Where did bush get 20 million extra votes from 2000 to 2004?

[BeFree]

Bush is said to have received 62 million votes in 2004.

Bush received 45.8 million votes in 2000.

Of those 45.8M about 3.8 million voted for Kerry, leaving Bush with 42M voters from 2000.

So somehow Bush got over 20 million new voters to vote for him in 2004.
Or so it is said.

And the Democratic Party leader - John Kerry- received only 18 million of the 38M new voters in 2004?

Well now, that just doesn't seem to be able to be explained; Indeed, the raw numbers from the exit polls contraindicate that difference.

And plain common sense tells ya Bush wasn't that well liked, and taking into consideration the huge democratic turnout in 2004, it makes ya wonder, doesn't it?

[oldtime dfl_er]

1. If I recall correctly...

those 20 million extra votes came out of Dick Cheney's ass.

[driver8]

10. I thought they came out of KKKarl Rove's ass?? n/t

[waiting for hope]

2. Well, by 2004

they had that electronic voting thingy down by then....you know, switch the All Democratic ticket to read All Republican ticket...how I hate that man.

[OnTheOtherHand]

3. I think you forgot the Gore voters, again n/t

[BeFree]

4. If anything

They balanced each other - 50/50.

But really, how many Gore voters do you think went bush?

[OnTheOtherHand]

7. sigh

No, there is no reason to think that they balanced each other, and -- as I've mentioned one or twenty times -- the data from the National Election Study panel strongly indicate that they didn't.

I think maybe about 6 to 6 1/2 million Gore voters voted for Bush. That's consistent with the NES data, and it also jibes well with the pre-election polls, which generally showed Kerry winning among new voters and Bush leading overall.

[BeFree]

9. Really?

And how many bush voters voted for Kerry? About 6 to 6 1/2 million?

On edit: But of course the OP said that 3.8M Bush2000 voters went for Kerry. So what you are saying is that all the NEW voters who did not vote in 2000 were split 50/50?

So you are saying that the Gore to Bush vote went 2 to 1 (more or less) yet all the NEW voters went 50/50? Why didn't all the new voters turn like the Gore 2000 voters? Only those who actually voted for Gore went lopsided into the Bush column? That makes no sense whatsoever and you know it.

Gotcha.

[OnTheOtherHand]

13. look, you can keep inventing my views as long as you want

I realize you think you know something that all the political scientists don't. I've seen no sign of it.

I find it hard to believe that after reading my previous post, you actually think I believe that 2000 non-voters went 50/50. Either you aren't paying attention, or you just don't care.

As for the rest, what can I say? You think it makes no sense. That isn't an argument to which I can respond. It certainly isn't an argument that I could be convinced by. Gore voters, Bush voters, and non-voters are three different kinds of voters -- in fact, many different kinds of voters. You're asserting that you Just Know something about how these three groups should compare. If you Just Know it, then obviously you won't be convinced by arguments either. So we're stuck.

[Botany]

17. Oh lord you are a political scientist

explain that one .... "they" just don't know how to vote?

Now, you can take this anyway you want. I forget more about Ohio 04 being dirty than
you will know in a billion lifetimes. I saw "it" happen w/ my own eyes. I heard it
happen w/ my own ears.

I worked on 11/2/04 @ a polling station in Franklin County, OH.
I watched a republican challenger work with the precinct judge using
a computerized list that she (the challenger) had brought w/ her.
I learned later that list was a caging list. They worked whenever i left
the room .... i had to put my chair behind that piece of shit challenger
and sit there for 4 hours to keep her from working with the precinct judge.
(which is illegal too)

The polling place had two Precincts located there Bexley 3A and 3C.
In the one precinct were the challenger was working with the judge
a machine went down as they were closing it out. When the data from that
machine was posted in the wee hours of the morning it came back as 42%
bush all the other machines were between 29 and 31% bush votes. The machine
that had the 42% bush vote had the highest # of bush votes in it despite the
fact that it had the lowest numerical # total votes registered (Kerry, Bush, & 3rd party
candidates).

The precinct judge tried her best to get me to leave before they closed out the machines.

When I tried to call the voter fraud hot line in Ohio to report what i saw the line had been
hacked and all I got was crazy music and a forever hold (look up James Tobin New Hampshire)
the hack was replaced w/ a fast busy signal with in minutes of Kerry conceding.

Also @ 1:07 AM CNN posted female votes in Ohio 53% Kerry 47% bush
male votes in Ohio 51% Kerry 49% bush.

As a scientist you must believe in stats .... and for the thousands of "glitches*" nationwide
to all benefit bush then there must have been a causative agent behind them. Not just random
chance. Go a look @ States that had paper trails the exit polls matched the vote .... in 33 states
that did not have paper trails the exit polls favored W greater then the margin of error .... in the
remaining states the vote went to Kerry less then the margin of error.


* Look at Indiana 2004 where in 7 (?) a straight dem party ticket resulted in the top of the ticket
flipping to a 3rd party candidate

[Febble]

20. Did anyone on this thread say that

Ohio was clean?

[OnTheOtherHand]

21. where did I say Ohio wasn't dirty?

There isn't much point in trying to carry on a discussion if you're going to attribute someone else's (or maybe no one else's) views to me. I have a right and responsibility to evaluate the truth of arguments actually made; it doesn't mean that I am somehow disagreeing by implication with every other argument anyone else conceivably might have made. Do I really have to explain this?

A problem with Joe Knapp's plot is that most of the precincts are Kerry precincts to begin with, so the visual is misleading in that respect. Nonetheless, it is very well established that residual votes were higher in black precincts. And no one who studied past punch card results would be surprised. Exactly why is unclear. (Sorry, but I don't get to claim to know things that I don't.) As far as I know, the rather extensive review of punch card residual votes in Florida in 2000 didn't unearth evidence of actual tampering with the ballots, but it may have happened. It is also widely conjectured that machines in black precincts may be defective or improperly configured. It is not inconceivable that more black voters do have trouble voting on punch card machines.

As for the machines in Bexley 3A and 3C, I have no idea. Walter Mebane has forgotten more about vote counts from individual DREs than I will ever know. Those machines may have been crooked (or FUBARed) as hell, for all I know. I do know that statewide, the results from DRE counties aren't out of trend with the results from counties that used other voting methods. And Mebane and Herron found that overall, at precinct and war levels, the 2004 results were in trend with the 2002 results. That doesn't mean that all the vote counts were right, but it's a real finding that I wish some folks would at least try to grapple with.

"Also @ 1:07 AM CNN posted female votes in Ohio 53% Kerry 47% bush
male votes in Ohio 51% Kerry 49% bush."

