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<DIV>Dan,</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The president of Diebold, the manufacture of a good share of the electronic
voting machines without paper backup and who has contributed heavily to the
Republicans, made the statement in so many words that he would do whatever
necessary to ensure Bush was reelected. That is a very brash statement for
someone in his position. I smell a rat also in that I wouldn't put it past
anyone to somehow rig the machines.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Dick</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=predator75@moscow.com href="mailto:predator75@moscow.com">Dan
Carscallen</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=vision2020@moscow.com
href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com">vision2020@moscow.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, November 17, 2004 12:27
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> RE: [Vision2020] I Smell a
Rat</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=906502020-17112004><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=#800000
size=2>again, I take issue:</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=906502020-17112004><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=#800000
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=906502020-17112004><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=#800000
size=2>1. Maybe my earlier take on people giving false exit poll answers
was wrong, but maybe some people just refused to answer. I know I
wouldn't. None of their damn business.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=906502020-17112004><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=#800000
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=906502020-17112004><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=#800000
size=2>2. In my limited experience, aren't most "hackers" who would
tamper with such things be more left leaning, therefore swinging the vote
Kerry's way? Heck, I watch movies, those hacker people for damn sure
aren't Republicans.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=906502020-17112004><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=#800000
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=906502020-17112004><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=#800000
size=2>3. Seems a real stretch to think someone would perpetrate such a
"fraud". Maybe I'm just overly honest, and like to think others are as
well.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=906502020-17112004><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=#800000
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=906502020-17112004><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=#800000
size=2>4. maybe the liberals/democrats should take a cue from one of the
biggest anti-Bush sites out there, and MoveOn. There's always
2008.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=906502020-17112004><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=#800000
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=906502020-17112004><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=#800000
size=2>DC</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader lang=en-us dir=ltr align=left><FONT
face=Tahoma size=2>-----Original Message-----<BR><B>From:</B>
vision2020-bounces@moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces@moscow.com] <B>On
Behalf Of </B>Tbertruss@aol.com<BR><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, November 17, 2004
11:59 AM<BR><B>To:</B> vision2020@moscow.com<BR><B>Subject:</B> [Vision2020]
I Smell a Rat<BR><BR></FONT></DIV><FONT face=arial,helvetica><FONT lang=0
face=Arial size=2 PTSIZE="10" FAMILY="SANSSERIF"><A
href="http://www.zogby.com/soundbites/ReadClips.dbm?ID=10414">http://www.zogby.com/soundbites/ReadClips.dbm?ID=10414</A><BR><BR></FONT><FONT
lang=0 style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" face=arial color=#ff9900 size=3
PTSIZE="12" FAMILY="SANSSERIF" BACK="#ffffff"><B>I Smell a
Rat<BR><BR></FONT><FONT lang=0 style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" face=Arial
color=#000000 size=2 PTSIZE="10" FAMILY="SANSSERIF" BACK="#ffffff"></B>I
smell a rat. It has that distinctive and all-too-familiar odor of the
species Republicanus floridius. We got a nasty bite from this pest four
years ago and never quite recovered. Symptoms of a long-term infection are
becoming distressingly apparent. The first sign of the rat was on election
night. The jubilation of early exit polling had given way to rising anxiety
as states fell one by one to the Red Tide. It was getting late in the smoky
cellar of a Prague sports bar where a crowd of expats had gathered. We had
been hoping to go home to bed early, confident of victory. Those hopes had
evaporated in a flurry of early precinct reports from Florida and Ohio.
