Home > Voting glitches haunt statistician

Voting glitches haunt statistician

by Open-Publishing - Saturday 5 March 2005
28 comments

Edito Elections-Elected Governments USA

Brian Joiner wishes he could "just get over it."

He wishes he could ignore the thousands of reported voting irregularities that occurred in the Nov. 2 election, accept the fact that George W. is going to be around another four years and just hope that we haven’t created even more enemies or fallen even deeper into debt by the time 2008 rolls around.

"I’m sure the Republicans would like me to forget all that stuff, just like they wanted everyone to forget all the strange things that happened in the 2000 election," the retired 67-year-old UW-Madison statistics professor said this week.

Well, sorry guys, but he can’t.

There were, Joiner says, too many things that occurred on Nov. 2 that "still don’t smell right." He can’t just pretend everything is rosy, he says, when he reads that Steven Freeman, a respected University of Pennsylvania professor, says the odds of the exit polls in the critical states of Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania all being so far off were about 662,000 to 1.

And since no one in the mainstream media has yet to provide a plausible explanation for such discrepancies - "investigative reporting essentially is just dead in this country," he groans - Joiner and many of his colleagues are going to continue to speak out and demand that government leaders provide some answers.

So that, at the very least, we don’t find ourselves in the same situation in 2008.

But if the irregularities are as suspicious and troubling as he claims, why aren’t John Kerry and other top Democrats making similar demands?

"Boy, I wish I knew," says Joiner, who was a volunteer observer for the Ohio recount in early December. Because you can sure as heck bet that Republicans would be screaming and demanding an investigation if Kerry had won under similar circumstances, he says.

"I think the Democrats read the tea leaves and think that people don’t want to make a big fuss over this stuff. They’d just rather be quitters and move on."

Joiner knows full well some people will roll their eyes while reading this and dismiss him as yet another shoot-from-the-hip conspiracy nut.

Not quite.

In fact, he’s among a group of prominent statisticians and academicians who contributed to a recent study that refutes a report by exit pollsters Edison and Mitofsky that exit poll errors on Nov. 2 were responsible for the unprecedented 5.5 percent discrepancy between the exit polls and the official results.

The study, done on behalf of US Count Votes, a volunteer scientific research project, not only disagrees with the Edison/Mitofsky findings but concludes that "the possibility that the overall vote was substantially corrupted must be taken seriously" and urges a thorough investigation.

Does Joiner personally believe the election was stolen?

"I don’t know, that’s a very tough question," he says. "But it’s not clear to me that it wasn’t, so it’s a question of where the burden of proof is."

At the same time, Joiner says, he does believe the country’s making a big mistake by relying so heavily on electronic voting machines.

"It’s just too easy to hack those machines," he says. "And if they are hacked, how would we ever know?"

Joiner, incidentally, isn’t the least bit surprised that the study - which was released Jan. 28 - has been virtually ignored by the media. Neither is Bruce O’Dell, vice president of US Count Votes.

"I think the mainstream media - like most Americans brought up to be proud of our Democratic traditions - simply assume that elections are honestly counted in the United States," O’Dell says. "They discount anecdotal reports of election irregularities and refuse to believe that systematic corruption could occur - even though serious, systematic vulnerabilities both in voting equipment and in counting procedures have been well-documented."

He notes that when reports of widespread voting problems occurred in Ukraine last year, both local and international observers quickly concluded the election had been stolen.

"But when precisely the same scenario occurred here, not only were mainstream journalists not alarmed, they quickly labeled those who questioned the results as conspiracy theorists."

O’Dell says US Count Votes wants to develop "a single database of nation-wide precinct-level election results, along with matching U.S. Census demographic information and the type of voting equipment in use."

Its ultimate goal "is to be able to gather and analyze data as it comes in on election night, and to spot vote counting problems in time for candidates to request an investigation or recount - before they concede."

And it hopes to have such a system in place by 2006.

Kjell Doksum, another UW-Madison statistician, says that if US Count Votes accomplishes just one thing, it’s that there’s a "paper trail" for every vote cast in 2008.

"This is easy to achieve," he suggested in an e-mail.

"Start a rumor that the Democrats have the world’s best hackers and are going to fix the machines the next time."

E-mail: rzaleski@madison.com

http://www.madison.com/tct/news/ind...

Forum posts

  • I don’t wear a tin hat and I DO believe the election was fixed. We shouldn’t have to wait til 2006! If we can prove fraud, Bush should be impeached and exiled to Syria.

