Wednesday, November 17, 2004

Election Conspiracy Theorists Still Grasping For Win

According to some liberal blogs and discussion sites, most of whom have a major problem with electronic voting in Florida, still believe someone swooped in and changed the votes without the county election boards having a clue. Whether the new touch screens or older scanners are the election board's voting machine of choice the theorists espouse the companies who manufacture the technology side with Bush. Therefore, they theorize, the only possible explanation is a 'rogue' program was written to somehow affect the actual results. Far fetched?

Let's look at the Florida election where this new technology was implemented as a direct result of the 2000 Presidential election. A commenter using the pseudonym x174 on the blog site recently posted a link to a very useful chart analysis with the comment:

"Here's an interesting link to Florida's county-by-county Presidential Election results including voting machines used, et cetera."
x174's comments on the chart analysis were:

"It is clear that vast majority of independents and third parties voted for either Bush or Kerry. But, the second table below indicates that all the independents may have gone to Bush, PLUS there must have been a huge crossover of Democrats from Kerry to Bush - but only in counties that used computerized ballot scanners. The difference between touch screen counties and ballot scan counties is immense when looking at the % of votes cast for Bush based on Republican registration versus the % of votes cast for Kerry based on Democratic registration. Is there any rational explanation? I've contacted the Florida Democratic Party for a response."
Is x174's claim that, "The difference between touch screen counties and ballot scan counties is immense when looking at the % of votes cast for Bush based on Republican registration versus the % of votes cast for Kerry based on Democratic registration," true? At first glance we do see a much larger 'crossover' vote in the counties that utilize the scanner technology. What we also see is an IMMENSE number of 'OTHER REGISTERED' voters in the 'Other REG' column. These people do vote for someone. Is it far fetched to think more 'Other Registered' voters voted for Republican Bush than Democrat Kerry?

In a 'main stream media' Peter Jennings report on ABC's November 9, 2004 edition of the Nightly News he reported:

"[..] that "conspiracy theorists" have got it all wrong; that despite their registration, the voters in Lafayette County have always voted in enormous numbers for Republican presidential candidates. But how long has the county been using ballot scanners? These scanners have been around since 1964. The election results could have been routinely altered for decades, which is exactly what the late Collier brothers alleged in their book, VoteScam: The Stealing of America. The fact is that Americans don't count their own votes, they let companies owned by Republicans and foreigners do it for them. We will never know who really won the election."
While Mr. Jennings' reported comments leave the 2004 election somewhat in doubt for some of his listeners the technology website offers a different take on this issue in an article titled, Florida E-Vote Fraud? Unlikely by Kim Zetter who writes:

"The analysis has led lawyers for the Democratic Party to look into allegations of fraud, and was cited in a letter sent by Democrats in the House of Representatives last week to the Government Accountability Office requesting an election investigation.

But academics at several universities, who received a flood of e-mail urging them to look into the matter, say the results are due to high numbers of Democrats in rural areas voting across party lines, and to independent voters who chose Bush in higher proportions to Sen. John Kerry."
The academics say the intense scrutiny has been good for democracy. The scrutiny has highlighted the need for instituting mandatory election audits that would help catch anomalies with voting machines and restore voter confidence in results. But Stanford University professor of government Jonathan Wand said the analysis can be harmful if done improperly.

In the article Kim Zetter observes,
"Activists and progressive commentators reject the notion that large numbers of Democrats voted for Bush, because the Democrats put a lot of effort into increasing turnout for their man, Kerry."
One very true fact remains. For anyone to win a Presidential election in this country there must be a high 'candidate appeal' if the majority of voters, whether those voters are registered as Independents, Republicans, Democrats, or have some other party preference, are electing a President of the United States. It's therefore reasonable to believe a Presidential candidate with strong 'candidate appeal' will, in most cases, attract a larger 'crossover' vote.
Reference Link