In May of this year, I did an analysis of the U.S. Electronic Incident Reporting System (EIRS) database (for the 2004 presidential election), in which I showed that incidents of "electronic vote switching" that favored Bush outnumbered incidents that favored Kerry by a ratio of greater than 12:1 – there were 87 incidents that favored Bush, and 7 that favored Kerry.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=371211.My conclusions were:
1. The probability of such a lopsided ratio in favor of Bush was extremely unlikely
2. Although it was possible that these results could be explained by a reporting bias, whereby Kerry voters were more likely to report incidents than Bush voters, it seemed highly unlikely that this could result in such a large ratio.
3. Therefore, election fraud (i.e., purposeful programming of the computers to switch votes from Kerry to Bush) would seem to be by far the most likely explanation for these findings.
Recently, mgr has suggested that another way to test these conclusions would be to compare the rate of vote switches in swing states vs. non-swing states. It seems probable that Republicans would target election fraud in states that were likely to have influence on who won the election. Therefore, if the rate is much greater in swing states than in non-swing states, that would provide confirmatory evidence that bias was a highly unlikely explanation for the lopsided ratio of vote switches in favor of Bush.
MethodsThe source of all data for this project is reports to the Election Incidence Reporting System (EIRS):
https://voteprotect.org/index.php?display=EIRMapNation&cat=ALL&search=&go=Apply+filter&tab=ED04, developed by the National Election Data Archive Project. All reports to this System involve the U.S. national election of November, 2004. The EIRS database includes 28,734 reported incidents, including 2,115 “machine problem” incidents. The material for this analysis was obtained by searching these “machine problem” incidents only in counties that used electronic voting machines, according to a database provided by Voters Unite! (www.VotersUnite.Org ).
A report was categorized as a presidential vote switching incident if and only if it met both of the following criteria: 1) The report specifically referred to the presidential vote (unless referring only to third party candidates) OR to one or both of the two major parties (unless referring specifically and only to non-presidential candidates), thus implying reference to the presidential vote; and 2) The report noted that the voting machine made it easier or more difficult to vote for one of the two major candidates OR difficult to vote for president in general. Typically these reports involved a voter attempting to register a vote for one candidate, and then the machine noting that another candidate had been selected. These “vote switches” involved switches from one to the other major party candidate, from a major party to a 3rd party candidate, or vice versa. Other problems involved such incidents as attempting to vote for a candidate and the vote not registering at all.
There were two exemptions from the above noted criteria: 1) Reports where the only problem noted was that one of the candidates was “pre-selected”. These were not included in this analysis because these cases likely involved a situation where the previous voted failed to register his/her vote, and the situation could be easily remedied by clearing the screen; and 2) Reports where I found it impossible to decipher what the complaint was referring to.
Having determined that a report met the criteria for “vote switching”, the next step was to categorize the report into one of three categories, according to which candidate the incident apparently potentially benefited: Kerry, Bush, or neither. The incident was categorized as potentially benefiting Bush if it indicated either that: 1) The voter attempted to vote for Kerry (or Democratic Party), but the machine registered Bush (or Republican Party) or another candidate; 2) The voter attempted to vote for a third party candidate, but the machine registered Bush; or 3) The voter’s attempts to vote for Kerry (or Democratic Party) were made difficult by any other machine related activity. By interposing the words “Bush” and “Kerry” in the above noted criteria, we obtain the criteria for categorizing an incident as apparently potentially benefiting Kerry. And if the report failed to meet either of the above two criteria, then it was categorized as potentially benefiting neither candidate.
This comparison of swing states assessed only the 87 cases of vote switches that favored Bush, since the number that favored Kerry was too small to analyze. The number of vote switches in both swing states and non-swing states was divided by the number of official votes from those states that were reported from counties that used electronic voting machines (rounded off to the nearest 1,000 for each county.) Swing states were considered to be CO, FL, IA, MN, MI, NH, NM, NV, OH, PA, and WI.
ResultsComparison of swing states versus non-swing statesOverall, of the 87 vote switches that favored Bush, 67 were reported from swing states, and 20 were reported from non-swing states. Counties from swing states that used electronic voting machines accounted for 10,104 K votes, and counties from non-swing states that used electronic voting accounted for 27,713 K votes. The rate of reports per million voters in swing states was therefore 6.6 per million, and the rate in non-swing states was 0.72 per million voters. Therefore,
the rate of reports of electronic vote switching that favored Bush was more than 9 times greater in swing states than in non-swing states. Some specifics on breakdown by state and countyThe distribution of incidents by state and county was very uneven. Of the 67 vote switches reported from swing states, all were reported from four states:
FL: 47 incidents, rate = 11.5 per million
OH: 8 incidents, rate = 9.1 per million
NM: 8 incidents, rate = 11.7 per million
PA: 4 incidents, rate = 2.6 per million
Three swing states, WI, NH, and MN, had no reports because they did not use electronic voting machines. And the other four, IA, NV, MI, and CO, simply had no reports even though some counties in those states did use electronic voting machines.
Of the 24 non-swing states that used electronic voting machines in some counties, only Washington exhibited a rate of reports that equaled any of the swing states noted above. Washington County had 3 reports, all from Snohomish County, for a rate of 8.2 per million for the state.