    The whole Ukraine election, which Bush’s administration called foul based on exit poles is a glaring red flag!

    I blame Kerry and the Democratic party for not fighting for our votes!

    They will not get another dime from me until they do. Praises to Rep. Conyers and Sen. Boxer, the only Dems with any real back bone. Question the election, hold it under a microscope. How can we spread democracy when it is severely lacking in the USA?

    When I heard the news on that awful Wednesday in November when I woke up, I knew that something was terribly wrong. I have never felt that way about an election before in my life.

    I am not a sore loser, I just don’t believe Bush won.

    Lana

    • Hooray for you, Lana!! My wife and I feel exactly the same!! Add insult to the injury when Kerry and the dems just curled up and died, while volunteers from all over the US gave time and money to monitor the Ohio "election"...replete in all its shenanigans. I guess its up to we citizens to demand fair and unbiased elections, and to hold those placed in office accountable when they fail to comply to our standards and I agree, we should NOT have to wait until 2006!

      Sure makes a statement doesn’t it, about the caliber of our representatives in government. Of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer applies...only to corporations. The real terrorist threat to American democracy and our way of life is the Bush
      administration...and its advisor Herr Rove. My God, what have we allowed to happen?

      Mike

    • Hey, "Hooray for you, Lana!!": Just exactly what do you mean, "...to hold those placed in office accountable when they fail to comply to our standards..."? Do you mean we should point our pinkies at their pictures in the newspapers and say tsk-tsk until the next election? That would really show ’em who’s boss; right? Or maybe even better: Write them a letter!! Now, that would really, really make a change, by golly!! Or, gee, maybe we should even hold up a sign on the street corner at the intersection of Useless Gesture Street and False Hopes Avenue!!! WOW, that’s the kind of thing that would really, really, really mean something!!!
      Wake up and wise up! The only way to get any of these people to pay attention is to put the legitimate fear of God into them - and there’s only one way that can be done! But how many Americans are at the point of saying, "No more!"?

    • "I am not a sore loser" - Oh yes you are. Get over it. You lost. Know why? America rejected your hair-brained ideas and decided to stand behind a man who WOULD defend our country. Sore loser is exactly what you are.

    • Hey, there, "Sore loser is exactly what you are": Since you’re such a genius about these things, why don’t you prove that your pretty boy won? You punks keep bragging about being the winners, but you can’t prove that girlie-Bush won any better than anyone can prove that girlie-Bush lost. You’re just too stupid to realize that all AMERICANS lost this last election. The only ones who claim to have won are losers like you!

    • It is clear that something went wrong on election day 2004. There is no way that people came out in droves in early voting and election day to vote for George W Bush. They came out to vote him out of office. The electronic voting machines gave ole George more votes than voters in Ohio, and Florida. The number of under counted votes was around 2 million that were thrown out. Let’s face it We The People have no control over who was to become our new leader. They showed us this by letting the electronic machines go ahead even though they have been proven to be easily hacked to change votes. They can obvliously add a few addtional votes.
      Has anyone noticed that the politicians and media personalities, and others have black, soulless eyes? It gives me a chill down my spine. I can’t watch the mainstream media any more. Life is to short for Propaganda and spin TV. Fight back turn them off. Wait to hear the stories of how there ratings are dropping.
      Go to www.buyblue.com to see who donates the GOP. Walmart donates 100% to the GOP for example. We have to hit them in the pocket books in order to make a difference.

  • i agree with the above ! i do not believe mr. bush won ... they need to prove it.

    • You agree. Hahaha. See how liberating is is to be able to form opinions although you know absolutely nothing of which you speak. No wonder you fools keep on losing.

    • Hello, Mr. "You agree. Hahaha." Anyone as glib as you should write a column for their junior high school newspaper!.........I’m sorry, that was really uncalled for. I shouldn’t insult junior high school students because they’ve done nothing so dumb as to be compared with you. What you are really too stupid to realize, FOOL, is that all A M E R I C A N S lost the last election. The only comfort in all this is that you will paint such an incredibly easy and wide-eyed target in my crosshairs when the revolution begins! Until then, enjoy, BOY!

  • W. HAS stolen 2 Elections! The Media has allowed this to happen by not reporting ALL the voting/ exit poll irregularities!
    It doesn’t take a Rocket Scientist to deduce that they OWN the Media!
    We must BOYCOTT the media! They MUST start reporting true news not distracting us with Michael Jackson and Martha Stewart! They will never change unless their bottom line suffers and they lose money or sponsers.
    We need to shout around the World..... WE DID NOT VOTE FOR BUSH AND WE DON"T WANT HIM!!!

