They wouldn't do That! : Steal an Election?

[BeFree]

This is a must read. You must read this. It was found on an old thread. Someone else wrote it. Can you guess who?

For way to long, people in this country have begged out with phrases like:

"They're all crooks."

"Nothing will change."

"There's no difference between the parties."

"They're all liars."

That's the "it's all politics" argument.

Oh yeah, throw your fucking vote away on Nader in 2000 because there's no difference between Gore and Bush, uh huh.

And the deniers imperative: Refuse to pursue or even consider the possibility of election fraud despite the fact that this * crew steals everything that isn't nailed down; invades countries that don't attack us; passes the Patriot Act that trashes the constitution; allows millions of children to acquire asthma they would never have had because it refuses to recognize atmospheric pollution; and places the planet on a death march to certain catastrophe due to global warming (even as the Pentagon says this is the greatest threat to our national security!!!).

Oh no, my goodness, these people would NEVER steal an election; they would never create a HAVA slush fund to let Boards of Elections buy lousy voting machines and tabulators from strongly Republican vendors; they would never use the 3 strongly Republican voting machine and tabulator companies with their lousy software and security to steal elections.

<:sarcasm:>
Why, the entire idea of 2004 being a stolen election is unthinkable -- especially if you can't think!

[Cocoa]

1. they stole 2000

but they didn't steal 2004.

[savemefromdumbya]

2. they rigged 2004

[we can do it]

4. WTF????

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

5. Are you kidding? They sure the hell did!

ever see this?

[Cocoa]

8. interesting

I'd like to see the other 41 states, and the numbers behind the pictures.

[Name removed]

13. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[OnTheOtherHand]

15. I stopped reading the first link when I hit this:

"There is skew - but ONLY in states which the Republicans had previously stated to be target states in play."

Like, umm, Vermont? (Kerry won by 20; the exit polls said he would win by 31.7 or 36.6, depending on which estimator you use.)

I would suggest that you present specific statements that you believe to be factually correct, instead of linking to agglomerations.

(EDIT: By the way, I agree with Cocoa's responses to the OP. The issue shouldn't be whether "they would do that." In my mind, the people who use flimsy exit poll arguments to convince us that "they did do that" are liable to weaken efforts to make sure that "they can't do that.")

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

16. Where do you get those numbers for Vermont?

tia

[OnTheOtherHand]

18. well, I got them from

the E/M evaluation report

http://www.exit-poll.net/election-night/EvaluationJan192005.pdf (page 22)

but you might prefer

http://www.exitpollz.org/cnn2004epolls/Pres_epolls/VT_P.html

[OnTheOtherHand]

19. oh, one more thing about 2004

I just know someone is going to read my comment about "people who use flimsy exit poll arguments to convince us that 'they did do that'" (i.e., that the 2004 election was stolen) as an insinuation that the only arguments for fraud in the 2004 election are flimsy exit poll arguments.

Nope. I've covered this ground before.

Some people think the election was stolen; some people don't. It's pretty simple, really. Some people have (to paraphrase the OP) considered and even pursued the possibility of election fraud, but don't think that it decided the 2004 election.

[OnTheOtherHand]

14. yeah, these 9 states need a closer look

I don't have numbers handy, but I think Maine and New Hampshire have a pretty similar mix of hand-counted paper and precinct-based optical scan, for the most part. To say that NH is "electronic voting" and ME is "paper ballots" seems like a stretch.

E/M's evaluation report last January showed that the exit poll 'error' in DRE precincts was indistinguishable from that in op-scan and punch card precincts, less than in lever-machine precincts. But it was lower in hand-count precincts, which some people consider significant.

[Febble]

17. Well I'd like provenance on those plots too

because they appear to be simply wrong. At one point I chased down a source and found them attributed to - myself.

It was in a Wikipedia article, so I deleted them, but they just go on and on like the bunny in the battery ads.

• Ohio is listed as "electronic voting". Well certainly, DREs were used in one major county, Franklin, but most precincts in Ohio, to my knowledge used punchcards, and a few used optical scanners.
  
  
• Florida was about half DRE, half optical scanning - so if you count both those as electronic, fair enough.
  
  
• Illinois seems to have exit polls that were bang on target. However it seems to have mainly used optical scanners. It is listed as "paper ballots". So maybe we count optical scanners as paper after all?


• New Hampshire, with a large exit poll discrepancy, was one of the few states that really did have a subtantial number of precincts with paper ballots, and most of the rest of the precincts I think used optical scanners. However, it is listed as "electronic".
  
  
• New Mexico, on the other hand, really was mostly DREs, but in fact the exit poll was fairly close. I myself think NM is suspicious, but that's because I don't give much credence to the exit polls.
  
  
• Maine did OK with regard to exit polls too, and yes, it had a lot of paper ballots, but also a lot of optical scanners.
  
  
• Pennsylvania, on the other hand, had a large exit poll discrepancy, and is down electronic. However, I think a large proportion of its precincts use lever machines.

Maybe I've been misinformed, but whoever made those plots appears to have been Just Making Stuff Up. And it wasn't me.

[BeFree]

6. Gawd, is that tiring

Now, if you had evidence that it was NOT stolen, I'd like to see it. Forget the cooked exit polls. Forget the final numbers. Give us something that shows the majority of America voted for these friggin' criminals!

Lawd knows, there is plenty of evidence that the people did NOT elect these criminals.

[Cocoa]

7. my basis for not believing 2004 was stolen isn't that they WOULDN'T

I know that they would steal it, because they did steal it in 2000.

My basis for believing Bush won is that I've seen the arguments that 2004 was stolen, and I don't find it convincing. Very different from 2000, where I found the evidence utterly convincing that Gore won.

[organik]

88. Are you high? There is just as much evidence that 2004 was stolen.

The MSMs lack of coverage has really worked this time - shame on them!

Read Mark Crispin Miller's "Fooled Again" to start with, or the Conyer's report, or Fitrakis' books, or the GAO report...

More info here: Election Fraud Beginner's Guide

[pauldp]

10. So they didn't take advantage of their own system?

A system of electronic voting machines with secret proprietary software that would let them cheat with impunity. A system they worked hard to establish and have worked just as hard to maintain by killing any paper trail legislation and screaming "Conspiracy Theorist" at anyone who questions the results. Have you read the Conyers Report? The GAO Report? So why did they work so hard to set up such a system?

If by some miracle they didn't you must at least admit they could have if they wanted to - right?

[Cocoa]

11. I read both the Conyers Report and the GAO Report

neither one of them concludes that the 2004 election was stolen.

Many credible reports, however, conclude that the 2000 election was stolen.

[pauldp]

20. The point is they could have. Easily, and without detection. n/t

[Febble]

21. How?

I mean, I'd really like to know. I did think at first it might be possible, but the more I've found out, the more I think detection would be a major problem.

