THE MEDIA ARE NOT ON OUR SIDE. THE POLITICIANS ARE NOT ON OUR SIDE.

[kster]

THE MEDIA ARE NOT ON OUR SIDE. THE POLITICIANS ARE NOT ON OUR SIDE.

For the "NEWBIES" The Chicago Tribune refused to run this article, written just after the 2004 election. This is a GREAT article that was written mostly about Republicans stealing elections, DON'T BE FOOLED as we know now, there are Democrats CLAIMING VICTORY as we speak, and yes their election was or is going to be counted by these illegal vote stealing machines, because they (Democrats) also refuse to speak out about the machines.


The silent scream of numbers

The 2004 election was stolen — will someone please tell the media?

By ROBERT C. KOEHLER
Tribune Media Services

As they slowly hack democracy to death, we’re as alone — we citizens — as we’ve ever been, protected only by the dust-covered clichés of the nation’s founding: “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

It’s time to blow off the dust and start paying the price.

The media are not on our side. The politicians are not on our side. It’s just us, connecting the dots, fitting the fragments together, crunching the numbers, wanting to know why there were so many irregularities in the last election and why these glitches and dirty tricks and wacko numbers had not just an anti-Kerry but a racist tinge. This is not about partisan politics. It’s more like: “Oh no, this can’t be true.”

I just got back from what was officially called the National Election Reform Conference, in Nashville, Tenn., an extraordinary pulling together of disparate voting-rights activists — 30 states were represented, 15 red and 15 blue — sponsored by a Nashville group called Gathering To Save Our Democracy. It had the feel of 1775: citizen patriots taking matters into their own hands to reclaim the republic. This was the level of its urgency.

Was the election of 2004 stolen? Thus is the question framed by those who don’t want to know the answer. Anyone who says yes is immediately a conspiracy nut, and the listener’s eyeballs roll. So let’s not ask that question.

http://commonwonders.com/archives/col290.htm



Another fantastic article written after the 2004 election.

05.10.2005 Jim Lampley

The Biggest Story of Our Lives

At 5:00 p.m. Eastern time on Election Day, I checked the sportsbook odds in Las Vegas and via the offshore bookmakers to see the odds as of that moment on the Presidential election. John Kerry was a two-to-one favorite. You can look it up.

People who have lived in the sports world as I have, bettors in particular, have a feel for what I am about to say about this: these people are extremely scientific in their assessments. These people understand which information to trust and which indicators to consult in determining where to place a dividing line to influence bets, and they are not in the business of being completely wrong. Oddsmakers consulted exit polling and knew what it meant and acknowledged in their oddsmaking at that moment that John Kerry was winning the election.

And he most certainly was, at least if the votes had been fairly and legally counted. What happened instead was the biggest crime in the history of the nation, and the collective media silence which has followed is the greatest fourth-estate failure ever on our soil.

Many of the participants in this blog have graduate school educations. It is damned near impossible to go to graduate school in any but the most artistic disciplines without having to learn about the basics of social research and its uncanny accuracy and validity. We know that professionally conceived samples simply do not yield results which vary six, eight, ten points from eventual data returns, thaty's why there are identifiable margins for error. We know that margins for error are valid, and that results have fallen within the error range for every Presidential election for the past fifty years prior to last fall. NEVER have exit polls varied by beyond-error margins in a single state, not since 1948 when this kind of polling began. In this past election it happened in ten states, all of them swing states, all of them in Bush's favor. Coincidence? Of course not.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/2005/05/biggest-story-of-our-live.html

[Awsi Dooger]

1. Jim Lampley's article is idiotic

He's an alumnus of the same Miami high school that I went to. Embarrassing for a fellow Eagle to be so ignorant.

