Let the Election Fraud Begin! - Page 3 - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

cj2112 · 11-07-2006, 10:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid

Some things (like, say, preserving our democracy) are worth using a few trees.

I find it very telling that the people screaming about the values our troops are fighting for are willing to ignore the integrity of the electoral process--the very foundation of our whole democratic system and the very thing at the CORE of what our troops are fighting for.

(See, cj? Two can play the straw-man game!

)

----

http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/blogs/po...y-in-utah.html

The difference is that I haven't heard any of the republicans say that they don't value the integrity of the elections. I personally am disgusted w/ both sides and find it increasingly difficult to find a candidate that I think would actually do the job he was elected to do.

roachboy · 11-07-2006, 10:56 AM

from very early on in looking into conservativeland, i ran across an astute elist that was called red rock eater--i dont know if it is still around, nor do i remember the guy who put it together--but it was very good. one of the main features of the new conservativeland that he pointed out was the role of projection. if the right does something--like shift very far to the right---you will find that the discourse will project this shift onto its construction of its opposite. the right does the same thing on the question of voter fraud, on the relation between the democratic party and the constituency that will in this election vote for it---and there seems to be no reocognition amongst the inhabitants of conservativeland that this is a structured response, part of the discourse they inhabit, and that by engaging in it, they simply repeat the official line.

now remember: vote for the democrats=vote for terrorism.

this is the kind of thing that always works to keep an autonomous polity convinced of the power of the arguments advanced. nothing to do with herding. nothing at all.

host · 11-07-2006, 12:56 PM

Par for the course....repubs recruiting and bussing homeless men from Philly to Maryland to distribute, today, bogus pamphlet at polling place:

Quote:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/sho..._11/010083.php

...As I approached the polling place here at Parkdale High School, a man in an Ehrlich-Cox shirt handed me a two-page fold-out pamphlet. I immediately recognized the front—it was the misleading Curry/Mfume/Johnson "endorsement" from "Ehlrich-Steele Democrats" that I blogged about earlier. Inside, however, was a clear attempt to mislead Democratic voters. Under the headline, "DEMOCRATIC SAMPLE BALLOT" was a comprehensive listing of candidates, each with an X next to his or her name. In the parallel universe contained within this pamphlet, Robert Ehrlich is the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, and Michael Steele is the Dems' pick for the Senate. The intent could not be clearer: to confuse those looking to vote a straight Democratic ticket. The handout cleverly conceals its purpose by leaving Democrats intact under many of the categories—for instance, Steny Hoyer is listed for district five.

I talked to the man who handed me the pamphlet. A thirty-something African-American who wouldn't give his name, he told me that, starting last Friday, some people had come to the Philadelphia homeless shelter where he said he volunteers, and had begun to recruit residents. Eventually, he said that 300 people filled five buses. He said he was paid $100 for the day's work. He was honest with me: He didn't actually support Ehrlich, but was pro-Steele.

Kristin Awsumb-Liu was also on scene. A volunteer supporting O'Malley, she was convinced the pamphlets could have an impact. "People don't know necessarily who the candidates are. I'd hand them the O'Malley literature, and they'd say, 'Oh, is he the Democrat?' And when I say yes, they say, 'Oh, OK, I'll vote for him.' But if someone hands them literature that says Ehrlich's the Democrat, then who knows?"

At the bottom of the front page, the small print reveals the pamphlet's origins. The two-line disclosure reads: "Paid and Authorized by Bob Ehrlich for Maryland Committee" and "Paid and Authorized by Steele for Maryland, Inc." Classy work, all around.

-- Jesse Singal
The Washington Monthly

ratbastid · 11-07-2006, 09:46 PM

<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/46431747/electronic_voting_ir.html">Here's</a> a pretty thorough run-down of electronic voting machine glitches, courtesy of boingboing.com.

fastom · 11-08-2006, 12:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid

Nobody has successfully demonstrated why a corporation whose CEO declared his commitment to "deliver Ohio for the President" should be trusted with our voting infrastructure.

