Debunking the 2000 election theft CT

[Caustic Logic]

Originally Posted by Brainster

But that Chapter Five also explains why Florida was so actively purging the rolls of dead people, felons and those who had moved:
Discussion of the infamous 1997 Miami race is here:

You have all the talking points down! Yes, there had been precedent for such abuses, hence the use of purge lists. There was reason from this precedent to try for a complete list. Did they go overboard in general? No one I've heard of yet were told they couldn't vote since they were dead. The one woman at least was perhaps deleted for resembling someone who had moved. It's only on the felon purge list we see systemic error with genuine effect. Now it's often noted that felons vote overwhelmingly Democrat, which would effect those who WERE felons, but not necc. those whose names resemble felons.

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So you set the standards for striking someone from the rolls loosely, purging more than is necessary, with the understanding that people can object. See also here, from that same chapter five:

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Of those voters who contacted the FDLE to appeal the notice from a local supervisor of elections that they were ineligible to vote, approximately 50 percent were found to be convicted of felonies in Florida and 50 percent were determined to not have Florida felony convictions.[88]

Interesting. I haven't read all this stuff myself, including this. Okay, Fl Dep of Law Enforcement was involved in this project:

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The Division of Elections, in addition to paying over $3 million to DBT Online, compensated the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for its role in the removal of felons from the voter rolls. In addition to its own toll-free hotline for voters who wished to confirm their eligibility status,[84] the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) performed record checks on a listing of 13,190 alleged felons in December 1999.[85] At a cost of $8 per record, the Division of Elections received an invoice for $105,520 from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.[86] The FDLE responded to approximately 5,000 voters whose names appeared on the felon exclusion list.[87] Of those voters who contacted the FDLE to appeal the notice from a local supervisor of elections that they were ineligible to vote, approximately 50 percent were found to be convicted of felonies in Florida and 50 percent were determined to not have Florida felony convictions.[88]

Thaere's a lot of detail there for some reason. $8 per record, 13,190 which means $105,520 if they checked all. Then... 5000 people of the 13,190 call in and request a check - and half are still wrongly listed. Or am I getting the order wrong?

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Sounds like 50-50 among those purged, but those are only the people who appealed the notice; presumably among those who did not appeal the rate of Florida felony convictions was probably much higher.

There's logic to that. It's also possible a lot of the people weren't properly informed.

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Although Florida election law required that the supervisors of elections, who received the exclusion lists compiled by Professional Analytical Systems & Services and DBT Online, attempt to verify the accuracy of those lists,[129] it appears that this procedure was not followed with any degree of uniformity.

Each county election supervisor decided their own metod of verification, with different alert letters. Ex - see Leahy's and Sancho's letters (ch 5 search). Accused were given 30 days to respond or else I guess the listing stood.

Interestingly, there was an earlier exclusion list for the 2000 election made by Professional Analytical Systems & Services (PASS) in 1998. Director of Elections Edith Baxter sent out numerous memos in 1998 regarding the lists, advising extra vigilance to county supervisors to be sure and verify felons, as the lists may be well in error and if there was doubt, let them vote prov. at least. DBT supplied two lists in 1999 and 2000. Sometime prior to the election, Baxter was replaced with Clayton Roberts. All the talk I've seen of errors with the rolls in in 1998 and after the election.

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Now, I don't know why those who objected weren't allowed to cast provisional ballots; that seems to have varied by polling location according to the testimony.

That I'll have to look into further.

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Is that a range among several counties? As noted above, right about half of the people who appealed were found to have been guilty of a felony; among those who did not appeal I'm sure it was substantially higher.

The 15% is from ch 5 "Professor Darryl Paulson testified that the Hillsborough County supervisor of elections estimated that 15 percent of those purged were purged in error and they were disproportionately African American." The 95 is a reading of Sancho's findings in Leon county. All we can really say is he found it at least 5% correct and helpful, the rest is unverified, I don't think we can say its all wrong as Palast does.

So... we have error of some size ... corrections of some degree ... unfixed error and people blocked from voting, uncertain number ... at one end Florida state policy setting the formula that led to error, and on the other the benefits to be reaped from this contextless Florida election thing.

[Caustic Logic]

So for what it's worth, I statrted out this thread with only limited information, believing as gospel the 95% wrong felon lists had disenfranchised something like 20,000 mostly Democrat voters, but I find it's not that dramatic at the least. But there is good circumstantial evidence for the theft. As Smarty Pants quoted Bill Maher, George Bush may not have stolen the election, but it did fall off a truck - that was driven by Jeb Bush, who was responsible for securing the load and failed, after promising the election to his brother. Ooops!

Brainster, thanks for the engaging comments - you've been able to put the fear in me that maybe I'm wrong. To prove otherwise is beyond me right now - more exacting evidence would need to be found on voting patterns, complaint call logs - FOIA perhaps? Serious study? Interviewing electoral procedure experts? Not today. Maybe one of them tomorrow or next week... maybe not.

Oh and Kestrel, thanks for popping in. You stepped in the trap at first but then got it, and thanks for the assists.


Anyone else - additional thoughts are welcome, esp. if you're an expert!

[SmartyPants]

Originally Posted by Caustic Logic

So for what it's worth, I statrted out this thread with only limited information, believing as gospel the 95% wrong felon lists had disenfranchised something like 20,000 mostly Democrat voters, but I find it's not that dramatic at the least. But there is good circumstantial evidence for the theft. As Smarty Pants quoted Bill Maher, George Bush may not have stolen the election, but it did fall off a truck - that was driven by Jeb Bush, who was responsible for securing the load and failed, after promising the election to his brother. Ooops!

Well, you added that last part on your own.

My question is this: What if Al Gore had carried his own state, or any other state worth 4 or more electoral votes?

[Caustic Logic]

Originally Posted by SmartyPants

Well, you added that last part on your own.

Sorry, I should've said "to expand on..."

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My question is this: What if Al Gore had carried his own state, or any other state worth 4 or more electoral votes?

He would win? I haven't studies all the margins and stuff to where I can say off the top of my head. It's pretty sad Gore didn't take Tennessee. Bush got his own state easy, and his brother's as well. Gore couldn't even get the first. Democrats should be blaming Gore for running a sub-par campaign, conceding the race early, and/or for failing to pull the right strings to at least carry Tennessee. Because as we have seen, it doesn't matter if you steal a state, so long as you can keep it slightly unprovable and sneak it in just before the deadline. If you lose a state for lack of proactive measures, it's your own dumb fault.

