News "Did Kerry Win the Election?" Analysis

[decibel]

This is interesting, what do you guys think?

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/kerry_won.php

 

[check]

Here's something else that's neat.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/05/voting.problems.ap/index.html
That's just one voting machine so far. Imagine if the same thing happened to 50 other machines...

 

[Political Prodigy]

Both links are intriguing. Although I highly doubt the same type of error discussed in the link that Check provided is likely to happen to 50 other machines, its worth looking into. I'm certainly very interested in decibels's link and I am definately going to do more research on it.

 

[bross7]

Exit polls mean nothing.

Who did you vote for?
Kerry...

Who did you really vote for?
Bush...

Just because exit polls tend to be accurate if you were a Bush supporter who would it make more sense to say you voted for. Say Bush and make Repulicans complacent, overconfident, and then possibly not show up, or do the same thing to the Democrats. Chances are people were encouraged to go out and vote at the last minute because the exit polls made it seem like Kerry was going to win.

 

[selfAdjoint]

They are adding the total spoilage to the total disputed and counting it for Kerry. Isn't that just slightly silly? I'm all for having the provisional ballots vetted and counted where valid, and only if that shows a really close race would I expect them to go to the spoilage (i.e. the 2004 equivalent of hanging chads).

 

[Moonbear]

While I'm not happy Bush won, I'm not going to jump on this bandwagon. Look at the two articles together. In one, they chastise Ohio's Secretary of State for running the election with hanging chad punchcards, and in the second, they complain about the errors of the electronic voting machines. The Secretary of State was actually pushing to get electronic voting machines throughout the state, and I was one of the people who wrote to him and asked him to not rush into it. Punchcards have their problems, but the lack of a permanent record of votes that permit a recount on electronic machines is even a bigger problem.

I also would guess the hanging chad and pregnant chad problems would be less in this election than previously, mainly because people know about the FL fiasco now, and would be more attentive to the problem. In addition, there were ads on TV demonstrating how to check for these problems, and information right in the voting booths reminding voters to check the back of the punchcards for hanging chad and to be sure the holes punched out completely. If anyone was still stupid enough to not notice, then it's their own fault their vote isn't being counted. Afterall, just when you think you've made something foolproof, you'll find a bigger fool.

 

[check]

Why can’t America just have one, standardised system of voting, controlled by one federal agency? It’s seriously not that hard.

When I go to vote, I get a simple little ballot with the names of the candidates and their parties. Next to the names are very large circles. I simply put a big X in the circle next to my choice, fold up the ballot and put it in the box. No hanging chads, no malfunctioning voting machines. Quick, cheap and easy. The only draw back is that the ballots need to be hand counted. But is that really a bad thing? (Is this the standard in all of Canada? I'm assuming it is)
I guess it would take forever though in the States seeing as a federal election draws over 100million people and in Canada we get about 10million LoL

 

[Moonbear]

Check, the individual states determine how voting is done in the US...it's written right into our Constitution. The reason is the founders of our country were very fearful of centralized government, so tried to decentralize everything as much as possible.

As for drawing an X in a box, you've clearly never had to grade ScanTron style exams (fill in the bubble). If college students can't follow simple instructions of "fill in only one bubble, do not go outside the lines, fill it in completely, be sure to completely erase if you change your answer," then what hope do we have of the rest of the population managing that? It would be no better than those who can't figure out that that piece of paper dangling on the back of their ballot should be removed. However, even those readers are prone to occassional mistakes...at least one or two in every 300 based on complaints I got from students that the machine scored their answers wrong (I kept the original and gave them a copy so they couldn't change their answers after the fact). I would think hand-counting is actually more error-prone, especially as those doing the counting get more tired.

 

[dekoi]

Bush won.

Everyone knows of the corruption of the American democracy. Should we do something about it? Perhaps we should. But ranting on forums will not get us anywhere.

The government should first raise the question, "What is a democracy?". From then, things should flourish.

