CALL TO ACTION UPDATE - I've changed the title of this diary - because I now believe that this study is pretty much bulletproof. I've looked at the numbers, and some highly knowledgeable other folks have too, including some political science professionals. Nobody has given me the slightest reason to doubt the conclusions of this study. The Florida E-Voting results are very, very, very suspicious!
THIS IS THE BIG ONE:
In my opinion THIS is the one that we should take to the mainstream media, big time!
It is not based on exit polling that we can't get the internals of (although I have BIG doubts about the exit polling/actual results discrepancy) but on a reliable set of data - and it's not being put out by a partisan but by a well-respected statistical expert and his team of graduate students. It is thorough, fully documented, and makes a damning case that the E-Voting numbers in Florida are way off, and totally in Bush's favor. I say that we should bombard the media with this one - it is time to get this out there.
SPECIFIC ACTIONS TO BE TAKEN:
1) I urge all kossacks to send the key grafs from the wired news article (BELOW), along with the Wired and/or Computerworld links AND the link to the study, to all your Mainstream Media contacts - it is time for them to stop pretending that this is a blogsphere fantasy. This is real, all too damned real for those of us who believe in fair elections.
NOTE RE MEDIA OUTREACH: november3rd has a diary with a pretty good list of media contacts and so on -- consider using these, they are HERE:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/18/115954/77
2) I also think we should contact all of our representatives in Congress and other Democratic party officials. We must DEMAND an end to unauditable black-box voting NOW! If they won't fight for that, what will they fight for? I don't want to work my butt off once again only to come up short and not even know if it was the voters' decision or hacking that beat us. This MUST be the last year that we hold elections this way - period.
THE LINK TO THE STUDY IS:
http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/
go down the page a bit - it's right under VOTING.
COMPUTERWORLD ARTICLE LINK:
http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/policy/story/0,10801,97614,00.html
AND HERE'S THE REPORT FROM WIRED NEWS ALONG WITH THE FIRST FEW GRAFS.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65757,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1
Electronic voting machines in Florida may have awarded George W. Bush up to 260,000 more votes than he should have received, according to statistical analysis conducted by University of California, Berkeley graduate students and a professor, who released a study on Thursday.
The researchers likened their report to a beeping smoke alarm and called on Florida officials to examine the data and the voting systems in counties that used touch-screen voting machines to provide an explanation for the anomalies. The researchers examined the same numbers and variables in Ohio, but found no discrepancies there.
Their aim in releasing the report, the researchers said, was not to attack the results of the 2004 election in Florida, where Bush won by 350,000 votes, but to prompt election officials and the public to examine the e-voting systems and address the fact that there is no way to conduct a meaningful recount on the paperless machines.
The analysis -- which hasn't been formally peer-reviewed, but was examined by seven professors -- showed a discrepancy in the number of votes Bush received in counties that used the touch-screen machines and counties that used other types of voting equipment. The researchers examined numerous variables that might have affected the vote outcome. These included the number of voters, their median income, racial and age makeup and the change in voter turnout between the 2000 and 2004 elections. Using this information, they examined election results for the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates in the state in 1996, 2000 and 2004 to see how support for those candidates and parties measured over eight years in Florida's 67 counties.
They discovered that in the 15 counties using touch-screen voting systems, the number of votes granted to Bush far exceeded the number of votes Bush should have received -- given all of the other variables -- while the number of votes that Bush received in counties using other types of voting equipment lined up perfectly with what the variables would have predicted for those counties.
The total number of excessive votes ranged between 130,000 and 260,000, depending on what kind of problem caused the excess votes. The counties most affected by the anomaly were heavily Democratic.
UPDATE 3:
CONFERENCE CALL IS OVER --
The professor was quite - professorial. Very, very cool, calm and professional. Essentially he said that the statistics are what the statistics are, he is not an engineer or programmer and is not offering an explanation as to why there is a statistical anomaly, but states that it is clear that there is one. He also stated that it is up to Florida election officials to look into this. That tells me that he may be a great statistician, but probably doesn't know much about Jeb and his merry band of election thieves. Anyway, the study is at the link noted just below - I will post any MSM reports on this that I find this afternoon.
If anyone thinks that anything else they heard on the call should be in this diary, post 'em in the comments and I'll add them.
ONE OTHER NOTE - JEWISH VOTE DOES NOT EXPLAIN THIS - I did some research on my own, wondering about this aspect
- there are a bit over half a million Jewish voters in the three largest counties in his study - Broward, Palm Beach and Miami/Dade - so, let's say 300,000 eligible voters who voted, obviously there are children and all among those. Bush supposedly went up from 19 to 24 percent among Jews, mostly among younger Jews, which is not so much our Florida population, but let's go with a 5% increase - giving him about 15,000 more Jewish voters in these counties than 2000. That doesn't BEGIN to get us to the gain that Bush got of over 100,000 votes in those three counties according to this study.
LINK UPDATE: THE STUDY IS AVAILABLE ONLINE -- THE LINK TO THE STUDY IS:
http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/
go down the page a bit - it's right under VOTING.
UPDATE: OldFlame posted the dial in info in a comment below - Presser takes place in 30 minutes, at 1 PM EST, 10 AM PST:
Here's the dial in number to listen to the actual conference:
302-709-8433, passcode: 44347114#.
ORIGINAL POST FOLLOWS:
Chris Bowers of MYDD wrote a diary today about "mainstream bloggers", the fraud issue, and all of that. He encouraged us to keep using the diaries to share information about the possibility of voting fraud. I agree. And I would sure say this one definitely qualifies.
Here's the key graf:
"A research team at UC Berkeley will report that irregularities
associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded
130,000 - 260,000 or more excess votes to President George W. Bush in
Florida in the 2004 presidential election. The study shows an unexplained
discrepancy between votes for President Bush in counties where electronic
voting machines were used versus counties using traditional voting
methods. Discrepancies this large or larger rarely arise by chance -- the
probability is less than 0.1 percent. The research team, led by Professor
Michael Hout, will formally disclose results of the study at the press
conference."The press conference is at 10 AM PST today. I will update this diary with any information that I can find, such as further press reports on the press conference, if and when they occur.
ENTIRE PRESS RELEASE FOLLOWS:
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/041118/sfth040_1.html
UC Berkeley Study Questions Florida E-Vote Count
Thursday November 18, 1:23 am ET
Research Team Calls for Immediate Investigation
BERKELEY, Calif., Nov. 18 PRNewswire --
When: Thursday, November 18, 2004, 10:00 a.m. PST
Where: UC Berkeley campus, Survey Research Center Conference Room --
2538 Channing Way (intersection of Channing/Bowditch). Parking on Durant
near Telegraph.
What: A research team at UC Berkeley will report that irregularities
associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded
130,000 - 260,000 or more excess votes to President George W. Bush in
Florida in the 2004 presidential election. The study shows an unexplained
discrepancy between votes for President Bush in counties where electronic
voting machines were used versus counties using traditional voting
methods. Discrepancies this large or larger rarely arise by chance -- the
probability is less than 0.1 percent. The research team, led by Professor
Michael Hout, will formally disclose results of the study at the press
conference.
To attend the conference or request dial-in information, contact: