It was a fight he couldn’t win, even if in the end he won - public didn’t want another Florida.
Tom - they had an “expert” on the Al Franken show on Friday & he said that the election was probably NOT stolen, i.e. there was no real evidence to support that.
Kerry conceded because he LOST!
Well, I’d guess he lost too, but ya gotta wonder if there is a pattern to all the spoiled votes. I suspect it crossed Kerry’s mind, albeit briefly. 
I think he did the math and that was the reason for his delayed concession. He probably considered all the available votes and even if a super-majority had gone to him, he still would have lost.
| Quote (CosmicCharlie @ Nov. 14 2004,13:34) |
| Tom - they had an "expert" on the Al Franken show on Friday & he said that the election was probably NOT stolen, i.e. there was no real evidence to support that. Kerry conceded because he LOST! |
No, Kerry was just a loser.
Kerry did not lose. You heard it here first. Something odd happened. The statistical chance that more then 100% can vote in a given dsitrict is pretty easy to figure. This had better be the news story of the next few months, or we are done for.
I Smell a Rat
By Colin Shea
Zogby.com
Friday 12 November 2004
I smell a rat. It has that distinctive and all-too-familiar odor of the species Republicanus floridius. We got a nasty bite from this pest four years ago and never quite recovered. Symptoms of a long-term infection are becoming distressingly apparent.
The first sign of the rat was on election night. The jubilation of early exit polling had given way to rising anxiety as states fell one by one to the Red Tide. It was getting late in the smoky cellar of a Prague sports bar where a crowd of expats had gathered. We had been hoping to go home to bed early, confident of victory. Those hopes had evaporated in a flurry of early precinct reports from Florida and Ohio.
By 3 AM, conversation had died and we were grimly sipping beers and watching as those two key states seemed to be slipping further and further to crimson. Suddenly, a friend who had left two hours earlier rushed in and handed us a printout.
“Zogby’s calling it for Kerry.” He smacked the sheet decisively. “Definitely. He’s got both Florida and Ohio in the Kerry column. Kerry only needs one.” Satisfied, we went to bed, confident we would wake with the world a better place. Victory was at hand.
The morning told a different story, of course. No Florida victory for Kerry - Bush had a decisive margin of nearly 400,000 votes. Ohio was not even close enough for Kerry to demand that all the votes be counted. The pollsters had been dead wrong, Bush had four more years and a powerful mandate. Onward Christian soldiers - next stop, Tehran.
Lies, #### Lies, and Statistics
I work with statistics and polling data every day. Something rubbed me the wrong way. I checked the exit polls for Florida - all wrong. CNN’s results indicated a Kerry win: turnout matched voter registration, and independents had broken 59% to 41% for Kerry.
Polling is an imprecise science. Yet its very imprecision is itself quantifiable and follows regular patterns. Differences between actual results and those expected from polling data must be explainable by identifiable factors if the polling sample is robust enough. With almost 3.000 respondents in Florida alone, the CNN poll sample was pretty robust.
The first signs of the rat were identified by Kathy Dopp, who conducted a simple analysis of voter registrations by party in Florida and compared them to presidential vote results. Basically she multiplied the total votes cast in a county by the percentage of voters registered Republican: this gave an expected Republican vote. She then compared this to the actual result.
Her analysis is startling. Certain counties voted for Bush far in excess of what one would expect based on the share of Republican registrations in that county. They key phrase is “certain counties” - there is extraordinary variance between individual counties. Most counties fall more or less in line with what one would expect based on the share of Republican registrations, but some differ wildly.
How to explain this incredible variance? Dopp found one over-riding factor: whether the county used electronic touch-screen voting, or paper ballots which were optically scanned into a computer. All of those with touch-screen voting had results relatively in line with her expected results, while all of those with extreme variance were in counties with optical scanning.
The intimation, clearly, is fraud. Ballots are scanned; results are fed into precinct computers; these are sent to a county-wide database, whose results are fed into the statewide electoral totals. At any point after physical ballots become databases, the system is vulnerable to external hackers.
It seemed too easy, and Dopp’s method seemed simplistic. I re-ran the results using CNN’s exit polling data. In each county, I took the number of registrations and assigned correctional factors based on the CNN poll to predict turnout among Republicans, Democrats, and independents. I then used the vote shares from the polls to predict a likely number of Republican votes per county. I compared this ‘expected’ Republican vote to the actual Republican vote.