How do you think it was done?

[pauldp]

22. You know you are right.

It must be impossible. I think all the Republican efforts to block paper trail legislation
like HR 2239, HR 550 and others are just silly coincidence. Because like you say they would get caught if they ever tried.
They wouldn't really have a nefarious reason to favor machines with no paper trail
and proprietary source code over transparency.
I'm sure it's all an innocent oversight.

So I guess there's no reason to worry about the machines anymore ? Good, I can just move on
to another issue then.

[Febble]

23. Well, I think

you may have slightly missed my point. I was asking how you think it was done, I really want to know. Do you think the machines were pre-programmed? Do you think they were hacked afterwards? Do you think it happened at precinct level or at tabulator level? Do you think it could only have been done on DREs or any type of machine? Do you think a few places were massively hacked, or a lot of places slightly hacked?

I think there is every reason to worry about the machines. I just find it hard to imagine how it might have been done, paper trail or not.

Do you think that only Ohio was stolen, or do you think that the popular vote was stolen too? What scale of crime are you talking about?

[pauldp]

25. I don't know. My point is there is a reason we have the system

we have, and that is because the Republican leadership at
the request of the White House wanted it.
To think they had innocuous reasons for implementing it
or somehow didn't realize the implications of it
seems incredibly naive IMHO. Therefore if we can all agree
they had dubious reasons for creating it we can get to square one.

[Febble]

27. Well, you may be right.

Means, motive may be in place. Opportunity I still need convincing of.

Also simple evidence that it was actually done (at least on a popular-vote-stealing scale).

But we probably agree that we don't trust the Bush team any further than we can throw them, if that far (I don't trust Bush beyond the range of a narrow-angle lens).

[OnTheOtherHand]

29. well, the only thing is...

HAVA passed the House (prior to the conference) by 362-63, passed the Senate by unanimous consent, and then the conference report was pretty much slam-dunked. On the final roll call in the House, 37 of the 48 nay votes were Republican. I know that doesn't mean that the legislation was actually a triumph of bipartisanship, but still --

I think maybe we can get to square one whether or not we agree that the Republican leadership had dubious motives. If the voting systems are vulnerable, it really doesn't matter much what the Republican leadership (or the Democratic leadership) thought it was doing. (Of course it does matter how vulnerable they are.) Or maybe that is skipping square one and moving to square two. Whatever.

[BeFree]

31. How was it done?!?!?!

Do you think the machines were pre-programmed?

Yes. The secret coding is the pre-programming. Why a secret? So that no one could easily examine it. But programs that were examined, were shown to be so loose a monkey could make it count votes anyway the monkey made it to count.

Do you think they were hacked afterwards?

Given that a monkey could hack the machines, the vulnerabilities to be hacked were available right up until it was finally turned off.

Do you think it happened at precinct level or at tabulator level?

Any level is possible. Are you getting the drift yet?

Do you think it could only have been done on DREs or any type of machine?

Any type of machine that runs a secret operating program. I recall a bond issue that once passed. The votes were on punch cards counted on a pre-programmed machine. You couldn't find any one who voted for that particular bond, but baby, it passed.

Do you think a few places were massively hacked, or a lot of places slightly hacked?

Again, with secret and loose programming codes, the possibilities are endless.

[Febble]

33. But don't you think

someone might notice all those monkeys?

[BeFree]

42. Yeah....me

And a few thousand others noticed the monkeying. And the secret programming, and all of the variable ways the machines could be 'fixed'.

Now you know. And the LA Times has a clue. See this thread in LBN:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2017834

[Febble]

44. Well, that's my point, really

If we are talking about millions of votes, I'd like to know just how many thousand others saw the monkeys, and what exactly monkeys were doing.

I have no problem in believing in a few monkeys, it's tens of thousands of monkeys I have trouble with.

[BeFree]

46. You just don't get it, do you?

No one said 'tens' of thousands of monkeys. You just now made that up.

Amongst the three major vendors, it would have only taken a handful of programmers to 'monkey' the code. That's evident, and I have a hard time believing you are so ignorant about that FACT. A hard time.

[OnTheOtherHand]

47. if you gave more informative answers to her questions

she wouldn't have to make anything up.

If you think that a handful of programmers monkeyed the code to switch votes, then you could describe the algorithm that you think they implemented.

If you think that a handful of programmers monkeyed the code to make the machines vulnerable to further hacks, then you could describe how and where you think the further hacks were implemented.

Or if your thinking pretty much stops at "anything could have happened, so it probably did," then we can all move on to more informative discussions.

[BeFree]

58. OK

The Florida-Diebold hack.
There was a case last month where programming "errors" altered the vote.
There is a case of a programmer, under oath, testifying he was asked to write such code.

There is much evidence of a stolen election. You just haven't read it. There is no use discussing this with you because you are obviously ignorant of that evidence. It is not my job to educate you. That is your responsibility. Just do it. Get an education. Read the archives, like most of the rest of us have.

[OnTheOtherHand]

63. you have very little clue what I have done

If you're talking about Clint Curtis, there's no evidence that anything like that code was ever distributed. ("There was a case last month" is just plain lazy sourcing.) But sure, there's plenty of evidence of problems with the machines -- although no compelling evidence that they flipped the outcome in 2004.

If assuming that I am just ignorant helps you to sleep at night, so be it.

(EDIT: And what you say in #57 -- "That alteration could have come only from fraud" -- is just plain wrong. Heck, you could check the archives yourself: it isn't as if we haven't explained it, or as if you have cited some authoritative source that refutes us. Game over, I guess.)

[BeFree]

65. So, you are one of them....

....kin to those about which it has been written. "They wouldn't do that!"

I figure that's what you are saying. Because nothing else you have written has convinced me otherwise.

Look, I've been following e-voting for years and years. You seem to be a near total newbie. I am educated about these things. The computer scientists are educated about those things. The states outlawing e-voting are educated. There is compelling evidence that the outcome was flipped in 2004.

You explained how the alteration came about? Well, I read it, but it was not at all compelling. Just because you wrote it doesn't mean it is the truth.

Advice: Don't believe everything you read on DU. LOL!

[OnTheOtherHand]

68. actually

I'm pretty sure that Doug Jones doesn't think the 2004 election was flipped. Does he count as a computer scientist? Come to think of it, how many computer scientists have gone on record as believing that 2004 was flipped? or are you just saying that 'computer scientists don't trust paperless DREs, ergo 2004 was stolen'? or what? You didn't really connect your thoughts.

It's nice that you have been following e-voting for years and years, but you sure aren't conveying a lot of detailed knowledge about it. You generally don't even define it, so I have to guess what you are trying to say, as I did above.

"kin to those about which it has been written" -- not sure what that means, but no, I'm not even discussing what "they wouldn't do." Been there, explained that, same thread. Whatever.

