Salon: Was the election stolen?

[kskiska]

The system is clearly broken. But there is no evidence that Bush won because of voter fraud.

By Farhad Manjoo

Did John Kerry actually win the presidency? If you've spent any time online this week, you've no doubt heard this argument: The election was stolen. Corrupt officials, rigged voting machines, a sleepy media and a Democratic Party that's been less than fully aggressive in its efforts to counter Republican dirty tricks came together to subvert the true will of the people.

According to proponents of this theory, proof of electoral fraud abounds. The journalist Greg Palast argues that in Ohio, there were probably enough "spoiled" punch-card ballots -- ballots tossed out by counting machines -- to make up Bush's margin over Kerry. Keith Olbermann points out that in some voting precincts in Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, there were more votes cast than registered voters -- for instance, in the Fairview Park area, 13,342 registered voters cast 18,472 ballots. Isn't that odd? Then there's the analysis by a former high school math teacher named Kathy Dopp, which seems to show that in counties using optical-scan voting systems in Florida, people registered as Democrats voted for Bush at an usually high rate. Did they really mean to do that, or did the voting machines corrupt their votes?

There are dozens of other points of concern. In Broward County, Florida, the counting software has been counting votes backwards. In Franklin County, Ohio, Bush was somehow given 4,000 more votes than he'd actually won. Citing vague security concerns, officials in Warren County, Ohio, locked down the vote-counting building on election night, preventing the media from observing the count. And what about those exit polls? Could it be that they were correct in their prediction of a Kerry win? To judge from the tone of the e-mail pouring into our in boxes here at Salon, not to mention the panicky posts on lefty sites like Democratic Underground, it's clear that many online find these arguments quite convincing. For many, it's difficult to believe that the election the nation held last week was completely on the level.

(snip)

There's little question that the American election process is a mess, and needs to be cleaned up. But even if this particular election wasn't perfect, it was still most likely good enough for us to have faith in the results. Salon has examined some of the most popular Kerry-actually-won theories currently making the rounds online, and none of them hold up under rigorous scrutiny. For instance, there's an easy explanation for the odd results in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, where Olbermann insists there were 93,000 more votes than voters. According to Kimberly Bartlett, a spokeswoman for the county, the reporting software the county uses to display the unofficial summary of election results on its Web site is simply buggy. For some reason, the software combines absentee ballots from several voting precincts into one precinct, and therefore makes it appear as if there were more votes cast in a particular area than there were registered voters there. But this bug does not affect the final election results, because the more detailed "canvass" of all the votes cast in the county shows the correct count, Bartlett told Salon. For example, this canvass indicates that in Fairview Park, where Olbermann says there were 18,472 ballots cast by 13,342 registered voters, there were actually only 8,421 votes cast in the presidential race -- fewer than the number of registered voters.

more…
http://salon.com/tech/feature/2004/11/10/voting/index.html

[crispini]

1. Huh. Well, some of that's not news.

We knew about the Dixiecrats in Florida argument... but Olbermann made the point tonight that not ALL of those areas were Dixiecrat areas.

This bit seems kind of rational:

"Given my current state of knowledge, it seems unlikely there will be enough bogus votes found to reverse the election," says David Dill, the Stanford computer scientist who's been leading the charge against paperless electronic voting machines for the past two years. At the same time, though, Dill adds that he's making "a highly qualified statement," and that he does not want to "declare the election over and done with." Odd things did occur last Tuesday, and even if the results aren't overturned, "it's extremely important that we seize this opportunity to review everything we can about this election," Dill says. "Having people comb through these results will give us more confidence in the legitimacy of this election. We shouldn't gain that confidence by resorting to the head-in-the-sand method we usually employ in the United States."

He doesn't do much to rebut the post on Zogby's site by the AAR fella about the REAL accuracy of exit polls.

It's not a bad article, all in all, but IMO the book's not closed on this yet. I *am* glad to see more of this stuff get out there and get investigated.

[John Q. Citizen]

2. The article addresses straw man arguments for the most part.

They set them up then they knock them down, without addressing the real issues raised by those concerned with the legitimacy of our election processes. Those who aren't already paying close attention come away after reading the article with the same impression the headline leaves which is "No Evidence of Election Fraud." That leads to a "head in the sand" reaction to the real issues of insuring a fair and accurate vote count.

According to Randi Rhodes today, Dick Morris, infamous pollster for Clinton and now a Republican, says exit polls CANNOT be that wrong. Morris attributes the impossible exit poll data to some liberal conspiracy to either discredit a Bush win or to keep Republicans from bothering to vote in the West. His conclusion is bizarre, but Morris' knowlegde of the reliability of exit polling is rock solid.

It's interesting that the author of the Solon article has three other articles he's done on BBV listed below his current "debunking" of mostly strawmen.

The articles are


"Will the election be hacked?"
A Salon special report reveals how new voting machines could result in a rigged presidential race -- and we'd never know.
By Farhad Manjoo
02/09/04

"An open invitation to election fraud"
Not only is the country's leading touch-screen voting system so badly designed that votes can be easily changed, but its manufacturer is run by a die-hard GOP donor who vowed to deliver his state for Bush next year.
By Farhad Manjoo
09/23/03

"Voting into the void"
New touch-screen voting machines may look spiffy, but some experts say they can't be trusted.
By Farhad Manjoo
11/05/02

Given the thrust of those articles, is it any wonder that "there is no evidence that Bush won because of voter fraud."

So which of his articles are we to trust enough to act on?

[PatsFan2004]

3. In any case, I appreciate seeing the article and knowing that

some in the media are listening even if half-heartedly.