[Caustic Logic]

Oooh, oooh, another article with more details
Again, it's Greg Palast, but from Salon in Dec 2000
http://archive.salon.com/politics/fe...ile/print.html

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In the 10 counties contacted by Salon, use of the central voter file seemed to vary wildly. Some found the list too unreliable and didn't use it at all. But most counties appear to have used the file as a resource to purge names from their voter rolls, with some counties making little -- or no -- effort at all to alert the "purged" voters. Counties that did their best to vet the file discovered a high level of errors, with as many as 15 percent of names incorrectly identified as felons.

[In the later Unprecedented video, Palast claims "AT LEAST" fifteen percent.]

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Etta Rosado, spokeswoman for the Volusia County Department of Elections, said the county essentially accepted the file at face value, did nothing to confirm the accuracy of it and doesn't inform citizens ahead of time that they have been dropped from the voter rolls.

[Volusia County 2000 pop 443,343 (wiki) 77% NH white 10.5% black]

Sancho in Leon County has different numbers in this piece - in the video he mentions a list of 690 where only 33 were later confirmed as felons.

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Using the information received in January, Sancho sent 200 letters to county voters, by regular mail, telling them they had been identified by the state as having committed a felony and would not be allowed to vote. They were given 30 days to respond if there was an error. "They had the burden of proof," he says. He says 20 people proved that they did not belong on the list, and a handful of angry phone calls followed on Election Day. "Some people threatened to sue us," he said, "but we haven't had any lawyers calling yet."

Sounds like two different lists, one 200 long the other almost 700.

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Leon County used the central voter file sent in January 2000 to clean up its voter rolls, but set aside the one it received in July. According to Thomas James, the information systems officer in the county election office, the list came too late for the information to be processed.

It was apparently the second unused one that was allegedly 95% wrong while the first was only somewhat over 10% off, and sent at the last minute, with note enough time to re-instate hundreds of mistaken purges.

Others:

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Hillsborough County's elections supervisor, Pam Iorio, tried to make sure that that the bugs in the system didn't keep anyone from voting. All 3,258 county residents who were identified as possible felons on the central voter file sent by the state in June were sent a certified letter informing them that their voting rights were in jeopardy. Of that number, 551 appealed their status, and 245 of those appeals were successful.

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Many Orange County voters never got the chance to appeal in any form. Condrun noted that about one-third of the letters, which the county sent out by regular mail, were returned to the office marked undeliverable. She attributed the high rate of incorrect addresses to the age of the information sent by DBT, some of which was close to 20 years old, she said.

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no figures for how many voters were able to successfully appeal their designation as felons.

for Orange and Miami-Dade.

[Klimax]

Originally Posted by Caustic Logic

It was apparently the second unused one that was allegedly 95% wrong while the first was only somewhat over 10% off, and sent at the last minute, with note enough time to re-instate hundreds of mistaken purges.

Was that other reviewed after elections? And is result (verified) available?

And sentence appears to be bit awkard. Which one was the "last-minute" and if that second had large errors and yet wasn't used,then where is "not enough time"?

Thank you.

[SmartyPants]

Originally Posted by Caustic Logic

Sorry, I should've said "to expand on..."



He would win? I haven't studies all the margins and stuff to where I can say off the top of my head. It's pretty sad Gore didn't take Tennessee. Bush got his own state easy, and his brother's as well. Gore couldn't even get the first. Democrats should be blaming Gore for running a sub-par campaign, conceding the race early, and/or for failing to pull the right strings to at least carry Tennessee. Because as we have seen, it doesn't matter if you steal a state, so long as you can keep it slightly unprovable and sneak it in just before the deadline. If you lose a state for lack of proactive measures, it's your own dumb fault.

Not only would he win, but the Florida controversy becomes a moot point. Obviously you need to win more than one state to steal an entire election, knowing, of course, that the 2000 election was going to be close and delivering Florida would a blow to whichever side lost it. Nevertheless, Gore wins any number of other winnable states such as Missouri, Tennessee, New Hampshire, etc, and he would've been President.

When presented with what we both know is obvious, does it become a more far-fetched to have a "stolen" election? I think so.

[Kritikos]

Originally Posted by Caustic Logic

[In the later Unprecedented video, Palast claims "AT LEAST" fifteen percent.]

See Palast's book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (2002), chapter 1, "Jim Crow in Cyberspace: The Unreported Story of How They Fixed the Vote in Florida." Palast says at the opening of the chapter that he has "two silvery CD-ROM disks right out of the office computers of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris" containing the information on 57,000 people purged from the state voter lists for being convicted felons (p. 11). After giving an example of one person listed as having a date of conviction in 2007 (the disks would date from 2000), he says: "At least 90.2 percent of those on this 'scrub' list, targeted to lose their civil rights, are innocent. Notably, over half—about 54 percent—are Black and Hispanic voters. Overwhelmingly, it is a list of Democrats" (p. 12). This figure includes not only people falsely identified as convicted felons but also, according to Palast, 40,000 Florida residents who had served time for felonies in other states where felons do not lose their voting rights and who therefore, under Florida law, could not be legally deprived of their right to vote in Florida (pp. 34–36; the book reproduces an article by Palast published in The Nation in the issue of February 5, 2001, but on the magazine's Web site the article is available only to subscribers).

The sample from which the figure of 90.2 percent is derived is the list of supposed felons given by the state to the Leon County election board. The election board investigated all 694 names on the list and determined that only 34 were actually ineligible to vote in Florida. Palast, after mentioning that he used to teach a course in statistics at Indiana University, then says (p. 46):

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The statewide list of felons is "homogeneous" as to its accuracy. Leon County provides us with a sample large enough to give us a "confidence interval" of 4.87 at a "confidence level" of 99 percent. Are you following me, class? In other words, we can be 99 percent certain that at least 90.2 percent of the names on the Florida list are not felons—52,000 wrongly tagged for removal.