The states outlawing e-voting presumably are educated that they don't like e-voting; not exactly the same issue.

You don't have to buy my explanation of why the exit polls were wrong or how they were changed. And of course, just because I write something doesn't mean it is the truth. But to say that the "alteration" (not sure what that even means) "could have come only from fraud" is, well, untrue.

C-ya.

[BeFree]

98. I can't educate you.

You are asking me to educate you about the whole ball of wax, and I can't.
You have to educate yourself... if you want to be educated. If not, that's fine. No problem.

If it had been proven already, we wouldn't even be discussing it. Your slant is... hell, I don't know what your slant is except that you think the election was fair and square. I don't.

One day you will find yourself all alone trying to beat back the movement that will find the proof the election was stolen. Heck, you seem to think that since it hasn't been proven, beyond a doubt, stolen, then nothing happened! Gosh, isn't that what trials are for?

Now, if they'd let me examine the code, do recounts, and test the machines thoroughly, I can assure you I'd find the truth... me or anyone else. But they won't let me do any of that.... and you, as far as I can tell, are on their side. If not, use your position to help make a complete examination take place.

Reading your stuff just confirms the moniker so well placed: Naysayer.

[OnTheOtherHand]

99. no, I'm not asking you to educate me

I am asking you to connect your thoughts. If you don't understand that your thoughts are disconnected, there is really nothing else I can do to promote communication between us.

And no, I don't think the election was "fair and square."

Why on earth would I try to "beat back the movement that will find the proof the election was stolen"? You just made that up. It's not in my "stuff" at all.

G'night.

[Febble]

48. Let me try to be clearer:

I didn't make anything up, I was trying to respond to your response. I am trying to figure out what actually might have been possible.

If the heist required a "monkey" at each precinct to trigger the fraud algorithm, it would have required a lot of monkeys - 10s of thousands. However, if it was done remotely, or at the factory, then not.

If you think the monkeys were working at the vendor end then that helps a lot. However, that hypothesis has certain implications, because I have some reason to believe (from the exit poll data) that if votes were switched, they must largely have been switched in precincts where Bush was doing badly relative to 2000. I can imagine a program that might do this (one that stopped Bush's vote dropping below a certain level relative to 2000) but in that case, 2000 data for each precinct would need to be available to the vote-switching algorithm. This would require either a precinct monkey (lots of monkeys problem) or remote hacking (internet problem).

It's not that I "don't get it". It's that I am trying to get beyond the bit of the discussion where we say "the system was vulnerable and the Republicans are crooks therefore election theft is possible". When I first started looking into this, I imagined that maybe a lone hacker could do it. Or that maybe all the machines were rigged in advance.

But actually, surprisingly enough, it turns out that neither of these hypotheses are consistent with what we now know about the exit poll data.

So as eomer says, I am down to thinking that IF the election was stolen it was stolen from Ohio. I find it hard to fit any popular-vote-stealing scenario to the facts as we now know them. And on balance I don't think Ohio was stolen, by electronic theft anyway. For a start, most of the machines were punchcards.

I'm genuinely interested in any suggestion you might have about which combination of things might have been done. Because not all combinations are consistent with what else we know.

[BeFree]

57. OK

You wrote:
But actually, surprisingly enough, it turns out that neither of these hypotheses are consistent with what we now know about the exit poll data.

What you profess, and what we KNOW about the exit-poll data are two different things. Not until you come to the conclusion that the uncooked, raw data is THE data to use, there will be no further discussion from me.

When looking at the real, raw data, (before it was mixed with the report numbers), there appears a remarkable alteration from the election reports. That alteration could have come only from fraud, and that widespread fraud could only come from electronic manipulation.

You don't believe the election was stolen. I do believe it was stolen. You don't think this cabal would take advantage of a loose election process. End of discussion.

[Febble]

62. OK

I'm happy to agree to differ, except that I will say that I am not basing my conclusions on the exit poll projections that included the vote-count returns. That would be absurd.

I am basing them on an analysis of the "raw data" presented by Mitofsky recently, and reported here by Mark Lindeman:

http://members.verizon.net/~mtlinde/slides.html

And I know enough about polling to know that the alteration that was required to make the poll data match the count could perfectly easily have come from bias in the poll.

But we'll leave it there.

Peace.:hippie:

[BeFree]

66. HAH!

The early numbers were cooked between 11pm and 2am. Before yall could get your hands on them and come up with your cover: Poll bias. I rely, as does TIA on the real raw data - before midnight. That's good enough for TIA, it's good enough for me!

And I am not about to click on some freebie website link. I have found them to be mostly bullshit, made up by monkies. LOL

[Febble]

67. This is the real raw data.

Way, way rawer than TIA's "raw" data, which had already been weighted by pre-election polls and a number of other factors.

This is the actual actual raw data, the discrepancy between the actual recorded vote counts on election night and the actual recorded responses in the poll. No weighting. And the reason you can tell is that the discrepancy is HUGE. Check out how many red spots (redshifted precincts) there are compared to blue ones. No way that was due to chance.

It was presented by Mitofsky at his debate with Freeman.

Don't click on it if you don't like the look of the URL. It normally resides at Bard College, but their web-page is down so I gave you a temporary URL.

If you want to believe it was made up by monkeys, feel free. But it's got way better credentials than those plots upthread.

[eomer]

43. Actual photo taken early a.m. of election day in Ohio:

[Febble]

51. Hey!

The pic wouldn't download at work, so I didn't see it.

:rofl:

[Amaryllis]

70. ALL OF THE ABOVE! that is the whole point. have you read Mark

Crispin Miller's book? Or Fitrakis's work? THey used every single friggin' method they possibly could! We're only talking 120,000 votes in Ohio! They could have got that on voter suppression and disenfranchisement alone, let alone tabulator fraud. Blackwell had two way communication between the SOS's office and ALL the central tabulators! We are only talking 6 to 11 votes per precinct, depending on how they did it.

[OnTheOtherHand]

102. well, I think we are talking past each other

Febble and I are not altogether unknowledgeable about what "they could have" done. We are interested in looking for evidence that "they did" it, for arbitrarily many forms of "it." (Not that Febble and I are joined at the hip -- there are just certain things that I know we have in common.)

The OP obliterates the difference between (1) not being convinced that something did happen and (2) insisting that it couldn't have happened. It's too bad. It makes for a lot of useless arguments.

Strange as it may seem to many folks here, a lot of people will have the same reaction to Mark Crispin Miller's book as Farhad Manjoo did: it falls a long way short of proving that the election was stolen. It really doesn't matter much what you and I and others here think about that; it's the reality out there.

[marions ghost]

106. all of the above

I believe that various methods were used to steal the election. With no auditing, no effective legal protections for voters, incredible sloppiness in procedures, local officials beholden to republican interests, investigations that were a joke-- AND an election system owned and operated by one party...well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist. Back in the 90's I saw enough election fraud at the local level to make your head spin. It has only become worse with increased e-voting, but it was bad then. I believe we are talking about a fairly large scale for the impact of these various election crimes.

