Here ya go Cocoa:
http://www.rules.senate.gov/hearings/2001/031401knack.htmFollowing the last Presidential election, a widespread perception emerged that punch card voting equipment was more prevalent in counties heavily populated by minorities and poorer persons. Our study contradicts this belief. We combined county-level demographic data for the mid-1990s with information from Election Data Services on voting equipment used by the counties in the 1998 election. Our results showed there is little support for the view that resource constraints cause poorer counties with large minority populations to retain antiquated or inferior voting equipment.
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. Nationally, racial differences in punch card use are negligible: 31.9% of whites and 31.4% of African Americans lived in counties using this voting technology. Controlling for county size and other variables, counties with larger percentages of African Americans actually have a significantly lower probability of using punch cards.
2. African Americans are more likely than whites to live in counties using electronic voting or lever machines, the two types of equipment in which "overvoting" is impossible if the equipment is programmed correctly.
3. Hispanics are more likely to live in punch card counties than blacks or whites, but this disparity is attributable entirely to the use of punch card voting in Los Angeles County. In most states, whites are actually more likely than Hispanics to live in punch card counties.
4. Based on presidential voting patterns in 1996, Democratic and Republican voters were equally likely to live in punch card counties, for the U.S. overall.
5. Because we elect Presidents by the electoral vote and not the popular vote, it's also relevant to make these comparisons on a state-by-state basis. It turns out that in the majority of states where some counties use punch cards and others do not, whites, the non-poor and Republican voters who are more likely to reside in punch card counties than African Americans, the poor and Democratic voters. Unfortunately for Vice-President Gore, Florida happened to be one of the exceptions to this pattern.
6. Public resources don't seem to matter much. Counties with punch card systems actually tend to have higher incomes, higher tax revenues, and larger populations than do counties with more modern voting equipment. In counties using electronic voting systems--the most expensive type--per capita incomes and property tax revenues are actually lower than in counties using punch card or any other voting technology. Florida is actually one of the best examples of these patterns: the largest and richest counties tend to use punch-card equipment. The Washington Post's claim of November 11 that it is "mainly affluent counties that have switched" to newer technology turns out to be dead wrong.
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A recent Cal Tech/MIT study has exposed as false another popular belief. It found that the electronic systems often promoted as the high-tech solution to chad problems actually generate the same rate of invalid presidential votes as Votomatic-style punch card equipment.
Evidence from studies such as these has obvious implications for some of the proposed solutions to problems associated with punch card voting. Our study shows that providing financial assistance to replace punch card technology would not be subsidizing the poorest counties--in most states, including Florida, it would subsidize the richer counties. And replacing punch card technology with expensive electronic systems might not reduce the number of invalidated presidential votes. In fact, it would probably increase it in the short run, because we don't understand yet why electronic systems generate a high rate of invalid votes, so we don't know what to do about it. On the other hand, just about everybody has become well informed about exactly what can go wrong with punch card technology. Next time around, anyone still using punch cards will probably take extra care to insert the card into the slot correctly, punch their selections forcefully, and tear off any hanging chad before turning in the ballot. Poll workers likely will check the vote recorders periodically for chad build up. The error rate for punch card voting will probably fall far below the rates prevailing in recent years for punch cards and electronic systems.
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Now, you tell us, why Congress ignored this. Too much mulah from the vendors and defense industry contractors, perhaps?
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