Things look even worse when you start looking into the unsavory record of ChoicePoint, the large corporation that owned Database Technologies, the company hired by the State of Florida to compile the felon lists. Palast reports that ChoicePoint vice president James Lee stated over the telephone that the state of Florida "wanted there to be more names than were actually verified as being a convicted felon" on the list (p. 57). ChoicePoint representatives denied that race was used as a "search criterion" in compiling the purge lists. As Palast explains, this is quite true: race was not used as a search criterion; it was used as a match criterion (pp. 59–60).

[Brainster]

Note that we have not discussed John Fund's book on Democratic voter fraud in Florida. There's an aspect of "both sides were doing it" that is getting ignored. What about this story?

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Several days after presidential votes were tallied in what has become the hotbed of Florida’s post-election confusion, police in Palm Beach County confiscated a ballot-box mechanism from the car of a well-known local Democrat.
The mechanism, called a “Votomatic,” did not contain any ballots. It’s a device used on some types of ballot boxes to punch votes through ballot cards, which are then tallied by computers.
According to a police report filed at the Palm Beach County sheriff’s office and obtained by ABCNEWS, Irving Slosberg, 53, pulled the mechanism from his car and handed it over to police on Nov. 11 after denying to a county government employee that he had it.

Palm Beach county had a very high rate of "overvotes" compared to the rest of the state, ballots where more than one hole was punched for the presidential race. The idea is, if you want to steal the race, you punch a whole bunch of ballots for Gore. If the individual ballot was already for Gore, nothing happens. If the individual ballot was for Bush, then there are two votes, and the ballot is spoiled and not counted.

[Kritikos]

Originally Posted by Brainster

Note that we have not discussed John Fund's book on Democratic voter fraud in Florida. There's an aspect of "both sides were doing it" that is getting ignored.

Fund's book is not primarily about Florida but about voter fraud in general. It has been several years since I read it, but the impression that I recollect getting from it is that the author makes a good case against "motor voter" registration arrangements as facilitating bogus voter registrations. I do not recollect his making much of a case for the widespread occurrence of voter fraud. But, as I said, it has been several years since I read the book, and these recollections (to say nothing of the original impressions) may be biased.

[Caustic Logic]

Originally Posted by Klimax

Was that other reviewed after elections? And is result (verified) available?

And sentence appears to be bit awkard. Which one was the "last-minute" and if that second had large errors and yet wasn't used,then where is "not enough time"?

Sorry that did come out wrong. I'm guessing the larger list with 690 names came in July, since he acted on the January info, sent only 200 letters, and got only 20 to confirm an error. If he checked the second list and found it ,

Dang, a few comments! Unfortunately it's Friday, my busy day, so I can't absorb muh til tonight.
Kritikos: Cool, I knew he had a book too, and now I remember its name. I appreciate the supporting info and now it's 90% all around?! It keeps getting worse the longer Palast looks at it - a sign of his initial caution or of deepening error? I'll read this stuff closely later - great stuff!

On-the ground realities are key tho - how many voters purged didn't get the warnings or chance to reinstate?

Brainster: I mentioned Fund inderectly in the OP. That site quoted his book, and it mentioned nothing about the voter rolls, only talked about cops and the recount. If the book is so, then it's strategically slanted. Interesting story on the machine, sounds odd. Both sides are capable and may be guilty, in FL or elsewhere, and that's a problem for Democracy in general. You say both sides do it? Is that an admission then that the Bushes were trying to steal?

[Kestrel]

Originally Posted by Brainster

Note that we have not discussed John Fund's book on Democratic voter fraud in Florida. There's an aspect of "both sides were doing it" that is getting ignored. What about this story?



Palm Beach county had a very high rate of "overvotes" compared to the rest of the state, ballots where more than one hole was punched for the presidential race. The idea is, if you want to steal the race, you punch a whole bunch of ballots for Gore. If the individual ballot was already for Gore, nothing happens. If the individual ballot was for Bush, then there are two votes, and the ballot is spoiled and not counted.

To start with, you don't need a Votamatic machine to vote with that punch card ballot system. The punches are already perforated. Votes can be entered using a paper clip or other simple tools to remove the chad. In fact, that is how absentee voters are instructed to enter votes using these ballots.

But to a layman unfamiliar with how Votamatic punch cards work, the story of someone having a "special" machine to punch ballots is fodder for a great conspiracy theory.

The conspiracy theory also ignores how election materials are handled. Voted ballots are not just left lying around in the office where anyone could come by and alter them. They are kept in boxes with numbered seals that must be broken to open the box. The numbers on these seals are checked when the boxes are opened for counting. Counting is done only when representatives of at least the two main political parties are present.

[Minadin]

I think he was talking about pre-punching the ballots, rather than post-punching.

[Caustic Logic]

Sorry again Klimax
that time it was my girlfriend's TV show and the rush to leave.
To finish, I'm just guessing the larger list with 690 names came in July, since supervisor Sancho acted on the January info, sent only 200 letters (presumably around 200 names), and got only 20 to confirm an error. If he checked a list and found it almost all wrong, it's more likely the July one, probably only studied after the election, and probably after Palast's Dec 4 article (no 95% error mentioned this early). If so, it had no effect on the election but would have been a major mess if it were used. It would also raise the question of why there were suddenly 490 more exclusions in six months in a county of only 150,000.

Kritikos:

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The sample from which the figure of 90.2 percent is derived is the list of supposed felons given by the state to the Leon County election board. The election board investigated all 694 names on the list and determined that only 34 were actually ineligible to vote in Florida. Palast, after mentioning that he used to teach a course in statistics at Indiana University, then says (p. 46):

Quote:
The statewide list of felons is "homogeneous" as to its accuracy. Leon County provides us with a sample large enough to give us a "confidence interval" of 4.87 at a "confidence level" of 99 percent. Are you following me, class? In other words, we can be 99 percent certain that at least 90.2 percent of the names on the Florida list are not felons—52,000 wrongly tagged for removal.

Okay, so the at least 90.2% is from Leon county, again. That's sancho's county, the one we've been on. In the video Sancho says he identified 33, here it's 34, leaving an error rate of 95.1%, - 4.9% "confidence interval" = 90.2% orgreater statewide. One oddity is how sure he is here that 90-95 is the right range when he said in the video statewide was "AT LEAST 15%"? Hadn't he also taught these classes and known these formulas at that time? Hmmm...