Well, they posted that as early as 7:30 or so -- I saw it myself. They didn't get around to reweighting the exit poll results to vote counts until about 1:30 in the morning. That doesn't tell us whether the vote counts were right or wrong. However, anyone who was watching the Ohio vote count come in knows that it didn't take a sudden right turn around 1:30 in the morning. So there is no particular significance to when the exit poll results were reweighted.

"As a scientist you must believe in stats .... and for the thousands of "glitches*" nationwide
to all benefit bush then there must have been a causative agent behind them. Not random
chance."

Well, the problem is, that's a totally anecdotal sort of argument. What are the thousands of "glitches" that "all" benefited Bush? I'm not asserting anything about random chance, but given my professional norms, I see no point in making an argument that I can't actually defend. The basic problem with the vote switch reports is that there is no good evidence about prevalence. Even if vote switches favored Bush 100 to 1, one wants to know how many votes were affected. And analysis of election returns tends to indicate that not many were.

[Botany]

24. When was the last time you took out money from your ATM

and the bank added money to your account? Because that is what Diebold and
EES Machines did.

"DELAND, Fla., Nov. 11 - Something very strange happened on election night to Deborah Tannenbaum, a Democratic Party official in Volusia County. At 10 p.m., she called the county elections department and learned that Al Gore was leading George W. Bush 83,000 votes to 62,000. But when she checked the county's Web site for an update half an hour later, she found a startling development: Gore's count had dropped by 16,000 votes, while an obscure Socialist candidate had picked up 10,000--all because of a single precinct with only 600 voters."
- Washington Post Sunday , November 12, 2000 ; Page A22

Bush becoming President in 2000 was a coup and the same criminal gang went after
the 2004 election with even more zeal.

There is nothing anecdotal about 19,000 votes being added to the vote total in Miami
County Ohio after all the machines were turned off.

There is nothing anecdotal about the shorting of machines to democratic areas in Ohio.

There is nothing anecdotal about a school principal in Lucas County locking the machines
in his office on 11/1/04 and not showing up for work 11/2/04 in the AM.

There is nothing anecdotal about declaring a "terrorist warning" in Warren County, and counting
the votes in Private

There is nothing anecdotal about 82 of 86 machines in Mahoning County, OH flipping votes from
Kerry to bush in 2004.

There is nothing anecdotal about C. Ellen Connelly (a liberal black pro choice pro gay rights women
getting more votes than John Kerry in 15 (?) Counties that are traditional republican strong holds.

Taken individually these "glitches" might be explained but the weight of all the factors that i have
seen tells me they are not independent variables but the result of actions that had one over riding
goal ..... bush winning the 2004 election.

******************************************************************************************

"reweighting the exit poll results to vote counts ... " ah, that was called blending the data so as to make
the exit polls fit the vote.

*********************************************************************************************

[OnTheOtherHand]

28. nothing anecdotal?

Obviously there is quite a bit anecdotal. It's one anecdote after another. The question is what the anecdotes add up to.

I don't know whether the vote switch in Volusia County in 2000 was a hack, but we both know that Gore got those votes back, right? Did someone in Florida arrange that temporary change to provide cover for John Ellis at Fox? well, I guess it may have happened. I don't see how it has bearing upon 2004.

If you have a rebuttal to Mark Hertsgaard's observations about Miami County here, please share. I especially like this part:

Kearney adds that he tried, twice, to explain this error to Fitrakis, who had published the allegation in the Free Press. "I'm a Democrat, by the way," says Kearney, "and I told him I'd be glad to find fraud here and turn the election around, but that didn't happen."

I agree that machines were shorted in Democratic areas, esp. in Franklin County. We've talked a lot about this.

I know nothing about the principal in Lucas, except that anecdotes don't get much more anecdotal than that. You are presumably intending to imply that the principal exemplifies a general phenomenon. Can you document the phenomenon?

On Warren County, again see Hertsgaard. Then look at the vote counts and note that Warren isn't out of trend. Again, that doesn't prove that the vote count was clean there or anywhere else, but your mere confidence that it wasn't is not useful.

"There is nothing anecdotal about 82 of 86 machines in Mahoning County, OH flipping votes from Kerry to bush in 2004." Good luck with that one. The Washington Post reported that 25 machines flipped votes and were taken out of service.

"There is nothing anecdotal about C. Ellen Connelly (a liberal black pro choice pro gay rights women getting more votes than John Kerry in 15 (?) Counties that are traditional republican strong holds." OK, look, I can't keep on putting more time into your posts than you do. "15 (?)"?? Here is the question: why does it matter in how many counties Connally (not "Connelly") got more votes than Kerry? Have you ever looked at any other Ohio elections to see whether this is unusual? Also, what do you have to say about the counties in which Connally's opponent got more votes than Bush? Would you be surprised to learn of their existence? Would you be surprised that one of them was, in fact, Mahoning?

If you actually want to move the ball on this issue, you will need to choose something on which you are willing to do work that hasn't been done before. If you are content to try to paraphrase things you think you read somewhere, then I don't see much point.

[Botany]

31. Don't spread bull shit on toast and call it country style apple butter

You have know idea how galling it is to hear from poli sci geek about
"willing to do work" on the Ohio 04 election.
.

One more time I SAW IT HAPPEN WITH MY OWN EYES. This is not UFOs
landing with Elvis' baby it happened.

Sometimes I think I am stuck in a really bad movie in which I have seen
a murder and when I go to the police they tell me go home and that
nothing happened. Later on I see the murderer on T.V. and he winks
at the camera to let me know that I know that he knows.

BTW ..... The single factor that has shown to influence voting behavior
is the economic factor. Jobs and money stuff. Ohio lost more jobs than
any other state from 2000 to 2004.

[OnTheOtherHand]

32. then add value about what you saw with your own eyes

If you are the world expert on Bexley, then build on that. You don't have to waste everyone's time by making other people's points badly when you could make your own points well.

You just whiffed on every single point in my post, which addressed the points in your previous post one by one. If you don't like the way it turned out, think about cause and effect.

Obviously it isn't true that economics is the "single factor that has been shown to influence voting behavior," but certainly it's an important one. Awsi Dooger has made the point pretty elegantly that Ohio's economy stank in 2004, and that that probably helps to explain why Kerry did better than Gore there, whereas (for instance) in New York Kerry's margin was almost 7 points smaller than Gore's had been.

[Botany]

39. t ball pratice

Volusia County 2000 .... The fact that Florida 2000 was dirty allowed bush to
become President and run as the incumbent in 2004. The negative votes allowed
the race to be placed in doubt and the rest is history.

Miami County, Oh 2004 .... Precincts with 80 to 99.7 percent turn outs. Conyers report
"What went wrong in OH." The extra 19,000 votes were @ the exact same ratio as
all the previous votes in Miami county .... (at least that is what i read) .... which is a
mathematical impossibility.

