Florida and optical scan counties.

[teach1st]

I don't know if this has been mentioned yet. I haven't followed along this afternoon. The Florida optical scan counties have been mentioned here and elsewhere as the pecentage of change expected (based on voter registration in 2004) hasn't matched the actual votes.

http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm

But I've been to most of the counties in question. The actual votes look right based on talking with people who live there.

Anyway, I compared selected OpScan counties with their 2000 election results. I selected a few counties with the highest pecentage of change from expected. The percentages between 2000 and 2004 don't seem to indicate much in the way of fraud, especially given the percentage drop in Democratic registration in each county from 2000 to 2004.

http://ustogether.org/election04/FL2000.htm

2004 Baker County, FL (OpScan) had 9,955 total votes, 7,738 for Bush (78%).
Baker County is 70% registered Democratic in 2004.
2000 Baker County, FL (OpScan) had 8,154 total votes, 5,610 for Bush (69%).
Baker County is 83% registered Democratic in 2000.
2000 to 2004 change for Bush: 9%

2004 Calhoun County, FL (OpScan) had 5,961 total votes, 3,780 for Bush (63%).
Calhoun County is 82% registered Democratic in 2004.
2000 Calhoun County, FL (OpScan) had 5,174 total votes, 2,873 for Bush (56%).
Calhoun County is 88% registered Democratic in 2000.
2000 to 2004 change for Bush: 8%

2004 Dixie County, FL (OpScan) had 6440 total votes, 4,433 for Bush (69%).
Dixie County is 78% registered Democratic in 2004.
2000 Dixie County, FL (OpScan) had 4,666 total votes, 2,697 for Bush (58%).
Dixie County is 86% registered Democratic in 2000.
2000 to 2004 change for Bush: 11%

2004 Franklin County, FL (OpScan) had 5,930 total votes, 3,742 for Bush (59%).
Franklin County is 78% registered Democratic in 2004.
2000 Franklin County, FL (OpScan) had 4,644 total votes, 2,454 for Bush (52%).
Franklin County is 81% registered Democratic in 2000.
2000 to 2004 change for Bush: 6%

2004 Hamilton County, FL (OpScan) had 5,065 total votes, 2,786 for Bush (55%).
Hamilton County is 79% registered Democratic in 2004.
2000 Hamilton County, FL (OpScan) had 3,964 total votes, 2,146 for Bush (54%).
Hamilton County is 87% registered Democratic in 2000.
2000 to 2004 change for Bush: <1%

2004 Lafayette County, FL (OpScan) had 3,325 total votes, 2,460 for Bush (74%).
Lafayette County is 83% registered Democratic in 2004.
2000 Lafayette County, FL (OpScan) had 2,505 total votes, 1,670 for Bush. (67%)
Lafayette County is 90% registered Democratic in 2000.
2000 to 2004 change for Bush: 7%

[Nicholas_J]

1. Yes this is what I have been talking about

In a handfull of counties, various prblems were found with the op[tical scan machines, anything form the analog vote tallying rolers simply not turning over whan someone voted for Kerry, even though the screen indicated that the voter had voted, to the rollers actually moving BACKWARDS, when a vote was case for Kerry, removing a democratic vote from the tally. More and morev it looks like the errors that they insisted were anomalies limited to one or two precincts, were stateside and almost universal. It would not talke more than one machine to make similar errors in only a third of so of the precincts to create the situation in which Bush won over Kerry. As I have noted, Democrats had a 360,000 voter lead in registered voters in the state, and I did a lot of phone bnking to Democrats in Duval county. I contacted hundreds of registered Democrats over several weeks, and we did our own polling to determing how strinlgy or not strongle these voters supported Kerry and i was stunned to have never found a democratic voter who was going to vote for Bush, and on the scale of 1-5 where 5 is strongly leaning Kerry, 3 means undecided, and 1 means they dont want to answer, I only recieved ONE undecided, and one do not want to answer, and over 500 strongly leaning towards Kerry answers. I was very surprised because other polls indicated that we should have expeted at least ten percent of Democratic voters stating that they were not going to vote for Kerry. This in a heavily Republican county. I cannot imagine many Democrats in hevily Democratic smaller counties voting for Bush to the degree that the results you posted state. This makes it even more obvious that the optical scqan machines shoud be examined for the sam kinds of errors noted in Dade and Broward.