 

[plover]

As for the electronic voting machine, this is a http://verifiedvoting.org/article.php?id=997 . It is one reason there were efforts to make a paper trail obligatory. I have no overall sense of how common these problems are, but they have been seen in a good number of elections in the past couple of years.

 

[Gokul43201]

I can understand states rights on cultural, (some) economic, and (some) educational policies. I can't see the point in states determining election procedure (especially for a National Election), other than it gives each Sec. State power to influence the outcome.

Can someone tell me the drawbacks of a Federalized voting system ?

 

[russ_watters]

Palast is a real kook. Provisional ballots are provisional - traditionally, only 20% or so end up being judged to be valid. Add to that the nuttiness of assuming all of them were for Kerry, and Palast really needs his head checked (or is just an ordinary conspiracy theorist).

 

[Gokul43201]

Palast is a real kook. Provisional ballots are provisional - traditionally, only 20% or so end up being judged to be valid.

Where do you get that number from ? In 2000, there were about 100,000 provisional ballots cast in Ohio, and 91% of them were valid.

 

[BobG]

There's a few different categories for provisional ballots and most do wind up being excepted. Each state is a little different, though.

If the person didn't register, obviously the ballots are tossed. This is seldom the case.

If the person moved, voted in his new precinct, but the voter regristration rolls weren't updated, the voter regristration rolls are corrected and the ballots excepted.

The in between is where there's a lot of variation. If you move across town to at least a new district for your state and local elected officials, and try to vote in your old district (which does happen, strangley enough), obviously voting for the wrong local officials won't count.

If you wanted to enforce the election laws very strictly, you could decide the person's vote for President, Senator, Congressman, etc. doesn't count either since the voter voted outside his precinct. That's a pretty hard sell to say voting on the wrong side of town invalidates your vote for a national office - the same names would be on the voter's ballot regardless of which precinct he voted in. Regardless of how many could technically be thrown out, it's a fight of technicalities vs. common sense. Fighting to throw out every single ballot that doesn't meet the exact letter of the law makes the election officials look pretty bad even if they win.

Yes, Ohio accepted almost all of the provisional ballots for President in 2000 and I don't think any state had the brass to only accept 20% for a Presidential election, but the actual numbers vary from place to place. If the election had come down to the provisional ballots with the outcome hanging in the balance, it would be anyone's guess how many would be accepted - the only sure thing is that it would have come via court decision some time after the election.

 

[Moonbear]

Can someone tell me the drawbacks of a Federalized voting system ?

The same potential for corruption that exists in the Secretary of States' offices could still happen on a national level, but would then only come out of one office instead of 50, so there would be even more concern of corruption turning an election in favor of one candidate.

 

[Moonbear]

Where do you get that number from ? In 2000, there were about 100,000 provisional ballots cast in Ohio, and 91% of them were valid.

There's no need to worry about the provisional ballots. Ohio state law requires all valid provisional ballots be counted before the Secretary of State certifies the election results. It sure would make for great headlines if the outcome changes based on the provisional ballots, but don't hold your breath expecting it.

 

[Kerrie]

Check, the individual states determine how voting is done in the US...it's written right into our Constitution. The reason is the founders of our country were very fearful of centralized government, so tried to decentralize everything as much as possible.

i believe the states should have the right to determine their method of voting when it comes to state issues...but perhaps the federal government needs to mandate a standard for presidential elections? it would be a lot more consistent that's for sure.

 

[Moonbear]

As for the electronic voting machine, this is a http://verifiedvoting.org/article.php?id=997 . It is one reason there were efforts to make a paper trail obligatory. I have no overall sense of how common these problems are, but they have been seen in a good number of elections in the past couple of years.

Just to play devil's advocate with regard to that machine that was reported to overcount the Bush vote...it sounds like the entire overcount is being attributed to Bush, so to come up with the count for Bush, they've subtracted Kerry's votes from the total number of voters. What if it overcounted all the votes...such as counted all of them 5 times or something like that? In that case, Bush might have had even a greater majority in that precinct with Kerry only getting a handful of votes.

