Voting errors -at least a dozen states-"stat proof doesn't stand scrutiny

[papau]

at least a dozen states, each involving from scores of ballots to as many as 12,000 votes


http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/articles/2004/12/01/voting_errors_tallied_nationwide/



Voting errors tallied nationwide
By Brian C. Mooney, Globe Staff | December 1, 2004

More than 4,000 votes vanished without a trace into a computer's overloaded memory in one North Carolina county, and about a hundred paper ballots were thrown out by mistake in another. In Texas, a county needed help from a laboratory in Canada to unlock the memory of a touch-screen machine and unearth five dozen votes.

In other places, machine undercounting or overcounting of votes was a problem. Several thousand votes were mistakenly double-counted in North Carolina, Ohio, Nebraska, and Washington state. Some votes in other areas were at first credited to the wrong candidates, with one Indiana county, by some quirk, misallocating several hundred votes for Democrats to Libertarians. In Florida, some machines temporarily indicated votes intended for challenger John F. Kerry were for President Bush, and vice versa.

In the month since the election, serious instances of voting machine problems or human errors in ballot counts have been documented in at least a dozen states, each involving from scores of ballots to as many as 12,000 votes, as in a North Carolina county. On Election Day, or in later reconciling tallies of ballots and voters, local officials discovered problems and corrected final counts. In some cases, the changes altered the outcomes of local races. But in North Carolina, the problems were so serious that the state may hold a rare second vote, redoing a contest for state agriculture commissioner decided by fewer votes than the number of ballots lost.

After the disputed vote in Florida four years ago, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 and authorized $4 billion so states could create central computerized voter lists and replace outdated voting systems such as punchcards by 2006. But many states have not completed the overhaul, and this year's election unearthed enough problems -- both with older technologies and newer electronic touch-screens -- that two federal agencies plan unprecedented nationwide inquiries. The investigations by the Government Accountability Office and US Election Assistance Commission will begin early next year and be completed by mid-2005, at the earliest.

In addition, minor presidential candidates requested recounts in four states -- a partial one completed yesterday in New Hampshire, and statewide in Ohio, New Mexico, and Nevada.

None of the recounts or inquiries is expected to affect the results of the presidential election, which Bush won by more than 3.3 million votes.

Those who believe that either or both of the past two presidential elections were manipulated by a vague conspiracy to elect Bush have done statistical analyses of voting patterns in Florida and argued that the voting discrepancies were much larger and systemic, but their studies have not stood up to scrutiny from academics and other analysts.<snip>

[AllegroRondo]

1. Funny how battleground states saw the most irregularities

FL, OH, NM, PA, CO

[papau]

2. And why does Boston Globe Stat review end with Dixiecrat error?

The best math is showing theft across the country

but they knock down the reports based on one analysis of Florida - and that dixiecrat Dem registration review analysis may have found something - just not as big a deal as originally suggested,

[ZRB]

3. Why the hell

When discussing the recounts, do these morons in the press always say that Bush "won' the election by three million votes? Anyone with half a fucking brain knows that the states decide this election, not the bloody popular vote.

Kerry needs to find about 65,000 flipped votes in Ohio, not 3 million. Bloody hell!

[skids]

4. I think we should attack the popular vote, too

You can say easily that the margin is not 3.3 million. Irregularities favoring Bush are being taken out of state totals. Maybe someone needs to start gathering a list of those irregularities that have been acknowleged and see how much they are going to knock off Bush's final "mandate".

When people see that corrections due to machine errors that HAVE been discovered make a big dent in the 3.3 million figure, like bringing it down below 3 million, then they might start to think a bit more about why the errors all favored Bush.