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ChoicePoint representatives denied that race was used as a "search criterion" in compiling the purge lists. As Palast explains, this is quite true: race was not used as a search criterion; it was used as a match criterion (pp. 59–60).

FWIW USCCR's report, ch. 5 states

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The Division of Elections instructed DBT Online on the information it was to use in the data processing/data matching procedure.[32] George Bruder maintained that the “color blind” search criteria used to create a list of voters with a potential problem included name, date of birth, and social security number.[33] He claimed that neither race nor party affiliation was used to create the list.

Kestrel: That story sounds odd to me too, and your reasons for doubting it are convincing. For example, this line doesn't sound right:

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Irving Slosberg, 53, pulled the mechanism from his car and handed it over to police on Nov. 11 after denying to a county government employee that he had it.

No I don't have it, here cops, here it is. What happened in between? Did he just hand them a "votomatic" straightened paperclip? Anyway, I plan to check out Fund's book once I get some old business settled with the county library, tomorrow I hope.

Klimax, Kritikos, and Kestrel, why are there three of you with K names? That's creeping me out!

[Caustic Logic]

From brainster's link, John Fund

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With its hanging chads, butterfly ballots and Supreme Court intervention, the Florida fiasco compelled this country to confront an ugly reality:

That he fails to even mention these real problems we're discussing here. He's all about election manipulation and systemic errors harming democracy and not one mention in the article of this widespread disenfranchisement? Now I'll grant he probably makes plenty of factual points, that the system is troubled (not that the solutions haven't made it worse), that Democrats and liberals and illegal aliens and etc. are sometimes guilty of election fraud, ballot stuffing, what have you. But he's got "2000" mentioned 11 times, Florida 9, usually together. In these spots he mentions problems like "the illegal votes of felons and aliens" but not ones like this;

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if voters’ names did not appear on the rolls, they were not allowed to vote, even if they presented valid identification.

But he'll point out

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Many of the suggested improvements, such as requiring voters to show ID at the polls, are bitterly opposed.

Example - all mentions of "roll"

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upgrade technology, cull voter rolls and enhance training[listed improvements]
...
More insidious are flawed voter rolls, voter ignorance, lackadaisical law enforcement and a shortage of trained volunteers. [flawed is vague - in what way?]
...
We're going to bring challenge to those people that disenroll people [in a quote from John Kerry, in Florida specifically, said "before a single ballot was cast, counted or disputed," as part of the problem of liberal election by litigation, ]
...
The "Motor Voter Law," the first piece of legislation signed into law by President Clinton upon entering office, imposed fraud-friendly rules [...] making it difficult to purge "deadwood" voters (those who have died or moved away) [or have names similar to felons?]
...
In 2001, the voter rolls in many American cities included more names than the U.S. Census listed as the total number of residents over age eighteen. Philadelphia's voter rolls, for instance, have jumped 24 percent since 1995 at the same time that the city's population has declined by 13 percent.

His take on voter rolls and their danger to Democracy is clear: they're too big, less names is good, purge purge purge. Dangers of overdoing it? Apparently none.

The guy's a Republican hack - I'll bet $1 right now his book spends pages discussing the dead people that voted in FL in '97 without one mention of the many living citizens who weren't allowed to in 2000.

And anyway, he dances right around this issue so well, I'm gonna go ahead and call his opinions irrelevant or worse.

[Caustic Logic]

Originally Posted by Kestrel

The Media Consortium Florida Ballot Project found that a full recount of all Florida ballots statewide would have given a narrow election victory to Al Gore.

Can you believe i was so eager to believe you walked into my clever trap I though you said "Bush" instead of Gore? But it was such fun to imagine another debunker just walked in and said "media group recount, Bush won."

Ballot issues, how counted, the different chads, are all important issues too when dealing with such (depressignly) narrow differences, that different counting "scenarios" could easily yield victory to either side - both have been found to have truly won. All this stuff is clearly relevant, but again we'd be dealing with votes cast.

So we're looking at vote fraud; extras added in, and I'd guess there were some, and those excluded from even entering the system. The "no chads" are somehow the least talked about ballot problem! Perhaps the two manipulations were as balanced as the votes cast, again leaving us depressingly divided, uninspired, and uniformly deceitful? Luckily we can never know for sure.

[Kestrel]

Originally Posted by Minadin

I think he was talking about pre-punching the ballots, rather than post-punching.

Pre-punching Votamatic ballots has a similar problem. On election day, individual ballots are taken from a pad and handed to the voter by an election judge. This is done in full view of the voter, other judges at the polling place and other voters standing in line. If anything was already punched out, it would be visible to these witnesses.

[Caustic Logic]

Originally Posted by Kestrel

Pre-punching Votamatic ballots has a similar problem. On election day, individual ballots are taken from a pad and handed to the voter by an election judge. This is done in full view of the voter, other judges at the polling place and other voters standing in line. If anything was already punched out, it would be visible to these witnesses.

And again that doesn't seem to work. Hmmm...

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When Slosberg was asked by Denise Cote, director of public affairs for Palm Beach County if he would return the votamatic, Slosberg became confrontational and denied having the mechanism.

"I asked Mr. Slosberg to return it to me, and he said no, he intended to use it," Cote told ABCNEWS.com. She said Slosberg did not say how he wanted to use it and he declined to say how he had obtained it.

http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin...ames/read/5449

Strange behavior. What did he intend to do with it, even when he was found out? Why insist on keeping up until the police arrive to take it? It was during the hand-count, he intended to use it, but:

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When told of the incident, Palm Beach County's supervisor of elections, Theresa Lefore, declined to press charges, according to the report. She noted that this incident did occur during the hand count of the presidential election and Lefore stated she did not wish to pursue further this matter at this time due to extenuating circumstances...

Now I'm curious how Lefore handled Palm Beach County's purge lists... Did this Slosberg guy ever go to jail, or was he just a pretend criminal?

[Caustic Logic]

USCCR ch 2 - ouch.

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According to Ms. Ramsey, the phone lines remained busy for three and a half hours—a delay she had never experienced during her time as a poll worker. Ultimately, the poll workers refused to allow her to vote because they could not verify her voter status.

