Bev Harris and others on vote fraud

I can't write much, but I can link and quote. Bev Harris has come out with a statement on the election:

Our organization has taken the position that fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines. We base this on hard evidence, documents obtained in public records requests, inside information, and other data indicative of manipulation of electronic voting systems. What we do not know is the specific scope of the fraud.

We are working now to compile the proof, based not on soft evidence -- red flags, exit polls -- but core documents obtained by Black Box Voting in the most massive Freedom of Information action in history.

We need: Lawyers to enforce public records laws. Some counties have already notified us that they plan to stonewall by delaying delivery of the records. We need citizen volunteers for a number of specific actions. We need computer security professionals willing to GO PUBLIC with formal opinions on the evidence we provide, whether or not it involves DMCA complications. We need funds to pay for copies of the evidence.

There are certainly indications that a sting, or at least an investigation, is in play right now.

Strong indications that both Florida and Ohio would be flipped if election manipulations are rolled back. Some indication that fraud may have occurred in at least 30 states.

This analysis cites a few of those "red flags":

In Florida Bush received a million extra votes, while Kerry received only 500,000 extra votes, in spite of a massive Democratic Get-Out-The-Vote(GOTV) and registration campaign in that state;

- In Florida's Broward County, a democratic stronghold and heavily black community, unauditable voting machines recorded a 33% (70,000+) vote gain on Bush's 2000 results and a much smaller gain to Kerry – again Broward was the scene of a massive GOTV campaign;

- In several places voters reported ( http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid/4154/) voting for Kerry but noticing the machine record their vote for Bush...

The same writer goes on to make a point I've been repeating endlessly:

There is a bit of math involved but don't worry, I taught market research at a University - a place where Republicans fear to tread, according to the media’s own polls! The Bush people argue that the exit polls are skewed by the methodology employed. It is odd that they don’t say what that error producing part of the methodology might be. A skew means a systematic error is introduced by the test protocol and causes a consistent shift in one direction.

IF this was true, then all the exit polls would show the same sort of shift from 'actual' results.

The GOP offer an alternative argument that the exit polls are not large enough samples and therefore the results are off by a large random error.

IF this was true, then the exit polls should scatter on either side of the actual result, especially if the final result is close to 50/50.

This good piece notes exit polls in a specific county:

The Institute for Public Accuracy also outlined various problems. Susan Truitt, co-founder of the Citizens Alliance for Secure Elections, was quoted on its site saying that seven counties in Ohio had electronic voting machines without paper trails, and scientific exit polls showed Kerry with the lead. But verifying votes was impossible, she said.

“A recount without a paper trail is meaningless; you just get a regurgitation of the data,” Truitt said. “A poll worker told me [Wednesday] morning that there were no tapes of the results posted on some machines; on other machines the posted count was zero, which obviously shouldn’t be the case.”

I would add this: Nevada has caused me to rethink the value of paper trails. As noted earlier, the paper comes into play only if someone calls for a recount. Thus, in a "paper trail" state you can pad the popular vote margin once the election has been won elsewhere.

Finally, this progressive writer does not get it. He's casting a suspicious eye at the exit polling organization. Dude, the exit poll data is helpful to our side...!