If the 2004 election had taken place in a third world country under the eye of international observers, it would have been thrown out. How can this not be a major concern? Here's how: the errors almost universally benefit the (current) majority party.

You got that right! I'm thinking if there were only ten people in the entire country casting a vote and five are known to have voted for Democrats the results would still show seven votes for the Bush cronies.

ratbastid · 11-08-2006, 05:09 AM

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles...6votefraud.htm

The woman featured in the HBO movie Hacking Democracy is making claims of widespread vote suppression, voter intimidation, vote-machine tampering and other mischief.

NCB · 11-08-2006, 05:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles...6votefraud.htm

The woman featured in the HBO movie Hacking Democracy is making claims of widespread vote suppression, voter intimidation, vote-machine tampering and other mischief.

But you guys won. How could there be election fraud?

ratbastid · 11-08-2006, 05:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NCB

But you guys won. How could there be election fraud?

Show me one place in this thread where it's been claimed that the Republicans have a monopoly on shady behavior.

As I said umpteen posts ago, I have a serious problem with election tampering no matter which side is behind it, and I promised to post any electoral hijinx that showed up on the news/blogosphere radar no matter who's alleged to be behind it. I've posted several articles that accuse Democrats of fraud.

NCB · 11-08-2006, 05:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid

Show me one place in this thread where it's been claimed that the Republicans have a monopoly on shady behavior.

You said it, in this very thread in fact:

Quote:

Originally Posted by I wrote

Of this rampant election fraud you seem to be so well versed about, have any of these "accidents" ever negatively affected a Republican?

Quote:

Originally Posted by You responded

Not that I know of. Of the reports I've heard, every single one has hurt the Democrat. Actually, now that I think of it, this post of yours I've quoted here is the first time I've heard anyone even suggest that it might be negative for Republican candidates too. It seems to be common knowledge that the Dems are the ones most badly affected by it.

ratbastid · 11-08-2006, 05:30 AM

Hunh. Well, fair enough. I can't deny I said that.

This thread has actually opened my mind about that, since I posted that comment. I'm now willing to accept and believe that both parties have blood on their hands, and that this is something we all need to be perpetually vigilant about no matter what color your shirt is.

I still believe that it's largely Republicans who use this tactic--and I still believe the voting machine companies are in bed with the GOP. But when you include things like vote suppression and casting of illegitimate votes, in particular, there are Democrats who have been just as shady.

--

Case in point: a local news channel in New Mexico reports on how a voting place in a largely GOP precinct ran out of ballots two hours into voting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XIGmIOq_NE&eurl=

--

Meanwhile, in Virginia, long-time VA-registered Democrat Tim Daly received this voicemail message yesterday:

Quote:

"This message is for Timothy Daly. This is the Virginia Elections Commission. We've determined you are registered in New York to vote. Therefore, you will not be allowed to cast your vote on Tuesday. If you do show up, you will be charged criminally."

<a href="http://www.webbforsenate.com/media/phone_message.wav">Listen to the message</a>

Seaver · 11-08-2006, 09:16 AM

So now that the Dems won...

....

... what was that about Diebold?

host · 11-08-2006, 09:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seaver

So now that the Dems won...

....

... what was that about Diebold?

Seaver...does it seem that far out of the realm of possibility that the reported results are in spite of attempts to suppress the expected backlash in reaction to the situations in Iraq and in Afghanistan, the dismantling of the US agreement with N. Korea/UN inspection program that accelerated the bomb grade uranium enrichment by at least a decade, a $3000 billion new treasury debt burden, in just five years, an assault on constitutional rights, due process, habeus corpus, domestic right to privacy, SCOTUS appointments of extreme right justices, the Colbert emcee performance at the annual white house press corp dinner, Helen Thomas's peristant and courageous press gaggle/conference questions, the renewed white house "agenda to "reform" SSI, the Abramoff related congressional arrests and resignations, the indictment of VP COS Libby, 800+ signing statements, the unrelenting terrorizing of the country by the POTUS and the VP....the failure to capture bin Laden, admission that there were no Iraqi WMD or active WMD development programs, Cindy Sheehan's activities next to Bush's ranch and his reaction to her......that's a brief and incomplete recap...of just some of the negatives, since Nov., 2004.....did I mention Foleygate....or the division of Phase II of Pat Robert's senate select intel committee report related to the administration's treatment of pre-Iraq war intelligence....now divided into five smaller "phases".....with the four most damaging phases delayed since July, 2004......