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Maria DeSoto, a poll worker in Palm Beach County, testified that she used her personal cellular phone to call the supervisor of elections office all day, but was only able to get through two or three times over the course of 12 hours. Ms. DeSoto added that if voters’ names did not appear on the rolls, they were not allowed to vote, even if they presented valid identification.

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She returned to the precinct later that afternoon and was allowed to vote only after she discovered that her name had been misspelled on the rolls.

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Susan and Joel Newman arrived at the Water Works Department in Palm Beach to vote at approximately 6:15 p.m. Upon their arrival, they noticed
"[T]he iron gates at the entrance were closed, preventing entrance . . . Several cars pulled into the entrance lane and tried to attract attention by honking horns and ringing an intercom. We waited 5–10 minutes but no one showed up and the gates remained locked. We drove off thinking we were wrong about the closing time—that the polls must have closed at 6:00. A few blocks away we spotted a police car and pulled up to check. He verified that the polls were open until 7:00. We complained about the situation we had just experienced and he told us to go to the Board of Elections (some 20 minutes away). We drove there and met a policeman as we entered the building. He listened to our complaint and politely told us there was nothing he could do. We would have to register our complaint with the [supervisor] of elections, Theresa LePore. Unfortunately, he told us her office had closed at 5 p.m. and her staff went home [and] we would have to complain the following day. We left, realizing that we would have no opportunity to vote this year.[19]

Yeah, they went home at 5:00. It's not like they had a backlog of calls to take on election day, people requesting permission to vote, anything like that...

[Caustic Logic]

Crickets. Alright, something fresh then, a well-documented example of scrub-list error I haven't even mentioned yet.

DBT's first list in January 2000 featured app. 65,700 names of felons to purge, and app 8000 of these were quickly found to be in error. It was probably the systemic nature of this block that tippped off county officials processing complaints - all were convicted of misdemeanors in Texas.
DBT double-checked their sources and found they made a mistake - in trusting the data supplied to them by officials in Texas. DBT announced the error and the fix in May, and by June had a new list out to the counties with 57,700ish felons rather than 65,700. Thus one single block error had provided 11% of the original "deadwood" list to clear out, but that one was also caught.

Now, mis-categorizing misdemeanors as felonies can happen by mistake. It can't do so with 8,000 cases one-at-a-time but only if it's done at the data-block level - one error repeated on all files. That this block error was made just as a company was specifically asking Texas about felons who needed to be barred from voting in the upcoming election is troubling. The worst of all of course is that the Governor of Texas was one of the candidates, and this "accidental" boost was being handed to his brother's people, perhaps well-prepared to maximize the edge.

My question is: can anyone here honestly tell me this is not a suspicious pattern worth considering a conspiracy over? I'm willing to consider Democrat counter-measures, like Slosberg's machine theft or the dead vote as it worked in 2000, or whatever. I suspect when we compare scale, however, the State has the advantage and they leaned Bush.

[Caustic Logic]

Alright, it would appear I have given this thread teh plagues.

There is at least one good counter-point that I've run across vis-a-vis the effects of the scrub lists in the actual voting. Found a site with a decent summation
http://www.davekopel.org/Terror/Fift...Election_Night

Quote:

The overbreadth of the purge was well-known in Florida before the election. As a result, election officials in 20 of Florida's counties ignored the purge list entirely. In these counties, convicted felons were allowed to vote. Also according to the Post, thousands of felons were improperly allowed to vote in the 20 non-purging counties. Analysis by Abigail Thernstrom and Russell G. Redenbaugh, dissenting from a report by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, suggests that about 5,600 felons voted illegally in Florida. (The Thernstrom/Redenbaugh dissent explains why little credit should be given to the majority report, which was produced by flagrantly ignoring data.)

When allowed to vote, felons vote approximately 69 percent Democratic, according to a study in the American Sociological Review. Therefore, if the thousands of felons in the non-purging 20 counties had not been illegally allowed to vote, it is likely that Bush's statewide margin would have been substantially larger.

For the record, failing to purge the vote lists is illegal. There were real felons on each list, at least two, wrongly registered and voting D. 20 counties out of 67 let the net down altogether. Only one I'm aware of, Valusia, did the opposite and used the list intact with no efforts to alert anyone or correct anything.

Does anyone know if the state pressed charges against any of the count election supervisors?

I still haven't read the Thernstrom/Redenbaugh dissent, but it is interesting, as Brainster noted, it's not at the USCCR site.

[Kritikos]

I've been following your posts; I just have no new information to add.

This stuff from Dave Kopel certainly complicates the picture. Now I suppose we have to check his facts too. . . .

[Caustic Logic]

Originally Posted by Kritikos

I've been following your posts; I just have no new information to add.

This stuff from Dave Kopel certainly complicates the picture. Now I suppose we have to check his facts too. . . .

Word, thanks. It's a decent source too - he had a shot at debunking the overall voter purge list and came up with this:

Quote:

There were two major problems with the purge. First, several states allow felons to vote once they have completed their sentences. Some of these ex-felons moved to Florida and were, according to a court decision, eligible to vote. Florida improperly purged these immigrant felons.

Second, the comprehensive effort to identify all convicted felons led to a large number of false positives, in which persons with, for example, the same name as a convicted felon, were improperly purged. Purged voters were, in most cases, notified months before the election and given an opportunity to appeal, but the necessity to file an appeal was in itself a barrier which probably discouraged some legitimate, non-felon citizens from voting. According to the Palm Beach Post, at least 1,100 people were improperly purged.

That's a pretty low number he settled on there. Not sure of thee Post's methods, but at least he doesn't danca around the evident fact that these were improper decisions. And he's TRYING to shoot down Moore's points.

Now what this affects really is the outcome of the vote, and NOT the intent behind the scrub list construction. It's possible officials at dept of Elections conspired to drop voters, and this ignoring of the lists in 20 counties was just backlash from that effort.

Even if there were only, say, 2,000 non-felons barred, that's about 1200 Gore votes down and 800 less for Bush. If as the dissent found 5600 felons voted illegally, that maybe 3360 plus for Gore to 2240 up for Bush. Either way the end result we know is the one that comes out 500+ for Bush by some counting methods and for Gore by others. IF these two scenarios are true, Bush just barely beat a backlash fraud surge that nearly cost him Florida.

And even if these are true, the patterns up until now STILL indicate a conspiracy going into election season.

