Graph of Florida by County by Voting Machine - Change from 2000 to 2004

[lostnfound]

How could this happen to my beautiful homestate? How can a 50-50 state in 2000 become "47-53" in 2004? Especially given disapproval ratings, etc. Which counties betrayed us, I pondered...or more to the point, which voting machines betrayed us.

So I created this graph.



And this one, which zeroes in on the Sequoia machines, since the trend on those 4 counties seemed particularly obvious.



Conclusion: Tampered or malfunctioning machines handed Bush a victory in Florida.

[Bozos for Bush]

1. Great post, lostnfound - terrific graphic!

A little hard to understand at first, but a solid analysis.

All those circles above the line represent county totals above the expected result, while Miami-Dade clearly lagged.

On election day when the votes starting coming in, I compared county-by-county results with 2000, immediately saw that something was very wrong, and started a thread warning people. Most responders told me not to worry, Dade numbers had not started coming in yet, etc.

Your graphic clearly illustrates what I was seeing all over the place that day. Thank you for putting it into a visual format that I do not have the skill for.

Nominated.

John

[lostnfound]

3. Thank you.

Someone suggested canvassing one of the small counties, at least the registered Democrats, and asking if they voted and for whom.

They've stolen it again, this time by more than a few hundred.

[Eloriel]

10. John -- do you have a link to your thread?

I'd love to have it. Thanks.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Thanks for the hard work behind this graphic!

[T Roosevelt]

4. Where did you get the data for this?

And do the circles represent relatitve sizes of the counties?

[lostnfound]

6. The florida election site.

The circles represent relative sizes of total vote count in this election.

[Eloriel]

11. If you get a chance, why not add that to your graphs

Something like "Data from FL Election whatever, link"

[Wabbajack]

5. Duh

I'm kinda slow and have no idea what this means.

[lostnfound]

9. I'll try in English. How can they be that consistent?

Make a mental picture of 4 groups of people: 3 have 450,000 and one has 60,000. The small one is mostly Republican and rural, 2 of the others are 50-50, and 1 is mostly Democrat.

Add more people (population growth), get them registered, and you get more votes. Raise overall election interest and you get more to the polls...probably in the same proportions that they voted in the last time. (Or perhaps more Ds...)

But to get all four, very different, counties to increase votes for one party but not the other? If the D's increased votes by 5%, the R's did 15%..if the D's got 20% more votes than in the last election, the R's got 30% more. How? Rural or urban didn't matter. Mostly Democrat or mostly Republican didn't matter.

Registered Republicans are flat or even negative in 2 of these counties. Nonetheless, Bush picked up 38,000 and 21,000 extra votes in these counties, and 63,000 from a third county where Republican registrations are up by 34,000.

The one thing that these 4 counties have in common is that the increase in votes for Bush was 9-12% more than the increase in votes for Kerry. As if demographics didn't matter at all. And one other thing in common is that they all use the same voting machines.

[lostnfound]

7. Please check out this updated thread narrowing in on Sequoia.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=2619207&mesg_id=2619207

[shelley806]

8. Thank you so much for this post...I tried to understand it early this am

and gave up before I went to bed! It looks like there is an abnormal growth scew for B*, but in those counties with Sequoia voting machines, not Diebold. Or does it show scew across the board, for all voting machine types? A bit more of an explanation would be appreciated for the dummies...

I'm posting your thread on another thread by a PHD statistician requesting raw data. I'll get back to you with that link! Thank you!

Edited for link where I posted yours:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=26421#

[T Roosevelt]

12. Another interesting thing about this

to reinterpret the data,

Of the 52 optical scan counties

29 counties had more registered Dems than Reps, but more votes for * than Kerry (1 county was opposite this, but the registered Reps was very close to Dems)

Of the 15 touch screen counties

1 county had more registered Dems than Reps, but more votes for * than Kerry (and none opposite)

Hmmm...