Lucas County 2004 .... it was not a phenomenon. The man did not show up, there by
slowing up the ability of people to vote. Lucas County's BOE was under control of one
Bernadette Noe, wife of Coin-gate's Tom Noe, she allowed republican operatives to
work on voting registrations at the BOE prior to the 04 vote. Many cases were also
reported of long time voters being told @ the polls they were no longer registered.
One couple who had first voted for JFK in 1960 and had lived in the same house up
until 2004 election were told they were no longer registered. Toledo Blade
Also they were cases of the urban and democratic precincts showing turn outs much
lower then republican suburbs. One precinct showed a 39 % turn out. The republican
suburbs showed 80 to 97% turn outs.

Franklin County OH .... despite a massive new voter drives that enrolled @ least 250,000
new voters the vote from 2000 to 2004 did not show that big a jump in the # of voters.

Warren County, OH .... show me the terrorists ..... that was a bald faced lie.

To this day I still don't get how "they" got to call a phony terrorist warning ad got
to count the vote in secret.

Richard Philip Hayes has done some great work on the vote there too. "Header
cards" were found in the vote punch cards .... also ballots of people who showed
up but did not vote for president have been found (dems only), and once again
the "glitches" always favored bush.

Mahoning County .... One machine had a negative 25 million votes for Kerry Pre-loaded.
Fact.

Connally's vote totals do not pass the smell test. She had no money and she was an unknown
as far as her name in those counties. For somebody to vote for George W bush for President
and then turn around and vote for a black liberal pro choice pro gay rights women just
does not add up.

BTW for bush to have gotten the #s he did he would have had to get the majority of the new voters,
the majority of the undecided voters, and not lost any of his 2000 base to death or switching
votes. The numbers just do not add up.

**************************************************************************************************

Conclusion: Evidence for Vote Miscount in the 2004 Presidential Election The possibility that the 2004 election exit poll discrepancy was caused by vote miscount has become increasingly credible as successive (E/M and ESI) reports claiming support for exit-poll error have instead provided more evidence for vote miscount. The nonpartisan U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) in its September 2005 report "ELECTIONS -- Federal Efforts to Improve Security and Reliability of Electronic Voting Systems Are Under Way, but Key Activities Need to Be Completed" 50 on page 38 said, "...there is evidence that some of these concerns —including weak controls and inadequate testing—have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes." The Ohio precinct-level exit poll data that was recently released shows highly irregular patterns of exit poll discrepancies that are not explainable by any exit poll error hypothesis, or “hypothetical”, offered to date. Neither a "constant mean" nor a “pervasive” pro-Kerry exit poll bias could possibly explain the E/M national aggregate exit poll data, or the detailed Ohio precinct-level exit poll data. To date no evidence-supported Exit Poll-based explanation of the Great Discrepancy has been provided. The state and national, as well as the detailed Ohio precinct-level exit poll data provide strong evidence in support of a vote fraud hypothesis. The refusal by Edison/Mitofsky to permit independent analysis of their trove of data is has deepened public concern. The shoddy and inadequate analysis (claiming, for example, that linear correlation analysis, or a 56%-to-50% response bias, is sufficient to support the E/M hypothesis) that has been released to the public has deepened the uncertainty about what happened in the 2004 elections. The Mitofsky/Liddle pervasive mean bias conjecture is unsupported by and inconsistent with the publicly available data. Spin and obfuscation have spread the myth that the "exit polls are unreliable". The support of the media for the pollsters' exit poll response bias hypothesis as an explanation of the discrepancies between the exit polls and the election results in the presidential election, without any serious evidence, has been a travesty. Many electronic U.S. voting systems do not permit voters to view the actual record of votes cast. Worse, the vast majority of U.S. votes are counted secretly by a small handful of inside
programmers and election officials using confidential vote counting software, and the resulting vote counts are not routinely independently audited to detect and correct errors. Hence, U.S. vote counts are vulnerable to wide-spread nationwide tampering. The current U.S. Election Assistance Commission's technical staff is led by the same person who ushered in un-auditable e-voting systems in Georgia, and so no adequate voting system guidance is likely to come from this federal organization tasked with protecting our voting systems. Analysis of limited available election results data has shown suspicious patterns, such as the New Mexico data that revealed padded absentee ballot votes and high rates of under-votes in counties using digital recording electronic voting machines; the Washington state election that showed an unlikely probability to vote Republican when using DRE voting machines and Democratic when using mail-in ballots in the same precincts 51 ; and the Ohio precinct-level exit poll results show what seem to be impossible election results.

Authors of this paper include: Kathy Dopp, Ron Baiman, Jonathan Simon, and Josh Mitteldorf
Reviewers include: Steve Freeman, Robert Klauber, Robert C. Koehler, and Jill Hacker

[Febble]

41. Sigh

The Ohio precinct-level exit poll data that was recently released shows highly irregular patterns of exit poll discrepancies that are not explainable by any exit poll error hypothesis, or “hypothetical”, offered to date. Neither a "constant mean" nor a “pervasive” pro-Kerry exit poll bias could possibly explain the E/M national aggregate exit poll data, or the detailed Ohio precinct-level exit poll data.

This is a nonsensical statement. I shan't bother to refute it unless there is a point that strikes you as particularly persuasive.

To date no evidence-supported Exit Poll-based explanation of the Great Discrepancy has been provided.

There was an eighty-odd page report, full of evidence, plus some further analysis by me.

The state and national, as well as the detailed Ohio precinct-level exit poll data provide strong evidence in support of a vote fraud hypothesis.

Well, no.

http://www.geocities.com/lizzielid/TheGunIsSmoking_Review.pdf

The refusal by Edison/Mitofsky to permit independent analysis of their trove of data is has deepened public concern. The shoddy and inadequate analysis (claiming, for example, that linear correlation analysis, or a 56%-to-50% response bias, is sufficient to support the E/M hypothesis)

Who is supposed to have claimed this? Where?

that has been released to the public has deepened the uncertainty about what happened in the 2004 elections. The Mitofsky/Liddle pervasive mean bias conjecture is unsupported by and inconsistent with the publicly available data.

Well I'd certainly like to know what the damn "pervasive mean bias" conjecture is supposed to mean, seeing as it's apparently got my name on it.

Spin and obfuscation have spread the myth that the "exit polls are unreliable". The support of the media for the pollsters' exit poll response bias hypothesis as an explanation of the discrepancies between the exit polls and the election results in the presidential election, without any serious evidence, has been a travesty.

Honestly, Botany, where did you drag this thing up? Could you give a link? Every so often I find some more crap with my name on it. If you are going to post stuff like this, could you please give the source? And preferably a date.

Elizabeth Liddle

[Botany]

49. Link

http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/Exit_Polls_2004_Mitofsky-Edison.pdf

[Febble]

51. No, that link is not to what you posted

I'd like the link to what you actually posted. If my name is being cited on a document, I'd like to know the provenance of that document. I am cited in that document, but the words you quote are not contained in it.

