More Questions in Florida 13 - David Dill, Walter Mebane

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

More Questions in Florida 13

As the legal battle in Florida's 13th Congressional District continues, a new report by Walter Mebane and David Dill analyzes the 18,000 undervotes from Sarasota County, but argues that further investigation is needed before any conclusive explanation can be reached.

http://www.electionreformproject.org/Resources/2baf77ec-8923-4831-95ec-64aa233c9177/r1/Detail.aspx

Excerpts from paper

Our results are suggestive but in important respects puzzling. In a
nutshell, the excessive CD-13 undervote rate in Sarasota County is not yet well-understood,
and will not be understood without further investigation. On its own, further statistical
analysis of the kind of data we examine here probably cannot explain the undervotes

We find differences of hundreds of CD-13 undervotes
when we compare voting machines that have different observable characteristics.
Hundreds of these undervotes are related to a specific error message in the event log file (the event
log file supposedly reports every transaction that occurred on each voting machine)...

The principal question we cannot answer is whether these patterns reflect voluntary behavior
or artificial errors or manipulations. The urgency of this question is highlighted by the fact that the relationship between the CD-13 undervote rate and the statewide office voting pattern differs depending on whether a particular error message occurs on the voting machine on which the votes were cast....

http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/wrm1/smachines1.pdf

[Land Shark]

1. Why don't election officials ask these questions before CERTIFYING?

Instead, activists get into a debate that should have occurred, at least first, prior to certification. But I'll bet they hardly considered anything at all. In fact, I guess we know what the public statements have been along the lines of: "no problems here"

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

2. same administrators from old days in new era

Election officials and policies have not evolved as elections
were made more complicated.

Our state has had paperless electronic voting since the 80s,
and this issue wasn't talked about much. Many of our officials
expressed trust in the machines.

The same people making decisions and administering elections
are much the same as those who administered punch card, lever,
paper, optical scan and DREs from decades ago.

Now as more people have computers, they learn to trust them
less.

Now that we have new venues of news, and more citizen reporters,
we had the chance to learn about this problem.