Imagine the worst. That's what happened.

[OnTheOtherHand]

24. something else struck me as I read that back-and-forth

I dunno if you know Febble, so the two of you could really mean different things by "detection."

I think Febble would probably agree with you that a lot of stuff could go down without being immediately detected by election officials (assuming they weren't complicit in the first place). I would, anyway.

What I'm trying to figure out, and what I think Febble is as well, is what and how much could go down without being detected in retrospect by analysis of the results. Potentially a pretty important question. But no substitute for locking down the security vulnerabilities with the machines (although we might go on to disagree about how to go about that).

FWIW, Febble really does worry about the machines. As a Brit, she can't imagine why we ever bought them in the first place (well, that's a freehand paraphrase).

[Febble]

26. Well, yes, I do worry about the machines

because I can see that in ideal circumstances, a clean hack is clearly possible, and this is quite intolerable.

But I don't yet see how a multiple clean hack is possible if each machine has to be separately corrupted, without involving a lot of people, and hence a high risk of detection. And I don't see how a large number of machines could be separately hacked remotely unless they were all online, and I don't see evidence that they could have been. And if the vote was hacked at the tabulators rather than at the voting machines, then it would at least have run the risk of being detected in any check made between precinct and tabulator counts (whether or not such checks were made). I also don't yet see what kind of vote switching algorithm could have left no trace in the kinds of data some of us have been analysing.

In other words, I agree the machines are corruptible, as detailed in the GAO report, and I share your doubt that Bush's administration would shrink from massive vote-theft if they thought they could pull it off.

It's the bit in the middle I have trouble with.

I have no trouble, however, with the view that your voting system needs urgent and radical reform.

[OnTheOtherHand]

28. you're right, the technical front end needs more attention too

certainly with respect to 2004. It's one thing for the machines to be hackable in the abstract, another thing for them to be systematically and massively hacked in practice. Not an unthinkable thing, but a part that many folks seem to get very fuzzy about when pressed.

You know, you and I need to find a way of sustaining some disagreement. Say, whaddya think about the Boston Red Sox? ;)

[eomer]

39. A couple of points.

"But I don't yet see how a multiple clean hack is possible if each machine has to be separately corrupted, without involving a lot of people, and hence a high risk of detection."

A whole class of machines can be rigged by a single programmer who is on the inside at a vendor. A new software version is developed (for some good reason) and a programmer takes the opportunity to insert rigging code into that version. Then a whole bunch of people handle the job of installing the rigged software without knowing it is rigged. We know there are many instances of untested versions of software being installed at the last minute and without proper disclosure or procedures. We can't know for sure that this last minute software was not rigged because no one really checked it.

"And if the vote was hacked at the tabulators rather than at the voting machines, then it would at least have run the risk of being detected in any check made between precinct and tabulator counts (whether or not such checks were made)."

I guess this is more of a question than a point - in how many cases are we able to do this kind of a check? I'm under the impression that the necessary detail isn't publicly available in most cases. And in those cases where it could be and was done, did it match?

Or maybe you meant detection not by election reform advocates but rather by election officials? If so, it seems they are not motivated to detect and publish information like this because at best they see it as exposing their own errors and at worse don't want to check into it because they have a partisan point of view and are happy with the results.

[Febble]

40. Thanks

This is what I was after.

So one hypothesis (sorry I like hypotheses) is that the machines were pre-programmed to switch votes, rather than the tabulators being hacked (which I'm not ruling out, but I'd like to know more about).

That of course leaves us with the algorithm problem I keep banging on about, because unless it was done on all voting machine types (including levers, punchcards etc) and on machines from all vendors, and was uniform (as you pointed out) we have this swing-shift problem - why wasn't there a swing-shift correlation?

One idea (OTOH? you?) is that the algorithm would have had to ensured that votes were only switched when Bush's vote share dropped below a certain level relative to 2000 - so 2000 data would have to have been programmed in.

But it would be important to get this right. So either it would have to alter the end-of-day totals (I dunno - is a running total visible all day? Would this be detectable), or it would have to switch votes TO Bush when his vote share was dropping, but switch votes back to Kerry when his vote share got too high. I could probably program something like that in principle, and I'm not much of a programmer. But I haven't yet seen anything like that demonstrated on an actual voting machine.

What do you think?

[eomer]

41. Or another possibility - that vote switching by way of rigged software

was relatively small - not enough by itself to steal an election but enough when added in to all the other ways votes were stolen (don't worry, not going to repeat all the typographical ways).

While we're talking about it, I think the definition of "steal an election" should be based on winning the electoral college, not the popular vote. So the question should be whether there could have been some e-switching of votes in Ohio that helped win that state when added in with the votes stolen all the other ways - through vote and voter suppression (like TfC's excellent research on registration purges in Ohio), old-fashioned vote stuffing, column swapping in co-located precincts (the "butterfly ballot" of 2004), etc, etc.

I'm in the school that says whatever happened is a complex combination of factors, not a simple, single cause.

edit: typo

[Febble]

45. I agree

re stealing elections.

I have a lot less trouble with Ohio (or NM) than I do with the popular vote.

I think I'm with you, except maybe more optimistic that the election stealers weren't that good. That your democracy is holed but not sunk (yet).

Might be a personality thing.

[Chi]

54. Not sure why it seems so difficult

Example...
If I were to program a patch to steal Kerry's vote share and add it to Bush's at the
County level, using a random generator with a range of 2.1765% to 6.8543%, but never
using whole numbers.....How would you pick that up?

[Febble]

60. Funnily enough

I think random fraud would be easier detect than non-random fraud. I think the strongest case for fraud has to be some non-random algorithm that made sure that Bush didn't do too much better than he "should" have done - in other words a method that stopped him bottoming out, but reversed the process if he started doing well anyway. But if I were writing fraud code myself, I'd certainly use some kind of randomisation protocol at the some point. I wouldn't switch every 10th vote for example (as I've seen suggested) as that might be detectable if you knew what you were looking for.

I agree that county level fraud is more doable in the sense that you need fewer monkeys, and also could be done regardless of voting technology (I think). However, the most of the exit poll discrepancy seems to have been with discrepancy with precinct level counts not county level counts, so if you want to cite the exit poll discrepancy, having it all happen at county level is a bit of a problem. If all discrepancy caused by fraud occured at county level, it is hard to see how it wouldn't have shown up in that swing-shift correlation, which it didn't. So let's go back to precinct level fraud:

If I was doing it at precinct level, and I want to keep Bush from dropping, but not interfere with a legitimate increase, and Bush's vote share in 2000 had been, say 40%, I'd have something like

If (vote-share so far for Bush)<40% then
if (random number between 0 and 1) <0.1 then
count vote for Bush,
else count vote as cast
end if
else
if (switched vote total)>0 then
if (random number between 0 and 1) <0.1 then
count vote for Kerry
else
count vote as cast
end if
else
count vote as cast
end if
end if

But I don't know how you get that 2000 data in there (But I only write fiendishly cunning tasks for cognitive psychology experiments so I wouldn't hire me to rig an election anyway).