I am not convinced (as yet) that the authors to whom you attribute those words are in fact the authors of those words.

Please post the correct link.

ETA: I have found the correct document, but will not post the link, as it is crap. The authors are not as you state. The document has a single author, Kathy Dopp (banned from this board). The other people you mentioned as "authors" listed as "contributors" which is not at all the same thing. Their contributions may be fine. One of them I count as a friend, which is why I care.

[OnTheOtherHand]

42. sigh (ETA: my sigh was independent of Febble's!)

You think Volusia County allowed the outcome of FL 2000 to be placed in doubt? Really? Talk about not passing the smell test. We can talk seriously about the impact of those votes, but that isn't serious.

"(at least that is what i read)" -- exactly my point. You are still repeating other people's talking points. Some are better than others, but you don't seem interested in figuring out which is which. Maybe at some point you will reread my post and make some attempt to engage the arguments you are ignoring.

Your response on Connally is especially weak. If she was "an unknown" (as I assume she was), then why do you think people knew she was "black liberal pro choice pro gay rights" -- or even Democratic? And, by the way, why did you not address any of my substance on that point?

"BTW for bush to have gotten the #s he did he would have had to get the majority of the new voters, the majority of the undecided voters, and not lost any of his 2000 base to death or switching votes. The numbers just do not add up."

Well, that's simply wrong. He didn't have to get a majority of new voters or a majority of undecided voters, and the rest is equally unsupported and incorrect. If you want to pick a fight with a "poli sci geek," bring something, for chrissakes.

As for Dopp, Baiman, Simon, and Mitteldorf, well, I sometimes agree with them. But they've managed to learn astonishingly little about exit polls in over two years of arguing about them.

[Botany]

46. Stuff

1) Volusia County 2000 the introduction of the negative 16,000 votes for Al Gore
(in one precinct .... hell of a big precinct) allowed all that other
'shit" to come into play i.e. the SCOTUS stopping the recount, the Brook's Brothers
riot, the hanging chads ...... Those negative votes did have an impact on what
happened afterwards. BTW vote counting should be a basic additional algorithm.

99.7% voter turn outs in Miami County were recorded. How? It is a specious argument
to say well this guy was a democrat so he must be telling the truth. Oldest dodge in the book.

On Connally the D next to her name might have been a good clue as to her party I.D..
And if I hear cows mooing, find cattle tracks in my front yard, and step in cow shit
by my front door then I know that cows had been around my house.

As far as the substantive part of your argument .... no I haven't checked other races to
see if there was any such "anomalies" but I did notice that bush always pulled in more
votes than Thomas Moyer (Connally's opponent) in every county in the state but in 15 (?)
counties Kerry got less then Connally. Those down ticket judicial races are always big
pull to the voters :sarcasm:

One of the Counties that went to bush and showed the "Connally Anomaly,"
Claremont had their vote counting stopped when Hackett was in a dead heat
w/ Jean Schmidt .... the humidity caused the ballots to stick ... :rofl: we vote
in barns in OH .... no air conditioning anywhere.


Show me the numbers. Where did bush pick up those 20 million votes?

BTW I worked with a number of life long republicans in Ohio who supported Kerry
because they were sickened by bush's actions so to say that his 2000 base did not
have significant #s that did not support him in 2004.

[Febble]

47. Where

is "the D right next to her name?"



And clearly, where Bush is ahead of Moyer, Kerry will tend to be behind Conally, because the better Bush does, the worse Kerry does, and the worse Moyer does the better Connally does. And the less partisan the judicial race is, the less correlated will the two races be with each other.

This is what I mean - I see no point in posting stuff that isn't true, then making illogical arguments from bad data. It isn't persuasive. If you want to demonstrate that Ohio was corrupt, I'm all ears for good evidence. But the signal to noise ratio on this thread is pretty low so far.

[Botany]

48. If that was the ballot state wide then I am wrong

http://www.thousandreasons.org/get_article.php?article_id=13

A little of what i saw and heard in 2004.

You must remember that I saw it happen w/ my own eyes.

For bush to have won it is the same as hitting every lotto in every state @ once.

I have just put down the tip of the iceberg.
Delaware County .... Precincts that went to Gore in 2000 went to bush
with more registered dems in them.
Trumbell County more absentee votes then registered voters
Hocking County & Cuyahoga Counties Dirty Recounts
Fairfield County recount stopped and new hard drives put in over the
weekend after the recount did not match up
Perry County 126% voter turn out in one precinct.


"And clearly, where Bush is ahead of Moyer, Kerry will tend to be behind Conally, because the
better Bush does, the worse Kerry does, and the worse Moyer does the better Connally does.
And the less partisan the judicial race is, the less correlated will the two races be with each other."

Sorry I do not buy it.

[Febble]

50. Thanks

my understanding was that the partisanship was not on the ballot for the judicial races, but that ballot was the only one I could find a picture of. It would certainly be interesting to find out. If I'm wrong, it would certainly make a difference to the interpretation of the data. And your own anecdotes are interesting.

Re the Connally thing: I am not sure what you "do not buy". It's just math. If Bush gets 80% of presidential votes in a county and Moyer gets 60% of the judicial race votes, Bush is doing better than Moyer. But in that same county, Kerry will get 20% of the presidential votes and Connally will get 40%, so Connally will do better than Kerry. If fewer votes are cast in the judicial race than in the presidential race (as you would expect) Bush will be more votes ahead of Moyer than Connally will be votes ahead of Kerry, but there will nonetheless be a directly inverse relationship between Bush's performance relative to Moyer's and Kerry's relative to Connally. By the same reasoning, you'd expect Moyer to do better relative to Bush where Kerry did better relative to Connally. And in fact, that's exactly what happened.

That's why it's not a great argument. Which is not to say others aren't better. I just like to know what the good arguments are. Bad arguments don't make a good case.

[MissWaverly]

61. well, mine was switched from Kerry to Bush

I tried to vote for Kerry in Baltimore, MD after waiting 2 hours and being asked to show
my voter's registration card, after which, I was told that was not "good enough" and they
demanded a government issued ID, my hospital ID with my photo was not "good enough" either.
When I went into the booth, I pushed the plastic square for Kerry and the square next to
George Walker Bush lit up 5 times. I have sworn an affadavit to this and reported it
to the Maryland Board of Elections, what did the Maryland Board of Elections do, oh, just
pay Diebold 143 million.

[OnTheOtherHand]

62. yup, it definitely happened

I mean, I'm not in a position to swear that it definitely happened to you, but you are, and I accept it. And there were, after all, reports from all over the country.

