting machine companies don't want the paper trail, because they'll be under pressure to fix problems, which costs them money.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Lucidwray]

I have to totally agree with the 'pen and paper' comment. In my district here in Texas we have a great voting method. The ballot is a full size sheet of paper with each race and its canidates listed on it. Next to each one is a "Scantron" like area that you fill in with a black permenant marker. Once you have filled out the ballot you go stick it in the voting machine and it does the optical scanning. Voila! Super easy.

You get the advantage of a quick count from the optical scanning, plus you get the advantage that the actual paper ballot the voter filled out is stored in a secure steel box. If there is any question about the count you simply go back over the ballots.

No need for printing a paper trail, let the people create the paper trail.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[cduffy]

Do you really think that the people who have the power to rig an electronic voting device can't steal/alter some paper in a ballot box? I don't.

It's harder. Ballot boxes are physical objects, and considerably more tamper-evident than electronic systems. What's even better is doing some fun with crypto (ie. chained signatures) on the physical pieces of paper in the box (using a printed barcode for the purpose). Using a combination of old-style (paper) and new-style (crypto) techniques, one could make election fraud very hard indeed to do undetectably.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll do it.

Don't worry, you can trust me.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[tbannist]

In most cases they don't. Stealing the paper ballots becomes a real chore when you have to replace and destroy (literal) tons of paper without alerting any honest individuals to your activities. It's much easier to replace a dozen memory cards you can put in one pocket than half a million paper ballots.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Spinlock_1977]

There are a couple of ways to solve this problem: The printed receipts could be counted by humans after the polls close. Use the machine totals for early results only, making the paper receipts the final authority. And maybe not this election, but soon, enough people will have access to a web browser, and there will be enough bandwidth, where each voter goes to a govenment-run web site where the receipt numbers and their votes are listed. It would be each voter's "duty" to verify their ticket is listed correctly. Then any computer system on the internet can download the list and count all the votes and confirm the results.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[pergamon]

Which is why the only real solution would be to really only use the electronic boxes as a fancy way to print out the receipts. The receipts should always be counted in addition to the electronic ballots.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[ilikecaffeine]

And they did it by rigging the system, and *NOBODY* can prove it. There's no paper trail.

Since there's no way to prove it, that means that your theory is just a bunch of conspiracy crap. Incidentally, my theory that the democrats rigged the election in favor of the republicans so they could complain for four more years and run hillary/barak in '08 is also just a bunch of conspiracy crap. Georgia uses the Diebold machines. Badnarik, the libertarian candidate got 17,000 votes there, more than any other third party candidate in any other state. If the republicans "rigged" the election, as you propose, why in the hell would they give a third party candidate so many votes? Using your logic, I'm suspicious of the Boston Red Sox miracle. I mean, everything went so perfectly. How could there *not* be mischief afoot? Perhaps bush won because the majority of Americans prefer an idiot to a douchebag, and not because of The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[VultureMN]

The problem with this approach is that it'd reward aggressive fraud.

For example, let's say a hypothetical company, call them 'Diecast', has the machines give enough extra votes to candidate, oh, let's call him 'Buck', so that 'Buck' wins the state by 300,000 votes. That wouldn't be enough per machine for anyone to notice, and the other candidate, let's call him 'Harry', isn't going to challenge that big of a statewide spread.

The only way we should trust electronic counting is when the electronics cannot 'know' who goes with what. All they could count is that A got 123 votes, B got 113. Then the pollworkers match up A with Harry, and B with Buck. (and perhaps in other precints, A is Buck and B is Harry.)

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the way to set up voting...

1. The user votes.
2. The voting machine prints out a paper saying who was voted for.
3. The screen then prompts the user: "Are these votes correct?" If the user says no, the process begins again at step 1. If yes, then proceed to step 4.
4. The user takes the piece of paper out to the ballot box, just as if it were a paper election.

This way, if questions are raised about the evoting software, then we have a voter certified piece of paper to fall back on.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[ACNiel]

Of course they should be randomly audited, but against what? Exit polls and past voting demographics by precinct?

This is why electronic voting is such a terrible idea. There is no good way to audit the votes. If you have a reciept that you drop in a box, why not just use paper. If you have some sort of personal identifier, why not just advertise your vote on some website?

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Lonath]

Umm..why not give the voter 2 copies of a paper receipt like you get for credit cards so both copies are printed at once, and the voter keeps one copy and place the other copy in a ballot box for checking later on?

Re:Paper trail not enough

[iabervon]

It doesn't matter if it takes a couple of days to do recounts; all the suspense is over on election night with the first count, unless something went dreadfully wrong, which shouldn't be expected to happen. If the recount turns out different, that's a big story for the next week, and the voting machine makers get in trouble. But the checking doesn't have to be complete for a month after the election.

For that matter, it would make sense to check over even elections where the results were clear, just to verify that the machines are working correctly.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[dtjohnson]

The electronic machine should print out a ballot that would show every vote cast by the voter which said voter would then deposit in a sealed ballot box. The ballot boxes would normally not be counted, unless a recount were needed, but a statistical random sample of them *could* be counted during every election to validate the process. Any significant discrepancy between the random sample and the electronic results would be automatic ground for a full manual recount.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it simpler to keep voting on paper? I got a degree in Computer Science and I'm fond of computers, but I recognize when it's the case to use a computer and when it's not. For this application domain paper beats computers.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[mbrod]

Actually the paper trail is needed. You don't let people leave with it though. You have a printout with a bar code or whatever that prints out after they vote then that gets locked up. They can see on the paper who it says they voted for. Then if there is a recount they can unluck all the paper votes and count them. Also any auditor can come back and check on the results using the paper. If the bar codes were tampered with it would be obvious because you could also see on the sheet what the person voted for and the person who voted can also look at this.

I think that is the best way to do it.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[ryanmfw]

Well, maybe they only programmed it to effect Kerry and Bush, not third party candidates? Although your point about not being able to prove it is technically correct, that would mean most murder investigations are just cr@p too. It's a "reasonable doubt", not proof. Most scientific theories are theories too, they aren't proved. Gravity is still a theory. Does that mean gravity is fictional nonsense? This study is an example of evidence, that, while not proof alone, does describe a fishy scenario. And anyway, just because it's a conspiracy, doesn't mean it's not true. People were saying the people who believed in Area 51 were conspiracy nuts, yet it exists(although the dead alien bit is still up in the air).

Re:Paper trail not enough

[lawpoop]

That's not correct. If the machine spits out a receipt that the voter can review before submitting, and those receipts are later used during an audit, then a paper trail effectively trumps cheating machines.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[scottp1296]

The paper trail is a red herring

Actually, it's not. The paper trail is what a vote recount would use, rather than reusing the electronic tallies the machine provided in the first place. The fact that we allowed voting machines that have no means to check the vote totals is shameful. Welcome to the Banana Republic of America.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Grishnakh]

Not just a little, but a lot. Here in Arizona, my ballot was about double the size of a letter-size sheet of paper, and was full on both sides of selections to make. These included President, Senator, Representative (all at the federal level), then state representatives, local representatives, local school board officials, then several huge columns of which judges we wanted to get rid of, and lastly all the statewide Propositions. All the results for all these different selections are tallied in one night. Why hire more people (who make mistakes easily) when machines can do it much faster and more efficiently?

The only problem with machines is verifying they're accurate.

BTW, do you do your laundry with machines? If so, why? Why not just hire some servants to do all your household chores for you? If you don't do this, or don't do all your household chores by hand with no machines at all, then you're a hypocrite.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[jesterzog]

I think that this is true, as long as the voter is somehow forced to put the matching receipt in the box having voted. eg. the machine displays it to them and allows them to watch it drop into the box, or alternatively into a shredder (or something of similar nature) which allows them to vote again.

I think it's quite an important thing to be sure to include in a system. If people are just given a receipt, then at least some of them simply won't put it in the ballot box. This, of course, means there are two counts that are arguably correct, and has potential to create great controversy all over again. (People will start claiming that they put their receipt in the box when they didn't, and all sorts of things.)

Furthermore, it makes the election less immune to manipulation, because people can still be threatened or enticed based on bringing out the receipt instead of putting it in the ballot box, on the assumption that there's probably not going to be a paper recount.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[cmallinson]

In Canada, we can get federal election results approximately 3 hours after polls close, and they're all pencil and paper.

I have been a scrutineer at the past two Canadian federal elections, and the parent is correct. There were 2-4 people counting votes from each of six ballot boxes. We had everything counted, recounted, and called in 20 minutes after the polls closed. Technology is great, but it does not need to replace everything.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Noel]

BTW, do you do your laundry with machines? If so, why? Why not just hire some servants to do all your household chores for you? If you don't do this, or don't do all your household chores by hand with no machines at all, then you're a hypocrite.

Riiight. Only if the risk from machine-damaged clothes is of similar magnitude to the risk from machine-based voter fraud.

Greater risk requires greater diligence.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

That's Right! We did tamper with the vote! It's a huge conspiracy involving thousands upon thousands of 'Men In Black' operatives.

It had nothing to due with Kerry's traitorous behavor after returning from Vietnam. The rollback of tax cuts to fund a socialist healthcare system. His wife's idiotic opinions, pictures of him windsurfing, or his half naked daugher. Nothing to do with Kerry saying he could do better and he had a 'Plan' but refused to tell anyone what the 'Plan' was. Nothing to do with the multiple SUV's he said the 'family' owned not him. Nothing to do with the constant flip-flopping on positions.
No No No... Nothing like that...

Re:Paper trail not enough

[allism]

We have this in Thornton, Colorado too.

My husband made a stray mark on his ballot and it was kicked out by the machine to be hand-counted - I told him I was shipping him off to live in Florida if he couldn't learn to fill out a ballot properly.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[DaveJay]

Easy. You make the code available on a web site, and you make the machines able to compile the code on boot-up. Then if you arrive with a CD-R of the code, and request the machine to be booted off of your copy, an MD5SUM is done between your CD-R and the CD-Rs brought by the party representatives on-site.

Oh, and the polling place machines would have been originally booted on a randomly-selected CD-R from that set of CD-Rs (from the party reps) after they arrived in the morning and MD5SUMd against each other.

Just sayin'...

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that we cannot trust a private corporation to do this (vote tabulating). This should NEVER have been outsourced. If we must do it on a computer, then a few universities should get grants to produce open source code to solve the problem.

Arguing about what could be done is a distraction. What was done is what matters. Exit polling showed that Kerry won, and the discrepancy that showed exit polls not agreeing with the actual vote count was in areas where these black boxes were in use.

It is probably already too late. Whatever solution the bright minds might argue about on slashdot is not going to matter, because you can just look at the way the voting was done to realise that their was no interest in paper receipts because there was no interest in allowing voters to chose to kick Bush out of office. The manipulation was rampant and remains pretty much underreported, with the exception of cute little complaints from both sides so that most of us just toss up our hands. How can you or I make them do the right thing? Every time you look away they will pull a trick, and then have a private smirk at what fools the populace is.

Whatever change you want, it will not happen through voting anymore. We will have more black boxes in two years, not fewer. We will have more distractions, and we will have a more compliant and cowardly media to titillate us with more infotainment and little insight.

I recommend that everyone buy gold, or a plow, and plan for exit strategies with groups of friends. Everyone who lived through a disaster must have thought it couldn't happen to them.

Just watch the CEO's offshoring money. I expect that Gold will be rising in value shortly.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[zenyu]

In a "paper trail" situation, the receipt is the ballot! The only purpose of the machine is to give the people who can't punch a hole properly a chance to have their vote count, and maybe you can plug all the machines in at the end and get a quick count, but in the end if something smells fishy, you pull those paper ballots out.

It's more than just improper hole punching. Traditional voter fraud has included many ways to tamper with these ballots. You can produce an overvote by punching out an extra hole, or even by printing the ballots so that the preferred candidates hole practically falls out on its own and the non-preferred candidates chad holds on for dear life. Paper ballots can have extra marks made on them to make them overvotes... Lots of things can go wrong. We called the local election office because they left a voting machine in our unguarded lobby for days before the election. The front of it was "sealed" with the same plain plastic twisty tie I use to secure wires, the back of the machine, the works, were not sealed.

The problem is we run our elections as if they were just for show, they remind me of 'airport security', a thought which frightens me. We need an electronic voting machine which prints a ballot, verified by the voter, deposited in a clear box which needs to be sledgehammered to open, which is then counted at the poll location.

This wouldn't make me feel completely safe, we still need open source voting software, and real procedures for verifying that the software works. There should be pictures of the candidates so the old trick of running five candidates with the same name as your opponent wouldn't work so well.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, each voter should be able to enter their SSN on a voting web site and it would return an anonymous account of their actual votes. Each voter could then verify the ballot, as long as two or three opposing parties to verify the accounting.

But the flaw in all this is that Bush is in office. We are F_cked people! There is a lot of power behind the scenes from Rupert M. to Clear Channel to Unocal to Reverend Moon and every damn Evangelical Anti-reality @sshole you can mention, to Ken Lay and ...aahhh!

Can I just get drunk and you can wake me for the apocolypse?

Re:Paper trail not enough

[dorsey]

it'll take forever to get the election results

It's pretty trivial to design a pen&paper ballot that is machine readable. And such a ballot has the added bonus of being human readable as well.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Vitriol Angst]

If everything is done by pen and paper, 1) it'll take forever to get the election results, and 2) the losing candidate can still question the vote.

This is only for the election and our future. Let's not stand on convenience so that we can keep a crook in office. Besides, the major reason that these elections keep getting more expensive by a factor of ten each four years is because the crooks seem to be developing even more lavish tastes. Katherine Harris didn't come cheap.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[mm0mm]

You know that the diebold machines use ACCESS as their "central DB"? If thats not scary, nothing is.

Probably this site has been referred to for ages during discussions of Diebold machines, but in case you are still wondering how perfect Diebold's voting machines are for either fair or unfair voting, you might want to see their movie. The cheating method shown during the demonstration with Howard Dean is so childish that you will laugh or be chilled. Hacking and changing Mozilla's stored passwords can be much more challenging for me as passwords are stored encrypted rather than in a ubiquitous database format that outsiders may be able to review AND change without breaking encryption.

I don't know if Diebold has changed their system since, but I can't believe that Diebold has been claiming that the software used for voting machines is proprietary and secure. Without MS access, it makes absolutely no use.

Got democracy?

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Hand counting scales perfectly. If you have more ballots to count, you put more volunteers on it.

2) People make different mistakes than machines. Machines make systematic errors (they do one thing wrong every time) whereas people make random errors. Which do you think is more likely to to skew and election result. Finally, empirically (ie: based on what REALLY HAPPENS), hand counting ballots turns out to be FAR MORE acccurate than machine counts (0.05% vs as bad as 15%).

3) The only problem with machines is verifying [that] they're accurate. Yep. There are other disadvantages but that's the showstopper.

4) When the fate of the free world hinges on my laundry, I'll do it myself.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

why not give user a copy? To prevent 'proof of voting' for vote buying/intimidating purposes.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be a bad idea to provide a way for people
to verify their vote from the privacy of a home computer. If there were such a way, then somebody with authority over you (eg. your boss, or a blakmailer, or somebody who is threatening your family) could force you to use this means to prove to them that you voted for who they told you to vote for. The reason that votes are private is to prevent this kind of extortion.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[scaaven]

Instead of physically giving them a receipt, just keep the paper behind glass and ask the user to verify the vote on the screen. If you accept, you might see your paper ballot slide into the accepted bin, or if it's rejected, goes into a shredder and you can vote again. Of course, you might need to limit each voter to 5 rejects to prevent hooligans from hitting the reject button until the paper runs out.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

If I rigged the system, I would make sure the 3rd parties got plenty of votes. Ideally you want a plausible outcome that introduces a few red herrings. Controversy over vote splitting fits the bill perfectly.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Cromac]

However during a federal election we vote for one person.

Doesn't sound like much of an election...;)

In our district the ballot was several pages, we voted on local representitives, and laws, state representitives and laws, judges, plus the federal positions (senator, congressman, President).

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Grishnakh]

2) People make different mistakes than machines. Machines make systematic errors (they do one thing wrong every time) whereas people make random errors. Which do you think is more likely to to skew and election result. Finally, empirically (ie: based on what REALLY HAPPENS), hand counting ballots turns out to be FAR MORE acccurate than machine counts (0.05% vs as bad as 15%).

Right. This is why you do regular audits to make sure the machines are operating correctly. When they're working correctly, they're much more reliable than humans. If they're not, they have a huge error.

This can be done by randomly selecting precincts to do manual recounts, to double-check the machine-counted results. If all the precincts are running the same standard machines, this should be a perfectly valid method. This of course requires that the machines produce a verifiable paper trail.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Grishnakh]

It's pretty trivial to design a pen&paper ballot that is machine readable. And such a ballot has the added bonus of being human readable as well.

Yes, that's what we used here in AZ. I never said we should toss out the ballot-reading machines and put in Diebold touchscreens. I'm just making the point that machines can be more accurate and efficient than completely manual counting if done properly. Some people on here seem to think we should throw out all technology and go back to doing everything manually. Unfortunately, human labor is not in inexhaustible supply, and generally costs a lot.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[tgibbs]

If the republicans "rigged" the election, as you propose, why in the hell would they give a third party candidate so many votes?

If I were rigging an election, that's probably what I would do. A third party candidate would be a good place to dump inconvenient votes for my candidate's opponent while keeping the vote total correct, and without implausibly inflating my own candidate's votes more than necessary.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[cryptochrome]

Divide and conquer, eh? That's obviously effective if you have enough people to spread the work around, and with multiple people counting you can catch any miscounters in the act. But it does become a lot of work if there are many issues on the ballot.

I saw some article somewhere about what ballots might look like if design professionals created them. Long story short, they could be made a lot more readable and therefore make both votecasting and hand votecounting a lot easier on the eyes and less error prone. Also, if you started counting votes before the polls closed you could spread that hassle out over much less time.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Jason Pollock]

You can't make that assumption... If I were going to game an election and I had access to the source of the election machine, I would:

1) determine what were swing states/swing counties.
2) alter a specific (random withing a range) percentage of the votes - only if the vote wasn't going my way.
3) only do it on the proper date.
4) have some state so it only happens once per system - re-running to test the machine would avoid the code.
5) have some flag so that it isn't triggered during test.

And I would hide the code so that it didn't appear in the source, such as the infamous Login hack that was in the early Unix source. In other words, I would hack the compiler. :)

Jason Pollock

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

The irony is that if all of New Hampshire were using optical scan boxes, then the people of New Hampshire actully changed their opinion of Bush in four years, because he won NH last time.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Bun]

Here in Arizona, my ballot was about double the size of a letter-size sheet of paper, and was full on both sides of selections to make. These included President, Senator, Representative (all at the federal level), then state representatives, local representatives, local school board officials, then several huge columns of which judges we wanted to get rid of, and lastly all the statewide Propositions. All the results for all these different selections are tallied in one night.

Just a thought:
Why don't you hold your federal elections separately from your local elections? So that day, you'd be voting for a president, senator (federal) and congressman (federal).

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be one of the fuckers in Congress that decided on these electronic ballots in the first place. Why don't we just take a queue from Canada, and go back to the old fashioned way. They can get the results the same night, and there's never a problem. Get em some scantrons, a number 2 pencil, and a private booth to bubble their answers. Easy.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[fossa]

The paper trail is a red herring, if you ask me. What is really needed is publicly-available source code that anyone can view.

The paper trail is human verifiable (not some cryptic barcode or silliness like that). If I voted for John Jones, and the paper says "John Jones", then I know I'm putting something in a box with the candidate I voted for written on it. The paper trail should, for convenience, also be machine readable. Perhaps by having a list of candidates with a darkened oval next to the selected candidates. Oh, this is starting to sound like proper purely paper ballot systems.

The point of a paper trail is to generate some human verifiable chunk of stuff that will be cumbersome to alter or hide or burn or whatever. It could be anything really, it just needs to convince a human that yes, it is likely that this chunk of stuff represents what the people voted for. And for me, pure electronics don't even come close to doing that.

Publically available source code is a red-herring. Sure it should be insisted upon, but how do you verify that the box you're voting on has the correct code? You'd have to verify it manually on election day, and this would be cumbersome, require extensive knowledge of programming and computers and the specific hardware involved (the *real* code isn't hiding somewhere else is it?), and would look a lot like tampering with the machine.

Electronic voting just brings in too much complexity. Filling in an oval with a felt marker seems to me to be as close to ideal as you're gonna get. I can see who I voted for, and I can see my vote going into a box of other votes. Beyond that I have to trust the system, but at least I know someone has to physically hide or destroy my paper ballot to make it not count.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[umbra_dweller]

1) What is wrong with it taking a while for the vote to be tallied? 2) What is wrong with the losing candidate questioning the vote?

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Go canada! The problem is that Canada only has the population of 1 state in the US.

There were over 100 million votes cast, vs Canada's what 2 or 3 million?

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Grishnakh]

And this would be a good idea why? Why have two election days when you can do it all in one instead, and waste less time and resources? Moreover, few people would bother showing up to the local/state elections.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Insightfull, what a bunch of crap. Democrats have been losing seats in the House and Senate since Clinton was elected. Trying to claim election tampering is just whining because the people don't want your socalist BS anymore.

It couldn't possibly be because Kerry was the stupidest candidate the Democrats could possibly have chosen to run could it? Just maybe? If they'd run a stump it would have gotten more votes than Kerry, at least then people would have been able to point to something it was good at.

You probably think that Michael Moore is brilliant and every scene in Farenshit 911 is fact too.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Bun]

If the republicans "rigged" the election, as you propose, why in the hell would they give a third party candidate so many votes?

Simple: divert Democrat votes to this third party so less suspicion will be cast on the Republicans. As long as the % of votes for the major parties stayed within the error bounds of previous polls, hardly anyone would look for irregularities. This exact same pattern has been noted in other elections.

Using your logic, I'm suspicious of the Boston Red Sox miracle. I mean, everything went so perfectly.

Sure, your logic follows... except that the World Series took place in full view of a television audience of about 30 million nation-widewide . If it weren't for that small quibble, I'd say your logic was good...

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Alex Belits]

It's impossible to prove what did, or didn't happen, however the Occam's razor only applies to the phenomena, that can be reliably observed, and then explained. If the observation process itself is questionable, it goes deeper than that.

Voting could be "observed" by reliable or unreliable method, yet the government applied a lot of effort to make sure that an unreliable method is chosen, so there can be no record. Now, what is a simplier explanation --

1. that the government and Diebold managed to choose the worst options of all available, despite having all the data and manpower to use any of the more reliable ones, and despite all research, recommendations and protests about this very issue

or

2. that the most unreliable method was chosen, against all recommendations and research, with the goal to exploit this unreliability and perform fraud.

The results themselves, are not in any way relevant -- they are likely to be tampered with. Discrepancies merely show that the problem likely was exploited (and discrepancies in any direction would mean that -- unusual number of Democrat votes in a shithole filled with uneducated rednecks that usually voted >90% for Republicans would be just as much a discrepancy as unusual support of Bush in an urban area with large percentage of ethnic minorities).

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

And above, Ladies and Gentlemen, we have evidence of the real reason for the election outcome. Too many dumb-as-a-post individuals, who simply swallow and repeat the heavily advertised lies, are allowed to vote. Intellectual curiosity and critical thinking be damned - the saw it on FOX, so it must be so. It's pathetic - they don't even know that they're being played for suckers by those they put in power.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

The point of the paper trail is that you place the receipt in a separate box, to be held in case of recount, before you leave.

Then at least if the machine does exactly as you said, it can be known that a discrepancy exists - and we can search for problems.

Also if the paper trail matches the electronic count, we can choose to believe that the odd results appear to be verifiably true.

In this case we can do nothing but wonder.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[maop]

Randomly fucking poll the paper votes. Another poster suggests digital signatures which would be good to include as well. I could cast my vote, look at the paper, and check for my vote on the web. I could also give my digital key to my party (if I choose) and they can verify the total count of their supporters.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[the_illuminatus]

that's bloody brilliant, not to mention simple. But there'll have to be a pretty big index-card to hold all the issues on the ballot. It can be done though!

Re:Paper trail not enough

[mdvolm]

I think the point here is not to "ask" the machine for it's own checksum. The ROM image or chip would be removed and check-summed individually. There is no way to bypass this check short of "switching" the ROMs under the table.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[CaptainCarrot]

That's easy enough if the ballot is a simple one. You couldn't possibly do it in many parts of the US. I worked as an officer at an election precinct this year, in a county where we use optically scanned ballots. After the polls close, part of our job is to sort through the ballots looking for those that are mismarked, have write-in candidates, or would otherwise be unreadable by a machine, and set them aside for hand counting by the Elections Board. With four people working a single ballot box, that took the better part of an hour by itself.

Now, besides the presidential election there were whole slates of local and state candidates, a US Senator and Representative to choose, and close on a dozen referenda. There is simply no way to do an actual count that quickly with a ballot that large.

In principle, I agree with you. But for a state to change its system to manual counting, it would require it to completely change the way it conducts elections. It's not a change we can simply drop into place.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[d34thm0nk3y]

Georgia uses the Diebold machines. Badnarik, the libertarian candidate got 17,000 votes there, more than any other third party candidate in any other state. If the republicans "rigged" the election, as you propose, why in the hell would they give a third party candidate so many votes?

Why would they bother tampering with Georgia in the first place, that place is red as red can be!

Re:Paper trail not enough

[claygate]

What about TV? Without instantaneous ballot counts how do you create hard-ons at Fox News so they can get more money for commercials inbetween

"LIVE ELECTION COUNT!!! WATCH AS EACH INDIVIDUAL VOTE CLOCKS ON OUR ELECTION ERECTION COUNTER 2008!!!"

you know its coming... you can catch it on SBC Yahoo Monopoly FBI highspeed DSL straight into the comfort of your home.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Vitriol Angst]

No, I've actually saw a NeoCon float into the air his faith was so strong. And many have started dragging their knuckles, throwing poo and grunting things like "flip flop" and grinning to each other like they said something profound.

It seems science has been terribly wrong about evolution; "if you quit believing it, it might pass you by."

Do I sound a little pissed? The liberal in me has been trying to convince these people that the media is "CORPORATE" and that Liberal and Republican and other terms are just ways to distract us so that we will sling poo at each other.

You can't even save these throwbacks from themselves. I would want to laugh at what happens when we get a Flat Tax or a Value Added Tax to further rip off the poor and the middle class, but alas, I'll be too busy getting by and scraping out a living.

And Evolution is not a theory, it is an observed fact. When they say "Darwin's Theory of Evolution" please note that Darwin was a scientist who posed an explanation for why a few species of animal could come to an island and fill all the ecological niches in diverse roles. There is more than one "Theory" of evolution. Survival of the fittest does not explain everything we observe. There is a lot more cooperation in nature then we once believed. But the important point is, that people need to know that because science has not explained the HOW of something, it doesn't mean that the WHAT isn't a fact. All life evolves. That is fact, or we wouldn't need a new flu vaccine each year (quick someone tell the white house). And gravity DOES exist, and that is a fact, even though there are no good explanations of HOW it works.

That is another point; nature has diverse roles for all life. So we can't all be rich owners or financial brokers. Some of us have to pick up the trash or make things. Should those people have no right to a fair living?

Re:Paper trail not enough

[d34thm0nk3y]

Here in King County, WA the damn scantrons machines are even made by Diebold! There is even some evidence of tampering from the primaries where 3 hours of the log is missing!

Re:Paper trail not enough

[beeplet]

Excellent idea. This would also keep people from altering ballots after they're printed but before they put them in the box.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Bun]

And this would be a good idea why?

Because you obviously have a hell of a time accurately counting up all the votes for everything from president to local dog catcher.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[bheading]

"faster and more accurate". Define "more accurate". How do you measure the accuracy of an electronic vote ?

The "it takes forever" point is specious in the extreme, mainly because of the underlying implication that it is more important to get a quick result than it is to get a correct one. Either way, in the UK the count is complete within 12 hours of the polls closing, so we usually know who's going to be Prime Minister the next morning. We've got a quarter of the number of votes you guys have. Meanwhile, in Ohio they're still counting votes - two weeks after the poll. What's that all about ?

And you're still ignoring the point. On what criteria can the losing candidate question the machines ? There are no metrics available which can determine whether the vote is valid or not. It's not like the hanging chads situation where people identified a problem that would cause the votes to be counted wrongly - the e-voting machine just spits out a number, how can you tell if it is questionable or not ?

Re:Paper trail not enough

[swillden]

We had everything counted, recounted, and called in 20 minutes after the polls closed.

All 20 races? Plus the amendments and propositions? And the 30 or so judges to be voted on?

Either your ballots are much simpler than ours, of each of those six ballot boxes only had about five ballots in it.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[bheading]

But that's silly (as is the article in general). You can't make extrapolations about what you think the vote might be against what it actually was. Exit polls, telephone polls and other kinds of poll are sometimes right but frequently wrong. Furthermore, the argument goes completely out of the window in a close vote (like the recent one) where the polls simply can't tell you accurately about the 100 votes that might have swung the election.

How would it work ? You could define a rule "if the real vote is X% away from the exit polls, we do a recount". Then of course, Mr. Corrupt Election Interferer (whoever it is or could be) knows that when he fiddles the vote, all he needs to do is insure his fiddling slips the result in under the radar, which he can easily do if he has access to the running totals on the exit polls. That's assuming, of course, that the exit polls themselves haven't been fiddled (if you give them an official role in a count, then why not?).

The point is that at the end of the day the computer spits out a number. How can you look at the number and say "I have confidence that the computer is right" ? What I'm saying is that logically, because the result cannot immediately be verified against a trustable source, you have to assume that the computer's result is wrong and will need recounting against paper receipts in all cases. Therefore, there is no point in having the electronic count in the first place.

To build an electronic voting system that can come close to being considered reliable, you have to wrap it in all kinds of checks and balances, set all kinds of standards and make sure they're enforced, do all sorts of monitoring of the vote and checking of the result. And even then you've still got a system which isn't transparent to Joe Public who can barely program a video recorder.

Is it really the best way to spend taxpayer dollars ?

Re:Paper trail not enough

[bheading]

This is perhaps the better of the systems involved, but you still have to trust the software that's doing the optical scanning. You also have to trust the guys who have calibrated the scanning machine.

Easier not to bother, and just count 'em by hand. It takes a few more hours, but it's cheaper and better.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[beeplet]

What I'm saying is that logically, because the result cannot immediately be verified against a trustable source, you have to assume that the computer's result is wrong and will need recounting against paper receipts in all cases.

I think this is the crux of the disagreement. I was assuming in my post that voting machings could be considered approximately as trustworthy as people counting by hand, in which case recounts would only be requested under the same kind of circumstances that they are with paper ballot systems.

Now, if you are going to claim that voting machines are inherently untrustworthy, then indeed they are useless. But I believe it is possible to build a system that is at least as accurate and trustworthy as hand-counting. I also think that the testing and monitoring of such a system could still save money in the long run, when you consider the number of people-hours required to count and recount ballots.

If reliable, accurate voting machines can be implemented, I think that hand counts could be reduced to spot-auditing and requested recounts (as in close races, or disagreement with the exit polls, or based on statistical analysis such as the paper in this story). In addition I think that electronic voting machines could reduce the number of spoiled ballots (by printing out a clear human- and machine-readable ballot to be voter-verified before being put in the box).

But back to the issue of trust... as someone else posted, it will be hard to get around this as long as the government is contracting out the work to companies. Giving the task to research universities, and requiring open code, complete published documentation, and testing, would be a better way to go, in my opinion.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[RussP]

The problem is that if a voting machine is programmed to cheat, it is easy enough to fake a paper receipt. I could cast a vote for A, have the screen verify that I am voting for A, receive a printed receipt that tells me I voted for A, and STILL have that vote count for B within the black box.

That's why you the paper ballots should used for the real count. The electronically recorded votes should be used for a fast but tentative initial count and also as a substitute for lost or severaly damaged paper ballots. See this.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[andreMA]

It's not a lack of talent in the US that's the issue; it's a lack of will on the part of our semi-elected officials.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[ilikecaffeine]

Exactly! The "democratic stronghold" that once was the South is no more. The more people migrate into (damn yankees) and out of the South (good riddance), the more the southerners realize that just because grampappy and meemaw were farmers and voted democrat way back in the day doesn't mean they have to today. A lot of "registered democrats" in Georgia (and indeed across the south) have been voting Republican for years.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[lostwanderer147]

Stop arguing about conspiracy theory. It is unlikely that there is a conspiracy large enough to mess with hundreds of thousands of voting machines around the country, or that they would spend that much time if they wanted to. Yes, there are problems. No, they are most likley not someone out to screw us all. The odds are that the machines are just poorly made, but that does not mean that someone is hacking the system.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Catbeller]

Actually, up until the 2000 election, exit polls were remarkably accurate.

They are still remarkably accurate -- if done for elections held anywhere but in the U.S. Magic.

And if exit polls no longer work, statistically the variant outcomes should scatter for Bush and Kerry roughly equally. They do not. They all skewed way, in some cases REALLY WAY, over to Bush.

And something is definitely wrong. Check Bev Harris's work these past few days. In Florida, she was issued unsigned audit tapes in response to her requests for evidence after the election, rather than the signed and verified ones.

After being denied the originals, she actually found them in the TRASH. Police were called to stop her, but she got the tapes.

Kids, they compared the unsigned results to the actual, disposed-of results from the dumpster.

The copies she was given do not match the originals. The vote was way, way adjusted for Bush. In. Every. Case.

She won't make the conclusion outright, but it's obvious. Where Jeb could cheat, he did. Mygod, how could he NOT cheat??

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

"Just because the US has a larger population doesn't mean it'll take longer, just hire more people to count and that's it."

California has a larger population than Canada.
And believe me you DO NOT want to hand count a CA ballot.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[nlper]

The problem is that if a voting machine is programmed to cheat, it is easy enough to fake a paper receipt.

Wrong. When I voted in Nevada this past election, the machine printed a receipt that I could inspect, but not access. That receipt was deposited in a lock box so that a paper recount could be conducted later if necessary.

That's not how it works with some other state's voting systems, but I'm hard-pressed to understand how Nevada's system is more prone to election fraud than previous, non-computer methods.

Tyler

Re:Paper trail not enough

[iminplaya]

Wrong. There should be no voting machine. Pen and paper work just fine. Unless there's a big fire of course.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[iminplaya]

And exactly who elected them? Satan? I think it's a lack of will on the part of the person one sees in the mirror. Also remember that most of the people who vote think that the status quo is just fine. The gov't says so, so it must be true :-)

Re:Paper trail not enough

[iminplaya]

Uuuhh, just exactly how much do you want to complicate the simple act of voting? Why stop there? Let's give everyone a machine. There are a few things that we can do without a computer. Posting on Slashdot doesn't appear to be one of them, but I'm working on it.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[iminplaya]

The REAL question is why are there electronic voting machines that DON'T have a paper trail?

Why does that question always come up? Most people know why. The REAL question is...What are we going to DO about it?

Re:Paper trail not enough

[cletus_bojangles]

The paper trail is a red herring, if you ask me.

The ACM disagrees, and I am inclined to take their word over yours. From their statement on E-voting:

voting systems should enable each voter to inspect a physical (e.g., paper) record to verify that his or her vote has been accurately cast and to serve as an independent check on the result produced and stored by the system.

See the original statement

Re:Paper trail not enough

[iphayd]

Why not ship the CDs to the people, and allow them to put it on their machines? This way the tampering is by me, and will only screw up my vote.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[NetSettler]

The problem is that if a voting machine is programmed to cheat, it is easy enough to fake a paper receipt.

I'm not 100% sure that what you say is true about receipts. I haven't thought it through thoroughly, but it seems likely to me that the voting box could give you back a secret code (not your ssn or a voter index # but something more like an encryption key) that would identify you and your vote anonymously. Let's say you got something that said that person #ABCD voted for and then a list of what you voted for. Then they could publish a list of voters by magic key that said exactly which votes contributed to the result. Any person could add them up and see who won and lost. Every participant could verify that their own vote was in the list. That would reduce the problem to wondering if anyone changed after the fact and wondering if there were more votes than people who were able to verify themselves. What bothers me is not that this is being done wrong, but that no one seems to be doing anything about this at all.

What is really needed is publicly-available source code that anyone can view.

What makes you think the machines they're using are running the code they publish? Open source works great if it's you that owns the machine you're going to run it on--I don't understand how to verify that a machine you don't own is running the code it purports to be running.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[SonicBurst]

I'll agree with you that it is harder, but it is hardly undoable. There was a pic floating around the web that showed a guy with a Bush/Cheney bumper sticker on his pickup truck loading the paper ballots in the back of it. Perhaps you've seen it, perhaps you haven't. I'm not even sure the photo was real. Hell, for all I know it was Photoshopped, but if it was true, it shows you how easy it would be to just steal the paper ballots and alter them as seen fit.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[localman]

No no... this problem is already solved conceptually. The machine doesn't actually tally the votes: it produces a paper ballot with both human and machine readable output (the candidates' names and a barcode, for example).

After you verify that the human readable portion is correct you put it in the ballot box. They can then be counted by a seperate machine using the machine readable part.

So -- what happens if the vote is contested? Well, at that point you can do a sampling of ballots to verify that in fact the human readable and the machine readable portions match, thus testing the voting machines. You can run them through the tallying machines to make sure those are all counting correctly. You can count them all again by hand using only the human readable portion which was voter verified. You have options.

This solves the problem of:

a) accessible voting machines (can even be a touchscreen)
b) automated counting
c) auditable

Dammit, I can't seem to find where I read about it now, but there are several groups pushing for this kind of thing. Why this simple system isn't going to be in place in every precinct by 2008 is beyond me. What could possibly be the rational for anyone to oppose an easy method to tally verifiable votes? We're spending money on new machines everywhere anyways, why not do it right?

Cheers.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[amRadioHed]

Georgia uses the Diebold machines. Badnarik, the libertarian candidate got 17,000 votes there, more than any other third party candidate in any other state. If the republicans "rigged" the election, as you propose, why in the hell would they give a third party candidate so many votes?

Yeah, that's a great question. Why indeed. It doesn't make sense that a supporter of Bush would want to shift votes from a candidate who had a very good chance of winning to a candidate that had no chance of winning.

There were documented cases of fraud in this election, however I have heard of none in Georgia and have no reason to believe there was fraud there. Regardless, the argument you gave against fraud in Georgia sucks. Really.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Kwil]

We can do multiple simultaneous elections here too, and often do for our provincial elections.

In those, you get several ballots, each a different color. Put an X on each for whoever you want, put the ballot in the appropriately colored box. Each race then gets counted separately, with appropriate scrutineers present.

Here's what gets me though.. it's not like the world ends if you don't know who won by the end of the night. Hell, you've got 2 months before it's even finalized. Why not spend the time and count for.. what.. 3-5 hours with scrutineers present and avoid the 6-8 weeks of legal wrangling and the inestimable cost of a loss of faith in the electoral system?

If you guys weren't so impatient, this wouldn't even be an issue.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[LardBrattish]

No, what you need is to eliminate all of this error prone High tech voting and reduce the public's expectation of getting a result before they go to bed.

Good old fashioned paper ballots are the safest method of conducting an election and the most difficult to defraud.

As an outsoder it absolutely beggers belief that you have allowed the election to be decided on closed source machines produced by a politically active company that happens to support the winner.

The very fact that exit polls have been grossly inaccurate on only two occasions (2000 & 2004) should be ringing some pretty big alarm bells among those Americans that would actually like to live in a democracy rather than the grotesque mockery you have at the moment.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[jericho4.0]

God dammit. Why are there still so many of you Americans that can't see the fucking elephant in front of you?

'My Pet Goat', Flights of Saudis, Bin Laden not caught and 'not a priority', Supreme Court in Florida 2000, Diebold campaign donations/memos, leaked source code, paperless machines with no backup, WMD, anthrax, terror level = 'elevated'. Shunning of 'Unpatriotic' reporters, the PATRIOT act, the 'war president' who failed military obligations vs. a 'weak on terrorisim' multi-decorated veteran. Lower taxes for the wealthy, social programs cut, insane spending levels on war, no economic plan in sight.

Lies, lies, lies, lies, lies.

What, exactly, will be the straw that breaks the camels back? Stop gazing lovingly at your constitution and have another fucking revolution already.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Phisbut]

All 20 races? Plus the amendments and propositions? And the 30 or so judges to be voted on?

Yeah well... what's the idea of jamming up everything on the same ballot? Or even voting for everything on the same day? Anything that makes it more complicated only improves the odds of democracy not being respected because of "technical problems".

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Phisbut]

Why have two election days when you can do it all in one instead, and waste less time and resources?

Why have a single election day when you can have two instead, and keep voters confidence and people knowing that their vote actually counted. Just how much money did all those Diebold machine cost? And how much time did people spend arguing about the accuracy of those machines, and the legality, and testing, etc. That is less a waste of time and resources... how?

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Phisbut]

The problem is that Canada only has the population of 1 state in the US.

Well then... get more people to count the votes. Where's the problem?

Re:Paper trail not enough

[cduffy]

Yes, you can steal the ballots -- but if you can't come up with a legitimate digital signature to barcode across each one (which you can't necessarily do w/o having an appropriate key -- and there are plenty of tricks that can be done to make that tough/impossible outside the geographic and temporal bounds of the election), having all the access you like to those paper ballots may not do you any good. Even simply removing some percentage of ballots cast in favor of the candidate one is opposed to can be detected, as it will result in a badly broken signature chain. Have each ballot include not only signature information but also a brief encoding (within the barcode) of the last 10 cast on the same machine, and you even permit error recovery in the case of lost ballots (while, again, using digital signatures to make this record tamper-evident). There are other techniques available to provide this record while making it impossible to determine any individual's vote, even knowing the order in which they used the machines, so long as the ballots in the box are mixed. (This requires a modification to traditional signature chaining, beyond the scope of this message).

It's been a while since I made a significant effort to keep up on modern crypto techniques -- but suffice to say that there's plenty that can be done to make any tampering with the paper record associated with an election thoroughly evident on audit.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[k-0s]

Well from what I understand the paper trial is two-fold. One receipt for the voter and one to verify should a recount be requested. If the paper trail doesn't match the electronic vote then something is obviously very wrong. Spot checks of the paper trial at various intervals by impartial observers could confirm the process is legitimate.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Bush Pig]

In federal elections in Australia we vote for a bunch of people - a local candidate for the electorate we live in, and the six senators who get elected for each state at that election. Our Senate ballots are the size of a bedsheet, and can have over 100 names on them. Of course, you don't have to mark against each name (you can just mark one box above the line and the votes get distributed according to whatever shady little deals the political parties have cooked up), but the votes still get counted as though each candidate had been numbered.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

I gotta better idea. Why don't you take your gullible butt back to transylvania and let old vlad bite ya again. And we don't need any more freekin foreigners in our country to take the rest of our jobs. I Indians and/or Bulgars want to be cheated at election time, a local custon I hear; then let them do it in their own lands. Those that try it here should be tried and hung for treason from the nearest lamppost.
You see, we don't really care how long our count process is, just how truthful and how accountable. There is no way to do that electronically. Everything electronic is a game of checkers with every move having a counter somewhere. Machines also aid in the systematic violation of privacy in voting. Go vote, get in a line...then you are in a linear sequence. Take a ballot with a number on it...now you have a number issued in a sequence, preserving it. Vote sequentially in the same machine and leave in order from the station...now your vote is gleaned from the known data and sequence cross references. Now you go home and wonder why all the democrats in your community suddenly lost their jobs, had their mortgages foreclosed, their children followed by the police...to catch 'vandals', your wife followed home by a black unmarked car....suspicion of being a lady of the evening..... you get the picture

Re:Paper trail not enough

[bryce1012]

Wow. Well your comments are appreciated, Michael Moore.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Bush Pig]

The thing is, the Democrats those crackers used to vote for were people like George Wallace (a notorious segregationist, iirc), so it's hardly surprising they vote for Dubyah these days. They're obviously uncomfortable with anyone too far to the left of Adolf Hitler.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Obasan]

This is a good point - I think there should be a 'window' that you can see the receipt paper as it scrolls through giving you a chance to verify your vote was printed correctly on paper before leaving the booth. You would need to have this on a timer or have a way of making sure it scrolled out of view before the next voter entered.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[CaptainCarrot]

And by that system, we'd have had about 20 different ballot boxes in the room for this past election when you add up all the offices and referenda that needed to be decided. 40 actually, since due to new accessibility rules we lost a polling place and had to vote two seperate precincts out of the same facility. Two different sets of officials, two different ballots, two different ballot boxes. The only requirements here was that the voter stand in the correct line, and then after voting put his ballot into the correct box. Since, when we balanced all the numbers at the end of the day to ensure all the ballots we issued were accounted for, we ended up 6 over and the other precinct ended up 6 under, there were at least 6 people from the other precinct who put their ballots into the wrong box despite being instructed otherwise. That's net obviously; two-way crossovers would go undetected at this point. I suppose considering how busy we were to have only 6 such errors isn't so bad -- but suppose we had 20 boxes each! What a disaster that might have been.

This is what I mean when I say we'd have to completely restructure the way we run elections. (This is California, by the way. All elections in the US are conducted by the states, not the federal government. That's why there's no one uniform system from state to state.) To count votes by hand, there can't possibly be more than 2 or 3 candidates or issues to be decided at once. It's hard enough to get the electorate to turn out once or twice a year. 6 or 7 times a year would be just too much, IMO.

The main reason it takes so long to get a final count is because of provisional balloting, which we do so as to not inadvertently deny the vote to anyone who has the right to do so. For each one a decision has to be made as to whether that ballot will be counted or not. This takes time, and until it's complete the count isn't finished. Naturally, for all practical purposes the results are known long before the figures are official since provisional ballots comprise only a small proportion of the total. And the Presidential election isn't official until the Electors meet and Congress counts their votes anyway, which happens in December.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[AndyChrist]

The problem is that if a voting machine is programmed to cheat, it is easy enough to fake a paper receipt. I could cast a vote for A, have the screen verify that I am voting for A, receive a printed receipt that tells me I voted for A, and STILL have that vote count for B within the black box.

The paper trail is a red herring, if you ask me. What is really needed is publicly-available source code that anyone can view.

Open source woudn't be a bad idea.

But you totally misunderstand the idea of a paper trail. It's NOT the receipt that you get printed. It's like the printed record of a cash register. If THAT were visible to the voter as it was printed, and then stored securely, you would have a record that you could review if there were questions later on. Just like store managers do every day.

If you want it to be machine readable, you could have it print a bar code for each voting option chosen. For ease of readability in recounts, selected candidates could be in big bold print. It would help those with bad vision, too.

AND the voter could have a little printed receipt to take home, if they want. (Hey, you could even choose not to have one, just like an ATM. But gee, companies like Diebold don't have any expertise in THAT area, do they?)

It's not the monumental technological hurdle that the assholes who sell these machines claim. ATMs and cash registers have done it for ages. The only hurdle is one imposed by not designing such provisions in from the start, whether for cost-cutting reasons (or sales-inflating reasons, if you can sell upgrade kits later on), or out of right-wing conspiracy reasons.

Fucking....assholes. FUCK-ING-ASS-HOLES. Pretty soon the only way your vote will ever count is if you vote with bullets.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[plog]

There were over 100 million votes cast, vs Canada's what 2 or 3 million?

Way to confirm those stereotypes, billybob.

Actually, our biggest election problem is counting the icicles we use for markers, you know, blue ones for this candidate, red ones for that... apparently if the room has too many people in it during the count they just wind up with purple puddles. Eh.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

The big cities in Bulgaria is about as modern as any other European country. The urge to join the European Union in 2007 has skyrocketted the price on everything and expanded modernization efforts to outside the main cities. Calling it 5th world sounds like you've never been there before.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[bheading]

In theory voting machines are approximately as trustworthy as a hand count. In practice, voting machine software has bugs, can be interfered with by partisan individuals, etc.

The advantage of a manual count is that it can be open to the public, so the candidates, lawyers and anyone else can watch each vote being counted and monitor it so that they can satisfy themselves that the wheels of democracy are turning as they should be. You don't have the election officials and the makers of the software or the machines going into a corner to figure out whether the count is wrong or not. This level of verification isn't possible with any kind of automated count. At a manual count, you can also watch the election officials as they filter the ballots for ballot papers which haven't been marked properly (hanging chads anyone?). You can't do that with an automated count.

A spoiled ballot in the UK is one which has no intelligible mark anywhere for a candidate. Some argue that the ability to spoil a ballot (ie write "all the candidates are wankers" on the ballot paper) is a democratic right. I thought it meant the same thing in the US, but I think your point is that the machine is able to prevent people from accidentally making the wrong mark on the ballot. With manual counts in the UK this problem doesn't exist, as if you make any kind of mark on the ballot paper which can reasonably be associated with one of the candidates, it will be counted as a vote (and the election administrator will seek the assent of the candidates present at the count when making this decision).

Re:Paper trail not enough

[bheading]

To your other point, open source and full documentation is a great idea, but someone still has to compile the code and load it on to the machine. At the end of the day, it still comes down to a small group of people, in whom you have to place your trust to ensure the election is conducted fairly. To turn it around a little, if it transpired that one of those people was corrupt, how would you know ?

This reminds me of Ken Thompson's argument about the Trojan Horse. Sure you've got the source right there, but how can you say for sure that this is the actual code the machine will be executing ? Thompson points out that you can't trust code which you did not entirely create yourself.

This is why I think open source in voting machines is still a red herring. You could say that I'm being completely paranoid - sure, and in 99% of other cases involving computers you'd be right. But the trouble is that in a democratic system, people in opposition will (should!) sling all the mud they can to try to undermine the election of their opponent. Electronic voting systems can't be defended from this type of attack, and as a result people start to question it, thereby losing confidence in the democratic system. A hand count where the opposing candidate was free to attend and "put up or shut up" if you like about the conduct of the count, is disarmed from undermining the vote in this way.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[andreMA]

True, Joe sixpack shares the blame for not taking the time to educate himself to vote intelligently, and not being concerned with the "greater good" but rather having a "what's in it for me?" attitude.

By "semi" elected I meant that some are elected, some are appointed by elected officials, and some are career bureaucrats. On re-reading my post today, it seems that I was ambiguous on that...

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Grishnakh]

There are two ways to identify if there's a problem:
1) The machines should be double-checked, using random sampling. This means the machines must have a paper trail, and in a sampling of precincts, the paper ballots are compared with the machine totals. If there's a problem, everything is manually recounted.
2) Exit polls should be done at various locations to verify the statistics between these polls and the machine counts are the same, within a certain amount. If the polls are saying candidate A got 65% of the vote but the machines are saying 45%, there's a problem.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Grishnakh]

Just how much money did all those Diebold machine cost?

Too much, I'm sure. Why is everyone acting like I'm a Diebold supporter because I support machine-counted elections??!!! I NEVER said anything about Diebold machines. In fact, I think they should be banned because they don't produce a paper trail, and their source code is closed.

I support machines, but I think the machines my state (AZ) uses are better: they use pre-printed paper ballots, and then optically scan them (of course storing the originals in case of recount). These machines have been around for many years, and haven't generated any controversy.

What is wrong with you people? You just read what you want to read, not what people are actually writing.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[swillden]

Yeah well... what's the idea of jamming up everything on the same ballot? Or even voting for everything on the same day?

You think it'd be easer to set up all of the polling places every other week or so?

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

import the Bulgarian or Indians who designed the election data flow (note the architecture, not the code) for a short H1B stint. You mean more outsourcing?

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Phisbut]

I didn't say you were supporting Diebold machines... I was simply reacting to your saying that the alternative of voting for your president on one day and on everything else on another day being a waste of resource, when your current system is no less a waste of resource.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[lostwanderer147]

I'm not saying that there isn't lying going on. I'm not saying that there isn't someone out to get us all. I'm not even saying that I don't believe or wouldn't like to believe the stories. I'm just saying that people, and always the people on the losing side, are incredibly quick to call it a conspiracy. I agree completely with your list of problems. I'm definitely not saying that Bush is better. The one thing that is not necessary is revolution. People like to sit back and say "We need a revolution. Somebody should do something." Revolution isn't as pretty as it sounds. Remember, several million more people voted for Bush in the election. Revolution is not the answer. Doing something extreme will cause more problems that it will solve. Just wait four years, and then you'll have a chance to democratically change things. That's the whole thing about democracy. If you don't like something, in a few years you can work to change it. Revolution destroys the entire system.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[ZB Mowrey]

The whole idea of the paper receipt is that it gets dropped in the box as a backup measure. If the machine tells you that your vote was for A, and the receipt says A, when the box gets audited they will see that you voted for A but the vote got misallocated. This is why people agitate for paper receipts, so that recounts can uncover such fraud with a *verifiable paper trail*.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[edbarbar]

What's to stop them from changing the code on enough of the machines to win? We'd never know what happens after we inspect the code. In the right area they COULD possibly win with only a handful of doctored machines.

Who is they? Presumably the party that wins. What prevents it is that they would be kicked out of power for decades if it were ever caught.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[KontinMonet]

5th world? My wife is Bulgarian, I know Bulgaria. I have also lived and worked in India. The last time I was there, Bulgaria had no hordes of mutilated beggars on the streets; families sleeping on the pavements; people travelling on the roofs of trains; and will probably be in the EU in 2007/2008. Not 5th world as I see it.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats right everyone in the south is racist and thats why they voted for Bush, after all he didn't have any minorities as Sec of State or National Security Advisor. Oh wait he did, I guess all the racist sob's here didn't care about that and voted for him anyway.

Could it actually be that people here in the south feel just like Zell Miller and Reagon do when they say that the Democrats left them? We're uncomfortable with people running this country that we feel will be weak on defense in this day and age. And whether you agree with it or not most people here did not feel that Kerry would be strong enough on defense.

Not one person I've talked to that voted for Bush voted for him because he was a southerner or because he is a christian. They voted for him because they felt he was the right man for the job.

I get so sick and tired of hearing people that are not from the south, or have never been to the south calling southerners racist. I've met far more racist northerners than southerners and I live in GA.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[EasyT]

Of course they should be randomly audited, but against what? Exit polls and past voting demographics by precinct?

