I AM a voter file expert and have ACTUALLY looked for Mickey Mouse in my county voter file before.

[ddeclue]

I have actually written database queries to test for voter file flaws in the Orange County voter file and yes there are some fictitious names there but they were all clearly placed there by the Supervisor of Elections NOT ACORN and use the SOE office address for these voter registrations. I have a test which compares the voter file to a huge list of common famous and fictitious names and flags any matches. I can do this against the entire state's voter files for all 67 counties if I am willing to spend enough effort on it. Perhaps I need to do this and publicize it.

Here is what I wrote to CNN regarding their ACORN/Obama conflation hatchet job on The Situation Room:


Your hatchet job conflating Barack Obama with ACORN is preposterously misleading.

Obama's work for ACORN was in his role as an ATTORNEY, not as a politican and it was 13 years ago, not too long after John McCain was being reprimanded by the Senate Ethics Committee for his role in the Keating Five Scandal.

There was nothing untoward about this work for ACORN in the distant past yet you brought it up as though there was collusion in some nefarious scheme between them.

ACORN fires and reports anyone who submits fraudulent voter registrations - yet instead of treating ACORN like the victim you are treating them like a co-conspirator. Would you accuse a department store who reports a shoplifter to the cops of being a co-conspirator?

As for all the hyperbole about registering "Mickey Mouse" to vote, this hardly ever happens.

I know because I am a database programmer who works as a volunteer for various Democratic Parties here in Orange County which DOES have an ACORN chapter - yet the only fictitious voters (ROAD RUNNER, MS VOTER, WALDO, and a few others) I have ever found have been put there by the Supervisor of Elections Office and have registration addresses at the SOE office.

I actually have written routines to identify fictitious and famous name voters and numerous other anomalies in the voter database in my county and yes such anomalies do exist but it is clear that these are all the fault of the Supervisor's office.

I can run this for all 67 counties in Florida if you like to identify just exactly how many there are but it seems clear that they are few and far between based on 530,000 voters out of a total of 12 million state wide.

Stop acting as a megaphone for right wing propaganda talking points and start doing actual independent investigation with actual voter file experts like me.

Disgusted,

Douglas J. De Clue
Orlando, FL

[Midlodemocrat]

1. It would seem to me, and I don't know a ton about it

that the registration of said Mickey Mouse isn't the issue. All that did was chew up resources. Mickey Mouse certainly isn't going to show up to vote.

I guess I just don't get all the hullabaloo about it. It seems silly to me.

[ddeclue]

4. Yeah but if I can demonstrate just how rare this is I can put the lie to the hyperbole being put out

by uncritical reporters who are just parroting the R-W propagandist talking heads.

Doug D.

[csziggy]

10. The hullabaloo is to intimidate people who were registered by ACORN

Or other organizations. New voters that are worried that their vote will be challenged are less likely to vote. And the GOP does not want all those new voters to show up and vote - they don't want them registered in the first place since new registration overwhelmingly are Democratic voters.

[ddeclue]

13. Of COURSE - ACORN is a Republican candidate's worst nightmare

because they register poor people to vote and are highly efficient at it and do it door to door. If the Democratic Party and it's candidates were 50% as good, we'd win just about every race.

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

[mike_c]

2. recommended!

Nice post.

[crispini]

3. You rock. nt

[DoctorMyEyes]

5. Good letter!

It wouldn't be as easy for them to do their job as it is to read right wing talking points, but I'm glad you suggested it to them anyway.

Who knows - maybe someone over there will get bored or ambitious enough to actually go off in search of some truth for the people.

[rosesaylavee]

6. Thank you!

:kick:

[foo_bar]

7. no Mickey Mouse in Orlando FL? that's a story!

You'd think people would actually be named "Mickey Mouse" nowadays, like if they were conceived on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.

[Generic Other]

You are assuming CNN can be swayed by the facts

Thanks for working so hard to root out election fraud is a state that made an artform of it. CNN is lucky to have locals supplying this info to them. Save their lazy ass staff from doing any real investigative reporting.

[PetrusMonsFormicarum]

8. Recommended!

Good job DD!

What I don't understand is the hue and cry over voter registrations. I mean, if a thousand nonexistent individuals are suddenly registered voters, it doesn't mean that an extra thousand votes are going to be cast, right?

[ddeclue]

12. The REAL problem in my mind at least is double registered voters

There are over 200 in Orange County Florida last time I checked. Theoretically each of these people can vote twice and have valid ID's for both registrations!

This only accounts for double registrations WITHIN the county, not inter county or inter state double registrations.

I theoretically could check for inter-county with the data at my disposal but would need a very powerful PC to run the match because it would take a long time. Essentially it is a "GROUP BY" query where I am looking for cases where two or more registrations match exactly with the name and birthdate. The odds are almost certain that these matches are double registers for almost everyone except for a very few common names like JOHN SMITH but even then the birthdates overlapping make even the odds of two JOHN SMITHS having the exact same birthday very low unless they are actually the same person.

The new Florida Voter ID law will do NOTHING to prevent double registers from double voting.

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

[rucky]

9. Please blast this letter to more media!

Does anybody have the contact list handy?