This is certainly a problem...how do you know which happened when there's no hard copy of the votes? Depending on who's calling the shots, determining the direction of the error could be biased toward either candidate.

 

[arildno]

Now, just a comment from the Norwegian fishpond:

The way we do it here, is that EACH PARTY has its own, SEPARATE, list.
There are few shortcomings of this system, although at times, some voting areas have too few lists for a given party (this may annul the result in that district).

Does any state in the US have this system?

 

[Political Prodigy]

I should have thought of this when I made my first post. No matter who won the election, the other side would dispute it. Of course the democrats will say Bush did not win, just as if Kerry had won the Republicans would say he did not win. That's politics.

 

[CloakNight]

Here's something else that's neat.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/05/voting.problems.ap/index.html
That's just one voting machine so far. Imagine if the same thing happened to 50 other machines...

"Franklin is the only Ohio county to use Danaher Controls Inc.’s ELECTronic 1242, an older-style touch-screen voting system."

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6418513/

 

[russ_watters]

Where do you get that number from ? In 2000, there were about 100,000 provisional ballots cast in Ohio, and 91% of them were valid.

I think I read it in USA Today. Not sure though. do you have a source for that number?

 

[plover]

Just to play devil's advocate with regard to that machine that was reported to overcount the Bush vote...it sounds like the entire overcount is being attributed to Bush, so to come up with the count for Bush, they've subtracted Kerry's votes from the total number of voters. What if it overcounted all the votes...such as counted all of them 5 times or something like that? In that case, Bush might have had even a greater majority in that precinct with Kerry only getting a handful of votes.

If each vote counts as an (unknown) n rather than 1, there's still enough information to solve for the original counts, but in this case the answer gives a non-integral count for each candidate.

In any case, the problems I mentioned appear to be random problems with the software, overall no party was favored in previous incidents. Even if several machines showed the same bias toward Bush, to prove fraud it would still be necessary to show that there was some expectation on the part of officials the bias would occur rather than it simply being the same unexpected bug manifesting multiple times.

It's silly for the need for a paper trail to be a partisan issue as anyone could be adversely affected by these crappy machines. These counting problems are only one of the software and hardware failures that have been widespread in recent model electronic voting machines (and from what CloakNight said perhaps in older ones also, though just because the county has some earlier models doesn't mean the problem at hand occurred on one).

 

[Gokul43201]

I think I read it in USA Today. Not sure though. do you have a source for that number?

http://www.columbusdispatch.com/election/election-local.php?story=dispatch/2004/09/25/20040925-A1-02.html is probably not where I first read it (actually I first heard this on CNN, Judy Woodruff on night of Nov 2), but it agrees with that number.

Observers say there’s no way to predict how many voters may be affected, and LoParo [spokesman for the Ohio Sec. State] disputes the suggestion that it will be a large number. He noted that 93 percent of the 54,137 provisional ballots cast in the 2002 general election were counted, and 91 percent of the nearly 100,000 ballots in 2000.

PS : I also heard the 20% number that same night (from Pat Buchanan) on MSNBC.

 

[russ_watters]

HERE it is:

"There are 140,000 provisional ballots. Historically, only 7 to 20% of those would be counted," said Bush-Cheney communications director Nicolle Devenish. "Even if twice that many end up getting counted, he can't close the gap of his defeat in the state. It's desperate."

I have no idea where she got that, and with the new info you guys provided, I'm inclined to believe the >90% figure.

 

[Moonbear]

Russ, I've also heard the 90% or higher figure numerous times on the local news coverage. I really don't know where the Bush campaign gets such a low number from. Since they say "historically," it could be either older data from elections pre-2000, or perhaps the nationwide average is much lower than in Ohio. If there is such a difference between Ohio and national averages, I'd have to wonder why that happens? Are other states tossing a lot of valid ballots on minor technical issues, or do they have more problems with corruption (i.e., dead people voting)?

