Mistakes Flip the Win - 2006, 2004, 2003

Truth, Lies, & Politics

When is a coincidence too much of a
coincidence to be one?

Truth, Lies, & Politics
Conspiracy of Facts

"Mistakes" Flip the Win - 2006, 2004, 2002?

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2006 Florida

While Democrats win gains across the country, Florida's
Republicans hold firm where it counts. Governor, Attorney
General.

No clean victory in Sarasota County. Sarasota's ES&S touch
screens failed to record 18,412 votes in Florida's Congressional
District 13 race. The Republican won with a 369 margin of victory
out of a total 238,249 votes counted. The 18,412 missing votes
represent an undervote of 12.92 percent. While the percentage of
undervotes in other District 13 counties is as follows: Charlotte -
2.51%, DeSoto - 2.13%, Hardee - 5.87, and Manatee - 2.35%.
Dr. Nabajyoti Barkakati, "GAO Elections, further Testing Could
Provide Increased but Not Absolute Assurance That Voting
Systems Did Not Cause Undervotes in Florida's 13 Congressional
District," GAO-08-97T, GAO-07-1167t.

Although the GAO results are inconclusive in its investigation of
Sarasota's statistically improbable undervotes, the GAO reports
exposed a series of circumstances that individually reveal
an apparent laps in sound business checks and balances,
and computer security basics with regard to ES&S, Florida's
Secretary of State, and Sarasota's Election Supervisor. Together
they are troubling. For it's no longer a question of IF the voting
systems falter, but WHEN. ES&S effectively holds the power.
ES&S manufactures the machines, dictates the testing process,
produces test data, system manages the voting process, tallies the
votes, pronounces the winner, then produces the reports to
declare a valid election. Lani Brown, "A closer look at the GAO's
Florida District 13. No smoking gun ... Not if but when and how
often." OpEdNews.com, 10/30/2006.

VotersUnite.Org provides an interactive up-to-date Election Problem
Log - 2006 and 2007 as well as a formal report of E-Voting Failures in
the 2006 Mid-Term Elections which includes a sampling of problems
across the nation.

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130,000 extra votes for George W. Bush.

Florida's Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach Counties may
have given President George W. Bush 130,000 or more excess
votes, according to researchers at the University of California in
Berkeley. In Broward County alone, Bush received an excess of
an estimated 72,000 votes. The team is 99.9% certain the excess
votes are not attributable to chance. "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. 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," Michael
Hout, Berkeley Survey Research Center.

Florida counties using electronic voting machines were significantly
more likely to show increases in votes for Bush between 2000 and 2004
than counties using optical scanners or paper ballots.

Berkeley's study included variables such as number of voters,
Hispanic population, income, change in voter turnout between
2000 and 2004, support for Bush in 2000, support for Bob Dole in
1996. (Dan Verton, "University researchers challenge Bush win in Florida,"
ComputerWorld.com, 11/18/2004.)

2004 Presidential

NEWSFLASH: Exit Polls Say Kerry & Credit Women "... Results confirm
the unofficial results posted earlier on Scoop.co.nz and several other
websites. Namely narrow victories to John Kerry...

In Florida (where the results have just been withdrawn from view
till 2pm NZT, presumably because polling has been extended)
Kerry is winning among women voters by 52% to 47% and Bush
is winning among male voters by 51% to 48%. Because slightly
more women than men appear to be voting, 54% to 46% Kerry
wins the state by a small nose.

In Ohio the situation is far more straightforward Kerry wins
among both men and women voters with 51% and 53% support
respectively. Again slightly more women than men seem to have
voted and so the lead in Ohio on the bases of the exit polls is
more of a half head than a nose." Alastair Thompson, "NEWSFLASH:
Exit Polls Say Kerry & Credit Women." Scoop Independent News, 11/3/2004.

Complete exit polls are provided by MSNBC Politics Exit Poll -
Decision 2004. MSNBC Politics.

1,100 voting problems reported nationwide.

Some 1,100 voting problems nationwide were reported to the
Election Protection Coalition during 2004's Presidential Election.
Several dozen voters in six states reported voting for one
candidate only to have the opposing candidate appear on the
touch-screen's checkout screen. Vendor Sequoia blamed the
voters, saying the voters pushed the wrong part of the screen.
(Rachel Konrad, "Reports of electronic voting trouble top 1,000." USAToday.com,
11/4/2004.)

Florida. Machine Malfunctions, Lost Ballots, Minority
Disenfranchisement, Unexplainable Vote Counts:

29 counties using Diebold scanners, Republicans gained 128.45% over 2000
and Democrats lost 21% from 2000.
In two heavily Democratic counties, voting machines started counting
backwards after counting 32,767 votes (Orange and Broward Counties).
57 memory card failures in Volusia County during Early Voting and on
Election Day(Diebold, more than all other Diebold customers combined).
At least 21 voting machines malfunctioned on election day and were
replaced, most machines had already recorded votes. Broward County.
58,000 ballots mailed to voters disappeared. Broward County.
In Volusia County, several precincts registered 10% more votes than
voters. The Canvassing Board certified the election based on numbers
provided by the Republican Supervisor of Elections, without validating the
voting machine receipts and checksum numbers. ("Florida Election Facts,"
www.solarbus.org.)

Countdown with Keith Olbermann provides a remarkable
snapshot of Election 2004 history, a play-by-play accounting of
important events from October 29, 2004 forward through November
19, 2004. ("Countdown with Keith Olbermann," www.MSNBC.com, 11/19/2004.)

2002 Gubernatorial

Florida's Miami-Dade and Broward Counties experienced significant
voting machine problems during the 2002 Primary Election
which many believe contributed to Janet Reno's loss to little
known Bill McBride. Janet Reno would have been a much more
formidable opponent to Jeb Bush than Bill McBride. Thousands of
people who voted or turned out to vote in predominately black
precincts did not have their votes counted. According to an
ACLU study, 8.2% of the people who went to the polls in 31
precincts did not have their votes counted. (Haggman.)

One optical-scanner failed to count 13,000 ballots when the machine's
memory card failed in Volusia County, Florida.

20 percent of the machines tested by observers across the country
failed to record votes properly, according to the Electronic
Frontier Foundations' VerifiedVoting.org.

BlackBoxVoting.org reported a three-hour deletion from King
County, Washington's internal audit log of the primary election.
("E-voting irregularities raise eyebrows, blood pressure."
Contributing Staff and Associated Press, USAToday.com
11/3/2002.)

Fiction Stops Here

Election officials 4 years to get it right - Not just a NY Problem