As I think I said, what I want to know is how often it happened -- and so far, I can't find evidence that it happened all that often. It's not as if I'm vouching for DREs: how often does a voting machine have to change a vote from one candidate to another before we say, damn, that doesn't work?

[MissWaverly]

63. what inspires me is Elizabeth De La Vega's book

On US v. Bush, she has written using her experience as a federal prosecutor drawing up
a case of fraud against Bush for the Iraq War. She says that you don't have to prove
someone lied to prove fraud, to present half truths, or to cobble information together
for a misleading result is fraud. It doesn't matter that some of the statements are true
as long as the purpose is to mislead. I think this is what will happen with the 2000 and
2004 elections as well. I would like to add here that the head of the Baltimore City
election board has resigned and that the City of Baltimore has replaced all the election
judges, I feel there is a commitment to progress here and would like to see more done
about the voting machines.

[OnTheOtherHand]

64. I would not want to be a DRE salesman

I suppose the money is good, but it seems a bit like selling Ford Pintos.

Of course, it's harder to get rid of the DREs once they've already been bought, but I think more will happen, for sure.

[MissWaverly]

65. No, Flordia is getting rid of them now

and there is no end to the cost of these beauties, it costs 1 million dollars to store these
DREs between elections. So it is a continual lose, lose situation.

[Febble]

22. Oh, one more thing....

Go a look @ States that had paper trails the exit polls matched the vote .... in 33 states that did not have paper trails the exit polls favored W greater then the margin of error .... in the remaining states the vote went to Kerry less then the margin of error.

Could you give me a source for this claim? It appears to be false.

[Botany]

25. I'll try to find some more.

Look @ Illinois exit polls v real vote they had a paper trail
I think Wisconsin had a paper trail too.

BTW Look @ Utah and I think they exit polls came out with in .01% of the real vote.

[Febble]

29. Thanks, but

where do either of those plots tell me which states had paper trails and which didn't?

New York certainly had a very large exit poll discrepancy - and no paper trail (all levers). New Hampshire also had a large exit poll discrepancy, and as far as I know was mostly optical scanners, AND it had a recount in which the recounted precincts were selected on the basis of aberrant results - and those who requested the recount were satisfied with it. Florida was half paperless DREs, probably crooked, but didn't have a particularly large exit poll discrepancy; Georgia was DREs, but again, the redshift was fairly small. Delaware was DREs AND had a large exit poll discrepancy. But as far as I can see it's the only state that makes the point, and I haven't seen a great deal of interest in investigating fraud in Delaware. New Mexico had DREs of course, and I happen to think, for reasons other than the exit poll discrepancy that Kerry won it. But the exit poll discrepancy was not particularly large. Tennessee and Colorado both had a substantial proportion of DRE precincts, but both had a slight but insignificant blueshift in the exit poll.

My concern, Botany, is not to downplay the problems with which US democracy is riddled, but to get a decent handle on what those problems actually are, and what there is good evidence for. I don't think any case is best made with faulty arguments, let alone faulty data, and I don't think problems are easily solved without a good problem statement.

In the analysis I did for Mitofsky, at precinct level, where it matters, there was no tendency for the exit poll discrepancy to be higher where DREs were used. As I've said elsewhere, the highest discrepancies were in lever precincts, followed by punchcards. When HCPB precincts were compared with precincts in similar neighbourhoods (rural, suburban, small town) there was no statistically significant difference between paper and other voting technologies. This finding was reported in the Edison-Mitofsky report, and I repeated it, rather more rigorously, myself.

[Botany]

55. This is what I was looking for

[OnTheOtherHand]

56. yeah, Febble offered me a bet about that

Actually, she didn't, but she would have known that I wouldn't accept it anyway.

Illinois in 2004 was mostly, if not all, a mix of punch cards and optical scan. New Hampshire was mostly optical scan, some hand-counted paper. How someone decided that New Hampshire was "electronic" and Illinois was "paper" is a mystery for the ages.

You might want to study this, especially pages 11-14. Proportions of DRE and op-scan use in each state were actually insignificantly negatively correlated with red shift.

[Febble]

57. Ah. I thought you might be.

I would dearly love to know where those plots came from. I once found them on Wikipedia, attributed to me! Where did you find them this time?

Anyway, take a good look. The first thing is that the categories are mostly wrong. Most states had a mixture of technologies, and only Maine had a substantial proportion of handcounted paper ballot precincts. It did, however, have a very small exit poll discrepancy ("redshift").

Of the other two that are supposed to have "paper ballots", Illinois appears to have been mostly optically scanned ballots, which are indeed "paper" - but counted by machine. And contrary to the plot, it had a 4.8 point redshift. Wisconsin was mostly optical scans - and it had a 5.3 point redshift, again, contrary to the plot.

Of the remaining six, all listed as "Electronic voting": North Carolina certainly had a substantial number of DRE precincts in addition to optically scanned precincts. Its redshift was 8.8 points. But New Hampshire was mostly optical scans with a few HCPBs (i.e. similar to Wisconsin), and had a massive redshift of 13.6 points - but a clean recount. New Mexico was mostly DREs, and had a redshift about the size of Wisconsin's (5 points). Florida was half DRE and half optical scan, and had a redshift of 3.9 points (less than Wisconsin or Illinois). Ohio only had one county with electronic voting, as you know - the rest were mostly punchcards, with a few optical scans. It had a substantial redshift of 8.6 points. Pennsylvania had some DREs but more levers, and a more substantial redshift (11.5).

Most states are not shown of course. Of note are Texas, which had a substantial proportion of DREs but a net blueshift of 4.1 points (larger than Florida's redshift) Colorado and Tennessee also had a substantial proportion of DRE precincts, but were blue shifted relative to the exit polls. New York, which had a huge redshift of 13.9 points, but was conducted on levers, with which New Yorkers seem extremely happy. Connecticut also had levers and a subtantial redshift (9.4 points). Delaware, however, had touch screens and a very large redshift (16 points).

In other words, those plots do not give the correct voting technologies; they do not give the correct exit poll discrepancies and they are not representative. There is, in fact, very little that can be concluded from the correct data. If all you had were Delaware and Maine, you might want to conclude that fraud was perpetrated on DREs. However, if you had New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania, together with Texas, Tennessee and Colorado, you might want to trade in your levers for DREs. Unless you were a Republican.

I do wish those plots would disappear from the internet. They are simply wrong. Someone needs to put them out of their misery. I don't know where the exit poll discrepancies came from (I got my figures from the Best Geo estimates in the Edison-Mitofsky report - the estimates made on the basis of exit poll responses alone), nor do I know where the state machinery data came from, but it is wrong too. I actually got my data from the NEP dataset, but you could check it out here:

http://electionline.org/Default.aspx?tabid=1099

although it's been updated.

[BeFree]

23. You know you're wrong

You say Bush Got 6M votes from Gore voters, and that's just about twice Bush's margin of victory.