First of all, he lies in the opening sentence. There are no sportsbook odds on elections in Las Vegas. Period. I've lived in Las Vegas since the '80s and worked/consulted in virtually every aspect of sports wagering, oddsmaking and related statistics. In Nevada you can't even wager on sporting elections like the Heisman Trophy or MVP awards, not to mention the Academy Awards. That old adage, "you can bet on anything in Las Vegas, honey!" is one of the most pathetic myths on this planet. It has to be a sporting event decided on the field of play.

He lies again with the offshore bookmakers aspect. They closed early in the morning, long before 5 PM Eastern time. In fact, I checked the biggies 6 hours earlier than that and they were closed. Offshore bookmakers are the sharpest in the field right now, by necessity. They take bets from all over the planet, and many times the amount Nevada will allow. No way the offshore outlets are going to allow themselves to be exposed to last minute inside information, especially a high profile event like a US presidential election. For reference purposes, in 2000 most offshore books pulled the odds on Bush winning the popular vote days in advance, since they were getting buried with money in that direction. If you recall, Bush was considered a near certainty to win the popular vote while conventional wisdom gave Gore an excellent chance to win the electoral college.

Now, Lampley's article does contain a basic truth: John Kerry went to a 2/1 favorite (actually 1/2, for those of you who know gambling). But it was hardly sophisticated oddsmaking. Ha! I was a part of it. It was the same type of early exit poll frenzy that swept the internet, especially liberal sites, in early afternoon on election day. The website Tradesports.com left the wagering open until the result, as is their daily habit. This is how Tradesports works:

"TradeSports.com is a person-to-person trading "Exchange". It allows you to trade in the most innovative, transparent and exciting way on financial, sporting, current events, entertainment and many similar events. TradeSports members trade directly with each other, bypassing the middle-man.

When you trade on TradeSports you are pitting your wits against other members of TradeSports. TradeSports provides the platform whereby members can trade between themselves without paying a Sportsbook margin or vig. The winning member will receive the profits, the losing member pays the loss.

With no vig, no juice, no artificial spread, TradeSports charges a small transaction charge per lot traded."

So that's how the wagering remained open and was subject to massive swing, as the early exit polls data became available. Here's an account of that day from a bettor's standpoint, not nonsense like Lampley reported: Early in the afternoon Pacific time on election day, I got a break from GOTV in Las Vegas and checked DU. It was forum to forum euphoria. I checked a few threads and posters I respected were gushing about the early numbers, including Florida and Ohio.

I immediately called my friend Paul. He stays at home virtually all day, every day, checking dozens of offshore accounts plus Las Vegas sportsbook odds. Playing one number off another, always looking for a tiny exploitable advantage, is how Paul makes his living. I told Paul about the early exit polls and he said he already wagered. I asked the Tradesports odds and they were up to -140 on Kerry, giving 7/5. Before I had left for GOTV hours earlier, it was basically reversed in Bush's favor. If the exit polls were accurate, that was still a bargain. Paul and I wagered high four figures on Kerry. I was ecstatic, convinced it was a glorified pickup. An hour later, almost exactly the 5 PM Eastern time that Lampley mentioned, I called Paul again and he said Kerry was a 2/1 (or 1/2 favorite).

So there's the truth in Lampley's report. But it was one person wagering against another. Not sophisticated oddsmaking. It was classic overreaction to an apparent edge. That's what gamblers do every day. If a sportsbook puts up a pointspread up without knowing about a major injury, bettors similarly pounce on it until the odds settle where they should be, given the new information.

When I got home and looked at the exit polls more carefully, nutty numbers like +17 in New Hampshire and +10 in Pennsylvania, I knew something was screwed up in Kerry's favor and the puny +1 and +2 in Florida and Ohio would never hold up. I literally turned off the TV and computer, reclined stunned on my bed and gave up while DUers were still celebrating.

And one final thing about Lampley's article: how the hell is a 2 to 1 favorite such a cinch? Do you realize how preposterous that is? A 2 to 1 betting favorite is the equivalent of a 4 point favorite in a football game. They seem to lose all the time. My alma mater USC was a 7 point choice over Texas in the Rose Bowl yet forgot to win.

