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?

[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?

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

[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.

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

[Reducer2001]

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

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.

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.

It's a damn shame

[ThomasFlip]

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

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.

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

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[ilikecaffeine]

And they did it by rigging the system, and *NOBODY* can prove it. There's no paper trail.

Since there's no way to prove it, that means that your theory is just a bunch of conspiracy crap. Incidentally, my theory that the democrats rigged the election in favor of the republicans so they could complain for four more years and run hillary/barak in '08 is also just a bunch of conspiracy crap. Georgia uses the Diebold machines. Badnarik, the libertarian candidate got 17,000 votes there, more than any other third party candidate in any other state. If the republicans "rigged" the election, as you propose, why in the hell would they give a third party candidate so many votes? Using your logic, I'm suspicious of the Boston Red Sox miracle. I mean, everything went so perfectly. How could there *not* be mischief afoot? Perhaps bush won because the majority of Americans prefer an idiot to a douchebag, and not because of The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

Re:Paper trail not enough

[VultureMN]

The problem with this approach is that it'd reward aggressive fraud.

For example, let's say a hypothetical company, call them 'Diecast', has the machines give enough extra votes to candidate, oh, let's call him 'Buck', so that 'Buck' wins the state by 300,000 votes. That wouldn't be enough per machine for anyone to notice, and the other candidate, let's call him 'Harry', isn't going to challenge that big of a statewide spread.

The only way we should trust electronic counting is when the electronics cannot 'know' who goes with what. All they could count is that A got 123 votes, B got 113. Then the pollworkers match up A with Harry, and B with Buck. (and perhaps in other precints, A is Buck and B is Harry.)

Re:Paper trail not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[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

[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??

Just fix it! Support the bills that will!

[daveschroeder]

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

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

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

The putative reasoning for going with electronic systems was likely that since we have managed to design accountable and reliable electronic and computing equipment for the management of our power, medical care, money, etc., it likely was more or less assumed by the legislature that such accountable systems could also be applied to voting.

A bill has been introduced to amend HAVA. H.R.2239 and its twin Senate counterpart S.1980, discussed further here, will amend the Help America Vote Act such that there is "a voter-verified permanent record or hardcopy" attached with each and every ballot cast by every voter, and that "any voting system containing or using software shall disclose the source code of that software to the Commission, and the Commission shall make that source code available for inspection upon request to any citizen".

Additionally, the three electronic voting manufacturers already have the ability to add permanent, individual voter-verified paper audit trails to their products. Some e-voting critics make it seem like vendors are resisting. However, it is the local election boards that are resisting (as well as the slow march of bureaucracy). The e-voting vendors will build - and sell - whatever municipalities will buy.

Re:Just fix it! Support the bills that will!

[brianosaurus]

Look back over the last year of articles about Diebold (for example) and their voting machines. They mislead the local election boards. They would change the software to versions that hadn't been verified by the officials. Their CEO, in a memo, said to make any changes to the system, such as printed receipts, prohibitively expensive as add-ons.

The vendors weren't building what the municipalities were asking for. They built what they wanted to build and told the municipalities "this is how it is. buy it or not, but the laws you just passed say you have to buy something before the next election, so you probably ought to buy it."

And I'm sure the massive lobbying and contributions (and inappropriate promises to deliver certain states to certain incumbent presidents) had nothing to do with the choices the local boards made.

Any computer-based system can trivially add a printed receipt. Its not like printers are some new technology. They've been on cash registers and calculators for decades.

Voting, and particularly accuracy in counting the votes, is very important. Why wouldn't the vendors, or more importantly the election boards, want a backup? Why wouldn't they want to be able to verify and demonstrate that the machines are accurate and correct? Why resist a method to prove how much better the new technology is than the old? Are they concerned that John Henry could count a mountain of votes faster and more accurately than their machines? Why not silence the skeptics by proving them wrong?

The only reason to resist a mechanism for independant verification in something as important to this country as voting is that someone wants to hide something, or at least have the ability to hide something. "Trust me" as a business model went out with Joe Isuzu.

You know, I'd love to refute their claims...

[Quinn_Inuit]

but I _can't_, because there's no way to do so. Because of paperless voting, we have no way short of standard polling techniques to tell if these machines were even close to accurate.

Re: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: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).