And I've still got a monkey problem.

Oh, plus, I can only do this on some machines, and I think I've got to do it on a majority in order to avoid that dratted swing-shift correlation.

Honestly Chi, I'm trying!

[Chi]

71. I suggested a percentage vote swing from the actual vote.

Why would you need 2000 vote results for that?

Still wondering how you would detect that.

[Febble]

72. Well that algorithm

would swing 10% of Kerry's vote to Bush, randomly, but would stop the swing over-topping a certain mark relative to 2000.

The reason that is important is because of a finding I talked about here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=398267

which shows that "redshift" in the exit polls was not correlated with the degree to which Bush improved his vote-share relative to 2000, and if fraud was responsible for the redshift, and was random with respect to how well he was doing, it should be. It's a pretty strong finding because of the large number of precincts in the study. On the thread I linked to there was an interesting discussion with eomer about the kinds of algorithm that might have been used to avoid such a correlation showing up.

There is more about the analysis here:

http://members.verizon.net/~mtlinde/slides.html

In the interest of "fair and balanced" reporting, I should point out Kathy Dopp's paper arguing that the analysis (which is similar to the ESI analysis of the Ohio data) is illogical here:

http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/exit-polls/ESI/ESI-hypothesis-illogical.pdf

and Lindeman's response to it here:

http://members.verizon.net/~mtlinde/doppresponse.pdf

The response is interesting (unless you are persuaded by Kathy Dopp's argument, which I am not) in that it demonstrates how fraud could be accomplished and yet not produce the correlation that was not found. That's why I have been trying to think up an algorithm that would produce benefit to Bush (ie increase his vote-share), and yet not produce an effect in the vote that was correlated with an effect in the exit poll.

Another possibility is that the fraud was uniform and widespread. But this also presents practical difficulties, and is at odds with other facts.


On edit:

Correction: discussion with eomer regarding possible algorithms that would avoid a swing-shift correlation was on this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=397502

[OnTheOtherHand]

75. Chi, I have other complementary answers

First of all, it may actually not matter whether one uses a 2000 baseline or not, because everyone knew that Ohio 2004 would run pretty close to Ohio 2000, and it did. For our empirical analysis, of course, we use a 2000 baseline because we don't have a "2004 pre-fraud baseline." (Yeah, there could be fraud in the 2000 numbers too.) Whether a hacker would use a 2000 baseline or not, that could go either way, depending on the implementation.

You suggested changing the results at the county level, which is fine, but sooner or later, the precinct-level numbers have to add up to the county numbers. I'm not saying that would be impossible to accomplish. I will say that so far, not many DUers have seemed very interested in the nuts and bolts of what it would entail. But my hat is off to liam_laddie and minvis and kiwi_expat and Time for change and others who have tried to sort out the facts on the ground.

(EDIT: I forgot Febble, of course, who actually did more, earlier, and better to document election irregularities in Ohio than most -- maybe any -- of the people who attack her motives. Of course you aren't in that latter group.)

[Chi]

77. Understood

But how many precincts have actually been completely hand counted in Ohio and Florida since the 2000 election?
(visions of GOP operatives storming a recount and acting like rioters dance in Chi's head)

[OnTheOtherHand]

78. yes, not a fond memory...

Because the recounting in Ohio was pretty minimal and iffy, I wouldn't venture an upper bound on how many votes might have been miscounted there, accidentally or deliberately. I personally don't think that the number is very high, because AFAICT no one has really made the case that all those Ohio counties managed to miscount (or misreport the counts for) all their punch cards. But I can't rule it out. People who do think this happened should be looking for every opportunity to examine ballots.

We know, of course, that punch cards have other problems -- and there are lots of other election problems that have nothing to do with miscounting votes once cast.

[Chi]

79. As far as I know

In Ohio 1 of 88 counties did a complete recount, and Liam Laddie did 1 precinct.
Florida never had a complete recount of anything.

Is this your understanding as well?

[OnTheOtherHand]

81. not exactly

Hey, this is a momentous post for me -- I'm rolling over my odometer. With neither a bang, nor a whimper, but rather more like a shrug. Oh well.

I'm not sure what you mean by a "complete" recount in Ohio. The recounts were 3% recounts. A bunch of precincts got recounted, although there are questions about whether the counts were square -- and there is no debate that the concept of "random" took a big hit when the precincts were selected. eomer, kiwi_expat, and me (probably others I've forgotten) had an interesting thread, authored by eomer, on what to make of the recounts. However, I can't tell you how many precincts got counted by hand. kiwi may have a decent estimate; she seemed to have been in the process of reading all the observer reports.

Some precincts in Montgomery (I think four) got counted apart from the official recount:

http://www.electionline.org/Portals/1/Resource%20Library/SpoiledBallots.pdf

I'm not aware of any recounts to date in Florida.

[Chi]

83. I forgot the 3% hand count were whole precincts....

That makes it tougher.

Thanks for the Montgomery link.

[Chi]

85. But then again, just rereading the Cuyahoga witness reports makes

it easy to understand how it might be done.

"The small fraction of precincts (only 8% of all precincts qualify for their ballots being closely examined in the hand recount) are not reflective of the county as a whole. Overall, the qualifying precincts have significantly higher proportion of votes for Bush than for Kerry, yet the county voted for Kerry by a 2:1 margin."

"Precincts that have significant problems on Election Day are that much less likely to reach the 550 minimum, and will thus not be rechecked in the recount."

"The vast majority of precincts have less than 550 ballots cast. It is thus possible in principle to fiddle with the returns from most of the county without fear that they would be checked in the hand recount of 3% of the returns."

— Professor Cyrus Taylor
Case Western Reserve University

http://www.iwantmyvote.com/recount/ohio_reports/counties/cuyahoga.php

[OnTheOtherHand]

96. not so hard to elude the recount if you control it, true

That may, or may not, entail the collusion of every member of the Cuyahoga County BoE (and perhaps, by extension, the BoE of every county in which this occurred). Also, if you tell me how many votes you want to steal in those precincts, I can tell you how likely it is to escape detection in Mebane and Herron's analysis -- well, I can't really, but we can at least take turns sketching on envelopes.

I do think that the recount makes it harder, but it would be crazy to say that it made it impossible.

[eomer]

100. I'm not sure how many BoE members would need to collude.

Maybe it would take only one who knew what the real goal was and the rest could be duped into it.

