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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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?

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

[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.

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

[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

[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?

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?

[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?

[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

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.

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

[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

[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

It's a damn shame

[ThomasFlip]

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

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?

[eyeye]

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

Dumbasses are generally republicans.

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?

[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?

[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.

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!

[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

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

Keyboard error?

[mortram]

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

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.

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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?

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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

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/

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).

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).

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.

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: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.

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: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: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?

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?

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.

[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.

[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

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: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.

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.

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"

[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.

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...

[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.

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?

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?

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.

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: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.

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?

[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.

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.

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.

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?

[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?

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.

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....

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.

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.

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: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.

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).

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.

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

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!

[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: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.

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.

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 :-)

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: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?

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.

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.

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: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.

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

[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

[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...

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

[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.

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.

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: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.

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: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).

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.

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?

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.

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: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: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.

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.

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: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!

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

[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

[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

[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!

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?

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/

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.

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.

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

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.

Diebold states

[Bun]

Has anyone done a comparison of the battleground states won by Bush and whether they used electronic voting machines or not?

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.