.....and you think that a vote result this close....is convincing "proof" that there was no problem, after all....with the integrity, reliability, and security of electronic voting software, and equipment.....do you.....really?

Bill O'Rights · 11-08-2006, 09:54 AM

I don't get it, Host. Are you saying that the election should have been a Democratic landslide, but since it was a Democratic victory by such a small margin, that it was because of voting machine tampering? "Cause, seriously...if you meant anything else, it went right the hell over my head.

host · 11-08-2006, 10:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bill O'Rights

I don't get it, Host. Are you saying that the election should have been a Democratic landslide, but since it was a Democratic victory by such a small margin, that it was because of voting machine tampering? "Cause, seriously...if you meant anything else, it went right the hell over my head.

to clarify....I simply meant that it is absurd, IMO, to conclude that the background story of the HBO docu, "Hacking Democracy", the spectacle of former Diebold CEO being a Bush "pioneer", and publicly committing to deliver the 2004, Ohio vote "to president Bush", the spectacle of brothers

Quote:

Two voting companies & two brothers will count 80 percent of U.S. ...Meet the Urosevich brothers, Bob and Todd. Their respective companies, Diebold and ES&S, will count (using both computerized ballot scanners and touchscreen ...
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting...804landes.html - 34k -

....and of Chuck Hagel not disclosing, for the first ten weeks of his '96 senate campaign, that he was still CEO of a major electronic voting vendor, and later, that he was a principle in the private holding company that still owned that e-voting vendor.....is "move along now, folks....nothing to see here".! Just watch the google video that I linked to "Hacking Democracy", and then explain why Cuyahoga county in Ohio, would choose to spend $22 million on Diebold scanning e-voting systems, after the hearing excerpts shown in that documentary.....how could they reach a decision like that, with what they were told in advance about the deficiencies in what Diebold was offering?

....absurd that a slim margin victory in a mid-term election for senate in just a few states, would lead to Seaver asking his question, in the serious way that he asked it.....especially with all of the reasons that voters had to vote more defninitively.

dc_dux · 11-08-2006, 11:20 AM

I think the close results mirror the partisan split in many states and districts and the country as a whole, and not a vast conspiracy to hold down Dem votes.

There were obviously voting irregularities. My bias tends to think they had a negative impact more on Dems than Repubs but there is no evidence to support that as yet.

While it wont be a top priority in the early days of the new House, I expect the Dems to conduct a much more serious and in-depth overisght investigation of voting irregularities than the cosmetic effort initiated by the Repubs in the last 6 years.

Seaver · 11-08-2006, 08:23 PM

Oh right, if Republicans win in this country it is because they are holding down the minority vote... or flat out fraud.

If Democrats win, but not by a blowout, it's because the Republicans are guilty of flat out Fraud.

Come on host, did it ever occur to you that MAYBE the people who were in charge of the voting machines had political leanings but were as easily as reliable as say... the people who made the machines who read the scantron voting sheets?

Elphaba · 11-08-2006, 08:32 PM

Quote:

Come on host, did it ever occur to you that MAYBE the people who were in charge of the voting machines had political leanings but were as easily as reliable as say... the people who made the machines who read the scantron voting sheets?