But in any event it seems like enough of them did collude in Cuyahoga for something weird to occur. This is the county where the decks of cards for the 3% precincts appeared to have been sorted before the recount began. And then there was this weird statement:

"As to the randomness of precinct selection: until the Democrat on the BOE spoke up and said "let's change for the future recounts but not for this election," the BOE had almost decided to go with an approach requiring many more types of precincts and rescinding what the staff had done. The staff complained that it would take them many hours into the night to redo the selection, but of course that shows yet again that there was no randomness to it whatsoever."

http://www.iwantmyvote.com/recount/ohio_reports/counties/cuyahoga.php

So apparently the staff thought it was normal for there to be some kind of pre-processing of whichever precincts were selected for the 3% recount and that pre-processing would "take them many hours into the night". There should have been no processing at all between the time that they picked a precinct out of a hat and the beginning of the public recount. What exactly did they do during these hours of pre-processing? I believe what they did was manipulate the decks in ways that were intended to make the machine count clean and known in advance so they could force the hand count to come out the same. This would probably include cleaning chads, a step that would constitute illegal tampering with ballots.

[OnTheOtherHand]

101. you may be right on both counts

On the second count, my big concern is whether they did anything that would conceal fraud. Whether they broke the law does not matter as much to me, retrospectively. But prospectively, as we've discussed, my view is that the recount rules in Ohio created strong incentives to 'cut corners,' and that is a bad thing.

I'm not one of the few DUers who has spoken or corresponded with Michael Vu, so I can say no more about Cuyahoga.

[Febble]

73. Correction, I wasn't clear

Sorry, what that algorithm would do is swing 10% of Kerry's vote randomly to Bush, but would undo the fraudulent swing if his real swing exceeded a certain level.

So if he was doing well without help, the vote would be clean. But if he was doing badly it would jack him up a bit.

Then of course you'd have to write code that ate the code. I dunno about that, but people say its possible.

[Chi]

76. Thanx for the links

I'm obviously oversimplifying.

Do you have any links to any data correlating Bush's 04 gains to his 00 vote share?
I'm not looking for an exit poll correlation, I'm looking for his actual results gains compared to his 00 results.

Thanks in Advance

[Febble]

80. Well, the first plot

in that page I linked to (the exit poll swing-shift correlation) simply shows Bush 2000 vote share (in the NEP precincts) correlated against his 2004 vote share. The precincts are coloured red and blue according to whether they had redshift of blue shift, but the main point of the plot is to show the very high correlation between 2000 vote and 2004 vote. OTOH has other plots for similar data sets.

I'll see what else I can find.

Edit: sorry, wasn't clear which link I was talking about:

http://members.verizon.net/~mtlinde/slides.html

It's the first plot.

[Chi]

82. Don't spend alot of your time on it

I already took note of the scatter plot you referred to, but skipped it when I realized it was exit poll precincts only.

[Febble]

87. I won't

but here is Florida by county:

http://tinyurl.com/d56ml

Cheers, nice to talk to you.

[Chi]

89. Ummm

Unidentified counties is no help at all.
If you have that in a line item format (text and numbers),
that would be more helpful.

But thanks anyway.

[Febble]

90. OK

sorry, stupid me, being a stats nerd I though you wanted the R squared, not the data!

I'll do you a spreadsheet, but I gotta go right now.

Seeya later

[OnTheOtherHand]

84. what level?

I can post Ohio by county. Someone must have the nation by county, but I haven't seen it. I may have Florida by county -- in any case I could whip it up right fast.

Mebane and Herron did 2004 vs. 2002 by precinct, where the precincts match. I'm not aware of anyone other than Edison/Mitofsky that has done 2000-04 precinct matching (obviously theirs wasn't complete!) -- I did some of this manually back in the mid-80s, and my eyes still hurt.

[Chi]

86. Hmmm....after re-reading the witness reports

Is there anyway to get Ohio (theres about 6 counties I'd really be interested in)
precinct by prescient?

(Edit -- If you already have county by county (Ohio) that would be Kewl too)

[OnTheOtherHand]

91. lessee...

Mebane has archived all the state data by precinct for 2004 and (as matchable) 2002; there is a separate file for wards, IIRC.
http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/wrm1/Ohio2004/replic2/replic2.html , see the first link "This", which includes .csv data files plus a lot of R goo. The vars aren't exactly documented, but I can dig out what Tfc and I figured out about some of the more obscure variables.

As for 2000, the Federal Elections Project at American U. seems to have what you need at
http://spa.american.edu/ccps/pages.php?ID=12
(note the request for attribution) -- the .zip file contains a .csv that at first glance seems to hit the spot. The problem is matching the precincts -- and unfortunately, it's tougher than you might think. If a precinct is added to a ward, then an existing precinct may just have been split, or two may have been split into three... or sometimes there is a domino cascade that would require census block analysis to make any sense of. Someone may have done this work, or some of it, but I'm not aware of it. So, extreme caution, please. If you find something that is really striking, you may need someone to go to the BoE and try to sort out whether lines have changed. As a first cut, you can check whether the lines changed between 02 and 04 as per Mebane and Herron.

I need to change computers and see what is my best Ohio county file. Check my verizon website http://members.verizon.net/~mtlinde/ in about an hour. I'll also see whether there is a version of the Mebane data that I can zip up as CSV and save you some time on that front.

[Chi]

92. Question

How do I open the ohio-leip-2000-2004.csv file and retain format.
It's unreadable the way it appears for me.

Very cute ice cream protest picture, BTW ;-)

[OnTheOtherHand]

94. you call it "protest," I call it "future president" ;)

You should be able to save it as a .csv, then open it in Excel or many other programs. But if you prefer another format, let me know which one, and I should be able to oblige.

[Chi]

103. That is what I tried the first time, but will try it again later.

I'm out all day.

[OnTheOtherHand]

104. hmm, works for me, but I've added an XLS version. n/t

[Chi]

93. New scenario

GOP (Blackwell), picks about 10 counties to target, counties that have his cronies in charge.
Tabulators are patched to add votes in precincts, some are predetermined (ex. Cuyahoga only adds to precincts under 500 votes).
Before election Blackwell plays games and combines voting precincts to obfuscate numbers.
Before election Blackwell also passes rule about pollsters staying 100' away from voting stations to mess with exit polls.
After election cronies keep hand recounts away from dirty precincts.

Limited monkeys (1 programmer, 10 cronies, and Blackwell)
Stolen election.

[Febble]

95. I don't have a problem with that

and I would love to see Blackwell in jail.

You forgot the provisional vote stuff, and the messing about with challenge rules. And the weight-of-paper business. And I'd like to blame Franklin County on him too, but that was probably Damschroeder and Anthony. If it wasn't deliberate disenfranchisement, it was culpable incompetence, and there's still a Civil Rights case on that score I'd like to see pursued.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

32. If I was going to do it, and had the resources they had

I would do it in a number of ways to avoid detection of one massive fraud, which would be Bad.