A letter I sent to the Washington Post

[Anonymous Coward]

I sent this letter to the editor of the washington post a few days ago on the evoting topic (wasn't published)...

re: In ATMs, Not Votes, We Trust
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articl es/A556 91-2004Nov16.html

I'm a programmer a major corporate bank in Manhattan.
Anne Applebaum's analogy of e-voting to ATM and credit card banking was misleading and uninformed.

Users receive regular bank statements, with each ATM transaction itemized.
Cross-checks of all transactions can be validated by the user through this method or
at any time with a phone call or with web access.
This is a paper trail.

For a credit card, it's the same deal, of course.
Again, there is a paper trail.

Increasingly e-voting machines have no paper trail requirement.

This is highly troubling.
Anne seemed to label this as "conspiracy", but it is no such thing.
To say so is irresponsible.

There is no way for the individual to verify that their vote was counted as they registered it, as you
can at an ATM, with or without a receipt. Do you find this troubling? I do.
This is just one short-coming in the system, among many.

As a computer programmer and security expert, I know how easily computers can be manipulated.
It is a fact that the coding on these machines could literally do anything.
We're irresponsibly putting our votes into a black box, and don't even have an audit trail.

This issue has nothing to do with whether fraud occurred in this particular election or not.
Glitches frequently occur due to human and machine errors.

An audit trail is a minimum necessary requirement -
And this is just the beginning of the problems with e-voting as currently implemented.

I'm surprised that the Washington Post allowed such a flimsy analysis to be published.

Re:A 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: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?

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.

[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

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

[AnotherBlackHat]

Given that the votes are challeneged and recounted every time, there is no point to going electronic at all.

When I withdrawn a large sum of money from the bank, the teller counts it, then gets a second teller to count it, then they both initial the withdrawl slip.

Since they always get a second teller to count, does that mean that the first count is unnecessary?

I favor electronic counts and paper audits.
If there's a large discrepancy between the two methods, then you investigate everything.

If paying for an audit count is a problem, then make the party asking for it pay for it.

Re: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.

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?

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.

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?

[cryptochrome]

Also paper ballots are very scalable - if too many people show up at a polling station you just slap up a new curtain and some markers and you're good to go. Worst case scenario you send for more poll workers to help process the check-ins, and print out/send for some more ballots. Not an option with electronic machines. You don't have enough, you're screwed. We've heard plenty of horror stories in this election of lines being hours long, so this is actually a highly critical problem.

Machines do have one critical advantage against paper ballots though (assuming they are properly designed) - they are tamper-resistant and naturally immune to invalid votecasting. Right now the easiest way to screw with a paper ballot is with a mark or punch made surreptitiously turning a valid vote into an overvote, or a no-vote into a vote. Not to mention the actual overvotes people made by mistake, and misreads. Quick and easy, all you have to do is make sure no one's looking and be ready to call voters incompetent. You can also stuff or lose ballot boxes and invalidate whole districts if necessary.

Computers won't allow you to overvote or make other mistakes, their receipts cannot be plausibly altered or misinterpreted by unscrupulous ballot handlers, and the numbers can be double-checked against the electronic tally in the machines. In fact with the right receipt you could do a second optical scan count and a hand recount, and if all three do not agree start raising giant red flags and sending in lawyers to put asses in jail.

Re: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?

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.

In related news...

[flyingsquid]

...in related news, a study conducted by Born-Again Alabaman NASCAR fans found that Bush swept California.

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.

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:Not good enough

[gl4ss]

* Unless those trails are voter verified, nobody has any way to determine if the trail matches the actual votes cast by the voters.

This is the core problem with electronic voting.

We either need to put the actual vote on paper, or make sure the machine printed votes match voter intent, or the election cannot be trusted.*

you use a machine to vote. the machine spits out a paper with your vote number into a transparent casing. you verify (if you're not lazy) that the number is the same that you chose on the machine and extract the paper with the correct number(s) and then take it into a normal ballot box. the result is computer readable and later verifyable by hand if necessary ballot(computer readable because it was computer printed).

either way, the voter should be able to verify that his vote has the right markings before going into the ballot box.

bad motives for a totally paperless ballot are way too bad to accept(too many what if's even by ACCIDENT not to mention the situations possible by intent).

Re:Bad source.

[Life2Short]

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

Re: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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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

[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!

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/

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

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.