A Dutch reader named flowski translated the article published in Der Spiegel. You can find it in the comments section of the preceding post, but this piece deserves more prominent display. (I've added a few touches of Americanization, plus a response.)
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Bush's automatic election victory
It happened in Florida as well. After reports concerning irregularities in the for the US presidential elections important swing-state Ohio, now there is also doubt and annoyance in Florida. According to a study of Berkeley University electronic votingmachines were giving President Bush a clear edge.
Hamburg: The electronic voting system gave George W. Bush some 260,000 votes more than he should have gotten. A group of professors from Berkeley University concluded this after a statistical study, published in the tech-magazine "Wired." The scientists have sent the results to Florida so they can prove or disprove it, and they call for them to investigate the voting results in the voting districts where touchscreen machines were used to vote.
According to the scientists, their goal is not to fight the election results. Bush is 350,000 votes ahead of second-place finisher John Kerry. The goal of the study is to point out the susceptability to fraud of machines without a paper trail, according to "Wired."
The experts' analysis points out an interesting discrepancy: Bush got a significant number of votes more in districts with touchscreen voting machines than in districts with other types of system -- and it is [in?]dependent of the demographic structure of the districts, also of the middle income group, racial groups and age groups. In 15 districts, the scientists concluded this statistical anomality to be present. In the districts with other voting equipment there were no relevant deviations.
An interesting detail: the districts where the deviations were extremely high were democratic strongholds. The statistic chance of that happening naturally is about one to a thousand, according to a quote from the magazine of Michael Hout, a sociology professor.
Many of the touchscreen votingmachines used were developed by de company ES&S. The corporation called the conclusions of the Berkeley University study hypothetical and refused the offer. “ES&S touchscreen votingmachines have been tested in thousands of elections in the entire country”, a spokesman of the firm told “Wired”.
In their article the magazine also quotes Susan van Houten, co-founder of the "Palm Beach coalition for voting reform." She was not surprised by the Berkeley conclusions and by reports from voters, who told her about irregularities. Inhabitants of her district, where "Sequoia" machines were used, told her about some interesting experiences: Voters who voted for Kerry were told they voted for Bush on the computer screen. They were told by computer specialists, Van Houten says, that it was relatively easy to program the system software in such a fashion that it gives every 50th vote to Bush. Such a manipulation is not very notable.
According to the Florida state office the report is serious, and therefore they do not want to give a response as of yet. However, Florida has one of the most strict license procedures of the whole country for such devices. "After a system is certified, each single device is tested and is sealed. The seal is not broken until election day," said the spokeswoman of the authority.
The touchscreendevices were allready doubted last year as many computerspecialist found out that the machines were susceptible to hackers and manipulation.
The reports in "Wired" naturally supports the theses of numerous Kerry supporters, who once again consider the election quasi-stolen by Bush. Yet this year, the results are so clear, in spite of some irregularity, that even after deduction of the incorrectly-counted votes, George W. Bush’s election victory will remain. For Bush’s advantage over his challenger amounts to 3.5 million votes. For there to have been such an exorbitant manipulation can not -- in spite of the multitude of critics -- be maintained as of yet.
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My response: The Hout study does not specify whether the anomalous Bush votes were added to his total or switched from Kerry's, but the "every 50th vote" remark indicates a switch. And if that is the case, then 260,000 votes is more than enough to swing the election. The remark about the popular vote total shows some ignorance of the electoral college system.
Obviously, evidence of a padded vote in Florida makes similar padding elsewhere "thinkable." If the Bush vote was overstuffed in, say, Texas or Tennessee, who would know? Who would bother to double-check?
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