[BOHICA06]

2. These are Dixiecrat Counties

...yep they're still out there. Each has a white majority and they are rural and fundemental.

Numbers are great, but you have to know the political geography too.

See the discussion here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2624415

[teach1st]

3. Thanks for the link N/T

[Faun Otter]

4. Hardee is anomalous

I agree that there are some clots of panhandle and armpit counties that swung their sparse populations to Bush Minor. If you measure the ratio between Rep and Dem votes in 2000 and again in 2004 and then express the swing as a percentage, you can build a gradient map of Florida. I did this and there is a reasonable gradation to much of the state with some islands of sanity that correspond to major conurbations and especially to universities (Alachua and Orange)

The clumps around Holmes. Washington and another around Union, Baker, Gilchrist, Dixie each have adjoining counties that 'blend' into the higher swing regions.

There is a county that sticks out like John Ashcroft at one of Tony Scalia's orgies ---
Hardee county. I've driven through it and never noticed it being much different from the surrounding counties of Polk, Desoto, Manatee, Highlands and the one step away county of Glades. Obviously it isn't like Hillsborough or Sarasota.

Republican votes went up 34% and Democratic votes fell 8.2% between 2000 and 2004.
Registrations for the county FELL from 10,586 to 10,399
The ratio between Rep and Dem votes swung from 1.78 to 2.53, a change of 46.1%.

Here are figures for the counties I mentioned. Swing percentage:
Polk 19.6%
Manatee 12.6%
Desoto 10%
Glades 11.3%
Highlands 18.1%

For comparison, here is the demographically different county on one corner of Hardee -
Hillsborough 7.5%

However - even if Hardee was gamed to the maximum, they only had 10,000 votes. That is a tiny fraction of the votes lost by suppressing Democratic voters in the mega-counties such as Broward.

The BIG fraud was suppression of Democratic turn out in big counties and some messing with the rural vote in at least Hardee and possibly some other counties.

Faun

[RhodaGrits]

5. Are the pre-OpScan results available (1996?)

The results were questionable in 2000 too.

[Eloriel]

6. One problem

Your reliance on 2000 votes is flawed, based on an assumption (not valid) that 2000 FL vote results could not have been fraudulent. And we all know that's not the case.

We NOW know that the optical scan machines are as vulnerable and fraud-ready as touchscreens; we now know that they use some of the same software as the touchscreen systems; we now know we can't trust ANY of them, ever.

Remember how absolutely desperate Baker and others were to make SURE there were no recounts? I am convinced that in addition to not wanting Gore to actually win, they were deathly afraid that the REAL problems would be revealed: the optical scan machines, NOT hanging and pregnant chads. The chads were a great diversion.

[Eloriel]

7. One other thing --

those increases for Bush this year are in the astronomical range for this type of thing. +8%? +11%? Astronomical.

[jmc777]

12. I agree with everything you said. n/t

[newyawker99]

15. Hi jmc777!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[jmc777]

16. Hi!

:hi:

[Chili]

8. I don't know if this helps at all, but...

...here are the Florida presidential election results for 1996. The reason it's inconclusive is that Perot's figures make it impossible to compare to either 2000 or 2004. And it doesn't seem practical to go back even further - heck, he was on the 1992 ballot too.

However, I will concede that these counties with more than 50% registered Democrats are Dixiecrat counties, no doubt about it. But that doesn't necessarily discount fraud.

The people who would know more than anyone are the phone-bankers and canvassers for Florida. Are there any here on the board? Since I phone-banked here in Ohio, I was confident that Kerry would take Cuyahoga county easily. What were the phone-banking results in these counties? If Kerry had expected to lose these counties, wouldn't they have been reflected in their internal polling? They were so confident, it still doesn't make sense.

Here's the link: http://election.dos.state.fl.us/elections/resultsarchive/Index.asp?ElectionDate=11/5/96&DATAMODE=

[EndElectoral]

13. 96 Results for Dixie

Well, Clinton carried Dixie in 1996 by 55.3% to 44.6% Dole. This factors in all votes for Clinton and Dole, and excludes Perot's votes because we don't know which way they would have gone in a two horse race.

