The usual Kevin election post.

Well, now that Kevin is on record as having been caught cutting and pasting forged quotes from me, and claiming that I have made assertions and claims that are nowhere to be found, AND he has dodged the Wilder question for what, the 5th time now?, added to his getting caught faking a Conyer's *staff* paper into "a one hundred page report from members of the Judiciary Committee" ( topped off incredibly, by claiming that someone else said those very words that can be seen in the first post on this page ), I think it would be safe to declare him a 'thoroughly discredited' liar and forger, and be done with him.

Buh-bye
 
NoZed Avenger said:
I have taken a look through some of the raw (?) exit poll data, and was wondering if anyone could help me out.

I am trying to locate the Mitofsky data for the Presidential race in Utah.

I am not looking for the BYU poll, but the actual data from the national Mitofsky exit poll. Does anyone know where that information might be found (if it can be)?
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My understanding is that data has not been leaked or released (yet).

I believe Steven Freeman has done his best to get the best possible raw exit poll data based on what was released on election night, and he says he will send it to you if you ask him on his web site.

http://www.appliedresearch.us/sf/epdiscrep.htm

Speaking of Freeman, here's an op-ed piece from his with a couple of worthwhile points I haven't seen made before about the Ukrainian election:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/01/06/EDGOQAL6VA1.DTL

WildCat, I still plan to get back to you about the Ohio mchine distribution business.
 
For WildCat

For WildCat, this is the first thing I found that is relevant, from Professor Bob Fitrakis.

"An analysis of the Franklin County Board of Elections’ allocation of machines reveals a consistent pattern of providing fewer machines to the Democratic city of Columbus, with its Democratic mayor and uniformly Democratic city council, despite increased voter registration in the city. The result was an obvious disparity in machine allocations compared to the primarily Republican white affluent suburbs."
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http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/990

So it looks like what is probably going on is that you are absolutely right that individual counties are responsible for machine allocation, but that the problematic behaviour occurs in Dem-heavy regions of Rep-controlled counties. There the Republicans in charge of the board of elections can suppress the Democrat vote by supplying insufficient voting machines to the bits of their county that historically tend to vote against them.

I believe that generally speaking reports of malfunctioning machines come disproportionately from Democrat-heavy areas. So it's also possible that the people supplying the machines supplied dodgy machines to precincts or counties likely to go blue. That's a story that could explain any instances of big lines in Democrat-run counties.

Wikipedia has a few graphs purporting to show an inverse relationship between Kerry voting and voter turnout in Cuyahoga County, amongst other stuff. So it looks like there is actually some evidence that something suppressed the Kerry vote in Ohio, and long lines and malfunctioning machines look like obvious candidates.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_voting_controversies,_Ohio#Machine_shortages
 
crimresearch said:
I think it would be safe to declare him a 'thoroughly discredited' liar and forger, and be done with him.

Buh-bye
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Well, given that his hero - Bev Harris - is a thoroughly discredited liar and woo-woo conspiracy nut, it's not suprising what he did.
 
The Central Scrutinizer said:
No, "Kerry" is not the correct answer. One way of knowing that? His initials aren't GWB. Try again.
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Bush, the cheat.
 
I believe that generally speaking reports of malfunctioning machines come disproportionately from Democrat-heavy areas. So it's also possible that the people supplying the machines supplied dodgy machines to precincts or counties likely to go blue.

(yaaaaaaaaaawn...................)

First, I'd like everybody to go back to the first two or three pages in this thread to see the "incredible shrinking conspiracy".

Kevin started with claims that there are eyewitnesses of "Diebold employees fiddling inside the machines" to change the results to pro-Bush, or that there is proof of people voting for Kerry and the results being recorded for Bush, or that the evil Republicans will not allow a recount under any circumstances, etc. Kevin is not making these claims any more, since they were shown to be first-rate nonsense and based on nothing but silly rumors.

So he is reduced to claiming that it is POSSIBLE the "real" conspiracy had been to supply "dodgy" machines to Democrats, with the eeeeeeeeevil purpose--not of changing their votes, or not recording them, or "fiddling inside the machines", but of making the would-be Democratic voters wait in long lines on election day.

A bit of an, er, "shrinking" of Kevin's claims, don't you think?