Distribution of incidents also varied greatly by county. Five swing state counties accounted for 58 of the 67 swing state reports (87%) and much higher rates than any of the other counties:
Broward, FL ...... 23 incidents, rate = 32.5 per million
Miami-Dade, FL .. 8 incidents, rate = 10.3 per million
Palm Beach, FL .. 11 incidents, rate = 20.1 per million
Bernalillo, NM .... 8 incidents, rate = 31.4 per million
Mahoning, OH .... 8 incidents, rate = 60.2 per million
Categorization of reports by voting machine type and vendorFour voting machine vendors accounted for all but three of the 87 reported incidents that were favorable to Bush. These included Diebold (7 incidents, 8%), Danaher (14 incidents, 16%), Sequoia (19 incidents, 22%), and ESS (44 incidents, 51%). Although these percents were very different than the distribution of voting machine vendors throughout the United States, all four of these vendors were characterized by a significant excess of incidents favorable to Bush, compared with incidents favorable to Kerry.
The rate of reported incidents was much greater with touch screen machines than with other electronic voting machines. There were 74 reports out of 20,136 voters for touch screen machines, a rate of 3.7 per million. Other electronic voting machines were associated with 13 reports out of 17,681 voters, for a rate of 0.74 per million voters.
Discussion and ConclusionsSignificance of the 9 to 1 ratio of report rates in swing states versus non-swing statesIn the analysis I did in May I stated that I thought the 12 to 1 ratio of reported incidents favoring Bush compared to reported incidents favoring Kerry was due to election fraud. My reasoning was that chance could be ruled out statistically, and a reporting bias of that magnitude seemed quite unlikely. Coincidentally, we now see that we also have a 9 to 1 ratio of rates of reports favoring Bush in swing states versus non-swing states.
What are the reasons for these findings? It is theoretically possible that these reported vote switches were accidental. But if they were accidental, then why would the vast majority of these incidents tend to favor one candidate over the other? AND, why would they occur at such a higher rate in swing states than in non-swing states?
In summary, the finding of a 9 to 1 ratio of the reported incident rate in swing states versus non-swing states, concurrent with a 12 to 1 ratio of reports favoring Bush, strongly points to election fraud as the cause of the vote switches. Especially significant is the fact that a very large proportion of incidents were concentrated in Ohio and Florida – the only two states that were considered absolutely critical to a Bush victory. Perspective for these findingsWith John Kerry now considering withdrawing from the lawsuit to force a full and fair recount of the Ohio vote, it is especially critical that all evidence of election fraud be thoroughly considered.
This study adds one more piece to the accumulated evidence of compromised integrity of the 2004 Presidential election. Much of the controversy over this election has centered on the fact that the Mitofsky-Edison exit polls not only showed Kerry winning the national vote by 3%, but also showed Kerry winning Ohio by 4.2% (which official results showed him losing by 2.5%) and virtually tied in Florida (where official results showed him losing by 5.0%):
http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/Exit_Polls_2004_Edison-Mitofsky.pdf .
In addition to exit poll discrepancy evidence, there has been a good deal of more direct evidence accumulated of compromised election integrity, such as the Rep. John Conyers report by the Democratic staff of the House Judiciary Committee: Preserving Democ- racy: What Went Wrong in Ohio:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/010605Y.shtml. Evidence more directly pertinent to this analysis is testimony given before the House Judiciary Committee by an ex- Florida computer programmer, Clint Curtis:
http://www.rawstory.com/images/pdfs/CC_Affidavit_120604.pdf. Curtis testified that he was requested in 2000 by Tom Feeney, then Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, to “develop a prototype of a voting program that could alter the vote tabulation in an election and be undetectable”. He did develop the program, after telling Feeney, however, that he could not make the program so that it would be undetectable if the source program were to be inspected.
What is the magnitude and significance of the problem – is this the tip of an iceberg?If voting machines used in the 2004 Presidential election were in fact programmed to make it more difficult to vote for Kerry than for Bush, or to switch votes from Kerry to Bush, what significance could that have had to the integrity or outcome of the election? 87 individual incidents in an election where Kerry lost Ohio by over a hundred thousand votes and Florida by a few hundred thousand votes doesn’t seem like very much. But what if these 87 incidents represent only the tip of an iceberg – the known part of a much larger problem?
In my May thread I proposed four reasons to believe that these 87 reported incidents represent only the tip of the iceberg. These reasons include:
1. Perhaps only a minute fraction of problems discovered by voters were reported to EIRS, since it is unlikely that most people were even aware of this reporting system, and even if they were aware of it most would have been unlikely to report incidents.
2. Most voters may not have noticed the problem, since noticing it would have required checking their ballots after they were done voting.
3. It could be that that many vote switches were not even accompanied by visual evidence.
4. Many of the individual reports note that the problem had been occurring all election day long.
Since this time, additional evidence has surfaced that supports the idea that these reports are only the tip of the iceberg: First there is a report by Paul Lehto and Jeffrey Hoffman which identifies 19 reports of electronic vote switching in Snohomish County, Washington – all which favor Bush – from the Washington State auditor’s office, the Washington Secretary of State’s office, and a Snohomish County voter complaint hotline. This compares with only three reports made to EIRS.
Even more compelling is an investigation undertaken by the Washington Post regarding electronic vote switching in Mahoning County, Ohio. This investigation identified 25 electronic voting machines in Youngstown, Mahoning County, which transferred an unknown number of votes from Kerry to Bush:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64737-2004Dec14_3.html. The Post report goes on to state
“Due to lack of cooperation from Secretary of State Blackwell, we have not been able to ascertain the number of votes that were impacted or whether the machines malfunctioned due to intentional manipulation or error.”What can be done? A better understanding of this problem can be obtained only by inspection of the implicated computers. Since this problem may have affected the election results, and since if that did happen, the problem may be repeated in future elections,
it would seem to be of the utmost importance that the implicated voting machines be examined by qualified experts. To my knowledge, that has not yet been done. Hopefully this report could help target the voting machines that need to be examined.
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