Seaver, I admit that I am long overdue for some sleep, but I can't make sense of the position you are trying to make in your above post. Would you clarify, please?

ratbastid · 11-08-2006, 09:13 PM

I've obviously quit posting everything that shows up on google about election fraud, but the sense now is that there was relatively small volume of irregularities. The hotline that that was set up to receive electoral fraud complaints at the federal level didn't receive a single complaint. Some states reported some irregularities, but generally it seems to have been a much cleaner election than some in the past seem to have been.

Far as I'm concerned, that's great news--and not just because I'm generally happy with the results. It means that the foundation that our nation stands on has integrity. It means that, no matter what our government does, we can look at them and say, well, we unquestionably voted them into office.

Seaver · 11-09-2006, 05:56 AM

Quote:

Seaver, I admit that I am long overdue for some sleep, but I can't make sense of the position you are trying to make in your above post. Would you clarify, please?

There is a company who makes the Scan-Tron scanners, which have been used by MANY states in the past including my own. These scanners read the pencil marks and count the votes mechanically. It would be easy to set these up for fraud, even easier than it would be for the voting computers. However no one questions those, could it be because they voted in a Democratic president before? I dont know, I think the whole freak out was unwarranted in the first place.

ratbastid · 11-09-2006, 06:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seaver

There is a company who makes the Scan-Tron scanners, which have been used by MANY states in the past including my own. These scanners read the pencil marks and count the votes mechanically. It would be easy to set these up for fraud, even easier than it would be for the voting computers. However no one questions those, could it be because they voted in a Democratic president before? I dont know, I think the whole freak out was unwarranted in the first place.

I think the key difference between a Scantron and a Diebold model is that there's physical evidence of the vote with Scantron. A human being could come back and manually recount, if needed. Most Diebold models don't even cough up a receipt--your vote goes off into the ether and you sort of have to hope and pray that it gets counted accurately.

Yakk · 11-09-2006, 07:57 AM

I would like to say -- good job Democrats.

They successfully hacked enough voting machines to win the election.

Now, the hard step -- jiggering the system so that either
A> You can never lose
or
B> Nobody else can jigger the system

The difference between pure-electronic systems and paper-electronic systems is that you can go back and hand-count the paper ballots. And adding in mass numbers of paper ballots requires moving large amounts of paper around -- which can be noticed.

So, does the Federal government have any juristiction over Federal election procedures? You'd think "equal protection" and the right to vote (barring treason and other crimes) would give the Feds some mandate...

Elphaba · 11-19-2006, 03:40 PM

I haven't seen this information appear in the main stream press as yet, but there does appear to be evidence of over and undercounts that favors the Repulican party.

Link

Quote:

Clear Evidence 2006 Congressional Elections Hacked
By Rob Kall
OpEd News

Friday 17 November 2006

Results skewed nationwide in favor of Republicans by 4 percent, 3 million votes.

A major undercount of Democratic votes and an overcount of Republican votes in US House and Senate races across the country is indicated by an analysis of national exit polling data, by the Election Defense Alliance (EDA), a national election integrity organization.

These findings have led EDA to issue an urgent call for further investigation into the 2006 election results and a moratorium on deployment of all electronic election equipment.

"We see evidence of pervasive fraud, but apparently calibrated to political conditions existing before recent developments shifted the political landscape," said attorney Jonathan Simon, co-founder of Election Defense Alliance, "so 'the fix' turned out not to be sufficient for the actual circumstances." Explained Simon, "When you set out to rig an election, you want to do just enough to win. The greater the shift from expectations, (from exit polling, pre-election polling, demographics) the greater the risk of exposure--of provoking investigation. What was plenty to win on October 1 fell short on November 7.

"The findings raise urgent questions about the electoral machinery and vote counting systems used in the United States," according to Sally Castleman, National Chair of EDA. "This is a nothing less than a national indictment of the vote counting process in the United States!"

"The numbers tell us there absolutely was hacking going on, just not enough to overcome the size of the actual turnout. The tide turned so much in the last few weeks before the election. It looks for all the world that they'd already figured out the percentage they needed to rig, when the programming of the vote rigging software was distributed weeks before the election, and it wasn't enough," Castleman commented.