Okay, Kevin, I know, I know: I should "look at the evidence instead of engaging in ad hominem attacks against the messenger", or--to translate--I should just shut up and disprove your latest 'fraud' theory, while ignoring the fact that the previous seventeen ones turned out to be laughably wrong.

Well, let me do just that.

To the point, yes, your current "fraud" theory is POSSIBLE. But it's not much of a conspiracy, is it? I just can't imagine Karl Rove and Dick Cheney going, "And now that our thousands of accomplices will help us in giving slightly annoyingly machines to the democrats which will make them wait an extra hour in line, VICTORY IS OURS!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!".

I mean, if you are going to fiddle with your election machines at all, you're just as legally culpable whether you fiddle with it by making it record Kerry votes for Bush, or whether you make it "slightly dodgy" with the vague hope of turning away would-be democratic voters sick of waiting in line. So you might as well go the whole hog, don't you think?

And besides, what kind of "winning strategy" is that? Can you really count, with any certainty, on making the machines just "dodgy" enough not to arouse suspicion but to make the lines just long enough to make just enough dispirited Democrats do decide not to vote after all? This sounds like a political version of the Rube Golberg machine--you know, the contraction from the cartoons where the mouse runs to the cheese and cuts the rope that loosens the knife which... etc., etc., etc. ... until eventually the 16-ton weight falls on the victims.

Try again. I'm sure you'll think of some other "proof of fraud" by tomorrow.

Wikipedia has a few graphs purporting to show an inverse relationship between Kerry voting and voter turnout in Cuyahoga County, amongst other stuff.

Well, duh. Did it occur to you that there might be a different explanation for this? No, of course not, so let me supply it.

As everybody who remembers the election noted, it turned out that--on average--the Bush voters were more dedicated and mobilized. In particular, generally pro-Bush voter groups (like veterans or religious Christians) turned out to vote in significantly greater percentages than generally pro-Kerry ones (like minorities or young people). Naturally, this would mean that "blue" counties could expect a lower voter turnout than "red" counties--because Democrats tend to vote less than Republicans.

So what, exactly, is there to "explain"? That the same behavior which Democrats and Republicans exhibited all across the country--higher Republican voter turnout than Democratic voter turnout--held true in Ohio counties as well?

Or was the eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil Diebold sending "dodgy" machines to ALL "blue" countries in the country, and THAT was the "real reason" Democratic turnout was less than Republican one?
 
Skeptic said:
First, I'd like everybody to go back to the first two or three pages in this thread to see the "incredible shrinking conspiracy".

Kevin started with claims that there are eyewitnesses of "Diebold employees fiddling inside the machines" to change the results to pro-Bush, or that there is proof of people voting for Kerry and the results being recorded for Bush, or that the evil Republicans will not allow a recount under any circumstances, etc. Kevin is not making these claims any more, since they were shown to be first-rate nonsense and based on nothing but silly rumors.
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Two of the three claims Skeptic attributes to me here are false claims I never made, and the third, while it is consistent with eyewitness reports, is also not a claim I recall actually making. In layperson's language, this is a pack of lies.

So he is reduced to claiming that it is POSSIBLE the "real" conspiracy had been to supply "dodgy" machines to Democrats, with the eeeeeeeeevil purpose--not of changing their votes, or not recording them, or "fiddling inside the machines", but of making the would-be Democratic voters wait in long lines on election day.
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That's an "and", not an "instead of". Voter suppression through machine supply happened. I figure it's more likely than not it was deliberate, given that it ran along party lines, but I'm sure you'll find a reason to differ. Electronic vote fraud, in addition, seems highly likely.

A bit of an, er, "shrinking" of Kevin's claims, don't you think?
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An expansion, actually. Successfully suppressed voters do not show up in exit polls.

Skeptic, you are really running up a track record of dishonesty here. Is it really too much to ask that you stop attributing claims and positions to me that I never made or endorsed? If the facts and the right are on your side you should have absolutely no need of slimy tactics.

This behaviour, on the other hand, could easily be mistaken for a deliberate effort to poison the well. It certainly makes it harder to have fruitful discussion (like I was having with WildCat for a second) if you keep wasting everyone's time by misrepresenting what I have said.