 

[Hydr0matic]

http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=388

 

[hitssquad]

Will John Edwards be inaugurated January 20

Apparently John Kerry won the election. His "abdication" might be taken as tantamount to resigning his position as president and hence the office might shift to John Edwards, Kerry's vice president.

 

[selfAdjoint]

If you read the article, all the irregularities reported in it wouldn't change the outcome. The case in Ohio was about 3000 votes and Bush won that state by 136,000 votes. So it goes to 133,000; big deal. There MAY be a case when the provisional ballots are all accounted for, but we'll just have to wait for that.

 

[check]

I wonder what would happen if after the results were certified some hacker(s) took responsibility (and it was proven true) for tipping the election in Bush's favour... :p
That'd be quite a story...oh man...

 

[Political Prodigy]

If you read the article, all the irregularities reported in it wouldn't change the outcome. The case in Ohio was about 3000 votes and Bush won that state by 136,000 votes. So it goes to 133,000; big deal. There MAY be a case when the provisional ballots are all accounted for, but we'll just have to wait for that.

Great point

Just a little side comment. The voting system is NEVER going to be 100% correct. There will always be some mistake, something gone wrong, some votes lost, or some votes given to the wrong person. It has happened in the past and it will continue to happen in the future.

 

[russ_watters]

Apparently John Kerry won the election. His "abdication" might be taken as tantamount to resigning his position as president and hence the office might shift to John Edwards, Kerry's vice president.

You made me laugh soo hard, my cat jumped off of my stomach. Therapeutic - thanks.

 

[selfAdjoint]

http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm

 

[russ_watters]

Interesting, but the President isn't elected via exit poll. Also, its kinda disturbing that a liberal advocacy group is looking for justifications to challenge future elections. The methodology there is also suspect: it utterly ignores the people who decided the election.

 

[plover]

Interesting, but the President isn't elected via exit poll. Also, its kinda disturbing that a liberal advocacy group is looking for justifications to challenge future elections. The methodology there is also suspect: it utterly ignores the people who decided the election.

If you are referring to selfAdjoint's link you have apparently yet again failed to read someone's link with even minimal care.

What is "the president isn't elected via exit poll" supposed to mean anyway? Who suggested that was the case? When different forms of data gathering produce inconsistent results, rational people investigate the reason.

And "looking for justifications to challenge future elections"? Now there's an objective assessment for you. It seems it would not occur to you that having transparently verifiable procedures is intended to prevent challenges to elections by making flaws in the system more readily apparent and correctable. But if you think that miscounts, whether from software bugs or human error or fraud, are ok, then go ahead, argue against redundant verification methods.

What part of the methodology is "suspect"? How does it "[ignore] the people who decided the election"? All that's been done is to point out a statistical pattern. Plus, the author states that "No conclusions as to the causes of the pattern can be drawn at this time". But I suppose that constitutes some kind of logical leap that I'm unaware of.

Why do you make misleading posts like this? You can do better.

 

[russ_watters]

What is "the president isn't elected via exit poll" supposed to mean anyway? Who suggested that was the case? When different forms of data gathering produce inconsistent results, rational people investigate the reason.

It is implied in the link that if the exit polls show something different from the acutal polls, the polls must be wrong:

...if exit polls from various states use the same scientific methodology, then the likelihood of election results being significantly different than exit polls results in half a dozen swing states is very very low.

And "looking for justifications to challenge future elections"? Now there's an objective assessment for you. It seems it would not occur to you that having transparently verifiable procedures is intended to prevent challenges to elections by making flaws in the system more readily apparent and correctable.

And you ask me if I read the link? This is fairly clear:

...so that we can develop and test the efficacy of a system to put in place by 2006 to pinpoint counties or even precincts which warrant recounts.

That's clearly looking for a basis to have recounts, not prevent them. Its looking for a way to quickly evaluate where they think they can do recounts - to help the next Democratic canditate decide faster, where to send his lawyers-on-gulfstreams (Kerry's most important innovation in campaigning).