Election Defense Alliance data analysis team leader Bruce O'Dell, whose expertise is in the design of large-scale secure computer and auditing systems for major financial institutions, stated, "The logistics of mass software distribution to tens or even hundreds of thousands of voting machines in the field would demand advance planning - at least several weeks - for anyone attempting very large-scale, systematic e-voting fraud, particularly in those counties that allow election equipment to be taken home by poll workers prior to the election.

"The voting equipment seems to be designed to support two types of vote count manipulation - techniques accessible to those with hands-on access to the machines in a county or jurisdiction, and wholesale vulnerabilities in the underlying behavior of the systems which are most readily available to the vendors themselves. Malicious insiders at any of the vendors would be in a position to alter the behavior of literally thousands of machines by infecting or corrupting the master copy of the software that's cloned out to the machines in the field. And the groundwork could be laid well in advance. For this election, it appears that such changes would have to have been done by early October at the latest," O'Dell explained.

In a reprise of his efforts on Election Night 2004, Jonathan Simon captured the unadjusted National Election pool (NEP) data as posted on CNN.com, before it was later "adjusted" to match the actual vote counts. The exit poll data that is seen now on the CNN site has been adjusted already. But Simon points out that both adjusted and unadjusted data were instrumental to exposing the gross miscount.

Simon, surprised that unadjusted polling data was publicly revealed, given the concerns after the 2004 election about the use of exit polls, downloaded as much of the data as he could in real time. Scheduled and planned revisions on the CNN site took place throughout the evening and by the following morning, the unadjusted exit poll data had been replaced with data that conformed with the reported, official vote totals. This was the planned procedure as indicated by the NEP's methodology.

Adjusting the exit poll data is, by itself, not a troublesome act. Simon explained, "Their advertised reason to do the exit polls is to enable analysis of the results by academic researchers - they study the election dynamics and demographics so they can understand which demographic groups voted what ways. As an analytic tool, the exit poll is considered more serviceable if it matches the vote count. Since the vote count is assumed to be gospel, congruence with that count is therefore assumed to give the most accurate picture of the behavior of the electorate and its subgroups.

"In 2004 they had to weight it very heavily, to the point that the party turnout was 37% Democrat and 37% Republican, which has never been the case - leading to the claim that Rove turned out the Republican vote. This was nowhere witnessed, no lines in Republican voting places were reported. As ridiculous as that was, the distortion of actual turnout was even greater in 2006. The adjusted poll's sample, to match the vote count, had to consist of 49% 2004 Bush voters and only 43% 2004 Kerry voters, more than twice the actual margin of 2.8%. This may not seem like that much, but it translates into more than a 3,000,000 vote shift nationwide, which, depending on targeting, was enough to have altered the outcome of dozens of federal races.

"It should be very clear that weighting by a variety of carefully selected demographic categories, which yields the pre-adjustment exit polls, presents a truly representative electorate by every available standard except the vote count in the present election. So you have a choice: you can believe in an electorate composed of the correct proportions of men and women, young and old, rural and urban, ethnic and income groups, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents - or you can believe the machines. Anyone who has ever wondered what is really in a hot dog should be aware that the machines are designed, programmed, deployed, and serviced by avowedly partisan vendors, and can easily be set up to generate entirely false counts with no one the wiser, least of all the voters."

Simon concluded, "These machines are completely and utterly black box. The idea that we have this enormous burden of proof that they are miscounting, and there's no burden of proof that they are counting accurately - that, first and foremost, has to change."

Election Defense Alliance issued the following statement:

As in 2004, the exit polling data and the reported election results don't add up. "But this time there is an objective yardstick in the methodology which establishes the validity of the Exit Poll and challenges the accuracy of the election returns," said Jonathan Simon, co-founder of Election Defense Alliance. The Exit Poll findings are detailed in a paper published today on the EDA website.

