Reply #33: DU posts with some original news.

[L. Coyote]

SIEGELMAN SPEAKS! EX-GOV CALLS '02 ELECTION "STOLEN" BY THE WHITE HOUSE!
Dec-17-07 - http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2485896

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StephW655 (3 posts) Tue Dec-18-07 07:44 AM
Response to Reply #89 - 144. Magnolia Springs

My family is from Magnolia Springs and I've been visiting there since I was a baby. My mom's brother and his family and my stepgrandmother still live there. It is a very small town. They finally got a stop light a few years ago and it was exciting. Most of the people in that area are older retirees and some of those are old dog Democrats. There are certainly not 6,000 people that would have voted that day.

I remember staying up all night watching that election. I was so excited when it was called for Seigelman and then was speechless at what unfolded next. The one image I distinctly remember is Bob Riley's son running up to a camera to emphatically say that something wasn't right and Riley had won. He just looked like he was up to something then. An hour later the Baldwin County results were changed. .....

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demobabe Dec-18-07 06:21 PM
Response to Reply #167- 172. Thanks for the correct election results

.... Source for the Magnolia Springs debacle... I've got a few.

1) New York Times: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9502E2DD1731F93BA35752C1A9649C8B63
... mention Magnolia Springs:

The trouble started election night in Magnolia Springs, a town near the Gulf of Mexico, where unofficial poll numbers were released to the news media that erroneously put the incumbent ahead. The mix-up was straightened out a few hours later, but not before Mr. Siegelman declared himself winner, proclaiming, ''How sweet it is!''

State election officials said there was no way he could have won the 7,000 votes he was at first reported to have gained from the Magnolia Springs precinct. Only 1,300 votes were cast there.

Trouble is, Don Siegelman was the only candidate to have their vote count changed. If there was a corruption in the data due to a lightening strike or power surge, it would have generated garbled data, or unreadable data - not data that selectively removes votes from one candidate but doesn't affect the other candidate, or any other race. The second count occurred in a locked courthouse with only Republicans present (which is illegal).

2) The Risks Digest/Mobile Register: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.60.html

The Alabama governor's election in Nov 2002 was irrevocably impeded by an unexplained anomaly in the use of ES&S optical-scan voting equipment in Baldwin County, which reversed the outcome of the election. In this case, the printed results of votes produced in the Magnolia Springs precinct were accurate (when compared with the actual ballots), but the data on the cartridges used to tabulate the final results electronically was seriously in error. Unfortunately for the candidate who should have won based on the acknowledged correct results, the erroneous electronic totals (in which about 6,300 votes for that candidate were missing) were accepted as
official. The official loser "ultimately abandoned his challenge after it became clear that he would not be able to get the statewide vote recount he had sought." Thus, the candidate with the most votes was declared the loser. Three months after the election, it is still unclear why the cassette was missing so many votes disappeared, blamed on a "computer glitch" -- possibly a "power surge at the precinct, static electricity, or something else".

3) I interviewed Professor James Gundlach from Auburn and he talks about it quite extensively. He talks about all the statistical possibilities and the fact that data is not manipulated in that way. I might upload some clips from this interview later...

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LizW - Response to Reply #144 - 168. I remember, too .....

I remember how the news people at the Riley gathering that night kept saying that Riley's people were telling them something was wrong with the vote. This was just minutes after the numbers came in. This was even while Seigelman was speaking. The news people looked confused.

If I remember correctly, the Repugs were even telling the news people how much they thought the vote was off by. They knew they were going to steal it, and they started the spin right away.

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