Vote chancing in Florida

by Jerome Armstrong, Thu Nov 18, 2004 at 10:27:29 AM EST

There must be an easy explanation for this:Among the factors weighted in the study were the Hispanic/Latino population, median income, change in voter turnout between 2000 and 2004 and support for Senator Bob Dole in the 1996 election.

The three counties where the voting anomalies were most prevalent were also the most heavily Democratic: Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade, respectively. Statistical patterns in counties that did not have e-touch voting machines predicted a 28,000 vote decrease in President Bush's support in Broward County, yet machines tallied an increase of 51,000 votes - a net gain of 81,000.

President Bush should have lost 8,900 votes in Palm Beach County, but instead gained 41,000 - a difference of 49,900. He should have gained only 18,400 votes in Miami-Dade County but saw a gain of 37,000 - a difference of 19,300 votes.

Right?"No matter how many factors and variables we took into consideration, the significant correlation in the votes for President Bush and electronic voting cannot be explained," Hout added. "The study shows that a county's use of electronic voting resulted in a disproportionate increase in votes for President Bush.

The odds of this occurring by chance?

"Less than once in a thousand," he said.

Lemme guess, it's the one.

Tags: General 2008 (all tags)

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It couldn't be the one

Since the odds are actually less than one in a thousand.

by Chris Bowers 2004-11-18 10:39AM | 0 recs

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Neo

Huh? What are you talking about? I thought Neo was the one? :)

by Winger 2004-11-18 10:51AM | 0 recs

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Re: Neo

Now you are just intentionally trying to confuse me. :-)

by Chris Bowers 2004-11-18 11:00AM | 0 recs

4a2fab88-ed3b-47a4-8f14-3ec8a24504ac_normal

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Re: It couldn't be the one

It could be out of a few thousand!

by Jerome Armstrong 2004-11-18 11:13AM | 0 recs

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My analysis is here

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/18/162756/98

Essentially, very fishy but not a smoking gun (unfortunately).

by DC Pol Sci 2004-11-18 11:31AM | 0 recs

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Re: My analysis is here

I've just read your analysis of the Berkeley study and neither are you able to be defnitive that the vote anomalies ARE NOT indicative of fraud.

I believe we will see similar trends in Ohio, and possibly North Carolina.

This is all adding up to convincing evidence of wide spread vote manipulation and fraud in the 2004 election.

Anyone with common sense will know that communitites that are between 60 and 70 % registered democrat did not vote 70 - 80 % for Bush.

I know you apologists for defeat will do everything you can to explain this OBVIOUSLY FRAUDULENT election but anyone with common sense (phd, not required) will know that this election was just as fraudulent as was 2000 and 2002.

Incredible to what lenghts you will go to deny the plainly obvious.

by leschwartz 2004-11-18 12:24PM | 0 recs

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Re: My analysis is here

les, you are filtering. His analysis was completely evenhanded. It wasn't a debunk or a denial in any sense.

by tunesmith 2004-11-18 02:58PM | 0 recs

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Re: My analysis is here

See... that's exactly the kind of article that should have made the Recommended list.

Jerome recommended it. His should count for more than some of those "fraud! wolf!" people.

I think daily kos needs a trust metric, like advogato. kos should be able to heavily influence the kind of articles that rise up. We'd all pick a few people that we trust, and our weight would be determined by how far away we are from the nut (kos).

Yes, I did just call kos a nut.

by tunesmith 2004-11-18 03:02PM | 0 recs

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Re: My analysis is here

Well, one of the things that DKos has dealt with is the turnover of new communities. You'll notice in the rankings that they are listed from top to bottom by userID numbers (that's why I'm always at the top there, being one of the first to sign up while we were beta testing for launch). Anyway, I'm pretty sure our hackers could start with that userID ranking, and weight the recommended in line with it. It would at least give a sense of stability to the community as it grows in that the first members would always have the highest weight. I've been telling Kos to look at FreeRepublic's model, as it's also on Perl, because he really needs to find a way to sectionalize the diarys. Of course, Scoop has Topics, which we are not even using, that could do this...

by Jerome Armstrong 2004-11-18 05:51PM | 0 recs

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Correlation = Causation

Really!

by BigModerate 2004-11-18 11:41AM | 0 recs

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Re: Correlation = Causation

Uh, I hope you're being sarcastic?