The results are shocking. Overall, Bush received 2% fewer votes in counties with electronic touch-screen voting than expected. In counties with optical scanning, he received 16% more. This 16% would not be strange if it were spread across counties more or less evenly. It is not. In 11 different counties, the ‘actual’ Bush vote was at least twice higher than the expected vote. 13 counties had Bush vote tallies 50 - 100% higher than expected. In one county where 88% of voters are registered Democrats, Bush got nearly two thirds of the vote - three times more than predicted by my model.
Again, polling can be wrong. It is difficult to believe it can be that wrong. Fortunately, however, we can test how wrong it would have to be to give the ‘actual’ result.
I tested two alternative scenarios to see how wrong CNN would have to have been to explain the election result. In the first, I assumed they had been wildly off the mark in the turnout figures - i.e. far more Republicans and independents had come out than Democrats. In the second I assumed the voting shares were completely wrong, and that the Republicans had been able to massively poach voters from the Democrat base.
In the first scenario, I assumed 90% of Republicans and independents voted, and the remaining ballots were cast by Democrats. This explains the result in counties with optical scanning to within 5%. However, in this scenario Democratic turnout would have been only 51% in the optical scanning counties - barely exceeding half of Republican turnout. It also does not solve the enormous problems in individual counties. 7 counties in this scenario still have actual vote tallies for Bush that are at least 100% higher than predicted by the model - an extremely unlikely result.
In the second scenario I assumed that Bush had actually got 100% of the vote from Republicans and 50% from independents (versus CNN polling results which were 93% and 41% respectively). If this gave enough votes for Bush to explain the county’s results, I left the amount of Democratic registered voters ballots cast for Bush as they were predicted by CNN (14% voted for Bush). If this did not explain the result, I calculated how many Democrats would have to vote for Bush.
In 41 of 52 counties, this did not explain the result and Bush must have gotten more than CNN’s predicted 14% of Democratic ballots - not an unreasonable assumption by itself. However, in 21 counties more than 50% of Democratic votes would have to have defected to Bush to account for the county result - in four counties, at least 70% would have been required. These results are absurdly unlikely.
The Second Rat
A previously undiscovered species of rat, Republicanus cuyahogus, has been found in Ohio. Before the election, I wrote snide letters to a state legislator for Cuyahoga county who, according to media reports, was preparing an army of enforcers to keep ‘suspect’ (read: minority) voters away from the polls. One of his assistants wrote me back very pleasant mails to the effect that they had no intention of trying to suppress voter turnout, and in fact only wanted to encourage people to vote.
They did their job too well. According to the official statistics for Cuyahoga county, a number of precincts had voter turnout well above the national average: in fact, turnout was well over 100% of registered voters, and in several cases well above the total number of people who have lived in the precinct in the last century or so.
In 30 precincts, more ballots were cast than voters were registered in the county. According to county regulations, voters must cast their ballot in the precinct in which they are registered. Yet in these thirty precincts, nearly 100.000 more people voted than are registered to vote - this out of a total of 251.946 registrations. These are not marginal differences - this is a 39% over-vote. In some precincts the over-vote was well over 100%. One precinct with 558 registered voters cast nearly 9,000 ballots. As one astute observer noted, it’s the ballot-box equivalent of Jesus’ miracle of the fishes. Bush being such a man of God, perhaps we should not be surprised.
What to Do?
This is not an idle statistical exercise. Either the raw data from two critical battleground states is completely erroneous, or something has gone horribly awry in our electoral system - again. Like many Americans, I was dissatisfied with and suspicious of the way the Florida recount was resolved in 2000. But at the same time, I was convinced of one thing: we must let the system work, and accept its result, no matter how unjust it might appear.
With this acceptance, we placed our implicit faith in the Bush Administration that it would not abuse its position: that it would recognize its fragile mandate for what it was, respect the will of the majority of people who voted against them, and move to build consensus wherever possible and effect change cautiously when needed. Above all, we believed that both Democrats and Republicans would recognize the over-riding importance of revitalizing the integrity of the electoral system and healing the bruised faith of both constituencies.
