-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: [Politech] Some Dems allege that exit polls wrong,voting
machines rigged
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 07:31:54 -0700
From: Richard M. Smith <rms@private>
To: 'Declan McCullagh' <declan@private>
Hi Declan,
Bush was always leading Kerry by 1 to 3 percentage points in all of the
pre-election polls that I saw. These polls seem to have predicted the
election outcome very well.
Here's one real election software failure that the Miami Herald reported on:
(Note to all election equipment vendors: Always use 32-bit integers to
count votes because 16 bits just aren't enough! ;-))
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/10099198.htm?1c
Defective software 'lost' votes
By ERIKA BOLSTAD
Thousands of new votes on some constitutional amendment questions were
discovered early Thursday, potentially forcing a recount on the question of
a South Florida vote on slot machines.
As absentee ballot counting wound down after midnight in Broward County's
elections warehouse, attorneys scrutinizing the close vote on Amendment Four
noticed that vote totals changed in an unexpected way after 13,000 final
ballots were counted.
Election officials quickly determined the problem was caused by the Unity
Software that pulls together votes from five machines tabulating absentee
ballots.
Because no precinct has more than 32,000 voters, the software caps the total
votes at that number. From there, it begins to count backward.
...
Richard M. Smith
http://www.ComputerBytesMan.com
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Politech] Some Dems allege that exit polls wrong, voting
machines rigged
Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2004 08:07:22 -0800
From: John Fricker <john@private>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private>
References: <418F28C3.50308@private>
Declan McCullagh wrote:
> [Personally, I think that oversampling of women/daytime voters in the
> exit polls coupled with Republicans perhaps being less willing to be
> interviewed could easily explain the minor differences between the
> polls and the results. But FYI... --Declan]
>
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: vote rigging?
> Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2004 16:02:22 -0800
> From: Carl Ellison <cme@private>
>
> http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110804Z.shtml
>
> This conclusion surprised me. Those of us looking at voting
> technology need to puzzle this one out.
>
>
>
Declan,
It's unlikely that the exit polls would be accurate in one county,
precinct or state and then bang on accurate in another for the reasons
you give.
Regardless, there is mounting statistical evidence suggesting anomalies
between vote counts and type of machine in use. See the Liddle_Analysis
documents here http://ustogether.org/election04/.
Of course, malfunction could explain it as well as deliberate fraud. I'm
still looking for the conclusive evidence either way.
--John
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Politech] Some Dems allege that exit polls wrong,voting
machines rigged
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 12:36:49 -0500
From: Chad K. Bisk <CKBisk@private>
Reply-To: Chad K. Bisk <ChadKBisk@private>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private>
References: <418F28C3.50308@private>
Declan,
Did I miss something? Didn't the IEEE already prove that the only way to
have a system that continues to work no matter which internal system is
cracked is to have end-to-end level checks like a receipt?
http://www.voterverifiable.com/article.pdf
Is there a reason that we don't hear this solution discussed more often?
-- Chad
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Politech] Some Dems allege that exit polls wrong, voting
machines rigged
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 11:52:55 -0500
From: Peter Hollingsworth <phollingsworth@private>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private>
References: <418F28C3.50308@private>
Declan,
While the sampling methodology for exit polls may have been poor, large
differences in results that correlate directly to method of vote casting
should arouse suspicion. Unfortunately, the web sights only give the
results in terms of voting machine, there are no results with respect to
other local or statewide races. Are the differences only in the
presidential race or do they show up elsewhere? The results for other
races are publicly available and need to be looked into. We know that
people will often vote differently for local parties as compared to
national parties. A quick look at the Presidential and Senate races in
two FL optical scan counties shows differences in the way voters break
in different races.
Pres:
Alachua County
Bush: 42.89%
Kerry: 56.16%
Duval County
Bush: 57.76%
Kerry: 41.65%
Senate:
Alachua County
Martinez: 39.62%
Castor: 58.73%
Duval County
Martinez: 54.66%
Castor: 43.71%
In the Senate race there was a third party candidate that received
~1.65% of the vote. In the presidential race all other candidates
received a sum total of 0.95% in Alachua and 0.59% in Duval. In both
counties the Bush received about 3-3.25% more of the vote than Martinez
did, and Kerry about 2-2.5% less than Castor.
