I found a really fascinating academic report today called What Hath HAVA Wrought.
This report is written by Charles Stewart III, Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Prepared for the conference on “Bush v Gore, 10 Years Later: Election Administration in the United States,” Center for the Study of Democracy, University of California, Irvine, April 16–17, 2011
What I love about academic reports is the integrity of the author's cited references to the information presented.
What I found disconcerting in this report are the many instances that call into question the efficacy of different aspects of HOW AMERICA VOTES, specifically, how votes are counted.
I am pressed for time today, so I did Edit/Find searches of this report for Absentee Votes and found some very disconcerting research.
Beginning on page 42:
In answering this question, it is important to ask what parts of the voting equation HAVA overlooked. The most obvious answer is that it overlooked absentee and by-mail voting, a phenomenon that has increased four-fold since 1972, and by roughly 60% since 2000.
Analysis by Stewart (2010) shows that the vote-by-mail pipeline is significantly “leakier” that the one for voting in person.
The best data available suggest that 21% of all requests for absentee ballots in 2008 never resulted in a vote being recorded for president, either because
1, the request was never received by the county election office,
2. the returned absentee ballot was not received back at the election office,
3. or the received ballot was rejected(Stewart 2010, p. 590.).
In other words, the lost-vote rate among absentee ballots is an order-of-magnitude greater than the overall lost-vote rate.
Because many election administrators regard vote-by-mail as cheaper than maintaining voting precincts, it is likely that the use of the mails will only increase in the coming years, causing growth in “lost votes.”
If the past is any indicator of the future, it seems that federal attention to problems inherent in vote-by-mail will only occur if there is an electoral catastrophe in a presidential election involving absentee ballots.
(I added the numbers)
Early and Absentee Voting A Growing Trend
In the November 2008 general election, 61.7% of those eligible to vote turned out and 131.3 million ballots were cast for president.
According to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission's 2008 Survey, 60.2% of those voting in the general election voted in person at polling places, 16.6% voted by domestic absentee ballot, 13.0% by some form of early voting, and 1.3% by provisional ballot.
If the HAVA report is correct, it is possible that in 2008, 21% of the 16% absentee votes were not counted which equals 7,772,960 votes not counted.
16% x 131,300,000 votes = 21,008,000 Absentee Ballots
21% x 21,008,000 = 7,772,960 votes that might not have been counted.
I think this is significant.
In 2008, Obama won the popular vote by 9,549,975 votes.
This year, a significant increase in Absentee Ballots being cast is being reported, possibly due the widespread coverage of VOTING MACHINE issues.
For example:
Ohio presents a more complex picture. Early voting is up quite a bit over the 2008 level. This is likely because election officials sent absentee ballot applications to every registered voter.
There is concern.
Error and Fraud at Issue as Absentee Voting Rises
We must remember that 29 states have GOP Governors. Most swing states have GOP Governors.
In light of the many instances this year of Election Fraud tactics being used by the GOP, I don't think it is a leap to question the safety of this years vote count!
GOP's 10 Election Fraud Schemes To-Date
This is a great tool to use to look a little deeper into vote counting issues, for those of you interested:
Counting Votes 2012: A State by State Look at Election Preparedness
Here's a map showing how states vote counting practices ranked from VerifiedVoting.org
It is clear that the best vote counting practices don't exist in swing states, sadly.
I hope you will take some time to peruse the HAVA report. There is a lot more information to glean.
Happy GOTV to you all!