Evidence Jennings won in Sarasota Dist 13 with a fair count- stolen election

[philb]

The following analysis shows that there is strong evidence the majority of voters in Dist 13 in Sartasota, Florida
favored the Democrat Jennings in the Congressional race, and if the votes had been counted fairly Jennings was the clear winner.

The Precinct data from the Supervisor of Elections Website, http://www.srqelections.com/results/gen2006pct.htm
was compiled for each precinct under the following conservative and reasonable assumptions:

1. an undervote due to voters who chose not to vote in the Congressional race of 2.5% in all precincts
2. undervotes in each precinct over 2.5% spread to Jennings and Buchanan in the same ratio as the Jennings/Buchanan votes in the precinct

Result: adds an additional net 1275 votes to Jennings total

Conservatively, Jennings would have won in a fair count by over 800 votes.


Its my understanding that from the audit, a large majority of the voters with undervotes were Democratic voting voters and
the results of doing a similar projection, or using the data for voters who voted in the race to do a regression predicting the
vote of a voter based on voting pattern in other races would have produced a result even more favorable to Jennings.


assumption 1 is reasonable and conservative based on undervotes for absentees in Sarasota and undervotes in all balloting in neighboring Manatee County in the District 13 race. (Manatee County uses opti-scan which is reliable and verifiable) likewise in other top level races in Sarasota and close Congressional races in Florida. See previous threads.

assumption 2 is also reasonable, and likely not as favorable to Jennings as the actual case based on most or all reports by voters
experiencing problems related to Jennings votes disappearing, and indications from the audit that most voters with undervotes were Democratic.

[EST]

1. Thanks.

Even though it is something I had pretty well doped out, it sure is nice to have it laid out so clearly.

[FogerRox]

2. I did nearly the same thing, based on the Sarasota Cnty results

Jennings won in the county by IIRC 53% to 47%, came out with about 800 votes too.

[philb]

3. Revision: Jennings net = 1103 under these assumptions ; adjustment

due to fact (Jennings votes + Buchanan votes) used in calculating voter intended undervotes rather than
(Jennings votes + Buchanan votes + undervotes) in the 2.5% assumption (used total votes per precinct rather than total voters)

This gives a net Jennings win of over 665 votes, and appears conservative since only Democratic votes were observed disappearing by
the voters and the audit determined that substantially more of the voters with undervotes were predominant Dem voters.


The spread sheet by precinct and calculations are at:
www.flcv.com/d13panal.html


the previous calculations would result in assuming lower than 2.5% intentional undervotes, which might be reasonable but the
recalculated results are more conservative.

[Imagevision]

4. Obviuously we can't have fair & honest elections without verification!!

[philb]

5. This study needs to be sent to everyone's CongressPerson

though this case makes it clear that there was an extremely small chance that Buchanan would have won in a fair
count, a similar analysis including the known (to some) audit results makes the case even stronger.
It is clear that there is virtually no chance that Buchanan was prefered by the majority of voters who tried to vote.

As was the case in 2000 in Florida when Bush was declared the winner over Gore in a race where a big majority of
the legal voters prefered Gore, as was later documented by Media group followup.

There is no chance that 18,000 voters chose not to vote in Sarasota in the most hotly contested race in that area.
And its clear that the majority of voters prefered Jennings.
The Judge's decision is clearly ridicilous, not based on valid evidence or legal precedance.
What were the real reasons?

[daverts]

6. NC iVotronic election with undervote AND paper trail

I've put a site up that has data and analysis of a significant undervote in Mecklenburg County (Charlotte metro area) North Carolina that may have potentially affected the Larry Kissell- Robin Hayes election, which Democrat Kissell lost by 329 votes.

Scrutiny of the vote totals has revealed an unexplained undervote: a significantly higher percentage of voters than in the past declined to vote for the most prominent races such as those for US House of Representatives. Never in past years had the Congressional races been "outperformed" by downballot races such as for sheriff, county commissioner etc.... but it happened in 2006. Mecklenburg County includes parts of three Congressional districts. ALL three districts had a significantly higher undervote in Mecklenburg than they did in other counties, and all three races had a significantly higher undervote than they did in past years for the same race.

Beyond relevance to the NC-08 race, it is also relevant to the undervote in FL-13 because that election also used the ES&S iVotronic. However, unlike in Florida, the iVotronics used in Mecklenburg do have a paper trail that could provide evidence that the ES&S voting machines are not as infallible as some would suppose. During a 3% sample precinct manual recount in November, the Mecklenburg election officials did not allow independent observers to view the paper trail. Ballot tapes that added up to more Congressional votes than the machine memory cards had reported were recounted several times until they 'agreed' with the voting machine totals.

During a meeting last week with the Mecklenburg Board of Elections, they admitted that there was an unexplained undervote based on the data that is presented on our site. However, they do not believe that it is possible that machine error could have played any role in the undervote, and they did not want to allow scrutiny of precinct-specific machine tapes because they claimed that we could determine individual voter identity from the tapes because they are serial records that could be matched to voter order, a far-fetched defense that presupposes our knowing on which machine each voter voted and memorization of the voter log.

We feel that this issue needs to be given more attention asap because it has implications for two potentially machine-tainted elections. The NC-08 undervote has not gotten the attention of the FL-13 one because the numbers are not as great and the candidate conceded, but it does offer a potential source of evidence for Jennings's efforts.

Please visit the site for more details...

[OnTheOtherHand]

7. looks like the Meck NC-8 calc is off

Looks like 4.1%, not 6.4% -- because the columns aren't in the same order, the % was calculated as a % of Kissell votes, not total ballots. Still higher than in the other counties.

EDIT TO ADD: Although I don't know whether to trust the Meck turnout figures, comparison with the sheriff's race in 2006 vs. 2002 does also (tend to) support the inference of excess House undervotes in 2006. Hard to say how many. If we split the difference between undervote rates in Cabarrus and Cumberland counties, maybe up to half of them (possibly more on different assumptions) -- 350 or so. Unlike FL-13, the undervote rate doesn't appear to be correlated with the % Democratic (actually the slope is slightly downward), but of course Kissell won by more than 2:1 in Meck, so we might guess that he would win the excess undervotes by a similar proportion. Probably not enough to reverse the outcome, but it does leave you scratching your head.

[daverts]

8. good call

Thanks for lending a hand, Hand- I've updated the site accordingly. The 8th district data is now consistent with the rest of the county undervote, which strengthens the hypothesis that there is something unique to Mecklenburg County that accounts for the undervote across 3 districts. Hmmm, what could it be?

Until we look at the paper and/or the code, we'll never know.

[BeFree]

9. Welcome to the DU ER, daverts

What you are doing is important. This type of investigation is what they fear the most. Hopefully you can get some local people to stand with you as it moves forward.

It becomes clearer and clearer that at least another 20 house seats were stolen in 2006 and it is work like your's that will end the abuse of our votes.

There is in this forum a member who I believe works NC elections. If that person checks in soon surely they will be able to be of assistance. Come to think of it they even posted a request for any Meck county recount info in the NC forum. You may want to check it out.

Again, welcome to DU and the ER, and Happy Hunting!