Finally got around to seeing "Hacking Democracy"....

[Duke Newcombe]

...and it scares the *&^$ out of me.

One question: Can anyone explain to me why Kerry didn't more vigorously challenge Ohio and Florida's voting irregularities?

Duke

[krispos42]

1. I heard...

... that Kerry wanted a second chance like Nixon did after losing to Kennedy back in '60.

:shrug:

[Ian David]

2. John Kerry's staffer threatened to refer me to Capitol Hill Security when I called to "discuss" that

I may have been just a tad disrespectful.

[kster]

3. Any member of the family that speaks up about the counting of ballots gets blackballed

they either conform or they are blacklisted, Kerry chose to remain a member of the family. Gore chose to fight the family, you see where that got us, one man can not TAKE this crime family/our government out.

It will take ALL OF US!

An Audit a full hand count of the optical scanned paper ballots are MEANINGLESS once the paper ballots are allowed to leave our neighborhood/polling places.

NGU.... K&R

[troubleinwinter]

11. How many have you gotten signed up so far to hand count your area?

[kster]

16. Are you still going with that silliness, is this not correct?

(An Audit or a full hand count of the optical scanned paper ballots are MEANINGLESS once the optical scanned paper ballots are allowed to leave our neighborhood/polling place.)

Don't try and divert attention to "can you get enough people signed up to hand count/audit the paper ballots IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD/polling place".

The Majority here have COMMON SENSE.

[ArmchairActivist]

4. The popular vote...

...Kerry didn't have it.

(I know, neither did Boosh, but IOKIYAR and all that.)

[Stevepol]

5. The exit polls say Kerry won the popular vote.

The exit polls IMO are infinitely more trustworthy than a privately run election system that counts the votes in total secrecy without verification.

[OnTheOtherHand]

6. the exits aren't "infinitely more trustworthy" than anything

That may work for you, but it sure wouldn't have worked for Kerry, no matter how lousy the election system is.

[BeFree]

23. Not true

The corruptness of the voting machines is way worse than Miscountski's exit polling.

Or are you holding to the idea that Miscountski and all the employees of his are as corrupted/corruptible as diebold et al?

Surely, a person like you who has used exit polls to make points doesn't really believe the exits are on par with diebold et al as far as trustworthiness goes?

I'd say the exits are infinitely more trustwothy than diebold et al, seeing as how nothing about the elections systems of 2004 can be shown to merit any trust at all.

[OnTheOtherHand]

24. what does "infinitely" mean to you?

No, I don't think the exit polls were corrupted; I just think they were wrong. In fact, wronger than the machines, although there's no reason why the machines couldn't be much wronger than the exit polls.

[Wilms]

7. "infinitely more trustworthy"

OTOH's harangue notwithstanding, you gotta admit your statement is tough for some people to accept.

The whole premise, admitted or not by it's proponents, is that the exit polls were untrustworthy because they were handled by a private corporation. Talk about chain of custody! HA!

With your logic, why don't we just forget voting and have exit polls decide races. :shrug:

The other thing you might consider is that while it's polite that you referred to your position as "IMO", real election integrity advocates...by definition...aren't interested in opinions.

We're a nation of believers because no one knows anything.

[Stevepol]

13. OK, change the "infinitely" and make it whatever the odds were

in that first study from Steve Freeman after the 04 election when he checked the chances that the vote allegedly tallied (on the voting machines) was not correct given the extent they differed from the exit polls, something like 500,000 to 1 as I remember. 500,000 to 1 more trustworthy than the machines.

I think the time is long past when the results of the voting machines can be looked at as anything other than purely speculative. If they were subject to a fair and thorough audit, which means first of all if there were paper (optiscans), that wouldn't be true. But snow is white. That's a fact. To think otherwise is nonsense. As you say we need facts, not opinions. But the facts are there now from by now hundreds of books and statistical studies. The voting machine offers in essence an opinion on the part of the machine; even a hand counted paper ballot would not be totally trustworthy (factual), since there's always the danger of cheating, no matter what arrangement is used, but in the real world of elections conducted by human beings, it's as close as we'll get to a fact.

The machine vendors from the very beginning fought tooth and nail to prevent any kind of real auditing, arguing that a totally cyber vote count was better because of the danger of paper jams etc. Such an idiotic argument in some other field of human endeavor, banking e.g., would probably get a business investigated and its owners in all likelihood arrested. That would be a consummation devoutly to be wished in this instance, but until our politicians and elections officials have the guts to call these companies on their criminality, we will continue to be in the dark as to what the actual vote was in any election.

