READ: Analysis of Undervotes in New Mexico’s 2004 Presidential Ballots

[L. Coyote]

Statistical analysis at USCountVotes. Voting machine correlation found:

"We find a strong association between election day undervotes and pushbutton DRE voting machines. The average undervote in precincts where pushbutton DRE voting machines were used was 3.5%, compared to less than 1% in precincts that used scanned paper ballots.

Precincts that used DRE voting machines were significantly more likely to record undervotes than precincts that used Optical scan machines, and of the two types of DRE machines, Push button machines were more likely to record undervotes than Touch screen machines."

http://uscountvotes.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=70&Itemid=63

[L. Coyote]

1. kick n/t

[Sodium Pentothal]

2. kick n/t

[thanatonautos]

3. Interesting: of 89 counties with 10% or greater undervote rate ...

all but one used DREs with push button entry, and had
average (doesn't say whether it's mean, median or mode)
minority population of 80%.

Optical scanned paper ballots have lower undervote rate
than either touch screen or push button DRE's.

I thought these damn machines were supposed to be
better than mark sense ballots. What's going on here?

[L. Coyote]

4. And why does this minority population correlation appear elsewhere also

irrespective of the type of voting machine. In Cuyahoga County, with punch card machines, again the non-vote percentages are highest in minority areas. Could it be that this only happens in precincte with near 90% Kerry support? It seems so.

Note the level of Bush support in the precincts with a z-score of over 1.0 (one standard deviation above the mean of 1.80%), that is, those with over 3.6% non-votes:



Whose votes are not being counted (or switched) here? John Kerry!

This subset of Cuyahoga precincts has 27.7% of the county non-votes, but only 11% of the county voters. It is 1.2% of the Ohio vote.

[thanatonautos]

7. Is this pattern replicated on a precinct level statewide in Ohio?

It really beggars the imagination to suppose that
this is caused by voter incompetence or voter
indifference to the presidential race. There must
be some other causative factor.

Eyeballing your graph, it looks like the effect
added on the order of 3,000 votes to the Bush plurality
in Cuyahoga county alone. (There were about 670092 votes in
Cuyahoga county according to CNN, of which 11% or 73710
are in this subset of precincts. Assume that these are all
Kerry votes, use the mean 4.47% undervote rate, and
you get 3295 votes. It's clearly an overestimate,
but should give the order of magnitude.)

Is this type of data available statewide yet?

I'ld be interested in looking at it.

[Carolab]

12. This brings up a good point.

In Ohio, some counties recorded NO undervotes. This is reported on by Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips. He discussed it in reference to the "default to Bush" or "default to blank or third-party candidates" phenomenon on touch screen machines.

NO undervotes is VERY suspicious particularly in high-turnout, Democratic counties. It would appear that this may be do to the default programming, so that voters were not "allowed" not to vote for president and/or if they selected Kerry but the vote did not record for Kerry it would default to Bush, to blank or to a third-party candidate depending on how the machine was set.

[Destroy_All_Monsters]

5. Any word on Help America Recount?

I thought Help America Recount was going to announce this week that they would be spearheading a recount of New Mexico. Around a week ago, Hedda Foil posted that there would be big (even blockbuster) news to be announced this past Tuesday. I haven't heard a thing since.

Here's the link to the Help America Recount New Mexico page, filled with links that suggest there's plenty to be investigated there --

http://www.votersunite.org/info/SnohomishElectionFraudInvestigation.pdf

Also, is there any legal authority for the Greens/Libertarians to request a recount now that the results have been certified? Has this moved to a situation where all recounts will be private initiatives that will have to entirely rely on private funding?

[L. Coyote]

6. The latest NM article linked here...

http://www.jqjacobs.net/bush/

Sendgood links there too!

Also, you can go to USCountVotes.org and join the NM mailing list.

[GetTheRightVote]

8. thanks for the graph, kicking it

:mad:

[Carolab]

9. Were those in Democratic precincts?

Were the undervotes supposed to be Kerry votes?

[L. Coyote]

11. They were, and they are minority precincts. It's a good read. DO IT.

[Wilms]

10. Kick for dinner.

[icehenge]

13. kick

[emlev]

14. kick