-- Luke
----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com> To: "lbo-talk" <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2004 8:10 PM Subject: [lbo-talk] Florida anomalies
> <http://www.computerworld.com/printthis/2004/0,4814,97614,00.html>
>
> University researchers challenge Bush win in Florida
> 'Something went awry with electronic voting in Florida,' says the
> lead researcher
>
> News Story by Dan Verton
>
> NOVEMBER 18, 2004 (COMPUTERWORLD) - Researchers at the University of
> California, Berkeley, said today that they have uncovered statistical
> irregularities associated with electronic voting machines in three
> Florida counties that may have given President George W. Bush 130,000
> or more excess votes. The researchers are now calling on state and
> federal authorities to look into the problems.
>
> The study, "The Effect of Electronic Voting Machines on Change in
> Support for Bush in the 2004 Florida Elections," was conducted by
> doctoral students and faculty from the university's sociology
> department and led by sociology professor Michael Hout.
>
> Hout is an expert on statistical methods at the Berkeley Survey
> Research Center and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
>
> According to the study, counties with electronic voting machines were
> significantly more likely to show increases in support for Bush
> between 2000 and 2004 compared to counties with paper ballots or
> optical scan equipment. This change cannot be explained by
> differences between counties in income, number of voters, change in
> voter turnout, or size of the Hispanic/Latino population, said Hout.
>
> In Broward County, for example, Bush appears to have received
> approximately 72,000 excess votes, Hout said, adding that the
> research team is 99.9% sure that these effects are not attributable
> to chance. The other two counties that experienced unexplained
> statistical discrepancies in the vote are Miami-Dade and Palm Beach.
> The three counties revealed the most significant irregularities and
> were the most heavily Democratic counties in the state. Smaller
> counties that showed strong support for Bush didn't produce any
> statistical anomalies, Hout said.
>
> "For the sake of all future elections involving e-voting systems,
> someone must investigate and explain the statistical anomaly we found
> in Florida," Hout said at a news conference today.
>
> The researchers said they used a widely accepted method of study
> known as Multiple-Regression Analysis. It is a statistical technique
> widely used in the social and physical sciences to distinguish the
> individual effects of many variables, which in this case included
> number of voters, median income, Hispanic population, change in voter
> turnout between 2000 and 2004, support for President Bush in the 2000
> election and support for Republican candidate Bob Dole in 1996.
>
> "No matter how many factors and variables we took into consideration,
> the significant correlation in the votes for President Bush and
> electronic voting cannot be explained," said Hout. "The study shows
> that a county's use of electronic voting resulted in a
> disproportionate increase in votes for President Bush. There is just
> a trivial probability of evidence like this appearing in a population
> where the true difference is zero -- less than one in a thousand
> chances."
>
> Hout, who describes himself as a nontechnical statistical researcher
> who has long been a skeptic of the criticisms levied against
> electronic voting machines, said he's "always taken a show-me
> approach to the theories of problems [with e-voting systems]." But
> when he saw the results of this study, "that's when I converted from
> skeptic [to believer]. I have concluded that something went awry with
> electronic voting in Florida."
>
> The researchers also studied electronic voting results in Ohio, which
> Bush also won, but found no problems there, said Hout.
>
> In an effort to explain what might account for the statistical
> irregularities related to counties that used touch-screen e-voting
> systems instead of optical scanning systems, Hout said there could be
> embedded software glitches or other potential hardware problems as
> were reported on election day in the press.
>
> "We have no political ax to grind," said Hout. "We're interesting in
> leaving no vote behind."
>
>
>
>
>
>
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