But if you think that miscounts, whether from software bugs or human error or fraud, are ok, then go ahead, argue against redundant verification methods.

That link says nothing at all about redundant verification methods. It isn't about fixing the election process, its about exploiting its flaws.

What part of the methodology is "suspect"? How does it "[ignore] the people who decided the election"? All that's been done is to point out a statistical pattern.

Right: a statistical analysis of democratic and republican voting patterns. This election was not decided by registered democrats or republicans (they rarely ever are): it was decided by independents.

 

[Gokul43201]

http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm

Either this is really shocking...or I'm not following.

Consider little Calhoun County : Of the total of 8,350 registered voters, 82.4% were registered Democrats. Less than 1,000 were registered Republican. Now the total number of votes from this county was 5,961, out of which 3,780 went to Bush ! Assuming all those registered Rep or Indep (1,470 people) voted for Bush this still needs about half the registered Democrats who voted to have switched loyalty and voted for Bush. That can't be !

 

[franznietzsche]

Retracted post-momentary rage.

 

[BobG]

Physical location is probably more significant than the voting machine used. Every county in the panhandle East of Walton County had incredibly high results for Bush and accounts for most of the most drastic surprises on the list.

 

[plover]

Either this is really shocking...or I'm not following.

Consider little Calhoun County : Of the total of 8,350 registered voters, 82.4% were registered Democrats. Less than 1,000 were registered Republican. Now the total number of votes from this county was 5,961, out of which 3,780 went to Bush ! Assuming all those registered Rep or Indep (1,470 people) voted for Bush this still needs about half the registered Democrats who voted to have switched loyalty and voted for Bush. That can't be !

This is actually not the anomaly in the data. The low population counties in Florida are rural counties populated by conservative folks who are registered Democrat because of long standing patterns in Southern politics. I looked at the data for one county over time, and their choice for President seems most often to be the candidate who might be defined in some fashion as "more Southern" rather than that of a specific party, though it's not completely cut and dried. There is, however, no reason to believe that these counties would not have voted for Bush as the results indicate (indeed if these results were, in fact, as glaringly off as they appear at first glance, I assume that residents of those counties would have noticed and raised a fuss).

The recent Presidential races for Taylor County have gone as follows:

2004  Kerry    35.5%  Bush      63.7%                  Other 0.8%
2000  Gore     38.9%  Bush      59.6%  Nader     0.9%  Other 0.6%
1996  Clinton  44.8%  Dole      39.9%  Perot    14.3%  Other 1.1%
1992  Clinton  35.6%  Bush      37.3%  Perot    26.7%  Other 0.3%
1988  Dukakis  30.0%  Bush      69.1%                  Other 0.9%
1984  Mondale  30.0%  Reagan    70.0%                  Other 0.0%
1980  Carter   50.5%  Reagan    47.3%  Anderson  1.3%  Other 0.9%
1976  Carter   62.3%  Ford      36.7%                  Other 1.0%
1972  McGovern 15.5%  Nixon     84.5%                  Other 0.0%
1968  Humphrey 18.6%  Nixon     15.7%  Wallace  65.7%  Other 0.0%
1964  Johnson  39.1%  Goldwater 60.9%  Unpledged 0.0%  Other 0.0%

Note the winners especially in '64, '68, and '80.

The problems in the data show up in the fact that counties with urban centers (e.g. Leon and Duval—containing Tallahassee and Jacksonville respectively) indicate cross party voting in ways that don't correlate well with other urban centers. Unfortunately some articles have started quoting these statistics indiscriminately, without waiting for a sufficently rigorous analysis to be made. If there is anything to the statistical anomalies that ends up being explicable only by flaws in particular voting methods, then there will be something to be concerned about.

 

[franznietzsche]

Their just angry because they lost and they refuse to admit that it might have been because they were actually less popular. So much for Democracy. Its unconceivable to them that the majority might disagree with them, unimaginable.

