Usa Election Problems

Whereas the former title IrefutableUsaElectionFraud? was a monstruous example of IntellectualDishonesty unworthy of wiki.

From the UCB study of the Florida vote: Irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000 excess votes or more to President George W. Bush in Florida. 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. In Broward County alone, President Bush appears to have received approximately 72,000 excess votes. We can be 99.9% sure that these effects are not attributable to chance. --http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/new_web/VOTE2004/index.html

The only reasonable conclusion in absence of other supporting evidence is that their statistical model is wrong. Show me the first evidence of rigged electronic ballots, and I will reconsider, until then the presumption is that reality beats statistical models. --CostinCozianu

From www.wizbangblog.com :

Wouldn't it be great if we had done a survey of Floridians and asked who they voted for and why? If we deployed an army of pollsters to gather that data at polling places throughout Election Day that would be a good idea as well. Amazingly enough that critical piece of missing information is available in the Florida exit polling data. And fortunately for us the data is sufficiently detailed that we can estimate (using the exit poll data for Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade county) how many votes were cast for each candidate before the votes had even been counted. All this should sound painfully familiar to election junkies...

So what did voters in those 3 counties report about who they voted for?

Exit Polls - Florida Vote By Region

Miami Area (26% of the 7,446,434 statewide Bush and Kerry votes) Bush 774,429* 40% Kerry 1,142,283* 59%

Florida Vote By County

Miami-Dade Bush 329,339 46% Kerry 385,023 54%

Broward Bush 238,397 35% Kerry 443,535 64%

Palm Beach Bush 210,580 39% Kerry 325,808 61%

Total Miami Area Votes Bush 778,316 40.27% Kerry 1,154,366 59.73%

* Vote totals estimated by multiplying exit poll percentage times state total votes (Bush+Kerry) times percentage of the state total for the region.

Conclusion

In Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade counties the number of people who reported they voted for Bush matched the number of people who actually voted for Bush. In this case the exit polling data was devastatingly accurate.

Note: All data from CNN's election results page and exit poll page.

So, voters in the Miami area told exit pollsters they voted in a particular way, and the actual ballots cast agree with the pollsters' reports of what voters told them, but somehow Bush received 72000 "excess" votes? Yeah, right. This study is pure crap.

You may have seen the story about the precinct in Cuyahoga county that had less than 1,000 voters, and gave Bush almost 4,000 extra votes. It now turns out that 29 precincts in Cuyahoga County, Ohio had this problem with at least 93,136 bogus votes cast. The numbers are from the official Cuyahoga County Board of Elections website: http://boe.cuyahogacounty.us//BOE/results/currentresults1.htm#top

Bay Village - 13,710 registered voters / 18,663 ballots cast
Beachwood - 9,943 registered voters / 13,939 ballots cast
Bedford - 9,942 registered voters / 14,465 ballots cast
Bedford Heights - 8,142 registered voters / 13,512 ballots cast
Brooklyn - 8,016 registered voters / 12,303 ballots cast
Brooklyn Heights - 1,144 registered voters / 1,869 ballots cast
Chagrin Falls Village - 3,557 registered voters / 4,860 ballots cast
Cuyahoga Heights - 570 registered voters / 1,382 ballots cast
Fairview Park - 13,342 registered voters / 18,472 ballots cast
Highland Hills Village - 760 registered voters / 8,822 ballots cast
Independence - 5,735 registered voters / 6,226 ballots cast
Mayfield Village - 2,764 registered voters / 3,145 ballots cast
Middleburg Heights - 12,173 registered voters / 14,854 ballots cast
Moreland Hills Village - 2,990 registered voters / 4,616 ballots cast
North Olmstead - 25,794 registered voters / 25,887 ballots cast
Olmstead Falls - 6,538 registered voters / 7,328 ballots cast
Pepper Pike - 5,131 registered voters / 6,479 ballots cast
Rocky River - 16,600 registered voters / 20,070 ballots cast
Solon (WD6) - 2,292 registered voters / 4,300 ballots cast
South Euclid - 16,902 registered voters / 16,917 ballots cast
Strongsville (WD3) - 7,806 registered voters / 12,108 ballots cast
University Heights - 10,072 registered voters / 11,982 ballots cast
Valley View Village - 1,787 registered voters / 3,409 ballots cast
Warrensville Heights - 10,562 registered voters / 15,039 ballots cast
Woodmere Village - 558 registered voters / 8,854 ballots cast
Bedford (CSD) - 22,777 registered voters / 27,856 ballots cast
Independence (LSD) - 5,735 registered voters / 6,226 ballots cast
Orange (CSD) - 11,640 registered voters / 22,931 ballots cast
Warrensville (CSD) - 12,218 registered voters / 15,822 ballots cast

I picked Bay Village to look at just because it was first on your list. From this link (http://boe.cuyahogacounty.us//BOE/results/history/2004/EL52.txt) I get these numbers (page numbers refer to the numbers listed in the page headings of this report):

Bay Village ward registered voters (page 1) votes cast (page 165) voter turnout % (page 411) 1 3602 2233 61.99 2 3381 2164 64.00 3 3122 2030 65.02 4 3605 2288 63.47 total 13710 8715 63.57

So the votes cast number from the report differs from yours by roughly 10000. And as a double-check, multiplying the total registered voters figure by the average voter turnout percentage from the report (13710 x .6357) gives the exact votes cast total from the report. So the report is internally consistent, and differs from your figures.