  • Or, you know, we could talk about the Washinton Governor’s election. The one the dems claerly stole fair and square.

  • "WE DIDN’T VOTE FOR BUSH, AND WE DON’T WANT HIM!"- Well, you didn’t vote for him, but 51% of us did. And that’s how it works. Bush won. Kerry lost. No stolen election. Dig this: "Editor & Publisher" reported back in December that all the reputable news organizations in Ohio checked these voter fraud allegations and found them to be utterly groundless. The key word here is "reputable". By its very definition, that leaves out Indymedia, Counterpunch, Free Press, Jeff Rense’s crackpot website, etc. It was also pointed out way back on Nov. 2 that the sampling of these exit polls were skewed. They overweighted women voters by 14%.
    As long as the Dems refuse to divorce themselves from the crackpot-crybaby-sore-loser wing of the left, they will continue to lose even worse than they already have.

  • Lana dear, you are a sore loser. You know it, I know it and now the French know it. President Bush is President for 4 more years. live with it!

    or not

  • "Steven Freeman, a respected University of Pennsylvania professor, says the odds of the exit polls in the critical states of Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania all being so far off were about 662,000 to 1".

    Actually, your quote is misleading. What the U of P paper ACTUALLY said was this: if you ASSUME the exit polls were conducted in an unbiased fashion, THEN the odds that the exit polls would be so wrong are miniscule. The paper was actually AGNOSTIC as to whether the exit polls were biased.

    Meanwhile, since other reliable analyses of the exit polling show that the exit polling was heavily biased in favor of democratic voters, it’s obvious that the discrepancy between exit polling and actual election results was entirely the result of polling bias.

    However, I do hope democrats continue to believe the delusion that Kerry won, since that will assure their continuing to make disastrous choices and minority status for decades.

    • I guess you also believe that by som ’MIRACLE" W. got 51% of votes when he had not broken 48 to 49 % in approval rating as well as individual state polls prior to the election.
      I guess you also want us to forget about all the tried and true indicators of a win (that is B.W., before W.) ie) undecideds always break for the challenger, record turnouts favor Dems/challenger, all the exit polls which were ALWAYS reliable B.W., all just happened to swing in W."s direction, all the Dem. precincts happened to have less voting machines, after election polls showed majority disagreed with W’s handling of economy, S.S., Iraq, environment, yet you want us to believe that MIRACULOUSLY a majority voted for W.
      I didn’t want Kerry to win but I do want a Country were we can vote and the person with the most votes wins. I don’t need to GET OVER IT, ! I share something in common with you... we were both duped!
      Also amazing that this newly supposedly re -elected W. on Inagauration Day had lowest approval rating of any Pres., including Nixon! BELOW 50%..
      Please give up the immature, name calling, it only makes us know that you are a Republican without even meeting you.
      PEACE!!!!!

  • "I don’t need to GET OVER IT, "

    bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa - a sore loser by any other name is still a sore loser.

    • Why does questioning an election make a person a "sore loser". Republicans are all about spreading democracy or at least talking about spreading it to other lands , but get all bent out of shape if you question your own government! Democracy is expressing dissent! You’re a hypocrit if you don’t see this and shold not talk about spreading democracy to other lands if you want to stifle it here at home!

    • Questioning an election means that Democrats simply can’t accept democracy in action. They got the idea from a razor thin (but fair) election in 2000, and now every time they lose, they protest the outcome. WHY CAN’T YOU ACCEPT THAT YOUR PARTY LOST? Bush won by over 1 million votes - you can’t even use the "Gore won more votes" argument this go-around.

      Accept the loss, figure out how to fix your party, and try to win in four years. Each time you come up with these conspiracy theories to cope with your inadequacies makes you, um, a sore loser.

      Oh yeah. Proof that Bush won? He won more electoral votes.

  • Hey pal, nobody’s trying to stifle your dissent. Scream all you want. The rest of us will either scream back, or we’ll laugh at you. Besides, the more you cry and moan, the more swing voters you drive over to our camp.

    • You forgot that not only do you Repubs scream or laugh at people but you call them names and lie about them. All this is done because you need to hide your ignorance. You can’t actually discuss things because you are so uninformed.
      The real loser is obviously YOU!

    • Whats wrong with being a ’’sore loser’’ ? Magnaminously admit defeat because of election fraud ? Election fraud that leads to mass slaughter, corruption and the killing of babies and children leaving Bush to crow ’’I feel good’’. Sore ?