If Kerry had been a mortal lock to win that election, Tradesports speculators would have bet him to 10/1 or 20/1 favorite. That's not exaggeration at all. Gamblers know value and a short term situation like an election requires only hours of investment. Boxing matches and tennis matches and propositions are 20/1 or 40/1 every day.

There was take back at Tradesports, preventing Kerry from going beyond a 2/1 favorite. Some bettors ignored the early exit polls and wagered on Bush at more favorable odds. Considering the paranoia here, I suppose I'll be told those were the ones who knew the Diebold fix was in.

[kster]

2. Then the ON TV media should not be afraid to

have Lampley and one of their own experts ON TV in a one hour discussion and or debate to explain this all away, but yet SILENCE, I haven't seen Lampley ON TV to discuss this article have you?

[Awsi Dooger]

3. No, in fact I've read it before on DU, but didn't realize Lampley wrote it

My response to this article was the same previously as now. I'm not going to temper my reply based on the author.

I'm thrilled he is on our side, but believe me Jim Lampley got the betting aspects wrong. In '92 one Las Vegas sportsbook got in trouble for putting a phony non-bettable number on ther board for the Clinton/Bush election. The sportsbook manager told me the Nevada Gaming Control Board scolded him and warned him not to do anything like that again.

Bally's puts up annual Oscar odds but the electronic board has dozens of disclaimers saying no betting, for entertainment only. They only do it because the guy who runs the book has a niche and gets nationwide publicity for his odds, and therefore the casino itself.

I don't think Lampley would want to debate his position as stated in that article. Any Nevada sportsbook manager or someone involved in the business could shoot him down simply based on the claim he checked the election odds using Las Vegas sportbooks.

Here's a more accurate rundown of what happened in the election wagering world on November 2, 2004. You'll note the same 67% or 2/1 odds are given for Kerry's high water mark. Jim Lampley got that exactly right, and his time of 5 PM Eastern is also accurate. But this article demonstrates what I wrote, that it was man-to-man overreaction to the early exit polls, not sophisticated bookmaking:http://www.slate.com/id/2109137/

"But in the afternoon of Election Day, when exit polls started to leak showing surprising strength for Kerry, the political futures traders freaked out and rushed to dump Bush and buy Kerry. By 4:30 p.m. ET, IEM's Kerry winner-takes-all contract had risen from below 50 in the morning to more than 70. The vote-share contracts on IEM also shifted in Kerry's favor. TradeSports' traders, who had shown Bush winning for the entire campaign, suddenly bid the Kerry election contract up to 67—meaning they thought he had a two-thirds chance at winning. By 5:44 p.m. ET, TradeSports gave Bush just a 39 percent chance of winning Ohio and a 43 percent chance at winning Florida. All on the basis of a few stray data points. Surely, as voracious consumers of all information relevant to political campaigns, these financially motivated investors should have known that exit polls can be unreliable. But instead they panicked.

As results started to flow in, and John Kerry's "seven-hour presidency" began to ebb, the traders—like the rest of us watching on television and the Internet—realized the exit polls were wrong. By 10:26 p.m., the Bush re-election contract on TradeSports was up to 68.9. The rest is history."

[OnTheOtherHand]

5. it's brutally bad on the polling stuff, too

If I went around bragging about "social research and its uncanny accuracy and validity," I would fully expect to be laughed at. "Uncanny accuracy" is what someone might say about a psychic on Fox, not how serious people talk about measures.

NEVER have exit polls varied by beyond-error margins in a single state, not since 1948 when this kind of polling began. In this past election it happened in ten states, all of them swing states, all of them in Bush's favor.

1. This kind of polling did not begin in 1948.

2. Lampley, or someone, just made up the thing about there never having been a state outside the margin of error.

3. In 2004, there were not ten swing states outside the margin of error, and many of the states that were outside the MoE weren't swing states.