The 2006 Edison-Mitofsky Exit Poll was commissioned by a consortium of major news organizations. Its conclusions were based on the responses of a very large sample, of over ten thousand voters nationwide*, and posted at 7:07 p.m. Election Night, on the CNN website. That Exit Poll showed Democratic House candidates had out-polled Republicans by 55.0 percent to 43.5 percent - an 11.5 percent margin - in the total vote for the US House, sometimes referred to as the "generic" vote.

By contrast, the election results showed Democratic House candidates won 52.7 percent of the vote to 45.1 percent for Republican candidates, producing a 7.6 percent margin in the total vote for the U.S. House ... 3.9 percent less than the Edison-Mitofsky poll. This discrepancy, far beyond the poll's +/- 1 percent margin of error, has less than a one in 10,000 likelihood of occurring by chance.

By Wednesday afternoon the Edison-Mitofsky poll had been adjusted, by a process known as "forcing," to match the reported vote totals for the election. This forcing process is done to supply data for future demographic analysis, the main purpose of the Exit Poll. It involved re-weighting every response so that the sum of those responses matched the reported election results. The final result, posted at 1:00 p.m. November 8, showed the adjusted Democratic vote at 52.6 percent and the Republican vote at 45.0 percent, a 7.6 percent margin exactly mirroring the reported vote totals.

The forcing process in this instance reveals a great deal. The Party affiliation of the respondents in the original 7:07 p.m. election night Exit Poll closely reflected the 2004 Bush-Kerry election margin. After the forcing process, 49-percent of respondents reported voting for Republican George W. Bush in 2004, while only 43-percent reported voting for Democrat John Kerry. This 6-percent gap is more than twice the size of the actual 2004 Bush margin of 2.8 percent, and a clear distortion of the 2006 electorate.

There is a significant over-sampling of Republican voters in the adjusted 2006 Exit Poll. It simply does not reflect the actual turnout on Election Day 2006.

EDA's Simon says, "It required some incredible distortions of the demographic data within the poll to bring about the match with reported vote totals. It not only makes the adjusted Exit Poll inaccurate, it also reveals the corresponding inaccuracy of the reported election returns which it was forced to equal. The Democratic margin of victory in US House races was substantially larger than indicated by the election returns."

"Many will fall into the trap of using this adjusted poll to justify inaccurate official vote counts, and vice versa," adds Bruce O'Dell, EDA's Data Analysis Coordinator, "but that's just arguing in circles. The adjusted exit poll is a statistical illusion. The weighted but unadjusted 7 pm exit poll, which sampled the correct proportion of Kerry and Bush voters and also indicated a much larger Democratic margin, got it right." O'Dell and Simon's paper, detailing their analysis of the exit polls and related data, is now posted on the EDA website.

The Election Defense Alliance continues to work with other election integrity groups around the country to analyze the results of specific House and Senate races. That data and any evidence of election fraud, malicious attacks on election systems, or other malfunctions that may shed more light on the discrepancy between exit polls and election results will be reported on EDA's website.

This controversy comes amid growing public concern about the security and accuracy of electronic voting machines, used to count approximately 80 percent of the votes cast in the 2006 election. The Princeton University Center for Information Technology Policy, in a September 2006 study, was the latest respected institution to expose significant flaws in the design and software of one of the most popular electronic touch-screen voting machines, the AccuVote-TS, manufactured by Diebold, Inc. The Princeton report described the machine as "vulnerable to a number of extremely serious attacks that undermine the accuracy and credibility of the vote counts it produces." These particular machines were used to count an estimated 10 percent of votes on Election Day 2006.

A separate "Security Assessment of the Diebold Optical Scan Voting Terminal," released by the University of Connecticut VoTeR Center and Department of Computer Science and Engineering last month, concluded that Diebold's Accuvote-OS machines, optical scanners which tabulate votes cast on paper ballots, are also vulnerable to "a devastating array of attacks." Accuvote-OS machines are even more widely used than the AccuVote-TS.