Also, it would be worthwhile for a group to hand count ballots from
several counties where the discrepancy is large. These tend to be
smaller counties, where a small change in votes produces a big
percentage change. Assuming that the actual ballots have not been
tampered with, if the hand count correlates well with the published
results it should be pretty easy to put to rest accusations of rigging,
causality would be present. If the hand count differs wildly then it is
time to look for causality.
I am by no means saying there was foul play, or if there was it would
have changed the results of the election. However, shouldn't we err on
the side of caution, at least for future races.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Politech] Some Dems allege that exit polls wrong, voting
machines rigged
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 10:24:32 -0500 (EST)
From: Matthew G. Saroff <msaroff@private>
Reply-To: Matthew G. Saroff <msaroff@private>
Organization: The Dealy Plaza Gun Club
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private>
References: <418F28C3.50308@private>
[for the interest of Politech readers]
FWIW, going through the archives of Steve Gilliard's blog
(http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com) his thesis is that whatever might, or
might not have gone wrong with the election was primarily old school voter
suppression tactics that do not involve computers.
I agree, and so would argue that any problems were largely an
artifact of things like too few voting machines in primary areas,
aggressive poll challengers, relocation of polling places, etc.
I would argue that the focus on DREs obscures some very real, and
easily fixed problems.
--
Matthew Saroff
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Politech] Some Dems allege that exit polls wrong, voting
machines rigged
Date: 8 Nov 2004 09:52:32 -0500
From: John M Levine <johnl@private>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private>
References: <418F28C3.50308@private>
| http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110804Z.shtml
>
> This conclusion surprised me. Those of us looking at voting
> technology need to puzzle this one out.
If they think the optical scan votes were miscounted, seems to me the
losing side should demand a manual recount. Optical scan means paper
ballots, right? You should be able to count a few thousand ballots in a
day or two.
---
Hi Declan,
As usual, I'd rather not be quoted for attribution. I too thought there
might be some sampling errors in the exit polls b/c certain types of
voters may have been more likely to vote early in the day. My
assumption was that the exit polls were taken earlier on. But I heard
one of the pollsters talking on the radio and he said that they did exit
polls throughout the day and the evening and that they all showed the
same error in Kerry's favor. I thought it might have been Andrew Kohut
from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press who said it on
the Diane Rhem Show on 11/3/04. But I flipped through the archive
recording and didn't find the right quote.
(http://www.wamu.org/programs/dr/04/11/03.php)
-The Unknown Bureaucrat
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Politech] Some Dems allege that exit polls wrong, voting
machines rigged
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 13:47:14 +0000 (UTC)
From: Robert J. Chassell <bob@private>
Reply-To: bob@private
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private>
CC: bob@private
References: <418F28C3.50308@private>
[Personally, I think that oversampling of women/daytime voters in the
exit polls coupled with Republicans perhaps being less willing to be
interviewed could easily explain the minor differences between the
polls
and the results. But FYI... --Declan]
In the claim I heard, the characteristics for good or ill of the exit
polls themselves do not matter, so long as the same procedures were
followed in the different areas. That is because the comparison is of
results with polls where the only variable is the presence or absence
of an auditable trail.
Specifically the question is whether Bush gained an advantage of as
much as 5 percent when comparing exit polls to actual results in areas
in which electronic voting occurred without an auditable paper trail,
but did not gain such an advantage in areas with an auditable paper
trail.
In so far as a fair portion of the voting population come to believe
that fraud was higher than it should have been, the UN political
system as a whole loses legitimacy. Since legitimacy is vital, the
issue concerns winners as well as losers.
So far, I have not seen a document that makes the investigation and
also lists the locations of sites that provide the exit polls and
procedures that were followed in practice, data about voting machines,
and actual results. Doing all this should be fairly easy and
straightforward for someone who knows about the issue.
--
Robert J. Chassell
bob@private GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
http://www.rattlesnake.com http://www.teak.cc
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Politech] Some Dems allege that exit polls wrong, voting
machines rigged
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 08:08:08 -0500
From: Norman Hawker <norman.hawker@private>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private>
References: <418F28C3.50308@private>
Declan,
You may be right. The problem is that with "black box" voting equipment
we can never know for sure.
