Mass Special Election Numbers

[BeFree]

In the 2008 general election the numbers were:
1,104,284 McCain
1,891,083 Obama

In the special election for the senate seat one year and 2 months later.
1,168,107 Brown + 64,000 more than McCain
1,058,682 Coakley - 830,000 less than Obama

The turnout for the conservative went up and the liberal vote declined by 40%.

That is amazing. Never happened before in such large numbers.

If the vote totals for the pubbie went down by a similar percentage as the dem, the dem would have won. But for the first time ever, in an off year election, the vote for the conservative actually increased.

That Brown is something. This trend continues and Jeb Bush will be the next president.

Something weird has happened. What could it be?

[still_one]

1. A Rassmussen poll indicated that there were 20% Democrats who voted for brown

Using terms such as conservative or liberal may or may not make sense in your context if you are referring to Democrat as liberal andrepublican as conservative. What are independents, and if 20% of Democrats actually voted for brown I have to question your impression

[BeFree]

4. Normally

What is curious is that the normal drop off is shown for the democrat but there was no drop off for the republican. Actually, the vote share increased.

An equivalent drop of 40% from the republican would be 440,000 votes less. Add in the 64,000 increase and we're looking at a 500,000 vote anomaly.

[BeFree]

7. Another weird thing

Take the 830,000 vote DROP from the Dem side and add the 64,000 vote INCREASE on the republican side and it adds up to 90% of the numbers McCain got in 2008.

Incredible!!

[still_one]

10. That is interesting /nt

[Aramchek]

2. don't get your hopes up, there will never be another Bush Presidency

[BeFree]

5. Hopes up?

What, are you crazy? Guess you are a newbie?

[Bitwit1234]

3. The republicans block and obstruct everything along

with their constant message of hate, violence and blaming the democrats for not performing miracles with a complete turn around is working.

Here we have people jumping up and down and saying WE DON'T WANT GOVERNMENT MESSING IN OUR LIVES. Then with out taking another breath they are complaining because the GOVERNMENT HAS NOT CREATED MILLIONS OF JOBS to take the place of the ones the republicans were responsible for sending overseas.

How can anyone rationalize this thinking. You are wrong on both counts. How can the Obama administration win. If they create more government to take care of the job problem, then they are condemned for messing in people's lives. The people of this country need to go back to school and learn how to interrupt things for themselves and not listen to the constant drum beat of hate hate hate coming from the republicans. Because all the republicans want to do, is not help the country, not get them jobs, all they want is to get back in office and once again tear this country apart while filling their pockets.

[BeFree]

6. You're right

The numbers make no rational sense. There is now way the people would be so stupid. Something very weird has happened.

[pansypoo53219]

8. conservatives RULE off year non presidential elections

CAUSE MIDDLECRATS/MODERATES/LIBERALS ARE TOO LAZY TO VOTE. or didn't vote cause obama didn't get them their pet pony yet.

[clear eye]

16. "pony" meme leads to instant "ignore". n/t

[we can do it]

9. DIEBOLD

nt

[Stevepol]

11. Amen. A major contributor to the numbers, not the only one. Now owned by ES&S.

[ClayZ]

13. Bingo!

K and R

[Fly by night]

12. Does MA manually audit their paper ballots read by opscan?

I certainly hope so, though if anything was hinky, it likely would have surfaced by now (IF they manually audit the paper ballots.)

If we had ham ... we could have ham and eggs ... if we had eggs.

[OnTheOtherHand]

15. nope, not one bit

Frankly, the results aren't especially suspicious -- but there is no excuse not to have routine post-election audits. Massachusetts activists have been working on this, but without success so far.

[Fly by night]

18. That's unfortunate. ANY close election that cannot be audited is automatically suspect in my mind,

particularly given the corporatist climate we live in and the continued reich-wing proclivities of the owners (and programmers) of the voting machines.

After five years of work to save our democracy here in Tennessee, I watched in horror and disbelief while our Republican senators lied about the value of implementing our TN Voter Confidence Act, and then voted to delay its implementation and to gut our audit procedures. As disturbing as that was, the 30 minute long (seriously) opening prayer (meeting) by two fundamentalist evangelists who kept saying that the US is a Christian nation with no room for any other world view was disgusting.

After 40+ years of living in Tennessee, I have put my farm on the market and plan to move to New Mexico (where they do vote on paper ballots) or to New Zealand. The only other option is another Battle of Athens (TN) and I am basically a nonviolent person at heart.

Though I may not always stay that way ....

[OnTheOtherHand]

19. language fails

One might say that the outcome is inherently suspect whether or not the results are especially suspicious.

I don't think the politics of the companies matter as much as the known vulnerabilities open to exploitation for any purpose whatsoever.