[Klimax]

Originally Posted by Caustic Logic

Crickets. Alright, something fresh then, a well-documented example of scrub-list error I haven't even mentioned yet.

DBT's first list in January 2000 featured app. 65,700 names of felons to purge, and app 8000 of these were quickly found to be in error. It was probably the systemic nature of this block that tippped off county officials processing complaints - all were convicted of misdemeanors in Texas.
DBT double-checked their sources and found they made a mistake - in trusting the data supplied to them by officials in Texas. DBT announced the error and the fix in May, and by June had a new list out to the counties with 57,700ish felons rather than 65,700. Thus one single block error had provided 11% of the original "deadwood" list to clear out, but that one was also caught.

Now, mis-categorizing misdemeanors as felonies can happen by mistake. It can't do so with 8,000 cases one-at-a-time but only if it's done at the data-block level - one error repeated on all files. That this block error was made just as a company was specifically asking Texas about felons who needed to be barred from voting in the upcoming election is troubling. The worst of all of course is that the Governor of Texas was one of the candidates, and this "accidental" boost was being handed to his brother's people, perhaps well-prepared to maximize the edge.

My question is: can anyone here honestly tell me this is not a suspicious pattern worth considering a conspiracy over? I'm willing to consider Democrat counter-measures, like Slosberg's machine theft or the dead vote as it worked in 2000, or whatever. I suspect when we compare scale, however, the State has the advantage and they leaned Bush.

Could be simple yet bad mistake in SQL select-update command can screw data very easly as one of administrators of Einstein@home discovered.(marking some units as cancelled he made one character error causing slect satement taking (nearly)all units.
And if there was sort of batching operation for more tables(files) and no subsequent check for correctness(not suprising...) it could explaing this type of error.

Just adding a possibility. (But then why manual update in cyclus? Or critical missed bug in software??? ...)

[Caustic Logic]

Thanks Klimax. I appreciate any and all feedback on this. It's a complex issue, I'm finding to my surprise. LOL.

Adding to the above about Ms. lePore, election supervisor for Palm Beach county - she's also of course the designer/appprover of design for the famous butterfly ballot that erased quite a few Gore votes. That also didn't match the sample ballot they sent to people to practice and by law it's supposed to. You aren't supposed to confuse people at the last minute. She's lso the person who decided to stay with the votomatic and to not press charges against the Slosberg guy. So she also had polling places closing early, phone lines jammed all day as elsewhere with calls to correct problems, a misspelled name, several voters turned away for not being on the rolls, and LePore shut down the office and went home early.

However I'm no original genius for being suspicious - the Miami Herald Report book I'm reading explains she's already been harassed plenty, lost weight from stress and threats, mostly about the ballot design and lack of guidance/warning. You don't get mad like that if you think it was an accident. Also the vicious rumors about her being a stewardess on Adnan Kashoggi's airplane were untrue - the Herald found she was just a friend of Kashoggi's who dated one of his pilots. So anyway, sorry for bringing it up.

[Caustic Logic]

I didn't want to leave it on quite that note, and I'm not arguing anything against LePore, it's just these weird things pop out and I can't ignore them. When it starts tying into Kashoggi and from there to Iran-Contra and then to... I have to recognize a rabbit hole and say no thanks.

Anyway, this issue is proving hopelessly complicated and impossible to verify all around. Election systems sucked, especially in Florida in 2001. People will cheat when they think they can get away with it. I feel I've made a sloppy but compelling case for stateside fraud to snag those 25 electoral votes, while a counter-force of pro-Gore fraud (presumably more decentralized) worked the other way. So nothing proven but I hope with all this at least someone out there will be less flippant in stating that Bush won fair and square and the 2000 election CT is debunked.

[zaphod2016]

Originally Posted by Klimax

Could be simple yet bad mistake in SQL select-update command can screw data very easly

Very true, however, wouldn't they hold a back-up copy (copies)?

And wouldn't they notice the "XXX,XXX records changed" message, and think: "whooops- that can't be right..."

Of course, this assumes a competent IT staff, and due dilligence on the part of everyone who had access to the data.

[Caustic Logic]

Originally Posted by zaphod2016

Very true, however, wouldn't they hold a back-up copy (copies)?

And wouldn't they notice the "XXX,XXX records changed" message, and think: "whooops- that can't be right..."

Of course, this assumes a competent IT staff, and due dilligence on the part of everyone who had access to the data.

Oh man, what are you, the plausibility police? We can't know what was purposeful or accidental. [/JREF fundamentalist]

[Caustic Logic]

Apologies

to the forum: above should be [/anti-CT fundamentalist]

to Zaphod and Klimax for sarcasm and/or failing to delve into this possible mass error and its details. It just seems too absurd to me, but I'm glad someone else is here to think about the things I can't be bothered with.

to Joey Donuts for glossing right past your post on page 1. Oh, we're only on page 2? Feels longer to me.

Originally Posted by JoeyDonuts

I'm sure that this was investigated thoroughly by the DNC. If it was, in fact, stolen - go back to one of the litmus tests for conspiracy theories.

How many people would it take to pull this off? How many people would have to keep quiet about it? The Bush Administration wasn't good about keeping any of their misdeeds and blunders under wraps - wiretapping, Valerie Plame, GITMO, etc.

If there was proof the election was "stolen" I'm fairly sure Democratic Party officials would have found it and raised the roof right off the Supreme Court. They were chomping at the bit to get their man in.

No links for ya, sorry - only my two cents on the matter.

It's past my bedtime.

It's a good couple of questions - broad-brush but worthy of addressing. On numbers of those involved, we have to consider not just quantity but quality of involvement. The Governors Bush, some loyal key lackeys, FL SoS Harris, DoE Roberts, DBT's passive willingness to make bad lists for big bucks - from there all that's needed is a little luck and too little time to correct the errors all, and a few county election supervisors willing to play their parts would sure help but not be necessary.

Then, the 'conspiracy of silence...' I don't want to go right to the old 'there's only one party with two wings' simplification, but... you could say 'well, they didn't make a stink because the claims aren't true.' But think - why should that stop them? There's a confusing but compelling case to be made, as I've done here, and they could have too but didn't.

What does anyone else say? Why did Gore and the Democrats not push harder on the election when things were so close it was down to Florida of all places and that barely and with allegations all over?