This faith has been shattered. Bush has not led the nation to unity, but ruled through fear and division. Dishonesty and deceit in areas critical to the public interest have been the hallmark of his Administration. I state this not to throw gratuitous insults, but to place the Florida and Ohio electoral results in their proper context. For the GOP to claim now that we must take anything on faith, let alone astonishingly suspicious results in a hard-fought and extraordinarily bitter election, is pure fantasy. It does not even merit discussion.
The facts as I see them now defy all logical explanations save one - massive and systematic vote fraud. We cannot accept the result of the 2004 presidential election as legitimate until these discrepancies are rigorously and completely explained. From the Valerie Plame case to the horrors of Abu Ghraib, George Bush has been reluctant to seek answers and assign accountability when it does not suit his purposes. But this is one time when no American should accept not getting a straight answer. Until then, George Bush is still, and will remain, the ‘Accidental President’ of 2000. One of his many enduring and shameful legacies will be that of seizing power through two illegitimate elections conducted on his brother’s watch, and engineering a fundamental corruption at the very heart of the greatest democracy the world has known. We must not permit this to happen again.
All I can say is here we go again. Interesting story. But, where is the army of attorneys if this is the case. I guess if this article is correct, we should see this explode in the media any day. If we don’t, by inauguration day, we should agree that Bush is in fact the president. After all, he did get over 3 million more votes nationwide than did Kerry. Unless of course most republican voting districts had similar scandals.
After all, he did get over 3 million more votes nationwide than did Kerry. Unless of course most republican voting districts had similar scandals.
Actually 3 million more popular votes doesn't mean anything (The Electoral College sees to that), but winning a couple of states through fraud does.
This will never see the light of day in court, true or not, and I doubt it will gather much media interest. It looks like sour grapes, even if the fraud is 100% true, and liberal whining.
What would happen if Bush has lost under the same circumstances? I would hope that this would be fully investigated and corrections made, and I would hope the same would happen if Kerry had won. When our election process is so screwed up that there is even the appearance of this kind of fraud there need to be a big change in the process or we will end up bing just like many other countries...and that would be NOT a democracy.
Actually 3 million more popular votes doesn't mean anything (The Electoral College sees to that), but winning a couple of states through fraud does.
This will never see the light of day in court, true or not, and I doubt it will gather much media interest. It looks like sour grapes, even if the fraud is 100% true, and liberal whining.
What would happen if Bush has lost under the same circumstances? I would hope that this would be fully investigated and corrections made, and I would hope the same would happen if Kerry had won. When our election process is so screwed up that there is even the appearance of this kind of fraud there need to be a big change in the process or we will end up bing just like many other countries...and that would be NOT a democracy.
Here is a good story that is a better response than I can give to you TOMS
Keith Olbermann, on his new blog, discusses the locking down of the Warren County, Ohio vote count from public view, supposedly on orders from the Department of Homeland Security; the voting machine in Gahanna, near Columbus, that evidently gave George W. Bush 10 times more votes than he got (an error that was caught and corrected); the supposed disparity in the exit polls in only Florida and Ohio (I say “supposed” because if I recall correctly, and I bet if I look it up I will, those exit polls were calling Pennsylvania 60-40 for Kerry); and “huge margins for Bush in Florida counties in which registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans 2-1, places where the optical scanning of precinct totals seems to have turned results from perfect matches for the pro-Kerry exit poll data, to Bush sweeps,” etc.; and vows "we will be endeavoring to pull those stories … into the mainstream Monday and/or Tuesday nights on Countdown."
Good for him. If something squirrelly is going on, we should find out about it, and what a comeback for the dreaded MSM if Keith or someone cracked that nut.
The problem is that Olbermann, for obvious reasons (from his perspective as an investigative reporter), is looking only at Bush states – ones which could change the outcome of the election as it stands right now. He seems uninterested in stories about Detroit-area poll workers taking “spoiled ballots” and counting them all for Kerry, to the chagrin of Republican poll-watchers, who were harrassed and whose volunteers were even assaulted. Sen. Kerry won Michigan by about 150,000 votes; Detroiters gave Kerry 301,000 votes to 19,000 for George W. Bush.