So what, exactly, is there to "explain"? That the same behavior which Democrats and Republicans exhibited all across the country--higher Republican voter turnout than Democratic voter turnout--held true in Ohio counties as well?
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I think you'll find that the huge queues and hours-long waiting times are among the annoying facts I keep mentioning. These queues and waits were simply not universal. So what you are saying is beside the point.

It's also begging the question in an important sense, because what is at stake here is whether more people did actually get out and vote for Bush than did for Kerry. The exit polls say one thing, the tallied vote says another, and neither is reliable enough at this stage to trust with the governance of the USA.
 
Meanwhile, back in reality, there are absolutely glorious shenanigans afoot in Washington.

The Democrats in King County, possibly anxious to show that they can be as crooked as Republicans, managed to scare up 3500 more votes than registered voters in their first run at it, and then dug up another few hundred "lost" votes when it looked like the Democrat candidate was going to lose a tightly contested recount. Plus there are other serious allegations of election rigging favouring the Democrats.

http://jameshudnall.com/archives/002641.html

It looks very much like some vote rigging from the old school in King County.

But meanwhile in Snohomish County, Paul R. Lehto, Attorney at Law, and Dr. Jeffrey Hoffman, Ph.D. have compiled a report showing pretty damn clear evidence that errors and repairs to voting machines correlated tightly with startling swings to the Republican party.

Highlights:

Absentee ballots composing 2/3 of the total ballots showed a Democratic lead of 97044 to 95228 votes, while the remaining 1/3 of the votes, on touch screens, showed a Republican lead of almost 5% (50,400 Republican to 42,145 Democratic).

Vote-switching and machines freezing up occurred in 58 polling locations out of approximately 148 total. There is a high correlation between the problem machines — as reported by KING5 news — and the Republican percentages the machines reported.

Statistical analysis of machines that recently had their CPUs repaired shows a propensity for Republican voting that is present but weak on the individual level but strong at the polling location where the machines were placed.

The average of the 58 polling places reporting vote switching, freeze-ups, or repairs within two weeks of the election was 11.58% more favorable to Republican Dino Rossi than absentee voters did, and averaged 10.8% more votes than Gregoire on election day, while Rossi’s overall spread among all electronic voters at all polling locations was under 5%.
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http://www.votersunite.org/takeaction/mediaSnohomishCounty.htm

It looks pretty plausible right now that both parties have engaged in electoral fraud to a degree that totally swamps any of the margins of victory so far established, right in the heart of the world's self-proclaimed greatest democracy.

That, fellow JREFers, is a giggle and a half.
 
Kevin_Lowe said:
and then dug up another few hundred "lost" votes when it looked like the Democrat candidate was going to lose a tightly contested recount.
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Clarifications:

1) Gregoire (the democrat) won even without the lost votes. She won by 130 or so with the lost votes, and by 8 without them.

2) By all accounts, the lost votes really were lost votes.

Compelling evidence of mischief has not been reported. The GOP secretary of state says the election was legit. From where I sit (in WA state), it has all the appearance of democracy in action, in an amazingly close election.

And though I don't understand why it's the case, the count discrepancies between ballots and registered voters happens here every election.
 
varwoche said:
Clarifications:

1) Gregoire (the democrat) won even without the lost votes. She won by 130 or so with the lost votes, and by 8 without them.

2) By all accounts, the lost votes really were lost votes.

Compelling evidence of mischief has not been reported. The GOP secretary of state says the election was legit. From where I sit (in WA state), it has all the appearance of democracy in action, in an amazingly close election.

And though I don't understand why it's the case, the count discrepancies between ballots and registered voters happens here every election.
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It's no real mystery. Do anything millions of times and there's going to be discrepancies and errors, no matter how many safeguards are in place. When it's a close election, you can only recount so many times. Yes, the totals will change w/ every recount but at some point it has to stop and a winner declared, as has happened in WA. Perfection is a worthy goal, but ultimately unachievable.
 
varwoche said:
And though I don't understand why it's the case, the count discrepancies between ballots and registered voters happens here every election.
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I just don't know what to say.

Every election you have more votes than voters, and so it's okay because it always happens?

That's... staggering. What on earth does count as evidence that something is amiss in a US election?

You have successfully amazed an Australian.
 
