[Transcend]

grabed from another forum. NOt saying "durr bush won cuz of this" I just think it is a viable reason to make sure these machines get fixed. This WILL disenfranchise voters...

"http://www.wwu.edu/~adamsb6/elections/
Florida is reporting more votes in the presidential election than it is reporting citizens that turned out to vote. Adding all the presidential race votes reported by the Florida Department of State here yields a total of 7,588,422 votes. The Florida Department of State reports here that voter turnout totalled only 7,350,900. That's a difference of 237,522. 3.1% of Florida's presidential votes were in excess of the number of voters in the election. 380,952 votes separate the President and John Kerry in Florida.

If we disregard the votes cast on the Model 100s and the Optech 3P Eagles, the difference between Bush and Kerry drops to 124,514. The votes cast on the Model 100s and the Optech 3P Eagles in conjunction with votes that cannot be tied to voters may have elected George W. Bush.

The 13 counties that report more votes than voters delivered 39.4% of the votes cast in Florida. These are the 13 counties:"

 

[MTB_Rob_NC]

The 13 counties that report more votes than voters delivered 39.4% of the votes cast in Florida. These are the 13 counties:"

Woo hoo... My county is not on that list! Rock on

 

[Transcend]

remember folks 27 electoral votes. This is insane. You guys need to sort out a system that elects a president in 48 hours, not a month.

I am interested to see how it turns out when you pull these 250k votes. It could just be really crappy software kicking out stupid votes. One machine was selecting the opposite of what ANYONE chose. Bizarre.

 

[nicklin]

SO does the total votes include the absentee ballots?

 

[SuzyCreamcheese]

I say that if someone makes the effort to get out and vote more than once, then the votes should count.

The Cheese

 

[Damn True]

Many of those extra votes will be eliminated.
Apparently, one can mail in an absentee ballot AND THEN show up at the polling place and cast a regular vote.
At some point they sift through and chuck the duplicates.

 

[Damn True]

I say that if someone makes the effort to get out and vote more than once, then the votes should count.

The Cheese

Thank you Mayor Dailey.

 

[Transcend]

Many of those extra votes will be eliminated.
Apparently, one can mail in an absentee ballot AND THEN show up at the polling place and cast a regular vote.
At some point they sift through and chuck the duplicates.

Exactly. I just see this as a major pitfall in how the voting process works in the US. They called a winner right away, which in this case was probably justified, but down the line i could see this system leading to MAJOR problems as the elections seem to get closer.

The tweaked voting machines seem to be causing issues as well, recoding wrong votes (for both sides) and basically just being crappy. Dioebold spokespeople are blaming election officials, saying the machines weren't "calibrated correctly". Yes, because we all know that elections officials are the most computer savvy people on earth!

I just wish there could be one simple, easy to calculate system. Either you vote one way or the other, not 3 ways, with 1 being calculated wrong by a machine.

 

[Toshi]

Yes, because we all know that elections officials are the most computer savvy people on earth!

read this:

http://www.avirubin.com/judge2.html

avi rubin is a hotshot cs professor, so probably is one of the most computer savvy people on earth. and he was an election judge, both on super tuesday and on nov 2.

 

[Silver]

FEC. One machine. Electronic. Open Source software. NOT NETWORKED AT ALL.

 

[Transcend]

read this:

http://www.avirubin.com/judge2.html

avi rubin is a hotshot cs professor, so probably is one of the most computer savvy people on earth. and he was an election judge, both on super tuesday and on nov 2.

i am sure that there is exceptions to the rule. But th egrandmas running most polling areas won't know a hard drive from a hanging chad.

 

[Changleen]

Blog repro..

What if we have been duped?

Given that approximately one third of the nation voted on electronic machines, most of which provided no paper receipts, it is entirely possible that many more precincts than we know of had more votes tallied than voters to give them. In Franklin County, Ohio, on electronic machines, Bush received 3,893 extra votes* yet only 638 voters cast ballots. This may have happened again and again and yet we wouldn’t even hear of it if voter officials chose to keep it secret.

In many instances, registered and/or provisional voters preferred/supported candidates differently then over-all results showed. Partisan Secretaries of State routinely made decisions that favored themselves and their parties. Florida again conducted a partisan purge of it’s registered voter lists. State after state had unclear standards as to whether provisional votes were counted or allowed even to be cast. We know that thousands of provisional ballots were tossed. How many were tossed that we do not know about? Voters were routinely turned away for failing to produce legal IDs, the standards of which varied from precinct to precinct and state to state. Greater than 70 percent of Ohio’s voters used punch cards which, through producing chads, have a high error rate.

In other words, maybe the nation didn’t really move decidedly toward GOP positions and ideals as Karl Rove (whose grandfather “allegedly helped run the Nazi party, and helped build the Birkenau Death Camp"**) suggested***. It would be advantageous for the party if this is to be believed, because too many faddist followers would then embrace the party and it‘s positions, resolving to be members of the main.

In short, a substantial and deciding portion of the nation’s votes easily may have been hijacked and no matter which colored map you consult, the results would change the scheme.

This isn’t sour grapes, but a progressive awareness that dirty tricks from unwarranted and untimely redistricting changes to paperless voting machines to partisan poll officials would ultimately ensure pivotal wins for the republicans.

Kerry gave up too soon and we got what some of us feared we would get all along. I, for one, am still not over it.

* http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/politics/campaign/07elect.html

** http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1006-08.htm

*** http://apnews.excite.com/article/20041107/D8676VMG0.html

 

[Toshi]

FEC. One machine. Electronic. Open Source software. NOT NETWORKED AT ALL.

no, no, open source cannot solve this, since there's no way to verify that there's no backdoor in the compiler, the linker, the chip, etc... we need paper ballots and a bunch of elderly people counting ballots BY HAND in local gymnasiums -- give those old, right wing voters something to do