That's a lot of wrongness to pack into a small space.

[kster]

8. Have you seen Lampley ON TV to discuss

his article? Because you either missed my question, or maybe I just missed Lampley ON TV. I'm not sure which.

[Awsi Dooger]

9. I've never seen Jim Lampley discuss this anywhere

Until you posted it with his by-line last night, I had no idea he was the author of this article. I've seen the piece before, on DU and elsewhere.

As I wrote in my previous post, I doubt Lampley would want to debate this article. If you had anyone with a threat of competence on the other side, someone who knows political wagering, they could make Lampley look foolish at best, liar at worst, by pointing out the Las Vegas casinos do not allow political wagering, and offshore outfits close the betting early in the day, long before 5 PM Eastern time.

[kster]

10. The Koehler article not ON TV or in the Chicago Tribune WHY?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x363754

Two articles that they refuse to discuss ON TV or hell, not even in the newspaper, they will allow that newspaper to rebut the article, but will not print the article they are rebutting? Suspicious? To me it is.

We need to ask Lampley don't ya think, he wrote the article, I don't think he wrote it to embarrass himself. That would be silly.

[Awsi Dooger]

12. I think Lampley was incredibly frustrated and had good intentions

He's convinced the election was stolen and wanted to focus on a different angle, something specialized and close to his line of work as a sportscaster. The betting aspect of elections is seldom to never discussed in the mainstream media. Lampley heard something he wanted to share, that Kerry became a 2/1 betting favorite based on exit polls.

That was fine if he left it there, instead of citing specific sources like Las Vegas sportsbooks and offshore outfits. Bad references ruin the article. If he had focused on the true source of the 2/1 favoritism, Tradesports.com, and provided history that big moves on that site win almost without exception, the article would have much more weight.

[kster]

13. That may very well be, put it ON TV and let the AMERICAN people decide

this should not be decided by You and I on the internet, if the vote counting machines are hackable, everyone in America should know, they have blacked out all the election theft stories Lampley, Koehler, RFK.Jr, MCM, the list goes on and on , Kennedy got some time ON TV but we are in, what I like to call, the Grace period 4 months prior to and 2 months after an election, the ON TV media is allowed to run some stories about election problems.

Then it is MUMS the word again. The American people know more about Clintons penis than we do about the machines that are manipulating our elections. What does that tell you?

[Awsi Dooger]

4. Here's my guess on the Lampley article

Someone told him Kerry became a 2/1 betting favorite at 5 PM Eastern time. That was correct info.

Instead of merely using that angle, he wanted to place himself in the arena and that's how he concocted the story about checking sportsbook and offshore odds. That probably sounded legit, since he's covered dozens of fights in Las Vegas, although I've never seen him in a sportsbook, unlike many other commentators.

[BeFree]

6. And your point is?

Why are you so intent with all this? Why no research into the machines? Why is everything that comes from the Awsi, so seemingly negative?

What are you for, Awsi?

Don't take this as an attack, imagine that I am trying to understand what you hope to accomplish.

[Awsi Dooger]

7. Put the focus where it belongs

Low tech vote suppression. That's where we're vulnerable and will continue to lose thousands of votes and therefore elections. Everything Blackwell is legit and under emphasized. Yet, when there's a thread about how to prevent 2006 from being like 2004 and 2002, the low tech stuff was the focus of maybe 20% of the posts, or less. We should be contacting statewide Democratic leaders throughout the country and prompting them to beware of one low tech scam after another, and to spread word regarding anything they find to other states/counties. Election day is too late. All those posts in that thread about challenges and lawyers made me want to scream. Once we get to election day, or anything close to that, we've already lost if it hasn't been addressed.

