Watch Freeman lay it on the line. Ultimately, we need HCPB!!

[Stevepol]

Here's an interview on tape from San Diego where Steve Freeman presents his view of the danger inherent in electronic voting machines, particularly the DRE, the worst possible way to count votes.

This is in the ERD for Wednesday but it deserves its own posting and thread. By the way, having seen Freeman deliver his opinions in the past, it seems to me he's become a lot better at presenting the case.

Take a look at the video.

Link: http://www.kpbs.org/tv/full_focus?id=7358

[Melissa G]

1. Is there a transcript somewhere? i'm on dial up at home... n/t

[Stevepol]

3. Couldn't find one Melissa, either at the site or at Freeman's homepage.

Here's the link to Freeman's home page.

http://www.appliedresearch.us/sf/

There are some other interviews there but not the one you're asking about.

Hope you can view it on another site. The interview is well worth a look-see.

[kster]

4. Cable here, but it

still took a little longer than usual to get the page up.

[bleever]

5. Anything on YouTube can be posted to DU's Video forum.

Maybe we could get him to put these on YouTube, so we could send them around more widely.

[Melissa G]

6. Thanks, guys ..It's okay I have DSL at work. I can catch it tomorrow

I'll ask Steve for a transcript if he has it and post it. Just wanted to see the video before i asked him for the script.
Hugs,
mg

[bleever]

8. No,

I meant that Steve should post it on YouTube. It'd be just as easy as sending a transcript to you, and we could all link to it.

He might need help with the procedure, but it would be so worth it.

[Melissa G]

10. I'll ask him to do it

I just watched the clip and it is well worth spreading around!

[kster]

2. Hand Counted Paper Ballots

The Man is a genius!!!! :thumbsup:


K&R

[Melissa G]

7. BTW...Freeman has an Election Reform Google group .

If any of my ERD buds around here would like an invite to join just PM me.
Here is the link to check it out...
http://groups.google.com/group/ElectionIntegrity?hl=en

[In Truth We Trust]

9. Hand Counted Paper Ballots! Nothing more and Nothing less! k&r Yahoo!!

[Febble]

11. He may have become better at making his case

but he has still failed to recognise the glaring problems with his own analysis.

First: yes, DREs offer the potential for "wholesale" rather than "retail" fraud. But there is no evidence in the exit poll data that this potential was realised in the 2004 election. If it had been, exit poll discrepancies would have been substantially greater (more "wholesale") in DRE precincts than in precincts using other technology. This was not the case. Exit poll discrepancies were greatest in lever precincts, followed by punchcard precincts. This is worrying. It suggests that technology may affect whether your vote is counted or not. It is an argument for urgent reform of the US election process. It is not an argument for getting rid of DREs per se. What is an argument for getting rid of DREs is that they are unreliable, corruptible and unauditable. Bringing the exit polls evidence into the argument is in danger of offering a convenient excuse for replacing levers and punchcards with DREs, not the reverse. If he wants to argue against DREs (as he should) he should keep quiet about the exit polls. They don't help his case.

Second: his argument about "participation rates" in the exit polls simply does not hold water. I don't know if he understands this, and ignores it, or has simply not understood it, but it's not for want of having the problems with his argument pointed out to him.

Firstly, "participation rates" are NOT the same as "response rates". Exit poll discrepancies WERE greater where participation rates were low; they were NOT greater where response rates were low. This is because one factor in participation rates is the rate at which voters were sampled. Where only a small proportion of voters were sampled the exit poll discrepancy was higher. This strongly suggests that selection bias (not response bias) may have been a contributory factor to the exit poll discrepancies.

Secondly, even IF it were the case that response bias was a factor in the exit poll discrepancies (for which the evidence is only slight), it doesn't matter what the overall response rate was. What matters is the relative response rates. Therefore even if it were the case that response rates had been significantly higher in Bush precincts (in fact there was no statistically significant relationship between the proportion of Bush voters in a precinct and the response rate), it would not make Freeman's case. It wouldn't matter whether the Kerry:Bush response rates in a precinct were 60%:60% or 15%:15% - there would still be no response bias. Nor would it matter whether the response rates were 50% and 75% or 10% and 15% - there would still be response bias.

The fallacy in Freeman's argument is known as the "ecological fallacy" and I think the ER movement deserves better.

[L. Coyote]

12. Tucson Fri. Feb. 23, 6:30, appearance details.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 6:30-9PM
PLUMBERS AND STEAMFITTERS UNION HALL
2475 E. WATER ST.
HOSTS: Antigone Books & Pima County Democratic Party
http://dfatucson.blogspot.com/2007/02/steven-f-freeman-will-speak-in-tucson.html

On the afternoon of Election Day 2004, the world was abuzz with the news: Exit polls indicated that John Kerry would win the election and become the next president of the United States. That proved not to be the case. According to the official count-that is the number of votes tallied, not necessarily the number of votes cast-George W. Bush beat Kerry by a margin of three million votes. The exit polls however had predicted a margin of victory for Kerry of five million votes. In every "battleground" state across the nation the final tally swung clearly beyond the exit poll's margin of error to favor the president. How can one explain this eight-million-vote discrepancy between the Election Day exit polls and the official count? Either the exit poll data was wrong or the official count was wrong. Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? analyzes the exit poll data and looks at documented examples of conventional vote suppression and outright vote fraud. It investigates the possibility that enough election fraud occurred to determine the outcome of the presidential race. And it asks the question why neither the government, nor the Democratic Party, nor any major media organization did their own investigation.

Steve Freeman has a PhD in organization studies from MIT's Sloan School of Management. He is a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Organizational Dynamics, where he teaches research methods and survey design (a domain that includes polling). He has received four national awards for best research paper of the year--on four different topics in three different fields.

[kster]

13. kick..nt