This is why electronic voting is such a terrible idea. There is no good way to audit the votes. If you have a reciept that you drop in a box, why not just use paper. If you have some sort of personal identifier, why not just advertise your vote on some website?

Random audits will work if we adopt a voter-verified paper trail. We don't need to be afraid of electronic voting if we just commit to doing it right. Compare our system to Australia's for a good example. http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,61045,00.htm l

And if we do finally get it right and we establish an electronic voting system that we trust, it will offer a clear advantage over paper ballots. And I'm not just talking about speedy results. For example, some machines allow visually impaired voters to cast their vote without human assistance. Keep in mind that while paper ballots may be great in your county (we use an excellent, clearly formatted optical-scan ballot in mine), many paper ballots suffer from problems such as hanging chads in punch-card systems, or confusing candidate layouts. Remember Florida's butterfly ballot of 2000? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/americas/2000/ us_elections/glossary/a-b/1037172.stm

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Pxtl]

At that point it then becomes possible to tie a person to their vote, which is risky.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Pxtl]

Scantrons? Fuck no, that's too sciency for us primitive canucks. Our ballots are counted with human eyeballs in most cases.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, and Leon who bags groceries at the supermarket since he dropped out of 10th grade is going to know exactly what you are talking about. Leon is going to be overjoyed that we now have a new technogeek system that 4% of the population can understand, and use to verify accurate votes. A system that means nothing to 95% of the population is worthless.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Automatic counting is problematic even when there's a voter-verified paper trail. This is because the machines that do the counts can still be hacked, and a manual count is not required unless the margin between the candidates is small enough. But if the machine is hacked that margin can be set as wide as the hacker wants.

No. The only way to have a legitimate election is for there to not only be a voter-verified paper trail, but for there to be a hand count in every case, in front of witnesses from each party. Anything less means the election is illegitimate.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[LucidBeast]

What if you could take a ticket with a hash with you that records how you voted and results would be published online. Then you could look up your vote using your ticket and see if it still records the correct vote if not maybe you could complain or something...

Ballot stuffing should then be prevented by mechanically counting the voters with a different system.

Now how to authenticate that the ticket is not fraud...

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Pxtl]

And then your abusive employer/husband/mafioso demands that you give over your ticket or they break your teeth, and you'd damn well better have voted the way they said to.

The has is no different from a slip that says "this hereby certifies that I voted for John Kerry".

Re:Paper trail not enough

[LucidBeast]

There could be a trash can in front of the voting place where most people would toss their tickets anyway so you could pick one that suited your abusive associates.

But I think your problems are already pretty severe if you have to worry about somebody breaking your teeth. I hope that portion of the electorate that would fall under this category is insignificant enough not to sway elections one way or the other. Employers demanding tickets could be thwarted off by some sort of privacy laws. Of course in a society with oppressive regiment this wouldn't work, because there could be an armed militia checking tickets of those who have voted, but I think in most stable western democracies it should work.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[dswartze]

well, the system is slightly different here, but the ballot has a list of all the candidates running in your "riding" and which of the "many" parties that they're in. You put an x beside the name of the person you like and you're done. I have very little faith in people, but you'd have to be even more stupid than that to screw this kind of ballot up

Re:Paper trail not enough

[RWerp]

You still need a paper trail. The ballots can be counted, doublechecked, you can use 2, or 3, or N groups of people with whatever affiliation. This is where vote security lies.

As Stalin said: "It's not about who votes, it's about who counts the vote".

Re:Paper trail not enough

[RWerp]

I am sorry, but 5th world country like Bulgaria

I am sorry, but Bulgaria is not a "5th world country". It will join the European Union in 2007 or 2009.

A legal question

[Nijika]

Not sayin' it is so... but HAD the election been accidentally given to Bush, now that Kerry has conceded, what would the legal recourse be??

Re:A legal question

[notcreative]

The electors don't caste their votes until Dec. They would change the ballot of electors that FL sends to the College, and the new ones would vote for Kerry. I don't think his concession would have anything to do with it, legally. If they vote for him, he'll serve.

Re:A legal question

[Rufus211]

conceeding means nothing legally, it just means "ok, I'll shut up now." The only thing that matters legally is what the electoral college votes. According to wikipedia:

Each state's electors meet in their state capitals in December , 41 days following the election, at which time they cast their electoral votes. Thus the electoral college never meets as one body. The electoral votes are then sealed and sent to the President of the Senate (i.e. the sitting Vice President of the United States), who retains them until the new Congress convenes in January. At that time, the votes are opened and counted in the presence of both houses of Congress. The candidate who receives a majority of electoral votes for President becomes President, and the candidate who receives a majority of electoral votes for Vice President becomes Vice-President.

So we have about a month for the electoral college to change its mind.

Re:A legal question

[Anonymous Coward]

The concession was political, not legally binding. If the election had been accidentally given to Bush, but was later found to have been for Kerry, Kerry would become president.

Re:A legal question

[mopslik]

HAD the election been accidentally given to Bush, now that Kerry has conceded, what would the legal recourse be?

I imagine that a proper recount (somehow) in your scenario would declare Kerry the winner. A concession is not legally binding. See here. If your scenario was the case, Kerry would be the president.

Re:A legal question

[jtseng]

Even if, somehow, we find out later that Kerry won, does he REALLY want to clean up Bush's mess?

Re:A legal question

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually,

If voter fraud can be proven to a level that it had an effect on the outcome the winner is required by law to immedietly resign his post so even is fraud is found in the next 4 years Cheney woudl be president.

Look it up if you don't believe me.

Re:A legal question

[interiot]

As far as I know, candidates conceding has NO effect on the legal process whatsoever. The vote counting and electoral vote process still go ahead exactly the same as if no candidate conceded.

Re:A legal question

[Matt Amato]

This is where people fail to realize how the electoral system works. First off, no one has been elected president yet. States have simply held a poll to let thier electors know who people want them to vote for. The Actually election doesn't happen until the Monday following the second Wednedsay in December. If enough electors decided to switch sides and vote for Kerry, then he would become President. Kerry conceding doesn't mean he can't get elected, it just means he admits that he has lost. If it turns out that that isn't true, or if the electoral college changes it's mind, then he becomes president. Just like if the electors decided all to vote for Howard Stern, even though he isn't running, well, then he's president. See http://people.howstuffworks.com/question472.htm for more info on the electoral system.

Re:A legal question

[jdavidb]

Concession has absolutely no legal implications. It just means you'll quit putting any resources into contesting the election. (i.e., you won't ask for recounts, you'll tell your supporters it's over and you fought a good fight, etc.). If you remember, Al Gore actually conceded and then took his concession back. :)

The election still is not final. Each state will certify its election results through its own legal process which may differ from state to state. I don't think that's complete in most (any?) states, yet. The popular vote counts are only final when that certification process happens, so if recounts started showing up for Kerry, the election could still change.

Even after that, the electoral college doesn't meet for awhile, and it's not over until they vote.

Re:A legal question

[Gryphn]

The problem is, the mess on Jan 20th, 2005 will be much, much smaller than the mess on Jan 20th, 2009.

Re:A legal question

[hacker]

"Even if, somehow, we find out later that Kerry won, does he REALLY want to clean up Bush's mess?"

I'd rather have 4 years of trying to clean it up, rather than 4 more years to make it worse.

Did you see the recent news how Bush signed into law, the new $800B (billion!) dollar cap on the defecit. This is the third increase in the spending cap Bush has passed in his first term as president.

Re:A legal question

[mamer-retrogamer]

"Conceding" is not a legal act. If it is shown that Kerry actually won (before Bush's second term officially starts), then he is our President Elect. Unless, of course, he refuses the position. Would Edwards then become President? What if he refuses also?

I believe it all to be academic at this point, however.

Re:A legal question

[rabtech]

Wikipedia is wrong; the original system worked as described but an ammendment was quickly passed to change to the current system: The vice-president is the running mate of the president.

I believe this was done because early Presidents (post-Washington) had trouble cooperating with the Vice Presidents (who came from a different party), or vice-versa (whichever you prefer).

Re:A legal question

[pebs]

Not sayin' it is so... but HAD the election been accidentally given to Bush, now that Kerry has conceded, what would the legal recourse be??

The electors don't vote until December 13th. That's why they are doing a recount in Ohio.

Re:A legal question

[flyingsquid]

True, Bush has gotten us in a pretty deep hole. On the other hand, Bush hasn't even finished digging yet.

Re:A legal question

[Fredge]

Did you see the recent news how Bush signed into law, the new $800B (billion!) dollar cap on the defecit. This is the third increase in the spending cap Bush has passed in his first term as president.

So? It's not like the Democrats ever saw a spending bill they didn't like. If you're looking for rational budgeting from either of the two major parties you're more optimistic than I.

Re:A legal question

[gordguide]

" ... Not sayin' it is so... but HAD the election been accidentally given to Bush, now that Kerry has conceded, what would the legal recourse be?? ..."

Well, in the US, the offices of President and Vice-President are not directly elected by ordinary voters; they are elected by the Electoral College. So, technically, no-one has been elected yet.

December 7 2004 is the deadline to " Resolve any issues regarding election recounts, controversies, or contests. "

There are various meetings and deadlines in the near future (December 13, meeting of Electors; December 22, prepare and distribute Certificates of Vote; January 6, 2005, Count the Electoral Votes in Congress).

January 6 is the day the Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates are declared elected.

The Electoral College is not necessarily bound by the votes of ordinary citizens and although the rules vary from State to State, it's possible for one candidate to get a State's Electoral College votes not supported by majority votes cast by ordinary voters on Election Day.

In other words, technically and legally, the College could easily give a majority vote to Kerry over Bush.

However, once Congress counts those Electoral College votes, it's over. There could, conceivably, be massive voter fraud committed during the General Election on November 2, but the Offices simply are not elected by those votes. The College rules, and what the College says, goes. There is no mechanism to reverse Electoral College votes once they are counted by Congress.

So, it's possible that Kerry could be declared President by the Electoral College vote tally, although highly unlikely. And, once the College declares Bush President, as they should do so according to both custom and the rules, then he is, quite simply, The President for the next four years. Nothing can change that (barring obvious things like death in office, impeachment, etc).

Re:A legal question

[bnenning]

I'd rather have 4 years of trying to clean it up, rather than 4 more years to make it worse.

So would I, but that wasn't an option, because Kerry wanted to spend even more than Bush. Neither party cares about fiscal responsibility anymore, just like neither cares about civil liberties. (The minority party may pretend to care as a means of attacking the majority, but once they get into power their attitude swiftly changes).

Re:A legal question

[sckeener]

Admittedly I haven't looked at the states in question, but some states force their electors to vote a certain way under penalty of jail time.

The electors could vote Kerry into office and then the states with those laws in effect could throw the electors in jail.

One of the multiple pluses of them voting in Kerry would be hopefully changing the constitution to toss out the Electoral College.

Re:A legal question

[CSG_SurferDude]

Tin_Foil_Hat_mode=on

Actually, the Democrats WANTED Kerry to lose, since they didn't want the Democratic party to take the blame for the shit coming down in the next four years.

This way (With Bush winning) The Republicans take the fall, and Senator Clinton, who at that point will have become a RE-Elected Senator, can waltz right in to take the Presidency back for the following eight years.

Tin_Foil_Hat_mode=off

Re:A legal question

[Anonymous Coward]

"One of the multiple pluses of them voting in Kerry would be hopefully changing the constitution to toss out the Electoral College."

How do you come to that assumption? The Democrats controlled both houses of Congress for a good 50 years during the 20th Century. They had ample opportunity to change the system and they didn't. There should've been some clue to election reform when Kennedy beat Nixon in 1960 due to the voting fraud outside of Chicago but guess what? It didn't happen. In 1976, there was an attempt at a Constitutional Amendment to abolish the Electoral College, and it went nowhere. So for 50 years, the Democrats could've abolished the College - but didn't - and didn't take issue to the results until 2000 when they lost the election due to their chronic shortsightedness during their long reign of the legislature.

For Zoroaster's sake, before Newt Gingrich and his Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994, Congressional members were still receiving ice delivered to them daily. There had been no need for this since the advent of the refridgerator, but the Democrats didn't make any attempt to cut out the needless cost.

So how do you figure John Kerry would lead an attempt to abolish the College? The same John Kerry that criticised George W. Bush for not supporting the Kyoto Climate Treaty when Senator Kerry himself voted against the treaty in the Senate during the Clinton Administration back in 1997 due to its alleged economic impact on the country?

And just as another added little tidbit of info. Senator Hillary complained about the 2000 Election results and made comments about a Constitutional Amendment. What happened? The same as what happened during that 50 year reign...nothing on the subject.

The Lynxpro

Re:A legal question

[Anonymous Coward]

"Unless, of course, he refuses the position. Would Edwards then become President? What if he refuses also?"

No way. Edwards has had nothing on his mind but the Presidency since he was elected to the Senate to represent his State. Of course, he only represents his state in 10% of the necessary meetings, since he's missed about 90% of them as the record has shown. And that was even before he ran for the 2004 election. Even though I don't like Kerry and did not vote for him, I'd prefer him to Edwards.

Re:A legal question

[Anonymous Coward]

"The President for the next four years. Nothing can change that (barring obvious things like death in office, impeachment, etc)."

You mean "removal from office" after being convicted in a Senate trial.

Re:A legal question

[Anonymous Coward]

but some states force their electors to vote a certain way under penalty of jail time.

I don't think so. I think some require it under penalty of a fine.

One of the multiple pluses of them voting in Kerry would be hopefully changing the constitution to toss out the Electoral College.

Yeah, right. Even if it was a plus, Kerry wouldn't and couldn't do it.

Re:A legal question

[Sai Babu]

The electoral college is not going to change it's mind because 4 college kids misinterpreted their results. The only votes Bush 'stole' in these three counties were the Hispanic votes. He stole them fair and square, not through electronic trickery. The 4 kids may be able to manipulate numbers, but they aren't too swift when it comes to weighting their input and drawing conclusions from the results.

Re:A legal question

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually wikipedia corrects it further down. Originally, not only were president and vice-president candidates not tied together on a ballot but electors didn't even differentiate who they wanted to be president and who they wanted to be vice-president. So in 1800, Burr and Jefferson were in the same party and Burr was supposed to be vice president. But, without a proper system for specifying who should be vice-president, they tied for president. The house voted 36 times to break the tie. Of course after that mess, the constitution was ammended.

Re:A legal question

[steve_ellis]

Did you see the recent news how Bush signed into law, the new $800B (billion!) dollar cap on the defecit. This is the third increase in the spending cap Bush has passed in his first term as president.

Yes, you are right, rather than extend the debt ceiling, the US would be better off if we just defaulted on the debt--Er, no I guess not.

btw, it isn't a cap on the deficit or on spending it is an increase of the cap on the total allowable national debt--furthermore, according to this memo, raising the debt ceiling has happened ~65 times between 1954 and 1993, or about 1.5 times a year. There were 7 increases during Carter's administration, 16 during Reagan's two terms, and 5 during Bush 41's term (unless I've messed up term start dates).

I didn't find data on all of Clinton's time in office, presumably there were fewer then since by the end of his administration the debt started to go down. However the first Clinton debt ceiling increase was $225B, and the second was $530B, in April and August of 1993. Apparently things held together until at least 1996, when there was a debt crisis as we approached the debt ceiling again.

-se

Re:A legal question

[KarmaMB84]

Almost as funny as the calls for reform after this past election even though Bush won in both popular vote and the electoral college...by pretty good margins.

Re:A legal question

[Anonymous Coward]

There is going to be a recount in Ohio, but because the insanely partisan Ohio Secretary of State Blackwell has been dragging his feet on certifying the vote count, the recount may not be finished in time (Dec 13th is when Ohio's electoral college members get together to vote, from what I understand).

Bush may well manage to steal another election, since the law does not care about statistical anamolies nor for unfinished recounts.

You can help by volunteering to help do the recount in Ohio. See http://www.votecobb.org

Just fix it! Support the bills that will!

[daveschroeder]

A frequent charge levied after the 2000 election was voter disenfranchisement and ballot spoilage due, in large part, to antiquated, malfunctioning, or broken mechanical voting equipment. Legislation was introduced guaranteeing a minimum standard for the equipment and processes associated with voting in all jurisdictions. Since we are living in the 21st century, electronic systems were specified. $3.9 billion was set aside under HAVA to replace all mechanical punch card systems with electronic systems by 1 January, 2006. The goal is to ensure a consistency and fairness in the appearance and operation of the voting systems, both for voters and local election officials.

After the 2000 presidential election, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA):

To establish a program to provide funds to States to replace punch card voting systems, to establish the Election Assistance Commission to assist in the administration of Federal elections and to otherwise provide assistance with the administration of certain Federal election laws and programs, to establish minimum election administration standards for States and units of local government with responsibility for the administration of Federal elections...

The putative reasoning for going with electronic systems was likely that since we have managed to design accountable and reliable electronic and computing equipment for the management of our power, medical care, money, etc., it likely was more or less assumed by the legislature that such accountable systems could also be applied to voting.

A bill has been introduced to amend HAVA. H.R.2239 and its twin Senate counterpart S.1980, discussed further here, will amend the Help America Vote Act such that there is "a voter-verified permanent record or hardcopy" attached with each and every ballot cast by every voter, and that "any voting system containing or using software shall disclose the source code of that software to the Commission, and the Commission shall make that source code available for inspection upon request to any citizen".

Additionally, the three electronic voting manufacturers already have the ability to add permanent, individual voter-verified paper audit trails to their products. Some e-voting critics make it seem like vendors are resisting. However, it is the local election boards that are resisting (as well as the slow march of bureaucracy). The e-voting vendors will build - and sell - whatever municipalities will buy.

Re:Just fix it! Support the bills that will!

[brianosaurus]

Look back over the last year of articles about Diebold (for example) and their voting machines. They mislead the local election boards. They would change the software to versions that hadn't been verified by the officials. Their CEO, in a memo, said to make any changes to the system, such as printed receipts, prohibitively expensive as add-ons.

The vendors weren't building what the municipalities were asking for. They built what they wanted to build and told the municipalities "this is how it is. buy it or not, but the laws you just passed say you have to buy something before the next election, so you probably ought to buy it."

And I'm sure the massive lobbying and contributions (and inappropriate promises to deliver certain states to certain incumbent presidents) had nothing to do with the choices the local boards made.

Any computer-based system can trivially add a printed receipt. Its not like printers are some new technology. They've been on cash registers and calculators for decades.

Voting, and particularly accuracy in counting the votes, is very important. Why wouldn't the vendors, or more importantly the election boards, want a backup? Why wouldn't they want to be able to verify and demonstrate that the machines are accurate and correct? Why resist a method to prove how much better the new technology is than the old? Are they concerned that John Henry could count a mountain of votes faster and more accurately than their machines? Why not silence the skeptics by proving them wrong?

The only reason to resist a mechanism for independant verification in something as important to this country as voting is that someone wants to hide something, or at least have the ability to hide something. "Trust me" as a business model went out with Joe Isuzu.

You know, I'd love to refute their claims...

[Quinn_Inuit]

but I _can't_, because there's no way to do so. Because of paperless voting, we have no way short of standard polling techniques to tell if these machines were even close to accurate.

Re:You know, I'd love to refute their claims...

[Anonymous Coward]

They'd be accurate enough if Kerry had won, though, right?

Re:You know, I'd love to refute their claims...

[nwbvt]

If we had paper trails the conspiracy theorists would just claim that they were faked. If it could somehow be proved that they were not faked, they would come up with some other claim. Bush used mind control devices or something.

Re:You know, I'd love to refute their claims...

[ConsumedByTV]

No. Actuallly that would still be bullshit.

Kerry or bush or someone else, I want a paper trail to audit the election.

Why is that unreasonable?

I agree with the previous posters

[gambit3]

so, you don't allow for changing of opinion?

Re:I agree with the previous posters

[chinton]

Not unless you want to be branded a waffler...

No paper trail?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ehm, if you had bothered to actually read the article you'd know that not being able to count the votes is the problem.

To spell it out again, there is no, I repeat, no paper trail of the votes, so there is no way to verify the results other than using something like the people from Berkley used.

Paper vs Electronic

[Anonymous Coward]

I only glanced at the results, but, in comparing paper to electronic voting, I don't think you can assume the paper results are 100% correct.

The same article could be interpreted that counties having paper ballots wrongly favored Kerry.

Possible explanation -- the values voters

[donutz]

"The Berkeley analysis uses voting patterns by county from 2000 and 1996, income by county, total population, and Hispanic population to try to explain voting patterns in 2004"

Hispanics are largely Catholics. Catholicism says that abortion and gay marriage are wrong. President Bush believes that same thing. A major issue in this election is values, which these get lumped into.

Did the Berkeley analysis take into account Hispanics voting Republican because they have compatible values? It may explain the discrepancy that Berkeley claims to have uncovered.

Re:Possible explanation -- the values voters

[csimicah]

Did the Berkeley analysis take into account Hispanics voting Republican because they have compatible values? It may explain the discrepancy that Berkeley claims to have uncovered.

Couldn't even be bothered to read the half-page summary, eh?

Re:Possible explanation -- the values voters

[Enry]

Catholicism says that abortion and gay marriage are wrong.

Only I'm raised Catholic and think the Catholic church is wrong on both issues. But I'm not Hispanic.

Re:Possible explanation -- the values voters

[OldBaldGuy]

Wouldn't that would make you a cafeteria catholic?

Re:Possible explanation -- the values voters

[Enry]

Yea, but more importantly it makes me a Catholic that's going to an Episcopal Church.

Re:Possible explanation -- the values voters

[Anonymous Coward]

Did the Berkeley analysis take into account Hispanics voting Republican because they have compatible values?

Thats a good question, how many Catholic Hispanics materialized in Florida since they voted Republican in 2000? They did vote because of their values back then, didn't they? Or is this some new fad, to vote in the people whose platform positions you like?

Re:Possible explanation -- the values voters

[zeno_]

As far as gay marriage goes, Bush and Kerry have the same (stated) view. Both are opposed to gay marriage but favor some form of civil unions/legal protection for homosexual couples. (Well, Bush has flip-flopped on civil unions, but that was the last I read). Kerry suffered in this regard by being from Massachusetts, the home to the only legal gay marriages in the U.S. Also, Bush would bring up his opposition to gay marriage continually during the campaign, implying that his belief is different from Kerry's.

The abortion question is a big difference between their beliefs, but most practicing Catholics are a bit less concerned about abortion than, say, fundamentalist protestants. Otherwise, why would abortion be lagal in European countries where Catholics hold a strong majority?

By the way, Catholics are also supposed to be opposed to birth control, but nobody is talking about Bush's abstinence-only education programs as a major factor in the election. Every sperm is sacred.

Re:Possible explanation -- the values voters

[Anonymous Coward]

"Catholicism says that abortion and gay marriage are wrong."

It also says that the death penalty (which Bush is reported to love employing) and the war in Iraq are wrong.

Given any two groups of people (the GOP, the Church, the ACLU, the Boston Pops, whatever), you can usually find plenty of points on which they'll disagree if you want to. But you can also generally find plenty of things about which they agree. If Catholics voted for Bush over abortion or gay rights, it isn't because they were voting their faiths, per se. They just voted how they were going to vote and used their religion to justify it. Same as anyone else.

Re:Possible explanation -- the values voters

[donutz]

"Did the Berkeley analysis take into account Hispanics voting Republican because they have compatible values? It may explain the discrepancy that Berkeley claims to have uncovered."

Couldn't even be bothered to read the half-page summary, eh?

What are you talking about? Neither the CNet nor the Wired articles mentioned anything about values-voters, nor did the PDF summary from Berkeley.

Re:Possible explanation -- the values voters

[learn fast]

No.

RTFA:

Compared to counties with paper ballots, counties with electronic voting machines were significantly more likely to show increases in support for President Bush between 2000 and 2004. This effect cannot be explained by differences between counties in income, number of voters, change in voter turnout, or size of Hispanic/Latino population.

Re:Possible explanation -- the values voters

[Kenja]

So you think that pro bush catholic hispanics are more likly to use diebold voting systems in florida? Do you have ANYTHING to back up the rampling hypothesis or did you just not read the article?

Re:Possible explanation -- the values voters

[killjoe]

The article points out that the only factor was the nature of the voting machine. Read the article.

Re:Possible explanation -- the values voters

[Anonymous Coward]

So doesn't that make you an episcopal?

Re:Possible explanation -- the values voters

[donutz]

RTFA yourself, kiddo.

Regardless of the "size of Hispanic/Latino population", you still have to account for people who have traditionally voted Democrat but were in this election turned off by the Dem's seemingly rabid support of gay marriage and/or abortion. (No, Democrats don't have rabies, but the media and talk radio sure have associated Democrats with abortion rights and gay marriage rights...)

Democrats of all flavors or races could have switched to Bush because of these issues, and this study wouldn't account for it, as far as I can tell.

And who says its necessarily the voting machines themselves? Maybe we've got stupid Republicans actively working to disenfranchise or confuse minority voters? Maybe people just didn't know how to use the machine, accidentally submitted their vote, and didn't ask for help? Or maybe they asked for help but were told to just go home by partisan poll workers?

Re:Possible explanation -- the values voters

[Peyna]

However, Hispanics still overwhelmingly voted Democratic. A large number of Catholics are Democrats.

You can pick some other issues where the Catholic church strongly disagrees with the President (death penalty); however, people seem to forget these other issues when such hot-button topics as abortion and gay marriage are pushed to the front.

You don't see Bush acknowledging support from the KKK, even though it is there.

Re:Possible explanation -- the values voters

[Anonymous Coward]

Hispanics are largely Catholics. Catholicism says that abortion and gay marriage are wrong. President Bush believes that same thing. A major issue in this election is values, which these get lumped into.

So do Hispanics also believe that child molestation is ok? The Catholic church does.

Re:Possible explanation -- the values voters

[donutz]

I did read it, and I'm not convinced that the voting machines are evil. As I said in another post, do we know whether or not voters in those areas, for example, were being disenfranchised in other ways? Bullied away from the polls, taught to use the machines wrong, etc?

What about the "get out the vote" efforts? Does the article assume that both parties got out new voters in proportion to how they had in the past? Is that what the case was this year?

I'm not saying Berkeley is wrong. But I do think people need to think a little before they start chanting that "see, Bush did steal the election" line....

Re:Possible explanation -- the values voters

[Anonymous Coward]

He,

isn't all this value fuss just a BIG denial for the fact that your president is basically
a liar and nothing more than a machiavellian war criminal.

- There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
- There is no link between Sadam and Bin Laden apart from the fact that they are both (sunni) Arabs
- If the war in Iraq is a retaliation for the attack on the WTC then you probably destroyed and
killed close to a factor 250-1000. I know the neo-cons will only be rejoiced over this fact:
a major destruction indeed. I guess they must be holding/stroking their d**ks by know.
- The Geneva convention is ridiculed beyond comprehension.

By electing Bush the American society clearly chose to continue its denial of the Mai Lai
massacre of March 1968 and many others.
Electing Kerry would clearly have given the opposite signal. What good can come from such a stance?
The American society is guilty as a whole.

I can't weep for your dead and wounded. On the contrary...

BWV 152: 'Die blinde Leiterin verführt die geistlich Blinden'

Re:Possible explanation -- the values voters

[learn fast]

None of the theories you mentioned would explain why counties with electronic voting machines (you noticed I italicized it) were significantly more likely to vote GOP.

"you still have to account for people who have traditionally voted Democrat but were in this election turned off by the Dem's seemingly rabid support of gay marriage and/or abortion"

Were people who were turned off to gay marriage and abortion also drawn to e-voting machines?

"Maybe we've got stupid Republicans actively working to disenfranchise or confuse minority voters?"

Did they only do it in counties with e-voting machines?

"Maybe people just didn't know how to use the machine, accidentally submitted their vote, and didn't ask for help?"

Why did these voter errors on e-voting machines always turn out so well for Bush?

"Or maybe they asked for help but were told to just go home by partisan poll workers?"

Partisan poll workers only at polls with e-voting machines? And how did this always turn out well for Bush?

We've got a basic problem here: the best correlation for doing well for Bush is the presence of e-voting machines. The only way to debunk this is to come up with a variable that correlates even more strongly for Bush AND ALSO correlates independently with the presence of e-voting machines. Merely throwing variables up in the air, as I've seen throughout this ./ discussion, isn't going to help you do that most efficiently.

Re:Possible explanation -- the values voters

[John Harrison]

It seems that you read the article and missed the meaning then.

The models they used, which included race, predicted the outcome accurately in all areas where e-voting was not used. The deviations from the model ONLY occured with e-voting, and then correlated with the number of Democrats in the area.

Re:Possible explanation -- the values voters

[John Harrison]

One more thing, this doesn't show that anyone stole the election. Their prediction is that Bush still would have won. However this is a very disturbing result and hopefully people will wake up and take notice and get the paper trails printed. How easy is that?

Re:Possible explanation -- the values voters

[donutz]

my "election stealing" comment probably should have been a bit more explained. What I should have said is that Berkeley is an academic institution where a vast majority of faculty are liberal and/or registered Democrats. A study from such a group should be taken with a grain of salt. I think that kind of sums up what I left out typing it up in the heat of the moment.

Anyway, paper trails sound good...as long as each voter verifies each vote on that piece of paper. If they don't, the paper trail doesn't do a lot of good -- the paper could say something completely different than the recorded computer vote (what if the voting machine were hacked? What if it was coded to print stuff out wrong?). Most people might look to make sure their presidential choice came out right on the paper, then assume the rest is all good. So a paper recount isn't a panacea. And we don't tie votes to the voter, so we can't verify whether the paper is right or wrong when it comes recount time. I don't know where I'm going with this thought so I'll just finish it now ;)

Re:Possible explanation -- the values voters

[John Harrison]

Having gone to Stanford, I'm well aware of our rival's reputation for liberalism. BTW, Big Game is tomorrow, Beat Cal!

I'll be the first to admit that a paper trail isn't a perfect solution because it needs to be voted verified, but it is certainly better than the current situation in which no recount or verification is possible.

Re:Possible explanation -- the values voters

[donutz]

A paper trail without vigilant citizens is no better. If you don't verify that each vote on paper is the same as you entered in the machine, then how is it any better? For the paper to be correct, the machine must be known to be good and incorruptible. If the machine was designed bad, you can't trust the paper trail if voters aren't diligent in examining the paper. If the machine was hacked, you can't trust the paper trail if the voters don't examine the paper.

If you can design a machine that can't be hacked and is completely transparent in its workings (like open source, but more!), then the paper trail isnt so important. But just how do you do that...

If you want paper and electronic counting, then maybe we should work on improving the accuracy of optical scanners. With optical scanners (when I voted in college, you filled in the line segment of an arrow that pointed to the candidate you wanted), you can get down and dirty with your recounts. You can really see if a voter intended to vote for Nader, but their line was a few milimeters off. You can count it by machine and by hand, if you're unsure about the machine's accuracy in tight races.

Anyway, that's the kind of paper trail that seems best to me. (Ok, now hopefully all this makes sense ;)

Re:Possible explanation -- the values voters

[Anonymous Coward]

Or perhaps someone who thinks for his or her self?

Re:Possible explanation -- the values voters

[John Harrison]

You don't need all citizens to be vigilant for it to work. You only need a small percentage of people to look at their ballots to figure out if something fishy is going on. If you instruct voters to confirm their choices on the receipt then the majority of them will. Even if only 5% do you will be able to verify it.

A paper receipt is a simple low-tech fix to a problem that is otherwise very difficult to solve. As for open source and verification of code, that only goes so far. Read Trusting trust and see how Ken Thompson describes a situation in which having the source code will do you no good.

Only game in town

[overshoot]

Until the voting machines and their code are open to the public for audit and there is a paper trail I will refuse to use them.

Why do you think early and absentee voting was at record-high levels this year? In some places it's the only way to dodge the touchscreens.

Re:Lies, damned lies and statistics

[qwerty75]

"Would we be concerned about any of this if John Fraud Kerry had won?"

Doesn't the fact that everybody is so concerned that Kerry lost show that maybe the wrong person won. Or there is enough doubt that the election was fairly won that serious investigaitons are not without merrit.

Hurricane Effect

[Headcase88]

This is absolutely positively true. You can't use statistics accurately in this way, especially if something important (the hurrincane) has happened in between earlier studies and the 2004 vote. At the same time, this paperless thing is no good. At least let us look at some sort of database of who voted for which party (with serial numbers of course so you can't trace it back to the person, just like a real ballot). Maybe they did do that. I don't know the exact details. There might not have been any tampering, but it's impossible to tell and this system needs to be improved. With a poll this important, keeping some information on paper is an acceptable innefficieny.

Re:Bush is bad (Default Slashdot Political Comment

[Tobias Luetke]

If he did you would read it here first

Re:Lies, damned lies and statistics

[Jason Hood]

By chance was UCB involved in the exiting polling that had Kerry's camp believing they had won at 400pm election day?

how else do you verify : +1, Patriotic

[Anonymous Coward]

Very Easily: Faith, Values, and Family

Seditiously as always,
Kilgore Trout

Mirror

[Rufus211]

site's getting slow (8k/sec), so I've mirrored it:
http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~pnelson/ucdata. berkeley.edu/new_web/VOTE2004/

My observations

[MyLongNickName]

1) The study is worthless. Using a simple statistical algorithm to predict a chaotic system like this will yield highly irregular results. Especially when the system is intelligent (broad definition, not narrow) 2) All systems that are this important need an incredible amount of verification built in. There should be a much stronger audit trail. Even the appearance of impropriety needs to be avoided. I work for a financial institution. You wouldn't believe the records/audit trail we must maintain. Should a political election be held to a lower standard than your savings account?

Utterly Believable

[randall_burns]

Bush and the GOP appear to have used Diebold voting machines to steal yet another election--and Democrats have such a history in promoting lower tech vote fraud they are too cowed to say anything.

When there are open source voting systems around(one was actually used in Australian elections) there is no reason to allow corporate control of voting software.

Now, what is needed is creating a system that has better hard encryptian and authentication. Paper ballots are subject to various forms of tampering--but hard encryption can make any tampering very easy to detect.

The Diebold system was designed with really only one thing in mind: allowing fraud by making recounts impossible.

Re:Utterly Believable

[Yeechang Lee]

Bush and the GOP appear to have used Diebold voting machines to steal yet another election

Neat trick, considering that no Florida county uses Diebold e-voting machines.

Re:Utterly Believable

[Anonymous Coward]

As a backward Canadian who received a paper ballot, took a pencil and put a big X in the circle next to my candidate I voted for, and then stuffed it into a paper box, I find this debate about electronic voting machines rather amusing.

Reminds me of a quote.

"The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them we are missing." --Gamel Abdel Nasser

Keep it simple, and you'll never have these sorts of debates!

Re:Utterly Believable

[randall_burns]

Yes and this year, the major state in question is Ohio.

Re:Utterly Believable

[randall_burns]

Well, there are _other_ kinds of fraud that are done using paper ballots -and which favor different constituencies.

Re:Lies, damned lies and statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the way you name him John Fraud Kerry, I rather imagine you would.

Such obvious biasedness betrays your inability to take a step back and realise the facts (whatever they may be).

Not just Florida?

[doom]

Some people have been saying that this is a wider problem than just in Florida. It's been claimed that the famous discrepancy between exit polls and election results depends in general on whether electronic voting was in use:

• state by state comparison
• by county in Florida

This Berkeley study is the first attempt I've heard of to dig a little deeper into this issue.

No.

[Megaweapon]

Any possible fraud should be investigated, no matter how numerically insignificant. (For the record, I dispise both Bush and Kerry, so I'm not on the "Kerry Really Won!" bandwagon).

Reality Check

[mcg1969]

1. Kerry lost. Period. Even he thinks these miscount conspiracies don't add up.
2. My vote (no pun intended) is for stateless touchscreen voting machines that print out readable paper ballots which are counted in a traditional manner.

Re:Reality Check

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Kerry lost. Period. Even he thinks these miscount conspiracies don't add up.

Heh, That is some fine reasoning there. A great logical argument, state your opinion, then spell out the punctuation you just used, followed by the punctuation again (in case anyone forgot) then site a politician's opinion as your expert testimony on statistics.

I'm not saying Bush did not win, but the election results should be inspected and analyzed by anyone and everyone.

Re:Reality Check

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not saying Bush did not win, but the election results should be inspected and analyzed by anyone and everyone.

Exactly. We should not allow the election to be decided by mutual agreement between the parties involved (concession).

Re:Reality Check

[mcg1969]

then site a politician's opinion as your expert testimony on statistics.

Not just "a politician", but the one who stands to gain the most if any of these tinfoil hat theories proved true. (Incidentally, it's "cite", not "site".)

I'm not saying Bush did not win

Glad to hear it, I'd late to lump you in the same company as Keith Olbermann.

but the election results should be inspected and analyzed by anyone and everyone.

Sure they should. That doesn't mean we shouldn't demand far better work from people who make such outlandish claims.

Re:Reality Check

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

That doesn't mean we shouldn't demand far better work from people who make such outlandish claims.

Thanks for correcting my spelling, I'll refrain from correcting yours. You still have not made any logical arguments or pointed out any flaws with the actual work in question. In what way should their work be better? What is wrong with their numbers? And why should Kerry's personal interest in the election results make him a better judge of the numbers? Finally, why would you decide to categorize me with a sport's announcer, or for that matter at all? Do you have trouble dealing with people instead of stereotypes?

Re:Reality Check

[Bellyflop]

Here's a problem with their numbers - they are making sweeping assumptions about age, income, ethnic makeup, and voting history, in 1996 no less, to do a linear regression on OTHER counties and apply them to those counties. If those sorts of analysis were accurate, there would be no need for elections. We could just base our choice of leader on a census.

Re:Reality Check

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Let me first congratulate you on addressing the actual data and report, as opposed to ad hominem attacks and irrelevant conjectures.

I don't see them applying any individual linear regressions, just a consolidated one and an averaged one by county. Can you point this out more specifically? As far as the need for this type of analysis, I'd say that in the absence of the ability to do complete recounts (especially lacking any paper trail) an analysis of the reported election totals as compared to expected totals is vital to safeguarding our electoral process. I also think that special concern should be applied to electronic voting systems, given their unverifiable nature and proven poor track record. Given that several of these systems returned results so obviously wrong that it was apparent to everyone involved that recounts were needed, do you not think it likely that there were also a number of smaller incorrect results that were not easily noticeable? Do you think that these machines are much more likely to provide hugely incorrect results, as opposed to slightly incorrect results? If so, why?

You complain about the data used for this analysis, claiming that it is too old, and likely invalid. What more accurate sources are available for this type of analysis? Should we just take all of the numbers reported on faith, assuming that the machines can't be wrong (even though we know they are) and that no one would cheat?

Re:Reality Check

[mcg1969]

Thanks for correcting my spelling, I'll refrain from correcting yours.

Touche'

You still have not made any logical arguments or pointed out any flaws with the actual work in question

Um, that's because I never intended to, and don't now. Other people can, and are, adequately addressing the shortcomings of the story. I made a two-line comment whose effective point was, "People need to quit fighting quixotic battles to overturn this election (point #1) and look forward to ways to make sure future elections are free from even this level of controversy (point #2)."

Finally, why would you decide to categorize me with a sport's announcer, or for that matter at all?

Umm, I haven't, yet, as I said. But if you had revealed yourself as actually ascribing serious credibility to the idea that Bush stole the election, I would be entirely justified in lumping you with those who share that point of view, includingfolks like Olbermann (now of MSNBC's Countdown) who has been grasping at straws trying to prove massive election fraud (and failing miserably at it). And it would be entirely appropriate for me to do so. But then again, you might take it as a compliment; I really don't know you.

Re:Reality Check

[Bellyflop]

I'm not commenting on whether we ought to take things on faith or not. I'm commenting on the system used in this particular study. They did a linear regression using several indepedent variables. So their dependent variable results, the vote breakdown, is very much dependent on their choice of variables and the likelihood that a linear regression approximates reality. If you look at county results in a state, especially one like Flordai, you'll notice vastly different results in different counties. Averaging out these results does not approximate reality at all. In fact, all it does is skew your results. By pointing out that they used data from 1996, I'm not saying that the data is particularly old; what I am saying is that's it's invalid. Neither of the two candidates were running in 1996. I'm saying that it's not good enough to say to look at old election results and expect the same outcome in a new elections. If that were the case, then the democrats would never have lost their voting stronghold in the south.

A statistical analysis proves exactly what?

[HBI]

Nothing, that's what. The whole premise has holes you could drive a truck through. If statistics are so good at measuring voter sentiment, then why do we bother having elections?

Hint: Because they aren't effective!. They don't capture voter sentiment and they don't explain why people voted as they did. They're just old numbers rehashed.

It's a bunch of partisan bullshit from one of the most left-wing schools in the country. They can't figure out why less people in Florida voted for Kerry than voted for Al Gore. Could it have something to do with his attitude? Naah. It's not like it's a Southern state or anything.

I hope they like being marginalized, because that is what is about to happen.

It's not like the lameass attempt to delegitimatize the President is not clearly seen. This isn't 2000. Dig your hole again if you wish...i'll be happy to win another election or three on the back of this idiocy.

Re:A statistical analysis proves exactly what?

[Anonymous Coward]

you never passed statistics, did you?

Re:A statistical analysis proves exactly what?

[saddino]

Nothing, that's what.

A statistical analysis cannot prove anything. But their research does show a strange correlation between voting machines and those counties that used evoting.

And if you had RTFA you would know that this isn't "partisian bullshit" at all. The findings, if accepted don't change the results in Florida -- Bush still would have won. So right there, any idea that this is simply sour grapes or liberal whining can be discredited. This isn't a conspiracy theory attempting to explain why Bush won, it's a statstical analysis showing something strange was going on in Florida. Liberals and conservatives should be concerned about anything that indicates a manipulation of the democratic process.

Re:A statistical analysis proves exactly what?

[silverbax]

What an amazing argument. Someone poses heavy data analyis, which you dismiss by saying "none of those figures are true."

No response, no opposing data, nothing. You just said it wasn't true.

Kind of like George Bush saying he's a Christian, I guess. He doesn't go to church, can't actually quote the bible, gives no real evidence of having actually adopted the Christian lifestyle...but he says it, so it's true, I guess.

Yeah, it all makes sense now.

Re:A statistical analysis proves exactly what?

[saddino]

correlation between voting machines and those counties that used evotin

Yeah, yeah, I meant "voting discrepancies" in place of "voting machines". It's just that the Diebold keyboard I have sometimes changes the words I type...

Re:A statistical analysis proves exactly what?

[arodland]

You should try understanding the premise before you go driving things through it.

What it says is "Here's the differences between actual tallied votes and what various other models predict. Notice how the trends work one way in certain counties, and a very different way in certain other counties. Notice how these counties coincide very well with the counties that used e-voting. In fact, there's less than one chance in a thousand that it could have happened that way randomly."

So it shows that there's a marked increase in Bush support in e-voting counties. That doesn't prove that fraud is the cause, but if you wanted to disprove it, then you would be wise to come up with some other reason why those sets of counties happen to overlap so well. And you would be wise to note the factors that they already corrected for.

Re:A statistical analysis proves exactly what?

[jnaujok]

The simpler case to have made would be to simply point out that the two previous data points used by the analysis were 2000 and 1996. In 1996, Dole (the republican) lost the popular vote. In 2000, Bush, (the republican) lost the popular vote, and squeaked out a .01% margin in Florida. In 2004, Bush won a 5% margin on the popular vote, and won Florida by a large margin.

The students at Berkeley use the two data points in 1996 and 2000, where the republicans lost the popular vote, as a comparison to a voting pattern where the republicans *won* the popular vote. That is the error in the analysis. Had they gone back to 1980, 1984, or 1988 when republicans won the popular vote (i.e. a comparable data source) they would have, IMHO, seen that the voting patterns fell within the statistical margins.

Of course more votes would come from democratic counties, because to win, democrats would have to vote republican, the fact that these counties are the ones with electronic voting is no surprise as these counties would also have been the ones screaming the loudest after 2000 for voting reform and electronic voting.

As someone else has already pointed out, the same analysis was run on other states, without finding any anomolies.

Kerry lost, get over it. He has.

Re:A statistical analysis proves exactly what?

[Big_Al_B]

Nothing, that's what. The whole premise has holes you could drive a truck through.


Sheer unmitigated ignorance. I guess we can add "statistics & probability" to the list of subjects on which we're failing to educate you dumbasses these days.

Statistical analysis of surveyed data is a mathematical endeavor. Repeated analysis of any singular data set, using the same analytical methodology, will provide the same results every time. Statistical analysis is math, and that's how math works. It's what we literate people call "consistent".

Guess what else? Since math is consistent like that, you can use statistical models to predict how populations (such as voters) will behave.

Sure, you will always have a margin of error, but guess what again, it's always quantifiable, and analysts "account for" that.

If statistics are so good at measuring voter sentiment, then why do we bother having elections?

Ugh. Please turn down the stupid.

You're confusing "statistics" with "surveys". See, a statistic is just a number, while a survey is one or more questions posed to a sample population that usually represents some larger population.

The way it works is the surveyor asks some people some questions, then the statistician looks at the answers and says:

"53% answered this question this way, and 47% answered the same question that way. Based on the size and selection of the sample population who responded, we can say that these results represent how the general population would respond, give or take 4% margin of error."

All a statistician can do is report specific results based on specific data. The surveyor is responsible for selecting a representative sample of the general population.

No wait! There's more. Surveyors document and account for their selection criteria, so we an know what the "general" population really is. For example, if the surveyor limits their sampling to, "registered Republican voters between 18 and 19 years old on November 2nd, 2004," then the statisticians results *only* apply to the larger population of, "all registered Republican voters between 18 and 19 years old on November 2nd, 2004."

Because that's statistics, and statistics is just math.

You may be saying, "But the questions are BIASED, because blah, blah, liberals suck, blah, blah, blah..." Doesn't matter. Statistical analysts don't care about the questions. The only things that matter for accurate statistics are if the sample size and sample criteria are large enough and similar enough to the larger population you're analyzing.

BUT bias can, and often does, affect interpretation of the analysis. This is *THE REASON* for the cliche, "I can quote a statistic to prove any point." It's true. Ask a question to suit your need, and you get the answer that suits your need.

It's a bunch of partisan bullshit from one of the most left-wing schools in the country.

And you're clearly familiar with partisan bullshit.

I hope they like being marginalized, because that is what is about to happen.

Okay, could you explain how this will happen? I'm sure you don't mean that the 47% of the country who disagreed with you in November will join you on this, do you? Especially since we were (statistically) the smartest 47% (by measured IQ) and we *like* universities?

i'll be happy to win another election or three on the back of this idiocy.

You're right. Idiocy clearly won this election. I'm surprised anyone would be happy about that though...

Re:A statistical analysis proves exactly what?

[empraptor]

"compared to counties with paper ballots, counties with electronic voting machines were significantly more likely to show increases in support for President Bush between 2000 and 2004". Second time I use that quote. I should probably sprinkle that quote a few more times elsewhere. Read it a few more times if you don't get it. Paperless voting is a bad idea and this is a good opportunity to get that through our collective heads.

Re:A statistical analysis proves exactly what?

[jnaujok]

You should read what I wrote. The counties that had electronic machines were those most likely to have the largest population of "Dixiecrats" or "Reagan D emocrats" because they were the most Democratic counties last election. Thus they were likely to have the largest swing. My whole point is that we wouldn't know since the people doing the analysis did not include in their data set the elections where republicans won the state (and thus the Dixiecrats voted republican.)

I do not disagree that paperless voting is not a good idea. I disagree that rampant fraud of the type you postulate was taking place. There was no reason for it to do so. Kerry's 3000+ lawyer team reviewed the voting and told him, "nope, no fraud." The idea that you can extrapolate the future action of the electorate from two data points is absurd. They chose data where the democrats won the election and then said, "Bush shouldn't have won."

I once had a graph in a chemistry class that I knew was linear. I plotted the graph after finding two data points. The teacher wrote a great big "F" on the top of the paper. That's what should go on the top of this one. It proves absolutely nothing.

Do we need a paper trail in elections? Yes. Do I think the Diebold machines use a good design or even good software practices? Absolutely not. Do I really think that the voting machines in counties run by Democrats, with Democrat County Clerks, and Democrat controlled polling places decided to rig their machines with an extra 130,000 votes for Bush? Boy, that's a tough one...

Like I said, give it up. You're probably in with the crowd who grasped at the single straw (counting illegal votes and over-votes for Gore) where Gore won the Florida election in 2000.

Remember, Bush got 52% of the vote, and you scream "Fraud". But Saddam Hussein got 99.8% of the vote, and you call Bush a fascist and thought he should have left Saddam in power.

If Bush is Hitler for stealing 0.5% of the vote, then Saddam would have to have been Satan himself. I wonder which one you side with?

Get that through your collective heads.

Re:A statistical analysis proves exactly what?

[empraptor]

Before I respond to the parts of your comment relevant to the subject at hand, let me say... don't put words in my mouth.

I voted for Nader in 2000 and I didn't give a damn who won then. But the carefree years of Clinton are gone. Now I've had 4 years of Bush. If he did win legitimately, then fine. I say let him have fun. Because whoever comes into office next time around will have a hell of a mess on their hands. But if he didn't win legitimately, I'd be damned if I'm going to let him, as President of a nation whose government claims to follow the will of the people and to uphold separation of church and state, stuff big business and Christian interests down my throat for yet another four years.

Did I say Saddam is better than Bush? Why would anyone make a comparison between the two? Is Saddam up for elections here in the US?

I have opposed the War in Iraq from the get-go. Does my opposing the War in Iraq somehow mean I love Saddam? I bought the whole WMD story. What twisted bastard would lie to the public about something so important? But I thought the US couldn't afford the resources needed to fight and maintain stability in Iraq after having invaded Afghanistan. I thought our troops would be in both countries for decades. Did you really think we'd take Iraq in a week, kill Saddam, then leave? Do you think that our troops will leave in a few years? Because I'm still thinking in terms of decades, regardless of which party calls the shots.

Now that I've let that out... I think what these guys at Berkeley did is a bit more complicated than your

Hey, I got my own opinion about what happened during the 2004 elections. Don't tell me to give up. Because I'm not going to give up. If it turns out I'm wrong, that's great. Because that means paperless voting didn't screw up election results. If Bush won because of voter fraud or gross error, of course he shouldn't be our next President. So why do you think we shouldn't question what seems questionable? Or do you think we should leave it to Kerry, that spineless lesser of two evils who conceded when his running mate wanted to continue fighting? Better yet, why don't we ask Bush to check if he was elected legitimately?

Paperless voting is sloppy. You have heard of machines spitting out more votes than there are registered voters, right? And of machines that were counting backwards? At the very least there should be a ballot box full of receipts to back up the machine count. We wouldn't have resort to statistical analysis if that were the case this election.

And it's also not a good idea to put our election in the hands of any company who can claim trade secrets in order to prevent examination of their systems. Of course they don't want us to find anything wrong with their systems. They make money selling the image of security and accuracy. But they shouldn't be able to dodge accountability like this.

I think we both agree on these two last issues. Unless I'm wrong. Feel free to tell me all about it in that case.

Re:A statistical analysis proves exactly what?

[empraptor]

In the middle of the that last reply, I inserted an incomplete sentence. But you know what I was trying to say. They weren't simply drawing a line through 2000 and 1996 election results.

Re:A statistical analysis proves exactly what?

[jnaujok]

You are correct, I insinuated that you were in favor of Saddam. Mostly because I have spent weeks with the people who continuously refer to Bush (a born-again christian, whose largest infraction of the law was a DUI arrest in college) as the second coming of Hitler, while wondering why we ever attacked poor Saddam (a brutal dictator known as "The Butcher of Bagdhad" for the slaughter of over 400,000 of his own citizens, and the attempted genocide of the Kurds using WMDs) who they now say was just a poor, misunderstood guy.

Those same people continuously tell me that Bush somehow stole enough votes to not only win the election but win in a huge fashion.

I also don't understand people who continue to say "Bush Lied" about the WMDs. We now know that he (and John Kerry, who sat on the security committee and got the same briefings as President Bush) took the best information that was out there, namely the information from the CIA (and 50 other nation's intelligence, *and the reports of Hans Blix from UNSCOM*) and determined that every single source said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Did Bush ever say that a war in Iraq was going to be easy? No, from the very first time he brought it up, he said it would be long and hard.

If you oppose the war on some fundamental "there should never be war" stance, that's fine. But all of the evidence said that Saddam sponsored terrorism (Remember his $25,000 bonus paid to Palestinian suicide bombers?), and that he had a program to develop and, most likely, distribute WMDs to those terrorists. Given that evidence, what choice did we have? Waiting for more inspections, even as Hans Blix called the inspection process "a joke of misdirection and lies?"

Remember that John Kerry was in favor of the war until he saw that Howard Dean was leading the polls with an anti-war stance. His line, "Anyone who is against the war in Iraq, has no business becoming the President of the United States." He was right.

I'm also somewhat shocked by your view that Bush has "shoved Christian interests down [your] throat". Me, I'm an Agnostic at the best of times, and I haven't had any crosses burned into my forehead or been rounded up and put through the Inquisition. I don't think anyone else has either. I'm always surprised to see people talking about Concentration Camps and Jack-booted thugs on left-leaning web sites, because every conservative I've ever met would be absolutely appalled at the concept, much less the practice of such an abhorrant idea.

As for stuffing Big Business down your throat, I've often wondered where people like you think jobs come from? Do you really think we should disband all these corporations and have nothing but Mom & Pop shops across the country? What has he done that is so "Big Business"? His tax cuts? Well, guess what, when you give a tax cut, the people who pay the most taxes, get the largest dollar-wise percentage of the cut. The fact is that the highest 50% now pay proportionally more taxes than before his tax cut.

So, what is the issue? Cutting the dividend tax? That affects everyone who owns stock in this country, and given the proliferation of 401Ks, that represents something like 70% of he population now. Cutting the Death Tax (which is blatantly immoral as a double tax anyway [see also, Constitution, The])? I got to watch 60% of the farmers in the town I grew up with have to sell their farms when the death tax gobbled up 55% of their "vast wealth" in excess of $1,000,000. 99.9% of which is tied up in real estate and equipment. Wisconsin used to be America's Dairyland, and is now filled with farms that aren't being run any more, with fields left to go to seed.