The figures for votes cast of 18,663 in Bay Village are from that first page too, about halfway down, which makes me think there's a screw up in the reporting. If there were a conspiracy to throw in 10,000 extra voters in one small town, I'm sure they'd do a better job of covering it up.

: Please look at page 234 of the detail report. You'll see the entry for "Bay Village City":

 03 = BALLOTS CAST BAY VILLAGE                  18,663

: There appears to be a mismatch, in the detail report, between the entries on page 165 and the rollup on page 234. The "18,663" number is repeated on pages 235-239. Now please watch the quicktime movie at http://homepage.mac.com/duffyb/nobush/iMovieTheater268.html. Pay particular attention to the clip of Howard Dean editing the rollup field of the MSAccess database used by the "Central Tabulator". We don't know how these reports were generated. I can't tell, from inspection, whether the smaller "votes cast" on page 165 was treated as the actual count or the larger number on page 234. The larger number of page 235 was propagated to the front page. If there is a "reporting error", it appears to me to in the database report. I think this is, specifically, the apparent fraud being pursued. The electronic voting machines in Ohio are produced by "Diebold Election Systems" -- whose chairman and CEO, Walden O'Dell, promised in an August 2003 Bush campaign fund-raising letter that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes for the president." (http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1086687227191651.xml). Let's not forget that brothers Bob and Todd Urosevich were founders of Diebold Election Systems and "Election Systems & Software" (ES&S), which together count 80% of the nation's electronic votes. The point is not that fraud occurred in "one small town", it's that if you get 10,000 votes in one small town here and 10,000 votes in one small town there, pretty soon you've got real fraud. The Bush margin in Ohio was 136,000 votes. The simple analysis done here -- merely reading the detail reports of ONE county -- comes up with over 90,000 bogus votes.
: This is looking, increasingly, like IrrefutableUsaElectionFraud?.

Allow me to quote from the Cuyahoga County BOE website:

"In even-numbered years, the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections tallies absentee ballots by Congressional, House, and Senate district combinations. Because of this, the ballots cast totals for municipalities on this web page and on the summary report needs to be derived by using the following technique: For municipalities with wards, find the ballots cast total for each ward and total them. For municipalities without wards, please refer to the contest of interest on the canvass report. Absentee ballots cast totals appear separately at the end of each contest on the canvass report. If you have any questions, please contact the Board of Election’s Ballot Department Manager at (216) 443-6454."

This indicates that the 18663 figure includes ballots from Congressional, House, and Senate districts that are not necessarily within Bay Village city limits. According to the BOE, the correct way to calculate ballot cast totals for Bay Village, which has wards, is to "find the ballots cast total for each ward and total them", which is what I did in the table above. Using that procedure, Bay Village had 13710 registered voters, and 8715 ballots cast.

This looks nothing like election fraud.

Assume in Florida Bush got 100% of the vote from Republicans and 50% from independents (versus CNN polling results which were 93% and 41% respectively). In 21 counties more than 50% of Democratic votes would have to have defected to Bush to account for the county result--in four counties, at least 70% would have been required. These results irrefutably prove widespread election fraud.

From the official results of the (Florida) Palm Beach County at http://www.pbelections.org/ElectionResults/2004/General/GENERAL2004.xls :

Absentee Kerry: 58%
Absentee Bush: 42%
Absentee Total: 91,038
Kerry Absentee Margin: +16%
Election Day Kerry: 40%
Election Day Total: 404,666
Kerry Election Day Margin: -20%

There is no longer any question about what has happened. The question is what to do about it.

But,

You are assuming the absentee group accurately reflects the population's vote in general. This may not be the case. Personally, I think efforts would be better spent preventing future fraud.

I don't see how this proves IrrefutableUsaElectionFraud?. Absentee voters are typically a very different demographic from election day voters. There's a large student population in there, which tends to vote liberal (18-26 year olds were the only age group to vote Kerry as a group). There's also a large military vote, which traditionally votes Republican but could easily have been fed up with the Iraq war and wanting a new leader.

It's like pointing to the 90% of black voters who went Kerry, pointing to the 90% of Christian Fundamentalists who went Bush, and saying that proves election fraud. Different demographics will vote different ways; you can't assume a random sample when you specify certain attributes of the voters. -- JonathanTang

Um, you're saying 40% more democrats use absentee ballots than republicans? That more students use absentee ballots than older adults? That the military voted democrat en masse? The notion that pro-democratic demographics use vastly more absentee ballots than pro-republican demographics is neither born out by history nor explained by ancillary data like exit polls. It's a FuRphy. A 40% thumb on the scales for non-written ballots is a massive shift in demographics - unprecedented in all US electoral history.

No. The rabid Kerryites in pro-Democratic Palm Beach County, unable to manipulate the closely scrutinized election-day voting, have tried to fake the absentee vote. Apparently they figured giving more than 58% to Kerry would be too obviously fake.

Um, if Palm Beach County is pro-Democratic, how come it voted for Bush? And why fake the absentee vote, which is very hard to do on account of it's a lot of paper and postage, when there's a simple backdoor into the Diebold machines - the password being 1111 and the crypto method simple DES? What kind of close scrutiny was used for these outrageous optical-scan votes? And are the supposed democratic conspirators so stupid their efforts result in a 20% victory for Bush?

Well, kudos to Bush for getting things right. After all, last time he only managed to rig the election up to a tie, and this pitiful display almost kept him from getting in.