He mentions nothing about Sen. Kerry winning Philadelphia County by 400,000 votes on the strength (one could conclude) of 219,000 newly-registered voters for the election (compared to 32,000 in neighboring Montgomery County, 25,000 in Camden County and 23,000 in Bucks County) – bringing the number of registered voters in Philadelphia County nearly equal to the voting-age population.
There’s nothing wrong with looking at stories coming out of Ohio and Florida and, as Olbermann describes it, deciding whether they reside in “the world of investigative journalism, [or] the world of the Reynolds Wrap Hat.” But just as a Gore victory somehow in the Florida 2000 debacle undoubtedly would have led to Republican re-examination of tightly-contested races in Iowa and New Mexico, when you decide to single out possible “Reynolds Wrap Hat” stories in red states, it’s not likely to have as its immediate effect turning over the Presidency to John Kerry, it’s likely to have as its effect turning new attention to fraud in Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin and elsewhere.
By no means am I suggesting that therefore, Olbermann shouldn’t try and sort out what’s going on. The title of this post isn’t intended to be ironic. But a more productive voting fraud investigation might look at all states where it’s alleged to have occurred – not just in the ones where if the stories bear the (let’s face it, Keith) desired fruit, the result of the election may be changed.
In other words, there’s as good a chance that Bush won Pennsylvania (look at that map!)as Kerry won Ohio. With American soldiers about to lose their lives in a bloody battle in Iraq, I suggest not that Olbermann should put a lid on it, but rather expand his investigation to blue states, too. After all, three things could happen: Bush might have won Florida and Ohio, and that’s it; Kerry might have won one or the other, which gives him what can only be described as just as tempoary an electoral college lead as Bush’s until fraud in some of the key blue states is fully investigated – say, we find out, a couple weeks later, that Bush really should have won Pennsylvania; or Kerry won, which we discover only after weeks and weeks of turmoil and additional investigations into the blue states. At least, those are the three things that can happen if we look only at Ohio and Florida. Look at Pennsylvania and Michigan, at least, at the same time, Keith. More than ever, the MSM owes it to the country to be mindful of the possible consequences of its reporting, and tell the whole story – not just one side.
I strongly agreee with the last statement although I am guilty of onesidedness on occasion. (I’ll cast my own stones, thankyou)
Seeker and phoo, I agree with both of you 100%. The process is more important than anything else here. If there was any kind of fraud, it ought to be exposed, and those responsbile ought to be held accountable. Even the appearance of fraud ought to be scrutinized.
I just found out that the Ohio recount is going to go ahead, the money was raised to pay for it apparently.
Oh, as a Michgander raised in the Detroit area, I don’t think the detroit vote is screwy, however. 300K to 19K seems in the ballpark to me.
Here’s a nugget to ponder… LOOK AT THE MAP …I’ve seen that mentioned MANY times by many folks all leading to a map that shows mostly red. What I wonder is why is that even relevant at all? The ONLY time it makes sense is if we elect officials based on land mass – votes per square foot. It would be relevant if the voting population was evenly distributed across the entire country. We know that isn’t the case, so the maps only point out most folks that voted Bush are scattered across a wider area than Kerry supporters that are centered in areas of larger population – Rural areas being more Bush supportive. As long as we get one vote per voter maps like this don’t mean a hill of beans in the way they are being used. It’s good for demographics only.
…if they did then so goes Alaska so goes the country.
| Quote (TomS @ Nov. 15 2004,17:21) |
| Seeker and phoo, I agree with both of you 100%. The process is more important than anything else here. If there was any kind of fraud, it ought to be exposed, and those responsbile ought to be held accountable. Even the appearance of fraud ought to be scrutinized. I just found out that the Ohio recount is going to go ahead, the money was raised to pay for it apparently.
|
Again here is an article outlining how the numbers have to add up. Sounds like a big waste of time and money. But who knows? If the numbers add up like they did in Michigan, could be President Kerry. (I shudder to think)
Counting Ohio provisional ballots (David Shuster)
Election boards all across Ohio have started counting "provisional ballots" in the presidential election. These are the ballots that were given to voters who believed they were registered but whose names didn't appear on the precinct list on election day. The verification process may take up to two weeks. In most states, approximately 85 percent of all provisional ballots are eventually verified and counted in the final vote tally. And the early reports out of Ohio suggest the "count" list in some counties will be as high as 90 percent.