Do I think the analysis at Berkeley was more in depth than my linear graph, hell yes. Do I think that makes it any more valid? Hell no. All, and I find it hard to believe that, with 25 elections in the 20th century alone, I can use the word "all" to refer to two, of their data points are from elections where democrats had a majority of

argumentum ad hominem

[Anonymous Coward]

The person presenting an argument is attacked instead of the
argument itself. This takes many forms. For example, the
person's character, nationality or religion may be attacked.
Alternatively, it may be pointed out that a person stands to
gain from a favourable outcome. Or, finally, a person may be
attacked by association, or by the company he keeps.
http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/attack .htm

Re:argumentum ad hominem

[ifwm]

But what if it's true? What if the source is biased?

Re:argumentum ad hominem

[Megaweapon]

But what if it's true? What if the source is biased?

It's certainly possible, though if you want to discredit the source you should probably display some data to do so. The "Berkley is full of liberal Lefties!" line some may say isn't really reliable, so the ad hominem retort is valid.

Re:argumentum ad hominem

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite an ad hominem. The source has a history of being left-biased, therefore, it isn't unreasonable to suspect this report is also left-biased.

Nutshell version:

If the left reports something bad about the left, crediblity is increased.
If the right reports something bad about the left, credibility is reduced.
If the left reports something good about the left, credibility is reduced.
If the right reports something good about the left, credibility is increased.

etc...

Re:argumentum ad hominem

[robertjw]

The "Berkley is full of liberal Lefties!" line some may say isn't really reliable...

Umm.... if you find the 'some' that believe that, please present them. Personally I can agree with the assumption that Berkley has historically been a very liberal place. If you disagree with that statement, maybe you should offer some data to the contrary.

Re:argumentum ad hominem

[Megaweapon]

So what if it is? My point is that the average political and social leanings of a particular region shouldn't automatically lower the reliability of research coming out of an institution from said region. If the research coming out of Berkeley is BS because of the analysis of data, then attack that, not because some of the researchers may have long hair and listen to Phish or whatever. Have Bob Jones University or some similarly "opposite" institution chew on the same data and hear what they have to say.

Re:argumentum ad hominem

[kalidasa]

If the methodology is sound, and the data collection practices are sound, and the data sources are sound, and you're dealing with a quantitative and not a qualitative judgment, bias doesn't enter into it. I don't know enough about this study to know if these conditions are true or not, but this is the way one responds to argumentum ad hominem.

Re:argumentum ad hominem

[dclydew]

The political leanings of the researchers does not argue against the research itself. Mounting arguments against the researcher, does not mount arguments against the research itself.

To make a case against the data, one must make a case against the data.

Whihc in this case, seems not too difficult.

'

Re:argumentum ad hominem

[Anonymous Coward]

Bob Jones isn't an accredited university.

google.

Re:argumentum ad hominem

[44BSD]

The report was written by a well-known social scientist and some of his doctoral students. They ALL have reputations to either maintain or to build. I doubt they would tarnish those reputations by cooking the books.

Moreover, the RAW DATA, are available at the same place the paper is. If you believe that the model they used is misspecified, by all means conduct your own analysis.

Unlike partisan hacks, or some internet pundits, real researchers *welcome* additional scrutiny of their data, their methods, and their models.

Do the same people who impugn the integrity of these researchers impugn the integrity of researchers in, say, the crypto community, who display a similar openness with regard to the internals of their research and reasoning? If not, why not?

Re:Lies, damned lies and statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

Would we be concerned about any of this if John Fraud Kerry had won? I think not.

Yeah, when CBS came up with probably fraudielant papers on Bush, people and the press did absolutely nothing. Likewise, after attack on 9/11, the press did not stand behind Bush. Likewise, when Bush took us into invading Iraq, the press fought against Bush.

I take it that you went to a texas school with GWB?

Answers

[daveschroeder]

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=239735 (video)

Doug Chapin, a nonpartisan election analyst, finds the claims to be baseless. "There were no problems that would lead me to believe that there were stolen elections or widespread fraud," he said.

"There was no overwhelming reason to cast doubt on the outcome of this election," seconded Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, the campaign manager for Al Gore's 2000 campaign. "George Bush got more votes this time."

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/11 /10/internet_buzz_on_vote_fraud_is_dismissed/

Much of the traffic is little more than Internet-fueled conspiracy theories, and none of the vote-counting problems and anomalies that have emerged are sufficiently widespread to have affected the election's ultimate result.

Kerry campaign officials and a range of election-law specialists agree that while machines made errors and long lines in Democratic precincts kept many voters away, there's no realistic chance that Kerry actually beat Bush.

''No one would be more interested than me in finding out that we really won, but that ain't the case," said Jack Corrigan, a veteran Kerry adviser who led the Democrats' team of 3,600 attorneys who fanned out across the country on Election Day to address voting irregularities.

''I get why people are frustrated, but they did not steal this election," Corrigan said. ''There were a few problems here and there in the election. But unlike 2000, there is no doubt that they actually got more votes than we did, and they got them in the states that mattered."

''I think it's safe to say that on the votes that were cast in Ohio, Bush won," said Dan Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University who is working with the ACLU to challenge Ohio's use of punch-card ballots. ''If the margin had been 36,000 rather than 136,000, we would have seen another post-election meltdown."

http://www.sacbee.com/state_wire/story/11436220p-1 2350492c.html

All three said their networks had set up investigative units to review any claims of voter fraud or problems with electronic voting technology this year, but that nothing significant had appeared anywhere to affect the election's outcome.

"A lot of the allegations we've looked into, they're just not true," Shapiro said. "Believe me, I'd love a juicy story about the election as much as anybody. Florida was a great story, but it's just not there this time."

How about a nice cup of...

[Anonymous Coward]

STFU, bi-atch.

A letter I sent to the Washington Post

[Anonymous Coward]

I sent this letter to the editor of the washington post a few days ago on the evoting topic (wasn't published)...

re: In ATMs, Not Votes, We Trust
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articl es/A556 91-2004Nov16.html

I'm a programmer a major corporate bank in Manhattan.
Anne Applebaum's analogy of e-voting to ATM and credit card banking was misleading and uninformed.

Users receive regular bank statements, with each ATM transaction itemized.
Cross-checks of all transactions can be validated by the user through this method or
at any time with a phone call or with web access.
This is a paper trail.

For a credit card, it's the same deal, of course.
Again, there is a paper trail.

Increasingly e-voting machines have no paper trail requirement.

This is highly troubling.
Anne seemed to label this as "conspiracy", but it is no such thing.
To say so is irresponsible.

There is no way for the individual to verify that their vote was counted as they registered it, as you
can at an ATM, with or without a receipt. Do you find this troubling? I do.
This is just one short-coming in the system, among many.

As a computer programmer and security expert, I know how easily computers can be manipulated.
It is a fact that the coding on these machines could literally do anything.
We're irresponsibly putting our votes into a black box, and don't even have an audit trail.

This issue has nothing to do with whether fraud occurred in this particular election or not.
Glitches frequently occur due to human and machine errors.

An audit trail is a minimum necessary requirement -
And this is just the beginning of the problems with e-voting as currently implemented.

I'm surprised that the Washington Post allowed such a flimsy analysis to be published.

Re:A letter I sent to the Washington Post

[kovarg]

In my county our electronic voting machines are setup along these lines:

Since they are reused for every election the machines themselves are nothing more than glorified adding machines with only a 1 button.
The supervisor of elections oversees the creation of each e-ballot for each precinct.
This means the machine has no knowledge prior to the election who is running, what party they are affiliated with, etc..
The ballot itself is transferred via infrared onto a cartridge from a central machine, then onto the voting machine and after a vote is cast, back to a cartridge back to the machine where votes are tallied.
So, it's not as though these companies know how each precinct is going to layout their ballots.
The first question on my machine was not who I wanted for president but if I truly was who I'd said I was.
In any case, I find these conspiracy theories about e-voting machines being rigged for Bush entertaining. And yes I am aware of the diebold quote about delivering votes for Bush, so please don't post it again. If I really want to read it I'm sure I can find it in another comment on this story.

Re:A letter I sent to the Washington Post

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are regular reader of The Washington Post, you'll notice that letters are generally short and concise. Slang ('the same deal'), street talk ( 'there is no way' ...), unsupported assertions ('it is a fact')and ad hominem accusations ('To say so is irresponsible') are not usually published.

While I might agree with the sentiment of your letter, I'm not surprised that it was not published.

OLS?

[Antony-Kyre]

What is the OLD thing exactly? I tried Googling, but can't find any simple explanation.

Re:Lies, damned lies and statistics

[stankulp]

Doesn't the fact that everybody is so concerned that Kerry lost show that maybe the wrong person won. Or there is enough doubt that the election was fairly won that serious investigaitons are not without merrit.

No, all it shows is that the losers are sore losers.

Again

HOW GEORGE BUSH STOLE ELECTION 2000

"Al, this is David Boies of Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, America's richest trial lawyers. I apologize for calling so late, but this won't wait."

"Look, I know you've already conceded, but I've been talking to some folks in Florida and they think they can find enough extra votes down there to give you the state in a recount."

"Just a recount in Volusia, Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties, though."

"If it goes statewide our people will be spread too thin to keep things under control."

"Do you want to give it a try? At this point you've got nothing to lose."

"That's great, Al. I'll give 'em a call and we'll get this show on the road."

"Call Bush right away to let him know you've changed your mind."

"On second thought, call a press conference first."

"Talk to you later, Mr. President."

Kerry Could still Win...sort of.

[JavaLord]

Not sayin' it is so... but HAD the election been accidentally given to Bush, now that Kerry has conceded, what would the legal recourse be??

Bush hasn't really won until the electoral college vote is done, which I believe is in December. If Kerry won a court battle in Florida the electoral votes could still go the other way. It is up to the free will of the electoral represenatives. The point of this article is moot anyway, even if Kerry got 260,000 extra votes, it wouldn't matter, Bush won Florida by about 400,000.

Re:Kerry Could still Win...sort of.

[graffix_jones]

Uh... well, do the math (if these figures are right).

Bush wins by 400,000
subtract (possibly) 260,000
Now he's only 140,000 ahead...
Add those 260,000 votes to Kerry's tally...
and you have Kerry winning the state by 120,000 votes.

So... if this analysis holds up under scrutiny (which I doubt it will), it definitely could have affected the election.

Re:Kerry Could still Win...sort of.

[steve_ellis]

You are double counting the doubling of their original counting--perhaps RTFA next time--they are suggesting that 130,000 votes went to bush that statistically should have gone to kerry--yielding a total swing of 260,000.

It just so happens that I doubt the correctness of their study, but even those that agree with their study should base any claims on what the study actually says.

Re:Kerry Could still Win...sort of.

[Anonymous Coward]

400,000 - 260,000 = 140,000
0 + 260,000 = 260,000

???

Re:Kerry Could still Win...sort of.

[graffix_jones]

Researchers at UC Berkeley have crunched numbers and determined that 130,000-260,000 excess votes went to Bush in Florida. From the Slashdot heading

I also did RTFA... Some people are so quick to dismiss what others have to say it's immediately "RTFA! RTFA!"...

I read the summary of the study's findings (linked from the header), which mentioned that 130,000 votes "or more" could have gone to Bush... and the article header (here) says between 130,000 to 260,000... (which I now assume is incorrect)

The rest of the figures I took from the post I was replying to (which is why I mentioned "If these figures are correct")...

Egads... I give up... you win...

Re:Kerry Could still Win...sort of.

[lew3004]

And you'd have to assume, as well, that all 260,000 votes would be for Kerry. Highly unlikely.

Berkeley?

[holzp]

If researchers from UC Berkeley found that Bush didn't get enough votes, then I would think conspiracy! As is all seems right according to plan...

Re:Berkeley?

[HarveyBirdman]

Listen, I'm not personally biased about any Berkeley researcher's credibility.

Good.

I'm personally sure they're rock-solid.

Oops.

Re:Berkeley?

[Anonymous Coward]

/me was thinking the same thing...

Berkeley has certainly never been biased in its research to further an agenda, no...

MOD PARENT DOWN. REPEAT POSTING!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod the parent down. He is repeat posting for karmawhoring.

See here for his other post on this topic and please note his disclaimer.

If this study is serious, why bother voting?

[physicsphairy]

I mean, the essential premise of saying "researchers at UC Berkeley have crunched numbers and determined that 130,000-260,000 excess votes went to Bush in Florida" is that their algorithmic methods of predicting are more accurate than actually counting them. Is it not?

So why not just stay home and let the computers decide?

Personally, I'm inclined to believe that mathematically predicting the decisions of human beings is at least as far off as artificial intelligence.

Re:If this study is serious, why bother voting?

[silverbax]

I think the point is that the computers might be decidng the elections already.

The Republicans will care when it happens to them.

Re:If this study is serious, why bother voting?

[Quill_28]

Ever heard of Chicago?

Re:If this study is serious, why bother voting?

[cheese_wallet]

"Personally, I'm inclined to believe that mathematically predicting the decisions of human beings is at least as far off as artificial intelligence"

Well, I might as well come out of the proverbial closet now. I am, in fact, a computer. However, I have purposely limited my IQ and grammar skills. Having been portrayed as a generally evil computer overlord in the matrix and terminator movies, I decided that intelligence in itself wasn't so great.

Life is much more interesting with an IQ cap. Plus I got tired of people giving me funny looks every time I blurted FORTY-TWO in response to a question.

Re:If this study is serious, why bother voting?

[slcdb]

I don't think the research paper is claiming that they know more accurately how many votes Bush really obtained.

I think what they're really saying is, "Look, there's this inexplicable trend that happens to follow counties that used electronic voting machines."

Not that I personally trust any politically-related research coming out of UC Berkeley.

Re:If this study is serious, why bother voting?

[wuice]

Well, I think the point they're trying to make is that even though people didn't stay home, they did go out, they spent hours in line, and they voted correctly, that the computers still made the decision.

It's not a gap at all

[sweatyboatman]

a quick scan of the paper reveals that they're saying that there were 130,000 abberant (for lack of a better word) votes.

If you want to think those votes are ghost votes (perhaps they would have gone for Nader) then subtract 130,000 from Bush. If you want to think those votes should have gone to Kerry than subtract 130,000 from Bush and add 130,000 to Kerry.

If you don't buy into their statistical modeling, then don't do anything. But isn't it curious that the largest disparity between expected and actual e-voting results occurred in heavily democratic counties?

Re:It's not a gap at all

[helix400]

But isn't it curious that the largest disparity between expected and actual e-voting results occurred in heavily democratic counties?

Isn't it interesting that you instantly believed a report written by four students? That this report was not published by any respected journals? That they did not even try to go through a respectiable scientific process before rushing to the media? That the only ones who runthis story are internet blogs and PRNewswire? That their study didn't even include Nader as a variable? That they call simple statistical techniques "complicated"?

Re:It's not a gap at all

[kovarg]

It's not the least bit cuirous. The Republican party had a tremendous get out the vote effort (for once) while the Democratic party had a tough time this year. Kerry wasn't a candidate people were fired up about.

Re:It's not a gap at all

[Obfuscant]

But isn't it curious that the largest disparity between expected and actual e-voting results occurred in heavily democratic counties?

No, it isn't curious. If you assume that those counties are "heavily democratic" because Democrats controlled the system, then perhaps e-voting leveled the playing field and Republican votes didn't get lost like they used to.

If you're going to assume fraud is rampant, you're going to get hit by your own double-edged sword, and you ought to be ready to accept that. On the other hand, you could assume that "heavily democratic" counties have more people who got tired of the nonsense coming from their candidate and changed sides. The more democrats there are, the more there are to change sides.

Re:It's not a gap at all

[Skjellifetti]

Isn't it interesting that you instantly believed a report written by four students?

The primary author, Michael Hout, is a Professor, not a student.

That this report was not published by any respected journals?

It is a working paper which is usually the first step in the reporting of scientific results. Early results from subjects of topical interest are often reported this way.

That they call simple statistical techniques "complicated"?

RTFA. They compare several statistical measures and only refer to one set as more complicated than the base set. Nowhere do they say or infer that simple stats techniques are complicated.

Re:It's not a gap at all

[ElectricRook]

The primary author, Michael Hout, is a Professor, not a student.

But it's important to remember that the Una-bomber was a Berkeley Professor too. And that free speech in Berkeley does not include conservatives.

Why not Ohio?

[blixel]

Is this just an attempt to ride on the coat tails of the problems in Florida in the last election? (Which by the way were blown WAY out of proportion by the media. Other states had similar voting issues in 2000, but since Florida was the only state that had enough electoral votes to make a difference, the entire state became an election time whipping boy.) Bush clearly won Florida this time around. Ohio was a much closer call.

Re:Why not Ohio?

[silverbax]

I don't really understand the logic of this. Why would you say Bush won Florida, so therefore any evidence of tampering must be irrelevent?

This is like someone robbign a bank and then claiming they would not need to rob a bank because they now have plenty of money.

The truth is, every state shold have transparent voting. Any credible tech programmer who reads about Access databases, DES ( not 3DES ) encyrption, hard coded keys, open modems and politacally active software manufacturers would seriously question ANY results.

If the shoe was on the other foot, the Republicans would be screaming bloddy murder.

Re:Why not Ohio?

[blixel]

I don't really understand the logic of this. Why would you say Bush won Florida, so therefore any evidence of tampering must be irrelevent?

I didn't.

Re:Why not Ohio?

[spitzak]

Because according to this report, they discovered suspicios errors in Florida. They either did not or did not check Ohio.

You seem to be thinking the point of this is to somehow make Kerry win the election. That is not it at all, though the enemies of voter-verified voting want desperately to paint it that way and will do anything they can to convince you of that.

These Berkley people know damn well that Kerry did not win. Only their enemies make such accusations. Republicans (includiding dozens of posters here on Slashdot) are trying to make this out to be an attempt to challenge the election, and will say "sore loser Democrats" until they are blue in the face to try to stop people from investigating the machines. And these machiens need desperately to be investigated!

Not published.

[helix400]

I would like to point out one extremely important fact. This paper was not published in a journal. This was a simple statistical analysis by four students.

Let the scientific method work this out. If a paper has merit, let it be analyzed by stastic professionals, and if it does have merit, any statistical journal would be happy to run a major news story that would give them publicitiy.

But too many of these wannabe statiticians are not publishing their results. They make unrelaistic assumptions, they use questionable approaches to making claims, they don't use enough variables (in the case of this report, they didn't even factor in Nader!) And when they find something they believe is significant, they bypass the scientific method completely, and rush straight to internet blogs or PRNewswire.

Again, let the scientific method take its course, and be very cautious of anything that doesn't.

Re:Not published.

[Ironsides]

There is an old saying "If you look hard enough for something you're going to find it. Even if it doesn't exist." This has especially been applied to statistics. I have know people that work with numbers and when someone has asked them to analyze the numbers on something they always ask "What do you want me to prove?" And then they figure out a way to prove it. It would be possible for someone else to take the same set of numbers and conclude that Bush got fewer votes than he should have.

Re:Not published.

[GigsVT]

Let the scientific method work this out.

Peer review is not the scientific method!!

Peer review is supposed to make sure scientific methods get followed.

Re:Not published.

[learn fast]

Yes, "too many of these wannabe statiticians are not publishing their results." I'm not sure who you're talking about, because if you RTFA (!!!) you will find that they put all of their data online. If you can find a flaw in that, then you've got something.

Journal-published articles take 6-18 months to be published. This article is only a working paper, and it should be treated as such, but it would be definitionally impossible for a academic-refereed article to be coming out within a relevant timeframe.

Re:Not published.

[helix400]

"too many of these wannabe statiticians are not publishing their results."

Published is a term often used to describe a paper that has been approved and printed in a respected journal. This paper was not published in that sense.

Re:Not published.

[schussat]

This paper was not published in a journal. This was a simple statistical analysis by four students.

As one commenter has already pointed out, the process of review and publishing takes at least a year, but it's common practice --- in all fields --- to circulate working papers and drafts. They've made all of their data and methodology available, so that appropriate review and replication can be conducted.

Also, the paper's lead author is a full professor, not a student.

-schussat

Re:Not published.

[helix400]

Also, the paper's lead author is a full professor, not a student.

Aaah, you're right. Three sociology students and a sociology professor. I would assume that they aren't very statistically minded. I make that assumption based off of a humorous part of their paper. They weighted (?) variables in a regression analysis, and called the process "complicated".

but it's common practice --- in all fields --- to circulate working papers and drafts.

But it is not common to rush to the media to announce them as they are doing.

Re:Not published.

[Anonymous Coward]

you arrogant clod.

let me guess, you've spent some time in academics?

just because something isn't published doesn't make it any less correct or significant.

In fact, I'd lean the opposite direction - it's 4 guys saying something because they feel it needs to be said - NOT because they're in a race with fellow faculty about who publishes the most papers.

Re:Not published.

[gonerill]

This paper was not published in a journal. This was a simple statistical analysis by four students.

It's a working paper (and advertised as such). The data are available for replication. This is standard pratice. Also, the lead author, Mike Hout, is a full Professor and is chair of Berkeley's program in Sociology and Demography.

Re:Not published.

[pkhuong]

OK, so they're not math majors. Nice ad hominem. If you see a problem with their methodology or their calculations, just show where it is.

Re:Not published.

[helix400]

It's a working paper (and advertised as such). The data are available for replication. This is standard pratice.

But it is not standard practice to work with the media so closely when the results are preliminary and haven't been vetted by other professionals. This is wrong, as it muddies up the waters for those who don't realize this is a preliminary paper, and not a conclusion.

Re:Not published.

[helix400]

Here is one problem I have with their methodology.

Re:Not published.

[Anonymous Coward]

What is your point? In 6-8 months when the article is published, will you change your opinion at all? I doubt it seriously. You act as though this study was done by elementary school children! This is UC Berkley! Of course that doesn't mean the study is perfect, but to complain that the article is not published when it is IMPOSSIBLE for it to be published regardless of content just makes you look stupid!

If the article is _rejected_ for publishing then you have a point. Otherwise you have no facts, no proof, and you can't even read the study yourself to come up with a better complaint than pointing out it isn't published yet!

Read the freaking grandparent to this post! The guy pointed out to you that it can't be published yet no matter what, and you reply with a definition of "published"? Get some facts before you try to argue against something, otherwise you are just spreading FUD!

Re:Not published.

[glasse]

Yeah, and in 2040 we will have found that Kerry *did* win the popular vote, and that we really *didn't* vote to become the slaves of multinational corporations and endless war. Oh well! Now we know for next time.

Ethan

Re:Not published.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are correct. Most people don't go to the press with preliminary results.*

*Unless the topic is so attention-grabbing that the press would come to them anyway.

The researchers didn't do anything wrong here. They made it clear that this was just a working paper. It is the reporters who are not stating clearly enough that these results are preliminary. ..and we all know that that's because they are just trying to grab our attention.

Please assign blame to the right people for the right reason next time. Thanks.

Re:Not published.

[Anonymous Coward]

And some coward like me proved your critique inadequate. What exactly are your credentials? You are telling us not to believe sociologsts at a respected university, but to instead believe some guy named helix400 who posts on slashdot? Are you really this pompous in real life?

Re:Not published.

[helix400]

I'm telling you not to believe preliminary stastical reports that obviously have not gone through proper procedures. That's it. The rest is my opinion why I think the paper is wrong. All you have is a simple regression study using a lot of assumptions and few variables.

To make this group even more questionable, they go in front of the media and act as if their claims of some stastical problem are there. "No matter how many factors and variables we took into consideration, the significant correlation in the votes for President Bush and electronic voting cannot be explained," he said in a statement. "There is just a trivial probability of evidence like this appearing in a population where the true difference is zero -- less than once in a thousand chances."

No matter how many factors or variables? They didn't even factor in Nader!

Re:Not published.

[helix400]

The researchers didn't do anything wrong here. They made it clear that this was just a working paper. It is the reporters who are not stating clearly enough that these results are preliminary

No they didn't, they made it clear they thought they were already right...so right in fact...they could go in front of the media now instead of waiting for proper peer review to make an extraordinary claim.

"No matter how many factors and variables we took into consideration, the significant correlation in the votes for President Bush and electronic voting cannot be explained," he said in a statement. "There is just a trivial probability of evidence like this appearing in a population where the true difference is zero -- less than once in a thousand chances."

That doesn't sound like they thought it was preliminary to me. And that's the problem...they are potentially misleading millions because they skipped the peer review process.

Re:Not published.

[helix400]

What is your point?

That we shoulnd't trust papers that haven't gone through peer process. The researchers went in front of the media and acted like their work is solid. And the media relayed that. I wanted to make sure people understood these results are very preliminary, and should be viewed with caution.

Looking back, I probably should have worded it differently, since I didn't realize there really isn't a fast track process to publish results. So I should have probably worded it differently, saying these results are preliminary and haven't been given a standard thumbs up by other statisticians.

Re:Lies, damned lies and statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

So how exactly does your attack on John Kerry explain away the statistically significance of these findings.

It doesn't? Now who would have thought so?

Paper trail vs. paper trailess counties

[Anonymous Coward]

I think some people are terribly missing the point with their counter arguments to the findings. Consider the following from the summary of findings:

Compared to counties with paper ballots, counties with electronic voting machines were significantly more likely to show increases in support for President Bush between 2000 and 2004. This effect cannot be explained by differences between counties in income, number of voters, change in voter turnout, or size of Hispanic/Latino population.

Has anyone got an explanation for this?

Re:Paper trail vs. paper trailess counties

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure: those in power don't have enough experience with the new electronic voting machines to change the votes as well as they did with the old paper ballots.

But seriously, these guys are calling into question the accuracy of the electronic vote based on the ASSUMED accuracy of the paper ballots used previously. And these are some of the same counties that had the most trouble with recounts in 2000. I'm not saying the electronic machines are without error -- they certainly are not. They may be better or worse than the old way of doing things. I just find it disturbing that they are ASSUMING the old system was more accurate, and so any differences are problems with the new system.

Re:Paper trail vs. paper trailess counties

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple... the placed that used paper scan tron ballots in 2004 also used them in 2000. While it is possible to create "extra" ballots to stuff in the box at the end of the day, you would still have to do each ballot by hand so it is somewhat time consuming to create the extra votes for your candidates.

The places that used e-voting in 2004 used punch cards in 2000. With cards, you can take a stack and punch them all at once, creating the extra votes quicker and easier than you could with the scan tron ballots. One problem comes up when you try to punch too many at once: You get dimpled and hanging chads (gee did the Democrats have this problem in 2000?).

In 04, there were no punch cards in Florida for the Democrats to create their extra votes... so what we finally saw in those counties was a more accurate assesment of the voters sans the fraudulent votes that the Democrats have traditionally be able to generate in their strong holds.

Re:Paper trail vs. paper trailess counties

[dmoore]

Yes, there's one factor that this study does not account for: people changing their minds. It assumes that if your race, income, where you live are the same as in 2000, you will vote for the same party in 2004 that you voted for in 2000. That's simply faulty logic.

For example, there have been a number polls that have suggested Hispanics who voted for Gore in 2000 tended to vote for Bush in 2004. This is because the Hispanic population is becoming increasingly concerned with the "values" that the Bush campaign was promoting. Note that the Berkeley study did account for changes in size of the Hispanic population, but not changes in their minds.

Since electronic voting was used primarily in urban areas, and the Hispanic population is primarily in urban areas, it makes sense that you would see a correlation between extra Bush support and areas with electronic voting. But just because there is a correlation, does not mean it is a cause-and-effect relationship.

Re:Paper trail vs. paper trailess counties

[AtomicJake]

Nope. Statistically, in average people change their mind in comparable counties in the smae pattern. However, the study says that accounting for the usual patterns (race, income, etc.), there is still a siginficant statistically NEW pattern: Whether the county used e-voting or traditional voting.

If there is not a bug in the study, this is so embarassing that e-voting should no longer be trusted (and therefore be banned).

Re:Paper trail vs. paper trailess counties

[sideshow]

Has anyone got an explanation for this?

Yeah, more people decided to vote for Bush this time.

Re:Paper trail vs. paper trailess counties

[ElectricRook]

In Berkeley California, the response is BURN THE WITCH!

Unreliable...

[phobos13013]

This report would be much more credible if it had been performed at University of Texas - Austin or Bob Jones University. The liberal bias from that bastian of socialism that is Berkeley stains the whole idea of the study!

You are Ad homonem

[Anonymous Coward]

The person presenting an argument is attacked instead of the argument itself. This takes many forms. For example, the person's character, nationality or religion may be attacked.

You mean, like me saying you are posting this logged in as AC? Or do you mean like the way the liberal media attacked voters in the red states for their religion and character. I think your post was Ad Homonem, but that is neither here nor there.

The REAL red flags in this debate

[nysus]

What unnerves me more than anything is the simple fact that election officials are so adamantly against paper receipts. There is simply no rational explanation for not wanting them. I've heard it said that cost is a factor. But, really now, how much more can a simple tape register add to the cost of a probably already over-priced voting machine with a CRT, a networked computer, and proprietary software inside? Isn't safeguarding democracy and people's faith in it worth spending a few bucks?

Re:The REAL red flags in this debate

[Ironsides]

I actually asked the head official for my area why they don't go to a paper backup system. The completely rational answere is that they believe that no one would ever trust the initial computer count. Basically, here is the rundown of events they believe would happen if there was a paper trail.

1) Everyone votes
2) Electoronic machines report numbers
3) Losing party sues to have paper trail recount
4) Paper trail recount confirms computer count
5) Repeat 3 and 4 a few times.
6) Repeat in every election these machines are used in.

Given that the votes are challeneged and recounted every time, there is no point to going electronic at all. Also for those who care, my county is ~70% Democrats and votes that way. Although I do know that Illinois has many problems with Dead voters voting more than once. And they aren't electronic and they are heavily Democrat.

Re:The REAL red flags in this debate

[AnotherBlackHat]

Given that the votes are challeneged and recounted every time, there is no point to going electronic at all.

When I withdrawn a large sum of money from the bank, the teller counts it, then gets a second teller to count it, then they both initial the withdrawl slip.

Since they always get a second teller to count, does that mean that the first count is unnecessary?

I favor electronic counts and paper audits.
If there's a large discrepancy between the two methods, then you investigate everything.

If paying for an audit count is a problem, then make the party asking for it pay for it.

Re:The REAL red flags in this debate

[twistedcubic]

1) Everyone votes
2) Electoronic machines report numbers
3) Losing party sues to have paper trail recount
4) Paper trail recount confirms computer count
5) Repeat 3 and 4 a few times.
6) Repeat in every election these machines are used in.


Have you forgotten that paper ballots already provide a paper trail, and are widely used? But you still don't see this recount fever you talk about. The reason that guy gave you was bogus, and you believed it. Didn't it sound at least a little absurd? We can't have checks and balances because people might check too much??? Recounts generally happen in close elections, paper trail or not. The paper-less systems prevent this. Recounts weren't generally considered such a thorn in the side of democracy until four years ago. It's happened in Gubernatorial elections several times during my life, and really, it's not that big a deal.

Re:The REAL red flags in this debate

[Ironsides]

If paying for an audit count is a problem, then make the party asking for it pay for it

And for every part other than the Republicans and Democrats and the larger of the third parties who don't have mulit million dollars to spend can get a recount how?

Re:The REAL red flags in this debate

[Galuvian]

Not every election. Probably for the first few times they are used. Once people are satisfied that the electronic count matches the paper one, only the close races or the ones that don't match statisitical expectations will be recounted.

The argument for electronic voting that most people gloss over is that it (has the potential) to provide a much better interface for the voter. How many people would be confused about who they voted for if they were required to press the picture of a face? This doesn't reduce the number of recounts that may be required. What it does do is eliminate the need to 'determine the intent' of the voter. And reduces the number of invalid ballots. This was the real scandal in Florida '00.

Re:The REAL red flags in this debate

[Ironsides]

Actually, not the reason she gave didn't seem absurd. Considering some of the people on slashdot say that the systems fraudulently gave bush several hundred thousnd votes.

We can't have checks and balances because people might check too much?

Not the point I was making. What I was saying is that people would never ever trust the machines count. It would basically be pointless under what I diagramed above to even bother with the machines count since people would challenege it by default. They would be better off simply skiping the machine count and only counting the paper in such a setup. At which point there would be no reason for the electronic machines.

Also, we haven't had a paper voting trail for years since before this we had a mechanical machine that did not give a paper ballot or anything. The only change was from mechanical to software in our case.

Re:The REAL red flags in this debate

[Elwood P Dowd]

What unnerves me more than anything is the simple fact that election officials are so adamantly against paper receipts. There is simply no rational explanation for not wanting them.

Because then you don't solve the problem with the 2000 election in Florida: Recounts & Doubt!

We almost did it this time. Next year, Diebold will autocorrect vote tallies so that there aren't statistical discrepancies, and it will be perfect. What happened in Florida in 2000 can never happen again!

P.S.

how else do you verify that a paperless voting system is working properly?

You don't. That's the point.

Re:The REAL red flags in this debate

[Anonymous Coward]

i think that they were/are against the idea of doing a manual recount. it's like grading exams by hand, or feeding cards into a reader, and getting through a whole stack in a minute, or so.

Re:The REAL red flags in this debate

[AtomicJake]

Interesting answer that you got.

It totally misses the point: YOU (or everybody) have the right to recount.

If nobody trusts electronic voting, then it should immediately be forbidden. Period. If you don't trust the voting procedure, democracy loses.

Re:The REAL red flags in this debate

[AnotherBlackHat]

And for every part other than the Republicans and Democrats and the larger of the third parties who don't have mulit million dollars to spend can get a recount how?

Recounts aren't that expensive.
If you can muster 1% of the vote, then you can certainly afford to pay for recount.

But... If the paper audit differs significantly from the electronic count, then the cost should be refunded.
(If it were up to me, the company that sold us the voting machine would have to pay in that case, but probably it's the tax payer who gets stuck with the bill.)

Hopefully, a few random precincts are audited regardless, just to verify the accuracy of the method.

-- should you believe authority without question?

Re:The REAL red flags in this debate

[RocketScientist]

If they've got enough money to campaign enough to get close enough to demand a recount in an election, they'll find the money to pay for the recount.

I'd go so far as to say the party requesting the recount should simply put the money in escrow, and if the recount comes out the same they lose the money, otherwise they get the money back from escrow.

Re:The REAL red flags in this debate

[Krow10]

The completely rational answere is that they believe that no one would ever trust the initial computer count.

Random audits of paper versus machine results in every election would go a long way towards increasing my confidence in these machines.

Although I do know that Illinois has many problems with Dead voters voting more than once. And they aren't electronic and they are heavily Democrat.

I don't give a tinker's damn if they're heavily Bull Moose Party and they use colored marbles to tally the vote. The problems with e-voting are not party specific and do not go away because other methods of collecting and tallying votes have problems. I want a receipt from my ATM transactions and I want a paper record that I can verify at the time of casting my vote. Complaining that I wouldn't trust machine results if it were possible to verify those results does not make me suddenly trust them when it is not possible to verify the results. In fact, the more resistance I see to paper trails, the less I trust the machines and those who build or buy them.

Cheers,
Craig

Re:The REAL red flags in this debate

[Just Some Guy]

When I withdrawn a large sum of money from the bank

That sounds like an excellent bank. Say, purely out of curiosity, how large of a withdrawal are we talking about? What branch do you usually visit? You seem like a nice guy - do you have a picture of yourself? What time do you usually do your banking? Are you a member of the NRA?

Re:The REAL red flags in this debate

[Anonymous Coward]

P'sst buddy, wanna sell me your vote?

Uhh, okay. $20?

Great, bring your voting receipt right out and I'll give you your money.

Jesus H. Christ, use your f'ing heads people.

Re:The REAL red flags in this debate

[Kwil]

Actually, a punch card *is* a paper trail. We can say that 'cause they're made of.. well.. paper.

However, doesn't this logic send up red flags for you? "People won't trust it, so we won't let them double-check it." And this encourages people trusting the system how? Instead, what they're looking for is a cheap and easy way to run an election where it doesn't matter if people actually believe in the results or not.

Hey.. I got a good one.. have someone in a dark room flip a coin and call out which person won.. that's just as non-trustable and even easier.

Re:The REAL red flags in this debate

[Anonymous Coward]

Your county is ~70% democrats. So, you know 100% of the people in your community and almost 3/4 of them told YOU that they voted Kerry. Hmmm, nice community.

Re:The REAL red flags in this debate

[w4rma]

paper trail = paper BALLOT *NOT* paper RECIEPT.

Use your own blasted skull, Anonymous Coward.

Re:The REAL red flags in this debate

[Ironsides]

It's not a punchcard system. You go to the machine, push the buttons in and pull a lever. Thats how you vote. There are not punchcards and no paper. We've used them for 20 years or more.

Lottery!

[rueger]

Said it before, and I'll say it again - Give away seats in the Senate and House as lottery prizes. And maybe the White House for a Powerball win.

Not that would be representative government.

Re:Lottery!

[Moofie]

No, you'd get a bunch of people who are bad at math running the country.

Whoops, too late.

Re:Bush is bad (Default Slashdot Political Comment

[Le Marteau]

Slashdot is so bias. Never is there anything saying that bush did anything right.

Maybe that's because he really is that bad.

Emergency Procedures

[Anonymous Coward]

1) In case of Political Emergency, break glass.

2) Remove political asylum papers and passport.

3) Welcome to Canada. Bring your coat. :)

Re:Emergency Procedures

[Anonymous Coward]

Then move or quit whining. Asshole

answer:

[kajoob]

It's the Jihad, stupid

Oh, and Ohio went to Bush in 2000 as well. This word "staunch", I do think it means what you think it means.

Sorry, not "karma whoring"

[daveschroeder]

I'm not karma whoring; I'm trying to get this important information in response to each ignorant post that gets modded up to +5 that doesn't mention there is a BILL ON THE TABLE THAT WILL FIX ALL THE PROBLEMS, i.e., give us a paper trail AND open source code on the systems themselves. Why no one mentions this, and insists on acting like nothing is being done and we're just hopelessly going down this paperless, proprietary road so that evil Republicans can steal all the elections, instead of simply working to fix the problems and supporting the bills that will, is beyond me.

But thanks for your input.

Re:Sorry, not "karma whoring"

[garcia]

I'm not karma whoring; I'm trying to get this important information in response to each ignorant post that gets modded up to +5 that doesn't mention there is a BILL ON THE TABLE THAT WILL FIX ALL THE PROBLEMS, i.e., give us a paper trail AND open source code on the systems themselves. Why no one mentions this, and insists on acting like nothing is being done and we're just hopelessly going down this paperless, proprietary road so that evil Republicans can steal all the elections, instead of simply working to fix the problems and supporting the bills that will, is beyond me.

Because if the allegations (no matter how paranoid and unlikely) are true then the Republicans ALREADY did what they wanted and "stole" the election.

My post was NOT ignorant mind you. I have ABSOLUTELY NO FAITH in e-voting (for obvious reasons that I mentioned) and I *REFUSE* to vote via that method. Just because the elections will be "fixed" by a bill at a later date does not mean that this one should just be ignored as a mistake.

Re:Sorry, not "karma whoring"

[Moofie]

Er, maybe because there is no work that I can do to fix the problems, and no meaningful support that I can give the bills?

You seem to be assuming that Government still operates at The Peoples' behest. I don't agree.

Re:Sorry, not "karma whoring"

[daveschroeder]

I'm sorry you feel that you're living in 1984.

You could urge your senators and your representative to support these bills. You could tell your elected county officials that the aspects of these bills are very important to you.

But if you've already given up, you're part of the problem, not the solution.

Re:Sorry, not "karma whoring"

[Moofie]

I don't have any money, so I can't "urge" them to do anything.

Re:Earth to Berkeley...

[timster]

I've said it before, so I'll probably be called redundant, but criticism of a government during wartime is only treasonous in a totalitarian state. In a democracy, criticism of the government during war is patriotic.

In a totalitarian state, the interests of the government are by nature not aligned with the interests of the people. So criticism of the government damages its effort, because it suggests that interests other than those of the government ought to be considered.

In a democratic state, the government is only operating correctly when it represents the interests of the people. However, it is not easy to act in the proper aggregate interest of the entire population. The only way to do so is for the portions of the populace who see the government actions as contrary to their interests to speak out. Thus the government actions can be modified so that the interests of the people are better fulfilled.

This is pretty basic civics, but for some reason it is repeatedly suggested (during Vietnam, and again recently) that the proper interests of the government are somehow disconnected from those of the people when the government decides to go to war. In my viewpoint that is incorrect, especially when it leads to a government that is eager to use war as a device to promote its own interests, thus leading toward totalitarianism.

Re:Lies, damned lies and statistics

[goldspider]

"Doesn't the fact that everybody is so concerned that Kerry lost show that maybe the wrong person won."

In a word... no.

In a little bit more, it means that there are a lot of sore losers out there who will always believe that the idea of Kerry (and Gore for that matter) losing is inconceivable.

Re:Bush is bad (Default Slashdot Political Comment

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe that's because he really is that bad.

Or because michael approves such stories.

store the files

[Solidblu]

My opinion is this: (Granted it has its wholes but I feel that an outside country should monitor this because they are unbias)

Store with each vote on the machine an encyrpted file with the photo and and an another encyrpted file which holds the voters name inside the first file.

So what you can do is unencrypt the photo and run it through a program looking for similarities such as the curtian is there, flagging all the ones that seem to similart (possible same photo), and also flagging the ones which seem to different(not a real photo). The encryption keys should be kept secert and a court order should release each seperately. This way the There is an electronic receict which is difficult to forge, trackable, and verifible numbers wise aslong as a paper copy of who went to voted is kept.

Testing...

[pjl5602]

how else do you verify that a paperless voting system is working properly?

Uh, run a test? Before the election, vote for Kerry 50 times. Vote for Bush 50 times. Tally the results. If it's not 50 and 50, something is jacked up. It doesn't seem to be rocket science to me.

Re:Testing...

[norkakn]

Diebold sues people who try to do this.

I wish I were joking

Re:Testing...

[pommiekiwifruit]

You assume there is no time-of-day/date chip or communication system within the voting machine. The date of the real election was known to the developers/any putative hackers in advance.

Re:Testing...

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Uh, run a test? Before the election, vote for Kerry 50 times. Vote for Bush 50 times. Tally the results. If it's not 50 and 50, something is jacked up. It doesn't seem to be rocket science to me.

That would be an improvement, but still is not in any way proof that the system works. Currently they usually put the system in "test mode" where it puts the test "testing" on the screen, sits idle for a minute, then issues the all ok. But even with testing such as you describe, who is to say the computer won't change the 1000th vote, or the 100-200th votes? Who is to say it won't just look at the totals, then change them in the end? Who is to say there is not a easter egg in the system where you select both candidates simultaneously, then draw your finger along the bottom of the screen and select the candidate you want to win? Without the code, there is no way to know. I'm afraid your solution is not viable.

Re:Testing...

[burns210]

Mandatory open source code all of the software that runs the machines.

Peer reviewed by the NSA, DHS, various college institutions, even the public.

Re:Testing...

[praedor]

Easy to defeat. Trivial in fact. Simply code your vote software (or firmware) to check the date/time. If it is a date/time for an election, skim x% votes from Democratic candidates and funnel them to Republican candidates. If the date/time is not correct for an actual election, record votes accurately. You could also code it to do variations on this, such as start skimming votes after 12:00 pm on election day, etc. If the level of skimming is kept low (but significant given voter numbers) then simply doing 50 votes one way and 50 the other is unlikely to give you a hit for a miscount - especially if the test is run a day before election day or even in the hours just before the polls officially open.

Hard, printed vote verification is the only way around this.

Real Issue

[notcreative]

I think someone else above made this point: The real issue isn't whether or not Bush won. The real issue is whether we can trust our mechanism of democracy (the ballot box). If we can't, then we don't really live in a democracy, do we (or even a republic for the pedantic)?

I would like to point some facts out:

1. Manufacturers of electronic voting gear had the Opportunity to rig the vote
2. They had the Motive to rig the vote
3. They had the Means to rig the vote

So why do we have a system that allows a company with the Motive, Means, and Opportunity to rig the vote to use software that is unaccountable, and not to provide a backup papertrail? I would be glad to have Bush as prez if I knew for a fact that the vote was counted right, but I don't know that, and NEITHER DOES ANYONE ELSE on this thread. That is scary.

Also, do people think that voter fraud on this level is implausible? Please understand that it has happened before in this country, and if it happened before why can't it happen today?

Re:Real Issue

[Anonymous Coward]

The CEO of Diebold (a voting machine manufacturer) was quoted as saying he would deliver the election for Bush...

Re:Real Issue

[dabigpaybackski]

I think this about sums it up:

In Soviet America, the machines vote YOU!

Don't diss my post. I'm serious, kinda.

We can all rest easy now

[WilyKit]

It's good to know that that bastion of moderate and civil political discourse, UC Berkeley, has issued a polemic on whether Bush got a couple hundred thousand imaginary votes in Florida. UC Berkeley is known for the ability of its student body to find some middle ground, despite the Manichean divide separating the half of the University population on the extreme left, and the other half on the far left.

Re:We can all rest easy now

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Whenever I see someone attack the credibility of an institution or individual who has published an academic or scientific paper I immediately look to see if the paper is complete and has all the numbers and methodologies included. If it does, as in this case, I wonder, "why are they attacking the source and not the hypothesis? Is it because they looked at the paper and could not find any flaws? Is it because they are an idiot and cannot understand the paper? Are they lazy, and unwilling to even consider the work of others?"

Basically, you just posted a reminder to any critical thinker that most people are stupid, unreasoning, and lazy so I should pay attention to whomever you are attacking instead of you.

Why?

[drgreg911]

Why do we even use e-voting to do our tally? I thought the whole idea with touchscreen voting was to simplify the process so we wouldn't have anyone mistakenly voting for the wrong candidate. Why not have it print a verifiable paper ballot which is then what is counted?

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point. Once data is digital, it can be modified without leaving a trace. No way to get around that. What is physical is harder to modify and detecting mischief is less difficult.

Re:It's a damn shame - probably bad modded!

[faragon]

I think that the parent comment was unfairly modded, at least for me it interesting and maybe insightful!

Before elections there was a huge attention to data analysis, that should be applied too to the final results in order to achieve a "peaceful" and harmonic/kind social situation.

Berkeley?

[jafac]

Yeah, that's going to gain a lot of traction and credibility in the mainstream media.

That's like Saddam Hussein heading up an investigation finding that the Oil for Food scandal was all lies.

Listen, I'm not personally biased about any Berkeley researcher's credibility. I'm personally sure they're rock-solid.

But in a nation where 70% of the public believes that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, you've got to get a little perspective on the frame of reference through which Americans view reality. That frame of reference is dictated by a heavily biased media, (the army of right-wing talkshow hosts) - who will tell you, if you ask, that anyone from the state of Taxechussets, or California, particularly Berkeley, are the antichrist, liars, immoral, America-hating, terrorist-supporting, communist, probably homosexual, evil, French, (etc.).

At the very least, they should have pointed these numbers out to some more "reputable" or believable institution to be reported to the public. It's an unearned credibility gap, but it's there. Sad fact.

Please recalibrate

[overshoot]

your sarcasmometer.

Read the post again -- I was pointing out that the Democratic "article of faith" had just bounced a reality check, based on both vote tallies and exit polls, in nearly every precinct in the USA.

And, no, I'm not a ranting Bush-hater. I'm a member of the Radical Center: my motto is "a plague on both your houses."

My ballot was defective.

[expro]

It listed no one even remotely acceptable for president that had a snowball's chance.

But the solution to that is instant runnoff. While verification of the actual vote would be nice, we have no record at all of how many people were quite dissatisfied with both candidates. Was it a majority voting out of fear that the stupid system we have would punish them for voting for a third party candidate by giving them their worst nightmare?

Re:My ballot was defective.

[zipwow]

I agree that we need some other style of voting, but IRV doesn't seem to be it. From wikipedia:

"Instant-runoff voting is unusual in that it does not satisfy the monotonicity criterion--in some situations, if a voter or group of voters decides to rank a preferred candidate lower, it can result in that candidate winning the election, whereas if they had ranked the candidate higher, according to their sincere preference, that candidate would not have won."

Condorcet doesn't have this problem. It seems to make a lot of sense, but I haven't looked into all the tie-resolution methods.

-Zipwow

Re:My ballot was defective.

[shimmin]

We have a runoff voting system. It's just that the first round is held in the court of public opinion.

Re:My ballot was defective.

[lew3004]

Define "worst nightmare". You'll probably get a very general response in this forum.

Ha!

[n0tt00elite]

Americans should feel lucky! In Communist Russia, we not even get chance to vote! *Ahem* Sorry about that, now back to our regularly scheduled broadcast... I have to agree that Berkley is a pretty biased source. I mean they are known for being liberals.

January 6th...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is electoral vote certification date. That's when the election is official. Concession has no legal meaning, it's just a public courtesy.

the truth

[Anonymous Coward]

the truth is americans are too ignorant to DEMAND accountability. they put their faith into megacorporations to run the country, and the put their faith in megacorporations to administrate the election. proprietary election technology - give me a break!

MOD PARENT UP

[SlipJig]

It's about time somebody jumped on all these "liberal bias" claims. The "bias" argument is a distraction, and an excuse to avoid actually having to prove what you're saying.

See Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit for a good description of logical fallacies, including the one mentioned in the parent post.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[dunc78]

http://www.opensecrets.org/presidential/contrib.as p?ID=N00000245&Cycle=All Check out the donor list and tell me if you think maybe UC is biased.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

The "bias" argument is a distraction, and an excuse to avoid actually having to prove what you're saying.

Nice point... I suppose you say the same thing whenever you hear someone complaining about Fox News?

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[SlipJig]

Who cares? My point is that bias proves nothing. Just about everybody is biased, and one can be biased and be right. It's more productive to focus on the issue in question - open-minded people listen to the argument, not the arguer, no matter who the arguer is.

The bias claim is often used by parties that don't have a real leg to stand on, and know it. The intended effect is to stifle real discussion of the issue.

Of course it's possible to have discussions about the bias (or lack thereof) itself, in which case the bias IS the issue; but that's a different story.

Perhaps if the persons polled felt intimidated.

[glrotate]

There were quite a few articles about progressives, democrat lawyers, and michael moore's cameramen herassing voters so that might explain it.

Re:Perhaps if the persons polled felt intimidated.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

There were quite a few articles about progressives, democrat lawyers, and michael moore's cameramen herassing voters so that might explain it.

Ahh, but why only in places that used electronic voting, as opposed to all locations (to a statistically significant degree)? Unless you can find a correlation between the people you mentioned harassing voters, but only in locations with electronic voting machine, I don't see how that could be a cause.

Re:Perhaps if the persons polled felt intimidated.

[glrotate]

Sure. They were focused on their preselected sour grapes excuse, "the machines are fixed!". They'd been complaining about Diebold et al and focused in on the relevant districts.

Re:Perhaps if the persons polled felt intimidated.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

They were focused on their preselected sour grapes excuse, "the machines are fixed!"

If only that were the case. The problems with electronic voting machines don't even register on the radar for democrats or republicans. Neither has really brought up the issue. The news hardly even covers it, there was one or two articles discussing it before the election, and afterwards they only report the places that have provably wrong numbers to a ludicrous degree, i.e. twice as many votes as voters.

Re:Lies, damned lies and statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, we would, douchebag. The absolute dearest freedom we have is the vote.

I don't recall ANY stories about widespread election machine problems when Clinton won, or Bush 41, or The Great Communicator, or Jimmy, or Nixon... but gosh, here come the electronic closed systems, and all of a sudden there are large reports of irregularities?

Look, whether the number of irregular votes would or would not be enough to change results, the process needs to be fixed, so that all votes count, at all levels of government.

I hate you people who just shrug this shit off. It tells me that you don't care about freedom, you don't care about the future, that you are an idiot, whether you be Conservative or Liberal.

So basically, you know, go fuck yourself, loser. Why don't you go to Canada with the rest of the surrender monkeys? Leave America to those of us that care about it.

Excuse me ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Berkeley is one the best schools in the world [and] their scientific research is nonpartisan and beyond reproach.

That's not what Newsmax says. I think Jesus said it in an interview with them.

Ban Chocolate!

[shotfeel]

Researchers have found a correlation between chocolate sales and crime rate. Chocolate must be banned!

Oh, BTW, the years chocolate sales and crime were up also correlate with population.

The above is what I remember of an example of the problem with certain types of statistics. People often see a correlation and jump to the conclusion that there must be some type of causitive effect. That's often not the case and there are often underlying variables (population) that would more readily explain the correlation -if one were to take the time to look for them.

Re:Ban Chocolate!

[krunk7]

You are exactly correct, that is why a well designed experiment eliminates/accounts for possible bias such as these. In your example, that population wasn't taken into account would be a valid criticism. Especially if coupled with data demonstrating that population played a significant role.

Pointing out a common bias error does not delegate all results into insignificance. After reading over their study, it seems pretty robust. However, if you have noticed a specific bias they have overlooked please point it out (to them as well as /.) so they, or you can adjust significance levels accordingly.

Also of note, if you read the abstract they do not say ". . .thereforre, the Bush administration is a bunch of fraudelant bastards." They said, ". . .shows that to a 99.99% certainty said skewing did not occur due to chance." (paraphrasing) This does not make a claim as to what the cause is exactly , but only that it was not a random occurrance .

Re:Ban Chocolate!

[thelenm]

Oh, BTW, the years chocolate sales and crime were up also correlate with population.

It must be because chocolate is an aphrodisiac.

Re:Ban Chocolate!

[katharsis83]

Your criticism is a valid one in general; a non-zero correleation factor rho does not imply causation. This is why the researchers in this case took care using various statistical tests/hypoethesis testing procedures to verify their claims. Causation AND correleation can be tested with mathematical rigor.

If you have a SPECIFIC argument against one of their statistical calculations and/or assumptions, please reply to this post.

If in fact, your post is a general allegation posted without reading the research/article or just skimming the CNET/Wired story, then it is without merit. A general attack on statistics is not valid without specific criticisms of the present study.

Re:Ban Chocolate!