[Wilms]

20. And vulnerabilities open to exploitation BY anyone...not just the manufacturers.

I think the more likely scenario for hacking doesn't involve the voting machine vendors beyond the dubious enterprise of building computers for the purpose of voting.

[OnTheOtherHand]

21. yep, exactly

I guess it's fine to worry about hidden "back doors," but it's the open front and side doors that worry me most.

[Wilms]

22. Source code this, and source code that.

Fine. Check it. But how many think about ballot definition files, the "open front and side doors".

Good frame.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=401378

[Bill Bored]

30. What, you don't do Windows? :) nt

[diva77]

23. I wouldn't be so sure about that, having met and observed vendors myself.

They're the ones with all the access on election night. Yep, the Diebold man gets to go in and "check on the central tabulator" at election HQ; and they get access year round to elections officials and equipment. They get as much face time as they want. Citizens get their 3 min. at a Board of Supervisors meeting and have to wait around all day for their time slot. And when their time slot is announced it's random chance whether or not any of the Board will be seated and giving their full attention to what is being said. :mad:

Remember this from 2003?

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20031218/0933248.shtml

Diebold Employed At Least Five Convicted Felons In Management Positions
from the um...-background-checks,-anyone? dept

This is sounding more and more like a bad movie. In fact, if someone wrote this script, I'd bet it would get rejected as being way too implausible. Not only has Diebold been shown to have incredibly insecure technology on their electronic voting machines (universal password: 1111), had their (very partisan) CEO say that he was going to help his party win the election, been trying to sue every whistle-blower who calls them on this, admitted that they're going to try to jack up prices for anyone who tries to force them to add a paper trail and been caught using uncertified software in a recent election (breathe...), now it also turns out that they've employed at least five convicted felons in management roles at their voting machine subsidiary, according to Bev Harris, who has been leading the charge against Diebold. In fact, a senior VP of the group, who was responsible for writing and maintaining the code used in their voting systems, served time in prison for "stealing money and tampering with computer files". Diebold says that the guy left at the time they acquired his company to become their e-voting subsidiary, but they're still using this guy's code.

[Wilms]

24. I excluded no one.

Not the manufacturers. Nor the vendors, like LHS. Nor the local jurisdictions that maintain/program elections on their own machines.

The latter is the case in the thread I linked.

Personally, I'm very concerned with the focus on Wally, especially these years later, when bad actors have all kinds of attack vectors to exploit that don't rely on the manufacturer.

[clear eye]

17. They don't ever audit anything unless the results are contested.

Never have. It's a dream state for tampering, especially w/ Diebold maintenance techs. (Even though it's been bought by the equally fanatical social conservative ES&S, the division is still "Diebold".)

However there was also the dispirited Dem base factor. They are counted upon to GOTV.

[demodonkey]

26. MA has 100% paper ballots (opscan and even some hand-counted) but no routine audits.

Sorry this was not clear in the subsequent posts.

[Bill Bored]

29. Not only don't they audit, they outsource their ballot programming.

One guy can rig most of the state and no one would know.

[Wilms]

31. No wait a second. I thought only Wally O'Dell could do that.

What up?

:evilgrin:

[we can do it]

14. Meant to rec this earlier

[Stevepol]

25. I don't know why people quote the figures from elections any more

when the results are so suspect. I long ago gave up the idea that our elections system was run by folks who could be called sane and rational. I thought in 02 when the results of the GA election were so different from the pre-election polls and this was the first election where the results were counted totally in cyberspace, no paper at all, that some reporter somewhere would investigate immediately and get to the truth, whatever that might be, at least turn over a few rocks.

It was a pipe dream.

The people who have been charged with the responsibility of monitoring and keeping the leaders honest, sometimes called the MSM, don't really give a damn. I can't help thinking that in the past this would not have happened or would not still be happening.

[BeFree]

27. Well

The figures are bogus. But the figures have real world results.
Republicans get 'elected'.

Why anybody believes the figures is what is crazy. No audits, no reason to believe.
But people still believe and republicans continue to get 'elected'.

I guess people just want to have faith that there is no conspiracy to steal elections.

I guess it would just be too hard for them to realize that there are people who will steal elections. They stole the 2000 election, what makes them think the thieves would stop then?

I don't get it. Why would anyone believe the figures are true and correct?

[BeFree]

28. If only

109,425 vote difference

So if just 54,713 votes were changed, we'd have a new winner.

Or at least there would have to be an audit.
That's too narrow of a margin for there to not be an audit.

Is anybody in Mass, working on this?

[n3ttik]

32. Close call

That was definitely closer than the news headlines boasted. They made it sound like it was a landslide for Brown.