Similar vulnerabilities affect other voting equipment manufacturers, as revealed last summer in a study by the Brennan Center at New York University which noted all of America's computerized voting systems "have significant security and reliability vulnerabilities, which pose a real danger to the integrity of national, state, and local elections."

The most prudent response to this controversy is a moratorium on the further implementation of computerized voting systems. EDA's O'Dell cautioned, "It is so abundantly clear that these machines are not secure, there's no justification for blind confidence in the election system given such dramatic indications of problems with the official vote tally." And EDA's Simon summarized, "There has been a rush by some to celebrate 2006 as a fair election, but a Democratic victory does not equate with a fair election. It's wishful thinking at best to believe that the danger of massive election rigging is somehow past."

EDA continues to call for a moratorium on the deployment of electronic voting machines in US elections; passage of H.R. 6200, which would require hand-counted paper ballots for presidential elections beginning in 2008; and adoption of the Universal Precinct Sample (UPS) handcount sampling protocol for verification of federal elections as long as electronic election equipment remains in use.

The Exit Poll analysis is a part of Election Defense Alliance's six-point strategy to defend the accuracy and transparency of the 2006 elections. In addition to extensive analysis of polling data, EDA has been engaged in independent exit polling, election monitoring, legal interventions, and documentation of election irregularities.

*The sample was a national sample of all voters who voted in House races. It was drawn just like the 2004 sample of the presidential popular vote. That is, precincts were chosen to yield a representative (once stratified) sample of all voters wherever they lived/voted - including early and absentee voters and voters in districts where House candidates ran unopposed but were listed on the ballot and therefore could receive votes. As such, the national sample EDA worked with is exactly comparable to the total aggregate vote for the House that we derived from reported vote totals and from close estimates in cases of the few unopposed candidates where 2006 figures were unavailable but prior elections could be used as proxy. It is a very large sampling of the national total, with a correspondingly small (+/-1%) MOE. There were four individual districts sampled for reasons known only to Edison/Mitofsky

dc_dux · 11-20-2006, 03:39 PM

An interesting analysis, Elph...and reason for further investigation by both Congress and the Election Advisory Committee established to oversee e-voting.

I also hope Congress acts on the issue of voter intimidation and voter suppression and take up Barak Obama's bill that deals with robo-calling, push polling, blatantly false mailers, etc.

Ourcrazymodern? · 11-24-2006, 02:02 PM

Each vote an individual. Abolish the electoral college.
If we're all willing to trust computers so much, what's wrong with that?

11-07-2006, 10:56 AM	#82 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	from very early on in looking into conservativeland, i ran across an astute elist that was called red rock eater--i dont know if it is still around, nor do i remember the guy who put it together--but it was very good. one of the main features of the new conservativeland that he pointed out was the role of projection. if the right does something--like shift very far to the right---you will find that the discourse will project this shift onto its construction of its opposite. the right does the same thing on the question of voter fraud, on the relation between the democratic party and the constituency that will in this election vote for it---and there seems to be no reocognition amongst the inhabitants of conservativeland that this is a structured response, part of the discourse they inhabit, and that by engaging in it, they simply repeat the official line. now remember: vote for the democrats=vote for terrorism. this is the kind of thing that always works to keep an autonomous polity convinced of the power of the arguments advanced. nothing to do with herding. nothing at all. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

11-08-2006, 09:16 AM	#91 (permalink)
Seaver Junkie Location: Fort Worth, TX	So now that the Dems won... .... ... what was that about Diebold? __________________ "Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas

11-08-2006, 09:54 AM	#93 (permalink)
Bill O'Rights will always be an Alyson Hanniganite Location: In the dust of the archives	I don't get it, Host. Are you saying that the election should have been a Democratic landslide, but since it was a Democratic victory by such a small margin, that it was because of voting machine tampering? "Cause, seriously...if you meant anything else, it went right the hell over my head. __________________ "I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony "Hedonism with rules isn't hedonism at all, it's the Republican party." - JumpinJesus It is indisputable that true beauty lies within...but a nice rack sure doesn't hurt.

