Why haven't I heard about the mysterious "18,181" vote totals before?

[iconoclastic cat]

This is some weird crap! And by "mysterious" and "weird" I mean "obviously fraudulent."

Links: http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=3&q=http://www.votewatch.us/Members/Unregistered%2520User/electionexperience.2004-08-12.9250914376/view%3Fsearchterm%3DNone&e=9888

Web Posted : 11/08/2002 12:00 AM

NEW BRAUNFELS — What are the odds?
Let's just say it's the proverbial "astronomical."

Comal County elections officials noticed an extreme oddity after the final votes were tallied in Tuesday's general election.

County Judge Danny Scheel received 18,181 votes in his victory over Lois Duggan.

Republican state Sen. Jeff Wentworth also got 18,181 votes in Comal County in his win over Democrat Joseph Sullivan and Libertarian Rex Black.

(more)

********

Yeah. Oddity, jackass.

Any DUers out there feel like telling me why this hasn't been made a huge issue?

On edit: I'm not blaming DUers, I'm blaming the media. Again.

Edit #2: Well, y'all are right: http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/index.php/18181

[Fridays Child]

1. It wasn't for a lack of trying on our part.

DU was all over it. The corporate media had other ideas, as usual.

[iconoclastic cat]

3. I'll have to go back and search. I don't remember reading about it here.

Just when I think I cannot be astounded by the corruption of our government and whoredom of our media, I am shocked anew.

[Old and In the Way]

2. Do a DU search on 18,181 in the elections forums

We know.

[NV Whino]

4. Do a search on DU

There were many, many, many threads on this.

[in_cog_ni_to]

5. Bev and Andy posted about the SAME thing going on in Ca. elections!!!!

FRAUD! FRAUD! FRAUD!

[iconoclastic cat]

6. *sigh...*

This country is screwed.

[in_cog_ni_to]

8. Indeed. n/t

[mike_c]

7. I remember when this was a hot topic on DU...

...but sadly it hardly created a ripple, elsewhere. In one of life's weird cosmic realities, DU hit 18,181 members DURING one of the threads on this topic.

[Pobeka]

9. It's not that weird.

This is just not as improbable as you might think. You need to put it in the correct statistical context.

First off, think of a similar problem, of 30 students in a classroom, how many share the same birthday?" Seems like the odds are miniscule, but they aren't. Google that one.

I did some significant work looking at this problem, punpirate peer-reviewed my work. The conclusion is that there's something like a 1 in 1000 chance this could occur. Given all the elections, held in all the counties across the US, it's just not a highly improbable situation that will occur *somewhere* in the US over many election cycles.

I'm not saying something scwrewwwy isn't going on with voting, but this is not damning evidence to point your finger at.

[iconoclastic cat]

11. But only to Republicans?

I have to do some reading about this.

[Pobeka]

12. Especially to one party or the other.

The analysis I did assumed every candidate had an equal, random chance of getting a vote. But voters tend to vote along party lines, so the chances are much better than I would have come up with.

I have to leave for the day, but if you search for 18,181 and Pobeka you'll find results from some work I did about 2 and a half years ago here at DU.

[rock]

10. How could you have missed it? It was on all the good news sources

That is, DU!