He actually does an OLS, which is suggestive of causation. But his "electronic voting" independent variable isn't ironclad, as my analysis notes.

by DC Pol Sci 2004-11-18 06:50PM | 0 recs

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Seniors

The important demographic that I don't see in their analysis is seniors. IIRC Bush did unusually well among them, and I assume they are especially concentrated in Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade.

by CA Pol Junkie 2004-11-18 12:21PM | 0 recs

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Re: Seniors

Yeah... I thought Bush's strength was supposed to be long-registered Republicans who hadn't voted recently, which might not be reflected in either the '00 or '96 (Dole) numbers.

by tunesmith 2004-11-18 02:53PM | 0 recs

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Something strange I saw in Florida . . .

meant to post this here, but somehow it got put up as a comment on the newer post instead:

As I posted here a few days ago when this topic came up, I saw a squirrelly guy come by the polling place where I was working in rural Florida several times during the day, claiming to be with the voting machine company, and claiming he had "permission from the Governor" to be there to "check" on the machines. He carried no credentials with him, and the pollworkers seemed to just take his word for it, although a lot of the pollwatchers from the local NAACP were very skeptical of him. I was part of the Kerry-Edwards Voting Rights Legal Team, and I reported this up the line to the Florida coordinators. A state senator called me back and said he had no information that anyone from the voting machine companies was supposed to have access to the machines, and he'd check on it. I never heard anything more about it. Kerry got 1000 more votes than Gore in that county, but Bush got 5000 more votes than he got in 2000. Did anyone see anything similar? Does anyone have information about whether legitimate voting machine techies were truly authorized to be out in rural Florida tinkering with the machines on election day to "make sure they're working"?

by Dooley 2004-11-18 12:22PM | 0 recs

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RE: Vote Chancing

The way this can happen is if the researchers miss a key demographic that explains the reason people chose who they voted for, or even more likely, if the reason(s) don't break along simple demographic boundaries. For example, if many people decided to vote for Bush because they did not want to change leaders in the midst of a War, then this might cut across demographic boundaries, and be difficult to model.

The Dems need to understand through interviews, and/or polling, why Kerry underperformed in the Blue counties of Florida. Given the angst over the 2000 election and Bush's policies on health care, and other issues, it seems very strange to me that Kerry did not perform better in these areas of the State. The lines for early voting in these parts of the State were huge and led me to believe Kerry had a decent shot at winning Florida.

So far, I haven't seen any compelling evidence to suggest vote fraud, including this study. This just suggests that Kerry underperformed, which may have occurred for lots of reasons.

by stuw 2004-11-18 12:51PM | 0 recs

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Re: RE: Vote Chancing

Stuw, you didn't see any evidence of voting fraud because, by design, the voting machines create no evidence whatsoever.

Big surprise!!

by bjohnm 2004-11-18 03:50PM | 0 recs

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Questions

My Stat Courses were long ago and dim in memory.

BUT 2000 census data, in a very fast growing state like Florida is no longer 2004 data. Indeed in those 4 years Palm Beach County added 250,000 NEW REGISTERED VOTERS. In 2000 Gore got 62% of the Palm Beach vote and in 2004 Kerry got 61% of the Palm Beach County vote.

What would these profs say should have been the Change plus or minus in Kerry's vote?

Also with such a large increase in both population and registration, they can not assume that the population they modeled their results on is the same population in terms of distribution in 2004 as it was in 2000.

Their number projections may be right but, after reading their paper, I am not sure that they have made correct assumptions about some of the deomgraphic data.

by debcoop 2004-11-18 02:19PM | 0 recs

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Re: Questions

That is the key question. Why did Kerry's margins stay similar (62% vs 61%), or so, in the Blue counties, while Bush's winning margin in the Red counties of Florida went up 5%, or more, in many cases. For example, Brevard County (where KSC is) was 52%/44% Bush/Gore, but 57%/42% for Bush/Kerry. That was repeated again and again in other parts of the state.

by stuw 2004-11-18 04:31PM | 0 recs

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The Responsibility of the citizens of a nation

I know in a "civilized" society my conclusions and rules of engagement are looked down upon but It must be said. IF and that is a big IF, it is found that Bush and the GOP cheated and stole this election the only thing left to do is, not to "bring the country together" not to unite but it is to take down the government. Period. Such abominations can not stand or I say to you that from this day you sit on a sinking ship. It is an unplesant reality and maybe even a forshadowing of the future of a nation but it IS reality.

by Wiseprince 2004-11-18 03:58PM | 0 recs