[Klimax]

Originally Posted by zaphod2016

Very true, however, wouldn't they hold a back-up copy (copies)?

And wouldn't they notice the "XXX,XXX records changed" message, and think: "whooops- that can't be right..."

Of course, this assumes a competent IT staff, and due dilligence on the part of everyone who had access to the data.

If manual then you don't have to notice that. However in case of application itself then it would be bad bug and then they don't have to get number of updated records.

However we are talkin about human factor and we all know how reliable it is...

Originally Posted by Caustic Logic

Apologies
to Zaphod and Klimax for sarcasm and/or failing to delve into this possible mass error and its details. It just seems too absurd to me, but I'm glad someone else is here to think about the things I can't be bothered with.

Not absud and since it happend already at least once,then why admins for state system should be immune?(Or programmers...)

As for sarcasm,why not? I like it. (Even if I am target...)

Quote:

What does anyone else say? Why did Gore and the Democrats not push harder on the election when things were so close it was down to Florida of all places and that barely and with allegations all over?

Maybe they were afraid of revealing their own secrets?

[fezzic]

Originally Posted by Caustic Logic

What does anyone else say? Why did Gore and the Democrats not push harder on the election when things were so close it was down to Florida of all places and that barely and with allegations all over?

I thought they tried plenty hard. They fought for recount after recount with (to my understanding) changed criteria for what constituted a valid vote for each recount to try and get more votes counted. Until they were shutdown by the SCOTUS, they seemed bent on continuing the recounts until they got the result they wanted or the electoral college vote date arrived or the Florida SC decided that enough was enough (or that continuing the recounts would make Florida and the SC the laughing stock of the country). There was not a lot more they would have done.

[Kritikos]

Originally Posted by fezzic

I thought they tried plenty hard. They fought for recount after recount with (to my understanding) changed criteria for what constituted a valid vote for each recount to try and get more votes counted. Until they were shutdown by the SCOTUS, they seemed bent on continuing the recounts until they got the result they wanted or the electoral college vote date arrived or the Florida SC decided that enough was enough (or that continuing the recounts would make Florida and the SC the laughing stock of the country). There was not a lot more they would have done.

I'm sure that someone will correct me if I am mistaken, but it is my understanding that the standards for the counting of votes were set by the counties; that presidential campaigns had no say whatever on those standards; and that Gore's lawyers never attempted -- what would have been a legal absurdity -- to change them. The delays in the counting of votes were the result of Republican obstruction, not of any attempt on the part of Gore's lawyers to prolong the counting process. If you have evidence to support your claims, I will accept correction; but as far as I know, your version of events is very far from the facts.

[Caustic Logic]

Originally Posted by Klimax

Not absud and since it happend already at least once,then why admins for state system should be immune?(Or programmers...)

Well, as soon as you can ID the system they used and common errors to that system, we could discuss plausibility. But speaking generally, they should have had checks against whatever error was likely. Absurd might be a strong word here, but it's the right side to err on I think.

Quote:

As for sarcasm,why not? I like it. (Even if I am target...)

You're alright dude.

Quote:

Maybe they were afraid of revealing their own secrets?

That appeals to my cynicism. Could be they had their own organized fraud going on too.

[/quote]

Originally Posted by fezzic

I thought they tried plenty hard. They fought for recount after recount with (to my understanding) changed criteria for what constituted a valid vote for each recount to try and get more votes counted. Until they were shutdown by the SCOTUS, they seemed bent on continuing the recounts until they got the result they wanted or the electoral college vote date arrived or the Florida SC decided that enough was enough (or that continuing the recounts would make Florida and the SC the laughing stock of the country). There was not a lot more they would have done.

In terms of the re-count, yes they did push that, more awkwardly than hard, so it seems like they tried harder than they did. However, I was referring to the possible mass disenfranchisement of voters. I don't even know if there's a way to charge that and get the State's entire vote tossed out, or what other options there'd be. But the Democrats never did push on THIS issue at the time, it was all about counting votes cast.

And there are plenty of issues there too. I'm not up on all the particulars, but different counting methods really do matter. I'm not sure what standards were agreed for hand counts, but AFAIC whatever method of deciding voter intent you must accept the most different chad. If there's one dimpled and hanging but still connected, and nothing else, guess who they voted for? To toss that is to read voter intent as leaving that page (President?) blank, and just bumping the Gore spot by accident. If there's two punched... well maybe you could dismiss Buchanan, but that's a little trickier. Who's to say he didn't just get 1000times more votes here... This isn't my focus here but that was my .02 on it.

[Caustic Logic]

Originally Posted by zaphod2016

Very true, however, wouldn't they hold a back-up copy (copies)?

And wouldn't they notice the "XXX,XXX records changed" message, and think: "whooops- that can't be right..."

Of course, this assumes a competent IT staff, and due dilligence on the part of everyone who had access to the data.

Hey Zaphod, don't you live in Florida? I was wondering if you had any special thoughts on this subject from your own experience?

[Kestrel]

Originally Posted by fezzic

I thought they tried plenty hard. They fought for recount after recount with (to my understanding) changed criteria for what constituted a valid vote for each recount to try and get more votes counted. Until they were shutdown by the SCOTUS, they seemed bent on continuing the recounts until they got the result they wanted or the electoral college vote date arrived or the Florida SC decided that enough was enough (or that continuing the recounts would make Florida and the SC the laughing stock of the country). There was not a lot more they would have done.

Gore never asked for recount after recount. He asked for a hand recount of ballots as specified under Florida law.

Florida law specified that a vote shall be counted as long as the "intent of the voter" was clear. The standard was not "readable by machine" or "fully punched chad" as some election officials seemed to think.

Recounts are a standard feature in elections. When the result within the margin of error for machine counting, the only proper way to determine the outcome is to count the ballots by hand.

