Was the election hacked??

[vwcruisn]

link (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm)

Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked



by Thom Hartmann


*



When I spoke with Jeff Fisher this morning (Saturday, November 06, 2004), the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District said he was waiting for the FBI to show up. Fisher has evidence, he says, not only that the Florida election was hacked, but of who hacked it and how. And not just this year, he said, but that these same people had previously hacked the Democratic primary race in 2002 so that Jeb Bush would not have to run against Janet Reno, who presented a real threat to Jeb, but instead against Bill McBride, who Jeb beat.

"It was practice for a national effort," Fisher told me.

And some believe evidence is accumulating that the national effort happened on November 2, 2004.

The State of Florida, for example, publishes a county-by-county record of votes cast and people registered to vote by party affiliation. Net denizen Kathy Dopp compiled the official state information into a table, available at http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm, and noticed something startling.




Also See:

Florida Secretary of State Presidential Results by County 11/02/2004 (.pdf)
Florida Secretary of State County Registration by Party 2/9/2004 (.pdf)





While the heavily scrutinized touch-screen voting machines seemed to produce results in which the registered Democrat/Republican ratios largely matched the Kerry/Bush vote, in Florida's counties using results from optically scanned paper ballots - fed into a central tabulator PC and thus vulnerable to hacking – the results seem to contain substantial anomalies.

In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen everywhere else in the country where registered Democrats largely voted for Kerry.

In Dixie County, with 9,676 registered voters, 77.5% of them Democrats and a mere 15% registered as Republicans, only 1,959 people voted for Kerry, but 4,433 voted for Bush.

The pattern repeats over and over again - but only in the counties where optical scanners were used. Franklin County, 77.3% registered Democrats, went 58.5% for Bush. Holmes County, 72.7% registered Democrats, went 77.25% for Bush.


...





Anyone hear anything about this? I have heard rumors of possible hacking and after some searching on the internet found this... not sure how reliable this sourch is? :confused: What are the chances this will see a thorough investigation? What would happen if it was found that the election was indeed hacked?

[SPG]

It wouldn't be too hard to prove/disprove this. Just go back and do a hand count of a few of the precincts and see if the numbers match up. That would show right away if the central PC vote tabulator had been hacked or otherwise been inaccurate.
I was going to discount this whole story until I read throught the entire piece. I'm still not buying it completely but it does seem to merit at least another look if for nothing else to prove that nothing was amiss in the election. Count up a few counties and see if they match. Since this was optical scan ballots the ballots are paper and recountable.
How gnarly will this be if it turns out that it the central computer was hacked? Two stolen elections in a row?

[vwcruisn]

It wouldn't be too hard to prove/disprove this. Just go back and do a hand count of a few of the precincts and see if the numbers match up. That would show right away if the central PC vote tabulator had been hacked or otherwise been inaccurate.
I was going to discount this whole story until I read throught the entire piece. I'm still not buying it completely but it does seem to merit at least another look if for nothing else to prove that nothing was amiss in the election. Count up a few counties and see if they match. Since this was optical scan ballots the ballots are paper and recountable.
How gnarly will this be if it turns out that it the central computer was hacked? Two stolen elections in a row?

i wonder if there are any plans to do as you say, count a few counties to see if numbers match. What would happen if the election was proven to be hacked? Would Bush stay in office?

[zimv20]

How gnarly will this be if it turns out that it the central computer was hacked? Two stolen elections in a row?
betcha you can't wait until we're told "get over it"

[SPG]

betcha you can't wait until we're told "get over it"
I am over it.

[Sayhey]

i wonder if there are any plans to do as you say, count a few counties to see if numbers match. What would happen if the election was proven to be hacked? Would Bush stay in office?

My guess is that it would take a prior indication of fraud (voting anomalies don't count) or a recount ordered under Florida law (don't know what the threshold is) and requested by the injured party. In other words, I don't think we are likely to find out.

If the election was proven to have been hacked, and it is proven to have changed the outcome, the state results can, and likely would, be challenged in court. The results can also be challenged in Congress when both houses meet together to accept the results of the voting of the Electoral College. Don't hold your breath for a Congress, dominated to an even greater degree by the GOP, to accept any challenge lightly.

In short, unless there is a lot more to this story than we are seeing, we will have a Bush presidency for four more years. While I'd be glad to see any fraud exposed, I think the more serious challenge is how to organize a fight back against the very real damage the Bush administration is almost certainly going to cause. It's going to have to be outside Washington, because 40 votes in the Senate is a very thin thread to weave a strategy around.

[pseudobrit]

betcha you can't wait until we're told "get over it"

Too bad Kerry-Edwards doesn't play as well if you're cooking up cute slogans like Sore-Loserman.

[kettle]

Wouldn't it be easier to hack some evidence of election hacking rather than hack the election?

Just one of many possible thoughts.

[Don't panic]

Wouldn't it be easier to hack some evidence of election hacking rather than hack the election?