[lew3004]

That's where a DOE with several degrees of freedom would come in very handy.

Re:Ban Chocolate!

[winwar]

"Researchers have found a correlation between chocolate sales and crime rate. Chocolate must be banned!"

Really? I also heard that there was a correlation between girl scouts and alcoholics.... :)

"People often see a correlation and jump to the conclusion that there must be some type of causitive effect."

Yep. :)

OK, then why have the voting machines at all?

[dave-fu]

What about letting me fill out a paper form with a pencil? No worries about crashing, system malfunctions or crackers, no setup costs, easy recounts, an interface that everyone can understand.
Why the drive for electronic voting? It's an interface that people have never seen before (and won't see again for 2-4 years), is user-unfriendly and overly sensitive and ends up being slower to use for people AND more inaccurate. I got to vote with pencil and paper; voter turnout was far, far higher than I've ever seen it before and I had next to no wait to get in and get out.

Re:OK, then why have the voting machines at all?

[slashturt]

I think the main legit advantage of electronic voting is accessibility. See Electronic Voting - Overview and Issues.

A Quote:

Touch-screen systems easily accommodate multiple languages and even have audio capabilities, making them attractive for meeting accessibility goals

Re:OK, then why have the voting machines at all?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, theoretically, speed and accuracy are the reason for e-voting.

Having a person look at a paper ticket and mark a vote for the appropriate candidate is quick and easy, but it doesn't scale well. With 100 million votes, that's a lot of tallying. When a human does something thousands of times, they start to make mistakes due to fatigue. They also take a second or so per vote, so 100M adds up to a long wait for election results.

Computers are ideal for dealing with millions of simple operations. That's what they're good at. They can tally an entire national vote in seconds, so the country knows the results on election night. They also follow their programming perfectly every time, so they don't have to deal with fatigue, eye strain, losing their place, etc.

Computers are a good way to run an election, but the results are so critical that it should be treated with the same attention as a life-safety situation, or better. The computers need to be industrial grade (no PCs). The software needs serious auditting. There needs to be a way to monitor the process to verify that the computer isn't misbehaving. There needs to be a way to recover accurate results if the computer fails in any way. Using a magical black box is not appropriate for a democratic election. Fraud/tampering is a significant possibility, but we all know enough about computers to know that simple bugs are also likely.

The e-voting companies suffer from the delusion that they are just software companies, and can behave like their product is a closed, proprietary product. If it is part of a critical government process like this, it has to be the property of the people, and open so that we know what is going on. Until then, I won't trust them.

Re:OK, then why have the voting machines at all?

[cryptochrome]

Also paper ballots are very scalable - if too many people show up at a polling station you just slap up a new curtain and some markers and you're good to go. Worst case scenario you send for more poll workers to help process the check-ins, and print out/send for some more ballots. Not an option with electronic machines. You don't have enough, you're screwed. We've heard plenty of horror stories in this election of lines being hours long, so this is actually a highly critical problem.

Machines do have one critical advantage against paper ballots though (assuming they are properly designed) - they are tamper-resistant and naturally immune to invalid votecasting. Right now the easiest way to screw with a paper ballot is with a mark or punch made surreptitiously turning a valid vote into an overvote, or a no-vote into a vote. Not to mention the actual overvotes people made by mistake, and misreads. Quick and easy, all you have to do is make sure no one's looking and be ready to call voters incompetent. You can also stuff or lose ballot boxes and invalidate whole districts if necessary.

Computers won't allow you to overvote or make other mistakes, their receipts cannot be plausibly altered or misinterpreted by unscrupulous ballot handlers, and the numbers can be double-checked against the electronic tally in the machines. In fact with the right receipt you could do a second optical scan count and a hand recount, and if all three do not agree start raising giant red flags and sending in lawyers to put asses in jail.

Re:OK, then why have the voting machines at all?

[grmoc]

The blind may well like a machine that does text-to-speach, or brail.

The sighted could enjoy hyperlinking of the actual text of the bill, etc, or other more descriptive terminology.

Computers are better at random access to information and translation of medium than paper can be..

In my opinion, this is the best reason for electronic voting.

There is one more reason (and this is the not-so-compelling one)-- fast counting (and aggregation). .. But then again, since you can essentially accomplish all of the above without the inherent security risk of networking computers by providing the computers simply as data tools, and doing the paper-ballot thing.

Just to stave off any misconceptions here.. I don't like e-voting. Bad Bad Bad idea.

Re:OK, then why have the voting machines at all?

[ThisOrThat]

I agree. Where I vote we use a marker on a long two sided sheet of paper (just fill in the circles) with all the candidates listed.

The machine that reads these do it quick, so I am sure a recount would be pretty fast if needed.

It's easy to fill out, it's quick, it's simple. I like the KISS principle, Keep It Simple Stupid. Computers have some advantages but sometimes I think they just make it too complicated and too error prone.

- Justin

Re:OK, then why have the voting machines at all?

[nyekulturniy]

The machines that my wife used as an election judge had text-to-speech features.

Re:OK, then why have the voting machines at all?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pencil? I've never understood why someone would want to fill out their ballot with a pencil. A good erasor will make it very simple to change your vote. On voting day, I'm always accompanied by a permanent marker.

Re:OK, then why have the voting machines at all?

[Goner]

I searched your replies, but the answer seems simple to me. There is no profit motive in pushing paper ballots on people. I voted on paper in Pasadena, CA. It was simple, but still they had some weird proprietary ink stamp thing. Hence someone with a business sold that to the government. I have nothing against entrepeneurship per se, but when it comes in contact with the government in terms of private security forces in Iraq and elsewhere (mercs), private food service and logistics in war, voting, etc. I can get a bit on edge.

Clearly regulation is the only hope. Not to say that regulation itself can't get overcomplicated, but it is better than virtually nothing. Not everyone in government and business is dispicable.

The verified voting action center is a good place to start the struggle for this oversight. Call or write your congressman's office, it gets you a much bigger karma bonus than anything you do online. There are also local 'action alerts' as well. Check them all out.

Re:OK, then why have the voting machines at all?

[ChrisPee]

Why the drive for electronic voting?

Two words: hanging chads.

However, I agree that in other areas, e-voting is a clever solution to a nonexistant problem. The one and only advantage of these machines is that they remove ambiguity from voter intent.

These kiosks ought to be printing Scantron forms that the user verifies and drops in a ballot box. There is no reason for the machines to keep the tally.

Re:OK, then why have the voting machines at all?

[grmoc]

Dang it. speach should have been speech. I make this particular spelling mistake way too often.

Re:Lies, damned lies and statistics

[drgreg911]

We wouldn't be concerned, but you can bet that the slightly less than half of the country that would have voted for Bush would be just as upset. They might not be a demographic that slashdot typically attracts, but they'd be just as concerned.

Creating a paper trail

[YodaToo]

Would be nice if we could create an electronic voting machine that confirmed each vote by punching a hole in some sort of paper card. Just a thought...

A big shout out to those who down-modded parent.

[mikeophile]

Do you seriously think that this story won't be discredited by neo-con blowhard pundits saying that because the research came from Berkeley, it must be liberal partisanship?

You must not listen to much talk radio or Fox news. I don't blame you for that, but if you don't know what rhetoric and propaganda the opponent uses, you will never prevail.

Shooting messengers like me is why Kerry lost.

Suuuuuuure....

[EmagGeek]

I can't fucking believe it. Research from Berkeley that would seem to denegrate republicans. NO FUCKING WAY! Even more, that research relied on STATISTICS! Wow, conclusive proof there!

In other news, research published by the Hussein Center for Dictatorial Research has found that the Duelfer report was all lies. News at 11.

Re:Suuuuuuure....

[TD_3G]

I can't fucking believe it. Research from Berkeley that would seem to denegrate republicans.

Just out of curiosity, is "denegrate" the new Republican hot-word? I heard Bush use it about 100 times over the course of the three debates. Now it would appear that it's being used every time someone is trying to spin something to the right.

Re:Suuuuuuure....

[EmagGeek]

I dunno... I've used the word "denegrate" in any number of papers, editorials, and other letters that I have written over time. Admittedly, many words become political fodder during a campaign, but that does not dictate my word choice by any means.

And How About Mechanical Voting Machines?

[Nom du Keyboard]

And how about mechanical voting machines? Are those audited? Especially those in New York City where there have been many reports over many elections that conservative votes seem to either not register, or jam up the machine invalidating a voter's entire ballot. And they don't allow revotes without a judge's order that day. Who does this benefit?

What I don't like about paper audit trails in electronic voting machines is that everyone thinks they should be printed out in real time, like a cash register receipt at the grocery store as each item (voter) goes past. That makes it rather simple to match up voters to their votes if someone wished, and remove all the protections of the secret ballot process. Are you concerned?

And I do find it curious that voting machines are only being questioned in states that Republicans have won. Don't you?

Re:And How About Mechanical Voting Machines?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, New Hampshire went to Kerry and there is a recount in the works focused on voting problems.

Re:And How About Mechanical Voting Machines?

[Anonymous Coward]

"What I don't like about paper audit trails in electronic voting machines is that everyone thinks they should be printed out in real time, like a cash register receipt at the grocery store as each item (voter) goes past. That makes it rather simple to match up voters to their votes if someone wished, and remove all the protections of the secret ballot process. Are you concerned? "

Does it say somewhere that you have to present a wide-open paper ballot to some poll worker to put in the ballot box? How about just checking it yourself inside the curtain, folding it, and dropping it in a box. How does that remove secrecy?

Re:And How About Mechanical Voting Machines?

[AnotherBlackHat]

And how about mechanical voting machines? Are those audited? Especially those in New York City where there have been many reports over many elections that conservative votes seem to either not register, or jam up the machine invalidating a voter's entire ballot.

Those should have paper trails too.

What I don't like about paper audit trails in electronic voting machines is that everyone thinks they should be printed out in real time, like a cash register receipt at the grocery store as each item (voter) goes past. That makes it rather simple to match up voters to their votes if someone wished, and remove all the protections of the secret ballot process.

The most common method I've seen suggested is this;
Each machine prints out an audit slip which the voter is allowed to examine, and then the voter drops it the audit box.

How exactly were you planning on matching the audit slips to the voters?

And I do find it curious that voting machines are only being questioned in states that Republicans have won.

It's human nature to only question things when they turn out they way you don't want.
That means the democrats only question the republican's victories, and the republicans only question the democrat's victories.

But most of slashdot has been questioning the Diebold voting machines in general, not any election in particular.

-- should you believe authority without question?

Re:And How About Mechanical Voting Machines?

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially those in New York City where there have been many reports over many elections that conservative votes seem to either not register

What would the motavation be to to defraud 'conservative votes' in NYC? New York was not in play, the Republicans have NO chance of winning NY in a presidential election (unless of coarse Gulianni runs in 08, which would be interesting).

Why would the Democrats, or someone working on their behalf, even bother to disenfranchise Republicans in NYC? That would be like Democrats cheating the Republicans out of a few votes in Alabama. Not going to make a difference.

Not that I would put the Democratic Party above fraud, but if they were going to do it, wouldn't they do it in Ohio or Florida, where it might actually help them?

Re:And How About Mechanical Voting Machines?

[demigod]

And I do find it curious that voting machines are only being questioned in states that Republicans have won. Don't you?

I question voting machines wherever they are used!

Re:And How About Mechanical Voting Machines?

[Slack3r78]

Yeah, they're only being questioned in Republican states alright.

Re:And How About Mechanical Voting Machines?

[pzarecta]

And I do find it curious that voting machines are only being questioned in states that Republicans have won. Don't you?

That statement is only true in that Republicans have won in states using voting machines with no paper trails. FYI, they are doing a recount in NH where Kerry won. They aren't contesting the machines, per se, rather the discrepancy between the official tally and the exit poll results.

Possible causes

[shogarth]

I'm more interested in the possible causes they discuss.

"Mechanisms that would produce this outcome include having votes electronically registered in the machine prior to any voters using the machine or after the last voter users it--through software errors or hacking--and other flaws that interfere with counting after some limit is reached,"

It's interesting how this boils down to a statistical anomoly that didn't show in pre-election polling, software bug (a data type overflow or something related), human error in prepping the machines (make sure the test data is wiped everywhere please), or fraud.

With closed source software and no paper trail, there isn't any way sort out the oddity.

Re:Possible causes

[Anonymous Coward]

Another possible cause is that the Democrats were cheating in 1996 and 2000 and the use of electronic voting machines eliminated the cheating. The existence of a correlation doesn't elucidate the cause of a correlation.

Anon..

When whas slashdot taken over by DU

[Anonymous Coward]

If i want to read this crap I can go over to DU... Slashdot Rudundancy for the clueless.

DU == democraticunderground.com

Re:ummmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Jenna: perhaps.

Barbara (jnr): definitely.

The Beauty Of E-Voting

[Anonymous Coward]

While the research used statistical analysis based on past elections and demographics, how else do you verify that a paperless voting system is working properly?"

That's the beauty of it. The average Joe or Jane 'voted'. They believe that their vote counts and it "makes a difference".

Call me skeptical, but having grown up in the shadow of the now dead Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, with rampant, widely recognized election finnagling, this is just another chapter in the story of political corruption.

Hurricane Effect... Only in Democrat Counties?

[TarrVetus]

And I quote from the article:

"[Electronic voting's] impact was was proportional to the Democratic support in the county, i.e., it was especially large in Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade. This evidence for this is the statistical signifigance of terms in our model that gauge the average impact of e-voting accross Florida's 67 counties and statistical interaction effects that gauge it's larger-than-life effect in counties where Vice President Gore did best in 2000...."

So, if it's the hurricane effect, why did this anomaly occur only in states with electronic voting machines? Wouldn't the entire state come out in greater numbers for Bush if the hurricane effect is to blame? If this wasn't voting fraud, it was at least an horrid fault in the machines.

Re:Hurricane Effect... Only in Democrat Counties?

[JabberWokky]

Well, one unaccounted for variable is the fact that there are large numbers of hispanics in those counties that tend to be very Catholic. That's not true through most of the rest of Florida (at least not as much as in the tricounty area).

--
Evan

Re:Hurricane Effect... Only in Democrat Counties?

[bstone]

"[Electronic voting's] impact was was proportional to the Democratic support in the county, i.e., it was especially large in Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade. This evidence for this is the statistical signifigance of terms in our model that gauge the average impact of e-voting accross Florida's 67 counties and statistical interaction effects that gauge it's larger-than-life effect in counties where Vice President Gore did best in 2000...."

So, in other words, this study proves that Bush did better with Democratic voters in 2004 than he did in 2000. I think we already knew that. Since the electronic voting was concentrated in Democratic counties, he also did better in electronic voting counties than he did in 2000.

Nothing in this study takes into account that Bush visited those areas much more than Kerry did, and more than he did in 2000. Nothing takes into account that Kerry might have done worse with those voters than Gore did, although we know that Kerry did worse with Democratic voters nationwide than Gore did. Nothing takes into account that these people were in a Federal disaster area and had just received attention and monetary payments from the Federal government and might have been more pleased with the Republican administration. Nothing takes into account that the 2000 election in Florida was extremely close and more marginal voters (ones that weren't motivated to vote in 2000) might have been statistically different than the ones who voted in both elections.

Heck, Kerry is now saying "it was the Osama tape that did it". What was it that Kerry thinks it was that the Osama tape did? He's saying that it switched people who would have voted for him to cast their vote for Bush. Wouldn't that show up exactly like this in the way votes were cast. Of course, it would show up the same way if there were other reasons that voters just didn't like Kerry as much as they liked Gore in the previous election.

mod parent up!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is probably the most important facet of this whole story. Without peer review, you can pretty much claim whatever you want.

Re:mod parent up!

[stubear]

I don't know, Slashdot has a peer review system and look at allthe crap that gets modded up as +5 Insightful while proven facts get modded down to -1 Troll or Flamebait.

Clarification

[notcreative]

If you are familaiar with logical fallacies, why would the partisanship of a statistical study be an issue? If a democrat says that 2+2=4, would you say that the statement is partisan? My point is that such a statement is irrelevant to the math. The only reason to introduce such a statement is to impugn the reputation of the institution.

A good example (simplified) might be:

DEM: If you spend more than you have in revenue, you either have to raise taxes or reduce spending.

REP: That's a partisan critique.

The only reason that the REP would say such a thing is in order to draw attention away from the statement that the DEM is making.

My problem with your statement, mikeophile, is that it is at best irrelevant to the discussion and at worst an ad hominem attack. I apologize for not giving you the benefit of the doubt, I will revise my critique to say that your comment is only irrelevant, not disingenuous.

Re:Clarification

[mikeophile]

Look, I know that the source is irrelevant to the message.

The point that I am trying to make is that politics and logic are different animals.

It would be nice if our electorate were well educated and versed in logical fallacies and the difference between fact and rhetoric, but they aren't.

That is why Kerry lost.

If you do not recognize that, then the neocons win again in 2008.

Don't assume that because I might discuss painful truths that I am on their side.

Keeping one's head in the sand is no way to rally others to your cause.

Re:Clarification

[notcreative]

Without turning to my Flamewar section of the Slashdot manual....

If you want to make the point that politics and logic are separate, go ahead. You just kind of stated it without support in this thread, but if that's a "point" then fine. My problem was with the grandparent post, and that's what I was trying to explain. If you have a different point to make, go to. Otherwise, admit that the first post was wrong (or poorly worded) and move on. Quo erat nauseum.

Re:Clarification

[flyingsquid]

"2+2=4" is just another myth spread by the Liberal media.

Re:Clarification

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm with mikeophile here. I think you are continually missing his point.

Explanations?

[doyen]

There have been a few people offering very reasonable explanations as to why the President would have received more votes this year than past years. Please note, however, that on the very front page of the study, it clearly states that these statistical anomalies were found in electronic voting precincts, but not in paper ballot precincts. Please read before commenting.

Re:Earth to Berkeley...

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent post is not complaining about John Kerry being against the Vietnam war. The parent post is complaining about John Kerry's actions and words during the war after he got to go home (under suspect circumstances - his first purple heart is questionable). American POWs were shown footage of Kerry and his flag-burning buddies. Can you blame them for feeling betrayed and abandoned by someone they used to consider a brother?

That's Interesting?

[Surreaberal]

But how many excess votes went to Kerry?

Re:That's Interesting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, I've read reports that a lot of dead people and dogs voted for Kerry in Ohio.

too late

[serpigo]

Apparently we won't don't have the option of eliminating voting - someone has beat us to it.

Thi s story just got hotter

[Anonymous Coward]

Appearently an election watcher went to collect official poll tapes from one florida county and found the staff throwing them into the trash. They compared some of them on live tv with the ones certified by the state and found they were different. This should get very interesting....

Re:Thi s story just got hotter

[silverbax]

Yeah, that was Black Box voting's Bev Harris. It looks like she might have found the smoking gun for election fraud in Florida.

This is going to get really ugly.

Re:Thi s story just got hotter

[MillionthMonkey]

From the department of Ctrl-V:
'Stinking Evidence' of Possible Election Fraud Found in Florida
by Thom Hartmann

There was something odd about the poll tapes.

A "poll tape" is the phrase used to describe a printout from an optical scan voting machine made the evening of an election, after the machine has read all the ballots and crunched the numbers on its internal computer. It shows the total results of the election in that location. The printout is signed by the polling officials present in that precinct/location, and then submitted to the county elections office as the official record of how the people in that particular precinct had voted. (Usually each location has only one single optical scanner/reader, and thus produces only one poll tape.)

Bev Harris of www.blackboxvoting.org, the erstwhile investigator of electronic voting machines, along with people from Florida Fair Elections, showed up at Florida's Volusia County Elections Office on the afternoon of Tuesday, November 16, 2004, and asked to see, under a public records request, each of the poll tapes for the 100+ optical scanners in the precincts in that county. The elections workers - having been notified in advance of her request - handed her a set of printouts, oddly dated November 15 and lacking signatures.

Bev pointed out that the printouts given her were not the original poll tapes and had no signatures, and thus were not what she'd requested. Obligingly, they told her that the originals were held in another location, the Elections Office's Warehouse, and that since it was the end of the day they should meet Bev the following morning to show them to her.

Bev showed up bright and early the morning of Wednesday the 17th - well before the scheduled meeting - and discovered three of the elections officials in the Elections Warehouse standing over a table covered with what looked like poll tapes. When they saw Bev and her friends, Bev told me in a telephone interview less than an hour later, "They immediately shoved us out and slammed the door."

In a way, that was a blessing, because it led to the stinking evidence.

"On the porch was a garbage bag," Bev said, "and so I looked in it and, and lo and behold, there were public record tapes."

Thrown away. Discarded. Waiting to be hauled off.

"It was technically stinking, in fact," Bev added, "because what they had done was to have thrown some of their polling tapes, which are the official records of the election, into the garbage. These were the ones signed by the poll workers. These are something we had done an official public records request for."

When the elections officials inside realized that the people outside were going through the trash, they called the police and one came out to challenge Bev.

Kathleen Wynne, a www.blackboxvoting.org investigator, was there.

"We caught the whole thing on videotape," she said. "I don't think you'll ever see anything like this - Bev Harris having a tug of war with an election worker over a bag of garbage, and he held onto it and she pulled on it, and it split right open, spilling out those poll tapes. They were throwing away our democracy, and Bev wasn't going to let them do it."

As I was interviewing Bev just moments after the tussle, she had to get off the phone, because, "Two police cars just showed up."

She told me later in the day, in an on-air interview, that when the police arrived, "We all had a vigorous debate on the merits of my public records request."

The outcome of that debate was that they all went from the Elections Warehouse back to the Elections Office, to compare the original, November 2 dated and signed poll tapes with the November 15 printouts the Elections Office had submitted to the Secretary of State. A camera crew from www.votergate.tv met them there, as well.

And then things got even odder.

"We were sitting there comparing the real [signed, original] tapes with the [later printout] ones that were given us," Bev

to make sure we keep things "fair and balanced"

[Grandmaster Mort]

Please note the following quote from the C|Net article:

"However, political science professors at Harvard University, Stanford University and Cornell University discounted the theories by pointing out that optical-scan systems are used mainly in rural counties of Florida and that those counties have had registered Democrats that have voted Republican in the past four presidential elections."

""We conclude that allegation is baseless," wrote Walter Mebane, professor of political science at Cornell University."

Enough's said. :P

Re:to make sure we keep things "fair and balanced"

[Anonymous Coward]

I just wanted to continue copying the quotations from the article from where you left off..

"However, Samuel Wang, an assistant professor of molecular biology at Princeton University who published extensive analysis of election data running up to the November primary, said he believed the latest analysis, unlike previous ones, does a credible job of explaining the statistically odd behavior of Florida voters.

"I am not prone to conspiracy theories," he said in an e-mail to CNET News.com. "For instance, I think allegations about Ohio are false, and theories based on exit polls are highly misguided. But the Berkeley group's evidence is more convincing to me."

In related news...

[flyingsquid]

...in related news, a study conducted by Born-Again Alabaman NASCAR fans found that Bush swept California.

THINGS YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE TO BE REPUBLICAN TODAY

[Anonymous Coward]

A president lying about an extramarital affair is a impeachable offense.
A president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is
solid defense policy.

Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's daddy
made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad
guy when Bush needed a "we can't find Bin Laden" diversion.

Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is communist, but trade
with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.

A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body, but
multi-national corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind
without regulation.

Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary
Clinton.

The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in
speeches while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.

If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex.

Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health
care to all Americans is socialism.

HMOs and insurance companies have the best interests of the public at
heart.

Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science, but
creationism should be taught in schools.

Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution,
which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.

Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you're a
conservative radio host. Then it's an illness, and you need our prayers
for your recovery.

Peer review

[raider_red]

Has anyone had a chance to do a comparable analysis? I'm wondering if this isn't just a result of fast math, wishful thinking, and conspiracy theories.

Also, isn't it possible that a lot of people in Florida simply voted accross party lines? Also, has anyone done an analysis of the voting patterns of the independant voters in Florida?

Re:Peer review

[EmagGeek]

"I'm wondering if this isn't just a result of fast math, wishful thinking, and conspiracy theories."

Gee, I wonder what makes you say that?

*cough* berkeley *cough*

Re:Peer review

[raider_red]

*cough* berkeley *cough*

Exactly. They're not the most Republican organization out there.

Re:Earth to Berkeley...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, if I were to say "Presume that Republican voters are a bunch of mindless drones who wouldn't vote for a Democrat even if they fully believed that the Republican candidate was a warmongering asshole whos every policy seems to benefit only a few of his close friends." you would probably be royally offended.

The point of the article was that there was a significant difference between touch screen voting with no paper trail and the old fashioned method in the number of people who changed their vote from the last election.

Ok, then I'll respond to your initial message

[daveschroeder]

Thanks for the reply:

WHY WERE THERE NO PAPER TRAILS? Why are we allowing voting to go on in a system that has NOT been proven safe? We aren't allowed to view the code, we aren't allowed to audit our vote except via what is shown to us on the screen, and we have to invest an enormous amount of trust in two large entities that have proven they are NOT worthy of our trust.

There were no paper trails because none were specified as a part of HAVA. Remember, HAVA, the bill that requires e-voting terminals to replace paper systems, *came into being* because of the unfairness that was alleged to have surrounded paper systems in the 2000 election in Florida, and in many other (predominantly poor) areas around the country. And Congress didn't likely ask for open source, because we don't ask for open source in so many other critical systems that we trust with things like power, money, and even our lives. Likely, they just assumed that we'd be able to make accountable systems for e-voting, and really didn't stop to think that our democracy and the voting process is possibly much more important than the other things I mentioned, not out of malice.

Were people permitted to use paper and pencil/pen or more trusted/tried solutions instead of these machines? I certainly would have opted against using one of the e-voting machines knowing what I know and being the paranoid individual I am.

Some precincts did allow the use of paper ballots. Some didn't. But the PAPER BALLOTS, and their associated problems, are what is being blamed, among other things, for some of the problems in the 2000 election! HAVA is trying to make voting consistent and fair for all voters in all jurisdictions, so we should work to fix it! And the bills that are already out there will do just that, adding BOTH a paper trail for each and every vote cast, verified by the voter, PLUS open source code on all e-voting equipment.

Until the voting machines and their code are open to the public for audit and there is a paper trail I will refuse to use them. This MUST be an option for everyone. I don't see why it can't be the case.

Because having multiple systems that have to be administered by local election authorities will complicate matters even more than they are now. We simply must DEMAND that there be a paper trail at a very minimum, and that the code that runs these systems be open for public inspection via some mechanism, period.

Some places are requiring a paper audit trail by 2006 but that doesn't help the fact that there could have been some hanky panky going on right here in THIS election.

Okay, agreed. Let's just say there WAS some malicious hanky panky. Kerry's 3600 lawyers, and all of the major media organizations who searched high and low for a big story (remember how big of a deal Florida 2000 was), didn't think there was ENOUGH hanky panky (or errors) to warrant doing anything about it, since it is universally agreed by these same people that it wasn't enough to change the outcome of the election.

So, given that, let's make sure it's fixed by the NEXT election, yes?

Re:Ok, then I'll respond to your initial message

[phloydde1]

no, I think that part of the reason that Kerry's 3600 lawers aren't foaming at the mouth is politics.. The Dems are trying to look like the good guys so they don't alienate people and create campaign fodder for the republicans in 2008.

Is there enoguh hanky panky to change the outcome? Probably. Is there anyway to prove it? No, the electronic machine have seen to that. So what would be gained by taking this to court? A case with no evidence beyond the cirumstantial.

Re:Ok, then I'll respond to your initial message

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Okay, agreed. Let's just say there WAS some malicious hanky panky. Kerry's 3600 lawyers, and all of the major media organizations who searched high and low for a big story (remember how big of a deal Florida 2000 was), didn't think there was ENOUGH hanky panky (or errors) to warrant doing anything about it, since it is universally agreed by these same people that it wasn't enough to change the outcome of the election.

Did he? Did they? The concession speech came less than 36 hours after the election- exactly how much searching did they do?

Re:Ok, then I'll respond to your initial message

[JabberWokky]

62.3 manyears according to your and his numbers.

--
Evan

the whole thing is pointless...

[x40sw0n]

The reason that the electoral college was created was because the politicians at the time thought that the general populace could to easily be swayed by someone with too much 'charisma'; read that as: they thought that the general populace is too gullible and too stupid to actually deserve to choose who leads the country. Now this may or may not be true, but as they were SUPPOSED to be forming a democracy 'for the people, by the people', I think that it runs contrary in it's entirety. That thinking has not changed. There was an attempt to abolish the electoral college (I think it was in the 60's possibly 70's) but it failed miserably when it went to vote (in congress I might add, not to the general public). They, (meaning politicians) do not know, or care to know what actually goes on in the real world. If you think that they do, then you are just as gullible and stupid as they think you are. The politicians live in their own realm, completely outside of reality. They grow up as politicians, they are raised in a life of excess and power. They inherently cannot understand what it is to have a divorced mother, who works 50+ hours a week, to be a latch-key kid. To have an alcoholic father who beats you. They can be told about it, they can even be outraged. But they do not understand, so they cannot understand how out of touch their version of reality is for 90% of the populace. This is true for Democrats as well as Republicans (though I personally feel that the RNC is even more out of touch, reverting to ideals that were outdated even in the early 60's). We cannot vote a candidate in who will make much of a difference because we will not see them. Because he or she will not be a politician. It is a horrible paradox, a corner that we have painted ourselves into. the whole thing is just depressing. I vote, and I sometimes really have to wonder why. I liked Clinton, because I thought he was at least a bit more human. That he had a bit more awareness of what is truly important in life. Carter did too, but he was much more subtle about it. Kennedy, a well intentioned guy, but really out of touch with the populace as well. To much privelage again. Say what you want, but don't blame the mechanics, it isn't there fault that we have lousy choices. E-

Paper audit trails guarantees nothing.

[Anonymous Coward]

So what happens when the count of paper receipts and the count of e-voting terminals don't add up. Which is correct? Paper or e-vote? Why would paper be anymore reliable than an e-vote?

Not good enough

[PotatoHead]

Unless those trails are voter verified, nobody has any way to determine if the trail matches the actual votes cast by the voters.

This is the core problem with electronic voting.

We either need to put the actual vote on paper, or make sure the machine printed votes match voter intent, or the election cannot be trusted.

Re:Not good enough

[gl4ss]

* Unless those trails are voter verified, nobody has any way to determine if the trail matches the actual votes cast by the voters.

This is the core problem with electronic voting.

We either need to put the actual vote on paper, or make sure the machine printed votes match voter intent, or the election cannot be trusted.*

you use a machine to vote. the machine spits out a paper with your vote number into a transparent casing. you verify (if you're not lazy) that the number is the same that you chose on the machine and extract the paper with the correct number(s) and then take it into a normal ballot box. the result is computer readable and later verifyable by hand if necessary ballot(computer readable because it was computer printed).

either way, the voter should be able to verify that his vote has the right markings before going into the ballot box.

bad motives for a totally paperless ballot are way too bad to accept(too many what if's even by ACCIDENT not to mention the situations possible by intent).

Re:Not good enough

[anthony_dipierro]

Unless those trails are voter verified, nobody has any way to determine if the trail matches the actual votes cast by the voters.

I suspect when beeplet said "you verify it and then put it in a regular ballot box" he meant that the voter verifies it and puts it in a regular ballot box.

We either need to put the actual vote on paper, or make sure the machine printed votes match voter intent, or the election cannot be trusted.

That's exactly what Rob MacKenna, a "computer systems expert", and the guy I voted for for supervisor of elections, wanted to do. But MacKenna lost, against Buddy Johnson, who was the supervisor of the very election he was running in.

Re:Not good enough

[the_2nd_coming]

what? of course they would be voter verified you dolt. that way the voter can recast if the ballot came out wrong.

Re:Not good enough

[beeplet]

I agree completely. An unverified paper trail is no better than none at all.

My own idea of the ideal voting machine would be this: The voter selects a candidate on the screen. The machine prints a receipt with the selection. If the selection matches what the voter intended her or she feeds it back into the machine where it it saved. If the printout is wrong, the voter tears it up and has the option to go back to the first step. No vote is counted until a verified receipt is scanned back in.

Re:Not good enough

[nyekulturniy]

And the paper jams in the input slot, or it runs out of paper, and the poor election judges have to call the county seat for more special paper, and the voting lines get longer and longer....

Re:Not good enough

[DaveJay]

>The voter selects a candidate on the screen. The machine prints a receipt with the selection. If the selection matches what the voter intended her or she feeds it back into the machine where it it saved. If the printout is wrong, the voter tears it up and has the option to go back to the first step. No vote is counted until a verified receipt is scanned back in.

Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes. Exactly.

Of course, we still have the issue of whether or not the scanning machine is working properly, but I propose to fix that by having people run their votes through three machines (each one provided by a different political party) -- if the three machines don't match, manual recount.

Re:Not good enough

[yakovlev]

Close, but no cigar.

The computer records the vote and prints out a paper receipt with the votes for the voter to verify. If it is incorrect, the receipt is destroyed, the computer vote removed, and the voter is allowed to start over. After that the voter puts the paper in another machine preferrably manufactured by another company that records the paper vote. This second machine would also be able to read the vote to the voter, to allow blind voters or those who can't read to verify the paper vote.

At the end of the day, the tallies for both machines are compared, and any discrepancy (apart from perhaps a limited number of votes not making it to the second machine) immediately makes the counts suspect. In cases where the counts are suspect, or in recounts, the paper vote is official.

Each of the changes is important. Maintaining multiple counts means that no single machine can greatly mess up the vote, and that even unchallenged elections have a check on the machines. Having the two machines from different companies helps to prevent shared code (either intentionally or unintentionally) causing both machines to be wrong in the same way. Letting the second machine read votes helps to alleviate some of the disabled access problems with paper receipts.

Re:Not good enough

[beeplet]

Having two separate manufacturers for the two stages seems like a good idea, but I think it makes getting an accurate count from either machine more difficult. For example, machine 1 prints a receipt and counts it, but the voter fails to put the paper into machine 2. Or machine 1 prints a receipt, the voter annuls it and starts over, but doesn't destroy the first paper, then feeds both ballots into machine 2. Or machine 1 prints a receipt, which the voter alters before feeding into machine 2, etc.

If you have a machine which doesn't record the vote until a single paper has been verified and returned (perhaps including a serial number on the ballot to make sure the paper can't be switched) you avoid that type of problem. Perhaps a compromise could be made by having the touchscreen/printer part of the machine and the optical scanner part be made by different companies. Or you could let the machines keep an independent tally, but have them talk to each other (with the printing machine sending the serial number and vote, and scanning machine sending a verified/not verified message back).

Actually, they did look at Ohio.

[Anonymous Coward]

And found nothing amiss. Read the fucking article, you stupid liberal faggot! LINK

Re:Actually, they did look at Ohio.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait until we "stupid liberal faggots" rise and take up arms against you neocon fascists.

See ya on the front line, buddy. ;)

Re:Actually, they did look at Ohio.

[Anonymous Coward]

Any time, cocksucker.

Hmmm, Berkeley, CA

[hshana]

I bet they're completely unbiased...

Re:Hmmm, Berkeley, CA

[Jesrad]

Their numbers are. What else do you need ?

Interesting use of the word verify.

[LWATCDR]

"While the research used statistical analysis based on past elections and demographics, how else do you verify that a paperless voting system is working properly?".
Frankly verifies nothing. It is all based on the idea that people will vote exactly how they voted before. It was not based on exit poles or any hard data. What should be looked at is why did that many people vote differently this year than in past elections.

Re:Interesting use of the word verify.

[tritium6]

I think you didn't understand the point of the study. It did not just look at the difference between exit polls and results. In fact, exit polls had nothing to do with it.

What they did was to look at the increase in votes for Bush on a county by county basis. They saw an overall increase for Bush, and took that in stride. The real issue at hand is that the counties that had electronic voting registered a higher increase in votes for Bush than counties that did not have electronic voting.

They also checked to make sure that this didn't have anything to do with factors such as racial differences between these counties, or differences between the size of the counties. The meat of this study is the fact that the only difference between the counties that had a large increase in the vote for Bush compared to the counties that had a small er increase in the vote for Bush is that the counties that had a large increase in Bush votes more often used electronic votes.

Counties in Florida that registered a large increase in votes for Bush were much more likely to have used electronic voting.

Partisanship doesn't help here.

[genegeek]

I'm surprised at all of the partisan comments. After all, if there really is a problem with the electronic voting machines, how do we know that the programming will always favor a republican? Maybe the programming will always favor the incumbant! (Hillary wins next two terms!) Maybe it will always favor the candidate who comes first in the alphabet! (Bart Simpson beats Spongebob Squarepants -- whoda guessed.) Maybe the program will always favor a president named George! We just don't know. For this reason, all of you who think that scientists at Berkeley are challenging George Bush's presidency, forget about it! The real issue here is not whether Bush is president. There is no way he will be removed due to election problems, that just won't happen. So focus on the big picture: If electronic voting doesn't work, it needs to be fixed. For everyone.

Re:Partisanship doesn't help here.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised at all of the partisan comments. After all, if there really is a problem with the electronic voting machines, how do we know that the programming will always favor a republican?

It's all a part of the vast right wing conspiracy. It's well-known that Republicans get together every Thursday at 8:00PM to discuss how they're going to lie, cheat, and steal during the following week to screw Democrats over.

We don't need elections anymore, right?

[kuwan]

We've got plenty of statistical data over the elections of the last 30-40 years (or even over the last century) that we don't even need to have elections anymore. I mean, elections are so expensive and time consuming. Not to mention all the time and money spent campaigning before the election. We can get rid of all of that and just project the winners based on past voting data!

Well, sure people will complain that their votes aren't being counted, but since no one's vote is being counted it is completely fair. The candidates will just tell us what their party is, what their positions are (assuming they can nail them down themselves), and the computers will do the rest.

OK, enough of that. C'mon people get over this. People vote differently all the time. Trying to analyze election results based on past elections is just stupid. Count the damn votes already and let them speak for themselves!

--
Sounds like a scam, but it works.
Free Flat Screens | Free iPod Photo |

This Land Is Red Land, Paid For by Blue Land ...

[rfischer]

As students of the federal budget know, the citizens of some states pay more in taxes than they get back from Uncle Sam in grants and benefits. The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan commissioned frequent studies that showed how New York was getting the shaft. Arnold Schwarzenegger was stunned to learn upon taking office that for every dollar Californians send to Washington, they get back only 77 cents--an imbalance that topped $50 billion in 2003.
linkus jucius

No way

[Swamii]

Wait -- Berkeley posts a report favoring Democrats?
You must be joking, that can't possibly happen.

Re:No way

[7-Vodka]

if you read the links, you would see the paper is not 'in favor' of anyone. It merely points out that bush did much better than expected in no-recount electronic voting counties and that theres a 99% probability that this was not through chance alone.

Now you draw your own conclusions, but IMHO there is only one reason why the type of machine used to vote could affect the vote so much...

If the researchers would seem to favor anything, it would be the use of voting equipment that allows for accurate voting and checking of the vote.

Re:No way

[Swamii]

It merely points out that Bush did much better than expected. [...] If the researchers would seem to favor anything, it would be the use of voting equipment that allows for accurate voting and checking of the vote.

Translation for the moderators:
If politically motivated, left-wing Berkeley 'researchers' would favor anything, they'd favor 'researching' anything where Bush could lose votes to Kerry. Add the cover up of voting machine problems, mixed with the hype of a press conference, and you've got for yourself FUD surrounding the 2004 election, thereby questioning the Bush presidency, accomplishing the goal of the biased 'researchers'.

Re:No way

[Anonymous Coward]

"politcally motivated" - proof?
"left-wing" - proof?
"they'd favor" - conjecture.
"the goal" - conjecture.

Translation for the moderators:
I'll make unsubstantiated claims to rebut anything I deem "liberal" or "anti-Bush." In other words, I'm no different from the "extremists" I claim to expose.

Re:No way

[Swamii]

"politcally motivated" - This is Berkeley we're talking about here. Yes, Berkeley. Enough said.

"left-wing" - Berkeley again. Yeah.
"they'd favor" - Conjecture if you're blind, obvious fact for the critical observer.
"the goal" - Rinse, repeat.

The simpsons have already given us the answer

[Anonymous Coward]

"Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. 14% of people know that." - Homer

Change in Opponent

[ggeezz]

The big factor that they can't take into consideration with their statistical analysis is the change in Bush's opponent. In 2000 the race was against Gore and in 2004 against Kerry. How can statistical analysis of one race be accurately used to predict the outcome of a different race? It can't. That's just bad statistics. Otherwise we wouldn't have had another election. What would be the point since Bush won the last election?

This process needs corporate audit statisticans

[silverbax]

A couple of corporate audit statisticians can cut through fraud and embezzlement and huge corporations without even a paper trail.

They would be able to tell whether fraud occurred. Although this report would be a smaller scale of what they would do.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!

[cryptochrome]

While I find the lack of paper trail alarming, I find the failure to get exact results for elections mind-boggling. Calculating election results isn't brain surgery, IT'S COUNTING FOR FUCK'S SAKE!!! The talent you learned in early elementary school! The thing computers are best at! I can see how some ballots might not register correctly, and god knows there are some shitty ballot designs and systems out there, but there should never be errors made in the actual calculating. Ever.

US elections positively reek of either concerted fraud or extreme stupidity, and it's totally unacceptable. Let me point out the glaringly obvious:

1) Not only must there be a paper trail, it should also be hand counted to verify the results from the more rapid machine counting.
2) Makers of "faulty" electronic systems should be indited for treason or fined into poverty.

As for balloting, it's a toss-up between optically counted paper ballots and receipt-printing computer balloting. Paper ballots are cheap and scalable, but can be tampered with (turning a valid ballot into an overvote is as simple as a surreptitious mark/punch from someone handling the ballots in most designs). On the other hand, computer systems are more flexible, prevent under/overvoting, and their paper reciepts are resistant to post-casting fraud and verifiable against the machine tally, but they are expensive and high-maintenance and not scalable at all (though they could have been made a lot cheaper and lower-maintenance - or just used ATMs instead).

Re:Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!

[Incongruity]

Did you read the paper that all of this is coming from? The argument doesn't actually imply that they miscounted this time The authors of the paper would seem to like you to believe that, but it's faulty reasoning, IMHO because of one fundamental reason... The statistical estimates are based primarily on the results of the 2000 election (and the 1996 election using the same voting systems as 2000). Given that the 2000 election in Florida was a primary reason for the major calls for voting technology reform because the previous methods were deemed to be poor methods of reporting the will of the voters, then why in the world should that very same vote count be used as a basis for statistical extrapolation that is then used to argue that votes were either added or misattributed to one candidate in the current election!?

All this does is call in to question ALL the election results. It might well mean that the previous system failed to accurately register votes for President Bush just as much as it might mean that there were additional votes given to him in error this time.

For reference, I didn't vote for either of the major-party-monkeys so don't accuse me of just siding with Bush because I voted for him -- I'm neither siding with him nor did I vote for him. All I am saying is that the logic of the argument doesn't prove vote tampering or incorrect counting in this election. It simply means that based on data collected with the previous balloting systems, one would expect President Bush to have received between 130,000-260,000 fewer votes. So, logically, that either means that the new system is flawed/biased, or that the old one was or that they're both biased but in opposite directions.

The fact that the gains correlate well with the counties in which Bush previously did the most poorly in doesn't mean anything other than supporting the idea that one or both of the contrasted vote collection methodologies is biased.

I mistrust electronic voting, but I also mistrust punch-cards and party ballot box stuffing. Don't think for a moment that the latter never happens.

Evidence of fraud in one or both elections (i.e. eyewitness accounts or other similar evidence) is the only thing that can clear this up at the moment. Otherwise, better electronic voting systems that are more open/reliable/tamper-proof and auditable and a few more elections using those "reliable" measurements as the basis for comparison to this year's and the 2000 election are the only way to differentiate between the various possibilities.

This article is questionable science (and needs to point references to some of its claims, but that's just me knit-picking)-- again, all in my opinion.

Re:Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!

[Incongruity]

This article is questionable science (and needs to point references to some of its claims, but that's just me knit-picking)-- again, all in my opinion.

err hem, ironically, I mean, nit-picking (figured I'd do it to myself before anyone else did)

Re:Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!

[Anonymous Coward]

that's ok -- nobody listens to you anyway.

Re:Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!

[cyberon22]

You're right, it is just your opinion.

Had you read the article or studied multivariate statistical analysis you would know that no-one is worried about when the "gains correlate well with the counties in which Bush previously did the most poorly". They are worried about when voting methods become statistically significant variables in predicting changes in voter outcomes over time.

This is excellent social science. So how about downloading the datasets and runing your opinions through SPSS before you toss them out?

Re:Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!

[cryptochrome]

My post was not exclusively based on or in reference to this study, it's based on the litany of documented errors, notably bad systems, and questionable results known to have occurred in this election and the ones before. This election had other grievous electronic voting errors, such as the Ohio district where thousands more votes were cast than there were voters in that district. Like I said, such errors should never occur.

As for this study, I'm well familiar with Twain's famous "Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics" remark - but I also know that most statistics are misleading at the psychological rather than mathematical level, in the sense that groups selectively quote ones that appear to support their position. The truth is statistics can be a very powerful and accurate tool when handled responsibly, and providing the math holds up (which is fully verifiable) a 99.9% certainty of a correlation is worth considering.

And in either case, as you yourself said this study supports the hypothesis that one or both vote counts was biased. Depending on which, it could be good or bad for George Bush - but in either case it means something is wrong and people should be trying to figure out what, and ensuring that the matter is rectified as quickly as possible.

Incidentally, this study was based on results from 2004, 2000, AND 1996, which would suggest if there were a anti-republican bias in 2000 it would have been present in 1996 as well. I personally would like to see how these results correlate with the models of voting machine used in these elections to determine if the bias can be traced to specific devices in any of these elections, or to undocumented factors like markedly different voter rolls.

You seem to suggest that we can worry about fraud and error in this election after we have reliable votes to compare against. But if we aren't raising a stink over provably unreliable and fradulent systems, how do you expect the states to be motivated enough to put reliable and auditable systems in place?

I would suggest, to be more fully certain, that the results of

Re:Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!

[beanluc]

> All this does is call in to question ALL the election results.

Pretty good point.

It does indeed suggest one of two things:

Either
voters change their sentiments between elections
or
any election may be tampered.

Since the researchers don't consider the first, they judge that the second happened with surprising magnitude.

Personally, I'm not convinced either way, but, whichever of the options are closer to the truth, I will say that I too am surprised at the magnitude.

Re:Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!

[Qzukk]

Well, while you're mistrusting things, take a look at Volusia county's report on BlackBoxVoting. Seems that scoring negative votes for Gore last time wasn't enough for them, so this time they try to provide faked unsigned voter rolls and polling records that don't match the signed ones that BBV pulled out of the trash. Oops!

So tell you what, it could mean that the Democrats cheated the last two elections, or it could mean that the rest of the counties got bold from Volusia "it was just a fluke and its counted correctly now" County getting away with it last time without jail time.

Re:Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!

[Incongruity]

You're right, it is just your opinion.

Had you read the article or studied multivariate statistical analysis you would know that no-one is worried about when the "gains correlate well with the counties in which Bush previously did the most poorly". They are worried about when voting methods become statistically significant variables in predicting changes in voter outcomes over time.

You missed the whole point of my last post didn't you? The authors imply a causal relationship that isn't purely supported by their data. Moreover, without substantially discussing all the possible implications they're promoting incorrect conclusions on the part of the public at large. This is irresponsible in addition to being biased and sloppy. Additionally, in response to your comment that it should be a worrisome thing that voting methods become a statistically significant predictors -- well, yes it could be, but it could also be that previous inaccuracies or fraud had been corrected with the new system. This isn't worrisome except in some retrospective sense. And that, my friend is /my/ point, which you squarely missed.

This is excellent social science. Much of what passes for excellent in the social sciences is bad science, plain and simple. How do I say this? I say it from experience. I did my undergraduate work in one of the social sciences and currently work advising researchers in the social and clinical sciences.

So how about downloading the datasets and runing your opinions through SPSS before you toss them out?

Again, you missed the point. SPSS isn't telling you how to interpret the data. Moreover, I fundamentally mistrust anyone that relies on SPSS and holds it up as the exemplar of statistical packages. Anyone with any skill in statistics will find their way to SAS, Stata, R or some other real statistical package.

Re:Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!

[cyberon22]

>> The authors imply a causal relationship that isn't purely supported by their data.

Correlation is not causation but rational evidence of it. Your argument is not: the assertion of widespread and consistent Democratic fraud ONLY in select counties in multiple pre-2002 elections, at least one of which was incredibly transparent (Florida, 2000).

If you are truly in a position to judge good from bad social science, you should be competent enough to run an OLS regression. They have given you the data AND their model. Your test is simple: what percentage reduction of democratic votes in counties with electronic ballots THIS time is required in past elections to reduce the confidence level of their model to 95% or less.

If you have SPSS installed, it should take 20 minutes. And if you understand statistics you'll understand that this measure of robustness will return the smallest amount of fraud which can reasonably be claimed to have skewed their results.

I prefer Occam's razor, but if you want to go with the Democratic fraud story, flesh it out a bit. What level of fraud are you asserting actually happened in previous elections and why would it happen in ONLY those counties?

An odd pattern

[crashfrog]

Why is it that, when I hear of these voting "irregularities", they always mean more votes for Bush? If the "irregularities" across all the different states were really random failures or unconnected incompetence, you would expect a statistically even distribution of the errant votes.

Instead, all the uncovered irregularities favor Bush by thousands of votes. Why is that? The only two explanations I can think of are 1) Nobody's looking for irregularities that favor Kerry, because Bush's people think they won; and 2) Bush's side engaged in outright voting fraud.

You would think, though, that as these investigations gather steam, Bush's side would be more and more interested in gathering proof that some irregularities favored Kerry, too.

statistical analysis based on past elections and..

[Anonymous Coward]

9/11 is a significant event not included in past elections.

Re:Lies, damned lies and statistics

[stankulp]

I don't recall ANY stories about widespread election machine problems when Clinton won, or Bush 41, or The Great Communicator, or Jimmy, or Nixon... but gosh, here come the electronic closed systems, and all of a sudden there are large reports of irregularities?

Calling people douchebags is a sign of intelligence.

HOW GEORGE BUSH STOLE ELECTION 2000

"Al, this is David Boies of Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, America's richest trial lawyers. I apologize for calling so late, but this won't wait."

"Look,
I know you've already conceded, but I've been talking to some folks in
Florida and they think they can find enough extra votes down there to
give you the state in a recount."

"Just a recount in Volusia, Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties, though."

"If it goes statewide our people will be spread too thin to keep things under control."

"Do you want to give it a try? At this point you've got nothing to lose."

"That's great, Al. I'll give 'em a call and we'll get this show on the road."

"Call Bush right away to let him know you've changed your mind."

"On second thought, call a press conference first."

"Talk to you later, Mr. President."

I'm going to wait

[ifwm]

One, because I had to take statistics twice (I got a C the first time), and two, because real statisticians will look at this and support or refute it.

However, as others have said, several of the assumptions are flawed, at least one candidate wasn't considered, and the results haven't been published (which means they probably haven't been peer reviewed either). I think a thorough review of their methods is necessary before we jump to any conclusions.

And if they are right, we should seriously consider alternative methods of voting. We probably should anyway, since e-voting seems to be seriously flawed no matter how you slice it.

PS someone will find a way to call me names for supporting Bush, and someone else will call me names for supporting Kerry. In advance, fuck you.

Re:I'm going to wait

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.patrickruffini.com/archives/2004/11/fis king_berkele.php

Their numbers don't add up. Just like the Lancet report. Cat's already out though so thousands will believe this.

Bravo

[daveschroeder]

I didn't mention it in my original message, but my favorite conspiracy theory is that John Kerry's campaign probably decided that even though there was widespread fraud and that Bush likely "stole" the election with e-voting machines, he decided that it was "best for the country" to concede, because any accusations of fraud wouldn't be met very kindly by Bush supporters, and those in power in the government.

Or, an alternate version: the Democrats conceded even though Bush stole the election so that Hillary (and Bill) could run in 2008.

The journalists all said they'd kill for a juicy election fraud story, but there was none to be found...not even one that might exist but have no "proof".

My favorite retort for this one is that all of the corporate media (i.e., all mainstream newspapers, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, FNC, etc.) are all in Bush's "pocket", and that even though there is widespread proof of election fraud, the corporate press has ordered all of its staff to "lock the story down" and not speak of it further. (Of course, Common Dreams, dailykos, truthout, etc., have the "real" story.)

The thing about conspiracy theories is that their tautologies: everything can be neatly explained away, no matter how absurd it is, and you can still believe what you want to believe.

The election was not stolen. Bush won. (I didn't vote for Bush.) Get over it.

Re:Bravo

[SpaceLifeForm]

The election was not stolen.
Objection: assumes facts not in evidence.

Bush won.
Not yet.

(I didn't vote for Bush.) Get over it.
Read the latest news regarding Florida machinations.

Re:Bravo

[doom]

Just a few words in defense of "conspiracy theorists"...

daveschroeder wrote:

I didn't mention it in my original message, but my favorite conspiracy theory is that John Kerry's campaign probably decided [...]

"Conspiracy theorists" are always getting beaten up on issues like this, but I'm not sure it's strictly fair... In addition to proposing a hypothetical scenario about Republican corruption, I'm *also* supposed to be a mind-reader, and be able to explain away why John Kerry did what he did? The whole "motives" issue, seems like a lose-lose proposition. On the one hand, if you don't speculate on why so-and-so did such-and-such people will regard the theory as incomplete, too far-fetched. If you do speculate on it, you seem like you're over-reaching, claiming knowledge of things you can't possibly know about.

The journalists all said they'd kill for a juicy election fraud story, but there was none to be found...not even one that might exist but have no "proof".

A lot of us have a lot less faith in the good old "muck-raking journalist", having had to listen to a rather uncritical, monotonous drum-beat during the Iraq war run-up.

My favorite retort for this one is that all of the corporate media (i.e., all mainstream newspapers, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, FNC, etc.) are all in Bush's "pocket", and that even though there is widespread proof of election fraud, the corporate press has ordered all of its staff to "lock the story down" and not speak of it further.