I'm hopeful the machines won't be tilted enough to prevent Obama from winning, given that he should win by a greater margin than Kerry did, and I plan to vote of course, but I do so with a feeling of certainty that the vote will be manipulated. I thought the same thing when Kerry won in 04, an election which I along with many others felt would turn out exactly as it did, that is, both the reality and the machine fantasy (which in our topsy turvy democracy is actually considered to be reality and everything else part of a conspiracy theory). If Obama is winning in all the exit polls the night of the election, people better stay up because the real results won't come in till about 1 or 2 in the morning, when the machines have time to kick in.

[Wilms]

14. True believers are traumatized, perhaps.

They mumble the same stuff over and over again as if saying it enough times will turn back the clocks and install Kerry.

I think you all need a different forum. Note Demodonkey below referring to DU back in the day. What happened? A handful of posters turned this former "Voting Systems" forum (yep, look up the history) into the exit poll wars forum with a side of the mechanized spamage of the "HCPB or I'll kill your discussion" types.

It's a pity, really.

It's an "Election Reform" forum. Not a forum for those who'll spend the rest of their lives kvetching over exit polls.

[Fly by night]

20. Some of us keep trying ... On the other hand, it would be very easy to stop.

But all y'all are still the second forum I check each morning (after the "Greatest" page) and the daily news summaries are still very much worth reading and very helpful.

Guess I just like sitting on my k-ster every morning with a cup of coffee before starting the day. Dreaming of a day when all this won't be necessary.

But then I remember, "eternal vigilance is the price of freedom."

[OnTheOtherHand]

15. Freeman didn't say that

although it's interesting how little time he has spent correcting people who thought he did.

Freeman calculated the odds that the exit poll discrepancies were due to chance or random error (or more strictly, the odds of obtaining discrepancies that large due to chance or random error) -- not "the chances that the vote... was not correct." He didn't calculate the chances of the exit polls being just plain wrong.

If you want to write about exit polls, I think you should state facts about them. It has nothing to do with trusting the machines.

[Stevepol]

18. Here are Freeman's words from the December 2004 article.

He compared the exit polls prediction in three states -- OH, FL, and PA -- with the actual or purported vote results in those states.

Here are his words about the significance of those comparisons:

"Assuming independent state polls with no systematic bias, the odds against any two of these statistical anomalies occurring together are more than 5,000:1 (five times more improbable than ten straight heads from a fair coin). The odds against all three occurring together are 662,000-to-one. As much as we can say in social science that something is impossible, it is impossible that the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote counts in the three critical battleground states of the 2004 election could have been due to chance or random error."

Notice: "It is impossible that the DISCREPANCIES BETWEEN PREDICTED (i.e. the exit polls) AND ACTUAL VOTE COUNTS IN THE THREE CRITICAL BATTLEGROUND STATES OF THE 2004 ELECTION COULD HAVE BEEN DUE TO CHANCE OR RANDOM ERROR."

He's not just studying "the odds that the exit poll discrepancies were due to chance or random error"; he was studying the odds that there would be a discrepancy between the exit polls and the purported vote. Nothing could be clearer it seems to me.

I have no idea what this sentence means or what it's directed toward: "He (Freeman) didn't calculate the chances of the exit polls being just plain wrong."

[OnTheOtherHand]

19. whoa

You really think there is a difference between "the exit poll discrepancies" and "the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote counts"?

What are the exit poll discrepancies, if not the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote counts?

Once we've established that the exit poll discrepancies weren't due to chance, the next question is: were the exit polls wrong, were the counts wrong, or were both wrong?

(ETA: By "actual" here I mean "official," as I assume Freeman did too.)

[Votergater]

8. But all Exit Polls have a 3% - 4% margin of error...

I can't recall now if Florida and Ohio in 2004 predicted that John Kerry would win by 1% , 2% or 3%,
but the Exit Polls couldn't and can't be trustworthy enough to decide the election.

[Duke Newcombe]

9. Three words: The Bradley Effect.

Again: Google is our friend.

After that (and especially with this race), I usually take exit polls with an exceedingly huge grain of salt.

Duke

[OnTheOtherHand]

12. actually more like Kerry +6 in Ohio and Bush +1 in FL

It wasn't clear at the time, because the tabulations that are posted on the Internet are based on 'composite estimates' which include pre-election expectations. But the best estimate based on interviews alone was Kerry +6.5. Probably the pre-election expectation was a tie to a small Bush win; at any rate, the composite estimate was Kerry +3.4.

The exit poll in FL actually had Bush ahead by about a point (both with and without pre-election expectations). But FL is included in the exit poll kerfuffle because Bush won by 5, and in that case the exit poll was so large that that is still outside the usual "margin of error."

I agree with your bottom line.

[demodonkey]

10. I was on the ground in Ohio as one of the nine original Regional Coordinators for the Recount...

... I saw one (1) Kerry observer the whole time I was there; a young twenty-ish year-old fellow who sat there in one county and looked like a scared deer in the headlights. The 15,000 lawyers were nowhere to be seen. Now mind you, the GOP had their maximum number of observers out (and trained) in every county I saw.