11-08-2006, 11:20 AM	#95 (permalink)
dc_dux Location: Washington DC	I think the close results mirror the partisan split in many states and districts and the country as a whole, and not a vast conspiracy to hold down Dem votes. There were obviously voting irregularities. My bias tends to think they had a negative impact more on Dems than Repubs but there is no evidence to support that as yet. While it wont be a top priority in the early days of the new House, I expect the Dems to conduct a much more serious and in-depth overisght investigation of voting irregularities than the cosmetic effort initiated by the Repubs in the last 6 years. __________________ "The perfect is the enemy of the good." ~ Voltaire Last edited by dc_dux; 11-08-2006 at 11:22 AM..

11-08-2006, 08:23 PM	#96 (permalink)
Seaver Junkie Location: Fort Worth, TX	Oh right, if Republicans win in this country it is because they are holding down the minority vote... or flat out fraud. If Democrats win, but not by a blowout, it's because the Republicans are guilty of flat out Fraud. Come on host, did it ever occur to you that MAYBE the people who were in charge of the voting machines had political leanings but were as easily as reliable as say... the people who made the machines who read the scantron voting sheets? __________________ "Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas

11-07-2006, 09:46 PM	#84 (permalink)
ratbastid Darth Papa Location: Yonder	<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/46431747/electronic_voting_ir.html">Here's</a> a pretty thorough run-down of electronic voting machine glitches, courtesy of boingboing.com.

11-08-2006, 05:09 AM	#86 (permalink)
ratbastid Darth Papa Location: Yonder	http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles...6votefraud.htm The woman featured in the HBO movie Hacking Democracy is making claims of widespread vote suppression, voter intimidation, vote-machine tampering and other mischief.

11-08-2006, 09:13 PM	#98 (permalink)
ratbastid Darth Papa Location: Yonder	I've obviously quit posting everything that shows up on google about election fraud, but the sense now is that there was relatively small volume of irregularities. The hotline that that was set up to receive electoral fraud complaints at the federal level didn't receive a single complaint. Some states reported some irregularities, but generally it seems to have been a much cleaner election than some in the past seem to have been. Far as I'm concerned, that's great news--and not just because I'm generally happy with the results. It means that the foundation that our nation stands on has integrity. It means that, no matter what our government does, we can look at them and say, well, we unquestionably voted them into office.

11-09-2006, 07:57 AM	#101 (permalink)
Yakk Wehret Den Anfängen! Location: Ontario, Canada	I would like to say -- good job Democrats. They successfully hacked enough voting machines to win the election. Now, the hard step -- jiggering the system so that either A> You can never lose or B> Nobody else can jigger the system The difference between pure-electronic systems and paper-electronic systems is that you can go back and hand-count the paper ballots. And adding in mass numbers of paper ballots requires moving large amounts of paper around -- which can be noticed. So, does the Federal government have any juristiction over Federal election procedures? You'd think "equal protection" and the right to vote (barring treason and other crimes) would give the Feds some mandate... __________________ Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

11-20-2006, 03:39 PM	#103 (permalink)
dc_dux Location: Washington DC	An interesting analysis, Elph...and reason for further investigation by both Congress and the Election Advisory Committee established to oversee e-voting. I also hope Congress acts on the issue of voter intimidation and voter suppression and take up Barak Obama's bill that deals with robo-calling, push polling, blatantly false mailers, etc. __________________ "The perfect is the enemy of the good." ~ Voltaire

11-24-2006, 02:02 PM	#104 (permalink)
Ourcrazymodern? still, wondering. Location: South Minneapolis, somewhere near the gorgeous gorge	Each vote an individual. Abolish the electoral college. If we're all willing to trust computers so much, what's wrong with that?