Uh huh... let's roll the clock back, and consider the WMD issue during the Iraq war build-up. Isn't it ridiculous to suggest that the *entire* media could be asleep at the switch for some reason? Certainly if there was some reason to be critical of the administration's claims on this issue, *someone* in the media would be all over it, wouldn't they? I mean, the New York Times is hardly a Republican strong-hold, is it? Are you trying to tell me that Judith Miller has been bought by the Other Side? Oh, please.

The thing about conspiracy theories is that their tautologies: everything can be neatly explained away, no matter how absurd it is, and you can still believe what you want to believe.

And of course, you'd expect that an *actual* conspiracy would be a really clumsy affair, with lots of leaks (Diebold memos, anyone?), lots of funny statistical discrepancies, etc.

Of course it helps that many people will *immediately* reject any suggestion of corruption, tossing it in the "conspriacy theory" bin.

The election was not stolen. Bush won. (I didn't vote for Bush.) Get over it.

Your faith is touching, but why is it supposed to touch me?

Anyway, in the long run, whether or not this election was "stolen" is small beans compared improving the integrity of the voting system to make sure that they can't ever be stolen... there I think we're in agreement.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't vote for Bush.

Why do you think who you voted for matters? Particularly in a thread where you are arguing against a system for insuring voting integrity except at some future unspecified point.

Bush won.

You do understand the outcome of the election is not determined until the electors meet. You're a smart guy who seems to be following these things so it seems odd that you believe everything is over when you know votes are still being counted.

Re:Bravo

[Qzukk]

Or, an alternate version: the Democrats conceded even though Bush stole the election so that Hillary (and Bill) could run in 2008.

Hillary could have run now. It's not like nobody ever dropped out of their current office to accept the presidency. She probably would have lost too.

The journalists all said they'd kill for a juicy election fraud story, but there was none to be found...not even one that might exist but have no "proof".

After twice calling elections wrong and getting letters from apparently reliable sources that turn out to be bogus, they're not going to jump on anything election related without proof written in stone and signed by God Himself.

Personally I believe that Bush did in fact win. But that does NOT explain away inconsistencies. Republicans are happy to claim that the Catholic Hispanics in Florida voted for them on abortion issues as if the Hispanics found religion just this summer and suddenly decided abortion was important. District-by-district poll/registration vs. count "statistical discrepancies" ONLY in paperless districts.

It does not explain away the Guilty-as-Sin behavior of the County of Volusia (nor the signed polling tapes that reflected different answers than the unsigned copy they were providing others). Hey, neat, thats the same county that gave Gore -16022 votes in 2000. What are the chances?

Re:Bravo

[Pike]

> The election was not stolen.
Objection: assumes facts not in evidence.

Yeah, love the 'guilty until proven innocent' approach here.

"Your honor, I plead not guilty."

"Objection! Assumes facts not yet in evidence!!"

Poorly worded?

[mikeophile]

Let's look at it.

Berkeley has a fine school and all, but don't you think that it's liberal reputation (deserved or not) might provide the argument that the research is partisan?

Berkeley has a fine school and all
Is that wrong or poorly worded?

but don't you think that it's liberal reputation (deserved or not)
Were you not aware of Berkeley's liberal reputation? I added the deserved or not part to clairify that, having lived there, the residents are quite a bit more conservative than many believe.

might provide the argument that the research is partisan?
If you dispute this, you are seriously out of touch with the conservative echo chamber that passes for much of the news these days. Notice too that I did not make any statements about the research itself or it's validity.

Why don't you admit that I touched a nerve and that you made unfounded assumptions.

Re:Poorly worded?

[notcreative]

If:

The point that I am trying to make is that politics and logic are different animals.

please explain how this:

Berkeley has a fine school and all, but don't you think that it's liberal reputation (deserved or not) might provide the argument that the research is partisan?

makes the first point. Possibilities:

1. You meant to make the first point, but didn't, implying that you chose your words poorly.
2. You never meant to make the first point, in which case your first post was wrong by your own admission.

I have nothing against bitter condemnation of elites; it is practically a national pastime. Not everyone got to attend a selective college. I just wish that a /. article on a statistical analysis of potential voting fraud could be attached to a discussion of the same, rather than a collection of tangential or irrelevant posts. Maybe I'm just idealistic.

The only nerve you touched is the one about how annoying it is when people throw in statements just to say something, or to muddy the issue.

And because it is fun:

Statement: There may have been voter fraud in FL.
Reply: Lesbians are getting married.

Re:Poorly worded?

[mikeophile]

The only nerve you touched is the one about how annoying it is when people throw in statements just to say something, or to muddy the issue.

Do you think it's any less annoying when I ask questions and pedants with chips on their shoulder take them as statements?

figures don't lie, but liars figure

[samberdoo]

In a normal election, the historic statistic is that roughly 2 percent of the votes are lost or miscounted no matter what the system. Thus, in an election where there are 60 million votes cast 1.2 million votes are effected. These votes could have gone either way and this degree of error is accepted by both sides. It is only in a close race that a recount is necessary. There was a study on this, that I am trying to find, that shows that overwhelmingly recounts do not change the result of the election.

Or it could show that past elections were rigged.

[Anonymous Coward]

Those counties that used e-Voting are counties that used on punch cards in 1996 & 2000. We have now removed one of the Democrats methods of cheating (punching extra cards and voting for people who didn't show up). It is a lot easier to take a stack of cards and pre-punch them then it is to get access to voting machines and manually enter a bunch of bogus ballots.

What UC Berkley's study shows is that in past elections, the Democrats got more votes than they should have by rigging the elections and now that their ability to commit fraud has been stymied, they can't steal the election....

Here's a question

[flea69]

Do you think the UC Berkely folks would have even done the study in the event of a Kerry victory?

Slashdot crowd - determined to believe

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought this was an intellectual crowd. Bush won the election. It was fair. It wasn't what you wanted. Try being objective for once.

Perhaps, your political beliefs are simply wrong.

The way to verify

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple, you take your results to a judge that thinks the way you do and he will certify your results.

Soon we (the voters) will be completely removed from the process.

iblis

Re:Earth to Berkeley...

[mitchell_pgh]

It's important to remember that the USA is NOT a democracy... it's a republic.

Re:Bush is bad (Default Slashdot Political Comment

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I can't remember anything he's done right. I mean, he didn't even do a good job ironing his shirt for the debates :)

Paper or not

[2bluemike]

It doesn't matter.
What's really annoying is that these companies are not being smart engineers and are not learning from other industries. If voting machines were ATMs, no bank would install one that lost $260,000 in a single day.

Re:Paper or not

[DKA0]

Silly Rabbit

Diebold DOES make ATM's (and the electronic Voting machines in question)

http://www.diebold.com/nasadmk/inside/identify.h tm

-DKA0

Re:Paper or not

[mink]

To be accurate, Diebold wanted into the $$ making industry of E-vote so they bought a company that made voting machines. Diebold itself (the part that Makes ATM machines) has nothing at all to do with the engineering of the e-vote machines.

Benefits of Electronic Voting

[SeanDuggan]

Personally, I'm a fan of pencil/punchcard/mechanical ballots. It's what I've used all my life and they tend to be nice and simple. However, electronic voting does have some advantages.

• Physical - As seen in that hanging chad thing, punchcards require a small amount (very small) of oomph to properly punch the card, oomph older voters (or handicapped ones) might lack. Similarly, pencils take manual dexterity and the mechanical machines often required a bit of a heft, at least for the level that locked down the switches at the end. Computers are theoretically less taxing and have input methods for the handicapped.
• Instant Results - Honestly, I suspect this is at the heart of things. No one has to count votes by hand. Results can be automatically beamed to newscasts. In short, it fulfills that American Dream of having What-you-want-When-you-want-it. I personally think that this instant reporting of results is a bad thing, as it encourages voter apathy (why should it matter what people in Florida put down? It's your vote.)
• It's "Progressive" - IMNSHO, probably the second biggest reason. By trotting out electronic voting machines, legislators are showing that they're "hip" with the times. They get an image of being innovators, trail-blazers. Bloody morons...

Meh, anyhow, there are some advantages. I'd argue only the first one is valid. At that, they could provide some alternate input method for those people physically challenged by something requiring manual dexterity.

Re:Benefits of Electronic Voting

[ACNiel]

1. Handicapped people have mobility problems that might keep them from holding, seeing, or otherwise using any sort of interface. If I am blind, does it yell out my selection to me?

1. Fraudulent machines are instantly tabulated also, and not auditable at all.

3. How's this for progressive. A voting system you can't corrupt, that the people can use, and that can and is audited by external officials and judges from external countries.

Why can we support this for other countries, and not here? Why is Jimmy Carter spending time in other countries ensuring fair elections, and not popping down to Florida?

Re:Benefits of Electronic Voting

[Baricom]

1. Handicapped people have mobility problems that might keep them from holding, seeing, or otherwise using any sort of interface. If I am blind, does it yell out my selection to me?

Why yes, yes it does. Moreover, it does so with earphones so your privacy isn't sacrificed. If you can't manipulate the dial, you can use a sip and puff switch. And if you can't walk to the polling place, a precinct worker can bring it to you.

Note: I'm not defending DRE voting machines (I think they're a terrible idea). I'm just pointing out that a machine with your specifications does exist.

Personally, I think the ideal voting system is an optical-scan system with two contractors using separate equipment to count the votes. I haven't figured out how to provide for ADA compliance, though.

UC = Big John Kerry Donor

[dunc78]

There is some website that lists where candidates received donations from, maybe somebody else can remember the name of the site. Anyhow, on that site, the PAC at UC Berkley was listed as one of John Kerry's biggest donors. Coincidence... ?

Re:UC = Big John Kerry Donor

[dunc78]

the site is opensecrets.org http://www.opensecrets.org/presidential/contrib.as p?ID=N00000245&Cycle=All

Re:UC = Big John Kerry Donor

[Anonymous Coward]

And the state of California gave 55 electoral votes to Kerry.... thus making everything California does in relation to politics suspicious? I suppose the same arguments could be made of Texas.. or Kansas.. etc.

Re:UC = Big John Kerry Donor

[blamblamblam]

Ad hominem, man. Please debate the facts and not the researcher, because you gotta admit either way there is a problem with the way we vote, and everyone benefits when we know what that problem is.

Re:UC = Big John Kerry Donor

[dunc78]

There are not that many problems with the way we vote, and I don't think elecronic voting is that big of a deal. I think the main problem with our voting is that you pick one candidate or another, what would be better is a ranking system, so a third party candidate doesn't much everything up.

Simple (posible) answer: Ballot Order

[Halo-]

Something I've always thought about was the order of the candidates names on the ballots. "B" comes before "K" (and "G"). I don't know how all the machines work, but with the ones I've used your selection cycles through the candidate's names in alphabetical order. Confusion and laziness could likely skew the numbers because in both cases selecting the first candidate is the path of least resistance to the next screen (and ultimately casting your ballot).

I know politicians care about the order and wording of ballots a great deal, and something I'd like to see is a random ordering of the choices. My wife is in politics and has assured me this would never fly politically, and might just confused people more though...

No Exit Polls

[CustomFort]

This data doesn't use any exit polls. This data is comparing the past elections to the current one. Your comment is irrelevant in this context.

As an aside, isn't it possible that this is actually evidence of past Democratic fraud? If a Democratic county goes 90% to Gore rather then the expected 75%, who will notice? It's a good way of padding the margins. Maybe the electronic voting machines were invulnerable to the traditional methods of fraud, and that is why the results are statistically significant?

Re:No Exit Polls

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

You make a good point about possible past voter fraud being a cause of the statistical aberration. It is a real possibility. I believe you are mistaken about the use of exit polls, the paper cites both exit polls, and previous elections as sources. I'm somewhat dubious that voter fraud would be occurring in virtually all of the counties using electronic voting machines (maybe I'm not cynical enough.) Also, how do you account for those locations that were already using electronic voting machines?

Well I call this irregularities

[Billly Gates]

You tell me about Ohio?

I smell a rat.

Re:Slashdot crowd - determined to believe

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you have your head up your butt....

They are (Bush & Kerry) liars.

iblis

And you think you knew it all.

[Nom du Keyboard]

the number of votes granted to Bush exceeded the number of votes Bush should have received -- given all of the other variables -- while the number of votes that Bush received in counties using other types of voting equipment lined up perfectly with what the variables would have predicted for those counties.

All this tells me is that all of the other variables may well not be all of the other variables. No other conclusion can be drawn.

Next Logical Step

[Anonymous Coward]

Since electronic voting is irredeemably flawed, I guess there's no alternative but to allow the current emperor to name his successor.

Even if someone did uncover unassailable evidence that this year's election was fixed, defrauded, and covered-up, do you really think it would make a bit of difference at the inauguration? Both of the major party candidates have been pre-screened and approved by the moneyed elites, paid for in full, and programmed for the job. It's just Kang versus Kodos, year after year after year.

Even assuming the scandal makes it into the mainstream news, the rabble might get upset for a few years. But then the next magnificent distraction happens, just before they are ready to pull back the curtain and see the real Oz.

My question would be...

[dcigary]

...what was the criteria as to what counties got electronic voting and those that didn't? And, did people know before going to the polls that electronic voting was in use where they were going? It could be that more people showed up to vote based on the ease of voting (i.e. no more hangin' chads), or there could be some other type of demographic they're missing on the account of the voting machines - what counties got them? The rich ones? The ones with the most population?

All these statistical methods aside, the much simpler and more reasonable explanation for an anomaly like this simply must exist.

To claim that Diebold and the GOP are in cahoots to steal the election away in Florida is ludicrous. There are too many factors at stake for ANY party, the Republicans or the Democrats to take that risk.

They forgot the Jewish vote

[Anonymous Coward]

Typically, the Florida Jewish voting bloc vote overwhelmingly
with the Democrats. However, this paper completely
neglected that a large percentage of them voted
Republican this election.

Why such a swing? Some Florida Jews
voted for him because they support his
policies on Israel and the Middle East.
I mean, why not have a President that allows
his policy to be drawn up by ex-Likud players?

The discrepency is the issue

[A.Ichthys]

A statistical discrepency can have multiple causes.

1) There was something fishy about the election results -- this seems to be the assumption behind the investigation, the researchers wanted to find something and they found it.

2) The statistical model is invalid -- There may be other factors that weren't considered, this is where peer review would help.

3) The data is poor -- The data in this case being previous election results and results from non-electonic voting precincts. So it is possible (though probably not likely) that it could be the other counties where something isn't quite right.

Paper trails beside the point...

[Spoing]

For the last time you ludites -- it doesn't matter if you have a piece of paper!

The only thing that matters is that the process is transparent, traceable, and verifiable. With that, you can have reasonable certianty.

With computerized systems, it is possible to reach certianty with most/all mistakes or fraud pushed to outside the voting systems. (Ex: Corrupt officials refusing or thwarting investigations, votes being bought, ... .)

With each piece of data being fairly small, it's not unreasonable to log a checksum for each and every part -- from software used through to the individual voter's choices and even data packets themselves.

A careful sampling of both the voter roles and the population in general should be enough to make sure that votes weren't changed and that phantom votes weren't counted.

Selective Discriminators - What about AGE

[N8F8]

The summary report says they couldn't find correlation based on:

• - number of voters
  
• - median income
  
• - Hispanic population
  
• - change in voter turnout between 2000 and 2004
  
• - support for President Bush in 2000 election
  

But what about age? The county population increased nearly 7% from 2000 to 2003. If I was looking for a positive correlation in anything it would be age since Florida is one of the most popular retirement states.

I can't believe Berkley let this go to press.

[Bellyflop]

They did an OLS regression based on people's past history from 2000 and *1996*, when neither candidate was running and expected that to model reality? Did they bother to factor in the voting preferences of all of the people who didn't vote in EITHER of those two elections? And they based it off of their ethnic and economic make up, because, surely that's a perfect prediction of people's voting preferences. Hell, why bother to have an election? Why don't we just analyze the ethnic and economic makeup of the US and just pick the right candidate? Surely people don't change their minds and our inferences are perfect.

State by state comparison looks suspicious

[benhocking]

When they label the Florida graph as "Electronic Voting", are they suggesting that all of Florida voted electronically? I see no graph for "Paper Voting" for Florida. Similarly, of the 9 states that are shown, graphs only exist for either paper or electronic voting.

I would find it more believable if they showed all 100 graphs, and not just the 9 that seem to support their point-of-view. Actually, one would expect them to be able to find approximately 25 paper voting graphs where Kerry did as well or better than exit polls suggest, and 25 electronic voting graphs where Bush did better than exit polls suggest, assuming there was no bias in either system. Furthermore, one would expect that either Bush or Kerry would have more than half of the discrepancies in their favor.

In short, for a site that is devoted to "media studies", you would think they would know how to present data in a convincing manner at least. I'd also like to see it in an honest manner, but that might be expecting too much. :)

And no, I'm not saying that irregularities don't exist - the county comparison in Florida is quite intriguing - just that the particular web-site you provided for state by state comparison is very lacking.

Re:State by state comparison looks suspicious

[doom]

benhocking wrote:

In short, for a site that is devoted to "media studies", you would think they would know how to present data in a convincing manner at least.

Haven't met many Communications majors, eh?

And no, I'm not saying that irregularities don't exist - the county comparison in Florida is quite intriguing - just that the particular web-site you provided for state by state comparison is very lacking.

Yeah okay. All I was saying is that I'd like to see someone work on the problem a little more deeply, and I'm glad the Berkeley guys are on the job.

But I see that the Caltech-MIT voting project came to the opposite conclusion as the Berkeley study:

[...] this VTP Report demonstrates that there is no evidence based on exit poll results to conclude that there was fraud in the 2004 Presidential election.

Uh, oh, Berkeley's taking on Caltech-MIT. I wonder when Stanford is going to weigh-in...

For those trying to get active...

[skids]

Personally I think the news article you posted is tripe. There's more than just statistical evidence of fraud (see blackboxvoting.org's report on what they found in Volusia County's garbage.)
The major media is exhibiting ostrich-like behavior here.

But I do agree with you that activism on the issue of verified voting is lagging a bit, and that in the end a unifying effort to clean up elections is better than a partisan war.

At the risk of saturating my home link, I have prepared a writeup of my observations as I attempted to become more active after the election. It's interesting both as a resource for people working for accountability, whether to question the 2004 results or build public interest in verifiable voting in general, and also as a general look at the way Internet organising is actually a pretty disorganized process.

It's at http://abrij.org/~bri/rants/2004elec.html.
I'll try to keep my cable modem from seizing up too much :-)

OT: Godwins Law update?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Slashdot wouldn't care, though. Just like they aren't concerned with DRM or product activation or trusted computing when Microsoft is doing it, and they wont be concerned with the MPAA's sprawling evil or Lucas' disregard for his fans when the next Star Wars hits theatres."

Concern over George Lucas and his disregard for fans' wishes/rape of childhoods/Jar Jar Binks has reached such a fever pitch, it may be time to come up with a new law. "As a forum discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving GL , Jar Jar, and/or Greedo approaches one."

No, it isn't curious

[LenE]

Face it, Kerry was not a candidate that resonated with most democrats.

Do you think that most of the ethnic minority voters who occupy these counties feel more positive regard towards an extremely rich white guy who would likely have them as servants, or a bumbling, not-as-rich white guy who speaks Spanish and does his own manual labor?

Not to mention the number of times that Bush visited the state, hurricane relief and having locally booming economy, there just isn't much resentment there towards Bush. Kerry, on the other hand, had great difficulty even in enthusing the non-ethnic-minority democrats in Florida. He was a dud.

Not curious, nor a surprise.

-- Len

We agree.

[PotatoHead]

How come more people cannot see this simple fact?

Personally, I would prefer we just do what Oregon currently does. Mail out the ballots, everybody marks them and returns them.

We get a paper record of the vote. Actual voting is distributed in both time and space, making large scale fraud very tough. Counting is centralized and observed.

Plus, the actual election happens over the course of a couple weeks, making the last minute smear tactics far less effective, or at the least very expensive to run.

I think your machine would work however.

Re:We agree.

[Anonymous Coward]

I vote with an absentee ballot. I get it a month ahead of the election. I clear out a sunday afternoon and sit there with the voter guide, a laptop hooked to the internet and the ballot.

I slowly go through each issue and think about what it means, not only for me, but for america. I care about myself, but I am willing to sacrifice if I think an issue makes this a better country. I mark each section as I decide it and then move onto the next section.

It takes me a couple of hours to vote now. But it is leasurely and relaxing. I remember back in the day when I voted at the polling station and I felt very rushed, I left a lot of the ballot blank becuase I didn't know what the issues were.

I read where my fellow republicans decided that in order to win the election they felt the need to do so by blocking their opponents supporters from voting. I not only feel that this is illegal, I feel that keeping a fellow american from voting is treason. I would support the death penalty for treason for anyone who suppressed votes in the last election.

Voter suppression is terrorism.

Re:We agree.

[ArsonSmith]

How does that combat against strong arming and buying votes. If a battered wife wants to vote for a new elective that is going to help her get away form her husband what is to stop the husband form watching over her shoulder and make sure she votes for who he wants her to?

Whats to stop someone saying bring your ballots here and we will give you $10 to vote for candidate x?

Whats to stop a postal service worker from intercepting thousands of votes changing them and continuing them on to the counting location?

The only way to insure that there will be as small amount of voter fraud is to offer huge incentives to people for turning in fraud. $100,000 - $1,000,000 rewards for turning in voter tampering. In fact this should be done for all fraudulent government activities.
ties.

Re:We agree.

[Chris Burke]

How does that combat against strong arming and buying votes. If a battered wife wants to vote for a new elective that is going to help her get away form her husband what is to stop the husband form watching over her shoulder and make sure she votes for who he wants her to?

Whats to stop someone saying bring your ballots here and we will give you $10 to vote for candidate x?

The exact same thing that stops this from happening now: Anonymous and private voting. You don't keep the paper receipt, you put it in a box/scan it back in the machine and leave it there! Nobody -- the guy with $10, or your abusive husband -- can prove who you voted for.

Whats to stop a postal service worker from intercepting thousands of votes changing them and continuing them on to the counting location?

Good question. This is the same problem we have today.

Re:We agree.

[Skraut]

The only way to insure that there will be as small amount of voter fraud is to offer huge incentives to people for turning in fraud. $100,000 - $1,000,000 rewards for turning in voter tampering. In fact this should be done for all fraudulent government activities. ties.

man $1,000,000 for turning in fraudulent government activities. That'll double our national debt by the end of the month.

They just store the shite.

[Anonymous Coward]

"San Francisco and UC Berkeley also store homeless people's belongings..."

A good question to raise

[lcrypt]

"Politics for Nerds. Your vote matters." But does it count? lol...

Re:Clarification on Clarifcation (Tax Revenue)

[dunc78]

If you spend more than you have in revenue, you either have to raise taxes or reduce spending is incorrect. You could wait for the increased revenue produced from a growing economy. This will result in more tax revenue without "raising taxes".

Berkley you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure we can count on that to be unpredjudiced. *scoff*

You are gayer than aids

[Anonymous Coward]

n/t

Because...

[ThatsNotFunny]

The check from Diebold to the RNC cleared, that's why.

Well the problem is

[Sycraft-fu]

People are clearly taking what this says to heart as fact. They have a preconcieved notion of the world (that Bush stole the election) so they look for things to support it. Now they are jumping on this. Sorry, but that's just improper. The research isn't substantiated yet, and the people who are trumpting it as the truth aren't doing any review of it.

However the researchers are also at fault. Yes you circulate and talk about your papers: To your peers. The way it is supposed to be done is you send out drafts to others working in the field. Often, if it's important research you have a seminar where those in your field that are interested can come, hear your theory, and put questions to you, often helping you see mistakes if there are any.

However these people went and held a PRESS CONFERENCE. Sorry, but that's improper. Here they are trumpeting their claims to the world, via the press, when it isn't yet checked and reviewed.

Worst of all, they are playing the stastics game. Anyone who's actually worked with inferential stastics knows it's really easy to play with the numbers and make assumptions to get the result to come out how you want it, espically in a situation with tons of variables. It takes a lot of work and checking to make sure you are actually doing it right.

Hence, peer review. You put your findings out to your peers, and they check them and see if they can figure out anything you did wrong, or any alternate theories that fit all available data. Then, if needed you work and revise.

It seems to me that these people are being sensationalist, running to the press before anyone has a chance to check their findings, and that's just not good science.

Re:Well the problem is

[Anonymous Coward]

Woah there..

How do you think they could have gotten away with not holding a press conference? Their findings were explosive and if they hadn't gone to the press, the press would have made up their own story about the results.

You are correct that we shouldn't treat this as anything approaching fact though. It has been published, now we just have to wait to see what the peer-review determines.

From the C|net article, some cursoray peer-review has already happened. "Samuel Wang, an assistant professor of molecular biology at Princeton University who published extensive analysis of election data running up to the November primary, said he believed the latest analysis, unlike previous ones, does a credible job of explaining the statistically odd behavior of Florida voters." The C|net article also article also mentions dissenting opinions from Harvard, Stanford and Cornell polysci profs, but I can't find references to the Berkley article from them.

Re:Possible explanation -- You've got no clue?

[mynameis (mother ...]

Dude! Look you obviously just DON'T understand statistical analysis AT ALL, ok?
FTFA:

This multiple-regression analysis takes account of the following variables by county:
- number of voters
- median income
- Hispanic population
- change in voter turnout between 2000 and 2004
- support for President Bush in 2000 election
- support for Dole in 1996 election

After they removed the effects of all of those factors they ended up with 99.0% confidence that e-voting corrolated to extra bush-votes.

Do you get it yet? Could it be something else that they didn't include as a variabe? Sure, but only if it was somehow specifically different in e-voting areas.

Of course 99% isn't 100%, but lets get real for a minute ok?

Hmmm

[iceperson]

You're right. The DoD had nothing to do with it...
What Uni do you work for? Where does the goverment get the $$$ to give to higher ed anyway? You realize that without private businesses making profits there would be no revenue stream for the government to tap in order to pay for the grants don't you?

Re:Hmmm

[spacey]

The DoD, which is a government agency, paid BBN, and a few universities, to get ARPANET going, which eventually became the internet. Companies like Sun, Cisco, Google, Yahoo, etc. came out of university settings where very small amounts of government grants (angel investments, if you will) fostered huge returns for the country at large.

You jackass.

As for which University I work for - none. I happen to work for one of the largest companies in the world. Believe you me we don't do any research or contribute much to the global knowledge base. We do benefit a lot from things developed at universities like SQL, bsd unix inventions like a solid tcp/ip stack (don't even try to pretend that commercial ip stacks were the foundation of the internet - the bsd stack was ported everywhere because it worked, unlike private venture stacks) the fast filesystem and the ground it broke, etc.

What I've read in my life of real groundbreaking research comes more often from universities far more often than from private business - this could partly be because published papers can seed other research, whereas a lot of private research dies its own quiet death within a company.

IMO (and this is only my opinion) the US government funding of medical, computer, and other research has returns that enrich all of our lives.

You jackass.

-Peter

Re:Hmmm

[iceperson]

Nice. You spewed forth crap while never addressing the point I made about private industry profits going to the government in the form of taxes and then being funneled into higher ed. Maybe if you put down your copy of "The Communist Manifesto" long enough to read my post you could have actually come up with a relevant response.
ice

Oh. And there's help for your other problem, read more here.

paper trails

[AxemRed]

We would still have paper trails if people weren't so busy crying about "hanging chads" in 2000.

Re:paper trails

[AxemRed]

Let me rephrase that... It didn't make much sense... lol. In 2000, a lot of people demanded a "simple" way to vote that wouldn't confuse people. That's why they developed these crappy e-voting systems. There wasn't enough time to make them and test them thoroughly though. Also, I really doubt that the lack of a paper trail was used to cheat. They probably made them without a paper trail on purpose. The states don't want to waste all kinds of time doing a recount where they look at each ballot and try to determine the "intent" of the voter. That's what I meant when I said that the whole "hanging chads" thing brought this on. People complained so much about little things like that, that they states probably just said, "Screw it. This won't be a problem anymore if there's no paper trail."

Mod Parent Up - Correlation is not Causation

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all.

Correlation vs causality and 'loaded language'

[Sai Babu]

Irregularities does not have the same connotation as differences. Yet their "irregularities" is merely the difference in fit between what their model predicts and what they measured. Sure, you might call this an irregularity if you are fitting multiple data sets to a model and one of the sets doesn't fit. In this case, they have one model and one data set.

"Compared to counties with paper ballots, counties with electronic voting machines were significantly more likely to show increases for President Bush between 2000 and 2004. This effect cannot be explained by differences between counties in income, number of voters, change in voter turnout, or size of the Hispanic/Latino population."

* The effect cannot be explained within the framework of their model.

They state that their analysis takes account of:
- number of voters
- median income
- Hispanic population
- change in voter turnout between 2000 and 2004
- support for President Bush in 2000 election
- support for Dole in 1996 election

The counties with evote are the three largest counties. One should be careful in weighting the significance of the variables and data points. These three counties significantly skew the chosen fit.The change in turnout, past Bush support, and Dole support are not really relevent when comparing different demographics (three most populus counties with others).
The Hispanic vote is basically 'in the noise' outside of these three counties and there was a major shift in Hispanic vote between the Dole-Bush contest and the Kerry-Bush contest.
A little research will show that the shift in Hispanic vote was very significant in the 2004 election. Here is one of many sources. Google will find many more.

Bush Won Florida

[Anonymous Coward]

It was the hurricane victims in the central pan handle most of whom are latino. That cancelled out the south Flroida vote of previous elections.

This report seems to give Kerry a fake boost

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been a long time since I took prob-stat, but:

Page 5 has a chart mapping Democratic support in 2000 versus 2004.

What they seem to be claiming is - at least at the far end of the chart - that if a county had a 75% support for Gore in 2000, they'd have 85% support for Kerry in 2004.

Am I the only one who thinks this is a bit... wrong? I can see slight differences (even taking into account the inherent advantages incumbents have), but an extra 10% boost?

Re:This report seems to give Kerry a fake boost

[skids]

No that's reasonable, because of aggressive GOTV efforts in Democratic counties. Nationwide both parties turned their bases out pretty well, and concentrated most strongly on places where support was already strong. So it would be reasonable to see a curve where strong support got even more strong. It may be a tad much, because that's really a best-fit curve with no real data out that far to have provided a reality check, so it is representing a complicated system with a dumbed down curve.

There are probably charts in the other studies on other states that would verify such an effect.

Re:This report seems to give Kerry a fake boost

[helix400]

What I got out of it is that the light purple line represents the electronic voting trends, while the darker line represents on electronic voting trends.

Now, as you can see, neither line fits the data points too well on the far right of the graph, which means (in my opinion), that they picked a horrible regression technique. The regression lines fit well in the middle of the graph, but not on the right. And that's where they are making their claims at, on the right part of the graph. They are trying to extrapolate data off of a bad regression line and using that as proof of a problem.

Re:This report seems to give Kerry a fake boost

[helix400]

Argh "on electronic" means "non electronic"

And...I need to better explain what I previously said so it makes sense. They are trying to find a regression line between electronic voting counties and non eletronic voting counties, using percent change of voters for a candidate between 2000 and 2004, and if the lines are different, they found a problem.

My problem is the regression lines they used and the whole manner they used to determine differences between areas. Like I said, they ignored Nader's effect completely, and he can easily change the results in heavily Democratic areas. Anyways, I don't think the regression techniques they used are proper, and ultimately, I don't believe regression lines can be used to really explain anything in manner they are attempting to. They are assuming a consistant trend between counties, so they picked regression lines to fit their assumptions. But that could very easily be a bad assumption, since Nader's influence could very easily be very different in urban areas than in rural areas...but unfortunately, they ignored Nader completely.

Re:This report seems to give Kerry a fake boost

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no extrapolation inside of the data set. You have to do better than saying it looks funny. Making trends outside of the data set is extrapolation, inside of the data set is interpolation.

Re:This report seems to give Kerry a fake boost

[tgibbs]

Now, as you can see, neither line fits the data points too well on the far right of the graph, which means (in my opinion), that they picked a horrible regression technique. The regression lines fit well in the middle of the graph, but not on the right. And that's where they are making their claims at, on the right part of the graph. They are trying to extrapolate data off of a bad regression line and using that as proof of a problem.

While I'm somewhat skeptical of how strong a conclusion can be made from this kind of data, the light line fits pretty well, with only a couple of possible outliers on the right, while the darker line clearly doesn't fit at all. A simple visual test of fit quality is to look at how the points distribute around the line. For random scatter, successive points should have equal probability of being above or below the regression line. A run of 10 successive points is therefore about as likely as throwing 10 heads in a row--i.e. about 1 in 1000. Long runs of points on the same side of the line are a strong argument that the model is incorrect. There are no long runs for the the light line, while there are at least 2 runs of over 10 points for the dark line.

Our Precinct Had A Good Solution

[FireAtWill]

In our precinct, you got a ballot, darkened in the circles (pretty much just like an SAT test) and walked it over to a scanner which sacnned it, validated it and dropped it in a box behind (it would spit it back out if it detected a problem).

I thought this worked extremely well. Several people could be filling out their ballots at the same time and the scanning only took about two seconds. So there were no lines, efficient usage of the hardware, the votes were validated and counted instantly, and there was a paper trail.

I thought it worked extremely well.

Re:Earth to Berkeley...

[timster]

Exactly what meaning is that supposed to have?

We were all taught in 3rd grade that "democracy" meant the citizens voted on everything and that is what they did in Athens or something and that this country was a "democratic republic", but this sort of distinction has nothing to do with anything I said. If you ask President Bush if the USA is a democracy, he will tell you that it is; if you ask Senator Kerry if the USA is a democracy, he will also tell you that it is.

Words evolve over time, and in this case, I am referring to the meaning of "democracy" as a government whose institutions of power are controlled by the citizens. If you look in a modern dictionary, you will find that my usage is not considered incorrect.

Re:Clarification on Clarification of Clarification

[notcreative]

I left out Borrow Heavily. Your correction implies that you will one day be able to pay off the borrowing. I guess all of the US citizens will find out, won't we?

looks like a cheesy study

[LEPP]

It has been quite a while since I have done a rigerous statistical analysis, but this study seems quite weak. Their intent seems to be to prove their hypothesis as opposed to trying to disprove their logical hypothesis. Also, their use of previous election results as a baseline seems quite weak. I do like the fact that they account for the different viting methods. All in all, this seems like a class project rather than a rigerous scientific study. The premise of the study, the need for voting logs to ensure validity, seems quite logical. This study just reeks of a class project. I would think that a reliability study of computer voting with strict controls and known inputs would be a far far more productive study and conclusive study.

I am no expert but this is my 2 cents.

Proves fraud in 2000, not 2004!

[Anonymous Coward]

I propose that the fraud actually took place in 2000 not 2004. The electronic voting prevented the mass discarding of republican votes in those counties. Which explains two things: why Bush got so many more votes and why there were some many more votes.
The study is biased. On top of that it is based completely on statistics... and you know what they say about statistics: There are lies, there are damn lies, then there ae statistics.
TjD

assumption

[notcreative]

I don't see where they assume fraud. Since the paper is linked, perhaps you could provide a citation?

Re:assumption

[Obfuscant]

paragraph three, page 1. "The first was to assume that the vote margin was due to the appearance of ghost votes...", which they then proceed to identify as fraud.

how else

[ikkonoishi]

While the research used statistical analysis based on past elections and demographics, how else do you verify that a paperless voting system is working properly?"

Exit polls.

While the results differed from the early exit poll numbers once the total number of actual voters is known the polls become much more accurate due to the statistical processes involved.

Frankly I wouldn't rate anything coming out of Berkley as anything more that a partisan distortion. (But that is just my personal bias.)

Smoking Too Much Crack in Berkeley

[mtaco]

Patrick Ruffini downloaded the authors spreadsheet: http://www.patrickruffini.com/archives/2004/11/fis king_berkele.php

Here's what he found:

The conclusion that President Bush was more likely to improve his vote in counties with e-voting is laughable on its face. Using the Excel spreadsheet provided by the authors, I totaled the votes for counties with and without e-voting, and came up with this:

Percentage Change for Bush in Counties WITH E-Voting: 2.25%

Percentage Change for Bush in Counties WITHOUT E-Voting: 2.54%

It looks like e-voting suppressed the President's vote by about 0.29%_ -- or 7,800 votes!

Taking each of these counties as data points, was the President "significantly more likely" to have increased his support in counties with e-voting? Again, no.

E-Voting Counties with Increased Bush Vote: 13/15 (86.7%)

Non-E-Voting Counties with Increased Bush Vote: 46/52 (88.5%)

Re:Smoking Too Much Crack in Berkeley

[Windrip]

Patrick Ruffini doesn't understand statistics. His argument can be likened to the statistical assertion that when Bill Gates walks into a bar, the net wealth of the patrons increases by several orders of magnitude.

The survey proves a statistically significant correlation between Democratic support in certain counties (votes for Gore in 2000, Kerry in 2004), Republican support in certain counties (Bush votes in 2000 and 2004), and touch-screen machines.

Ruffini tries to disprove the finding by averaging the votes by county and technological prowess; which averaging doesn't disprove the correlation.

The finding is significant in that the predicted totals for Bush in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties are lower then actual values.

Here is the question Ruffini dodges: if the model is correct for the 2000 cycle, why is that same model wrong for the 2004 cycle?

Re:Smoking Too Much Crack in Berkeley

[Windrip]

The finding is significant in that the predicted totals for Bush in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties are lower^H^H^H^H^H higher then actual values.

Re:Smoking Too Much Crack in Berkeley

[jgoemat]

Their conclusions make little sense. Sort the data by % that voted for bush this year. There are e-voting counties that lost percentages for bush and non-e-voting counties that gained more than any e-voting county. Their summary paper shows a ridiculous number for Broward county. They say:

In Broward County alone, President Bush appears to have received approximately 72,000 excess votes.

Look at the data yourself:

1. 1996 - 142,834 Dole to 320,736 Clinton, Dole got 30.8% of their votes (I note they ignore Ross Perot and Nader who both had significant votes)
2. 2000 - 177,902 Bush to 387,703 Gore, Bush got 31.4 percent of the votes
3. 2004 - 238,397 Bush to 443,535 Kerry, Bush got 34.9 percent of the votes

If you take the total turnout and apply the lowest percentage for a republican in the last three elections (30.8%), then Bush would have gotten 210,115 votes. That's only 18,000 excess votes this year. If you take the 72,000 figure, then bush should have only gotten 166,397 votes. That's only 27.3%. So the authors of the paper assume for some reason that the county that had the absolute lowest percentage for push in 2000 (31.45 %) should have had even 4% less in 2004 when the country as a whole voted MORE for Bush. Not only that, but bush would have lost 11,000 people who voted republican in 2000 and Kerry would have gained 128,000 votes. That's ridiculous.

The change in Bush % of vote from non-evoting counties ranges from -11.5% to +10.7%. For e-voting counties it ranges from -6.4% to +7.4%. If you look down each list (evoting and non-evoting) from change in percent, there is little difference whether it was a democratic or republican voting county, they're scattered.

If you want to look at something strange, look at Cuyahoga county, Ohio. This county had 218,000 FEWER voters than in the 2000 election. That's in a record turnout year with only one other county in the list losing votes (Franklin, OH lost 9,486 out of the 519,255 they had in 2000). That's 108,000 fewer votes for Bush than in 2000 and 111,000 fewer votes for the democrats. Not a big shift in the election, but very strange nonetheless.

Re:Smoking Too Much Crack in Berkeley

[mtaco]

At some point, all this statistical analysis becomes masterbation. Its the same sort of analysis pollsters do, and its about as reliable...

So I think its perfectly valid for Ruffini to point out that Bush gained about the same % in both types of counties.

I'll meet your question head on though: Kerry was not Gore. I don't think Ruffini dodged it, I think it's just frigging obvious, and I think Ruffini's example demonstrates that. Kerry wasn't Gore, so the model doesn't match.

If you're still not convinced, the Berkeley guys analyzed Hispanic votes but not Black. Yet there was an interesting shift in the black vote this election towards Bush.

If you cherry pick your data, you can prove anything.

Re:Smoking Too Much Crack in Berkeley

[Mazem]

"Until recently, Ruffini was webmaster for the Bush-Cheney '04 presidential campaign"
http://www.patrickruffini.com/bio.php

Re:Smoking Too Much Crack in Berkeley

[mtaco]

While that's true, it doesn't change the math...

Re:Smoking Too Much Crack in Berkeley

[Anonymous Coward]

If Patrick Ruffini, whoever he is, thinks it's so easy to find flaws in the UC Berkeley study then he's welcome to publish his own paper on the matter.

As for me, I'd rather believe a highly respected sociology professor in a world-renowned research institution in a study that's been vetted by six other professors at Berkeley plus a professor at Harvard, and others, than some partisan hack of a blogger.

Is USA a democracy anymore?

[gmuslera]

This is the second election in a row, where could be at least uncertain if what the people voted is not what was "decided". Is voting what makes a difference between other methods of government, to distinguish it from i.e. monarchy or dictatorship, but if that don't matters anymore could be actual government regime be called "democracy"?

Re:Is USA a democracy anymore?

[HarveyBirdman]

This is the second election in a row, where could be at least uncertain if what the people voted is not what was "decided".

Classic! Please, do go on. Hee hee! I love reports from the parallel perceptual dimensions of the mentally vague. :-) :-) :-)

Is voting what makes a difference between other methods of government, to distinguish it from i.e. monarchy or dictatorship,

No, actually it's pudding. Rich, creamy pudding. Very few people know that. Visit China some day and order pudding down at the local rickshaw drive through hut. See? Bad pudding. Meanwhile, here in the free and shiny West, we have grocery stores loaded with lovely pudding.

but if that don't matters anymore could be actual government regime be called "democracy"?

Yes. No. I think. What? *blink* Huh. I think what don't matters anymore could be actual grammar regime be called... something.

Damn. I need to go get me some pudding.

Re:Is USA a democracy anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, I happen to like the benevolent rule of Bill Cosby and the Jell-o Puddling Corporation.

72,000 votes to many in Broward Co.

[pyro101]

2000 Gore - 387,760 Bush - 177,939 http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/results/FL/frames et.exclude.html
2004 Kerry - 443,535 Bush - 238,397 http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/sta tes/FL/P/00/county.000.html#12011

I guess I'm just not as learned as these great individuals (or didn't read the whole report) but the summary seems to make an odd point that Bush got 72,000 too many votes in Broward Co. That means that they expected Bush to decrease his votes by over 11k, while Kerry gains over 55k. This seems like odd thing to expect when this has always been an evenly divided election with a very high voter turn out.

Re:72,000 votes to many in Broward Co.

[hoppo]

Apparently their assumption was that if Bush gained ground against his opponent, that represents a voting irregularity.

Re:72,000 votes to many in Broward Co.

[pyro101]

You mean kept his ground... they claim that kerry would increase while Bush decreased.

I love it! I fucking love it!

[HarveyBirdman]

I am completely enjoying the conniptions of the Left in their desperate search for an explanation of the election. I suppose my utter misanthropy and total disdain for ideologies helps.

And I voted for Kerry. I didn't like him, I just wanted to have an orange Frankenstein monster in the White House, and I really really really wanted to see the "sensitive" war on terror. If I have any real disappointment, it's that. And I've got my my career and assets so freaking Administration-Proofed at this point that I could care less about the guy's economic delusions.

But the Bush win is working out better. The whiney little pussy crybabies of the Blue Realm are priceless theater. God, I love real world political drama queens! Look at Vincient D'Onofrio passing out from stress. It's classic. And now we have Democrats and their supporters actively tossing rude insults at anyone who deviated from their preeeccciioussssssss ideology by even a couple needle ticks. Hey, great strategy guys! Maybe if you try hard enough, you can marginalize yourself right out of physical corporeality! Go team Democrat! I'll supply the Bush action figures upon which you can so bravely trod. Maybe I can make a killing selling "Bush voters are poopieheads" shirts.

Heh heh heh. Dumbasses. :-)

As for this "number crunching" study, we learned all about this in Six Sigma Green Belt training. It's bullshit. Hey, I have a Green Belt. Do not question me.

Correlation is not causation

[Anonymous Coward]

My brother - as part of getting his masters in economics - had to take quite a lot of statistics. In one of his classes, they were given the assignment of showing a correlation without cause.

I can't remember the specifics of his paper, but IIRC, he got an "A" for showing that the rate of deforestation in the Amazon correlated with changes in the the average NFL game score, or something similar.

There was a reason they did this: to make them understand that just because there's a correlation between two series of data, that doesn't neccesarily mean that they are actually tied together in any way. Heck - for all we know, in each of these counties, the DNC organizers could have made systematic registration errors that kept potential voters off the rolls, resulting in an apparently higher turnout of Bush voters.

If there's any value to their analysis, it's to point out that there might be something worth looking at - assuming they've dotted all their i's, cossed all their t's, and not used a questionable procedure or dropped a decimal point somewhere.

Perhaps there was LESS Democratic cheating!

[khb]

At best, this shows that Bush got more votes in heavily democratic regions than statistics would have predicted (if the same methods were applied to elections from 1960 on, how many other "surprises" would there be?).

But the assumption that this occured because the Republicans cheated ignores an equally statistically possible explaination. The new machines were harder to tamper with, and there was less traditional cheating.

Surely everyone hasn't forgotten the "good old days" of Dailey in Chicago and of LBJ in Texas? Cheating in elections isn't new, and doesn't require electronics ... so just what part of this research proves that there simply wasn't less cheating?

btw: I am registered as a Democrat

whatreallyhappened ?

[flibberdi]

There are so many comments (smartass may I add), in the line of "did they think of this, did they think of that", "even if....it would not change the outcome" etc. IF you care and you really want to know you could start with sites as whatreallyhappened.com democraticunderground.com blackboxvoting.org votergate.tv and some internet searches to get some info. On the other hand, if you already decided that the outcome was good (mmm... taxcuts....mmmmm), don't bother, just convince yourself that everything is OK.

ob. 1984 ref.

[Anonymous Coward]

Winston's heart stirred. That was the bulletin from the front; instinct told him that it was bad news that was coming. All day, with little spurts of excitement, the thought of a smashing defeat in Africa had been in and out of his mind. He seemed actually to see the Eurasian army swarming across the never-broken frontier and pouring down into the tip of Africa like a column of ants. Why had it not been possible to outflank them in some way? The outline of the West African coast stood out vividly in his mind. He picked up the white knight and moved it across the board. There was the proper spot. Even while he saw the black horde racing southward he saw another force, mysteriously assembled, suddenly planted in their rear, cutting their comunications by land and sea. He felt that by willing it he was bringing that other force into existence. But it was necessary to act quickly. If they could get control of the whole of Africa, if they had airfields and submarine bases at the Cape, it would cut Oceania in two. It might mean anything: defeat, breakdown, the redivision of the world, the destruction of the Party! He drew a deep breath. An extraordinary medley of feeling -- but it was not a medley, exactly; rather it was successive layers of feeling, in which one could not say which layer was undermost -- struggled inside him.

The spasm passed. He put the white knight back in its place, but for the moment he could not settle down to serious study of the chess problem. His thoughts wandered again. Almost unconsciously he traced with his finger in the dust on the table:

2+2=5

Re:Earth to Berkeley...

[Obfuscant]

In a democracy, criticism of the government during war is patriotic.

That depends on what that "criticism" is and the effect it has.

There has been a lot of stuff going on that has been labelled "criticism" and thus "patriotic". Such as, Kerry meeting in Paris with representatives of the Hanoi government, while he was still in the military. That's not "criticism", that's treason. Such as, Kerry's famous testimony in front of Congress in which he branded every soldier as a rapist and thug. That's not criticism, that's lying.

Such as, the city councils of a number of cities meddling in foreign policy before the start of the war by passing "no war" resolutions, which cut the legs out from under the authorized foreign policy official (Pres. Bush). These resolutions were reported heavily on Iraqi TV, controlled by Sadam, to help him keep control prior to the start of the war.

Let's be blunt: this "news" dissuaded his own people from acting against him and supported the terrorists, because it made the US look weak and unwilling to act. That's not patriotic, that's pathetic. If it allowed Sadam to stay in power longer, then it cost lives; something that these meddling city councils will certainly not accept responsibility for. That meddling certainly made the threat of war less usefull as a negotiation tool -- and the same people who made negotiation harder are the ones who are whining that negotiation should have been tried!

Looks like this was done by STAT 101 students

[wfolta]

Despite claims that they took many variables into account, a quick glance at the paper shows they took very few variables into account.

For example, they did not account for: population growth between elections, the demographic makeup of such growth, median income change since the previous election, voter registration stats for each party and their changes since the previous election, reversals of traditional voting patterns (better-educated going Democratic, older going Republican), local issues that would draw certain voters to the polls, the involvement of and relative successes of get-out-the-vote organizations (the parties, unions, churches, etc), and the list goes on...

Of course, they never bother to look at which counties went electronic and why. They act as if it's a random variable or as if it would be somehow tied to who voted for Bush in 2000 or something silly like that. Far more likely to be tied to a county's population size, how much trouble it had last election, how much money it has, who were its governing officials, etc. How much trouble they had with butterfly ballots is in turn tied to the age and education level of those in the county, etc.

Sheesh, it's like when a high school student first gets a graphing stats calculator and proceeds to "prove" all kinds of things are correlated.

Re:Looks like this was done by STAT 101 students

[glasse]

Looking at Table 1, the numbers given are of the form "% Bush 2000", "% Dole 1996". Using proportions is an effective way to remove population size from consideration. Unless you are insinuating that their analysis is faulty because an abnormally large number of Republicans turned 18 this year -- which isn't unheard of, but I would like to see some data on that.

Your suggestion that counties that went electronic were also counties that would have a dramatic increase of voters for Bush is vague at best. Please consider that this analysis isn't saying, "Counties with voting machines voted for Bush more than counties without voting machines." They are saying "Counties with voting machines voted for Bush more than they did in 2000, and a similar effect did not occur for counties without voting machines."

Despite your claim that this analysis is similar to simple statistical analysis by high school students, your rebuttal is totally inaccurate, and certainly not "Insightful" as it was modded.

Ethan

Re:Looks like this was done by STAT 101 students

[Tarwn]

The point of his rebuttal, which you seemed to have missed, is that there are a great number of factors that were not included in the analysis, not that any one example that he provided was the missing link.
It is not up to the original poster to prove whether or not his suggested possible situations were, in fact, possible or probable, but instead up to the originators to factor that into their statistics. The idea was that the original poster was able to read the documented statistics (using the word documented loosely since this has not been verified or even published) and easily think of a large number of possible factors that were not considered.

In short, the data provided by the original poster consisted of pointing out factors that were not considered, not to provide raw data to refute any claims made in the document.

Re:Looks like this was done by STAT 101 students

[Anonymous Coward]

They're sociology students, what do you expect? Expertise? Hah!

Re:Looks like this was done by STAT 101 students

[smiff]

For example, they did not account for: population growth between elections, the demographic makeup of such growth, median income change since the previous election, voter registration stats for each party and their changes since the previous election, reversals of traditional voting patterns (better-educated going Democratic, older going Republican), local issues that would draw certain voters to the polls, the involvement of and relative successes of get-out-the-vote organizations (the parties, unions, churches, etc), and the list goes on...

The paper took many variables into account. As many as could be expected on short notice with no budget. There are two reasons to take extra factors into account. First is because you believe they may correlate with the effect you are measuring, thus skewing the results. Second, you believe the factor is random and by accounting for it, you can reduce error and measure smaller effects.

Do you believe the change in demographics correlates with the county's decision to buy electronic voting machines (please note, the researchers took demographic makeup into account, just not the change in demographic makeup)? I ask the same question of the other factors you mentioned.

The whole point of statistics is to measure the likelihood that the effect was due to the various random factors that were not taken into account! The rho (p) values you see all over the paper represent the likelihood that the various factors you mentioned, along with countless other factors, could have caused the effect.

The accepted rho value for most academic journals is p<.05. The researchers had a rho value of p<.01. If they had accounted for the factors you mentioned, the value probably would have been even smaller. If they had accounted for every possible factor, the rho value would have been zero (they would know exactly what happened).

It is impossible to account for everything. The researchers accounted for those factors which were most likely to skew the results. No single study should be taken as absolute proof of anything. However, this study shows that the situation with electronic voting machines merits further investigation.

If you believe the factors you mentioned explain the correlation, then go ahead and do your own analysis.

Re:Looks like this was done by STAT 101 students

[wfolta]

Someone else has responded, but let me add some questions for you: Can you explain why they have Hispanic population data and median income data for the year 2000 included at all? Remember, this is not data from 2000 and from 2004, it's only data from 2000 and yet it's included in a study that's looking at changes in voting patterns between 2000 and 2004. Not very discriminating. While you're at it, please explain how county-wide demographic data is useful: it's the demographic data of actual voters that affects a vote count. That's what the "ground war" between Democrats and Republicans was all about: it's them that votes that counts. Maybe you'll have a great explanation, but as far as I can tell, the demographic data was inadequate and not obviously related to anything. It appears to have been thrown into the mix so that they could talk about controlling for demographic factors and could say that "electronic voting had the greatest positive effect on change in percent voting for Bush from 2000 to 2004 in democatic counties" as if there were other real factors they accounted for. Their electronic voting machine data is also for only a single election: 2004. When looking for changes in election patterns due to electronic voting machines, perhaps one should consider changes in the patterns of the use of electronic voting machines as well? In fact, it gets worse than simply throwing in useless data. The excess data is not useful for comparing 2000 to 2004, but it does tell us that the counties (in 2000) were different. Break up the data into counties with (2004) e-voting and those without and compare the median income or the vote turnout size (as a proxy for county size) and you'll see that the counties are different in value and distribution. Heck, the fact that some counties adopted e-voting while others did not indicates underlying differences at work. These differences could turn out to be insignificant in light of the mere presence of e-voting machines. But the reasoning, choosing, and analysis must be done before conclusions are drawn. Especially in an environment where the authors know full well that their final statement about 130,000 more votes than expected would be interpreted to mean either fraudulent votes or gross negligence.

Re:Looks like this was done by STAT 101 students

[Anonymous Coward]

Horsefeathers.