No, I would use a company who made machines, installing mallicious code via FTP for a bunch of votes. I would call in favors in places no one would notice. I would use old-fashioned ballot stuffing elsewhere. Relatives in high places in others. Political allies, and promises of appointments or pardons in another place.

Just like it was done.

None of the people who "did" it know they did it.


Look at the whole thing like a huge intel op, cause that is what it is.

[Febble]

34. Yes, I would do it that way too.

But it means, to my mind, that it is difficult to sustain the assertion that "it was done".

That it could have been is bad enough for me.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

35. Never been involved in an intelligence op,

I am guessing?

It has all the hallmarks of a great one.

Again, that does not mean it happened, and that is the main goal... confusion to the enemy (us, in this case).

[Febble]

36. No

but there is a difference between saying a crime could have been committed and that it would have been committed, and saying that it was committed.

Don't get me wrong, I think the election stinks in many, many ways.

But I don't think there is actually evidence of massive electronic vote theft. So where I diverge from you is in your conviction that it was committed. Or at least on popular-vote winning scale.

Lack of evidence could mean they were clever - but equally it could mean it didn't happen.

(On edit: when I say lack of evidence: I keep finding that evidence that initially looked persuasive turns out not to be. See my response #17 to the plots you posted above. I'm not saying it the crime didn't happen. I'm just saying that the evidence looks a lot thinner than I thought at first, and I don't think lack of evidence is evidence. What are the hallmarks you find persuasive?)

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

37. The opportunity was created. The machine will

not not use such an opportuntiy, in my experience, that is.

Coincidences do not exist when you are dealing with people like this.

[Febble]

38. But what you seem to be saying

is: they would have done it, and they could have done it, therefore they did do it.

I have trouble with the "could". They had means (we know, from the computer insecurities) and motive (we share a lack of trust in the regime) but I am not convinced they had the opportunity, when I try to think of ways it could, actually, have been implemented on the scale some allege (I am not sure what scale you allege).

I do not think there is evidence of that there was opportunity to shift millions of votes without detection, and I do not think there is evidence that millions of votes were shifted.

I'm willing to be persuaded, but I am not, so far. The plots you posted looked persuasive, but they were wrong.

What else do you find persuasive? (This is a genuine question, I'd like to know :))

[WCGreen]

3. You forgot Haitti and how the Bush Administration

undermined a legitamate but radical elected leader....

[Oversea Visitor]

9. They did and they will again

And again and again
Until you stop them

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

12. now, as to who wrote it?

uhhh, Bev Harris?

:hide:

[BeFree]

30. Nope

Our own Admiral! <---_{That there's a clue.}

It is a statement that goes along way toward galvanizing the disparate voices amongst us. They could, and they would.....would set up the voting apparatus to steal elections. And they did. The Admiral is correct!

[kster]

49. The fact that we...

...had an election/voting system shoved down our throats that does not provide for complete transparency (during vote collection and tabulation) and conclusive accuracy verification through some kind of redundancy check, tells me everything I need to know. Who but a thief would even contemplate such a system, much less propose and implement it? Who but a thief would fight so hard to prevent effective means of transparency and verification from being put in place as the GOP has done? If we were to sit down and play poker with my new poker system where only I (the dealer) get to look at the hands dealt, determine the bets and cards taken, and then report the results without anyone but me ever allowed to look at any cards, might you become suspicious after I win all your money? Would you need to do statistical analysis to decide whether or not you'd been defrauded?

Duer.........Mr_Jefferson_24

[OnTheOtherHand]

50. sorry, but I don't accept the analogy

We're sold stuff without adequate safeguards all the time -- and indeed, corporations often lobby legislators (openly and in secret) to go on selling it. But most of the time, the corporations sell us unsafe stuff because it takes more money and trouble to make it safe, not because they actively want to hurt us.

First-generation SUVs were scary (many SUVs still are), and IMHO they never should have been exempted from the safety (and efficiency) regulations that apply to ordinary cars. It's darkly entertaining to think of first-generation SUVs as reflecting a plot to kill off the sort of people who wanted to own them, but not very realistic.

Blaming the voting system on the GOP just won't fly with me. Calling all the Dems who have been involved "DINOs" doesn't really save the argument either.

And the GOP hasn't won everything, either.

So, yeah, I need to do statistical analysis, or something, to decide whether or not I've been defrauded.

[Trinity56]

52. All You Need to Know in this Book

Fooled Again: How the Right Wing Stole the 2004 Election and Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them) by Mark Crispin Miller

Thoroughly researched and meticulously footnoted - I think you'll find the author presents a most persuasive line of reasoning. :patriot:

A Reader Review from Amazon.com (an example of the many, many recommendations for this book):

I came to this book with, I think, the usual preconceptions: it will present a paranoid conspiracy theory, it 's just a Democrat's sour grapes, it will be the left-wing equivalent of an Ann Coulter or Joe Scarborough rant--in other words, nothing new to say, shrieked at top volume. Instead I found that Miller has the rare courage to take on a forbidden topic, one of the few remaining in America. He asks us to consider the possibility that our cherished democracy, the very heart of American exceptionalism and the thing that sets us apart from (and, in the eyes of many Americans, above) all other nations, is not merely flawed or compromised but actually in danger of disappearing. Perhaps it has already disappeared. We are now a nation in which one political party has no intention of ever releasing its hold on power and the other is too cowed to defend itself against constant attacks, let alone defend its constituents or the integrity of the process by which power is allocated.

The "mature" and "reasonable" thing to do, of course, is to practice moderation, to avoid strong, polarizing accusations, to work with the opposition to provide strong governance, and always to understand that your political opponent is not your enemy. But this presupposes an opponent who is willing to practice moderation and reason in turn, rather than simply demand it. As President Bush and his allies keep reminding us about terrorism (with rather too intimate knowledge whereof they speak), fanatics cannot be reasoned with. Mark Crispin Milller has pointed out, in exquisitely documented detail, that this country has its own fanatical extremists to deal with, and they are not a fringe element. They are a significant force in the Republican Party, perhaps the dominant force. Miller shows in great detail what this means: the mindset that allows these people to justify their actions to themselves and the specific ways in which they have subverted American democracy. Under these circumstances, compromise and moderation can only fail. When we are faced with fanatics, true reason demands that we do what Miller has done: call them what they are.

In short, this is a powerful and terrifying book. It is well documented and makes its case, if anything, too abundantly. The 2004 election was stolen. My nightmare is that generations from now, historians will look to Fooled Again as a valuable contemporary account of how America became a theological dictatorship.

[OnTheOtherHand]

53. I like the book, but it didn't convince me either, at least...

it didn't convince me that the election was stolen, i.e., that the outcome was determined, through vote suppression and/or vote count corruption. (I hope I said that right -- so many ways to "steal" an election, so little time.)