I comment on what I know. When a Steven Freeman claims Kerry earned 52.9% in Nevada and 54.1% in Ohio, I know that's asinine because of the relationship to the voting percentages of other states, ones not in dispute. I've studied statewide voting trends for a decade. As a native Floridian, yesterday I happened to now something about recent partisan changes in Pasco County, Florida. I damn sure know political wagering, since I've been heavily involved since '96, offshore political wagering and a 16-man betting pool. What am I supposed to do, allow Jim Lampley's nonsense to stand, as if legitimate? Bush was the betting favorite throughout 2004, even during the late spring when Kerry had the lead in the polls.

Plenty of good intentions but wasted energy around here. Like that Busby race and the Libertarian vote. Among 130,000+ votes, very natural for 3-5% to drift to the third party candidates, regardless of how minor they may seem. That was demonstrated in the district in 2002 and 2004 and will continue this November and in 2008. Not everything is theft, just because we lost.

I'm not a machine guy. Obviously I want a paper trail, like the one mandated here in Nevada beginning this year. The machines should should help us in the long run, eliminating over votes and unintended under votes. I'd love to wager we've lost more votes and elections via punch cards than Diebold or any of its mechanical kin.

[BeFree]

11. I find it curious....

....that someone who supposedly lost thousands of dollars on the bad exit polls, would so casually dismiss the mistakes the pollers claim they made. It would seem that someone like you would be leading the charge to get all the facts about what happened.

It's obvious that you had great faith in the polling numbers... why else would you bet with those early numbers?

And it's curious that you might wager that punch cards would have "lost" more votes than "Diebold or any of it's mechanical kin." It is now clear you don't really have a clue about the machines.

Pasco county: Don't you think it rather odd that Rove has been quoted as saying he clicked first on Hernando, then Pasco county when checking out the polls on election night? Why would he concern himself with two minor counties such as these unless he had an idea that he needed to check on how his friend's machines were doing? It strikes me as rather odd.

Anyhow, your advice about low tech theft is well taken, but since you don't have a clue about the machines, I would wager that it is best you get an education before so casually dismissing their potential impacts.

[Awsi Dooger]

14. The devastation was Kerry losing the election, not losing my bet

I wager almost every day and have for 20 years. That presidential wager was abnormally large for a single bet, but, for example, I have 37 matchups wagers on the US Open golf tournament this week totalling 6 times as much. As a bettor you move on, volume and an edge. Neither one is any good without the other.

That Tradesports wager was careless dumbass. But typical of a gambler seizing quick advantage. It's like a sportsbook here putting up a bad college basketball total and you run up and bet first, think second. If it's off 10 or 20 points I'll take my chances whether I like the bet or not. I was more concerned with the odds shifting against us than double checking the rationale for the bet.

I had a 30 minute midday break from driving a GOTV van in Las Vegas. At the precinct I convinced someone to let me borrow their laptop and get on the internet. I couldn't get on DU for many attempts, it was so jammed. Finally I managed a peak at the GD 2004 forum and everyone was ecstatic. Every thread was exit polls. I don't think I saw a single number. But as soon as I read we were leading Ohio and Florida I grabbed my cell phone and called Paul. I knew Kerry needed one of those states, not both.

Hours later I saw the specific exit poll numbers. The three I remember were Kerry +17 in New Hampshire, +10 in Pennsylvania, -3 in North Carolina. All were idiotic, no chance to approximate the actual vote. Immediately my eyes scrambled for Florida and Ohio. When I saw the puny +1 and +2 numbers, I knew Kerry's chances and my money were sunk. If those states erred similarly to the obviously flawed polls, no way 1 and 2 points could hold up.

That's why I've never understood TIA or Steven Freeman's assertions of millions to one the exit polls all erred toward Kerry. When I stick a bad formula or bad results into my sports-related Excel workbooks, the calculations inevitably spit out numbers erring in the same direction, until I catch the mistake. I gave up on election night and went to sleep since it was obvious the exit polls slanted in one direction only. This was before I ever heard of Freeman or Febble or OTOH.