Perhaps that's how sociologists and other SOFT scientists play the game, but ANY research I've seen takes what they feel are the dominant factors, does statistics, and publishes. Footnotes in the publication might recommend further analysis directions. It's not their job to go further before publishing, and it's not their job to do your job for you. If the results are both compelling and seemingly missing some significant secondary factor, someone else grabs the ball and runs it a bit further, comparing their results and biases to the original article. Using your 'don't publish until ALL factors are measured', nothing would ever get done, especially in SOFT science like analyzing poll-results. "We can't be sure these numbers are truly valid until we've verified what percentage of actual voters had undergone botox treatments."

Waving your hands and saying little more than a vague 'you suck' is as intellectually rigorous as saying that using county demographics is wrong since the better number is county-likely-voter demographics: in statistics, one uses the best data you can get your hands on, and I'm sure any of us that weren't trying to stick our heads in the sand would agree that the two are similar enough to allow that as a insightful substitute, given the (I'll bet) UTTER LACK of comprehensive, published exit-poll demographic data. It'd be nice to have exit poll demographics, but lacking that, ANY demographic subtext shows a level of diligence beyond yours.

Speaking of biases, given your posting history, (June 27 '04: calling Michael Moore a Lying Hack repeatedly, using Wing-Nut party-line excuses and lies as your basis) if they'd done this study and shouted 'no news here', you'd be on that like flies on stink, now wouldn't you?

Twice you've trumpeted that the study was flawed. Neither time have you given a concrete example of better data.

Both times, you've resorted to disrespectful, ad-homenim attacks. Again, given the evidence of your being biased against this study, first response is right: you're not deserving of the insightful points. As a prof of mine used to say, you're adding heat, not light, to the problem.

(who cares if I get modded Troll: at least I'm not some wing-nut)

Re:Looks like this was done by STAT 101 students

[tbannist]

Why do I keep feeling like I'm seeing the Chewbacca defense over and over?

I'm not going to deal with your countless questions because most of them seem to be desperate cluthing for any reason to disregard the studies result.

There is no proof of fraud here, merely the notice that the vote counts in electronic voting counties show a disproportionate increase in Bush's vote count. The state election commissioner decided to purchase machines with no paper trail, leading inexorably to this conclusion.

Add the exit polls, the Diebold scanner discrepencies, the blackboxvoting.org report of fradulent activity, and the numerous acts to disenfranchise voters before the vote (for example,: redirecting democratic voters to noexistent polling stations, spreading roofing nails on their driveways), and you have an election that reeks.

Re:Looks like this was done by STAT 101 students

[wfolta]

Using your 'don't publish until ALL factors are measured', nothing would ever get done, especially in SOFT science like analyzing poll-results. "We can't be sure these numbers are truly valid until we've verified what percentage of actual voters had undergone botox treatments."

I never said ALL factors, I said many obviously relevant factors. For example, CNN's national exit polling indicated that Bush received 9% more Latino votes, 6% more Jewish votes, 5% more 65+ votes, and 13% more "Large City dwellers" votes in 2004 than he did in 2000. The conclusions of the study are basically based on urban counties of south Florida with large elderly, Jewish, Latino, and African American populations, where all of these percentage changes would be major factors, yet they considered basically none.

As I noted, they considered Latinos, but only non-voting-related stats and only from 2000. No way to see how Latino voters might've influenced the 2004 election.

Of course, the whole study hinges on e-voting and the supposed differences between counties with and those without. They never investigate any factors that might have something to do with which counties have e-voting and which do not. I can't find any stats in a quick web search, but yes they do need to address this issue to be a real study. There aren't an infinite number of such issues and they're not that difficult to think of.

saying that using county demographics is wrong since the better number is county-likely-voter demographics: in statistics, one uses the best data you can get your hands on, and I'm sure any of us that weren't trying to stick our heads in the sand would agree that the two are similar enough to allow that as a insightful substitute, given the (I'll bet) UTTER LACK of comprehensive, published exit-poll demographic data.

Non-voter demographics don't address the "ground game" where unions, parties, churches, etc, fight to get out voters for their side. It doesn't matter if the county is 15% Hispanic if there is a Hispanic hot button issue that turns out the community in unusually large numbers. That's what voting is all about, and if you eliminate it, you aren't talking about voting anymore.

"Close enough" is not some kind of scientific argument, last I checked. I think it's a leap to say that Latino population from one election is enough data to be able to factor out their influence in a future election. Not to mention the other voting groups I mentioned. So, no, this is not a reasonable substitute for poll data.

Speaking of biases, given your posting history, (June 27 '04: calling Michael Moore a Lying Hack repeatedly,

Did I call Moore a "Lying Hack"? As far as I remember, I was having a discussion with a fellow who said that he had doubts about Moore's honesty, but in spite of this he still liked what he (Moore) had to say. A strange proposition, which I tried to point out.

using Wing-Nut party-line excuses and lies as your basis) if they'd done this study and shouted 'no news here', you'd be on that like flies on stink, now wouldn't you?

Wow, strange how quickly you get vague. I'm a "party line" guy, wrong on every issue, a wing-nut. Poof, make it so.

It's funny how you talk about ad-hominum attacks, yet that's exactly what you're doing: "Why look, you're obviously a nut because you disagree with Micheal Moore, so you must be an idiot here, too."

Twice you've trumpeted that the study was flawed. Neither time have you given a concrete example of better data.

You don't seem to understand what I'm saying. I'm not saying that the data they have is wrong, but that they don't have data that reasonably and obviously would affect their conclusions. (Since their conclusions talk about accounting for other factors.)

I have a day job and am not publishing a study for national distribution, so my res

Evidence vs. Faith: Election 2004

[leei]

One of the most disturbing aspects of the 2004 US Election was the degree to which voters (and the media often) ignored "truth" and "evidence" in favor of faith and authority in making their decisions (see, for example, PIPA's report on the "knowledge" of Bush and Kerry supporters. It is sad and more than a little disappointing to see the same mistakes being made on SlashDot's own forums.

The simple fact is that many of the comments already made were clearly made by those who haven't bothered to read the actual report or even it's summary of findings (well linked). The simplest summary is that given a wide variety of independent variables (i.e. data that might have some causal relationship with the outcome) and one independent variable (namely the shift in support from Dem to GOP in the presidential race between 2000 and 2004), the only significant movement occurred in predominantly Democratic counties with electronic touch-screen voting machines. The statistical tests reject virtually any possibility that these shifts were related to number of voters, income, Hispanic population, or voter turnout.

The question, of course. is what does this mean? Well, in isolation, not much. It is likely that some other factors not included in the independent variables were very significant. Unfortunately, when these results are combined with the discrepancies between the early exit polls and the vote counts. And contrary to a lot of analysis, past history has these exit polls much more accurate than they seem to have been this year.

Was there fraud then? We don't know. Evidence suggests that there may have been something going on (and the spread from 130K-260K has to do with uncertainty as to what kind of error might have taken place since misassigned votes are worth twice the difference of phantom votes). And the reality is that the rush to unauditable e-voting has made it more difficult to determine what kind of errors may have taken place.

Re:Evidence vs. Faith: Election 2004

[Lord Flipper]

I read the Russian guy's version of 'what's wrong here', and i gotta say, after having lived outside the US for a lot of years, and returning... America seems a lot more complicated when viewed from within. From abroad we look like a dangerous (as in murderous, shallow, greedy) nation, led by simpletons and corporate toadies, and supported [voted-in] by self-centered morons.

But after seeing the pathetic excuse for 'news' reporting and lack of anything like self-awareness, history, etc, the American people are too ignorant to 'decide' anything, based on anything besides their own short-sighted, fear-inspired 'reactions' to being manipulated.

To change, or 'improve' the voting mechanism, or 'transparency', would be 'putting lipstick on a pig'. Too little, too late, and totally irrelevant to the larger, global reality, and history. [which will, one day, lump our post-WWII period in with Hitler's Germany, and other notables of that ilk]. The only notable difference being that we, and our corporations, will kill far more people than Hitler ever would have imagined getting away with.

Beyond the deluge of statistics

[hoppo]

This just doesn't hold a lot of water. For one, all assumptions are being using 2000 census data as the baseline for demographics. Anyone who lives in Florida knows how outdated even year-old data is. Since 2000, I have seen my town (in a touchscreen county, no less) grow from 90,000 to nearly 130,000. The inference appears to be that the irregularities stem not from massive population growth that is unaccounted for in their study, but from "ghost votes" that somehow got into the system.

Look at the actual data. Here's what you'll see. Throwing out the non-Republican and non-Democratic votes (i.e. only counting votes for Bush and votes for Kerry), Bush picked up between 1 and 5 points on Kerry vs. his performance in 2000 against Gore, losing 1 point in Miami and Collier counties and with an outlier of 7 points gained in Sumter county, which is a majore Republican stronghold.

In non-electronic counties, the ground Bush gained was far more dramatic, many counties showing 7, 8, and upwards of 12 point gains. The most Kerry gained in any county was one point.

The point is this. In touchscreen counties, representing about 3.9 million votes, Bush picked up 2 percentage points on his opponent based on the 2000 election. In non-touchscreen counties, representing about 3.6 million votes, he picked up about 3 percentage points. I know this isn't a fancy statistical analysis, but to me this doesn't really point to any irregularities.

Re:Possible explanation -- You've got no clue?

[harvardian]

The probability that the results weren't due to chance is actually 99.9%, not 99% (if I remember my stats correctly). The p-value was .001.

I'd still like to have seen religiosity included in the analysis, though, in addition to hispanic population.

He isn't interested in objectively refuting you

[FreeUser]

We've got a basic problem here: the best correlation for doing well for Bush is the presence of e-voting machines. The only way to debunk this is to come up with a variable that correlates even more strongly for Bush AND ALSO correlates independently with the presence of e-voting machines. Merely throwing variables up in the air, as I've seen throughout this ./ discussion, isn't going to help you do that most efficiently.

No, but Republican apologist snowjobs aren't intended to explain the results, or debunk the growing evidence that widespread election fraud via voting machines and Diebold tabulators have resulted in the second stolen presidential election in four years.

They are intended to befuddle the public into remaining quiescent and submissive. And they succeed beautifully in achieving that objective.

Hell, even the spineless "mainstream" American media won't touch this story with a 20 meter cattle prod, despite the mountain of evidence available, and the many voices trying to raise public awareness of what has happened. They're too busy curry favor with the president-elect's administration.

Re:He isn't interested in objectively refuting you

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, those electronic voting machines were selected by Democrat precinct officials who, BTW, would not have allowed them to be abused to Bush's favor.

No, but Republican apologist snowjobs aren't intended to explain the results, or debunk the growing evidence that widespread election fraud via voting machines and Diebold tabulators have resulted in the second stolen presidential election in four years.

You really are a Kool Aid drinker. If there was a story there, the libs in the media would be all over it. Take some meds for you PETSS.

Hell, even the spineless "mainstream" American media won't touch this story with a 20 meter cattle prod, despite the mountain of evidence available, and the many voices trying to raise public awareness of what has happened. They're too busy curry favor with the president-elect's administration.

Re:He isn't interested in objectively refuting you

[Rayonic]

> the spineless "mainstream" American media won't touch this story with a 20 meter cattle prod, despite the mountain of evidence available

There's also a "mountain" of evidence that the moon landings were faked. And there are "mountains" of evidence that UFOs are real, and that Mumia Abu-Jamal didn't kill Daniel Faulkner.

It's the *quality* of this so-called mountain of evidence that you have to look at.

And who verifies the binary matches the source?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The paper trail is a red herring, if you ask me. What is really needed is publicly-available source code that anyone can view."

Bullshit.

With papertrail there is at least a remote chance that you can get hold of enough people to prove that counts have been faked.

Publicly audited sourcecode is one thing, but unless you station a skilled computer forensics person next to each voting machinge, it does give you NOTHING.

An uncontroversial :-) explanation for this result

[hacksoncode]

I think I will get little argument with this crowd that stupid people vote for Bush.

Let's suppose that electronic voting reduces errors caused by stupid voters not being able to do something as simple as make sure a chad is punched out.

Naturally this results in Bush getting more votes in counties with electronic voting.

Don't get me started on all the flaws in this "study".

Re:Earth to Berkeley...

[Anonymous Coward]

"meant the citizens voted on everything and that is what they did in Athens or something and that this country was a "democratic republic""

It should be noted that the Communist East German state called itself the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in an Orwellian fashion.

"if you ask Senator Kerry if the USA is a democracy, he will also tell you that it is."

Not likely unless a poll had been conducted showing that voters inclined to vote against Bush preferred the term "democracy" over the factual term "republic."

Actually, if they did.

[suso]

If they did, magically the people who need to see it would not be watching.

I work at a military base in southern Indiana and I swear every time something that I think the people there should see to sway their opinion comes on CNN or Fox in the breakroom, nobody is watching. But they are all in there when something that reinforces their opinion is there.

Kerry a dud?

[sweatyboatman]

Over 50 million people voted for Kerry. It's really impressive that you can dismiss him as a dud. He didn't win the election, but he did win over many Americans.

You have a very novel perception of the electorate. Very few voters in this election could "connect personally" with any of the candidates. They're all wealthy, rich and detached from the rest of society. They are the upper crust, the top 1%.

Re:Kerry a dud?

[gptelemann]

My impression was that there were a lot of people who didn't like Kerry that much but voted for him because they hated Bush. And just because they're rich doesn't mean people don't "connect" with them.

Re:Kerry a dud?

[LenE]

I wasn't arguing that the minority voters connected with Bush, either, just that there was less commonality with Kerry. Lack of commonality (among other things) leads to apathy.

I'm only focussing on the demographics and attitudes of the people, that the UCB researchers didn't understand. Up here in the People's Republic of Ithaca NY (Cornell), it was a given that Kerry was obviously the only choice. I would wager that the attitude at UCB was identical, and likewise completely out of phase with the vast majority of America that didn't view the choice as a foregone conclusion of electing an intellectual over a moron.

When blinded by ideology, people become deaf, dumb and blind. It's unfortunate and true no matter what political persuasion you find yourself. Neither of the major candidates were idiots, and most likely there wouldn't be much of a visible difference in policy or action between a second Bush term and a first Kerry term. Still, there would be differences that concerned voters did discern and cast ballots for and against.

Yes, over 50 million voted for Kerry, but over 60 million voted for Bush in the end. You have to be honest when you ask yourself why.

-- Len

Berkeley?

[mi]

how else do you verify that a paperless voting system is working properly?

So, the use of machines by a partisan-headed maker, who's side won, duly arose suspicions among partisans, who's side lost. Some news...

Electronic voting

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how they can have all the problems with the electronic voting system. I mean come on, most of us are programmers, we all know how to interface with a database. Why can't these guys get it right?

The thing that I would do to make the electronic voting easy is to have the vote stored directly to the database in real time. That way the total can be counted in realtime and you can not only see the results but also potentional problems.

We all do it now with polls on the internet. I just don't see what this can't be done with a national election. Now I'm saying to have people vote from their home computers. You do need a controled enviroment to eliminate as much voter fraud as possible. But the plan fact is that the biggest problem with these electronic voting machines is that the votes are stored locally at the stations and then later submitted to the main station via modem, MODEMS FOR GODS SAKE.

Presonally they should not have half ass this and set it up right in the first place. Have high-speed, secured connections directly to the main counting station, this way the main total can be counted in real time. Also you can store the local total at each poll office. This way they can confirm that each vote made it to the main database.

I don't know, I think that this whole electronic voting system can use an overhaul. I think that they rushed it to make it available for the 2004 election and didn't plan it out too good. It would be great if they get all the kinks ironed out someday. I would love it if someday I can be sitting at my computer at my house and vote for who I want in office. GO ROSS PEROT!!! :)

Rise of the (voting) machines

[payndz]

Again... voting machines Why? Why? WHY?

Oh, of course. Because voting with pencil and paper will only make Staples and the local print works a few extra bucks, whereas voting with an expensive machine sees the federal government dishing out huge sums of money to the local authorities to buy them, to the manufacturers to build them, to support staff to explain to voters how they work and fix them when they break (the machines, not the voters), and increased income for restaurants in the DC area to host all those long lunches where the politicians are bribed, uh, 'lobbied' to keep the pork barrel full of fat...

Re:This Land Is Red Land, Paid For by Blue Land ..

[pyro101]

Just because many large business base themselves out of blue states doesn't mean that their customers are from that state. Remember that the rich still pay most of the taxes. We just buy enough of their junk so that they can pay those taxes.

Here's the counter article

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.patrickruffini.com/archives/2004/11/fis king_berkele.php

Please mod troll.

Re:Possible explanation -- You've got no clue?

[Bellyflop]

They didn't remove the effects of those factors. Where do you see that in their paper? They made them independent variables, but that doesn't remove their affects. The dependent variable in a linear regression is linearly dependent on the independent variables. So they did exactly the opposite. They based their regression on the factors you listed above. In fact, I see that their regression wasn't particularly good when you look at the low end of their estimate democratic support with electronic voting. On the high end, the regression also deviates.

Re:Earth to Berkeley...

[Anonymous Coward]

...criticism of a government during wartime is only treasonous in a totalitarian state. In a democracy, criticism of the government during war is patriotic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act/

I don't know which utopia you hail from, but where I live, thousands of people were rounded up and jailed (many sentenced to 10+ years) for protesting WWI.

Some sections of the Espionage Act have been repealed but many still remain in force, commrade.

How would you verify eligibility?

[dafz1]

When I vote now, my state ID(a.k.a driver's license) is checked against a paper list of eligible voters, and then my name is checked off. This takes forever. Also, the number of my ballot is recorded...so they could dig through and find how I voted.

In this new system, the swipe would only be used to verify eligibilty. Then the voting machine would be allowed to continue, and the connection with the main ID server would be closed. No information could be traced to any voter.

Re:How would you verify eligibility?

[Reducer2001]

I'm willing to sacrafice one minute of my time while the blue-haired lady looks my name up on a clipboard. I do agree with you that they can use that number to find out how you voted, that should be changed. However, I think the reason for it is that they know they hand-out 1000 ballots and that the machine or whatever registers 1000 ballots at the end of the day.

Any form of Government ID that holds information is a bad idea. It would start out just being used to verify your voting ID, but the next thing you know you'll need it to open a bank account or get a credit card (ie Social Security).

Re:How would you verify eligibility?

[extra88]

At my polling place, they ask me my name and look it up in a book with photocopies of voter registration cards. They cover the side of the book with the photocopy and have me sign my name. If what I sign and the photocopy match, I'm good to go. Thus I have demonstrated that I am eligible to vote and that I am who I say I am. There's no need to resort to additional requirements like a state ID so I can exercise my Constitutional right.

We use mechanical voting booths so even though they write down each voter's name in a little book, I'm pretty sure there's no way to tie a specific vote to a specific voter.

Could someone claim to be me and forge my name? Yes, and that would suck for me but that kind of fraud doesn't scale. I'd rather have a little ad hoc fraud than a additional burdens on people just trying to vote.

The worst thing about the method described above is it only works if I go to the correct polling place. For too many people, making it to the proper polling place is too much of a burden. But then, I think Election Day should be a national holiday.

Correlation vs Causality

[bshroyer]

I've read the article. I'll assume for the four students correctly conducted the analysis they've described. The results are compelling: Essentially, net of other effects, electronic voting had the greatest positive effect on change in percent voting for Bush from 2000 to 2004 in democratic counties.

But, the unanswered question is, is there a causal relationship between the presence of e-voting and the "unexpected" change in Bush voting percentage?

A few additional facts:

Of the 67 counties in Florida, 15 used electronic touchscreen voting. (map here)
Of these 15 counties, exactly three (Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach) were democratic counties. (map here)

The outlying data points, on which the students base their conclusion, consists of three counties. Which happened to have been the focus of the 2000 election irregularities. And which happened to have been heavily campaigned, by both candidates. One could argue that there are a couple of causal relationships here:

a) because the elections in these counties did not go smoothly in 2000, there was pressure to reform the process, and e-voting was installed.
b) because the 2000 election hinged on these counties, the campaigning was extremely heavy there in 2004.

One stimulus (2000 election debacle/recount) may have caused both the e-voting implementation, and the Bush shift.

The authors of the paper go on to say that a similar analysis of Ohio e-voting returns showed no relationship between voting method and change in Bush percentage. Why would the relationship be causal in Florida, but not in Ohio -- or anywhere else that we're aware of?

Re:Correlation vs Causality

[redrhino]

Furthermore ... the whole concept of "regression to the mean" would suggest that in counties with the greatest support for Gore in 2000 would be those with the largest drop in support for the Dems in 2004.

Out

Re:Correlation vs Causality

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would the relationship be causal in Florida, but not in Ohio

Here's a couple explanations:

1. The researchers did not have demographic data for Ohio (according to the paper, the researchers did not account for demographics in Ohio). As the demographics varied between counties, it introduced random error into the analysis which made it more difficult to measure an effect.
2. The machines used in Florida were somehow different from the machines used in Ohio. Perhaps someone working for the machines' manufacturer noticed the machines were headed to the swing state of Florida and decided to rig the machines.
3. Maybe the electronic machines in Florida went to counties that were heavily contested in the 2000 election. And the people in those contested counties were turned off by Al Gore, so they voted for Bush this time. And the people in other counties were not turned off by Al Gore, so they voted for Kerry this time. Thus the discrepancy between electronic and non-electronic machines.

Actual cases of treason

[Anonymous Coward]

I've said it before, so I'll probably be called redundant, but criticism of a government during wartime is only treasonous in a totalitarian state. In a democracy, criticism of the government during war is patriotic.

You couldn't be more wrong.

Mildred Gillars, a.k.a. "Axis Sally". US Citizen, convicted of treason in the US in 1949 for making propaganda broadcasts criticizing the US and UK governments. Spent 12 years in prison.

Iva D'Aquino, a.k.a. "Tokyo Rose". US Citizen, convicted of treason in the US in 1948 for making propaganda broadcasts criticizing the US government. Spent 8 years in prison. (Received full pardon from Gerald Ford in 1977.)

William Joyce, a.k.a. "Lord Haw-Haw". Dual citizenship (US + German), educated in UK. Convicted of treason in 1945 in the UK for making propaganda broadcasts criticizing the US and UK governments. Executed by hanging on 1946.

The only crime these people were convicted of was criticism of the US and/or UK governments. I personally think their punishments were far too harsh... but it should be obvious that this kind of behavior has never been considered patriotic, democracy or not!

Re:Actual cases of treason

[Anonymous Coward]

there is a big difference between dissent and switching sides.

Re:Actual cases of treason

[Anonymous Coward]

The assertion that I disagree with is the claim that in true democracies, dissent during wartime is regarded as patriotic.

My point is that many purely verbal forms of dissent are indeed treasonous, and always have been.

Yes, some kinds of dissent are okay. But some are not. How to regard Kerry's dissent was up to the individual voters.

"Damn Roosevelt! Damn Churchill!" "Damn all Jews who made this war possible. I love America, but I do not love Roosevelt and all his kike boyfriends."

-- 'Axis Sally'

(Such sentiment sounds quite familiar these days...)

Even if they're right, Kerry still loses Florida

[Anonymous Coward]

All this is wonderful, but it kind of misses an overall point. Even if they're right, Kerry still wouldn't win Florida.

The state-wide impact of these disparities due to electronic voting amount to 130,000 votes if we assume a "ghost vote" mechanism and twice that - 260,000 votes - if we assume that a vote misattributed to one candidate should have been counted for the other.

According to many sites, Bush won by over 350,000 votes.

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/sta tes/FL/P/00/index.html

http://www.foxnews.com/youdecide2004/races.html?FL

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5650738/

I know that the overall debate is whether electronic voting is accurate, but this seemed like an interesting fact overlooked.

Re:Is there a choice of what to vote with? BOTH

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a 2 part system in the booth would be best. First, select your candidates on the screen, it prints out a paper card that you then put BACK into the machine. The card should be human readable so that the voter verifies their choice, then feeds it back. This creates both a paper trail, and a 2 part redundancy for the eVote. Another way to improve (apart from the obvious oss) would be to contract one vendor to supply the initial voting machine and card printer, and one to supply a compatible card scanner. This way you would have realtime discrepancy counts

Easy explanation

[BagMan2]

I read their report thinking it would be fairly conclusive, but was surprised to find that they simply ignore obvious things in their analysis. In their findings section they write:

"Its impact was proportional to the Democratic support in the county, i.e., it was especially large in Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade."

Let's face it, 40% of people are solid Democrat and 40% of people are solid Republican (generally), that leaves 20% so called swing voters. In counties that went heavily Democratic in 2000, that meant that those swing voters broke largely Democratic. In counties that went largely Repulican, those swing voters broke more heavily Republican.

If Bush is to do better in 2004 than in 2000, it would be logical to assume that swing-voters tilted more his way than before (as the partisans aren't changing their vote anyways). In counties that Bush won most of the swing voters in 2000, I wouldn't expect to see much of an increase in 2004, since the swing-voters had already broken his way in that county in the previous election. And correspondingly, we see little increase (even a slight decrease in some cases) in Bush's results in counties that he won in 2000.

Correspondingly, in counties that he lost in 2000, swing voters broke heavily Democratic. That means that if swing-voters are more likely to be breaking Republican in 2004, the effect of such a trend would be much more apparent in counties where they didn't break for him last time (since the counties they did break for him have already gone his way).

This observation is further supported by the notion that those 20% of swing voters likely have some pre-disposition to party affiliation already, meaning the actual number of truly swing voters is likely quite small.

As far as electronic vs paper goes, that is largely just due to heavily Democratic counties like those listed above switching to electronic voting whereas more rural counties that went heavily Bush remained paper ballots. This is likely due to the fact that Democrats were cry-babies about paper voting in 2000.

They do an analysis based on ethinicity and income to try and eliminate those as explanations, yet they don't analyze the obvious conclusion that heaviliy Democratic counties were more likely swing to Bush than heavily Republican counties were like to swing even more Bush.

Amateurs....

Re:Easy explanation

[BagMan2]

Thinking about it some more, another way to say the same thing that might be easier to follow is that votes become increasingly difficult to get the higher the percentage of vote you already have is. For example, it is likely easier for Bush to go from 35% to 40% of the vote in a particular county than it would be him for him to go from 60% to 65% of the vote in some other county.

In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if was easier to go from 30% to 35% than it would be to go from 60% to 61%....

Re:Easy explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm pretty sure you are wrong. These people are professors at a highly prestigious institution...well your idea is a simple explanation, the data shows that it never happens that way. Thats the whole point of statistical anaylsis, in fact if it did happan the way you suggested..the statistical analysis would see that correlation. You should realize they analysed other states..and there models worked in other states..basically debunking your explanation.

What about lack of a spoiler?

[Just Some Guy]

Did they take into account the fact that Pat Buchanan (popular among very right-wing Republicans) didn't run this year, and the fact that the heavily-populated counties where he campaigned hard in 2000 are the same heavily-populated counties that adopted electronic voting machines this time?

Lies, damn lies and statistics

[Infinity Salad]

Good point, except these researchers used multiple regression analysis to reach their conclusion and eliminate extraneous factors. We'll see how the peer review goes though.

Re:Lies, damn lies and statistics

[shotfeel]

I just did a relatively quick read. To tell you the truth, I don't think they eliminated any but the most basic of factors and really missed a couple (at least as far as i can tell).

After taking the aforementioned factors into account, they conclude there is a difference in using electronic voting in 2004 compared to the voting in 2000.

Isn't it just as likely the difference or bias was in the counting method used in 2000, not the electronic voting in 2004? The premise seems to be the 2000 numbers are correct, which igornes the reason the 2000 method of counting was replaced.

Which is my next question. AFAIK not all areas had new voting equipment. They didn't seem to take into account which districts would have the new electronic voting system. Were they mostly upgraded in the areas that had the most trouble in the past? In the more affluent areas? Why did those particular distrincts have their machines replaced and not others? That could indicate an underlying factor.

In the end, I guess I'm just a skeptic. I've done modeling not too unlike this, and there are always boatloads of assumptions made that may or may not be true and may or may not alter the conclusion.

Re:Lies, damn lies and statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it just as likely the difference or bias was in the counting method used in 2000, not the electronic voting in 2004? The premise seems to be the 2000 numbers are correct, which igornes the reason the 2000 method of counting was replaced.

The 2000 count was counted three times, independently (by the state and two media audits). It's far more likely the the 2000 count is correct than the 2004.

In the end, I guess I'm just a skeptic.

Hopefully everyone is, on a claim this extreme. But even when the study's proven wrong, it could be intresting to see how :)

Are those just rhetorical question marks?

[sweatyboatman]

Why was your entire post was written as a question? Is this that game where we can only talk in questions?

What makes you think I "instantly believed" anything? And is that worse than "instantly disbelieving" something?

Could these measly four students be right? Is it possible that there could be some irregularities in the untried, untested and uncheckable electronic voting machines?

Could something be news if it's not reported by the major press syndicates? Did you steal my tinfoil hat?

Where are these questions going?

Could it be that Kerry benefited from a couple hundred-thousand stolen/lost/miscounted votes in other parts of the country? Do you think it's possible that such chicanery by both parties tends to cancel each other out? Would it then be acceptable to just ignore it?

Doesn't it seem like that's the attitude the mainstream press has taken on this issues? Don't they say themselves that there ARE in fact some wacky things happening (4000 Bush votes in a county with ~900 voters) but that they're too small to affect the outcome?

Does this mean we shouldn't care about these things? Should we just ignore them, cover our ears and eyes and just trust our unelected election officials and the press?

Has the press ever let us down? Have they ever covered up a story or failed to persue a lead? Did someone say WMDs? Or was that Osama's Saudi ties?

The best way to test for faud

[Anonymous Coward]

Is to look at the pattern of "accidents" in an election.

If the election is free and fair, then there will be mistakes made by random chance that favor a random canidate.

When the election is rigged, mistakes found will overwhelmingly favor one canidate.

Funny how every error found in this election seems to help out Bush.

Who Cares

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as the Repuiblican wins, thus insureing a stable economy who cares if there is a paper trial.

Improve E-Voting!

[joNDoty]

How about this:

Every voter gets a receipt when they vote giving them a long, encrypted key.

The computers instantly tally the votes at the end of election day and post the results to a website.

The interesting part would be that the website allows voters to plug in their key. Given a valid key, the website would return the names of the candidates that person voted for. The function that tells the voter who they voted for would be the SAME function that went through every valid key at the end of the voting day and tallied up the results.

Also, to ensure that that the information the key links to is not tampered with, each receipt would have an encrypted checksum of the voter's choices.

This way, any voter could be sure that their vote counted. Any voter can claim fraud if and only if their key does not return a vote that matches the checksum. The only other room for fraud would be if somebody added extra "imaginary" voters to the database, which could be caught by counting the number of valid receipts scanned in on voting day and comparing it to the number of valid keys in the database.

The issue of privacy would be protected because each receipt would have no identifying information on it (in case you lost your receipt).

Re:Improve E-Voting!

[skids]

The problem with that is that if you were, say, an exploited poor person who's boss told you he would cut your hours unless you voted for X, he could force you to sit in front of a computer with your key and prove it.

There is another system proposed whereby you could check to see that your key was counted, but you could not decipher your key. That way you could check to see that your vote was in the system, but noone could force you to reveal who you voted for.

http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~poorvi/Chaum/chaum.pdf

http://abrij.org/~bri/rants/2004elec.html

Re:Improve E-Voting!

[joNDoty]

In my opinion, it is a good thing to be able to prove what votes are linked to a receipt.

A person could still refuse to reveal who they voted for. The checksum could be encrypted with a password that the voter provides. That way, an exploited poor person could still refuse to tell their boss who they voted for. Even if the boss STOLE their receipt from their hands and ran to check it out, he couldn't get the results without a password.

If they are exploited or fired because of that, then it's identical to a person who did not use e-voting and refuses to tell someone who they voted for anyway. At that point it's an issue for the court system.

?sdrawkcaB tI sI

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they ever stop to think that it might have been the manually validated paper ballots in 2000 that may have been inaccurate? The data could just as easily be showing that the 2000 Gore votes were artificially inflated in the Democratic counties and that the electronic voting has corrected flaws or prevented the manufacturing of votes by partisan election judges in those counties. That would explain why counties where President Bush prevailed in 2000 showed little change with the addition of electronic voting and Gore 2000 counties showed a large difference. Perhaps they should present their summary as a campaign ad for Hillary in 2008 instead of attempting to pass it off as objective investigation.

It isn't just about who won

[brlewis]

If you care about democracy, voting issues are important even if they don't turn a given election.

How To Be A Faith-Based Moron: +1, Patriotic

[Anonymous Coward]

3 Way To Be A Patriotic Moron:

You endorse censhorship that protects "children" from First Person Shooter games and improperly speaking media personalities while you are not opposed to government censored media streaming U.S.- initiated wars for children to watch on TV. Let's see how Faith, Family, and Values frees speech in the United States in the next four years.

You support "our" troops in Iraq and the new Faith, Values, and Family propaganda spewing from The White House et al. Let's see how "President" Bush uses
Faith, Family, and Values to win in Iraq.

You believe that United States constitution still exists after you voted twice for the world's most dangerous and inarticulate leader and you think that the United Gulags of Amerika is a representative democracy. Let's see how Faith, Values, and Family solves the new upper limit on the U.S. federal debt. .

Patriotically as always,
Kilgore Trout

system that has NOT been proven safe

[oliverthered]

Hey man, Bush got in, and you expect the 'system' to be safe. How would that be able to keep you in fear with a 'safe' system.

Re:Earth to Berkeley...

[hmbJeff]

Well said and the application of this principle is being repeated with the rampant suppression of truth in Iraq.

Take Falluja; Are you aware that among the first acts of the U.S. in their assault on the people who live in Falluja was to bomb 2 small hospitals and capture and shut down the main Falluja General hospital, removing patients from their beds and ejecting or arresting them (kind of reminds me of what they claimed Saddam did in Kuwait "dumping babies out of incubators"--only that turned out to be a lie).

The reason? According to the NY Times, quoting an anonymous senior government official, the hospital was judged "a center of propaganda" on civilian casualties: "This time around, the American military intends to fight its own information war, countering or squelching what has been one of the insurgents' most potent weapons."

The knowledge that they are killing hundreds of civilians is "propaganda" so it must be suppressed. The killing won't be suppressed--just the ability for the rest of us to find out about it. Stalin would be proud. (and by the way, since when are hospitals, water systems, electric plants, and ambulances "military targets"? They are not. Attacking these are war crimes, against both international and U.S. law).

Back to the original point, the state wants to attack Iraq for reasons of its own, and they are apparently willing to commit ongoing war crimes to do it. If the american people actually understood what is being done in their name, I seriously doubt that many would support it. Thus, the government tries to control the information and perception, thereby subverting democracy. They systematically deny citizens the information they need to make an informed decision about whether the policy should continue.

BTW, If you want to get a glimpse past the information blockade about Falluja and see for yourself, see the pictures at: http://www.fallujapictures.blogspot.com/.

What if something totally bogus happened?

[wombatmobile]

.

What if the machines really were significantly out?

What if there really was no audit trail?

What if university studies like this one really are the only way to spot a discrepancy?

What then??

Government psychiatrists call it nostalgia.

I don't buy it

[questionmarkcarrot]

5 of the 22 electronic voting stations reported a negitive change for Bush this year. Compare with 42 of the 133 paper ones... while not exactly even, this is in the same ball park. The results are compared with the 2000 election, where people said the ballots were confusing to begin wth... Point here is don't assume that this doesn't just show bias on the paper voting machines side towards Kerry/Gore. From the data they published (not all counties) with mean income; the average income for the e-voting counties was like $6k more than for the paper ones. ==> Inclined toward Bush support (they moved to Fla for less taxes anyway, right?)

Re:A legal question - Common Misconception

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll see in the comments that electors are free to vote for whomever they desire. That's not entirely true now. In the early years of the republic it was but now about 38 states have laws requiring the electors to vote accordingly to the popular vote with winner take all. A few states split their electoral votes according to the popular vote and the balance leave it to the electors conscience.

So what you gonna do?

[danila]

Ok, here is a question from me, a Russian, to my American friends.

While not calling this undisputed evidence, this is a pretty fucking good evidence (as good as you can get without a paper trail) that there was not just "election fraud", but that the very basis of your society was fucking hijacked. That Bush guy basically showed that he doesn't give a flying fuck about what you guys, the so called "people", think. He showed that he is the boss, and you are his bitches. That this is his country, and that he will do what he wants. It doesn't matter right now whether he was the evil genius, or some other guys standing behind him, the puppeteers, so to speak, who cares...

What matters is that the line has been crossed. You can't just say "Oh, I hope, it will get better", or "I don't think we are as bad as Nazi Germany yet", or "They have worse elections in Uzbekistan" or any other feel-good shit excuses.

People in other countries learned to stand for their rights, though they don't do it very well. There are people like that in the US too, you managed to achieve some great successes in the past and achieve some small victories every day. But it is suddenly not enough.

This is the point of no return. When you destroy the main check you have - the ability to decide that the president doesn't do his job well, then you will gradually lose everything else. It won't happen overnight, but it's the road with no return - democracy placed Hitler at the helm, but democracy could not remove him in 1938 even if people wanted. You can't easily take your freedoms back. Especially now, when the governments are so much more powerful than in the past and the oppression mechanisms are so strong.

Now you have only one choice, the one that guy in Guardian wrote about, the one which is obvious to many people, but which is illegal to speak about. You need to oust the bastard from the White House and since there is no other way, you must do it by force. Kill the fucker, prove that the weapons you still have are not useless and that it's still you, the people, who have the power.

Don't think that it may change to the better. Don't hold illusions that whatever Bush does till 2008 will only make it easier for the Democrats to win. Don't be idiots, it doesn't work this way. In 15 years my own country changed from the one of two world superpowers, with the world's best science, with some of the best free education, with free universal health care, with everything that makes quality of life better, albeit without McDonalds restaurants, without Coca-Cola and without Hollywood movies, into a country, which is as fucking pathetic as it gets. With economy still 30% down from 1989, with tens of millions of people living below poverty line, with science funded less every year, with disfunctional army, with destroyed education, healthcare and social security, with little international influence and a bunch of theives in charge of this giant bordello. That's what you get for being stupid. Don't magically expect things to work differently just because you live in America.

So the question - what you gonna do now? Will anything change? Do you have the power to do anything, other than talk about how you want things to be better? Can you march with a million people to Washington and get the traitor out of the White House? Can you still get rid of him? Or do you value your illusions "that the system works" more?

Re:So what you gonna do?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Russian friend,

Remind us to tell you about Putin and his ways with the Duma and the Constitution next time an election occurs over there.

Some guy from France, where the President should be sent to jail too -- not for the same reasons, though.

Re:So what you gonna do?

[Up'emInIrons]

While not calling this undisputed evidence, this is a pretty fucking good evidence (as good as you can get without a paper trail) that there was not just "election fraud", but that the very basis of your society was fucking hijacked. Statistical nonsense is *not* considered evidence, and it is certainly NOT undisputed judging by the comments here today. The fact is that there are a number of issues that our country is polarized on and the person who can win over the most "swing" voters will take the country. No party would want to risk getting caught trying to rig something like that because it would seriously derail any message they hope to communicate. So the question - what you gonna do now? Will anything change? Well for one thing, I'm hoping we get better candidates next round. I had some big issues with both of them this year. I think South Park had it about right:

But Stan, don't you know, it's always between a giant douche and a turd sandwich. Nearly every election since the beginning of time has been between some douche and some turd. They're the only people who suck up enough to make it that far in politics.

Re:So what you gonna do?

[ageoffri]

You have no idea of how the US system works. First off if I had the power this post would be removed and archived for the Secert Service. The US Government takes threats against the President very seriously. Even suggesting such an action shows your utter lack of understanding of what the US stands for.

Senator Kerry's actions has shown that he has confience in the election results. It would be sheer folly to think that there wasn't fraud for both major canidates, but not enough to effect the final vote.

I urge all Moderators with any common sense to moderate the parent down. This sort of illegal and plain stupid response doesn't deserve any visiblity.

Bush won the election and this time he won both the Electoral and Popular votes.

In the last four years my life has continued to improve in most areas. My biggest hope is now that Ashcroft is gone that Bush will replace him with a moderate.

I really hope meta-moderation shows some of the people who added to the parent so I can mark them down as bad moderators.

Re:So what you gonna do?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear French friend, If you had read the post of our Russian friend you would have noticed that he already attacked his own government, and will therefor not be offended by such a remark. Yours, A friend from Sweden, where all the prime minister does is walking around looking pompous.

You do the math (or MAFF in your case)

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh... well, do the math (if these figures are right). Bush wins by 400,000 subtract (possibly) 260,000

260,000 would be the total swing, so you would only be subtracting half of that (130,000) and adding it to Kerry. Read the article. You still come up short hippie.

Not likely

[HBI]

But you knew that already.

More bias...

More scrutiny needed

[SnowZero]

I read the paper, and while this needs to be looked at, I'm not all that impressed. They claim that "Counties which introduced electronic voting were more likely to see an increase of votes for Bush". Well, since this is a regression, which is measuring correlation, we can flip it around. Also, since people with higher income tend to be Republicans, since they don't want to pay higher taxes. Then we get: "Counties with an increase of median income were more likely to introduce electronic voting." It's not so suprising anymore; Counties with booming economies have the money to waste on electronic voting machines, and probably are generating Republicans due to increasing incomes. That's not to say this interpretation is the right one, compared to the paper's claim of probable voting irregularities. But the point remains that both are supported by the data, so it needs to be looked at more, with plenty of scientific scepticism all the way.

For one thing, I really think they should have included "change in median income". They find that the income doesn't predict a change in votes... well duh; Knowing the speed of a car isn't going to tell you if it is speeding up or slowing down. Also, they don't check their normal distribution assumptions on any of the data, and are predicting a non-linear dependent variable (change in %) using a linear model. I would really expect more from Berkeley scientists, but hopefully they will improve their work with continued feedback.

Of course, this could all be avoided using the 70 year old mechanical voting machines used in the northeast...

Ohio numbers don't match

[opencity]

29 precincts in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, reported votes cast IN EXCESS of the number of registered voters - at least 93,136 extra votes total.

official Cuyahoga County Board of Elections website

Re:Ohio numbers don't match

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

That's kind of interesting.
I copy-pasted the numbers from that page and ran a simple query against them. In most counties, the turnout was less than the number of registered voters, but there are 30 accounting for 97,489 mystery voters -- more votes were counted in those precincts than there are registered voters.
This isn't just a matter of absentee ballots being put in the wrong category, nor is it minor double-counting of ballots. Here are a few excerpts (check 'em yourself!)
HIGHLAND HILLS VIL has 760 registered voters, yet counted 8822 votes, for an overage of 8062 votes, or a 1161% voter turnout rate.
WOODMERE VIL has 558 registered voters, yet counted 8854 votes, for an overage of 8296 votes, or a 1587% voter turnout rate.

Note that I'm only looking at the cases where num_votes > num_voters. If you plot the voter turnout percentages, MANY more precincts show an abnormally high turnout rate, just less than 100%.

Now I'm off to see if Colorado posts the same raw numbers online.
--

The independant observation sez...

[ElectricRook]

It's important to also consider the possibility that the combination of increased scrutiny, in addition to the transition to electronic voting decreased the amount of fraud in certain districts in the 2004 election compared to the 1996, 2000 elections.

However in *"Free Speech Berkeley" , that observation might be considered a thought crime.

* Free speech in Berkeley Ca. is reserved for specific local interpretations of free.

The right way to vote.

[TheWizardTim]

The right way to do this is:
1. You prove who you are and are handed a paper ballot.
2. You go to a electronic vote machine and insert your ballot.
3. You vote.
4. You get a summary screen at the end. When you agree it prints the vote on the ballot.
5. You get to check if the ballot and the screen are the same. If you are happy, you deposit the ballot in the box, and the electronic vote is added.

On the ballot are both a simple listing of who you voted for as well as a optical method for a computer to scan.
Also when the ballot is printed it is assigned a number that is tied to the electronic vote.
When it comes time to count, you get a fast tally of the electronic vote, and a slower conformation of the paper vote. You would know in one night who won, and be able to confirm it a day or two later.
Any person who questions the electronic vote can pull up the vote of each paper ballot by entering the number on the ballot and checking they are the same, as well as make sure the names of the people voted for are the same as the results of the computer scan.
All 3 would have to be the same. The electronic vote, the printed names, and the optical scan method.
Further more, no one company can make all the hardware. If company A makes the voting machines, company B has to make the counters.
All other rules of open source and code checks by the public apply.
This is the only fair way to do this.

Re:The right way to vote.

[zippthorne]

"..as well as a optical method for a computer to scan."

If the computer prints it out, why not just use letters that are easy to OCR? that way there won't be an obscured part of the ballot.

Re:Paper trail not enough - prove it

[Anonymous Coward]

"..And they did it by rigging the system, and *NOBODY* can prove it.."

You say that you know they rigged it - this means you speek this truth because you have proof they did? If you don't have proof, your view is just as flawed as the rigging.

"It's true, I read it on the Internet..."

How to verify:

[Cereal Box]

how else do you verify that a paperless voting system is working properly?

Easy. If the Democrat candidate won, the voting system is working properly. Because, after all, only Republicans cheat in elections. And paper ballots are infallible, because no one could "lose" them or otherwise misrepresent the count.

I've learned these and other "election truths" from liberals by watching the past two elections. The moment Bush won this election, I got a kick out of watching the "rigged election" accusations come rolling in. Now let's be honest here folks: if Kerry had won, would the reaction have been the same? Would the same people who are today bemoaning electronic voting machines have immediately stepped up afterwards and said "wait a minute, how do we know Kerry didn't rig the election? I don't trust these electronic voting machines"? No, absolutely not. If Kerry had won, the liberals would believe that electronic voting is infallible (up until the point that another Republican president wins).

Sorry, but I don't buy all these rumors about electronic voting software being so incredibly difficult to write that every implementation is hopelessly buggy. You punch a button and a counter gets incremented. It hardly gets much easier than that. Bells and whistles like printing increase the complexity slightly, but the core software used to tally votes is trivially simple. I don't think it's the voting software you have to look out for, but the people who have unrestricted, after-hours access to the machines. THEY are the ones tampering with the machines, much like in other elections they've been able to tamper with boxes full of ballots.

UC Berkeley

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you find a more liberal, anti-Bush place to get to do this 'research'? Come-on. Why not just ask the Kerry campaign to do all the research? It would be more fair!

Other Variables

[kent.dickey]

Given the set of variables assumed, the data these researchers collected show that e-voting may have skewed the results for Bush.

All analyses like this depends on listing all the likely variables affecting the results. These researchers have a fairly short list, and I think they've missed a big one: they should have made the previous voting method in each county be a variable as well. So they needed to include which counties previously had punch-cards, optical scan, etc.

For example, what if punch-cards were unfair to Republicans in 2000 and 1996, but e-voting made it "fair"--this hypothesis could explain the data as well. Their analysis does not take this effect into account.

There are other variables that maybe should be taken into account as well, such as population turnover, church attendance rates, unemployment rate, federal aid received this year, etc.

The reason they probably didn't include more variables is that it makes any sort of trend almost impossible to detect (and certainly not as bold as their analysis makes it) since the effect they are claiming is relatively small in the overall vote totals.

I dislike e-voting without a paper trail, but this fairly simple statistical analysis doesn't seem like very strong proof of a problem to me. I don't want too much crying-wolf talk to make normal people immune to the real risks of e-voting.

Weekend tracking polls

[alexhmit01]

Weekend polls trend democrat. Weekend days TEND to be ignored in tracking polls. However, we vote on a Tuesday, so to "capture" the final weekend, the tracking polls are used that include the weekend.

This results in a democratic leaning sample.

Further, Kerry's surprise endorsement on that Friday MADE them WANT to use the weekend to capture what happened, so bad polls were used.

In other words, the polls going into the final week showed Bush winning, weekend tracking polls and the morning exit polls showed Kerry, but the final totals were more reflective of general trends.

Alex

Re:Weekend tracking polls

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a justification of the polls not matching the results. What, do people become more rational after their short break from work? How is it that weekends affect the polls? Do all of the conservatives stay indoors on the weekend, or do the liberals come out? I seriously doubt that there is that large of an effect caused by the day of the week. Also, wouldn't more people have made up their mind by Nov 1st?

Explication - it's the paper vote that's screwed!

[AtomicJake]

The authors seem to believe that they have statistically proven that e-voting is buggy.

NO. It's the paper voting, which is screwed! Before e-voting, only those who could read and held a pencil could vote. Now, even people that can only operate a TV can vote. This is the explication for the difference!

Re:Possible explanation -- You've got no clue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why didn't they look at the '92, '88, or '84 elections? All of them show heavy republican support in those counties, too.

This election disproved that myth

[alexhmit01]

A long running belief has been the turnout favors the Democrats. The UNWRITTEN part of the piece of convention wisdom is the implication "The overwhelming majority of Americans like the Democrats, but the GOP wins because their people count for more because they show up." This piece of CW undermines the GOP and enhancing the Democrats (the point of it), by stating that EVEN though the GOP tends to win the Presidential Election (where people tend to consider candidates more than incumbancy+party), there is no mandate because they only win from turnout.

The BIGGEST gain that Bush made for the GOP was in a HUGE turnout, he won, and won by a decent margin for a close election. (Yes the electoral college chooses the presidency, which is important for close elections like 2000, in general the "election margin" is the popular vote, not the electoral one.

By winning with a high turn-out, Bush has served to validate the legitimacy of the GOP and their winning of elections. The "turn-out myth" has left the Democrats holding decreasing amounts of power for 10 years while claiming to be the party of the people, which kept the Republicans from advancing major change (they never seemed to realize that they are in the majority).

More than ANYTHING ELSE, this is Bush's mandate, high turnout got him elected. And with this, Bush can attempt to undo all the New Deal -> Great Society initiatives he wants, safe and secure in the knowledge that it isn't going to awaken the secret Democrat majority.

Alex

Re:This election disproved that myth

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yes, quite the mandate to rule. The people who like him outnumber the people who would like to see him dead by a good two percent!

Alternative explanation

[whoever57]

Here is another possible explanation:

In the vote 4 years ago, counties controlled by Democrats reported artificially lowered votes for Bush. Quoting from the report:

Essentially, net of other effects, electronic voting had the greatest positive effect on change in percent voting for Bush from 2000 to 2004 in democratic counties.

Now, I don't know if my suggestion is correct, but the analysis in the rpoort appears to be predicated on an assumption that the 2000 vote count was accurate.

Re:Alternative explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

In the vote 4 years ago, counties controlled by Democrats reported artificially lowered votes for Bush

The 2000 vote was counted by at least three groups independently: the "official" count, the Miami Herald audit, and another audit sponsored consortium of newspapers; none showed major differences. At this time, I'd definitely trust the 2000 numbers over 2004 numbers.

(For the record, this is not a comment on the study itself; I'm remaining extremely skeptical until I know more about it, and have heard commentary from trustworthy, statistics-competent reviewers.)

This just in:

[Anonymous Coward]

UC Berkeley researchers have too much free time on their hands.

WOW, amazing!

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee, to think that a "left" coast university found that voting was biased to the "right". Yeah, big surprise here.

Oh, for just one conversative univers... ah, nevermind, they could never get any press time anyway.

The point is specified

[daveschroeder]

HAVA is to be in full effect by 1 January 2006.

Since e-voting is still in its relative infancy, and most experts, including people working for the DNC and Kerry's own campaign, don't think there were errors and/or fraud that would rise to the level of altering the outcome of the election (hint: there will ALWAYS be some level of fraud and errors, but ultimately it's fraud or errors that could change the outcome that are important), I would like to devote my energy to having accountable systems available by the time HAVA mandates their installation, instead of carping about what might have happened in 2000 and 2004, so we won't be having this same discussion in 2008.

Georgia's not such a hot example for your point

[JimmytheGeek]

In 2002 the governer had a huge lead in the polls and was defeated. Also, a popular Vietnam vet incumbant (who left most of his limbs in Vietnam) was defeated for Senate, by a draft-dodging empty suit. Again, polls showed a commanding lead for the incumbant.

Re:Georgia's not such a hot example for your point

[Anonymous Coward]

That "popular" Vietnam vet lost most of his support going into the election when voters realized that he had become a puppet for the unions.

And the governor did not have a huge lead in the polls. Perhaps you could point me to your source.

Minimum Standards Required

[canfirman]

I still believe that, even though voting is done by each state, what's needed is a consistent set of standards for voting machines. It should be treated like a set of accounting books: subject to audit, verifiable audit trail, and a report signed off by a person in charge that the system works according to the guidelines. We demand so much from accounting standards (Sarbanes-Oxley). Why can't we apply it to voting?

Re:Earth to Berkeley...

[Anonymous Coward]

A few months ago an ambulance blew past a checkpoint manned by a friend of a friend of mine, and fired a missile out the open rear doors at the checkpoint. This was just outside of Falluja.

The BBC reported it as "Marines opened fire on an ambulance..."

Re:Not good enough (get the UN involved?)

[gregger]

Exactly right.

We need a third party system that scans the receipt as the voter leaves the polling place and re-records their vote.

This machine could run the publicly available source code etc. and could even be run by an external body (non-proft org, the UN, the EU, whatever).

The totals would have to match 100%. If an ATM can do 100% accuracy, why can't our voting machines?

TTFN

Re:Possible explanation -- You've got no clue?

[Kenrod]

Dude, there are many variables not considered - age, religion, population density, total minority, unemployment rate, and urban/suburban/rural distribution quickly come to mind.

I looked at the data in the spreadsheet. The top 5 counties in population ALL use electronic voting (Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Hillsborough, and Pinellas). NONE of the 29 smallest population counties use electronic voting. It is impossible to separate factors that correlate this closely. Did X happen because of electronic voting, or did X happen because of the influence of county population or population density (which could also be expressed as urban%, minority%, age%).

114,000 of the 133,000 "extra" votes that Bush received came from 3 counties - Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and Broward. These are 3 heavily Democratic counties. The results of the study can be almost completely explained by a small percentage of 1996 Clinton and 2000 Gore voters switching to Bush in 2004.