Of course the Greens and Libertarians (who called for the recount, after all) had great observers and trained them very well. That's who and what I was working with. Many of our volunteer observers for the Green Party were Dems who wanted to help but couldn't get the Democratic Party to move on this. There was no Dem effort to organize and use their services.

I saw things in Ohio that would curl your hair, like ballots in SEALED ballot boxes, supposedly locked since election night, sitting in that ballot box sorted in perfect order of who was voted on for President. All the Bush ballots were together, all the Kerry ballots were together, etc. And not one hanging chad or even rough-edged hole in the bunch. I can't "prove" it of course, but I am sure those cards were remade -- and long after election night, too.

That was just one of many wild things I saw. And I will go to my grave knowing that Ohio didn't go the way the will of the people there intended. But thanks to Blackwell and many other things, again we couldn't PROVE it.

Despite that, my hat is forever off to David Cobb, 2004 Green Party Presidential candidate, and Michael Badnarik the Libertarian Candidate, for having the courage to use their standing as official Presidential candidates to call for that Recount in Ohio. If they instead "moved on" as Kerry apparently decided to, the dangers to our electoral process would be even LESS known, and much of the gains we have achieved for election integrity in various states over the past 4 years would have never seen the light of day.

One more thing -- a LOT of the organizing, fundraising, and recruiting of volunteers for the 2004 Recount was done RIGHT HERE on the DU Election Reform Forum. Those were heady, but productive days; there was a spirit here then that we had better do our best to recapture here and everywhere else in our movement (and soon) with another incredibly important election on the line AGAIN in just a few months.

"We are the ones we have been waiting for" are more than empty words. It is high time for every Democrat (and every person of any party who cares about fair elections and Democracy) to pay attention and get productive -- unless we want to be floundering YET AGAIN in a morass while our so-called leaders "move on".


MB in PA
http://www.VotePA.us

[Fly by night]

21. Thanks, DemoD. Anyone who heard Joanne Roush at the "Nash-ional" conference also heard ...

... about multiple examples of recount fraud witnessed by the recount volunteers. In Joanne's case, she spoke with a voting machine company rep, present at the recount, who admitted tampering with the voting machines BEFORE the recounts and posting the "correct" recount number so that officials could come up with the "right" (as opposed to "left") number. She was also denied access to the actual recount process, which was the very reason she had traveled 6+ hours from Wisconsin to participate.

The incessant arguments about exit polls belie the fact that they are still used to predict the winners in all national races, minutes after the polls close. I am unaware of very many individual races since 2004 where the exit polls have performed so poorly --- all over the map and all on one night -- as they did in November, 2004. But then I don't have to convince a room full of freshmen that I know what I'm talking about either.

If we never stop fighting, we cannot lose. On the other hand, we can sit on our k-sters until this country collapses. Really glad you and me (and most other DUers) aren't made that way.

BTW, how did your showing of UNCOUNTED go at the state capital? Inquiring minds (and patriotic hearts) want to know.

[OnTheOtherHand]

22. oh, c'mon

As long as you're busting my chops, are you ever going to explain the terrible thing you think I did in Utah? It might actually be useful for me to know.

I think you know that actually, the exit polls never were used to project a winner in Ohio. Certainly Ohio wasn't called within minutes after the polls closed. So your point here doesn't make much sense. If you trust the exit polls more than the exit pollsters and networks do, don't blame it on them. I can't force you to make sense when you discuss exit polls, but I really think you should.

But certainly the 3% recount was jiggered in many counties. The question is which counties did that to cover up... ? (hacking of the punch card tabulators?) and which counties were just trying to avoid a 100% hand count, which would be triggered by a single-vote discrepancy in the 3% count.

[mod mom]

25. Carville undermines Kerry:

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2006/oct/07/did_carville_tip_bush_off_to_kerry_strategy_woodward



Did Carville Tip Bush Off to Kerry Strategy (Woodward)

By M.J. Rosenberg - October 7, 2006, 9:11AM
I just came across a troubling incident that Bob Woodward reports in his new book. Very troubling.

On page 344, Woodward describes the doings at the White House in the early morning hours of Wednesday, the day after the '04 election.

Apparently, Kerry had decided not to concede. There were 250,000 outstanding ballots in Ohio.

So Kerry decides to fight. In fact, he considers going to Ohio to camp out with his voters until there is a recount. This is the last thing the White House needs, especially after Florida 2000.

So what happened?

James Carville gets on the phone with his wife, Mary Matalin, who is at the White House with Bush.

"Carville told her he had some inside news. The Kerry campaign was going to challenge the provisional ballots in Ohio -- perhaps up to 250,000 of them. 'I don't agree with it, Carville said. I'm just telling you that's what they're talking about.'

"Matalin went to Cheney to report...You better tell the President Cheney told her."