[The Backlash Cometh]

11. I'm very impressed.

[nashville_brook]

14. This is such an incredibly serious charge, that not-coming forward with evidence could do more harm

than good. Blasting letters off to Wolf Blitzer making outrageous allegations and claiming to be an expert has the ring of "old man yells at cloud."

Are you saying the Democrat running for re-election as Orange County, Florida Supervisor of Elections -- Bill Cowles -- is committing "voter fraud?" And you can provide evidence to hold up your claim that this person is engaged in serious (and somewhat non-sensical) voter registration fraud?

Are you speculating on what he intends to do with those registrations? Do you imagine him hording ballots and filling them out between now and election day ("here's Daffy Duck's ballot... next up, Amanda Hugginkiss"). Or are you saying that he's just "goofing around."

Are you postulating a conspiracy or merely calling out Cowles? Is Bill Cowles (himself) inserting bogus names into the voter rolls to some end, such as providing cover for Republican charges of fraud? If so, he needs to go.

What is your experience of Cowles, given all your previous experience with elections in Orange County? Is he corrupt or just a moron?

Considering that Cowles is already in the national news for sending bogus "you're not registered" letters to newly-registered Orlando voters, you might actually be called to account for this. Hope it's all in order.

[ddeclue]

15. NO- I'm not accusing Bill Cowles of voter fraud

but YES I can provide evidence that there are fake voter names in the voter file. They've been there for years.

Bill is actually a decent hardworking fellow and a strong Democrat and he is someone I know personally although not a close friend.

Most likely these were put in there by SOE employees goofing around or as a way of "salting the data" so that if someone used it for non-legitimat purposes (outside of politics) in a mailer the mail pieces would come back to the Supervisor's office and they'd get caught.

There are also other flaws in the voter file like bad birthdays and reg dates and double registers that I've identified. They are NOT unique to Orange County FL and such flaws exist in just about every large gov't database which is why the No Fly List is such a preposterous concept.

The most serious problem is the double registers because those people ACTUALLY COULD double vote and theoretically get away with it.

Doug D.

[nashville_brook]

19. thanks for the clarification -- do SOEs routinely "salt the data"? is that like "caging"?

[ddeclue]

20. No

salting the data is kind of like adding an "easter egg" to your software to find out when someone has misappropriated it. In Florida the voter records are public records but you can't use them to sell Amway and Avon. Salting=booby trapping for those that misuse.

[progressive_realist]

16. I think test data is being referred to.

It is not uncommon for owners of large database systems to insert some obviously fake data items, used for testing results. For example, if you wrote a query to identify duplicate name/birth-date combinations and the results came up blank, you wouldn't know if the database contained no duplicates or if the query was malformed. If you have fake data that you know meets the criteria, you know the query should contain at least those. If it returns no results, you know the query is bad.

In the case of the Supervisor of Elections putting in these fake names, the ballots are mailed right back to the Supervisor of Elections to be discarded. But they can check these off as a means of sampling to verify that the entire expected run of ballots was successfully printed and mailed. If they don't show up, something obviously went wrong with the process and needs to be investigated and fixed.

So nothing untoward is suggested here, I don't think.

[ddeclue]

17. It's not supposed to be released to the public as voter data.

when we are talking about Road Runner or Waldo and I'm of the opinion that this is falsifying a public record and shouldn't be allowed to be released outside the building but it has been for years. This is NOT necessary to validate data for "testing".

Far more serious though: The dupes truly are a serious issue and are NOT addressed to the SOE. These are actual voters at REAL street addresses who have re-registered at some point (such as when moving or changing parties) and their first registrations were never removed from the system. This happens ACROSS state lines as well.

There are also obviously dead people who are 100+ years old who haven't voted in 4 years in the system as well. The oldest is 113 years old.

Doug D.

[Kansas Wyatt]

18. It's a preemptive fight they want to take on when Obama wins.

They know he is going to win, and they know he is going to win big. They are trying to muddy the waters and piss on the Democratic parade, by pushing doubt about whether he won or by how much. That way, they feel justified by bitching, whining, and screaming about everything and anything he tries to do, along with obstructing everything Obama and the Democrats try to do, because they will claim that half the country agrees with them.

They will also take their bogus charges as justification to start investigating everything about Obama and all of his relationships with anyone. Before Obama is even sworn in, they will be trying to shove a microscope so far up his ass, in an attempt to tie his hands from getting anything done. And the Corporate Media will parrot everything they say, non-stop, so that it becomes to most important crisis for the next four years. These fuckers have NO morals and are pansy ass little crybabies, who upset the game board when they lose.

Hopefully the Democrats will gain enough seats, so that they can tell the crybaby republicans to sit down and shut the fuck up.

[nashville_brook]

21. they're laying the groundwork for a legal war -- there was a woman in the breakroom

where i work talking this up 3 whole weeks ago. she said that Obama "had little black boys out there signing up people in cemeteries." i'm not making that up -- and she wasn't a flyweight clerk. she's a muckety muck in the company i work for. it was revolting.

[Waiting For Everyman]

22. K&R Very interesting post on this.

And an excellent letter. Way to go!