      Fucking right.

      Sore about the helm of the US hijacked by draft dodging billionaires who use the military as racketeers and gangsters for their sleazy corporate theft ?

      Fucking right.

      Sore that as a result the US is despised and hated throughout the world ?

      Yes we are, and you, as an apologist for this, should be thoroughly ashamed.

    • Honey, there ain’t nothing we democrats will have to do to win over the swing voters and some republicans next time. 4 more years of this corrupt Bush administration is all it’s gonna take! Bush and his cronies left and right are pissing off the public already, just look at the low approval ratings this guy has now! You reap what you sow and shit out =’s shit returned !

    • I wasn’t crying and moaning! It doesn’t matter because 4 more years of Bush will elect a democrat president in 2008! Bush is hurting the repugs big time! Just look at his low approval ratings and the disent starting in his own party. 4 more years of this guy can only help the dems in 2006 and 2008! Swing voters will continue to move our way. The dems are the party of the people and the people aren’t crying they are standing up to this president and his abuse of power!

  • I’m not rolling my eyes. I want the far left wing kook fringe out there everyday! I want the media to repeat these conspiracy theories every hour on the hour. That way the democrat fraud machine will be destined for a permanent minority.

    Isn’t it odd that the left relies on some kook conspiracy and completely ignore the concrete facts of democrat voter fraud out of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Washington? Dang, Governor Rendell was caught giving voter registraion cards to convicts in prison. He also disenfranchised the military vote. But the left supports the troops, right? In Washington they found over 1,000 votes by felons and dead people for democrat governor. In Milwaukee they have so many irregularities that it boggles the mind, from more votes than registered voters in Milwaukee to 3 sons of democrat politicians on trial for slashing tires of Republican volunteers.

    Lets also not forget that shots were fired into a Republican headquarters in Tennessee and several other Republican volunteer offices were burglarized.

    So I say yes, keep up your whining! Liberalism is a cancer that must be eradicated!

  • Losing an election to a decent leader ---who cared about what was best for America, our people and our planet; who did not kill and torture other human beings without blinking an eye; who encouraged free speech and press; who believed in transparency instead of secret meetings, secret voting machine codes, secret agendas (e.g., energy plans, perhaps 9/11); who did not encourage shipping good jobs overseas; who had some semblance of ‘moral values’ instead of outright HYPOCRISY (e.g., gays, policies toward weak and poor, touting democracy); who did not use government money to pay the media to propandize his policies; who did not lose NINE BILLION DOLLARS (!) of taxpayers money, and on and on ad nauseum— would be much easier to accept by the losing party [even if he cheated].

    However, Bush is the worst president this country has ever known. He is despicable in every way and contrary to all we know as decent. To have him leading our country to financial and moral ruin when he was not legally elected is simply impossible to accept without objection.

  • TO ALL THE REPUBLICANS ON THIS SITE:

    REMEMBER HOW YOU SNIVELED AND SNIFFLED FOR EIGHT YEARS WHILE CLINTON WAS IN OFFICE? REMEMBER HOW YOU FINALLY IMPEACHED HIM BECAUSE OF YOUR SICK INTEREST IN HIS FLY AND WHAT HE DID WITH IT AND WHEN AND HOW, AND HIS LIE? BUT WHEN YOUR ’GIRLIE-BUSH’ FAG TELLS NOTHING BUT LIES, YOU ALL BEND OVER LIKE ALL THE GOOD LITTLE GIRLIE-BUSHIES YOU ARE, AND ENJOY YOUR QUEER PRETTY BOY BUSH PUTTING HIS TONGUE UP YOUR ASS WITH JUST THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF TEETH THAT YOU LIKE! THE ONLY ""SORE LOSER"" HERE IS EVERY REPUBLICAN WHO ENJOYS GEORGE W. BUSH BLOODYING THEIR ASSHOLE AND THEN LEAVING ALL AMERICANS THE I.O.U. THAT BELONGS TO ALL OF YOU SICK FUCKS!

  • Screaming and laughing are 2 prominent signs of Psychosis. This qualifies you to be a member of the Republican party. I pity you... You Are The REAL loser!

  • Man, this is too funny. Here comes the hammer, folks. Ohio voters will elect Ken Blackwell governor in 2006. And the American voters will elect Condi Rice president in 2008. The Green Party will nominate Ward Churchill as their candidate, with Noam Chomsky as his running mate. Okay, that last prediction was a joke...at least, I think it’s a joke. Maybe the Greens will take me seriously.