You say the bush margin of victory came from former Gore voters? Incredible.

[OnTheOtherHand]

26. if you have nothing to say, why post?

To paraphrase the man in the yellow hat, just any words do not make arguments, BeFree. "Incredible" is not an argument.

[BeFree]

27. It is incredible

Your whole argument is predicated on your idea that Bush swayed 3 million Gore 2000 voters and that is how he won.

Yet you don't reply to that accusation, you just build a straw man.

Incredible.

[OnTheOtherHand]

30. "accusation"?

It's a flat-out error, since I actually wrote that I thought the figure was 6 to 6.5 million. You don't have to "accuse" me of that; it's what I wrote. And I've repeatedly explained my reasoning, which you haven't laid a glove on. You don't have to believe it, but that doesn't mean you've lifted a finger to refute it.

[BeFree]

33. Simply, again, the accusation is

This: You think the Bush margin of *victory* came from the Gore 2000 voters who switched and voted for Bush 2004.
You wrote:

I think maybe about 6 to 6 1/2 million Gore voters voted for Bush. That's consistent with the NES data, and it also jibes well with the pre-election polls, which generally showed Kerry winning among new voters and Bush leading overall.

You've also said that about 4M voters of Bush 2000 voted Kerry 2004. Well the difference is just about the margin of the Bush *victory*, so you are in fact saying that the Bush margin came from the Gore 2000 voters who switched. That is simply incredible and I don't know how you can continue to press that case.

Very simply you are claiming that Gore 2000 voters are in a class all by themselves and their votes went against the new voters in 2004. Common sense tells us that there would be similarities not, as you claim, opposition.

[OnTheOtherHand]

35. lather, rinse, repeat

Since Gore and Bush got (at least officially) similar vote totals in 2000 -- and since probably 75-80% of 2004 voters were either Gore voters or Bush voters -- of course the difference between Gore voters for Bush and Bush voters for Kerry will tend to resemble the winning margin, no matter who wins. (How close the resemblance is depends on how the new and other voters split.) That's arithmetic.*

"Very simply you are claiming that Gore 2000 voters are in a class all by themselves and their votes went against the new voters in 2004." Well, we both agree that the vast majority of Gore 2000 voters voted for Kerry -- very much unlike the new voters, although that probably isn't what you meant. However, you insist that it is "incredible" that 13% or 14% voted for Bush. As I've said, that isn't an argument.

As far as I can tell, you intend your argument to be that the difference between % of Gore voters for Bush and % of Bush voters for Kerry ought to somehow resemble the difference between % of new voters for Bush and % of new voters for Kerry. I can't tell why you think this should be true, and you haven't presented any evidence to support the expectation.

*ETA: It also depends on the assumption that Gore and Bush voters turned out at similar rates in 2004, which is reasonable, although there could be some difference at the margin.

[ohioINC]

5. Ohio was stolen in 2004

Then Republican Secratary of State Ken Blackwell conspired with Bush and Diebold(an ohio company) Voting irregularities and Ken's systematic disenfranchisement of his own race gave the state to Bush.

[Botany]

6. Well in Ohio Kerry/ Dems registered 375,000 new voters

the repugs registered 35,000 and yet bush won.

Ohio fun fact.

Morrow County OH the most repug in the state
2000 = 68% bush vote
2004 = 63% bush vote

so that shows a 5% drop in core support for bush.

Bush won legit in 2004 just like we found WMDs in Iraq.

[Melissa G]

8. I love it when you talk Ohio stats, Bots....

:loveya:

[OnTheOtherHand]

14. fact check

"Morrow County OH the most repug in the state"

How do you figure? According to the official returns, Bush beat Kerry by over 50 points in Holmes County -- and he beat Gore there by over 50 points, too. I see a bunch of counties where Bush did better, both times, than he did in Morrow.

"2000 = 68% bush vote
2004 = 63% bush vote"

Again, how do you figure? According to Leip's presidential atlas (http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS ), the correct figures are 61.1% in 2000, 64.1% in 2004.

"so that shows a 5% drop in core support for bush."

Well, if I accepted that reasoning, it shows a 3% increase in "core support" for Bush. But who knows?

[Febble]

15. Is it worth explaining

why "that reasoning" isn't quite sound, quite apart from the fact that the data seem to be wrong?

According to Leip, Kerry got 5,775 votes in 2004, and Gore + Nader got 4,834. So Kerry did 1.19 times better than Gore+Nader, which you might like to call an increase of 19%. Or, you could say, he did 1.28 times better than Gore alone, which you might like to call an increase of 27%. On the other hand, Bush increased his vote from 7,842 in 2000 to 10,474 in 2004, ie by 1.34 times, or 34%.

But I don't see that any of these data demonstrate whether or not the official results are likely to be correct, or otherwise, although it's certainly worth speculating where the extra votes for either side came from. Some will be from new voters, some from rare voters, some from defectors.

FWIW, I made this plot of national votes from 1968-2004. It could be interpreted in a number of ways, but I think it's informative. I also think Democrats can take some heart from it:

[Botany]

16. I was going from figures I saw in article in 2005

.... I believe that the article used the Sec. of State's data.


I remember those figures and find it odd that they now have changed. I do not doubt
the stats you posted but I am sure of the 68 to 63 point drop that I read about @ the time.

What is troubling is the pick up of the 20 million new votes for bush .... where from?
(this assumes that bush lost none of his 2000 base from death or voting from somebody
else) In Ohio what the "educated" group has been selling is the "miracle of the exurbs"
aka all those big houses outside traditional suburbs voted for bush in 2004 but it is doubtful
they were all first time voters .... the demographics of the people living in the exurbs makes
it highly likely that they voted in 2000 (education and income are strong indicators of voting)

[OnTheOtherHand]

18. on the data

The problem I have is that you are going from your memory of a 2005 article that you believe used the Secretary of State's data. So, I have no particular reason to think that the secretary of state's figures changed at all.

Actually, I just googled one of your own posts from June 2005, in which you said the drop was from 67% to 60%. Refining my Google search, so far I haven't found warrant for that anywhere outside DU.

Nationally, I think (for reasons I've explained several times, and am happy to review) that Bush got about 2/3 of his "new" voters from did-not-votes (although Kerry won more of those votes) and about 1/3 from Gore voters. It would be interesting to speculate how new voters in Ohio voted, but we have even less basis for inference than we do nationwide, because the Ohio exit poll didn't ask about past votes. Both Bush and Kerry got more votes than Bush and Gore, respectively, in 2000, and indeed Kerry did a bit better than Gore did. I don't think we need to posit an "exurban miracle."