Just one of many possible thoughts.

true.
but if you weigth in the exit polls, that where all off by 2-6 % points and all veered in bush's direction, it does raises an eyebrow.

any news about the count of the "provisional" ballots?

[kettle]

oh yeah stats, nice and useful.

What are the accurate stats for the likelyhood of partipating in an exit poll based on political alignment.

What tests are there for the accuracy of exit stats bearing in mind there usefulness in manipulating an in complete ballot when used by the media.

Political persuasion of people working in media industry.

There is so much going on you really have to trust the ballot and not trust an exit poll.

If exit polls were accurate we could all vote while leaving the supermarket, the guy with the clipboard would even mark the box for us.

also I'd love to know some of the technology used in compiling the varios exit polls. Even an exit poll has a lot of votes to count.

[zimv20]

There is so much going on you really have to trust the ballot and not trust an exit poll.

historically, exit polls tend to be pretty accurate. in "other" countries, they're often used as a measure against which fairness of the election returns can be compared. too bad that's not being applied in the present situation.

i'm waiting for the statisticians to throw some giant standard deviations at us. not that most of the population would know what to do w/ it...

[kettle]

What would happen if it was found that the election was indeed hacked?

and what if to everyones surprise, shock horror that the ballot had been hacked in the democrats favour? What if the republicans had really got in by an even greater margin?

or does republican mean hacking political liars and democrat mean innocent political good.

Wasn't sure how scientific this disscussion was going to be.

but yes, hacking would be a stupid possibility to rule out and so Ithink investigation would be a good thing to be done independently. (if that were possible).

[zimv20]

and what if to everyones surprise, shock horror that the ballot had been hacked in the democrats favour? What if the republicans had really got in by an even greater margin?

and is there any evidence of that?

it's not like anyone's pulling the idea of the GOP cheating out of their arse. there are known dirty tricks from 2000, which were committed by the GOP or those sympathetic to their cause. in addition, we've got the president of seybold saying he'd do whatever it takes to ensure a bush victory. should that not, in and of itself, raise a reasonable doubt?

it seems there's a tendency of late to excuse one side because the other side does it w/o paying a whit of attention to the degree of the crime.

"It is criminal to steal a purse, daring to steal a fortune, a mark of greatness to steal a crown. The blame diminishes as the guilt increases." -- Johan Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, poet and dramatist (1759-1805)

[Mr_Ed]

I copied the table data from that page to a text file and ran it through a short 'awk' script to turn it into tab separated text for import into an AppleWorks spreadsheet, I wanted to be able to re-sort it and "see what I could see." I added some columns to indicate E-voting used, % of registered independents (not dem or rep), voter turnout %, and an indication of which side won the county based on the numbers on the table. If interested, you can download the spreadsheet here (http://homepage.mac.com/mr_ed_065/FlaVote.cwk). You may have to 'CTRL-click' and download it.

A few things I noticed about the Florida election data:

1) The web site's home page has links to articles talking about how E-voting machines can be hacked, specifically talking about flaws in the Diebold machines, yet the Florida election results show the Democrats posted bigger "gains" (percentage of cast votes) in states with E-voting machines. So which side "rigged it" to their advantage?

2) Re-sorting the provided data reveals some other interesting views. For example, the counties where the Dems posted the largest gains ("Percent Change") are coincidentally counties with large numbers of "independent" registered voters (most of those counties >=20% independent). Does that simply point out that the Dems efforts to target the so called "swing" vote paid off, but perhaps at the expense of a loss of some of the registered Democrat vote? I think it might. By the way, the Republicans also posted significant gains in most of the counties where the Dems posted their largest gains.

3) Again re-sorting the data shows that the Dems won more counties using Diebold equipment (maligned elsewhere in that web site) than ES&S and Sequoia combined, even though these constituted the minority of counties. So again, who rigged it to whose favor?

4) Sorting by TOT_REG (number of registered voters) reveals that the Dems won 5 out of the 10 most populous counties, including the top 3. Where Reps won, they tended to have larger victory margins in the smaller (ie. more rural) counties. I believe this is in line with most of the nation in regards to urban areas being more traditionally democratic. By the way, 3 of the 5 in the top 10 won by the Reps used E-voting machines.

That was the extent to which I looked at the numbers on that table and I don't think they reveal earth shattering: The Dems lost Florida. Period.

As to why that happened there is much more to it than the numbers on this table. It's OK to assure ourselves that the election was conducted fairly, but as a Floridian, I have a little different outlook because I take into account other factors:

- The percentage of hispanic voters in Florida continues to increase. While the traditional view (which largely still holds true) is that the majority of these vote democrat, I don't see this as an accurate portrayal of the Florida voter base.
1. Many Cubans are traditionally Republican. Of course the largest Cuban concentration is in Miami-Dade and Dems carried that area, but that is not the only place with significant Cuban populations. Hillsborough, for example, was carried by the Reps.
2. While most hispanics traditionally dislike the Republican party, that dislike is likely tempered somewhat by their perception of the Bush family personally. The Bush family has had long standing personal/family ties to the hispanic community.