Matalin does, advising Bush that "somebody in authority needed to get in touch with J. Kenneth Blackwell, the Republican Secretary of State in Ohio who would be in charge of any challenge to the provisional votes." An SOS goes out to Blackwell.

The rest is history.

Does something about this story stink to high heaven!

IMHO-Carville and members of the DLC thought if they could prohibit Kerry from fighting then 2008 would be a shoe in for DLCer Hillary Clinton (who sincerely believed she was a shoe-in) I believe the DLC is part of the Money Party (combo R's and D's)-which putting corporate/self interest above what is best for the county. Here is a great example how Bill Clinton was willing to sell out elections for the almighty $:



After Mining Deal, Financier Donated to Clinton

By JO BECKER and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
Published: January 31, 2008

Late on Sept. 6, 2005, a private plane carrying the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra touched down in Almaty, a ruggedly picturesque city in southeast Kazakhstan. Several hundred miles to the west a fortune awaited: highly coveted deposits of uranium that could fuel nuclear reactors around the world. And Mr. Giustra was in hot pursuit of an exclusive deal to tap them.

Unlike more established competitors, Mr. Giustra was a newcomer to uranium mining in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. But what his fledgling company lacked in experience, it made up for in connections. Accompanying Mr. Giustra on his luxuriously appointed MD-87 jet that day was a former president of the United States, Bill Clinton.

-snip


"Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, whose 19-year stranglehold on the country has all but quashed political dissent."

"Mr. Nazarbayev walked away from the table with a propaganda coup, after Mr. Clinton expressed enthusiastic support for the Kazakh leader’s bid to head an international organization that monitors elections and supports democracy."

-snip

Just months after the Kazakh pact was finalized, Mr. Clinton’s charitable foundation received its own windfall: a $31.3 million donation from Mr. Giustra that had remained a secret until he acknowledged it last month. The gift, combined with Mr. Giustra’s more recent and public pledge to give the William J. Clinton Foundation an additional $100 million, secured Mr. Giustra a place in Mr. Clinton’s inner circle, an exclusive club of wealthy entrepreneurs in which friendship with the former president has its privileges.

LINK:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/us/politics/31donor.html

WHY WOULD ANYONE SUPPORT AN OPPRESSIVE TYRANT TO HEAD AN ORGANIZATION THE MONITORS ELECTIONS?

[demodonkey]

26. We have had quite a few oppressive tyrants working on elections here.

For example we had James Baker co-head the so-called "Carter-BAKER" Commission on Federal Election Reform.

For newbies or those who don't remember, fortunately some of us decided to hold our own "Commission". See http://www.electionassessment.org/

And thank you Kip Humphrey, Seth, and others for keeping this up.

[mod mom]

27. Certainly, but is it disturbing seeing a "Democrat" supporting these folks.

:hi:

[OnTheOtherHand]

28. I have no idea what this has to do with my post

I don't know how it is that Ohio turns out differently if Carville doesn't call his wife, but hey, maybe. How many uncounted provisional ballots were there in Ohio?

I agree that Clinton was on the wrong side of the OSCE issue. (ETA: Not the first time, not the last!)

[mod mom]

29. I guess I posted after reading yours. As far as PVs in OH in '04 the numbers dramatically

changed from a reported 250,000 to the given (via Blackwell) ending number of 158,000. Bush "won" by just over 118,000 votes. I've looked at the 6 counties where PVs are most prevalent (Cuyahoga, Franklin, Hamilton, Lucas, Montgomery & Summit) for 2004. Although Ohio has 88 counties, there were 75,236 in these six urban counties (out of 158,862-Blackwell's final number-statewide) in 2004 and urban counties tend to vote Democratic, the change in the numbers of PVs is significant. The percentage overall acceptance was 77.9 % statewide in '04, but the six urban counties saw a much lower acceptance rate (At the bottom is Lucas, which saw 41% of their Provisional Ballots not counted.)

Anyway this is all a rather moot point right now. We have to make sure changes are implemented, and voter's votes count in November. The Ohio Democratic Party has a new Director of Voter Protection who will help ensure that this election will fair and our votes protected. The Obama campaign is setting up shop in the entire state instead of concentrating on only urban areas. There are many people overseeing the process. I predict Ohio turns blue in November.

[OnTheOtherHand]

30. OK

FWIW, I think the 250,000 was a guesstimate. It's hard to know how many provisional ballots may have disappeared, but they are handled at the county level, so Blackwell couldn't unilaterally disappear them, although he did prevent a bunch of them from being counted. But, as you say, that's all rather moot.

Yes, Obama and the Ohio Dems are doing a lot right.

[althecat]

17. He didn't know about them the morning after when he conceded...

And he was being leaned on very heavily by Democrats and Republicans not to be a sore loserman. It was intensely disappointing to us here in DUERD obviously.