Kevin_Lowe said:

I just don't know what to say.

Every election you have more votes than voters, and so it's okay because it always happens?

That's... staggering. What on earth does count as evidence that something is amiss in a US election?

You have successfully amazed an Australian.
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Under President Bush the US Bureau of Weights and Measurements is slated to become a faith-based program.
 
Kevin_Lowe said:
I just don't know what to say.

Every election you have more votes than voters, and so it's okay because it always happens?

That's... staggering. What on earth does count as evidence that something is amiss in a US election?

You have successfully amazed an Australian.
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Apparently you have overlooked my posts to this and other of your threads on this topic. I take irregularities seriously. They should be investigated, and problems should be corrected.

The issue that you are up in arms about in WA state is widespread, and occurs every election cycle. Does that make it ok? No. Should it be fixed? Yes. (Unless it's unfixable minutia.) Should the 2004 election -- all states, all counties -- be overturned due to this recurring irregularity? Of course not.

It appears the system worked in WA state, regardless the random blog you cite. I see no credible reason for a re-vote. In fact, a re-vote would be against state law and a subversion of the democratic process.

Election reform going forward is a separate topic.

And if you're still staggered, Kevin, you're going to lose one of the few who argued that you aren't nutty.
 
Kevin_Lowe said:
I just don't know what to say.

Every election you have more votes than voters, and so it's okay because it always happens?

That's... staggering. What on earth does count as evidence that something is amiss in a US election?

You have successfully amazed an Australian.
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Voter roles might not be up to date or a caregiver might submit an absentee ballot for a dead person or (this boggles me) you can be registered in two (or more, I guess) towns and thus be able to vote multiple times. As far as I can tell, nothing is really centralized so that if I own property in towns A and B, there is no way of determining where I have voted already. Then again if I in fact do own property in two towns I can certainly vote on budgets and town matters and the like, legally. You would need a centralized exception reporting thing which would have to be able to churn out a composite list. Also, you can, even if you are not on a Town's Grand List, submit an affidavit at the poll that you are in fact a resident and then vote.

I doubt that this is a big factor, though it could have been big enough in WA. I wonder what an acceptable error range is for such things since error there will be. Could one expect an error of .01%? That would still be 30,000 votes.
 
This from the blog cited by Kevin re WA state election:
random blog
When first you lose and election, try and try again for a recount. Until you "find" the votes you need. That's how Democrats have been operating since 2000.
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Examples please.
So they have to invent ballots where there are none. Such was the case in Washington, this election
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By all accounts, the lost & found ballots were just that -- lost & found. This was ruled on by the state supreme court.
when after 2 recounts showing a Republican victory for Governor, the Dems paid for an inaccurate hand recount
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Wrong. There were a total of 2 recounts, not 3. The first was mandated by state constitution. The second recount can be demanded when margin is close -- it is a hand recount by law, not by partisan shenanigans, as this bozo implies.
and "found" extra votes "stuck in voting machines"
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Nonsense.

Wake up Kevin. It's almost unbeleivable just how wrong this crap is. I suggest you read up on the facts before citing random, misinformed bozos.
 
varwoche said:
Clarifications:

1) Gregoire (the democrat) won even without the lost votes. She won by 130 or so with the lost votes, and by 8 without them.

2) By all accounts, the lost votes really were lost votes.

Compelling evidence of mischief has not been reported. The GOP secretary of state says the election was legit. From where I sit (in WA state), it has all the appearance of democracy in action, in an amazingly close election.
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Well, without much effort I found a bunch of people who disagree with that.

The 723 ballots originally overlooked in King County were mistakenly rejected on Election Day because of a problem with how voters' signatures were scanned into a computer. They were rediscovered during the hand recount by elections workers.

...

State GOP Chairman Chris Vance called their discovery weeks after the election "very suspicious." And some Washington state residents who had calmly been watching the recount with confidence in their state's reputation for clean politics were starting to have their doubts.
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http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-12-22-wash-governor_x.htm

During the first count of ballots, two days before certification King County announced it had 10,000 more ballots than it originally thought. These additional ballots benefited Gregoire.

During the machine recount, King County counted another 300-plus ballots that hadn’t appeared before. Again, these additional ballots benefited Gregoire.