[Kritikos]

Just to remind everyone of the findings of the Media Consortium Florida ballot project (link to PDF; cited above by Caustic), here is a text version of the summary table that appears on p. 8 of the document:

Quote:

Candidate Outcomes Based on Potential Recounts in Florida Presidential Election 2000

Review of All Ballots Statewide (Never Undertaken)

Review Method -- Winner -- Margin of Victory

Standard as set by each county Canvassing Board during their survey -- Gore -- 171 votes

Fully punched chads and limited marks on optical ballots -- Gore -- 115 votes

Any dimples or optical mark -- Gore -- 107 votes

One corner of chad detached or optical mark -- Gore -- 60 votes


Review of Limited Sets of Ballots (Initiated But Never Completed)

Review Method -- Winner -- Margin of Victory

Gore request for recounts of all ballots in Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Volusia counties -- Bush -- 225 votes

Florida Supreme Court of all undervotes statewide -- Bush -- 430 votes

Florida Supreme Court as being implemented by the counties, some of whom refused and some counted overvotes as well as undervotes -- Bush -- 493 votes

Certified Result (Official Final Count)

Recounts included from Volusia and Broward only -- Bush -- 537 votes

As Keating says in the report (pp. 7-8):

Quote:

When uncounted ballots were reviewed for potential votes, two critical findings emerged: The recount outcome did not hinge on whether dimples or other incomplete marks were counted as votes. And, because of misjudgments about what was likely on the ballots, both candidates pursued strategies that were diametrically opposite to their best interests during the recount. Any discussion of recount outcomes must note that the media consortium ballot analysis used impartial, multiple reviews of ballots and computerized application of standards, none of which would have happened in an actual hand recount. For that reason, the ballot review is a best approximation of what was on the ballots, but not a firm prediction of what would have happened in a recount.

Rather than dimples or not-dimples, the deciding factor in the recount was inclusion of all ballots or only a subset of ballots. And the deciding line was very simple — if all of the ballots were counted there were enough potential Al Gore votes to give him a victory, but any smaller subset of ballots would retain or even enlarge George W. Bush’s margin.

Another way to summarize the findings of the consortium would be this:

(1) If the Gore team had succeeded in getting hand recounts completed in the counties that it selected, the final count would have been in favor of Bush. Therefore, given the Gore team's strategy, the efforts by the Bush team to stop the manual recounts, and the ultimate decision of the supreme court in favor of those efforts, did not affect the outcome of the election.

(2) However, if there had been a manual recount of all ballots in Florida, the result would have been in favor of Gore. Under any of the contending standards of counting, Bush failed to win a plurality of votes in Florida.

So (just to relate these findings to the original topic of the thread) anyone who wants to make a case that the election was "stolen" from Gore cannot do so on the basis of the (ultimately successful) efforts of the Bush team to block the manual recounts ordered by the Gore team. Certainly one could plausibly claim that if Gore had sought a statewide manual recount, Bush's lawyers would have worked as hard to block it as they did to block the recount in selected counties; and in such a case, the success of those blocking efforts would have made the difference between a victory for Gore and a victory for Bush. Similarly, if the vote count in Broward, Miami-Dade, Volusia, and Palm Beach counties had been in favor of Gore, then the efforts of the Bush team to block those recounts would have amounted to changing the outcome of the election. But one can't convict someone of actual misconduct for what he would have done had circumstances been different.

Damned complicated business.

[fezzic]

Originally Posted by Caustic Logic

snip

In terms of the re-count, yes they did push that, more awkwardly than hard, so it seems like they tried harder than they did. However, I was referring to the possible mass disenfranchisement of voters. I don't even know if there's a way to charge that and get the State's entire vote tossed out, or what other options there'd be. But the Democrats never did push on THIS issue at the time, it was all about counting votes cast.

snip

CL, I wasn't quite sure whether you were referring to the recount effort or the larger disenfrancisement issue.

I think it was much easier to try for recounts, however many or few there actually were, than to try to have the entire State vote thrown out. Recounts can be ordered because of the closeness of the voting. I think most election experts said that the voting process always has a margin of error and the election fell within that margin.

Throwing out the whole election would be a much more serious and substantial measure and the democrats would likely have been loathed to go that route -- assuming it could be implemented in a timely manner since there was a specific deadline that would moot the tremendous effort as far as the Presidential race was concerned.

I think I'll stop now.

[Caustic Logic]

Originally Posted by fezzic

CL, I wasn't quite sure whether you were referring to the recount effort or the larger disenfrancisement issue.

I've been focussing on the latter this whole time.

Quote:

I think it was much easier to try for recounts, however many or few there actually were, than to try to have the entire State vote thrown out. Recounts can be ordered because of the closeness of the voting. I think most election experts said that the voting process always has a margin of error and the election fell within that margin.

Throwing out the whole election would be a much more serious and substantial measure and the democrats would likely have been loathed to go that route -- assuming it could be implemented in a timely manner since there was a specific deadline that would moot the tremendous effort as far as the Presidential race was concerned.

Indeed, I think they might've been looking at it like that. I don't think there is any precedent or procedure for dismissing a fraudeulent statewide vote. I guess they could order it re-done, but with that much pressure, that could get weird too. Sucky. They should have something, in case some state ever just deletes all of one pay's votes or something. But there'd be no good answer aside from counting the votes cast.

Which brings us to the stuff Kritikos posted:
Excellent job digging into that "damned complicated business."

Quote:

because of misjudgments about what was likely on the ballots, both candidates pursued strategies that were diametrically opposite to their best interests during the recount.

Interesting irony, that. Much of it went over my head though.

Quote:

I think I'll stop now.

Lol. I think I'm at about my brain limit myself, barring some re-charge. Feel free to keep on if you like though.

[Klimax]

Originally Posted by Caustic Logic

Well, as soon as you can ID the system they used and common errors to that system, we could discuss plausibility. But speaking generally, they should have had checks against whatever error was likely. Absurd might be a strong word here, but it's the right side to err on I think.

And was it likely? There are all kinds of corner-case bug which are unkown until they happen. As for ID,how can I get to it? I am not USAian and I live in Europe,so how? As for plausibility it is so far same as any other,since it cannot be preemtivly ruled out...
(Why? How can you know there is no such bug? )

Quote:

That appeals to my cynicism. Could be they had their own organized fraud going on too.

Take a look at my own country and you'll see why neither system fail nor fraud and corruption doesn't suprise.And why I take sometimes this view...

[Kritikos]

Originally Posted by Caustic Logic

Interesting irony, that. Much of it went over my head though.

How so? Keating's point was just that the Gore team was seeking, and the Bush team trying to prevent, manual recounts in selected counties, while the result of those recounts would have been to confirm Bush's victory.