Miami Herald- No Flaw in Bush Fla Win

[GrapplerHK]

No flaw is found in Bush's state win

Some critics have alleged that Florida's majority vote for President Bush was flawed. The Herald counted the votes in three North Florida counties and found little discrepancy.

BY MEG LAUGHLIN AND DAVID KIDWELL

[e-mail]


LAKE BUTLER - Since George W. Bush captured Florida and the White House again, critics have fixed their sights on northern pockets of the Sunshine State and asked: How did the Republicans win so heavily in counties stocked with Democrats?

Some wondered whether Florida's tally was corrupt, with one Internet site writing: ``George W. Bush's vote tallies, especially in the key state of Florida, are so statistically stunning that they border on the unbelievable.''

Last week, The Herald went to see for itself whether Bush's steamroll through North Florida was legitimate. Picking three counties that fit the conspiracy theory profile -- staunchly Democratic by registration, whoppingly GOP by voting -- two reporters counted more than 17,000 ballots over three days.

The conclusion: No conspiracy.

more

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/front/10286349.htm


They hand counted 17,000 votes, from three small counties, that didnt use electronic voting machines.

They recounted 0.22 % of the total votes in Florida.

17,000 out of 7.5 MILLION votes and concluded "No flaw is found in Bush's state win".

Some great journalism there.

[kitp]

1. my email to them

I am writing regarding your recent articles dealing with the three county partial hand recount of ballots your reporters witnessed.

I have been following the problems with the our recent election in hopes of finding a way to eliminate all concerns and suspicions in this and future elections. I appreciate your newspaper being present at these recounts and publishing the results.

Anything that increases the transparency of our elections will improve the trust of the voters in that system.

I do have a few questions regarding your reports, though. In several studies, the UC Berkeley study for example, the three counties you reported on showed no signs of irregularities or problems. Therefore, a hand recount that is virtually identical with the reported results in these counties does not really address the issues raised by these studies.

A second issue is that in two of the counties the President lost votes in the hand recount. I do not understand how this is possible. A machine can (incorrectly) not count a vote for a variety of reason and a hand recount would add votes to the total, most likely adding votes for all candidates. However, if a hand recount decreases the votes cast for a candidate, that would mean that the machine counted a vote that didn't exist. I'm not sure I understand how this is possible and your article did not talk about this issue. Did the machine total include votes for which there was no corresponding ballot? Did the machine tally a vote when the ballot showed no selection? Either of these raises serious concerns about the machines' reliability. I have no concern that machines might miss votes, this can happen and hand recounts can find these votes and add them to the totals. I am concerned when the machine counts votes that don't exist.

The third issue is that, if our goal is to relieve the anxiety of those who feel that there is bias in the system, to show that regardless of what errors, glitches or malfunctions we may experience, it is systemic and affects all candidates, your report fails. Note that in each case of a hand recount, the reported results versus the hand-counted results favor John Kerry.

As I have been reading the reports of those who are concerned that there is a systemic bias in the errors, glitches and malfunctions toward the President in this election, I am afraid these results, though small, only feed that concern. It appears that there may actually be enough data to support the notion that there is a systemic bias and the results you reported do not challenge that, they support it.

My final point is that these partial hand-recounts in three counties not only do not address the serious issues raised regarding irregularities, as these counties were never in question, and not only do not address the possible serious issue of systemic bias, as the results seem to confirm systemic bias for every variance with hand-counting was in Kerry's favor, and not only do not address the possible serious issue of programmatic bias, as the machines counted votes for Bush that did not exist, but that these results are woefully inadequate to use as proof that "No flaw found in Bush's state win".

Again, I appreciate all efforts to make the 2004 election, and all future elections, transparent. I wish that you would continue this task by looking a little deeper into the issues raised and the problems reported.

[noclonyofthechimp]

3. Exellent letter! Can't wait to see if you get a response or if they post

your letter.

[mirandapriestly]

7. That is an excellent letter n/t

[pointsoflight]

8. Excellent letter, right on the money.

[Pacifist Patriot]

10. Beautiful!

I hope it's not lost in the wind.

ETA: I just looked below. Please consider sending it to the Orlando Slantinel as well.

[smartvoter]

16. Great letter. Dead on.

[floridadem30]

19. Great letter. Can't wait to hear their response

[jamboi]

2. Yeah great. "We found 1 place that seems okay, therefore its all okay!"n/t

[kitp]

5. hey

i've only been around for a couple of weeks (nooooobie) and i don't know what n/t means....please don't laugh at me...

[Pacifist Patriot]

11. n/t means there is no text in the message of the post

Only a subject line. It's not really necessary with the DU formatting style, but at other on-line forums using (m) to indicate more/message and (nt) to indicate no text saves people time when browsing through an outline format in which you have to click on a post to actually open and read the full body. Just a courtesy really. I've had a hard time breaking the habit here and have just now stopped using the code.

[noonriser]

12. Means no text. Same as EOM (end of message).

No laughs here!

[distantearlywarning]

4. Not to mention

that the original Dopp & Liddle study didn't really include "Dixiecrat" counties, and many of us didn't think that the Northern Panhandle counties were the ones with the problems anyway.

Let's see them count Miami-Dade or Broward (two subjects of the Berkeley study, which is better than the Dopp & Liddle).

Sometimes I can't stand news people. They go to all the trouble of counting 17K ballots, and then can't even be bothered to give us little people enough information about it to determine anything valuable.

[tbuddha]

6. Their still using this? Boy have we got them beat!!

We've already dismantled the cheap "dixiecrat" theory. Who cares about rednecks in north Florida counties. The question everyone should be asking are what are the vote totals on the polling tapes Bev Harris found in the trash?

[The Backlash Cometh]

9. They printed this crap in the Orlando Sentinel too.

I don't like the way it said that in the Panhandle the voters are conservative and routinely register as Democrats for the local elections. Do you know what that means? It means that DINOS are intentionally infiltrating in order to tip the Democratic primaries to the right.

[kitp]

13. yes

Sent my email above (slightly modified) to them as well.
Still no word from the Herald.

[The Backlash Cometh]

17. Thanks.

[fearnobush]

14. Hey wow, It's ok now. Its ok to look like total Fool journalists in FL.

Gee, that paper sounds just like it did about this time four years ago when Palest was begging this so called reporters to report on the Choice Point CD's he had with voters losing their right to vote for crimes committed in 2007. And that big Fraudulent list he had then too.

[pointsoflight]

15. That's downright irresponsible journalism.

You have to wonder how some people can sleep at night.

[badc0der]

18. Not to mention that they don’t understand their own data…

It looks like they did a full recount in two counties, Union and Lafayette. In both counties they found fewer than reported Bush votes and more than reported Kerry votes.

They also did a partial recount in Suwannee County. While Bush still "wins" the county under their recount he does so with about 67% of the vote as opposed to the 71% reported. Given the large number of votes counted we would expect the partial recount to be within 1% of the total. Since it is not, I would expect that a full recount would result in a net shift of at least 600 votes to Kerry.
If their numbers hold up throughout the state, this is enough to change the outcome of the election.

[floridadem30]

20. Welcome to DU