According to the Fisher article, 1,404 voters voted in Dixie who were not registered to vote.

I also beleieve the 2000 statistics for Dixie were not examined. Clinton also took Dixie county in 1992. Dixie swung strongly to Bush in 2000.

The question is was any canvassing done of Dixie after the 2000 election, or this one to understand WHY the switch? These guys did not change party, just voting trends.

Was it the Lewinsky scandal? The love of GW Bush, or Gore and Kerry failed to excite. If so, why did they not change party affiliation?

Well, I decided to look at the 2000 US Senate seat in Florida and Dixie County voting and compare it to the Bush-Gore voting:

Dixie County (2000)

Bush-(R) 2,697

Gore-(D) 1,826

Senate Race for Florida 2000

McCollum -(R) 2,007

Nelson -(D) 2,450

So, according to the 2000 election between Senate and President about 625 voters of Nelson crossed over and voted for Bush OR about 25% of Bush's total... This didn't happen in 96, and they didn't switch parties over the US Senate race. I find this odd. Hs there never been follow up canvassing of the reasons for this?

[ParanoidPat]

17. The people who would know best are the ones who cast the votes.......

.......in the election. :)

The total number of voters is fairly small in some of these counties. If we could get a copy of the poll sign in books and send a targeted questionnaire to everyone who cast a vote in the county asking who they voted for, what their experience at the polls was like and if they would be willing to swear an affidavit to that effect, we might have something.

[peacetalksforall]

9. I can't get into the mind of 78 to 86 % of voters registering Democratic,

then voting Bush 69 to 58 % as is shown for Dixie. The first number is 2004; the second one is 2000. Votes for 2000 can't be trusted, right?

Aside from that, why would such a high number of people go through an act of registering Dem when they vote Repub - Bush people feel tainted by anything Dem in most rural places and Ocala isn't that big of a city to have warm fuzzies for Dems to the point of registering Dem.

Do they always want to vote Dem for Sheriff and they keep losing Sheriffs, so they just register Dem for convenience?

Perhaps I'm not reading the above words and numbers accurately.

[teach1st]

10. They've always been Democrats..

..and their daddies and their daddies' daddies were Democrats and they're not about to change now. The white Dixiecrats are generally nice, down to earth folks in my experience, but I'm a white guy. Most were nice to me when I had long hair and freaky clothes and hitchhiked through, though they did try to convert me to Christianity all the time. They're pretty socially conservative.

Perhaps there is a double fix in - 2000 and 2004, but I dont' think many in the mainstream media will buy that.

It would be interesting to see how these counties voted in the primaries.

Just out of curiosity, I looked at CNN's exit polling to see how Southern Democrats adhered to the party this presidential election. This is how Democrats voted for Kerry according to CNN:

Georgia 87%
Kentucky 71%
Louisiana 78%
Mississippi 85%
North Carolina 84%
South Carolina 92%
Tennessee 90%
Texas 87%
Virginia 92%
West Virginia 69%

[Chili]

14. well...

LOL. Jeb Bush notwithstanding, I find it hard to believe that the rest of the Democrats in the South - just as likely, if not more, to be Dixiecrats, especially in MS, AL, and GA - went for Kerry in high percentages. After all, according to the stats, 89% of Democrats voted for Kerry.

Now I'm swinging back the other way - I was willing to concede the point about their being Dixiecrats and back off a little about fraud here - but Kerry and the Dems worked just as hard in Florida as the Bushes, and makes no sense for the numbers to be so skewed only in FL... especially if you add in the fact that Kerry was LEADING in FL.

What is the percentage of Dems going for Bush in FL?

WAIT A MINUTE... I just checked those exit poll totals for FL... it says that a full 85% of the Democrats went for Kerry.

http://us.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004//pages/results/states/FL/P/00/epolls.0.html

85%

Uhm... HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE, then?

Going to look at those county totals again.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

11. Generally makes sense- less Dems, more pubs, and more Dems for Bush

if this is true.