Belittling me regarding machine opinion was predictable. That's the pacifier of choice on this site, and particularly this forum. I can point to tens of thousands of votes undeniably lost via punch card in Ohio 2004 and Florida 2000, the latter changing the course of history. Anywhere punch cards have been used there's considerable spoilage. You think you can identify machine theft. The examples like Georgia 2002 are interesting until examined more closely.

Besides, am I allowed to mention all the Diebold fear on this site that has flopped? Maryland, anyone? Once they installed Diebold we were doomed. Then the partisan index remained identical to 2000. Likewise Virginia 2005. Kaine had no chance. Oh, of course, the clever rationale: those would be too obvious, or they'll give us a minor one once in a while, so the nation won't catch on. Like all conspracy theories, whatever fits. And what fits here and now is subject to 100% alteration tomorrow, if a different buggyman shows up.

Rove undoubtedly isolated Hernando County and Pasco County as areas where the new emphasis and evolving partisanship would be evident, in totals and percentages. That was the GOP key in those counties, not merely the percentage shift but how many voters would go to the polls in smaller counties, since Republicans apparently underperformed for many cycles.

I've worked GOTV for three straight cycles and will do so again this year. I'm going to contact that office and get a list of Democratic election workers statewide and hopefully elsewhere, to send a list of low tech vote suppression concerns and other ideas.

[BeFree]

15. You can blame me....

... for your ignorance about punch cards, but the fact is punch cards are read by machines. Machines with coding just like Diebold's. So, you think punch cards stole votes, but Diebold is somehow hunky-dory? BS.

The election: You treat it as just another game to bet on. What game can you bet on after the kick-off, tip-off, or first punch? Yet the exit polls do just that, they allow you inside info that you took to heart and expected to win with. The polls failed you. Would you bet with another odds maker that failed you like that? Yet you continue to back up the one that failed you?

Look, forget the exit polls, they are BS, they way they are presently managed.

I still don't get your point. You don't accept that the potential for theft exists with the machines, even after such cases as the recent Iowa case where the votes were undeniably altered by the machines. You say paper is good, is needed, but accept the counts without paper as facts? Sorry, none of it makes any sense.

[kster]

16. Hey you

:toast:

[BeFree]

18. You too!

One day, maybe we actually sit down a share a few, eh?

[kster]

19. Absolutely ! And I'll buy ! ........nt

[Awsi Dooger]

23. See Febble's excellent post, #20

Punch cards are NOT read by machine. Not the punch cards I'm referring to. They are rejected by machine due to over vote or unintentional under vote, those pesky chads of various description.

It only cost us the presidency in 2000, changing the course of world history. Or are you conveniently forgetting that? I'll go back to November 7, 2000 right now and replay that election, with all the fancy Diebold machines replacing punch cards in Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Duval, etc. I'll take Gore and give you Bush +20,000 votes statewide, everything else staying the same. And I'll have much the best of it. So will the planet.

I'm originally from Miami and I voted on those punch cards many times. It's hardly pristine and automatic. I had to shove and shove, especially late in the day when the box filled with chads. I remember picking the chads off the punch card before turning it in. I guarantee we lost local elections in South Florida and elsewhere due to those punch cards and how they disproportionately disenfranchise voters who trend heavily in our favor.

So yeah, I want machines. Every vote being counted. I don't fear the switcharoo. As Febble wrote, "All the recounts in the world aren't going to restore a vote that wasn't cast, or isn't legally valid." Precisely. In 2000 we were clawing for under votes when the vast majority of Gore's hidden "will of the people" advantage was over votes, long gone and irretrievable, evaluated later for historical footnote only.

BTW, I can bet almost every day all year after the opening kickoff or tipoff. It's called halftime wagering.

