undergroundclips

Video of Mike Hout giving news conference

Mike Hout video on "The Effect of Electronic Voting Machines on Change in Support for Bush  in the 2004 Florida Elections"  (QuickTime)

Here is the video I recorded today at UC Berkeley, this is the High Quality version and it is very large at 120mb, a 25mb smaller one will be at:  http://undergroundclips.com/video/ucdata/11-18-04_VidConf_LQ.mov

And here is the Q & A:

Large Quicktime of Q & A

Small Quicktime of Q & A

UC Berkeley Research Team Sounds 'Smoke Alarm' on Florida E-Vote Count

The Effect of Electronic Voting Machines on Change in Support for Bush  in the 2004 Florida Elections:

I just videotaped the news conference given by Mike Hout, Professor of Sociology and Demography at UC Berkeley.  I should have a QuickTime file up within 2 hours.  UC DATA is UC Berkeley's principal archive of computerized social science and health statistics information and is a part of the University's Survey Research Center.  Their web page and results are here:  Vote_2004 from UC Data.

Their purpose:  "To instigate a serious and sobering examination of the E-Voting System.  Because there is NO PAPER trail, statistical methods are the ONLY WAY to determine if there was a problem with voting."

Summary:

-  Irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may  have awarded 130,000 excess votes or more to President George W.  Bush in Florida.
-  Compared to counties with paper ballots, counties with electronic  voting machines were significantly more likely to show increases  in support for President Bush between 2000 and 2004. This effect  cannot be explained by differences between counties in income,  number of voters, change in voter turnout, or size of  Hispanic/Latino population.
-  In Broward County alone, President Bush appears to have received  approximately 72,000 excess votes.
-  We can be 99.9% sure that these effects are not attributable to  chance.

These are disturbing findings, even assuming everything went especially postive for Bush in these counties, the vote is statistically aberrant. The 'Blogosphere' appears to have called this one right.

They do not make any statements as to what might have gone wrong with e-voting, but one thing is clear:  with no paper trail, there is no way to recount the votes....thus 'saving' us all from the horrible plight of the Chads....but despoiling our democracy.

-->Thanks to Ron Martinez and Karole Irene of TrueFalseFilms for helping break this story.<--

 

Democracy Spoiled

Who needs conspiracy theories when the facts will do?

If you want to know more about voting and how it can be that in the 21st Century, whether a vote is counted depends on where it is cast, please have a look at Harvard University's 2002 Civil Rights Project report:  Democracy Spoiled.

It's a sobering analysis, and nothing has changed since 2000.  When the press reports that somehow we 'got lucky' this time, they have it wrong, we're still not counting every vote, and the Democratic party has done little, so far, to make good on their promise of making every vote count.

Some Details from the Harvard 2002 report:

Spoilage Rates Vary Greatly From State And County To County

In the 2000 election, almost 2 million votes went uncounted - about 2 percent of all ballots cast - and the percent of uncounted ballots ranged from less than 1% to over 4% depending on the state. Fifteen states had residual ballot rates above the national rate of 1.9%. And even states with moderate or low overall spoilage rates contained counties with high rates of uncounted ballots; in some counties, over 12% of the ballots cast went up in smoke.

Spoilage Rates Are Most Prevalent In Counties With High Concentrations Of Minority Voters

Of the 100 counties with the highest spoilage rates, 67 have black populations above 12%. Of the top 100 counties with the lowest spoilage rates, the reverse is true – only 10 had sizeable  black populations, while the population of 70 of the counties was over 75% white. There is also a strong correlation between uncounted ballots and black population; specifically, as the black population in a county increases, the uncounted ballot rate correspondingly increases.

Did Diebold Deliver the Votes?

Blackboxvoting.org shows how easy it is to manipulate the Diebold voting machines (quicktime)

But in a more serious vein: 

Bush is already on his way with turning the US upside down, but there is still time to find out what happened in Ohio, Florida and elsewhere. See Greg Palast's article of November 4, 2004, "Kerry Won..."

Commondreams.org has an interesting article by Thom Hartmann that evidence is indeed mounting that the vote in Florida and elsewhere may have been hacked:  Evidence Mounts that the Vote was Hacked.

In the end, perhaps, we probably shouldn't be surprised that Ohio wound up voting for Bush in the end, as so much of the state is conservative, what is perhaps more surprising is how close Kerry came to winning anyway. See "What happend in Ohio?, but Terry Smith editor of the Athens News in Athens, Ohio.

But it absoultely behooves us to investigate...we'd be crazy not to, if ONLY to make sure that it can never happen.  Unfortunately, from everything I've learned about Diebold and voting software in general, I have little confidence that voting is even close to being invunerable.

Surely this is old information, but I'm repeating here, just to remind everyone:

Where is Diebold Systems located?  Ohio

What did Walden O'Dell, the Chairman of the board and chief executive of Diebold commit to doing for Bush? (From the MotherJones article of March 5th, 2004)

"Last September, he held a packed $1,000-per-head GOP fundraiser at his 10,800-square-foot mansion. He has been feted as a guest at President Bush's Texas ranch, joining a cadre of 'Pioneers and Rangers' who have pledged to raise more than $100,000 for the Bush reelection campaign. Most memorably, O'Dell last fall penned a letter pledging his commitment to helping Ohio "deliver its electoral votes to the President.""

Have a look at this documentary from VoterGate.tv

Finally, have a look at the question of spoilage rates for voting systems in the US, Ohio in particular had an apparent spoilage of well over 1.5%, enough to have turned the vote either way.  Let's face it, the 135,000 or so votes which Bush won by were WELL WITHIN THE MARGIN OF ERROR.  Is that a way to run an election?