- State politics cannot be ignored. The fact is that Republican governor Jeb Bush is popular and well liked by Floridians of all affiliations, races, etc. He was more than happy to campaign for his brother.

- Recent events cannot be ignored. We endured three major hurricanes this summer. I have not heard anyone personally complain to me about bad or insufficient response in those events by government officials. Governor Bush was right there on the TV in our faces every day reassuring everyone that help was on the way. He was even joined by his brother to echo those reassurances from the federal level. This could only help the popularity of the governor and his brother. Like it or not, these "acts of God" (as an insurance policy might refer to them) probably helped to ingratiate the Bush family to Floridians even more.

In my opinion, Florida was the Republicans' to lose in 2004 and they held on to it. As a Floridian, I don't see anything sinister or magical at work here. As I said before, it's OK to assure ourselves that the election was fair. But looking at just the numbers does not really tell the full story.

[kettle]

MR. Ed - thankyou for taking the discussion the step beyond the predictable.

That's really good work, lot's more evidence to show that the facts are a lot less cut and dried than whichever rag, slinging the story this time, would like to make out.

[themadchemist]

Hartmann keeps going on about this on his radio program--and while I enjoy the program and I rather wish there had been foul play (because it means I wouldn't have to admit that Rove & company's strategy worked), I doubt that there was enough foul play to actually change the outcome of the election.

[zimv20]

I copied the table data from that page to a text file and ran it through a short 'awk' script [chomp]
yes, thank you for the analysis. and i'm happy that someone besides myself is still using awk.

[Lyle]

Just a follow-up, for anyone who's interested: Wired (http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65665,00.html) has also chipped in with their analysis of the Florida vote fraud claims.

[Xtremehkr]

I'm not counting out the possibility that there may have been some fraud, I don't think that it would have made a difference this time around.

Especially since it is Florida and the Bush brothers made such a big deal out of helping them out after the hurricanes. The shouldn't be discounted, not that it is heartening to know people can be so easily bought.

Lingering on these issues takes away from the thought that should be put into reorganizing the Democratic Party into an effective unit again and developing the means to counter the anto liberal propaganda and start to start reaching voters again.

[Mr_Ed]

...
Especially since it is Florida and the Bush brothers made such a big deal out of helping them out after the hurricanes. The shouldn't be discounted, not that it is heartening to know people can be so easily bought.
...
Some Florida voters being "bought" by response to those events is one way to look at it. Realizing that the president gets "graded" on more than just 'Iraq', and that the governor doesn't get "graded" on 'Iraq' at all is another way to look at it. Their handling of pressing problems at home is a big part of what people take into account when deciding how to vote, so this should not be so surprising. If there was widespread feeling that those in charge did not respond appropriately, there might indeed have been a good possibility of Kerry carrying the state.

...
Lingering on these issues takes away from the thought that should be put into reorganizing the Democratic Party into an effective unit again and developing the means to counter the anto liberal propaganda and start to start reaching voters again.
Absolutely right. There are more constructive things people can do to change the outcome next time around.

[Desertrat]

My understanding is that these machines are not hooked up to the Internet, so somebody define this "hacking".

If there is such widespread meddling with the machines' countings, how is it that nobody's talking? It's rather hard for me to believe that there's not some person gloating after a few beers. After all, it's a bunch of people, and a helluva lot of precincts.

Diebold folks have said there's a paper trail of totals for each machine. Thus, a paper trail for each precinct. Even if there's some sort of meddling with the central recorder, back-checking oughta be simple enough.

From what I'm hearing, a bunch of folks deliberately lied in exit polls, just because of the publicity about them. While I've never been asked, I know I'd either lie or laugh, just on general principles.

OR:

Hey, yeah, Kerry actually won. His message was what people chose, really. So, stay with the program, and just make sure there's no "hacking", next time.

'Rat

[Xtremehkr]

Some Florida voters being "bought" by response to those events is one way to look at it. Realizing that the president gets "graded" on more than just 'Iraq', and that the governor doesn't get "graded" on 'Iraq' at all is another way to look at it. Their handling of pressing problems at home is a big part of what people take into account when deciding how to vote, so this should not be so surprising. If there was widespread feeling that those in charge did not respond appropriately, there might indeed have been a good possibility of Kerry carrying the state.


Absolutely right. There are more constructive things people can do to change the outcome next time around.

Well, I chose to use the term "bought" because California has its own crisis with energy, and Bush did nothing about it. There was proven fraud that had a very detrimental effect on one of the largest economies in the world, which is detrimental to the nation as a whole as the Federal Government takes money from California and gives it to other states. The difference was, Bush (or maybe Rove) knew that California would not go Bushs way. That selective use of Federal power is self serving, hence the fact I believe the generous help from the Federal Government was a means to an end.