The exit polls did fail me. But if I had been at home on the afternoon of November 2, 2004, instead of driving a GOTV van back and forth with only a brief midday glimpse at DU, my posts on this forum and others would look entirely different. I would be linking to threads I started early that afternoon, ones that shouted the idiocy of Kerry +17 in New Hampshire, +10 in Pennsylvania, -3 in North Carolina, +31 (or whatever) in New York. That's hardly self promotion. If there's one thing I know it's statewide voting trends in presidential races, and those numbers don't compute. Not even close. I wouldn't have let it go without extreme skepticism and warning. No doubt I would have been labeled a troll or worse, perhaps even banned, but many posters who follow the numbers would have agreed, and been concerned.

The Iowa case is troubling.

[BeFree]

25. Punch cards are read by machine

geez, you'd think by now some would.... ah, nevermind.

But then you say "I want machines". I give up. I hope you and your machines have a nice democracy together. You deserve each other.

Oh wait, a pearl of real thought: "the Iowa case is troubling". Ah, screw it. You and your machines are to smart for me. You win.

You won't bother me anymore. You are on ignore.

[Awsi Dooger]

27. What are you so petrifed of, BeFree?

You couldn't comprehend a basic point, in the first paragraph of my post. If it weren't so pathetic I'd be laughing.

Punch card over votes are not read by machine. They are rejected by machine. No vote is tallied in that category. That's how Gore lost Florida 2000, in case that minor fact has been concealed from you all these years.

Unlike punch cards, Diebold and other electronic vote machines do not allow over votes. Once you vote for that particular office, you are prompted to confirm or change your vote. Then you move to the next race. You can't vote again, for Pat Buchanon or Harry Browne or anyone else, something that would void your original vote.

Eliminating over votes is a tremendous boost for our side. Frankly, you're too machine paranoid to understand that.

[kster]

28. That makes sense, to bad

your point is hidden here on the internet, where the majority of Americans can't hear it. Hey maybe if we can get Clinton and Monica to have sex on top of an election theft machine they will put the election theft machine story ON TV, those Corporate Media people liked to talk about Clinton's penis 24-7, but are scared to death to have serious discussion and debate ON TV about the election theft machines.

Why do you think that is?

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

29. its not the punch cards themselves

the punchcards were not the cause of the loss in Florida.

The failure to clean out the chads was part
The lack of rules in Florida to say what constitutes a vote

IN NC, in 2004, punch cards had lower undervotes than did touchscreen machines.
http://www.cs.duke.edu/~justin/voting/totals.html

We have election officials who are hired by appointed a bipartisan BOE.
Our election officials clean out the space under the punch cards where the chads fall,
thus preventing the clogging,and making it possible for each voter to properly punch out
the candidates on their ballots.

We have rules that advise what constitutes a vote, hence no need for supreme court to
explain chads, hanging chads, and partial chads.

We have a non partisan State Board of Elections, and not some flunky political campaign
chief running our elections.

Gore didn't lose by punch cards, that was a diversion.

He lost when a machine subtracted about 22 K votes from him.
This was not on a punch card.

while the nation was focused on judges trying to recount punchcards in search of a few
hundred more votes, the real catastrophe was in the subtracting voting machines.

We had subtracting Central tabulators in our state,in 2004- but we corrected it before the official
results were reported. I don't think Florida ever corrected their vote subtracting problem.

Also, punch cards are read by computer. Yes they are marked by the voter, but counted by
a tabulator.

However, I do credit you for your comments regarding gambling, that sounds legit.
I know nothing about gambling, so wouldn't know.

[kster]

17. Just curious

will you bet on the next election?

[Awsi Dooger]

22. I'll bet many elections

Senate races. Gov races. Probably more than a dozen total.

Again, gambling is volume and an edge. If you worry about making 15 bets and losing all of them, and what the bottom line would be in that scorched earth scenario, you shouldn't be doing it. But if you have a 2% edge flipping a coin you want to do it all day. That's the way I look at it. I do statistical research via Excel and try to twist the advantage from slightly house to slightly myself. Nothing dramatic just a slow earn.