[Febble]

19. Well, have a look at that plot

Sure, both Bush and Gore lost some of their 2000 voters to death. And sure, some Bush voters turned to Kerry. But look at the steady rise in the total number of votes since 1968. In fact here's another version of the plot:



New voters are more than replacing the old, but there is no real evidence that overall they are turning to the Democrats. The number of votes for the Democratic candidate is growing steadily with each election, but the number of votes for non-Democratic candidates is also growing steadily. What is not so steady is the number votes for the Republican candidate. At least one factor in the success of the Republican candidates would appear to be the number of votes cast for an independent.

Perot certainly cost the Republicans dear. Unfortunately they seem to have made up the loss. Whether by fair means or foul is of course the question, but I don't think the numbers indicate that fair means are implausible (unless you count lies, of course, which I do).

added missing word

also should have linked to my earlier response:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=468189&mesg_id=468213

[kster]

11. Maybe * got them from the

Lies about Iraq? NO
His Lack of immediate response to the 9/11 attacks? NO
Theft of the 2000 election? NO
His responce to the Aanthrax attacks? NO
The torure at Abu Graihb or Guantanamo? NO
His failure to go after Bin Laden? NOPE
His massive tax breaks to the top 1%? NO
Halliburton and Carlyle making billions on Iraq? NO
Maybe the Patriot Act? NO
His Refusal to accept Global Warming? NO
His going AWOL? NO
The White House outing of Valerie Plame? NO
His relationship with Ken Lay of Enron? NO
His refusal to fund stem-cell research? NO
Spying on the American people? NO

OK, your right * could not have gain 20 million votes, not from anything I see on this lineup. Only way for * to gain 20 million votes is by COUNTING THE VOTES IN SECRET (PERIOD)

[BeFree]

12. How'd 'e do it?

That's a lotta no's there kster. It makes you wonder, eh?

Say, I started a thread over in GDP... if ya ain't doing nothing....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=3128901&mesg_id=3128901

[L. Coyote]

34. Back to the Facts. Credibility of Argument requires non-imaginary numbers

First, let's examine the correct numbers:

2004, US Archive Official Results:

   Bush: 62,039,073	
   Kerry 59,027,478

2000 Presidential Election - Popular Vote Totals
Vote totals are State's Certifications.

   Bush 50,456,062  	
   Gore 50,996,582

Republican gain = 11,583,011
Democratic gain =  8,030,896
                   _________
Republican net =   3,552,115

The primary disparity focus, of course, is on the states with exit poll error in excess of the expected, more than one standard deviation. That's 15 states with near 34 million votes (33,982,586). Here are those statistics. The average exit poll/vote tally disparity is 3.65% in these 15 states.

	  			%Bush	%Kerry	%K Exit		Disparity	StDev	   

States w/ StDev > 1.0	means:	50.35	48.37	52.02		-3.65		1.69	

If an argument is not based in fact, it has no basis! Ranting may be useful, but it is not convincing.

Sources:

http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/2000/popular_vote.html

http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/2004/index.html

http://jqjacobs.net/politics/xls/exit_poll.xls

[BeFree]

36. Very good, Coyote

Now what has been said, by the folks claiming Bush won, is that the 3.5M vote margin of victory came from the Gore 2000 voters, who, they claim - without a shred of evidence - switched to Bush in 2004.

[OnTheOtherHand]

38. hello?! the 2000-04 NES panel: A Shred of Evidence (tm) n/t

[BeFree]

40. Hello!

NES? And you were on that panel, I take it? Never heard of this NES you mention. Do they think Gore 2000 voters who voted for Bush in 2004 swung the election, too?

Geez, what will they think of next? That the voting machines were all fine and dandy? That the raw numbers from the exit-polls were bad? That the hundreds of citizen investigations showing a crooked election are of no use in determining the outcome of this controversy?

I have a feeling that were I to ever see that paper that I wouldn't even wipe my ass with it, I'd just shred it.

[OnTheOtherHand]

43. Thanks: proof positive that you don't actually read my posts n/t

[Febble]

37. Beg to differ

The focus shouldn't be on states with exit poll error in excess of expected. Even if every single state result had been within the MoE of its exit poll (and depending on how you compute the MoE this is arguably the case) a simple chi squire, or a one sample t test, is enough to tell you that the net deviation was significantly different from zero - in the "redshift direction".

But knowing that the net redshift was non-zero doesn't tell you where the "error" occurred, nor whether it was in the poll or in the count. And given the variance there is no particular point in focussing on states with large exit poll errors.

Not that I suggest that the exit poll discrepancies be used as a guide to where to find fraud at all. Given that there is absolutely no correlation at precinct level between redshift and swing to Bush, I see no reason to think that the exit poll discrepancy was due to fraud - unless it was completely uniform, in which case, it won't tell you where to look.

[L. Coyote]

44. Do you have a nation-wide precinct-level analysis we should know about?

You wrote: "The focus shouldn't be on states with exit poll error in excess of expected. ..."

They are a good place to start. The states that deviate the most should be considered first, for obvious reasons.

You also write: "Given that there is absolutely no correlation at precinct level between redshift and swing to Bush, I see no reason to think that the exit poll discrepancy was due to fraud..."

Where is your "given" derived from? Do you have a nation-wide precinct-level analysis we should know about? Plus, if red shift and swing to Bush are the same thing, the correlation is 100%.

Check this evidence, based on a precinct-level analysis:

OHIO 2004: 6.15% Kerry-Bush vote-switch found in probability study
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x259620

This matches the exit poll error. Of course, more precinct-level analysis needs to be done in other counties, to see if similar findings obtain elsewhere in Ohio. Volunteers?

[Febble]

45. Sorry

here you go:

http://inside.bard.edu/~lindeman/slides.html

and:

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Febble/3

And here's another plot:



X axis exit poll discrepancy (positive = count "redder" than poll; negative = count "bluer" than poll) in standard errors. ("redshift")

Y axis is percentage point swing to Bush from 2000 (positive = swing to Bush; negative = swing to Kerry.

So "redshift" means count redder than exit polls and "swing" means voteshare redder than in 2000. They aren't the same variable!

You can see that there are many precincts in which the discrepancy is several standard errors from zero, in both directions, but you can also see that the net discrepancy is in the "redshift" direction. You can also see that while Bush did worse than 2000 in some precincts and better in others, overall he gained voteshare.

You can also see that there is absolutely no correlation between the two. There are 1250 precincts in the analysis, and the R squared is given, and the regression line is visibly (but insignificantly) negative, so you can even work out the confidence interval of the regression line if you like.

As for precinct level data within state - there are only tens (49 in Ohio) of precincts polled in each state, so there is very little statistical power. ESI published a precinct level study of the exit polls in Ohio, and essentially found the same as I have posted here - no correlation between swing and shift, ergo, no evidence FOR fraud. However, because of the much lower statistical power, it is not evidence against. Because of the very large statistical power in the plot above, it is actually contra-indicative of widespread massive fraud.