Norman Hawker
Western Michigan University
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Politech] Some Dems allege that exit polls wrong, voting
machines rigged
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 04:32:49 -0600
From: Jim Davidson <davidson@private>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private>
CC: cme@private
Dear Declan,
On Monday, Nov 8, 2004, at 02:05 US/Central, Declan McCullagh
wrote:
> [Personally, I think that oversampling of women/daytime voters
> in the exit polls coupled with Republicans perhaps being less
> willing to be interviewed could easily explain the minor differences
> between the polls and the results. But FYI... --Declan]
There is nothing about exit polls that I feel a need to comment
upon. Your analysis is as good as any. However, I did find the
following paragraph from the link Carl sent along quite stunning:
"In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered voters,
69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them Republicans, the vote
was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what
is seen everywhere else in the country where registered Democrats
largely voted for Kerry."
Totalling those two figures, I find that 9,918 registered voters
voted in Baker county, which is 76.96% of the registered voters
and quite at odds with the more normal 55%.
Then I found the following paragraph totally delightful:
"In Dixie County, with 4,988 registered voters, 77.5% of them
Democrats and a mere 15% registered as Republicans, only 1,959
people voted for Kerry, but 4,433 voted for Bush."
Here the two figures total 6,392 voters. Ahem. Uh. Ah. AHEM!
That's 128.1% turnout. Now, I don't mind 76.96% turnout. It
seems quite patriotic in some ways. Unlikely, but patriotic.
I find 128.1% turnout to be, well, dubious. Incredible. Not
to be believed. So, either there is something really, really
wrong with the report, or there is something *obvious* wrong
with the election.
Thanks for the interesting message. I'm not really sure what
needs to be puzzled out.
Regards,
Jim
http://indomitus.net/
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Politech] Some Dems allege that exit polls wrong, voting
machines rigged
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 04:42:24 -0600
From: Jim Davidson <davidson@private>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private>
CC: cme@private
Dear Declan,
Quick follow-up. The figure for Dixie county seems to be reported
wrong in the truthout.org page. The stats here:
http://ustogether.org/election04/FloridaDataStats.htm
which is a link from Carl's suggested truthout page indicate
a total registered voter population in Dixie county of 9676.
Whether that figure was properly copied from the .pdf file
on the state's web site, I dunno. And I find .pdf files so
annoying, I won't make the effort to look. Has anyone mentioned
to the folx in government that the true universally "portable"
format is HTML?
Regards,
Jim
http://indomitus.net/
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Politech] Some Dems allege that exit polls wrong, voting
machines rigged
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 20:22:24 +1100
From: Truckle The Uncivil <truckle.the.uncivil@private>
Reply-To: Truckle The Uncivil <truckle.the.uncivil@private>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private>
References: <418F28C3.50308@private>
On Mon, 08 Nov 2004 03:05:23 -0500, Declan McCullagh <declan@private>
wrote:
> [Personally, I think that oversampling of women/daytime voters in the
> exit polls coupled with Republicans perhaps being less willing to be
> interviewed could easily explain the minor differences between the polls
> and the results. But FYI... --Declan]
>
That would at first seem to be a reasonable attitude, but there are
(at least) three factors that suggest otherwise.
The first being that the people who take the polls know that these
factors (privacy, 'selected' sampling etc. ) are there and they
compensate for them with sufficient accuracy as to normally be able to
acurately predict what will eventuate. There are margins of error
calculated. These results did not lie within them.
The second is the fact that there were some electorates in which the
exit polls were most accurate and some where they were wrong (by a
consistent %'ge). These happened to use different means of recording
votes. Fraud or not, that wants investigating. Else how can you be
sure your vote will count.
Thirdly, from what media I have seen, these discrepancies always
favoured Bush (and by a reasonably consistent %'ge). It is unlikely
that that would always be the case and unlikely in the extreme that
there should be any consistency in the %'ge.
I'm not much of a statistician but enough of one to be seriously
disquieted by the above.
It wasn't my election (.au) but I think you were had.
--
Truckle The Uncivil, Nullus Anxietas Sanguinae
But remember, please, the Law by which we live,
We are not built to comprehend a lie.
We can neither love nor pity, nor forgive,
If you make a slip in handling us you die!
--The Secret of the Machines-- Rudyard Kipling
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