On Nov. 13, King County released a list of voters whose ballots had not been counted because of signature problems. Only nine of the 573 voters whose ballots King County now wants to count because of alleged “clerical errors” were on this original list. It wasn’t until Dec. 7 or 8 that another list emerged from King County with the names of all those 573 voters.

An attorney for King County verified on Dec. 13 that the 573 ballots have not been stored in sealed and secured containers.
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http://www.wsrp.org/news2004/2004_12_16.htm

Republican observers watching over the King County recount cited the following examples:

1. Ballots clearly marked for Dino Rossi are not being counted.

In more than one instance this morning, ballots where the bubble was clearly and fully marked for Dino Rossi were spit out of the machine because of other stray marks on the ballot. King County Elections workers noticed that there were faint marks on or around the bubble next to Christine Gregoire’s name. The workers recommended that these ballots be sent to the King County Canvassing Board to clear up any confusion, but King County Elections Superviser Bill Huennekens, who is a Democrat, ordered the workers to not count the ballots at all, even though they were clearly and fully marked for Dino Rossi. A Republican observer questioned Huennekens on his decision, but Huennekens was not responsive.
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http://www.wsrp.org/news2004/2004_11_21.htm

"The number of votes cast questionably, illegally or mistakenly is vastly in excess of the 129-vote margin by which this election has been certified," former U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton said at a news conference Rossi held at his campaign headquarters in this Seattle suburb.

Republicans highlighted a host of problems, including thousands more ballots than people credited with voting in several counties' records - more than 1,200 in heavily Democratic King County alone.

King County Elections Director Dean Logan and other county officials have said it's common for vote totals not to match up with their lists of voters who cast ballots.

Another problem in King County: Nearly 350 provisional ballots were fed directly into vote-counting machines before election staffers could verify whether they were valid, Logan said.
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http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WASHINGTON_GOVERNOR?SITE=MITRA&SECTION=US&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

As usual there is no proof of electoral fraud by any specific person - by the nature of the crime, proof is very hard to come by.

But there are chain of custody problems (a big no-no), allegations of naughtiness at all sorts of stages of the vote counting process, the stark fact that there are more votes than voters (and saying that this always happens is not much of an explanation!). When the outcome of the election hangs on a hundred or so votes the election is being decided by votes which are, at best, dubious.

There is no proof that, for example, that the bonus 573 unsecured votes that were discovered were actually cast on election day, as opposed to being run up afterwards by enthusiastic Democrats. The whole point of the usual election procedures is to rule out all such possibilities.

I'm also continually frustrated by the common US attitude that breakdowns in electoral security don't matter unless you can prove beyond unreasonable doubt that the election outcome was affected. I find that attitude baffling. The relative minority who demand that every single vote be counted without fail, under conditions that rule out all reasonable suspicion of possible fraud, seem to me like to be the only sane ones.

To quote Cook County State’s Attorney Richard A. Devine:

“You have a system where people have no reason to believe in the integrity of the system,” he said, “where people have no reason to obey the laws unless it’s convenient for them.”
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Kevin_Lowe said:
Well, without much effort I found a bunch of people who disagree with that.
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Congratulations, you found some rabid partisans. What a shock.

add: Including the state party chairman! Kevin, do you vaguely understand the role that party operatives play in the US political system? Do you realize they are unelected partisans -- the worst imaginable sources?
 
varwoche said:
Wake up Kevin. It's almost unbeleivable just how wrong this crap is. I suggest you read up on the facts before citing random, misinformed bozos.
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That blog was a whimsical choice, because it amused me to see a Republican supporter engaging in all the bad behaviour that "loonie Democract moonbat bloggers" are regularly accused of. I admit I was also curious to see whether Skeptic, Scrut or crim would do their homework and criticise that guy with the same enthusiasm as they apply to criticising bloggers from the other side of the debate.

As you can see from the more serious articles I just linked to, though, he wasn't as far off beam as you might think. He gets a variety of facts just plain wrong, but the essential case that a group of Democrats kept on "finding" new votes whose bona fides cannot be properly established has a firm basis, as does the case that the whole county's election has to be treated as suspicious if the voter turnout is well over 100%. Even if it's always suspicious for that reason.
 
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