Feel free to ask if you have any more questions.

Cheers

Lizzie

edited to correct unfortunate freudian slip

[L. Coyote]

52. irregularities like vote-switching equal to the exit poll disparity

"Not that I suggest that the exit poll discrepancies be used as a guide to where to find fraud at all. Given that there is absolutely no correlation at precinct level between redshift and swing to Bush, I see no reason to think that the exit poll discrepancy was due to fraud - unless it was completely uniform, in which case, it won't tell you where to look."

To what extent can the exit polls be trusted? Only to that extent, can the research based on them be trusted.

Using the exit polls to argue for no fraud falls very flat. Espcially when there are election results to analyze, and the precinct-level analysis of the results, using every precinct, does show irregularities like vote-switching equal to the exit poll disparity.

So, where is the precinct-level analysis? Not using a sample of precincts selected by someone else's criteria, but the real thing?

You write: "what we need to do is to demonstrate that he did not win a fair race. And he didn't. The race was unfair from beginning to end..."

Perceptive, to say the least. That has been demonstrated with precinct-level analysis:

The 2004 Ohio Presidential Election: Cuyahoga County Analysis
How Kerry Votes Were Switched to Bush Votes

http://jqjacobs.net/politics/ohio.html

And, that unfairness was in play in previous elections too. So, 2000 and 2004 likely had similar fraud in the same demographic precincts, at least in Cuyahoga County. Have you accounted for that in the 2000 to 2004 comparison?

What is needed is a next stage of inquiry, using precinct-level results for an entire state like Ohio, and examining a decade of races. Then, we will have a real basis for conclusions free of inferential statistical margins of error.

[Febble]

53. It depends what you mean by

"trusted". There is plenty of reason to think that the exit polls tend to get a biased sample, but the information is still potentially informative. It's just not reliably informative about who actually won a tight race.

I certainly do not consider that the exit polls argue for "no fraud". What I do think is that it is difficult to square vote theft on a scale of millions (i.e. a popular vote winning scale) with that analysis. Simply put: if fraud was responsible for Bush's increase in vote-share AND redshift in the exit poll, why do we see no correlation between his increase in vote-share and redshift? There is no significant shared variance. How would you accomplish multi-million vote theft and NOT end up with a positive correlation between the two?

What I have given you is the precinct level NEP analysis - that plot contains 1250 of the 1460 or so precincts in the NEP precincts. Not included are precincts in which a large number of absentee votes were included in the precinct vote totals.

Edited to ask: I just read, and don't quite understand, your post header. Could you make your point a little clearer?

[Febble]

60. Sorry, I didn't address this:

And, that unfairness was in play in previous elections too. So, 2000 and 2004 likely had similar fraud in the same demographic precincts, at least in Cuyahoga County. Have you accounted for that in the 2000 to 2004 comparison?

Well I accounted for it in two ways. Firstly, the overall redshift in 2000 was small, so if the 2004 redshift was due to fraud, it must have been due to new fraud. However, while overall redshift in 2000 was small, it varied from state to state. I do not have precinct level data for redshift in 2000 because the the precincts selection is not the same from election to election. However, I did have state means of precinct level redshift (mean state WPEs) so in subsequent analyses I baselined to those. There was still no hint of a positive correlation between swing and redshift.

This does not rule out the possibility that some of the redshift was due to repeated fraud (or miscounted votes) of similar magnitude year after year. But what I was testing was the hypothesis that in 2004, multi-million vote theft occurred due to the possibilities offered by electronic voting, and that this was the cause of the very large 2004 redshift. This hypothesis is not supported by the data.

BTW, I am puzzled by some of your comments, and I wonder if you are aware that only a few tens of precincts are sampled in the exit polls in each election? A rather larger sample is used to predict the result, from the incoming returns, but actual voters are polled in only 20-50 precincts per state. Precinct level analysis of the exit poll data within-state has very little statistical power.

[In Truth We Trust]

54. Off to the greatest with you... Hand Counted Paper Ballot's- Nothing more and nothing less!

[kster]

58. Befree, if I was convinced that * won 2004 fair and square

I would not sit here at the Democratic Underground trying to convince other people that he did, not a chance, but for some reason there are people, who have been here for years, trying to do just that.

I can understand, why You and I are here, We are convinced * stole it, but, for us to be here if we where convinced that * won, it would be kinda weird. Wouldn't it? If I was convinced * won, I would not sit here day in and day out trying to convince you that * won, I would have been gone after a week. :)

[Febble]

59. Who could you possibly mean, kster?

I have never met a poster on DU who thought that Bush "won 2004 fair and square" and I am certainly not one. I don't see one on this thread either.

What I do see is bad data and flawed arguments. And because I think election integrity in the US is vital for both America and for the world, I think the movement needs good data and good arguments.

You seem to see this as a problem.

[kster]

67. -

[MissWaverly]

66. There is hope

Conyers has mountains of evidence from the 2004 election, he has held a hearing on it
and now the democrats are in the majority in the house and he is chair of the House
Judiciary Committee, the evidence is not going to be spun away.

:-)

[kster]

68. Yep, the Anti-Exit Poll group is

very good at what they do, that is for sure, they are able to successfully go around and around with their never ending debate, its getting old, but nonetheless, you have to give them credit. :)

[Febble]

69. You are wrong

if we were any good at what we do, we wouldn't have to keep making the same points, and people wouldn't keep posting the same bad plots and flawed arguments.

kster, let me try one more time:

• I do not think Bush won "fair and square".
  
• I do not think paperless voting is a good idea.
  
• I support paper ballots
  
• I support hand-counting.
  
• I am appalled at the scale of systematic disenfranchisement of Democratic voters in the US.

BUT

I don't think the election reform is best achieved by making arguments that don't stand up. The exit polls do not demonstrate that Bush stole millions of votes in 2004, and if anything, suggest that fraud is unlikely to have been on that kind of scale. They also suggest, if anything, that the biggest problems were in urban precincts using levers and punchcards, not DREs and optical scanners.

Please don't misrepresent the views of other people working for election integrity. Disagreement is fine. Debate is fine. Argument is fine. But please do those of us who take evidence and argument seriously the favour of not misrepresenting our views as to whether the 2004 election was "fair and square". If you actually read the posts, you might see how wrong you are.

[autorank]

70. When will you stop that complaining. Everything is perfect in this most perfect of

...all worlds. Those who defend that world will help you see the light and simply accept the fact that the laws of science, probability and simple common sense don't' need to apply when it comes to the demented fascists who seek to destroy this country by invading nation after nation and stripping us of our civil rights. "Oh my God Becky," How dare you question their right to rule?

These are beloved people, what's your problem BeFree...and thanks to those who defend our fearless leaders, were would they be without you