Florida residents relieved that the presidential election passed without a major meltdown may need to think twice, according to statistics researchers from the University of California at Berkeley.
A team from the school's Survey Research Center analyzed Florida returns and found "anomalies" in several heavily Democratic counties using touch-screen voting machines where President Bush received more votes than their statistical model predicted.
<snip>
Applying statistical models to the Florida returns, they found Bush may have received from 130,000 to 260,000 more votes than their models predicted he should have, based on demographic information and past voting history.
The surprising Bush tally was most notable in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, longtime Democratic bastions that also used touch-screen voting machines for the first time in a national election.
<snip>
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/epaper/2004/11/19/a6a_evote_1119.html