As it stands, there are approximately 155,000 provisional ballots. So, one can expect at least 130,000 ballots to be verified and "added to the final count."
There is another number that will eventually come into play in the Buckeye state... and that's the number of "spoiled ballots." The Green/Libertarian coalition, through recountohio.org, has already raised enough money to pay for a statewide recount. And the group is now raising even more cash so they can hire recount monitors. A statewide recount will include a visual examination of all 93,000 "spoiled ballots" that indicated "no" vote for President. (The "no vote" is usually a machine-tabulation problem because of chads, hanging chads, and etc.) A brilliant e-mailer named Matthew Fox has analyzed which counties reported "spoiled ballots." And it does appear that approximately 60 pecent of all the spoiled ballots come from heavily Democratic urban areas.
Can the "provisional ballots" and "spoiled ballots" change the Ohio outcome? As it stands, the difference between President Bush and John Kerry is 136,483 votes. When John Kerry decided to concede, here is some of the math his campaign looked at:
If you assume, for the sake of argument, that Kerry receives 80 percent of the 130,000 provisional ballots most observers expect will be validated... Kerry would receive 104,000 votes and President Bush would get 26,000. That's a net gain for John Kerry of 78,000. At that point, the margin between President Bush and Senator Kerry would drop to 58,000 votes.
Now, let's assume a preference can be determined on all 93,000 spoiled ballots. And let's also assume John Kerry receives 80% and President Bush receives 20%. John Kerry would receive 74,400 votes and President Bush would receive 18,600 votes. That's another net gain for John Kerry of 55,800. However, that still leaves John Kerry 3,000 votes short. And remember, the theory that Kerry is going to receive 80% of all provisional and "spoiled" ballots is not realistic. As the Kerry campaign noted on November 3, "the votes are just not going to be there."
However, there is one other number that has been the talk of the Net... and that's the number of "tallies" that might have been hacked or changed by somebody who left some nefarious "code" on the Windows systems tabulating the county by county vote. If that actually happened, it's not clear that a statewide recount would detect such a break-in as it affects "electronic voting" machines. But, given that 70% of Ohio used punch cards... most of the state does have a "paper trail." And the recount, when it happens, should settle these allegations once and for all.
| Quote (phoo @ Nov. 15 2004,17:32) |
| Here's a nugget to ponder.... LOOK AT THE MAP ...I seen that mentioned MANY times by many folks all leading to a map that shows mostly red. What I wonder is why is that even relevant at all? The ONLY time it makes sense is if we elect officials based on land mass -- votes per square foot. It would be relevant if the voting population was evenly distributed across the entire country. We know that isn't the case, so the maps only point out most folks that voted Bush are scattered across a wider area than Kerry supporters that are centered in areas of larger population -- Rural areas being more Bush supportive. As long as we get one vote per voter maps like this don't mean a hill of beans in the way they are being used. It's good for demographics only. ...if they did then so goes Alaska so goes the country.
|
At electoral-vote.com they have (had?) an option to view the map sized proportionally to population/electoral vote.
Actually 3 million more popular votes doesn't mean anything (The Electoral College sees to that), but winning a couple of states through fraud does.
And that is a darn good reason to get rid of the electoral colledge IMO. The winner of this election would have been clear earlier on Nov. 2, and wierdness in individual states will make little difference. In 2000, we wouldn't have had the mess either.
The EC has long outserved it's purpose but we'll see Arnold President before we see the EC abolished to popular vote!
And that is a darn good reason to get rid of the electoral colledge IMO. The winner of this election would have been clear earlier on Nov. 2, and wierdness in individual states will make little difference. In 2000, we wouldn't have had the mess either.
The EC has long outserved it's purpose but we'll see Arnold President before we see the EC abolished to popular vote!
| Quote (phoo @ Nov. 15 2004,17:09) |
| Actually 3 million more popular votes doesn't mean anything (The Electoral College sees to that), but winning a couple of states through fraud does. |
I must have missed this little remark. Of course my little remark came first. I was trying to be cute with mine. After all, that was what everyone said about Gore in 2000. He won the popular vote but lost the EC. I guess I forgot the smilie.
Brad