Reply #15: The problem with drawing conclusions, Hart Intercivic eSlates

[Kip Humphrey]

While vote switching occurred in the 2004 election, a problem with any analysis using a single source like EIRS is there are too many unknowns in the way of drawing significant conclusions.

We do not know how many voters saw, corrected, and remained silent.
We don't know how many voters did not see a switch that actually occurred.
We do not know how many Bush voters knew of EIRS
We don't know how many Kerry voters knew of EIRS

I investigated the reports on Hart Intercivic eSlate vote switching with the following finding: Every county in which eSlates were placed had at least one reported incident of no vote registering for Kerry when "Vote Democratic Slate" was selected.

This may have been a configuration error replicated in each area on at least one machine per county, or it may have been a pre-programmed "feature" of the all Hart Intercivic eSlates. There is no way to tell conclusively from the data which is correct. The fact that this exploit appeared in every county with eSlates and occurred on machines from different manufacturers and machine types (DREs and OptiScans) strongly suggests that centralized GEMS configuration of evoting machines was the source. For example, in Texas this exploit appeared wherever eSlates OR OptiScans were placed.