I was just sent this link, which has forced me to reconsider the vote in Florida.
The work of Bev Harris and others has caused us to mistrust computerized voting. But the numbers here (yes, I know that the chart isn't all that easy to read, but keep studying it) indicate that wildly unexpected voting did, in fact, occur -- not in counties with electronic voting machines, but in counties using old-school optical scanning.
Example: In Miami-Dade county, the e-vote rules. 248,045 people were expected to vote Republican (based on past performance), and 326,362 actually voted for Bush, a 31.6% jump. Before you react, note this: In the same county, 305,486 people were expected to vote Democratic, yet Kerry got 383,032 votes -- a 25.4% increase.
Bottom line: High voter turnout could explain the difference between expectation and the final tally for both Republicans and Democrats.
Much the same story can be told in most of the counties using electronic voting (although Nassau and Sumter counties may seem iffy). If computers were used to "massage" the vote, it was done with finesse.
Have I broken the hearts of conspiracy theorists? Well, prepare to have your hearts mended. Because a glance at the non-electronic vote counties shows us a different picture. Very different.
Example: Baker County. The "actual" Republican vote increased over the expected vote a staggering 220.4% -- while the Democratic vote decreased -68.4%.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," I hear the skeptics saying. "That's just one county. Bush was popular there this year. So what?"
So this: Similarly wild numbers occur in nearly all of the other counties using optical scan ballots. We're talking 52 counties. In case after case, we see Brobdinagian jumps for the Republicans, and decreases -- sometimes drastic decreases -- for the Democrats.
The results are unmistakable. In every "e-vote" county the numbers are much less suspicious. But very suspicious figures cropped up in nearly every one of the optical scan counties. In each case, Republicans -- only Republicans -- reaped rewards.
Granted, many of these counties are small, so small that a relative handful of party defections can cause the percentages to fluctuate. But not all the counties in this category are that small (Duval, for example), and the pattern holds true throughout.
I'm not saying we should now trust the computers implicitly, or that we should all send snarky emails to Bev Harris. The e-vote counties are mostly quite large. In a large county, a hypothetical manipulator could switch 10,000 or more votes without causing any eye-popping fluctuations in the "percent changed" category.
But if this chart is accurate, we shouldn't just cast a wary eye at the electronic vote. The optical scan vote may be filthy.
(I'd appreciate any alternative "reads" of these data.)
10 comments:
Even the optically scanned votes need to be tabulated centrally, and if the Diebold GEMS tabulator was used, the tabulation could have been hacked. The Blackbox voting site has a lot of information on the GEMS tabulator. So the question to ask is whether these suspicious counties in Florida had the votes tabulated by the GEMS system.
jm
the exit poll story has been utterly silenced except on frontpagemag, a far right neocon e-zine which only cites it to prove the presumption of a liberal bias in exit polls, citing no evidence. have a read:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15821
Actually, it looks more like Bush did especially well in smaller counties. In large counties, with op-scan, the results don't show the same fall-off. This may just be a sign of an energized rural conservatives and some turned off rural Democrats, for whatever reason. (It could also be a sign that Republicans did their vote fraud in small counties -- but that seems unlikely. Too many people would have to be involved.)
Thanks to the people who put the work into that. The graphs that Charlie Strauss did are interesting, also. I'd love to see a Pennsylvania 2004 graph also, if he can do that easily. That graph could serve as a good example of non-suspect data.
You're forgetting one thing: Look at the national popular vote. 59 million + for Bush, and about 55 million for Kerry.
I would like the people who said that Bush was illegitimate because he lost the popular vote (by a lot less) in 2000 to defend their position now that Bush is illegitimate even though he won the popular vote in 2004. Where is the consistency? Where is the rationality?
Can you please defend this position?
for a much broader analysis of this emerging...strike that, BURSTING scandal, please see thom hartmann's article on it in commondreams: http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110804Z.shtml
he adds a tantalizing point that a US Congressional candidate has called the FBI; there's a LOT more.
but, if you folks look more carefully at that link to the data chart Joe mentioned, the column you need to focus on is the first column of numbers from the left, after the county names. this column shows the percentage of shift from registration (as R or D) to actual votes (R or D). this column shows 37 of the 52 counties using opscan/central tabulators had a NEGATIVE shift of Democrats from their registered numbers, and half the counties showed a shift to Republican voting of OVER 100%!!! these figures absolutely defy logic, and they certainly defy the exit polls.
what the hackers have done is to simply switch the results to show the red votes for blue and the blue for red; this would be the simplest way to make sure that the final totals match up.
if this bears out, and the whole thing is sure looking beyond fishy, this means that KERRY WON WITH 279 EVs TO BUSH'S 259!! And this is without any of the other swing states scrutinized, which absolutely MUST be done because it appears this likely affected Congressional elections, as well.
STAY ON THIS ONE FOLKS; OUR DEMOCRACY IS AT STAKE!!
I ask again:
WHAT ABOUT THE POPULAR VOTE?
Interesting information. Also interesting is the fact that there aren't any defenders of Bush among those who advanced the "but he lost the popular vote" theory in 2000.
Look -- it's clear that politics is all about hypocrisy. But does that mean that Democrats can be hypocritical too, with impunity? Democrats are the ones taking the "moral high ground" regarding the contention that "every vote must count". Then -- I ask again, for the THIRD time -- defend your enthusiasm for unseating Bush when it is clear that he won by 3.5 million votes or more on the national level.
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
The claims of illegitimacy with respect to 2000 relate to the counting of votes in Florida and widespread voter fraud, disenfranchisement of voters and the involement of the Supreme Court who did not allow all votes to be counted. The other point is that Bush did not seek in any way possible to heal the partisan divide - despite the circumstances surrounding his "election", he acted like he had a mandate to impose his will.
Yes, some of us Dems were dumfounded - how could Bush act like that when more people voted for the other guy? The typically arrogant response from conservatives was that "the Popular Vote doesn't count - its the electoral college, stupid." To which Dems replied that he arguably did not win the electoral college. Hence, the wquestion as to his legitimacy.
Now, of course, Republicans are brining up the popular vote as the reason for his mandate. Well, as I have heard from Republicans for the last 4 years - " the popular vote doesn't count - its the electoral college, stupid."
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