>A correspondent to the comp.risks newsgroups notes that counties
>that used Diebold voting machines exhibited odd-ball voting
>patterns, i.e., disproportionately large number of votes for
>obscure candidates: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.95.html#subj7
>A more detailed analysis of these anomalies is available in the
>October 8 entry at Mark Crispin Miller's weblog,
>http://markcrispinmiller.blogspot.com;
>you'll have to scroll down to see it. Some obscure candidates
>received votes ONLY in counties with Diebold machines.
I wrote last week to Prof. Miller that the problem in at least one county had more to do with ballot design than anything else. I decided a few days ago not to expect him to discuss on his website the role of ballot design in the anomalous voting.
He writes about anomalies in Tulare County; here's a link to the actual ballot used in Visalia. (Remember that the order of the candidates was random, with a different top candidate in each of the 80 assembly districts.) http://www.tularecoauditor.org/elections/recall/root1007/ballots/bt000001.pd f Miller mentions obscure candidates Palmieri, Sprague, and Kunzman; they wind up one column to the right of popular candidates Schwarzenegger, McClintock, and Bustamante, respectfully, in this assembly district only. And obscure candidate McClain is #1 on the ballot in that assembly district.
Visalia voters endured a ballot with a stupid design--stupid in isolation, but doubly so after the infamous 2000 butterfly ballot--but nothing that screams fraud. When the left calls fraud when simple explanations suffice, it helps to inure the public against real frauds.
--tim francis-wright a spirit in the materialist world
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