Its a quite common perspective out here in california. Most people out here think conservatives are about 35% NATION WIDE, like they are locally. These people just can't concieve that maybe some people really wanted Bush to be reelected.

People disagree with me? NEVER...

 

[selfAdjoint]

Physical location is probably more significant than the voting machine used. Every county in the panhandle East of Walton County had incredibly high results for Bush and accounts for most of the most drastic surprises on the list.

The voting machine link was highly significant (p < .001) even when other factors were controlled for. RTFP.

 

[plover]

It is implied in the link that if the exit polls show something different from the acutal polls, the polls must be wrong:

...if exit polls from various states use the same scientific methodology, then the likelihood of election results being significantly different than exit polls results in half a dozen swing states is very very low.

And the sentence you quote here oversteps the bounds of statistical inference, um, how?

The woman who set up this page appears to have written it as if everyone reading it was going to understand that it was an incomplete analysis and not jump to conclusions, which was, of course, absurdly naïve. Almost every comment on this I've seen from either side (and I'd been following them for a couple of days before selfAdjoint's post) has done exactly the opposite.

And you ask me if I read the link? This is fairly clear:

...so that we can develop and test the efficacy of a system to put in place by 2006 to pinpoint counties or even precincts which warrant recounts.

That's clearly looking for a basis to have recounts, not prevent them. Its looking for a way to quickly evaluate where they think they can do recounts - to help the next Democratic canditate decide faster, where to send his lawyers-on-gulfstreams (Kerry's most important innovation in campaigning).

So, recounts are de facto bad? Or having accurate staistical methods which show where a recount might be useful is more untrustworthy than guessing? Or if the kinds of procedures Dopp is describing were available, both sides wouldn't be using them? You seem to have pretty much wandered off into partisan paranoia land here.

The more transparent the system is the better it is for both sides. Statistical measures are one method of increasing transparency. The victors (unless, of course, they are stealing elections... ) should want the vote results to be transparent so their legitimacy isn't challenged. Or do you enjoy living in a country with a snarlingly bitter partisan divide?

In my opinion, it would be extremely preferable if there were voting procedures in place that I trusted, but currently we have error-prone electronic voting machines with completely half-assed security. So as it stands I want to see this analysis done right—if there is something shady to find I want it found, and if there isn't anything beyond some counter intuitive patterns, I want that to be made clear so people don't sit around whinging and making up idiot conspiracy theories. Uncertainty and suspicion are a much worse hell than a fair and obvious loss.

That link says nothing at all about redundant verification methods. It isn't about fixing the election process, its about exploiting its flaws.

If I said that you didn't want voting procedures to be transparent so that Republicans could continue stealing elections, you'd say I was raving. I fail to see how the above theory is any more sensible.

Right: a statistical analysis of democratic and republican voting patterns. This election was not decided by registered democrats or republicans (they rarely ever are): it was decided by independents.

What does independents deciding the election have to do with an analysis of anomalies in cross party voting patterns?

 

[plover]

Computer security expert Bruce Schneier on electronic voting machines.

The auditing that is conducted on slot machine software in the U.S. is significantly more meticulous than what is done to voting software. The development process for mission-critical airplane software makes voting software look like a slapdash affair. If we care about the integrity of our elections, this has to change.

Proponents of DREs often point to successful elections as “proof” that the systems work. That completely misses the point. The fear is that errors in the software -- either accidental or deliberately introduced -- can undetectably alter the final tallies. An election without any detected problems is no more a proof the system is reliable and secure than a night that no one broke into your house is proof that your door locks work. Maybe no one tried, or maybe someone tried and succeeded...and you don’t know it.

Even if we get the technology right, we still won’t be done. If the goal of a voting system is to accurately translate voter intent into a final tally, the voting machine is only one part of the overall system. In the 2004 U.S. election, problems with voter registration, untrained poll workers, ballot design, and procedures for handling problems resulted in far more votes not being counted than problems with the technology. But if we’re going to spend money on new voting technology, it makes sense to spend it on technology that makes the problem easier instead of harder.