I don't demand to be convinced, nor am I hell-bent on converting anyone to my views; I am just reporting.

I'm sympathetic to a lot of Miller's political analysis. And even when I disagree with him, he isn't much like Ann Coulter.

EDIT: An example of the sort of thing that doesn't convince me: On pp. 46-49, he tells a very interesting and potentially important story about some voters being apparently deleted from registration rolls in Summit County. Then he blithely says, "Kerry won Summit by 58 percent -- a lower figure than one might expect from a heavily Democratic areas where the turnout had been very high." And likewise he is surprised that Kerry got only 51% in Stark. Well, maybe. Kerry won Summit in 2004 by a margin of 13.76%, according to Leip (with about 57% of the vote); Gore won Summit in 2000 by a margin of 10.25%. Kerry won Stark by 1.66%; Gore lost it by 1.78%. It's fine to believe that Kerry should have done much better, but it's not an obvious slam dunk by any means.

[kster]

55. You would need statistical analysis to know

you've been defrauded if you sat down to,

"play cards with someone that won't show you any cards and he only gets to look at the hands dealt, determine the bets and cards taken, and then report the results without anyone but him ever allowed to look at any cards"??

[Febble]

56. I think you missed his subject header

I'd agree with you that in the circumstance you describe, statistics would be unnecessary. You'd be better off with a psychoanalyst who might tell you why you'd agreed to play.

I'd also agree you don't need statistics to make the case for an investigation. The case merited investigation, and still does (it was why I got involved). There was means, and there was motive. There was also actual skulduggery.

But I personally am unconvinced that there was opportunity for massive theft, because I think the evidence that that crime actually occurred at least on the scale that some allege, is weak. (I'd agree with eomer that the case for a stolen electoral vote, via theft of Ohio is considerably stronger).

And what evidence there is, says to me, as a data analyst, that there are serious constraints within the data on the mechanisms by which fraud on a massive scale could have occurred. I myself find them virtually prohibitive, but I am still interested in suggestions as to how it could have been done, and not show up in the analyses that have sought for traces.

I do understand that your view of the evidence is different. All I can say is I don't agree that the case for a stolen election is a slam dunk.

But I do agree that the case for investigation is.

[kster]

59. Even after the hack in Florida

and the all out war going on by the voter to get a paper ballot that we can count, and the fact that this whole story is hidden on the INTERNET, that there is nothing being Televised and all but a few politicians have not said one word about the election theft machines of 2004 and to heck with 2004, The politicians are going to allow these same machines to be used in 2006, because of their silence on this issue.

You don't need to do analysis to know that these things are happening right before our eyes. Complete silence about the past and present when it comes to these machines.

That alone throws up a BIG red flag .

[Febble]

61. Flags I have no problem with

especially red ones.

Keep it flying until your democracy is safe again!

[OnTheOtherHand]

64. for better or for worse, "the voter" isn't warring for paper ballots

At least not in Georgia, unless the public mood has shifted sharply since last March.

http://www.cviog.uga.edu/peachpoll/poll.php?date=2005-03-10

This poll did show reasonably strong support for adding a paper trail to the DREs. It's interesting. They've done some other interesting polls, too.

(As Febble said, you misread my earlier post. I wrote, "So, yeah, I need to do statistical analysis, or something, to decide whether or not I've been defrauded." I didn't write, "I would need to do statistical analysis to decide whether or not I had been defrauded." Since I didn't accept the analogy, I didn't answer your question. My answer would have been: it would never happen, because I don't play cards for money. ;) But I'm not arguing that we should trust the machines. Blind trust has no place in a voting system.)

[kster]

69. There are a few fighting for it

http://www.dembloggers.com/story/2005/7/19/232324/915

but we could go back and forth with links all night, why do you think the media and politicians are completely, silent about the machines. If like you said there was not enough stealing going on inside the machines to throw the election to * then why not have an open discussion about the machines on television for all to see.

I think the silence is because they like the vote rigging machines and having open discussion about them on television would get many more people to wake up to what is going on.

[OnTheOtherHand]

74. sure, there are people fighting for paper

I wasn't trying to engage in a smackdown about who thinks what. I study public opinion, so I was very interested to see the results. Clearly Georgians in general don't hate DREs; clearly they aren't wedded to the idea of paperless, unverifiable elections, either. When you are trying to win people's hearts and minds, it is good IMHO to start by learning what you can about what and how they think. But of course that isn't the main point of our back-and-forth.

I can't agree that the media are completely silent about the machines; I think the daily news thread attests otherwise. Most of it isn't mainstream media, but some is. But there are thousands of issues that aren't getting openly and fully discussed on television, or by politicians. I don't think this proves much. Do we hear so little about Darfur because the media and politicians think "I (heart) genocide"? And that's an issue that few people are willing to say should not be important -- but there are lots of issues that many people think are not important. What if reporters and editors just don't think the 2004 election was stolen? Could the silence be because they just aren't all that interested?

I have to say: if Democratic politicians thought that their political futures depended on getting rid of DREs (or op-scans, for that matter), we would probably hear more about them. Politicians really, really like getting reelected. (Of course, if one thinks that the Dems have all cut a deal on this issue where they acquiesce in rigged elections -- well, I don't.)

Now, so far I have been addressing why I don't see the silence as proof of a coverup, as I think you do. That doesn't mean I am defending the media coverage, or defending the machines. There are more than two possible opinions here.

[kster]

97. There are two opinions

but they are not being addressed on Television.

"What if reporters and editors just don't think the 2004 election was stolen? Could the silence be because they just aren't all that interested"?

They don't own the airwaves, We do. They don't have that right to decide whats important to put on TV or not. We do.

If they would discuss it on Television it would get the politicians that don't see the election theft machines as a threat to understand that there is a real threat, And that goes for Democrats and Republicans.

[autorank]

105. We do own the airwaves and Diebold doesn't own our votes.

The notion that people are happy with anything when they're not informed is absurd on it's face. The media leaves all sorts of good stories out of the papers and even more off of television. There was a nice thread about how Chris Matthews helped Abramoff raise funds for children's athletics. The foundation gave 1% to kids and 99% to Republican stooges. Now Matthews is quoted all over the place as saying the Abramoff scandal is going to be 'self-contained,' not something to hurt the Republicans. Wonder why? This is a paradigm for how the media works. Chris Matthews' parent company, GE, has considerable interests with the government, not the least of which is defense contracting. How much will they allow on the air about impeachment, illegitimate elections, etc. Let's see...nothing! They would not be serving their stock holders. They're not serving us either.

Give voters a fair explanation of how machines work and how neither they nor their representatives can ever see inside the machines--see what they say then. Where that's happened, people make the right choice--free, fair, transparent elections.