I've also been in a 16-man election pool since '96. That might be in jeopardy this year since the head guy is very ill.

I started my statewide research in '96 when they challenged me to enter that pool. I knew I had no chance subjectively. The bulk of my competitors are right wing so I kicked their ass and loved it in '96 and '98, winning both times. They slanted their projections based on what they wanted to happen, not what logic said.

When Gore "lost" in '00 that cost me the pool. I didn't fare as well in '02 or '04. I guess posters here will say that's due to the machine influence, but truthfully I didn't make proper adjustments in my Excel election model due to 9/11 and the partisan shift due to national security concerns.

My favorite political bets are when a late poll or several polls goes against the partisanship of the state and makes it appear the race is much closer than it appears, changing the odds in my favor. For example, a moronic poll in the final days of the Hillary/Lazio race in '00 gave Hillary only a 2 pont lead, so all of a sudden the odds plummeted and I stole a pickup bet on Hillary.

Here's a link to a political betting site: http://politicalbetting.bestbetting.com/Default.aspx?&market=14041317&help=false

[Febble]

20. Regarding this:

"I'd love to wager we've lost more votes and elections via punch cards than Diebold or any of its mechanical kin."

Well, not only was 2000 lost because of punchcards

http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/wrm1/mebane.pop2004.pdf

http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/wrm1/butterfly.pdf


but the one piece of evidence from the exit poll data that supports vote miscounts as a contributory factor in the redshift, is that in urban precincts, particularly those serving Hispanic or African American communities, the redshift was significantly greater where levers or punchards were used than where DREs or optical scanners were used. It's probably one of the effects that became more marked when my measure of redshift was used than when WPE was used, as WPE tends to understate the discrepancies in highly partisan precincts.

Yes, one of the big reasons the digital-theft-of-millions-of-votes story bugs me is that there is a huge problem of disenfranchisement of minorities that systematically disadvantages Dems, and includes differential residual vote rates on older technologies (including older pushbutton DREs, it would seem, in New Mexico).

All the recounts in the world aren't going to restore a vote that wasn't cast, or isn't legally valid.

[Awsi Dooger]

24. Thanks for the post and the links

We'll never know what Ohio 2004 would have looked like if Diebold had been implemented statewide prior to the primaries, as planned. Instead you had something like 69 of 88 counties using punch cards.

In 2000 nobody paid much attention to Ohio since Gore gave up early and didn't campaign over the final month. But leading into 2004 I looked it up and Ohio 2000 had almost 100,000 punch cards with an attempted but disqualified presidential vote. I guess it was similar in 2004.

Yet the outrage is centered on 19 counties and speculation, not the 69 counties where we know we're losing votes. Does not compute.

Well, at least Blackwell earned his money, suppressing in all the itty bitty ways once the punch cards were destined to stay. Must have really pissed him off, all that extra grunt work. With pure Diebold he had a few knobs to turn, maybe a couple of software specialists to oversee, and nothing more.

[OnTheOtherHand]

26. Ohio residuals 2004

per the Mebane dataset (the figures I give here are basically total votes minus presidential votes, so they do incorporate small numbers of "phantom votes" in some precincts)

residual votes:

76,660 in punch card precincts (1.85%)
6,885 in central op-scan precincts (1.09%)
1,618 in DRE precincts (1.26%)
681 in precinct-based op-scan precincts (1.36%)

Given the small numbers of counties, the last three rates are basically indistinguishable. The DRE rate is strikingly higher than residual rates in many DRE jurisdictions (although note that the pushbutton DREs in New Mexico had very high residual rates).

Mebane and Herron, based on more complex analysis, estimate in the DNC report that about 1% of Ohio votes cast went uncounted due to punch card technology.

[kster]

21. Kick...for the hell of it ........nt