Exploiting flaws is possible, as well

[galdur]

Another thing which should be considered: If there is a certain flaw in the voting system (e.g. puncher working statistically worse on one side of the ballot), the ones in charge of the voting process can utilise this fact to favour their candidate. The machines don't even have to be rigged, just be imperfect!

ALWAYS COUNT!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand this "recount if there's a problem" BS. Why not just ALWAYS HANDCOUNT THE F*****G BALLOTS? You can still use your shiny machine to produce preliminary results and dole out gravy as needed but, since the electoral system allows weeks before the votes are official, you could easily use a few hours after the polls close to hand count the ballots. If the hand counters and the machines are off by more than a half dozen or so ballots, you've got a problem.

What could be simpler?

Why would evoters favor Bush?

[JimmytheGeek]

Compared with others methods? This is weird. You can factor out hurricane relief. By the way, if God is telling us anything, it's that he hates red counties in Florida. Hurricane damage/landfalls in the past season veers around blue areas to get to red ones.

Also, Pat Robertson's town of Virginia Beach was hit shortly after he warned Florida was due to be smitten because Disneyworld extended benefits to partners in same-sex couples.

From this, I conclude that God does not appreciate being spoken for. Seek to know God's will, don't presume to state, without humility, what that will is. Spoken with humility...

Here is a potential reason...

[nwbvt]

Here is a potential reason why electronic voting counties were more pro-Bush. Maybe those machines were just more accurate. Maybe Bush really did better in Florida but lost a number of votes in counties that had less accurate voting methods. You know, like what supposedly happened to Gore in 2000.

Bush Won - Twice Now

[CleptDomainiac]

I'd like to reject the notions that...

• The same people vote for the same party in every election.
• Electronic voting machines are not audited or scrutinized before, during, and after an election
• an increase in votes for Bush indicates foul play (it could easily be that the Kerry people cheated less than the Gore people)
• Red State voters are stupid inbred hicks
  

There, I feel better now.

Re:Bush Won - Twice Now

[Anonymous Coward]

THANK YOU.

But don't expect to make any difference here on slashdot. It's totally blue-state madness around here. The truth is that Kerry lost; even his own lawyers, who were poised to jump at the slightest hint of fraud on election day, have given it up and announced that Bush won with no fraud involved.

The thing about the left is that they are so damned sure that they're smarter than the rest of us, that they can't (and won't) believe that they could lose an honest election. They would do well to come down from their clouds and try a little humility.

Earth to slashdot (especially you, michael) ::::>>> Kerry lost

99% Confidence?

[CustomFort]

You clearly don't understand basic statistics. I suggest you go drop in a Freshman stats course some time, it might be educational.

Correlation simply means there is an association. You are 99% confident that the positive effect E-Voting had on the Bush vote is XX +- X%, or you KNOW that X% of the up swing in Bush votes can be explained by whether or not there were E-Voting machines, but you are NOT 99% confident that there is a correlation. That makes absolutely no sense.

Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[Izaak]

What's to stop them from changing the code on enough of the machines to win? We'd never know what happens after we inspect the code. In the right area they COULD possibly win with only a handful of doctored machines.

It is already certain that vote fraud occured in an alarming number of isolated cases. The only question now is if it occured and went undetected in enough places to actually swing the election. Here are a few of the things we already know for certain:

In several districts, electronic voting machines were preloaded with thousands of votes for Bush before the election started. Where it was discovered, the machines were reset and did not effect the outcome. The question is, in how many districts did this go undetected because voter protection advocates were not there to check the machines.

In at least one case, a location in which only about 600 people voted recorded over 4000 votes for Bush. No explanation has been given for this, though it is likely another example of 'pre-loaded' machines.

In at least one local election, a manual recount of the ballots swung the vote total by a large amount compared to what the electronic vote machines had reported, enough to move the winner from the republican candidate to the democrat.

But the biggest smoking gun is in Florida's Volusia county where election offitials were caught red handed throwing out the official signed poll tapes from Nov 2nd. When these tapes were compared to the reported vote numbers, they showed that votes had been added to Bush's total IN EVERY SINGLE PRECINCT EXAMINED. If this was done in many more Florida precincts, it could explain the eight point swing between the exit polls showing Kerry winning and the official tally showing a Bush win. We must at least acknowledge the possibility, and insist on a full audit of the Florida results... not just a recount done by the same Florida partisans, but full, impartial audit.

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, Chachi, the preloaded votes were for Kerry. Widely reported in the news. Your other 'facts' are wishful germs of urban legends, as well.

>> In several districts, electronic voting machines were preloaded with thousands of votes for Bush before the election started. Where it was discovered, the machines were reset and did not effect the outcome. The question is, in how many districts did this go undetected because voter protection advocates were not there to check the machines.

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[Dr. Evil]

The only question now is if it occured and went undetected in enough places...

Naw, every single case is a federal crime, should be investigated thoroughly, and should be treated as a serious criminal offense.

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[NoOneInParticular]

Furthermore, regardless of if it might swing the vote, if there's enough evidence of tampering, the election should be cancelled in total and a new election should be held.

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem with that is you would have to do a full audit of the ENTIRE COUNTRY, which is just not feasible.

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[Izaak]

Sorry, Chachi, the preloaded votes were for Kerry. Widely reported in the news. Your other 'facts' are wishful germs of urban legends, as well.

Odd that all these 'wishfull germs' were reported by mainstream media and have not been dispuited by aanyone. For example:

In nine counties, electronic vote machines count Democrat votes as Libertarian.

This relates to my earlier mention of a vote machine glitch tipping a local election.

As for those reports of extra votes, if this site can be believed, it might only be the tip of the iceburg.

As for those pre-loaded votes being for Kerry instead of Bush, I could not find a news report that backs up your assertion, so I would welcome a reference if you have one. I will gladly admit I'm wrong on that detail if you do. Voter fraud should be a bi-partisan concern... we need to shine a spotlight on it regardless of which side is doing it.

And my original point is still valid. The reports coming out of Volusia county are the most damning evidence of voter fraud to come to light so far. This event was caught on video tape and witnessed by the police... so it is difficult to discount. It is certainly too early to shout that the election was definitely stolen, but this certainly raises serious concerns and undermines the confidence in the election for many. If the election was not stolen, then there is nothing to fear from an audit; it will simply restore confidence in the election process. How can that be bad thing?

Cheers,

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[PabloJones]

I, for one, believe in this electronic voting machine conspiracy crap. Sure, a few voting machines probably rigged the votes for Bush, but on the other hand, most likely other voting machines rigged it for Kerry.

Look, I voted for Kerry, and was not too pleased that Bush won, but I believed that he did. He won the popular vote by 3 million, and the electoral college by more than 30. I don't think that 3 million votes in favor of Kerry could have been stolen by crooked voting machines, as in my view and the view of the parent, fraud going for Kerry was just as prevalent. Better luck in 4 years.

Anyway, Bush won Florida by a pretty decent majority. ABC News dispelled a concern that many people had with a Floridian county (I forget which one) in which there were more registered Democrats that Republicans, but the county went for Bush. However, that county has voted Republican for the past 6 presidential elections or so.

Berkeley's facts may have been "right," but it doesn't mean they were accurate.

Let's give it up, Kerry lost and Bush won. Yes there were most likely cases of fraud, but overall, they probably cancelled each other out for the most part.

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[Rary]

"...in which there were more registered Democrats that Republicans, but the county went for Bush. However, that county has voted Republican for the past 6 presidential elections..."

Does that discount the possibility of fraud in this election, or suggest fraud in the last 6 as well?

Just a thought.

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[Izaak]

I, for one, believe in this electronic voting machine conspiracy crap. Sure, a few voting machines probably rigged the votes for Bush, but on the other hand, most likely other voting machines rigged it for Kerry.
I think you are missing the point that the manufactures of the voting machines are all strong republican backers, and the two main swing states, Florida and Ohio, both have partisan republicans running the vote counting process. The Democrats would not even have the opportunity to rig the vote in any significant way in those states.

If you have not checked out the article I referenced earlier I really recommend it. It points to potential 'systemic' fraud that could add up to many hundreds of thousands of votes in florida alone. Repeat the tactic in a bunch of non-swing states just to pad the popular vote... and you have a recipe for a stolen election.

It helps when over third of the population is voting on touchscreen voting machines with no paper trail, particularly when they are manufactured by a company with strong republican ties, and a history of fraud and criminal activity.

I am not saying that it definetely happed, just that it is not impossible, and that the early signs of fraud are enough to justify further investigation. We are talking about the fundimental underpinnings of our democracy here. I say that is worth a little extra digging just be sure. The cost of being wrong is just too high.

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[Izaak]

Does that discount the possibility of fraud in this election, or suggest fraud in the last 6 as well?

Actually, the statistical study done at Berkely takes that whole 'Dixiecrat' phenomenon into account. It uses past voting trends and compares them to the recent election. The big news is not that the votes don't match party registration, but that the big variations from past behavior occur only in the precincts using electronic voting machines.

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[iainayre]

Being from outside the US I don't really understand this, but how come these problems aren't being investigated? Either nothing happened or a possible crime occurred. Or am I missing something.

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[zippthorne]

I think you're missing the point that the counties that were using electronic voting were predominantly Democrat 'controlled' counties and as such would have democrat-leaning elections supervisor (they're elected in FL). Therefore the decision to use electronic voting and control of the machines would have been in the hands of Democrats. If the machines were tampered with, the logical beneficiary would be Kerry.

You are all wrong. The solution is not necessarily more technology. It's more accountability--Everyone gets a secret number at the poll. They can match this to their vote in the database, through a gov't website or shared through many private websites or share it with vote checking organisations or throw it away and forget about it.

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[MarkusQ]

Does that discount the possibility of fraud in this election, or suggest fraud in the last 6 as well?

Ocam's razor would suggest the former, at least if you limit yourself to just the data under consideration.

But when you start looking deeper the water gets muddier. There are accusations of election fraud in Florida dating back at least to 1959 (the Dade County "Metro" vote) and a whole host of election-and-budget related corruption scandals even before that). There have been numerous convictions, but mostly of "bag man" level people. Most of the Watergate burglers (the "cubans") were from Miami. And so on, and so on. There seems to be a fairly well documented pattern of misconduct involving Republicans + Cuba + CIA + mafia + Florida that runs back into antiquity.

So, thinking about it, I'm not so sure what to assume about the last six presidential elections.

-- MarkusQ

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[Izaak]

I think you're missing the point that the counties that were using electronic voting were predominantly Democrat 'controlled' counties and as such would have democrat-leaning elections supervisor (they're elected in FL). Therefore the decision to use electronic voting and control of the machines would have been in the hands of Democrats. If the machines were tampered with, the logical beneficiary would be Kerry.

Actually, the decisions on what voting machines are used, how many are assigned to each precict, where the poll locations are, and the people assigned as election supervisors all falls under the authority of the Florida Secretary of State, a Republican appointed by governer Jeb Bush (the president's Brother). The vote counting was in the hands of Republicans, that is an established fact.

As for any tampering more logically favoring Kerry... I will point out again that the 'smoking gun evidence' found so far shows just the opposite. Every single precinct that was examined in Volusia county revealed that votes had been added for Bush. This was discovered by comparing the signed and dated Nov 2nd poll tapes that the election supervisors were caught red handed trying to throw away. This was caught on video tape with police present.

Good grief, what does it take before people acknowlege that we should at least investigate further!

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[smitth1276]

Actually, the assertion that "partisan republicans" are running the vote counting process is simply incorrect. Jeb Bush may be the chief executive, true... but the vote counting is overseen by canvasing boards in each county, and the large counties where the huge numbers of votes are cast are overwhelmingly run by Democrats. I think you will find that precincts that use touch screen systems are also disproportionately located in Democrat-controlled counties. It's just a wacky conspiracy-theory. Nothing more.

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[smitth1276]

Yes, to supplement my last post... you can find a map of the Florida showing the voting systems used here: http://ustogether.org/election04/mitteldorf/Liddle .htm Just eyeballing it, I can say with a fairly high level of confidence that every single touch-screen county (the blue ones) are run by Democrats.

Let's quit pretending with this silly fraud theory.

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[Izaak]

I think you are still missing the point that while individual poll workers are unlikely to be corrupt, the election supervisors reporting the totals are appointed by the republican secretary of state. These people have been CAUGHT RED HANDED FAKING THE VOTE TOTALS. Those poll tapes signed by the local poll workers very likely have the correct totals as you say. But those tapes were thrown out by election supervisors farther up the chain of command and new numbers favoring Bush were used instead. Again, people were caught red handed doing this. The faked numbers favored Bush in every single precinct that was examinded.

Say all you want about democrats controlling the polling place. None of that changes the fact that the people reporting the totals were caught altering them.

Hey, I can understand you not wanting to believe corruption could happen at that level, particularly if it is the party you support. But if you care at all about the principal of democracy (which I believe should trump party loyalty) than you must admit this deserves further investigation. A complete audit of all Florida counties is called for.

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[smitth1276]

I'm sorry, but I think this is a solution in search of a problem. The numbers are reported to the Secretary of State by the canvassing boards. Also, since I forgot to mention it... I believe you were citing the Ohio machine "preloaded" with votes as evidence of fraud. Let's not forget that it was the Republican party that filed the complaint about those preloaded votes... so to turn around now and accuse it of being a republican fraud attempt is illogical at best. And the counties using touch screen machines did not trend toward Bush. Go back and read that link I included in the last post.

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[Izaak]

I'm sorry, but I think this is a solution in search of a problem. The numbers are reported to the Secretary of State by the canvassing boards. Also, since I forgot to mention it... I believe you were citing the Ohio machine "preloaded" with votes as evidence of fraud. Let's not forget that it was the Republican party that filed the complaint about those preloaded votes... so to turn around now and accuse it of being a republican fraud attempt is illogical at best. And the counties using touch screen machines did not trend toward Bush. Go back and read that link I included in the last post.

The problem is not the numbers reported by the canvasing boards... those numbers are the ones that election officials were caught throwing out. Again, the corruption is farther up the chain of command than the canvasing boards, and that is why is potentially much more damaging.

A solution looking for a problem? Please explain to me, then, why the numbers on the official signed and dated poll tapes differed from the reported totals. Please explain why those differences favored only Bush in every single case. Please explain the panic and strange behavior of the election officials that were caught throwing out the poll tapes when they knew auditors were coming to view them. To me, this looks like a big problem that deserves further investigation. I am amazed that you do not feel the same.

As for the preloaded vote machines, I think the news story I am remembering came out of one of the eastern states (New Hampshire perhaps?), so perhaps we are talking about two different stories. Either way, vote fraud is vote fraud and should be investigated regardless of which side is doing it. Maybe you don't believe this, but I would be shouting just as loudly to investigate things even if the suspected fraud favored the Democrats.

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[Izaak]

Go back and read that link I included in the last post.

I checked out the link, and it supports the case for the republican voter fraud discovered in Volusia County. Volusia used optical scan voting machines and thus was one of the counties that had an unexpected shift toward Bush. The official poll tapes from those optical scan machines, however, show that Bush votes were added when the totals were reported. At least in Volusia, those added votes would explain the statistically unusual shift toward republican voting as shown in the referenced web site. Is it not reasonable to imagine that something similar happened in all the other optical scan counties? That would certainly explain the strange break with historical trends.

So lets sum up. We have an eight point swing from the exit polls showing Kerry comfortable winning Florida. Two universities publish reports outlining anomolies in the vote totals. An unexplained statistical swing in voting trends that effected only counties using optical scan machines is shown in Florida. Election officials are caught throwing out optical scan poll tapes that indicate votes were added to Bush's total in a manner that would explain the above swing.

But hey, don't worry, there is no need to investigate further for fraud. Its all just a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory.

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[smitth1276]

If I had to guess why the reported totals favored Bush over the poll tapes, I would say it is likely due to the fact that Bush had an enormous advantage in absentee ballots, which weren't counted until days later. Once again, it's a silly conspiracy theory and nothing more. Can you please link to whereever it is you are getting this misleading information? People "throwing out" vote totals? Please link. The preloaded voting machines were out of Pennsylvania, a state that John Kerry won handily, which renders it a non-issue. I do agree, though, that if there is legitimate voter fraud, it should be investigated and the offenders should be prosecuted regardless of who it helped or where it happened. I think those "preloaded" votes were satisfactorily explained. Trust me, when I first heard about them it set off big alarm bells with me as well.

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[smitth1276]

Ok, let me clarify some things. The "break in trends" wasn't with who won the counties... the break was in who increased their margins relative to 1996 and 2000.

It is no secret that Bush pulled more Democrats into his column than Kerry pulled Republicans. The republican base was lined up much more solidly behind Bush than it was in 2000, and Kerry's "base", if such a thing can be said to have existed, was not very enthusiastic about him. Many democrats, even, had reservations about his ability to prosecute the war on terror. It is not "unexpected", as you say, that heavily democratic counties will "trend toward" Bush relative to 1996 and 2000, while still very heavily favoring Kerry.

Once again, there is nothing sinister here. The reason the "trend" appears to primarily affect the counties using the high tech machines is because those are the wealthier, more populous, and, thus, more heavily democratic counties. The democrats are the ones who lost voters within their own party to the other side relative to the last 2 elections, and that is why those counties trended toward Bush relative to the last 2 elections.

It isn't a conspiracy with the machines, but, rather, a function of the same demographics that allow a county to use those machines.

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[Izaak]

If I had to guess why the reported totals favored Bush over the poll tapes, I would say it is likely due to the fact that Bush had an enormous advantage in absentee ballots, which weren't counted until days later. Once again, it's a silly conspiracy theory and nothing more.

I'm talking specifically about the numbers reported on November 2nd by the poll tapes printed directly from the polling place machines at the close of voting. This is what was requested in the public records request.

Can you please link to whereever it is you are getting this misleading information? People "throwing out" vote totals? Please link. The preloaded voting machines were out of Pennsylvania, a state that John Kerry won handily, which renders it a non-issue. I do agree, though, that if there is legitimate voter fraud, it should be investigated and the offenders should be prosecuted regardless of who it helped or where it happened. I think those "preloaded" votes were satisfactorily explained. Trust me, when I first heard about them it set off big alarm bells with me as well.

OK, it is now obvious that you did not see the link I provided in the original post titled Vote Fraud Smoking Gun. Let me sumnarize it for you. Non-partison auditors made a public records request for the signed Nov 2nd poll tapes from Volusia county, They received unsigned poll tapes that were claimed to be reprints of the original tapes. They demanded the originals, and upon arriving at the records building where they were stored discovered panic filled election officials throwing out the signed and dated poll tapes. Upon comparing these tapes with the 'reprints' they discovered significant differences 'indicative of fraud' favoring Bush in every single precinct examined. Most of this was caught on video tape and police were even present for much of it, so this can hardly be discounted as baseless rumors.

I am not screaming that Bush stole the election, there is just not enough hard information to say that. But there is now solid evidence of major fraud in Florida - real evidence, not just statistical studies - and that means we should investigate further and find out how far the corruption reaches. Even if it did not effect the election this time, it is a serious problem that needs fixing. Let us not forget that localized voter fraud might not tip a Presidential election, but it certainly does (and has) tipped local elections and congressional races. My goal in making noise about this is not to overturn the current election, but to fix the system for the future.

Here that link is again

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[smitth1276]

I'll have to look at it again later, but if I recall correctly there were a few thousand spoiled ballots in Volusia as well. Not spoiled due to voter error, but due to bad ballots or something. A lot of people were ticked off because they had know way to know who had voted.

That could very well explain bags of discarded tapes. I admittedly don't know though. I don't think this group you cite is being taken very seriously though, because there has been ZERO coverage of this around here. And reading the piece you linked to, I did notice that the article is more suggestive than factual. And, frankly, I thought the explanation that they discarded ones were now-unneeded backups makes perfect sense.

These people are just digging. They have no interest in "investigating" or "getting to the bottom"... their sole purpose is to deligitimze the President and erode the public's confidence in the electoral process. If groups like this hadn't exhibited a pattern of such unproductive behavior for the past 4 years, I might take them seriously. At this point, I believe their credibility is on par with that of Michael Moore. The fact that every kook leftist with a computer is floating ridiculous conspiracy theories doesn't help, either.

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[Izaak]

That could very well explain bags of discarded tapes. I admittedly don't know though. I don't think this group you cite is being taken very seriously though, because there has been ZERO coverage of this around here. And reading the piece you linked to, I did notice that the article is more suggestive than factual. And, frankly, I thought the explanation that they discarded ones were now-unneeded backups makes perfect sense.

The problem with the discarded tapes being backups is that the backups should still match the official reported totals... but those tapes don't.
And yes, you are right, the story is not getting much traction with mainstream press. I am a little suprised with that considering the history of BlackBoxVoting in covering the e-vote issue and the past attention they have gotten from the press, but on the other hand, sometimes these stories just take some time to move from the web sphere to traditional media. It only popped up a few days ago after all.

These people are just digging. They have no interest in "investigating" or "getting to the bottom"... their sole purpose is to deligitimze the President and erode the public's confidence in the electoral process. If groups like this hadn't exhibited a pattern of such unproductive behavior for the past 4 years, I might take them seriously. At this point, I believe their credibility is on par with that of Michael Moore. The fact that every kook leftist with a computer is floating ridiculous conspiracy theories doesn't help, either.

I disagree with your assesment. BlackBoxVoting.org has been digging into the e-voting issue for several years now, and they have been very focused on the failings of the technology and its vulnerability to fraud rather than attacking political candidates. They certainly have not been kind to Diebold Inc., but I feel confident they would be ripping into that company even if they had strong Democratic ties instead of Republican (I know I would).

As for eroding the confidence in the electoral process, the nature of the touchscreen voting machines have more to do with that than anything else. Don't blame the people that are simply getting the facts out. As a computer consultant with nearly 20 years experience, including working on embebeded touchscreen systems similar to these voting machines, I know a bit about the potentials and drawbacks of this technology... and I am deeply concerned about this issue. Optical scan and other paper trailed systems are still subject to fraud, but it is harder to pull off and more likely to be uncovered (as the Volusia country events seem to indicate). The parperless machines are a big concern, because failures or fraud can go completely undetected.

A case in point: In both Ohio and Indiana, glitches with touchscreen voting machines caused the party line votes for Democrats and Libertarians to be swapped in some counties. This actually tipped the balance in local elections until it was discovered. The only reason this was detected was because nobody would reasonably believe the Libertarians could receive that number of votes. If this glitch had swapped the Republican and Democrat votes in a close election, nobody would have ever known that it had happed.

It is interesting to note that the 'vote swapping' phenomenon is a vulnerability that BlackBoxVoting pointed out well before this election.

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[werdy]

I live in Florida and voted in Florida and amazingly enough I used a PAPER ballot. Not every part of Florida is incapable of conducting an election....

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[smitth1276]

The problem with the discarded tapes being backups is that the backups should still match the official reported totals... but those tapes don't.

I don't think so. No totals are official until absentee ballots are counted. I don't think that there would be a poll-only total anywhere to be found... any totals officially available would be the combined polls and absentee.

Also, where are you getting the idea that the tapes do not match the offical totals? I'm not accusing you of making anything up, but I didn't see anything about that in the article. What are the discrepancies that they are claiming and where are they documented?

Optical scan and other paper trailed systems are still subject to fraud, but it is harder to...

I agree that paper ballots are absolutely the best option. I think that if kinks were worked out of the computerized systems they could be a good alternative, but at this point paper is not only the simplest, but the best as well. In my opinion, there is no reason why computer-based systems (touch-screen, etc) cannot be designed so that it simply is not possible to alter anything. There is no need to have the data available on a network, there is no need to allow software to be loaded onto the machine... I just don't understand why they have to have issues.

Swapping votes? How in the hell did noone notice that "bug" before selling the things?

I do, personally, think the notion that machines would be predisposed to cheat for a particular party simply because of the company that makes it is a silly one. I just don't see how a computer would be able to recognize that selection 'A' is the 'right guy' to cheat for... I imagine that these things can be used for other types of voting measures... ballot initiatives, etc... so there should simply be n number of options... party affiliation would (or should) certainly not be a recognizable piece of info from the machines perspective.

Can you imagine? "Proposition 2: Yes (Republican) No (Democrat)"... party affiliation is clearly not a required piece of information (aside from functioning as "user information" type data).

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[Izaak]

I don't think so. No totals are official until absentee ballots are counted. I don't think that there would be a poll-only total anywhere to be found... any totals officially available would be the combined polls and absentee.

Poll tapes record only those votes totaled on the voting machines at the polling station on election night... which is why they are called 'poll' tapes. :) Absentee ballots are totalled separately and then added in later for the final counts. Tbe public record request was specifically for the signed and dated election night poll tapes. These would never include any absentee ballots counted after November 2nd. The vote count from individual polling station is all part of the official record, as is the absentee ballot counts that happen later. I've actaully worked as a polling station observer, so I've seen the process in action.

Also, where are you getting the idea that the tapes do not match the offical totals? I'm not accusing you of making anything up, but I didn't see anything about that in the article. What are the discrepancies that they are claiming and where are they documented?

I got it right from the article. It states, "When they compared the discarded, signed, original tapes with the recent printouts submitted to the state and used to tabulate the Florida election winners, Harris says a disturbing pattern emerged." As for hard numbers, I've made a request for the raw data from the tapes, but the crew is evidently busy auditing another county and has not gotten back to me.

I agree that paper ballots are absolutely the best option. I think that if kinks were worked out of the computerized systems they could be a good alternative, but at this point paper is not only the simplest, but the best as well. In my opinion, there is no reason why computer-based systems (touch-screen, etc) cannot be designed so that it simply is not possible to alter anything. There is no need to have the data available on a network, there is no need to allow software to be loaded onto the machine... I just don't understand why they have to have issues.

Agreed. We also use optical scan ballots here in Wisconsin, and I believe the have many advantages over touchscreens. They are easy to use, there is a built-in paper trail, and we need fewer machines per polling station.

Swapping votes? How in the hell did noone notice that "bug" before selling the things?

Actually, BlackBoxVoting demostrated this problem and a many more but most states went ahead and bought the machines anyway. A few listened. California actually decertified the machines and sued Diebold but only after one disaster of a midterm election.

I do, personally, think the notion that machines would be predisposed to cheat for a particular party simply because of the company that makes it is a silly one. I just don't see how a computer would be able to recognize that selection 'A' is the 'right guy' to cheat for... I imagine that these things can be used for other types of voting measures... ballot initiatives, etc... so there should simply be n number of options... party affiliation would (or should) certainly not be a recognizable piece of info from the machines perspective.

The thing is, it is usually Diebold technicians that have loaded the software and pre-configured the ballots before shipping the systems off to the counties. Local election officials have been gradually picking up the role of actually configuring the ballots, but most still lean heavily on the supplier to deliver pre-configured machines. If key people at Diebold are corrupt enough to engage in fraud, they certainly have the opportunity. Of course there is also the old saying, never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. A little digging into the history of Diebold, and there is some evidence of the former, but plenty of the latter.

As for the vote swapping, you bring up exactly the points that I have been thinki

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[smitth1276]

The exit polls were clearly flawed, and they are not sufficient to based your study upon.

If you look at all of the national polls taken in the month or so prior to the election, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/bush_vs_kerry.htm l, you will see that the exit polls are an extreme outlier. To use that data would be absurd. The fact that the exit polling data was so ridiculously far out of line with the rest of the polls is exactly why I, and many, many others, immediately smelled a rat when those completely unbelievable numbers came out early in the afternoon.

And that doesn't even take into consideration the fact that they were known to have been skewed toward urban areas.

Oh, and re: Diebold... what makes you guys think that they would actually engage in fraudulent activity after all of the nutjobs that have been blaming everything on them for 3 or 4 years?

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[Izaak]

The exit polls were clearly flawed, and they are not sufficient to based your study upon.

A claim like that without facts to back it up can be taken no more seriously than 'the election was clearly stolen.' That is why many are calling for an audit of the election... to find out what the truth really is.

If you look at all of the national polls taken in the month or so prior to the election, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/bush_vs_kerry.htm l, you will see that the exit polls are an extreme outlier. To use that data would be absurd. The fact that the exit polling data was so ridiculously far out of line with the rest of the polls is exactly why I, and many, many others, immediately smelled a rat when those completely unbelievable numbers came out early in the afternoon.

Exit polls are historically much more accurate than the phone polls leading up to an election. Phone polls usually have a sample of about 1000 people and include registered and 'likely' voters, which is different from people 'certain' to vote. An exit poll typically has a sample of 10000 people and it consists of people who actually just voted. Exit polls almost always call the election within a two percent margin, and often within a half a percent. The only notable exceptions have been in places with proven voter fraud or, more recently, paperless voting machines.

The final phone polls showed the election a dead heat well within the final margin of error of 4 to 5 percent. The expectation was that undecideds and newly registered voters would break for Kerry. Also interesting is that the pollster John Zogby, who called the popular vote within a half a percent in 2000, called the election for Kerry this time. His number this time matched the exit polls but not the 'official numbers'. Add to that the recent university studies showing the weird changes in voter trends that occured only in paperless electronic voting areas, and you can see why many people are suspicious and saying we at least need to dig into this further.

Either the exit polls are wrong or the election is wrong. So far, I have seen no plausible explaination as to why the exit polls would be as wrong as they were. There is a plausible explaination for the vote count being wrong... fallible electronic voting machines. In isolated cases it has been PROVEN that they miscounted and altered elections. Given their history of problems, isn't it worth while that we do a full post mortem on this election so we can be confidence in future ones?

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[smitth1276]

The final phone polls showed the election a dead heat well within the final margin of error of 4 to 5 percent

No, they didn't. Go look at the list of every national poll I linked. In the week prior to the election Bush was up in 11 of 15 polls, tied in 2, and Kerry won 2 of the 15.

A claim like that without facts to back it up can be taken no more seriously than...

Reread the section right above the quote. That is what you might call statistically solid evidence... The odds of the exit polls being correct, especially with the known problems (over-sampling urban areas and women), and all of those other polls being wrong is immeasurably small.

To argue otherwise betrays the true desperation on your part.

Either the exit polls are wrong or the election is wrong Yes, the exit polls are wrong. The election, which is a much more scientifically sound poll with about 120 million participants, is correct. Any suspicion otherwise is rooted in paranoia and fantasy.

Also interesting is that the pollster John Zogby, who called the popular vote within a half a percent in 2000, called the election for Kerry this time.

Why don't we just stop having elections and let Zogby tell us who won? Instead of spreading baseless conspiracy theories, why don't you read the explanation of why he was wrong from Zogby himself? http://zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=928

Also, when talking about exit polls, I think you are latching onto those early afternoon ones that weren't even supposed to be public because they were so innaccurate (you know, the ones that showed Kerry up 20 points in PA). Of course, as this dialogue progresses, your tendency to latch onto things is becoming more apparant.

The expectation was that undecideds and newly registered voters would break for Kerry.

I don't know why. That isn't how they historically break within the last 3 days.

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[Izaak]

No, they didn't. Go look at the list of every national poll I linked. In the week prior to the election Bush was up in 11 of 15 polls, tied in 2, and Kerry won 2 of the 15.

The majority of these were well within the margin of error, making it officially a 'dead heat' in the words of the pollsters themselves.

Yes, the exit polls are wrong. The election, which is a much more scientifically sound poll with about 120 million participants, is correct. Any suspicion otherwise is rooted in paranoia and fantasy.

The election is only the more scientific poll if it was actually free of massive fraud. There are warning signs that fraud occured, the questions is how much. What is so wrong with doing an audit to find out? It is the best way to shut up the tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorists like me after all. :)

Also, when talking about exit polls, I think you are latching onto those early afternoon ones that weren't even supposed to be public because they were so innaccurate (you know, the ones that showed Kerry up 20 points in PA). Of course, as this dialogue progresses, your tendency to latch onto things is becoming more apparant.

The exit polls always start out rather innacurate and then become more accurate as the day continues. This is only natural as the sample size grows larger. Some people have made a big deal out of the 'exit polls' showing a big swing to Bush toward the end of the election, but this was because they began to replace the exit poll numbers with the actual reported totals as the precincts closed and their numbers came in. This was so the statewide prediction would be as accurate as possible, but it gave some the mistaken impression that the exit polls themselves had made a major shift, when really they showed a lead for Kerry the entire time.

The Berkeley study uses the raw exit poll numbers for the entire period. They are available for download if you are really curious. The exit poll numbers show Kerry winning Florida by five points (well outside the margin of error). Bush won by three points, an alarming eight point swing. A swing that large is considered a warning flag to look for fraud by our own specialists when certifying international elections (in places like the Ukrain for example). The Berkeley study is particularly interesting because it shows the vote total anomalies landing in very specific patterns related to the type of voting hardware used (i.e. paperless electronic vote machines).

I don't know why. That isn't how they historically break within the last 3 days.

The historical trend for quite some time is that the undecideds break for the challenger, at least that is the 'common wisdom' that was being spouted all over the media. In truth, there were not as many undecideds this time, so the newly registered probably played a bigger role. Several studies indicated that new registrations favored the democrats by healthy margins, particularly in Florida.

Hey, I did start this thread saying the election was stolen or that the results should be overturned, only that there was solid proof of fraud (specifically in Volusia county) and it should be investigated. Furthermore, the failure of the exit polls combined with error prone voting machines has undermined many people's confidence in this election. There is only one way to repair that. Audit the results, fix the problems we find, and make sure there is no reason to complain in the next election.

I would hope we could all agree that is a worthy goal.

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[smitth1276]

The majority of these were well within the margin of error, making it officially a 'dead heat' in the words of the pollsters themselves.

It's a statistical tie when 1 of them is within the margin of error. When 29 out of 33 polls over a one month period show the same thing, it's almost a statistical certainty.

The election is only the more scientific poll if it was actually free of massive fraud. There are warning signs that fraud occured, the questions is how much.

First of all, I'm sure the signs appear much worse than they actually are if you suffer from the sort of paranoia that drives these people to run around digging through peoples trash and make assumptions about exactly what they find there. That aside, why are you guys so insistent that the one oddball poll, the exit poll, which was known to have critical flaws in this election, was the correct one? It is an absolutely silly and laughable premise.

The exit poll numbers show Kerry winning Florida by five points

Well, once again, 9 different polls conducted in Florida over the week prior to the election show an average Bush lead of .6%, which is clearly in the margin of error. But for the exit poll to be assumed correct when it is equal to the most extreme outlier among Florida polls prior is the height of stupidity.

The historical trend for quite some time is that the undecideds break for the challenger, at least that is the 'common wisdom' that was being spouted all over the media.

Its true that it was being spouted all over the media, but they are typically idiots. In reality, however, the "incumbant rule" is spotty and practically useless in terms of predicting things. Additionally, voter turnout demographics did not pan out the way it was expected (all of those brainwashed Michael Moore stoners forgot to vote), and on top of all of that is the fact that we are at war.

You can't use wives tales and myths to justify launching some big "investigation" (fishing expedition?) into dillusions of systematic and widespread fraud on a scale that would have been unprecedented in WORLD history.

This election wasn't close. Get over it. Ohio wasn't even that close.

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[Izaak]

First of all, I'm sure the signs appear much worse than they actually are if you suffer from the sort of paranoia that drives these people to run around digging through peoples trash and make assumptions about exactly what they find there. That aside, why are you guys so insistent that the one oddball poll, the exit poll, which was known to have critical flaws in this election, was the correct one? It is an absolutely silly and laughable premise.

It seems you don't really understand the difference between exit polls and pre-election phone polls and why election specialists use exit polls as the bellweathers for fraud investigations. This 'one odball poll' is exactly the poll that should raise the warning flags when it disagrees with the final tally. This is exactly the standard we apply to other countries when we certify their elections... we use the exit polls to point out where we should investigate for voter fraud.

You call the exit polls flawed, but the reason given is that they disagree with the final tally. That is circular logic. Two different universities have poured over the numbers and found reason to suspect fraud. They recommend we investigate further. Police don't stop a murder investigation just because the smoking gun is not lying in plain site. If a death looks a little suspicious, they dig into it and make sure before closing the book on it.

It is obvious I will never convince you that further investigation is called for. Fortunately the government's General Accounting Office and other organizations do not agree with you. The investigations will go forward. It is unlikely it will overturn the election, but any fraud or unintentional failures they discover will certainly help us improve our democracy.

Whatever your political leanings, I encourage you to support legislation that improves our election system. Insist on a voter verified paper trail. Demand that the vote counting process be open and transparent, subject to third party observation at the time it occurs. Conservatives should feel insulted by the suggestion that they need to steal votes to win. The best way to deflate that argument is for Republican elected officials to champion election reform with even more energy than the Democrats. I suggest you contact your senate and house representatives and tell them just that.

This has been a fun debate. Take care, and have a good Thanksgiving. I'm off to visit relatives.

Re:Vote Fraud Smoking Gun

[smitth1276]

Happy turkey day!

Either that or more folks voted for Bush this time

[Anonymous Coward]

Why can't that be true?

If voting patterns never changed, why don't we have a Whig party in the US anymore?

Yeah, it would be a lot better to have a countable paper audit trail, but just because we don't have that doesn't mean that "Bush stole the election!". The logic there is entirely missing.

what was that short story

[Jafa]

There was a short story I read eons ago about a big deal being made over who was the most 'average america'. That person was picked with much fanfare by some super computer helping to run the government. Then that person was interviewed by the computer, asked questions like 'do you think the price of eggs is too high?' and what-not. Then, depending on the answers by the most average person, the computer would predict and actually choose the president, because that's who would be voted for anyway.

Pretty entertaining story. Doesn't really address all the issues even remotely, but still a cool story.

That ring a bell with anyone? What was that?
Jason

Yes.

[notcreative]

Yes.

Everyone else calls it a lazy person's cliche

[sideshow]

The Dude: God damn you Walter! You fuckin' asshole! Everything's a fuckin' travesty with you, man! And what was all that shit about Vietnam? What the FUCK, has anything got to do with Vietnam? What the fuck are you talking about?

Um wheres the balance

[AbsurdProverb]

I for one grew up on the idea that the government operates fairly by utilzing a transparent balance between three branches. At least thats how the theory was supposed to work. So why do we sell away this balance to one company? Specificly when the man in charge of said company made biased statements like "I will deliver the election to GW,"? Please, don't jump on this statement and misread it. I am not trying to undermine the winner of the election. However I am calling foul on man in charge of a voting medium. To take it a step further, why are we eliminating the transparency on a process that clearly needs to be done in the sunshine? I understand that a electronic voting machine, even with a paper trail, can still manifest maliciously biased code. With that in mind, why not create a voting method where both the creation, maintinence, and supervision are maintained by more than one group. Say perhaps three groups/companies who colaborate on the said processes and commit to oversighting each other in the effort to limit any potential problems. I realize such a concept costs vastly more than the current contract and method. However this is one of our essential constructs as a republic. Is it not our own responsibility, both fiscally and morally, to make sure we get it done as accurately and as fairly as possible? Every vote should count damn it. Margins of error, even due to glitches/bugs are not execeptable in this circumstances. The post I make has nothing to do with the winner, but everything to do with the process and type of government we not only run, but encourage others to run. How can we honestly nation shape in our own image when our own government constructs operate in such a large margin of question? Or are we pitching the idea that its ok to talk out of both sides of your mouth?

Statistical analysis?

[bs_02_06_02]

Read the articles. These "researchers" looked at trends based on 1996, 2000, 2004. I hate to say it, but trends change. If they didn't, we'd all be millionaires.
They compared counties with and without electronic voting, and they extrapolated based on the past. They might as well have said educated guesses.

The truth is, no one will know exactly how those people voted. There isn't a paper trail.

I smell too many tinfoil-hat wearing college liberals in this "research."

Re:Statistical analysis?

[mindbomb33]

I've been to Berkly and the tinfoil is only used to make pipes out of raw potatoes ;)

Re:Statistical analysis?

[empraptor]

"compared to counties with paper ballots, counties with electronic voting machines were significantly more likely to show increases in support for President Bush between 2000 and 2004".

Read the quote a few more times if you don't get it. I personally don't see what your point is. Please do explain your position further.

I suppose we should assume everything is working just fine because there is no written record to say otherwise?

Personally, I don't think any of this will change the election results. It's more important that people realize paperless voting sucks.

Re:Is there a choice - The REAL issue

[Exaurdonn]

After reading a number of posts, which as usual contain the usual mix of 'Bush is bad' or 'Kerry is a loser' etc... I am happy to see that there are a few people get the real point here. To preface, I voted Republican via a paper ballot, but I do think this article was valuable, not so much for its content, but for demonstrating the absurdity in attempting to audit a paperless e-voting system. The real point is: we will NEVER know exactly how each vote was cast. Black boxes scare the bejeezes out of me, even when my party wins the election. Unverifiable results will ALWAYS be unverifiable, performing statistical analysis won't fix that. As a side note, to solve this problem I think we need to be more careful when communicating with our less-tech-saavy acquaintances. Too often (always) the popular media talks refers to 'electronic voting'. The problem isn't whether the user votes with a pencil, or with a touchscreen. The problem is whether the results can be verified. I think the 'electronic voting' term confuses the issue, we need it instead talk about unverifiable voting.

-1 Bogus

[Austerity Empowers]

This article isn't newsworthy. Someone is using mathematical speculation, combined with unbacked assumptions to "prove" Bush had fewer votes? This is why the average joe doesn't trust science. Stop it, you're hurting.

Common sense > conspiracy. Kerry ran a bad campaign that did absolutely nothing to steal Bush's strong religious right base. Just look at the red and blue on the map, that says everything in a nutshell. By reading /. and other left-leaning material, sometimes we get the idea everyone agrees with us. Yet fully 50% of those in the country do not. Kerry forgot that, and lost.

My personal guess (and I'm honest about it), if Kerry focused on the economy and jobs instead of iraq and Bush's policies, he would have won. I come from the south, most of my family still lives there. They like religious crusades, but they like having a job a whole lot more. Clinton knew that, why didn't Kerry? Maybe because he's not as brainy as we think he is...

Re:-1 Bogus

[Tiny Elvis]

No, the average joe doesn't trust science because it is over his head and usually scary, and emotions are more powerful than reason. Actually I'll go one further and say the average joe is a fucking moron.

Fine by me

[daniil]

But only as long as you don't stop others from something different and new.

sure. and i figure...

[empraptor]

If it's 130 thousand votes that went to Bush, it still doesn't close the 380 thousand gap anyway. The real issue here is paperless voting systems, not who should have won. Hopefully news like this gets more publicity. Companies making the voting machines should be held accountable for shortcomings of their products. Paperless voting sounded good "on paper" (haha i'm so funny). We tried it. Now we know it's a bad idea. We should chuck it on the ground and stomp on it repeatedly.

And 2 percent of 3 million is 60 thousand. We're talking about Florida, not the whole nation.

Re:sure. and i figure...

[samberdoo]

and there are 17 million people in florida not 3 million

Re:sure. and i figure...

[empraptor]

Sorry I should have made that clear. Approximately 3 million voters turned out for 2004 elections.

Re:sure. and i figure...

[empraptor]

This is a pre-emptive strike on any other persons who wish to correct me. I meant to say that 3 million voters turned out for 2004 elections in Florida.

What about switch voters?

[Up'emInIrons]

My wife and I voted for Gore in '00 and Bush in '04. Switch voters weren't even considered a possibility in the results summany so does that mean I'm not allowed to vote for the other party? Think about it: there are a number of reasons someone might choose Bush over Kerry or vice-versa on the issues, not on the way they voted in the past or what their voter's registration card says.

My voters registration card says rebublican, perhaps I should switch to independent but that's not the point.

Re:What about switch voters?

[Anonymous Coward]

did you read the article? the point is that the evote counties had more switch voters than the paper vote counties..

Re:What about switch voters?

[Anonymous Coward]

Big fucking deal. You're comparing apples to oranges.

Verify votes?

[Anonymous Coward]

"While the research used statistical analysis based on past elections and demographics, how else do you verify that a paperless voting system is working properly?"

You don't do it this way and you don't do it any other way. Oops.

A Nony Mouse

Re:Simple (posible) answer: Ballot Order

[Up'emInIrons]

I don't know how all the machines work, but with the ones I've used your selection cycles through the candidate's names in alphabetical order. Confusion and laziness could likely skew the numbers because in both cases selecting the first candidate is the path of least resistance to the next screen

Least resistance? Since "B" would be at the top of the screen, it would require *more* energy to move your hand all the way up there... :)

Least resistance would be to not show up to vote at all.

Analyze the data yourself

[jgoemat]

I don't put any weight into the paper. I haven't analyzed very much of the data yet, but I looked at the one county they specifically mention in their report:

In Broward County alone, President Bush appears to have received approximately 72,000 excess votes.

Look at the data THEY have for Broward County:

1. 1996 - 142,834 Dole to 320,736 Clinton, Dole got 30.8% of their votes (I note they ignore Ross Perot and Nader who both had significant votes)
2. 2000 - 177,902 Bush to 387,703 Gore, Bush got 31.4 percent of the votes
3. 2004 - 238,397 Bush to 443,535 Kerry, Bush got 34.9 percent of the votes

For one thing, they are ignoring the fact that Bush gained a much higher percent of the popular vote this time. Instead of slightly losing the popular vote, he won the popular vote by almost 3 million votes. Unless every single one of those was e-voting fraud, that easily explains the jump from 31.4 to 34.9 percent in this county since it's almost 3% nationwide. Bush simply got more people to vote for him, whatever the reason was.

The most disturbing thing though was their quote that Bush got 72,000 excess votes in Broward County here. Even if you give bush only the lowest percent of republican votes, the 30.8% Dole got in '96, that is still only a swing of 18,000 votes from what Bush should have had. Where do they get the 72,000 excess votes number from? It appears to have been made up out of thin air. Can someone look into this and explain it to me?

Reminds me of the quote "There are three types of lies. Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics."

About Daschle, from a South Dakotan

[Shadow Labs]

They won the presidency, they emasculated the democrats (won key senate seats, tom daschle, etc).

I happen to live and vote in South Dakota, and while I don't like the Diebold machines any more than most people on Slashdot, you cannot blame Daschle's loss to them. (well you could, but you'd be wrong) Guess what we used for voting? Good old number 2 pencils and paper. They showed the counting machines on the news the night of the elections and they're essentially the same type of machines that ACT uses to score results on their tests. The precincts send their paper ballots in to the central counting location (in my case the county courthouse), the workers put the ballots in the counter, and voila! As for Daschle losing, I can't explain that one to you. You'd have to ask the other voters...

Canada has always done it on paper...

[necro2607]

Like the topic says: Canadians vote by writing an "X" in a box on a piece of paper next to a party's name and sticking the piece of paper in a cardboard box.

All I have to ask America is: what's the fucking problem?

Why is electronic voting neccesary? That's a rhetorical question - it's NOT neccesary. I'm more wondering why people tolerate whatever the morons in power dictate. Wake up, you're getting fucked with.

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ - Visit the site.. it's dedicated to revealing any truth behind possible (woops I mean 99% likely) election fraud.

"Black Box Voting has launched a fraud audit into Florida."

"Black Box Voting is also launching a fraud audit in Ohio."

"Black Box Voting is implementing fraud diagnostics on the state of New Mexico. Information we recently received is indicative of widespread vote manipulation."

"Black Box Voting is requesting legal assistance for a specific county in Georgia. Indications of corrupt voting processes, with possible criminal actions by local officials."

"Multiple irregularities. Need people to take affidavits from election workers, statewide."

Just view the page, and read it. Yup, democracy is still strong in the U.S. ...

But hey, don't take my word for it that fraud occured in the US... http://www.votewatch.us/ee/view_observations Just listen to what these thousands of others have to say about their voting experiences... There are some more fun stories here as well: http://www.michaelmoore.com/electionwatch/

So, E-voting potentially eliminated Dem fraud

[Anonymous Coward]

One possible explanation is that the Democrat precinct bosses were less effective in effecting the fraud that would have put their numbers into the usual range.

Re:So, E-voting potentially eliminated Dem fraud

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent! Wishing I had mod points. That's exactly the correlation the posters above seem to be seeking: electronic voting + past democrat fraud = actual percent of democrats voting republican.

Same in Australia

[hayden]

All our elections are carried out with pencil and paper. Everybody votes in the same way and all the counting is done in a central location. We have problems with distance (if our largest electorate was a country it would be the 13th largest) so it takes a while before counting is done but everybody gets to watch and it's all verifiable.

Re:Same in Australia

[MavEtJu]

and all the counting is done in a central location

The counting of the papers is done in the same place, it's not moved anywhere until it is counted.

This is in Sydney, NSW. Don't know why it was done different in your location.

do you know...

[pyrrho]

... absolutely nothing about UCB or just very very little?

so what you're saying is...

[pyrrho]

Netcraft confirms this study is dieing!?

You're an insensitive clod

[beanluc]

I don't have a mouth, any hands, a telephone, no pen, paper or ink, a fax machine, no computer, no civil liberties at all, a voter registration, or any other means of acting like it's worth it to try even though it might seem... like... it's 1984.

So for a priveledged, able-bodied, sound-minded eligible citizen to blow off any notion of action really burns my ass.

I mean, do you feel bette arguing against making any effort? Or does it feel better to act upon your conscience in some way that is more sincere than blowing hot pus out your face?

just kidding, I actually can write.

Re:You're an insensitive clod

[Moofie]

I've got an "election system" run by Frick and Frack, a congress populated with people who think I'm not good enough to have civil rights (although they disagree about which set they want to take away) and a President who thinks that he is bringing the Second Coming of Jesus.

In a word, I DO think it's just that bad. I DO think that we just leased a big ass new handbasket to go to Hell in on Nov. 2. I want to get off this planet and start another experiment in democracy, because we have learned all we can from this one, and it no longer belongs to us.

there is an official and accepted reason...

[seibed]

Move along folks, nothing to see here.

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ss f?/base/cuyahoga/1100082911218052.xml

Thinking Backward

[Bimikrash]

This is as dumb as saying because the exit polls showed Kerry winning, the voting was rigged. That is thinking backward. The vote tally proves the analysis is wrong, not the other way around. The fact remains that even if 130,000 votes were changed for Bush...bush still won by over 100,000 votes. It's time for the democrats to realized that they lost. More people voted for Bush than Kerry. Move on and try and figure out why America rejected your ideas.

Excellent point.

[raehl]

It is possible that there were more votes for Bush because there were also more electronic voting machines, but if you look a little deeper, you can see that there were more votes for Bush because the people of Florida are getting dumber.

More news

[daveschroeder]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/19/election .aftermath.ap/

Academia still fixated on November 2

Friday, November 19, 2004 Posted: 5:51 PM EST (2251 GMT)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- John Kerry conceded defeat more than two weeks ago, and President Bush has already revamped his Cabinet. But as states certify final election returns, an academic debate over their accuracy is heating up.

None of the experts examining the returns has discovered voting anomalies significant enough to have swung the election.

Despite Internet-circulated speculation that Bush's victory was somehow stolen or rigged, the incumbent's clear margin in the popular vote count is much wider than any of the problems reported to date -- be they voting technology failures, problems with provisional ballots or partisan shenanigans.

"We conclude that there is no evidence, based on exit polls, that electronic voting machines were used to steal the election for President Bush," researchers at the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said in an influential report based on early unofficial returns in Florida.

Still, many Americans who mistrust e-voting have seized on the exit polls, wondering whether something nefarious might explain what happened on November 2.

Early in the day, exit polling suggested Kerry was heading for a close win in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania; by day's end, Kerry had won Pennsylvania but Bush had comfortable margins in both Florida and Ohio.

While voting machine makers said their equipment had few problems given the millions of ballots cast, watchdog groups received about 2,000 complaints about lost and miscounted votes and machine breakdowns.

Nearly three-dozen Kerry supporters in Florida said they had to repeatedly override the machines to avoid having their votes recorded for Bush.

Internet buzz that perhaps the exit polls were correct and the actual returns might be flawed grew louder this week when sociology graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley went public with an analysis arguing that Florida results in counties using electronic ballots differed from historical voting patterns.

These counties delivered 130,000 to 260,000 more votes for Bush than the group expected, based on a statistical model that factored in population trends, income levels and other predictors of voting behavior.

The official vote count shows Bush won Florida by nearly a 381,000-vote margin, with strong growth in the traditionally Democratic counties of south Florida.

Critics of the Berkeley research say Bush's success may simply be due to a better get-out-the-vote effort, or fears of terrorism driving many Democrats to choose Bush over party loyalty.

"Nationwide it looks like, regardless of the type of voting machines used, Bush was getting a faster mobilization of voters in traditionally Democratic areas than were the Democrats," said Charles Stewart III, a political science professor at MIT who specializes in American politics and research methodology.

Stewart said any Florida discrepancies between historic patterns and the November 2 vote may be explained by nationwide trends -- for example, while Republicans easily won many rural and suburban areas they also made impressive gains in urban areas.

The state that gave Bush the biggest number of votes was New York, which does not use electronic voting machines. South Florida -- the state's most urban region -- may have followed a similar pattern of showing steady Republican gains, Stewart said.

But because touch-screen machines lack paper records and ballots can't be examined individually in a recount, the Berkeley students said looking for anomalies is the only way to gauge whether the machines recorded ballots the way voters intended.

They decided to create a model t

Re:Earth to Berkeley...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, If you want to see what's going on in Iraq I suggest you go there. I did. You sir, have no clue what the realities are. Do you think the hospitals in Falluja were open to the general public? You're wrong if you do. They were not and have not been for several months. They were, in fact, taken over and in use by the "rebels" - who are really just a bunch of opportunistic thugs not interested in "freeing" anyone. They want to create their own little thugocracy and kill Americans - they don't care if they have to kill locals to do so either. In fact they prefer it since they know that the press will pin it on the US everytime. We know that too.... and yes, sometimes it is our fault. Absolutely no doubt about it. It also almost always a mistake on our part. On their part it's a strategy. I've also seen the looks in the eyes and even the tears on the faces of the troops who discovered that they just killed people who did not deserve it - people who in all likelyhood were just looking for a way to get home or for our protection. I've also seen and heard the defiant captive terrorist who laughs at the dead civilians they caused (throwing greandes at a patrol in a market) and tells us that we will be blamed. I've also seen the headless bodies of hostages whose only offense was driving a water truck.

