Reply #7: TIA has linked to this Greg Palast article in the past: "Abracadabra: 3 Million Votes Vanish"

[tiptoe]

http://myvoices.blogs.com/blog/2006/06/greg_palast_abr.html

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In another life, I taught statistics. And these statistics stank: the raw data tells us that if you are a Black voter, the chance of you losing your vote to technical errors in voting machinery is 900% higher than if you were a white voter.
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In total, over three million votes (3,600,380 to be exact) were cast -- marked, punched, pulled -- YET NEVER COUNTED. I'm not talking about the Ukraine or Uganda. I'm talking about the United States of America "with liberty and justice for all."

Well, not "all." The nine-to-one Black-to-White ballot spoilage rate is a national statistic -- not just an Ohio trick. Last year, I flew to New Mexico to investigate the 33,981 cast but not counted ballots of that state in the 2004 race. George Bush "won" New Mexico by 5,988 votes. Or did he? I calculated that, of the all the ballots rejected and "spoiled," 89% were cast by voters of color. Who won New Mexico? Kerry won -- or he would have, if they had counted the ballots.

But they didn't count them. And that was deliberate. It's in the plan. It's the program. And the program for 2008 is simple. Two million ballots were cast but not counted in the 2000 race. (Over half, 54%, were cast by African-American.) In 2004, the GOP kicked it up to THREE million. Get ready, these guys aim high: "four in '06" and "five in '08" looks to be their game plan.

54% of uncounted votes are African-American.
89% of spoiled ballots in New Mexico "were cast by voters of color".
90% of blacks and 67% of Hispanics are democrats.


Also, see the numbers here:

Gore won Florida by 30,000 votes!

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There were 175,000 votes overall that were so-called "spoiled ballots." About two-thirds of the spoiled ballots were over-votes; many or most of them would have been write-in over-votes, where people had punched and written in a candidate's name. And nobody looked at this, not even the Florida Supreme Court in the last decision it made requiring a statewide recount...The write-in over-votes have really not gotten much attention.
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Those votes are not ambiguous. When you see Gore picked and then Gore written in, there's not a question in your mind who this person was voting for. When you go through those, they're unambiguous: Bush got some of those votes, but they were overwhelmingly for Gore. For example, in an analysis of the 2.7 million votes that had been cast in Florida's eight largest counties, The Washington Post found that Gore's name was punched on 46,000 of the over-vote ballots it, while Bush's name was marked on only 17,000.
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One of the things I found that hadn't been reported anywhere is, if you look at where those votes occurred, they were in predominantly black precincts. And (when you look at) the history of black voting in Florida, these are people that have been disenfranchised, intimidated. In the history of the early 20th century, black votes would be thrown out on technicalities, like they would use an X instead of a check mark.
So you can understand why African Americans would be so careful, checking off Gore's name on the list of candidates and also writing Gore's name in the space for write-in votes. But because of the way the vote-counting machines work, this had the opposite effect: the machines threw out their ballots. ...

46,000/63000 == 73% Gore, 27% Bush.


And here: MIT-CalTEch study:
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/07/16/voting.problems

"Some cities, including Chicago and New York, had rates of unmarked, uncounted and spoiled ballots well in excess of the state of Florida."

New York City: more than 3-to-1 registered Dems than Repubs in NYC.


I vaguely recall mention of a UCLA study re uncounted votes (but vague...can't find reference now. Someone on DU may know).