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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?"
"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.
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?
that mainstream media won't cover this, or make a big deal out of it.
If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
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.
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.
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.
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
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.
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).
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.
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 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?
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
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.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
I would like to point some facts out:
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?
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.
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.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
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.
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?
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
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?
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).
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
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.
FTFA:
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?
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.
./ discussion, isn't going to help you do that most efficiently.
"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
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.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
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.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
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.
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.
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?
The cure for cancer is coming: Reovirus
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?
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
daveschroeder wrote:
"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. 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. 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. 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.
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.
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.
blog
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/
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!
The Bolachek Journals
While that's true, it doesn't change the math...