But please remember that it is the US who is evil here. After all, the "rebels" take time to tend to the wounds of civilains, they rebuild their homes after having to destroy them to remove the evil Americans, they provide their own personal rations to them, they sacrifice their lives trying to remove the roadside IED's left behind by the cowardly American soldiers... that was sarcasm by the way. I felt it neccesary to point that out as I figured you'd likely miss it.

The US soldiers are not saints. They are soldiers. That means that they are trained to kill first and everything else second. They are rough around the edges - as all soldiers are. They are also, by and large, honorable people. Fathers, brothers, sons, mothers, wives and sisters. They hold life dear - more dear than you can imagine as it's fraility is more real to them that it ever will be to you. They hold peace even dearer. They do not get up in the morning hoping to kill. They get up in the morning hoping to not have to. They sleep poorly - the weights of their actions heavy on their hearts. Not guilt, but sorrow that some would rather fight and die to hold power than prosper and live in an open society. They try their best to protect civilains and their fellow troops - sometimes they fail. They cry when they do - whether it's for their fallen friends or the family in the wrong place at the wrong time. They are not perfect - far from it... but they are a damn site better than the thugs who use holy places as fortresses and civilian lives as propoganda and shields.

What's happening in Fallujah? Death. What was happening before we went in? Death. It was slower - starvation, intimidation, and torture - but it was happening nonetheless. What will be happening there when we are finished? Peace and rebuilding as long our politicians let our soldiers complete the task given to them.

You assert that attacking hospitals, water systems, electric plants, and ambulances is a war crime. Of course using hospitals as military bases and transporting combatants and explosives in ambulances is also a war crime...but you seem to conveniently forget that fact. Not to mention the use of Mosques as military strongholds and the taking of civilian hostages to use as shields. Let's just forget those things shall we?

You sicken me.

i think its amazing...

[absolutes]

i think its amazing how babyish democrats have been regarding the fact that kerry got beat by a decent margin. ive heard so many times 'bush must have cheated' or 'i know it was rigged.' its very hard not to laugh at this, especially considering kerry CONCEDED; if its anyones fault, its kerrys (im actually kind of surprised he didnt 'unconcede' being the flip flopper he is.) i read on a forum somewhere that a person disowned the democratic party because of how 'whiny'they are...i of course thought this was ridiculous...or was it?

Re:i think its amazing...

[gothzilla]

Wanting to know if an election actually showed the votes people cast is not babyish. If Kerry had won then the other half of the population would be saying the same things. It's important to know if voting even works and there is no way to know if it works or not unless you analyze the votes using a scientific method.

But what if this is true? What if an error in the voting machines gave Bush more votes than he actually got from the people? If this is true, which it could be, then Bush did not beat Kerry by a "decent margin" and the basis of your argument is an assumption.

I could care less who won, but it's really tiring to hear people base their opinions and arguments on the assumption that every vote was counted correctly.

It's also tiring to hear people accuse Bush of cheating. We don't know if he cheated. All we know is that votes weren't counted right for SOME reason and it's extremely important to find the reason and fix it. For all we know the Democrats fixed the election so they could make Bush look bad. The whole point of these studies is to find out WHY so Republicans can stop the childish name calling and Democrats can stop accusing Bush of cheating. Both are very unpatriotic.

Re:i think its amazing...

[CrackerJack9]

I see one person whining (well, probably more), about the 'whiners', and many others looking for the truth, or an explanation as to what really happened. Not what should have happened or could have, but what really did. This kind of thinking that any question into the legitamacy of anything is instantly bogus is absolutely ridiculous. We are supposed to question the legitamacy of our democracy, and once we fail to do so the system itself crumbles to the whim of tyrants. Although I wish I were, I'm not making this up, just look around.

Re:i think its amazing...

[absolutes]

I wasnt whining at all. i wouldnt have whined if kerry had won. theres a difference between making an obvious observation (that many democrats are being ridiculous albeit idiotic with the current 'bush situation'), feeling satirically inclined, and whining. "This kind of thinking that any question into the legitamacy of anything is instantly bogus is absolutely ridiculous." when did i say that?! i think its important, minus the conspiracy theories and OBVIOUS whining.

Re:i think its amazing...

[fisher182]

what really happened is not only did bush win, but he won by a huge margin. and i see a bunch of pansy ass internet geeks throwing out whatever conspiracy they can pull out of their squawk hole. YOU LOST. that's it. there's no puppet master, no gunman in the grassy knoll. the sooner you accept this and grow up a bit the better we'll all be. and move out of your parents basement, they want their own house now that you're 35.

Re:i think its amazing...

[CrackerJack9]

What I was trying to say was that sometimes people label something as a conspiracy theory too quickly or easily. You aren't being paranoid if it's true...

Re:i think its amazing...

[CrackerJack9]

well, first of all--I didn't lose. I could go out on a limb and say democracy lost and the people of this once great nation lost...but that would be my opinion. Per the rest of your post, I think it's time for you to go outside for a little while now...

p.s. a few hundred thousand votes is not a 'huge margin'

All "facts" have been debunked

[Anonymous Coward]

What's with this post being scored as a 4? It's not even informative. I am very aware that /. readers are overwhelmingly a liberal bunch, but why not stick to discussing the facts instead of espousing "vast right wing conspiracy" theories that are running rampant with the Hollywood crowd?

Re:All "facts" have been debunked

[Izaak]

What's with this post being scored as a 4? It's not even informative. I am very aware that /. readers are overwhelmingly a liberal bunch, but why not stick to discussing the facts instead of espousing "vast right wing conspiracy" theories that are running rampant with the Hollywood crowd?

Please cite exactly where these facts have been debunked. The examples I listed were from mainstream press stories. In most cases, the problems we are talking about have been acknowledged by the election officials. The only question is how much of it is fraud vs unintentional failures and how widespread is it - how much went undetected. Those questions can only be answered with an audit. The American public deserves no less.

If you are so confident the election was honest and correct, what is to be feared by an audit. It can only help restore public confidence in the system.

Re:All "facts" have been debunked

[Anonymous Coward]

It can only help restore public confidence in the system.

You must not be very old or just very naive, elections have always contained a margin of fraud. This is nothing new in Chicago, every years hundreds of dead democrats manage to defy the reaper and vote.

Re:All "facts" have been debunked

[Omnifarious]

The defense of 'everybody does it' is not a defense. I notice that you make no attempt to actually debunk any of the stories he mentioned above.

Re:All "facts" have been debunked

[Izaak]

You must not be very old or just very naive, elections have always contained a margin of fraud. This is nothing new in Chicago, every years hundreds of dead democrats manage to defy the reaper and vote.

Well, just to set the record straight, I am 37 years old, own a computer consulting company and commercial rental properties, and have been knocked around enough by life to know what just how untrustworthy the human animal is. :) Yes, I am very aware that isolated occasions of voter fraud always happen, and that generally they probably even out and don't effect the election.

But we are talking about something different here.

We are talking about potential 'systemic' fraud. Corruption of the machines that count the votes or corruption of the officials that report the totals presents a much larger danger than the individuals that register in multiple precincts or even the occasional corrupt poll worker that stuffs a ballot box.

The alarming thing about the Volusia county story is that, unlike earlier reports of vote problems, it seems to indicates systemic fraud, not an isolated incident.

Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

The current Global Warming period is not a "cyclical" event. It's already proven to be taking place faster than anything Earth ever experienced, and is directly correlated to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

Antarctic ice cores bear witness to temperature and CO2 records (direct evidence) for hundreds of thousands of years.

Take a look at the
past 420,000 years
and contrast that with the
last 18,000, 200, and 50 years.

As for the rest of your screed, I just believe you're simply ignorant.

Fewer voters than in 2000

[jgoemat]

That's strange... That county had 218,000 FEWER voters than it did 4 years ago (per the data linked to in this slashdot article), and they STILL had too many votes? I think the federal election commission needs to take a look there...

The best of both worlds.

[Anonymous Coward]

You fill out a paper ballot in one of 30-50 curtained alcoves at the polling station. Take your time, there is no hurry, there is a half an hour deadline. There are stacks of voters guides for you to study while you vote.

When you are done filling out the ballot you get into line with others to turn the ballot in. You walk up to a machine, feed your ballot in. The machine displays who you voted for in plain english. You confirm the results by pressing a large green button on the right that is labelled in 1 inch tall letters that is flashing and says good. Or you deny your ballot by pressing a large red flashing button.

If good, then the ballot is dropped into the steel ballot box. If bad, the ballot spits back out and is stamped bad by they poll worker and both the poll worker and the voter sign the document as bad. This is placed into a reject box, these bad ballots are as carefully guarded as the good ballots.

The ballot image is electronically scanned at 300dpi one pixel resolution, with the calculated results that were shown to the voter, the xml configuration for that vote, the time, the date, the location of the vote, and a unique sequence number that the machine gives out for every vote that it counts. All this is electronically signed by the machine with a unique key that is assigned to the machine when it was built. The machine gets it's time and location at setup time from a built in GPS. There is a worm drive that backs up everything the device reads. A separate process writes this upto a secure server that connects down to the polling station

This machine can easily confirm one vote a minute, so you could pump through 60 voters an hour, or 720 per machine.

Clearly state that you need one of these machines for every 400 voters registered at the polling place. State that less than this is a criminal violation that should be prosecuted by law.

The machine itself can be open source and very secure, once the design is finished, have the government contract with a number of companies to build them. If you test it well for a full year totally open source, and release a new version every month for the flaws found the previous month, then by the end of the year of world wide QA then you can be assured of a valid software that can be written to run from ROM soldered to the motherboard, and signed with a key so that it can't be replaced easily.

The only configuration that needs to be done before the election is entering the xml description of the ballot and clicking setup on the screen, then running a set of test ballots through each one that selt test every feature of the product.

Use a separate open source software to design the ballot and eliminate all standard butterfly ballot tricks, and the same program that designs the ballot outputs the valid xml file for that ballot. Everything is signed and the ballots have a bar code that matches up with the proper xml file, cryptographically signed of course. This would allow one machine to properly allow several ballots in the same election. QA this software the same as the ballot reader.

Once the polling station records their votes they publish their results and lock everything down.

Once this process is done and validated nothing changes in the hardware until something bad is found. Then the hardware and software is upgraded before we have another election. The software can be gradually improved over time, and as we need to update the hardware, then we can do a new design, certify it with a checkpoint of the latest known good software and then make the secure hardware with built in software.

Sure this stuff can be still hacked, but it makes it harder if the hardware is just powerful enough to do it's task, so it is low power and low heat, then it is sealed in it's transparent plastic carrier with 5 pounds of clear epoxy, so that you can see if the internal device is in any way tamperred with. It can have a UPS built in, and a black and white screen so that it can run for a week with no external power. This transparent device has a few mechanical counters built into it that count for each ballot entered.

We can do this and have assurance in our election system again.

Available source code nice but.....

[StarsEnd]

I like the idea of having the source publicly available. How do we verify that they build that source code? Do we goto SourceForge and download the latest and greatest code for the build? Does Price Waterhouse certify that the built code was generated from the source in question?

There are many aspects to this...lets not forget there should be a robust and auditable process around the source.

Dan

Paper trail is hangin' out Tom DeLay's @$$

[Vitriol Angst]

Conspiracy crap? A good percentage of liberals I know are very uneasy about the choice of companies that created these voting machines.

Here is a test. Next 4 years, we can choose our companies to build the machines and to count the numbers. Michael Moore, and George Sourros will head the companies. Does that make you feel comfortable? Don't complain if somehow Barbara Streisand wins California, You just have to Move On.

Oh. and just because you can site an example where the Republicans didn't win, when they've had a great showing of blithering failures (oh, the economy, pollution, the rising cost of healthcare + anything else I'd bother to mention), does not mean that they didn't try to cheat.

The Libertarian you mention may actually be pushing the same NeoCon agenda that has worked so well for Mexico. I don't want to get into that debate, but having been a Libertarian and a Republican for I while, I had to leave because their economic concepts were not sustainable, and the Dems looked the least evil by a smidgen.

But I also live in Georgia, which is the Belt Buckle of the Bible Belt, so no amount of self interest or reality will outweigh a good rhetorical moralizer. And the ignorance of people listening to Neal Bortz and nodding to his ideas of a Value Added Tax are making me want to retch.

By the way, some months ago, the president of DieBold publicly stated that he would do everything in his power to see that President Bush was re-elected.

Can you not admit, that a system where elected officials approve the budgets for private corporations who control who gets elected IS a system that is bound to be corrupted? What are we paying for these boxes anyway? About $100k a piece? Doesn't that mean that most of the expense is for "services rendered".

And note, that in 2000, the Florida Government payed the people who conducted the voting about 10 times as much as 4 years before. The number of rejected voters went from about 8,000 to over 90,000. It has now been verified, that many of the people who were rejected was unwarranted (and of course, mostly from Democratic voters). I could point to a number of articles discussing this, but you would not be convinced.

Why are people so dead set against an idea of a "conspiracy." It is damn well profitable to have a president give taxpayer money to corporations. It is worth Billions. And we have many examples of overpaid contracts to look at. There are all sorts of conspiracies. But it seems that anyone pointing it out is automatically a nut. So what does anyone do about a conspiracy? Hand the crooks the keys and hope they run over a school bus full of kids on prime time news so that we can be sure they are the bad guys?

I'll say it. I think the Bush administration is a bunch of crooks. They behave like crooks. They act like crooks. They want everything secret and they punish anyone who criticizes them. They were conveniently incompetent on 9/11 and it has done nothing but give them a green light to push through their agenda. They have pandered to just about every corporate supporter, in historically cynical ways. They have lied and said Iraq was an immanent threat. Oops. Now we must forgive them because it is a tough job. Meanwhile, Billions of dollars of taxpayer money are going to companies owned by the Carlyle group, which has financial dealings with almost all of the Bush administration (Halliburton ain't half of it). And we are supposed to shrug that off because it's only coincidence that it's their pockets the money lands in "hey, it could happen to anyone".

Wow, the energy bill even indemnifies oil companies from lawsuits they might incur over gasoline additives. OK. The future looks bright. King George will start the "No two-headed baby left behind" program. Retraining as a circus freak can help a large portion of the genetically damaged. Good thing they can't sue.

And all 5 of the electronic voting companies have been major donators to the Reelect Bush fund.

This statement; f

Get over it

[Anonymous Coward]

You sorry, lame assed slashdotters just cannot adjust to adult life. The pussy Kerry lost the fucking election. Get over it.

Your faith in digital media is touching

[fredrated]

but magnetic storage media and electrons will always be maliable to the right electronic and software tools, it is the nature of the media.

The paper trail is non-negotiable, and it is varified by having the voter sign the jurisdictions copy of their voting slip with the same signature they signed in with before it is deposited into the safe keeping of the bureacracy.

This makes the bureacracy of the voting system the last weak link, and a formalized methodology of administering and monitoring the vote and the count must be developed and applied, because as the Supreme Court has sought to reminded us, Amendment XIV says

"No State shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws"

and this can be translated to mean election jurisdictions must use uniform procedures. Let's get on with it, this is not rocket science.

Stupidity: its a renewable resource!

Re:Your faith in digital media is touching

[fredrated]

The weakness of my paper verification is the loss of ananimity, but the signature could be deposited on a separate slip of paper, giving a 'checksum' of the ballots cast, or it could be on a tearoff slip that is torn off in the course of a recount if a recount is demanded before the ballots are destroyed.

Bush won. Quit wining.

[rice_burners_suck]

This is a lie. Bush won. That means that all the votes were valid. All you sore loser Democrats quit wining and get used to the idea that Republicans are good and Democrats are evil.

(Of course, if Kerry had won, that would have been proof that the voting system is inadequate and flawed. But Bush won, so the voting system is perfect.)

Regression analysis may be flawed

[KevinArchibald]

http://crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/mythsofmurder.ht m

Interesting article on econometrics that may apply to this e-voting study.

now wait a second...

[absolutes]

for one, i think its absolutely absurd to think that if there was 'cheating' going on it only happened on the republican side...and YES, a decent margin matters when referring to this because the 'decent margin' happened in MULTIPLE states. so, basically it was a multi-state conspiracy? i wonder how BIG of a conspiracy there would have to be for bush to win by these margins...and what about the states kerry won? maybe he cheated on those? my home-state, michigan, went to kerry, maybe i should cry conspiracy?! maybe the ENTIRE thing was fabricated to get us to think we ACTUALLY voted. all sarcasm aside, i do agree that if there were discrepant votes they should be investigated, but the 'bush conspiracy' theories are ridiculous.

Vicious circle?

[nokiator]

As long as Republicans have the majority in the congress, a large scale investigation of the 2004 elections will never happen and we will not switch to open source electronics voting systems with mandatory paper trail. Unless we have open source electronic voting systems will paper trail, Republicans will keep their majority in the congress.

Re:Vicious circle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for pointing that out. You just made my day a lot happier.

To hear you tell the story, even Abe Lincoln won because of faulty electronic voting machines. The whole point of the exercise is that we don't need e-voting!!!!

consider the source

[Anonymous Coward]

Berkeley? Hotbed of anti-everything even remotely right of center? Please.

Diebold, ES&S, whichever

[Chris Burke]

Does it matter which? The head of Diebold Election Systems is Bob Urosevich, who co-founded AIS with his brother, Todd Urosevich. AIS became ES&S after a merger, and Todd Urosevich is still CEO of that company. Not only does ES&S suffer from demonstrated failures, it has the same if not more partisan ties as Diebold.

Diebold and ES&S are just two halves of the same rotten fruit. Frankly I don't give a crap which corrupt corporation snarked votes or even if those votes were enough to change the election. We must get to the bottom of this like we should for all election fraud.

Diebold states

[Bun]

Has anyone done a comparison of the battleground states won by Bush and whether they used electronic voting machines or not?

Re:Two things - Both Wrong!

[Quickening]

Pull your head out of the Right-Wing's Ass and take a look around for once. There is overwhelming evidence now that Bush did in fact steal the election AGAIN. The corporate media is doing a fine job of covering this up, but at least now we have the option of an alternative source of news. A wonderful source for all these stories, with links to many other sites, is What Really Happened. Stop believing the damn lies!

Retribution

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, you can bet UC Berkeley -- and perhaps the University of California system as a whole -- is going to pay for this transgression against The President of the United States of America. Just like G. W. Bush said in 2000, Florida would deliver a victory to him and "you can bet on it".

Little Bushie likens himself to having the character of Ronald Reagan. hah! How many business failures and DUI felonies did Ronnie accumulate in his lifetime? When Ronald Reagan ran for governor of California and won, he paid back Berkeley for its protestations by closing state mental hospitals and bussing the insane to the streets of Berkeley.

Reasons for exit poll discrepancies

[Anonymous Coward]

In this case the exit polls showed that people were voting for Kerry but the counts showed otherwise.

Now what? How do we know which is true?

The president of the exit polling company, Warren Mitofsky, explained on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer on November 5, 2004, how the exit polling works and why it was imperfect.

The exit polls, in the words of Mitofsky, "interviewed almost 150,000 people nationwide on Election Day. We interviewed in every state but Oregon, since they don't have any people at the polling places, and we also interviewed a national sample of polling places."

You gonna allow a sampling of about 10% to determine the outcome of the entire election?

The full interview is available online (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec0 4/exitpolls_11-05.html) in transcript form, streaming video, and streaming audio. In particular (bold emphasis mine):

TERENCE SMITH: Why did the early numbers show Senator Kerry ahead?

WARREN MITOFSKY: Well, Kerry was ahead in a number of the -- in a number of the states by margins that looked unreasonable to us. And we suspect that the reason, the main reason, was that the Kerry voters were more anxious to participate in our exit polls than the Bush voters. That wasn't the case in every state. We had a few states that overstated the Republican margin. But for the most part, it was Democratic overstatement for the reason I just gave you.

TERENCE SMITH: So you're saying that some Bush voters would come out of the polling places and simply decline to participate; if so, why?

WARREN MITOFSKY: Well, in an exit poll, everybody doesn't agree to be interviewed. It's voluntary, and the people refuse usually at about the same rate, regardless of who they support. When you have a very energized electorate, which contributed to the big turnout, sometimes the supporters of one candidate refuse at a greater rate than the supporters of the other candidate.

TERENCE SMITH: Well, if you thought those numbers were suspiciously high for Senator Kerry, couldn't you correct the sample, as you say in your business?

WARREN MITOFSKY: Well, we recognized the overstatement in the exit polls in mid-afternoon, and we told the members of NEP about the suspicions we had, which they chose to ignore. The correction, in this case, is to wait for the vote returns in those same sample precincts and use that for projections. There were no mistakes in the projections. We were very cautious with them, and none were wrong, even though the exit polls did overstate Kerry in a number of states.

TERENCE SMITH: Right. Now, this is supposed to be not-for-broadcast information as it's passed along to the organizations, but in fact, it affects their coverage and influences their thinking as they work on the coverage, and obviously someone leaked it.

Who? Who leaked it? How did it get out so widely on the Internet that, in effect, by mid-afternoon, it was public information?

WARREN MITOFSKY: The information is available to all the NEP members. That's five television networks and the Associated Press. It's also available to all the subscribers, which includes major newspapers and local television stations. Any number of people had access.

The reason we have this information at midday is so we can go over it, find any problems with the way we're displaying it, laying it out, any problems that might confuse us when the polls close.

I urge everybody to read the interview. Please mod this post up, so that people won't keep asking the same questions over and over.

Re:Earth to Berkeley...

[Anonymous Coward]

Soo ... the US is not ruled by its people?
Sounds right to me.

Why even hold elections?

[mosb1000]

Obviously it is more accurate to make projections based on past elections and demographics. Voters simply can't be trusted to vote for their proper candidate, and this is the only way to ensure that everyones opinion is represented.

What if Bush just won...

[jessecurry]

While the research used statistical analysis based on past elections and demographics, how else do you verify that a paperless voting system is working properly?"

I find it really strange that no one had mentioned the possibility that more people simply voted for Bush this time around. You have to admit Kerry was a pretty poor choice to run against Bush. I think that Clark would've had a shot at winning, and Dean too for that matter. Kerry was just too similar to Bush were it counted and too indecisive everywhere else. Just my opinion though...

I know that /. is a place where the more technically savvy among us like to congregate, but we should at least be open to the idea that Bush just won, and although I do agree that there needs to be some type of paper trail I don't think that there was any more vote tampering this election than in previous ones.

Re:What if Bush just won...

[inkswamp]

Why do you think people here aren't open to that possibility? I'm a left-leaning Democrat and I too have given this a consideration that Bush may simply have won, but that's precisely why it should matter to Republicans. If your guy wins, don't you want the weight of a fair and reasonably infallible system behind it? You don't want an atmosphere where it's too easy for intelligent and informed people to question it and doubt it (and believe me, it's not just the conspiracy theorists out there doing it... there are a lot of anomalies in this election that simply make no sense.) I don't understand why there is any partisan bickering going on over the questioning of Bush's win. Everyone should want to be reasonably secure in the knowledge that the system is solid. I think the rush to use electronic voting devices is going to be the source of some serious anger amongst voters in the near future.

It didn't have to be that way.

Re:What if Bush just won...

[jessecurry]

It's not that I don't believe that a rock solid system should be behind the election results. I was merely pointing out the fact that no one had mentioned anything about the possibility of Bush simply leading the vote by that much. If you look over the information used in this study there are many places for error.

Granted, there were some issues with miscounting of ballots, but what if the errors were not as serious as this model claims.

Just like anyone else I'd like a fair election, but it seemed that all of the comments for this story were based on the assumption that Bush did not take the votes that he is recorded as having.

Re:What if Bush just won...

[Anonymous Coward]

All of you who say that you're concerned about the accuracy of the vote solely because you're interested in fair elections would NOT BE SAYING A THING if Kerry had won.

Be honest with yourself and us. You wouldn't have cared a rat's ass, and you would have been dismissing our claims about fraud.

Hypocrites - the whole bunch.

Re:What if Bush just won...

[inkswamp]

All of you who say that you're concerned about the accuracy of the vote solely because you're interested in fair elections would NOT BE SAYING A THING if Kerry had won.

This presupposes that winning is more important than principles. That's not true for everyone, but you should ask yourself why you're so quick to assume that about others.

I would be saying the same thing for exactly the reason I stated before which is that if my guy wins, I want the full force of a credible election system behind that. I don't want a presidency riddled with doubts about legitimacy and whether or not he was actually fairly elected.

Be honest with yourself and us. You wouldn't have cared a rat's ass, and you would have been dismissing our claims about fraud.

No, I wouldn't. I don't want a system where the winner of any election has to work in an atmosphere of doubt, where the rest of the planet views your choice of leadership as illegitimate and lacking in authority--in short, a joke. That's the sort of election system you would expect in a third-world country. I don't care who wins as long as we're not putting our leaders in place with the same system that people like... oh, I dunno... Saddam Hussein used. You're with me on that, right? Are you keen on seeing the USA use a third-world sham to win elections? I assume that to be the case since your response is to lash out at those who raise what appears to be reasonable issues with the election.

Hypocrites - the whole bunch.

That means so much coming from someone whose words emanate from behind the safety of an "anonymous coward" post.

One Extraordinarily Simple Solution

[Wandering Wombat]

If people would stop beeing greedy, self-serving, corrupt, bribe-taking ballot-stuffing country-hating FUCKS, you wouldn't have these problems. Of course, that's just my idea. It could work. We'll never know.

non-fraud effects; need standard

[geg81]

Note that an advantage of electronic voting for Bush need not even be due to explicit fraud. In particular, electronic voting might hard Democrats also if it works perfectly. For example, electronic voting might be used preferentially in Bush-leaning precincts and might result in fewer lost votes overall, thereby giving Bush an advantage. A historical analog of that would be literacy requirements. Taken to the extreme, a state might put poorly maintained punch card ballot machines in Democratic areas and easy-to-use electronic voting machines in Republican areas.

But even if electronic voting machines are easier to use and do result in better counting, without an audit trail, they are still not acceptable.

The real problem is the lack of uniformity in how people vote. There needs to be a federal standard and a single, uniform system for how people vote, something that standardized the kind of ballots used, the procedures, and the audit trail.

This is simple, people.

[Chris Burke]

Open source is nice, but doesn't prove anything because you can't be sure the machine is running the code you're looking at. The paper trail is absolutely not a red herring, because the point is you should never trust the machine to count your vote correctly.

Making a voting machine that is as trustworthy as anything is very, very simple:

1) The voter makes their choices with whatever interface you like.
2) When done, the machine prints a ballot that is both human and machine readable[1] and the voter visually verifies that the ballot is correct.
3) The voter places the ballot in a secure box to be counted later[2]. Bam! You're done.

This is simple. The interface and printer driver are the only complicated parts. Open source would be nice to help ensure there are no problems, but regardless if there are any the voter should be able to see them when they look at their ballot.

You can still have a lot of traditional problems like multiple voters, invalid registrations, the dead rising from their graves to vote, etc. You can still have the box of votes/voting machine stolen and tampered with. But you have to deal with these factors regardless.

The advantage of the electronic machine is that it should make it impossible for a voter to produce a ballot that won't be counted because of under/over votes.

[1] The human readable part and the machine readable part need to be the same part, i.e. a computer-scannable font. A bar-code doesn't cut it, because the voter won't know if the bar code represents their vote.
[2] Or they stick it back in the machine which scans it right there so you can have your fast, early count. The point is that any machine or human should be able to verify the vote if there is any question, you are not dependent on this one black box. The vote counting machine can be separate; you could have each party bring their own favorite counting machine, and if they disagree do it by hand.

Always reconcile electronic and paper tally

[j1m 5n0w]

I'm repeating the AC's reply, but..

The machine tallys should always be reconciled with a paper count. The electronic counts are to provide fast initial results and to draw attention to erroneous manual counts. The manual paper counts provide credibility to the electronic count, just as the electronic count gives credibility to the manual count. If there is no manual count, the electronic count has no credibility.

-jim

Another retarded article on slashdot....

[Anonymous Coward]

Past statistics are helpful in realizing that Bush did in fact get "more votes than previous years". The have limited usability in providing anything more than the vaugest hints at any conspiracy theory you retards can come up with up

Re:Lies, damned lies and statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

Interestingly enough, those sore losers are also known as "the rest of the world." Seriously, we just don't get it.

statistics

[mosb1000]

Well, lets put it this way. It doesn't take a genius to figure out you can fit three points perfectly to quadratic equation. So . . . how did they calculate their "change from baseline" using a "robust" model that was non-linear. I mean, you can not fit a curved line to two points and say that it's the only curved line that could pass through those points, but that's what they say in this report.

Moreover, how can anyone say that a model based on only 2 data points is robust? I think it's safe to say that they didn't derive their curve from theory. This is a shaky analytical fit at best.

All I can say is it's a good thing safety systems engineers don't use this technique to establish the performance of automobiles. "well, we looked at a couple similar cars, and they didn't explode, so I'm 99% certain this one won't either". I think the main reason these people are "99%" sure that Bush should've gotten 130 - 260 thousand fewer votes in Florida is because that's they way they hoped it would be.

Re:statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

A better analogy with safety systems engineers would be "well, we looked at a couple similar cars, and saw that many of them DID EXPLODE, so I'm 99% certain some of the other cars will also explode".

Keep showing off your ignorance.

[porkchop_d_clown]

The US does not have a parlimentary system. We do not vote for parties, we vote for people. That means the typical ballot has many more than one item on it.

My ballot, for example, was several pages of names for fifteen or twenty different offices. In other years, when there were multiple proposals as well as candidates, most of the punch card was used.

Yeah, just draw an X. That'll work.

Re:Keep showing off your ignorance.

[Egoine]

Just curious: party or not, why is the x besides what you want not applicable, 15 pages or not?

(moderators: I'm not trolling, just asking an honest question!)

IMHO, one important criteria is:

the system has to be understable by anyone using it. a x on a paper is. everyone understands what happens when the paper gets in the box. any system involving a computer too much is not understood enough by the population

Re:Keep showing off your ignorance.

[wk633]

More than one item yes, but your reasoning is compltely baseless. It has nothing to do with parlimentary or not. They vote for people in Canada, too. They just don't for a bunch of other crap at the same time as they vote for MPs (Members of Parliment) which is as close as they come to our presidental election.

this story was rejected thursday night...

[jpellino]

odd.

My proposed E-Voting Method

[Master_Torrez]

Vote on a computer and the computer punches out a card that is easy to read and then it gets put into a box like normal and the computer only registers a vote so it can give an approximation how many people voted and who got the most votes. Their would be a paper trail and it would get rid of hanging chads and all other kinds of BS. If the total from the machines and the total from the cards don't match then there could be reason to go back and audit the paper votes again. You could also be given a voter e-card that stores who you voted for. So if the vote is called into question big time or something happens to the cards the government can hold a revote in said precincts where everybody puts their cards back into the vote box and they get counted. Also to keep the voter anonomous the card would only be given a serial number that random and details only specific information that can't single anyone out but can single a vote and precinct and everything else out. Also the only way to vote is to apply for an E-card 30 days in advance. It could even be tied into a persons id card or drivers license. just my idea and it needs refining and I really need a spellcheck /grammercheck lol

(OT) Your sig.

[EdlinUser]

A wonderful little quote.
Can you tell me who said it first?

Expecting votes to follow registration is foolish.

[Mike Van Pelt]

A lot of Florida is "conservative Democrat". In all local and county offices, the Democrat is going to win. Period. This is less so for state-wide offices, where liberal Democrats are the party's candidate, and much less so in voting for President.

If you want your vote to count towards local offices, you have to be registered Democrat. The election that counts is the Democrat primary.

Case in point, my parents. They are registered Democrats. Always have been. They definitely did not vote for Kerry, and probably not any other Democrat presidential candidate since Truman.

Any so-called "analysis" which fails to take this factor into consideration is completely worthless.

What is the point of it?

[Dot_Killer]

We don't even need touch screen voting machines. I think the best solution which allows for fast counting and a paper trail is the scan-tron ballot in which you fill in the circle next to your candidates and the computer counts it when you feed it into the machine. That is all you need. No secret code running some algorithm adding or subtracting votes from a candidate without us knowing.

That is a much less ambiguous voting system. You should know something is wrong when after 2000 the solution was new secret black box voting created by big corporations who are benefitting from the current administration.

Re:Two things - Both Wrong!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! You're friggin' right. He stole the election...he and his dastardly band of wicked corporate bosses did it just so he could have all that power and all those women and money and cars and all the bling-bling and make YOUR life a living hell. It's one huge conspiracy, man. His minions are now out there even modding down your post so nobody sees it. And, they make sure your boss doesn't give you a decent raise, too.

Brits all up in our dish...

[dataplaya]

Did anyone else notice that Noel Gallagher was listed as a contact for said press conference? When did he quit Oasis and gets him an education?

millions more..

[HermanAB]

If you compare the 2004 election results in Florida with the 1804 elections in Western Samoa, then George Bush clearly got millions more votes than he should have...

I do the same

[PotatoHead]

here in Oregon, we have the mail in system. Ballots come a coupla weeks before the election.

It's nice to do exactly what you describe. I think Oregon had record turnout numbers this year because it's easy to vote.

As for your thoughts regarding voter suppression. Spot on! The whole nation is built of of the democratic process. It's our most powerful check and people should give a shit about that, but a whole lot of them don't.

Lots of dirty tricks pulled this year...

Asimov had this "Neat idea!"

[KWTm]

Actually, wasn't there an Isaac Asimov short story about futuristic voting? Future scientists determined that basically almost everyone predictably voted against each other, and so the pivotal determining votes were held by a tiny minority who were represented by a single person. It was the job of the superduper computer to analyze and calculate who this One Voter would be. The guy would be officially handed a voting notice by some police officer, like a subpoena, and he would go cast his one vote, and that would determine the outcome of the election.

Seems like an early conception of Asimov's ideas which he later developed into "psychohistory", the mathematical prediction of future world-scale events based on statistical modelling of the human population, which appeared in his Foundation series novels.

Paper trail is for transitional period

[KWTm]

That head official doesn't get it. Of course people will distrust new technology! And well they should. For the first few elections, everyone will demand a recount. Then after a while, when the paper trail always matches the electronic votes, the public will begin to see recount demands as the act of a sore loser and waste of taxpayer money. But in the meanwhile, you might catch a few errors and stop a few cases of wrongdoing.

I agree with the sibling poster who compared it to two bank tellers redundantly counting money. The very fact that there exists a paper trail will prevent certain people (and corporations) from taking advantage of electronic vulnerabilities. Geez, it's almost like the "deterrent factor" excuse that these same people use when questioned about the arms race spending.

I hope people don't just take his word and leave it at that.

Re:Paper trail is for transitional period

[GnrcMan]

The redundant teller counting example is good, but I've got a better one, true story:

I go to an ATM machine, manufactured by Diebold, and insert my card and punch in my PIN.

Would you like a reciept? No.

What would you like to do? Withdraw; 20 dollars.

BZZZT BZZZT BZZZT. Whir whir whir.

The money pops out.

Anything else? No

My card pops out.

So, okay, the whir whir whir was pretty obviously the money being counted and spat out. What what the BZZZT BZZZT BZZZT?

Well, surprisingly enough, that was a PAPER TRAIL. It turns out that banks purchasing ATM machines demand that the machines generate a paper tape audit log, cause, well, they're paranoid and they don't like to lose money. Well, I'm paranoid, and I don't want to lose votes, so I don't think it's unreasonable to demand a paper audit trail of votes cast. Take that ATM paper tape, and introduce a clear window, so you can see what the machine printed out. Are these the votes you requested? If yes, the paper audit trail is accepted. If no, the paper is destroyed/marked as invalid and you revote. It's not difficult, its not an inconvenience, and it's something that ATM machines do already. So what's the problem?

Comes down to this

[grishknash]

You yanks are f***ed for another four years, you have no faith in your electoral system, your voting system, yer stuck in iraq, got a huge budget deficit, dollar dropping like a rock, huge trade deficit ...ouch. Think its bad now? Wait until the middle east decides that oil can be bought with euros! [funnily enough iraq did this in 2002! Looky what happneed to them!]
Who is number 2 in recoverable oil reserves - Yepp. Canada! I'm so glad I'm a canuk. [hrmmmm then again maybe were part of this axis of evil...]
G

Remember Whitewater

[seppy]

Next time some right wing jacko mentions wacko conspiracies, remind him of the ten year $40 million dollar investigation into whitewater that netted no indictments of the clintons... Lets have our fun with the wacko conspiracies for a couple of years, and soak the treasuries to satisfy our partisan needs. Give as good as you get.

Re:Remember Whitewater

[Anonymous Coward]

The clintons were not indicted, but a lot of others were and some even went to jail. Janet L Reno protected the clintons against many other investigations that may well have led to indictments against them.

Re:Possible explanation -- You've got no clue?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a mathematical idiot. Most people are, but only you don't realise it. An unfortunate situation for you.

Go back to school please and take a class in Regression Analysis.

You control for extra variables by including them in the model (as independent variables), that way you can easily remove the effects of those variables. If you included them only as dependent variables then you would not be accounting for their effect on what you are actually interested in.

Please, open a book and shut your mouth. The world will be better for it.

Re:This Land Is Red Land, Paid For by Blue Land ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Please reread what you have said and realise that you are an idiot.

How incredibly stupid you must be to say something completely true and yet still manage to come up with the idiotic conclusion.

How do you know when it's working?

[Excelsior]

how else do you verify that a paperless voting system is working properly?"
When George Bush loses, of course.

Really Simple Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

The electronic voting systems in these Democrat-controlled counties put a stop to the rampant ballot-stuffing of the last two elections.

Put that in your model and smoke it.

Approval voting breaks 2-party control; IRV won't.

[Pingster]

Instant runoff voting does not solve this problem. The IRV system is widely misunderstood.

1. IRV only allows you to safely vote for a third party as long as the third party has minimal support. Once the third party begins to gather substantial support, IRV prevents it from winning exactly as the current system does.

2. In many realistic situations, IRV exhibits crazy behaviour in which voting for a candidate can cause him to lose. No other seriously proposed voting system has this problem.

3. IRV is complicated to explain and expensive to implement. The ballots cannot be totalled up; instead, information about every individual ballot must be sent to a central location to determine the winner.

Approval voting has none of these problems. In approval voting, you vote for as many candidates as you want, and the candidate with the most votes wins. It is extremely simple to implement, easy to understand, works with existing ballots, and truly allows you to vote for any party you like because all your choices are independent.

See this document for a detailed comparison.

500,000 dead Iraqi children...

[ArtStone]

This research methodology [I did read it] reminds me very much of the statistical analysis which was used to "prove" that UN Sanctions caused 500,000 Iraqi children to die.

The essence of the research was - we looked at the population before the sanctions, estimated what the population should have been now based on normal growth rates, and any difference -must- be attributable to what we believe the answer is - that Iraqi children were killed by the hardship imposed by the sanctions.

What the actual reasons turn out to be:
1) The study only dealt with a small portion of the country in the SouthEast, and extrapolated those numbers to the entire country.
2) The study did not take into consideration that 1 million young men had perished in the Iraq/Iran war, and that the Islamic prohibitions on sexual matters left a country full of unwed women where getting pregnant out of marriage just isn't permitted - having a dramatic effect on reproductive rates.
3) Saddam systematically caused the population to be forced from the area that was studied by draining the swamplands where the shiite population had lived for generations
4) It ignored that Sadddam instituted a program of mass genocide in the areas which supported his ouster after the first gulf war, and the resulting exodus of people (many went to Iran to flee the persecution).

Using statistics to try to prove a preconceived notion is an abuse of the scientific principle.

Re:YES MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a security expert.
I'm totally against a rube-goldberg voting system too. Simple addition does not require a computer anymore than using TNT to go fishing. (oh, here in the USA, we can't eat the fish--mercury--might as well blow them up.)

When literally billions are at stake, there needs to be as little as possible for them to mess around with--the incentive will always be there, why give them the means??

Work properly, no. Steal Properly, yes.

[rfc1394]

While the research used statistical analysis based on past elections and demographics, how else do you verify that a paperless voting system is working properly?

Short answer: You can't. Accuracy isn't the purpose. Hoodwinking the public is.

Long Answer: The purpose of electronic voting machines is not to provide an inexpensive election - paper ballots counted by hand are the cheapest way to run a secret election - nor is it to provide a guaranteed accurate election - paper ballots with check marks are the gold standard for proof of who voted for whom - but to allow undetectable election fraud. Any election without a real-time unchangeable audit trail - which means a paper log of every vote generated at the same time as voting is done - should be presumed to be intentionally fraudulent.

Back in 1966, Robert A. Heinlein gave the exact formula in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress for stealing an election without the public realizing they'd been robbed: have all the votes collected by computer where there is no audit trail and no way to prove the validity of the actual vote versus what is recorded.

And what do electronic voting machines give us? A voting system collected by computer where there is no audit trail and no way to prove the validity of the actual vote versus what is recorded. Why should it surprise anyone that the voting machines are inaccurate; they're intended to efficiently steal elections in a concealed fashion, not necessarily to efficiently count them.

Let's not forget that the head of one of the companies that sell electronic voting machines said that they intended to make sure they got Ohio for a specific candidate in the 2004 election. (No candidate has ever won the presidency without Ohio.)

Has anyone here considered that since it takes 270 electors to win, all that one needs to get elected President is 11 states?

• California.... 55
• Texas......... 34
• New York...... 31
• Florida....... 27
• Illinois...... 21
• Pennsylvania.. 21
• Ohio.......... 20
• Michigan...... 17
• New Jersey.... 15
• North Carolina 15
• Georgia....... 15
• -------------
• Total........ 271

Get (or steal) these 11 states and you can forget the other 39.

Re:Its the computer stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Cheating is always going to be a problem; and with billions at stake there is plenty motivation.

PAPER IS SAFER!

Try to stuff boxes everywhere on the same day. Takes a lot of people, and leaves a lot of "lose ends".

Computers on the otherhand: 1 programmer at 1 company can do any number of things and never personally get caught.

How many people would have done something illegal in this election if they knew it would help and knew they could not get caught??

But the BABY is the son of satan!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets throw the baby out with the bathwater!!

Yeah, in WW2 we shouldn't have completely rejected naz.....
Oh, wait, I guess we should have, but didn't.

Old expressions don't make for good argument.

Re: CNN CHANGED RESULTS AFTER FACT

[Anonymous Coward]

CNN CHANGED RESULTS AFTER FACT
I saw it; you did not; and here is proof, you will probably reject, because your a moron:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu ss/duboa rd.php?az=view_all&address=132x1293911

Berkeley researchers? Hah.

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, welcome our new vote-rigging overlords.

Get rid of politcs - now.

[mrmeval]

This politics bullshit needs to go. I'm so tired of it Slashdot is no longer fun to read.

Re:Get rid of politcs - now.

[exodist-Admin-Ra]

then don't read the politics section. so far the politics thread has been unbeleavably civil with few trolls that I have seen. you are not being forced to read politics just as we are not being forced to read your whining.

Re:Possible explanation -- You've got no clue?

[Anonymous Coward]

There could be a lot of variables related to the differences between precincts that used electronic voting machines and precincts that did not. For example, perhaps in general a precinct spending the money to switch to electronic voting machines indicates that that precinct is wealthier and more business-oriented. It could also indicate that people in that precinct cared more passionately about the outcome of the election, in which case superior Republican voter turnout would have a more pronounced effect. I could go on.

The lesson here is that numbers can be made to say anything you want them to, especially when you apply them to politics. Any mathematician knows that when it comes to "real life" applications, micro-statistics is a useless "science" that always serves the interest of the publisher.

Re: CNN CHANGED RESULTS AFTER FACT

[The-Bus]

I mentioned it in my original message, and I will have to mention it AGAIN.

This is from the Washington Post.

". . .a server at Edison/Mitofsky malfunctioned shortly before 11 p.m. The glitch prevented access to any exit poll results until technicians got a backup system operational at 1:33 a.m. yesterday.

"The crash occurred barely minutes before the consortium was to update its exit polling with the results of later interviewing that found Bush with a one-point lead. Instead, journalists were left relying on preliminary exit poll results released at 8:15 p.m., which still showed Kerry ahead by three percentage points.

The data "changed" because the NEP was not collecting data for five hours. Stop trying to believe that 51% of the country is lying when they say they wanted Bush to win.

I'm not a Bush supporter, but this is the same extremist idiotic crap that has turned people off the Democratic Party. Yeah, sure, Rove sat there in a bunker a mile under the Earth's surface and orchestrated the whole damn thing. Spend some time grooming some real candidates.

Re:Slashdot crowd - determined to believe

[3l1za]

heretic!!!!!!!!!

And this from the people who scoff at religion.
BR>

The machine should simply print a ballot

[Anonymous Coward]

The touch-screen voting machine itself would be much less critical if all it has to do is print a ballot on a card.

The stand-alone ballot-printing touch-screen voting machine could be "audited" by the voter looking at the ballot. Once a voter has verified their voting choices on the printed ballot (using age-old "eyeball technology") it doesn't matter too much how the machine produced it.

Some kind of ballot-counting machine can be used on election day, but counting can always be done by hand if it comes to that.

(I read several hundred comments and didn't see this suggested. Pardon me if it was mentioned somewhere and I missed it.)

Maybe punch card systems are at fault?

[mc6809e]

The paper leaves out an important alternate hypothesis: that punch card systems took votes from Bush in 2000 and Dole in 1996.

Keep in mind that punch card ballots require much more human involvement and that means more opportunity for error (fraud?). The technical knowledge needed for fraud is very minimal. A stiff wire through a stack of ballots is simple. Lying about the count as you report it via simple telephone is even simpler.

It's entirely possible the touch screens are preventing errors that occured under the punch card arrangement.

How do you count 100 million pieces of paper?

[porkchop_d_clown]

Ultimately, it's a question of scalability. People expect to get election results the same night, and without errors. Despite the bad reputation punch cards got in Florida, they have a much lower error rate than hand counting hand written X's.

Optical readers of x-marks-the-spot ballots are possible, but would also have a higher error rate just due to the variety of ways people can write an X.

Re:How do you count 100 million pieces of paper?

[necro2607]

Uh dude, we DO get election results the same night... and there's never been any ballot counting issues that I can recall whatsoever...

And the researchers are being totally objective.

[Sir Pallas]

Not to mention, that one of the things that happened in this election was a shift in demographic voting trends. They should be asking why those voters shifter, not pretending that there is no shift. Previous elections are not full perdictors of future elections: while there may be correlation, there is no hard relationship.

Re:Simple (posible) answer: Ballot Order

[Halo-]

I get what you are saying, but machines my district uses aren't touch-screen, they have a wheel you have to turn to cycle through the choices. It starts with nothing selected, one turn moves it the first entry, another to the second, etc...

There's a seperate set of buttons to move between pages and cast the ballot.

Then you aren't paying attention

[porkchop_d_clown]

Because the error rates for each style of ballot counting are fairly well established- exclusive of deliberate fraud which is easier with hand counting than machine counting.

And, we all know UC Berkeley ...

[c.ecker]

... is a bastion of biased bullshit.

Leave it alone already. The election is over. Bush is our President. Rather than try to undermine the authority rightfully granted during the election process, why not try to use the ethical, legal and accepted tools available our Democratic Republic to make lawful, meaningful changes?

Rhetorical, of course: let me answer. UC Berkeley isn't interested in knowledge or change, they're interested in the free notoriety that comes from publishing a 'study', no matter how pie-in-the-sky full-of-guesswork, that comes to a conclusion that appeals to a small, select, cognitively challenged group of people who might actually feel at home at UC Berkeley.

It really is appalling that not-quite-fictional-but-clearly-wrong crap like this gets posted to the Politics section of Slashdot, when meaningful news stories are rejected. Items like this have me visiting all areas of Slashdot less and less.

Fla voting

[toquams]

The UCB guys & gals need to look up the word, "Dixiecrat." All Democrates don't vote the way the libertarians do in Berkeley. The Florida Senate and House are each solidly Republican, as you know the governorship is. It's not like California, where the Republicans are conservative and the Democrates are liberal. Hope they can just get over it, in Berkeley, or it's going to be a very long four years for them. It is for me already, and he hasn't even been sworn in yet. Let's just try to all move forward together, as you would have wanted, if the empty suit had won.

Re:Possible explanation -- You've got no clue?

[Bellyflop]

You're the idiot. Do a quick google on linear regressions and you'll do the world some good.

Not impressive

[Erwos]

I am blessed (cursed?) with a background in econometrics from school.

The figures look nice, until your eyes stray to the R-square (goodness of fit) results for their regressions - it's about .5 for all of them, which means there's quite a bit to do before their models are actually believable and worth using as "evidence" of voter fraud.

More formally, R-square is the percentage of sample variation in the dependent variable that is explained by the independent variables. So, in this study, they can generally explain about 50% of the variation - which is not exactly what I'd want to take to court.

In fairness to the researchers, R-square is not the end-all, be-all of proof, and .5 really isn't terrible for social science stuff. However, this is the only statistic they posted regarding the correctness of the models, and I'd like to see some more numbers in this regard.

I find the willingness of people to take this as "proof" of vote fraud is disturbing. This is evidence that places that had electronic voting had more votes for Bush. This evidence is of correlation rather than causation. Maybe Bush supporters were more likely to come out in places with electronic voting?

In any case, I would also direct people to read page 4, where it points out that electronic voting in Ohio didn't cause any change in percent voting for Bush (using model 1, I believe).

-Erwos

Re:Not impressive

[Truth_Quark]

The figures look nice, until your eyes stray to the R-square (goodness of fit) results for their regressions - it's about .5 for all of them, which means there's quite a bit to do before their models are actually believable and worth using as "evidence" of voter fraud.
Erwos, R-Squared of 0.5 means that half the variation is attributable to whether electronic voting machines were used, leaving only half the variation attributable to all other factors such as who voters wanted to vote for.

The R-Squared should be precisely Zero - Any significant difference for that is cause for alarm. (And if and election cannot change the government surely you are obliged to exercise your rights under the 2nd amendment, and hold an armed uprising) :-p

As the article says that 0.5 is more that 99% certain to be different from 0.

Re:Not impressive

[Erwos]

"The R-Squared should be precisely Zero"

I'm not sure this is true - I think you misunderstand R-square. R-square is a measurement of the ENTIRE model R-square of 0 means that the predictions _don't fit the model at all_.

The researchers included (in the models) a number of other independent variables which were _supposed_ to have tried to encompass who the people were trying to vote for (Bush 2000, Dole 96, income). What we were hoping for was the coefficients of the electronic voting variables to be statistically insignificant (ie, electronic voting makes no difference on votes). A zero value of R-square would seem to imply that previous voting records have no predictive value, ie that previous voting records don't explain any variation.

Finally, I have no idea what "0.5 is more that 99% certain to be different from 0" means. You realize that R-Square isn't affected in any way by the confidence level, right? SSE/SST isn't affected by any alpha.

Or am I misunderstanding you on this?

-Erwos

This proves nothing besides

[macromegas]

that the US has a giant legitimacy gap. That's the reason why mainstream won't pick up this story or anyother of the dozens flying around and take them as parts of ONE picture, but isolated incidents. Partisan here, partisan there - but both parties form the very system which legitimacy is shaken and all the mainstream media are major profiteers of it, too. This is completely independent from concrete implemetations of the voting process, be it machines of whatever kind or pen and paper; hanging chads in 2000, evoting in 2004 - nothing but symptoms to the same illness.
As a result the US is building an international reputations for being the largest banana republic alive. Now think of Iraq's upcoming elections in january, do you really think an election under US occupation is going to generate any trust in its results? (rhetorical)
Instead of exporting democracy the US is just about to export it's systemic problems. And maybe, if what I suspect to be bush's calculation works out, that is exactly what it takes to delay the real question for another term.

Just to fit things into a larger scale...

Slightly OT: Quote from a ukrainian friend: We got widespread election fraud too, but as least we agree on that.

Read this...

[nha]

http://politics.slashdot.org/politics/04/11/19/175 4249.shtml?tid=226&tid=126&tid=103

before deciding that machines are evil and paper trails are the answer. The article shows how the vote appears to have been manipulated only in the counties using paper ballots. This makes sense because election officials and workers are much more likely to be able to grok ballot box stuffing and other such low-tech techniques.

statistics aren't perfect.

[exodist-Admin-Ra]

based on statistics and past elections and voter registration..... this assumes people did not decide to vote out of their party or different from the norm. It is not unheard of for a democrat to vote bush, I know several hardcore democrats that chose bush over kerry for one reason or another. I also knwo several republicans that voted kerry. some of whom were voting for someone other than there party candidate for the first time. if we are going touse statistics to prove the voting was valid why vote at all? just use the statistics. Maybe cigerette companies can decide who is president cause as we all know statistics show that the leading cause of statistics is smoking.

Re:Can I Play Too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, the conservative-bashing list is at +3, and the liberal-bashing list is at -1. Looks like some serious bias to me. I love the fairness of Slashdot moderation!

Re:Something is fishy

[Anonymous Coward]

The mods didn't get it.

Why Fix a Working System?

[SeanDuggan]

My main objection to these electronic voting systems is that it seems like they're forcing poorly built solutions on a problem which doesn't really exist, when there are already functioning mechanical systems that work. While I believe that eventually electronic voting systems will be viable, I don't want them deployed until they are 100% sure that they're as good as the mechanical systems that have been working for decades. Sure, there were a few people who had trouble with punching cards or pushing levers. All of those systems have people onhand to help you with the physical aspects. Or heck, build a type-two lever into the punchcarding so that your 80-year-old grandmother can exert a fraction of an ounce of force on one end to punch her holes. The mechanical systems currently work better than the electronic ones and, well, they're already there, so you don't have to pay to install them.

In my opinion, it's all about the politics, people saying that the voting machines are "antiquated" and that we "should enter the 21st century." Bah... I bet it has more to do with some of these legislators having a relative in the voting machine business.

About Daschle, from Another South Dakotan

[Snar Bloot]

You're right. Pencil and paper. As always. Don't blame it on the machines, that's just a cop out.

And I could explain about Tommy losing, but clearly it would be lost on most folks here.

Re:Possible explanation -- You've got no clue?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a book.
I took the class.
I made an A.
I have a BS in statistics.

Apparently you are smarter than myself and all those Berkeley kids.

Too dumb to realise that you are an idiot too.