<BR><BR>By 3 AM, conversation had died and we were grimly sipping beers and
watching as those two key states seemed to be slipping further and further
to crimson. Suddenly, a friend who had left two hours earlier rushed in and
handed us a printout. <BR><BR>"Zogby's calling it for Kerry." He smacked the
sheet decisively. "Definitely. He's got both Florida and Ohio in the Kerry
column. Kerry only needs one." Satisfied, we went to bed, confident we would
wake with the world a better place. Victory was at hand. <BR><BR>The morning
told a different story, of course. No Florida victory for Kerry - Bush had a
decisive margin of nearly 400,000 votes. Ohio was not even close enough for
Kerry to demand that all the votes be counted. The pollsters had been dead
wrong, Bush had four more years and a powerful mandate. Onward Christian
soldiers - next stop, Tehran. <BR><BR>Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics
<BR><BR>I work with statistics and polling data every day. Something rubbed
me the wrong way. I checked the exit polls for Florida - all wrong. CNN's
results indicated a Kerry win: turnout matched voter registration, and
independents had broken 59% to 41% for Kerry. <BR><BR>Polling is an
imprecise science. Yet its very imprecision is itself quantifiable and
follows regular patterns. Differences between actual results and those
expected from polling data must be explainable by identifiable factors if
the polling sample is robust enough. With almost 3.000 respondents in
Florida alone, the CNN poll sample was pretty robust. <BR><BR>The first
signs of the rat were identified by Kathy Dopp, who conducted a simple
analysis of voter registrations by party in Florida and compared them to
presidential vote results. Basically she multiplied the total votes cast in
a county by the percentage of voters registered Republican: this gave an
expected Republican vote. She then compared this to the actual result.
<BR><BR>Her analysis is startling. Certain counties voted for Bush far in
excess of what one would expect based on the share of Republican
registrations in that county. They key phrase is "certain counties" - there
is extraordinary variance between individual counties. Most counties fall
more or less in line with what one would expect based on the share of
Republican registrations, but some differ wildly. <BR><BR>How to explain
this incredible variance? Dopp found one over-riding factor: whether the
county used electronic touch-screen voting, or paper ballots which were
optically scanned into a computer. All of those with touch-screen voting had
results relatively in line with her expected results, while all of those
with extreme variance were in counties with optical scanning. <BR><BR>The
intimation, clearly, is fraud. Ballots are scanned; results are fed into
precinct computers; these are sent to a county-wide database, whose results
are fed into the statewide electoral totals. At any point after physical
ballots become databases, the system is vulnerable to external hackers.
<BR><BR>It seemed too easy, and Dopp's method seemed simplistic. I re-ran
the results using CNN's exit polling data. In each county, I took the number
of registrations and assigned correctional factors based on the CNN poll to
predict turnout among Republicans, Democrats, and independents. I then used
the vote shares from the polls to predict a likely number of Republican
votes per county. I compared this 'expected' Republican vote to the actual
Republican vote. <BR><BR>The results are shocking. Overall, Bush received 2%
fewer votes in counties with electronic touch-screen voting than expected.
In counties with optical scanning, he received 16% more. This 16% would not
be strange if it were spread across counties more or less evenly. It is not.
In 11 different counties, the 'actual' Bush vote was at least twice higher
than the expected vote. 13 counties had Bush vote tallies 50 - 100% higher
than expected. In one county where 88% of voters are registered Democrats,
Bush got nearly two thirds of the vote - three times more than predicted by
my model. <BR><BR>Again, polling can be wrong. It is difficult to believe it
can be that wrong. Fortunately, however, we can test how wrong it would have
to be to give the 'actual' result. <BR><BR>I tested two alternative
scenarios to see how wrong CNN would have to have been to explain the
election result. In the first, I assumed they had been wildly off the mark
in the turnout figures - i.e. far more Republicans and independents had come
out than Democrats. In the second I assumed the voting shares were
completely wrong, and that the Republicans had been able to massively poach
voters from the Democrat base. <BR><BR>In the first scenario, I assumed 90%
of Republicans and independents voted, and the remaining ballots were cast
by Democrats. This explains the result in counties with optical scanning to
within 5%. However, in this scenario Democratic turnout would have been only
51% in the optical scanning counties - barely exceeding half of Republican
turnout. It also does not solve the enormous problems in individual
counties. 7 counties in this scenario still have actual vote tallies for
Bush that are at least 100% higher than predicted by the model - an
extremely unlikely result. <BR><BR>In the second scenario I assumed that
Bush had actually got 100% of the vote from Republicans and 50% from
independents (versus CNN polling results which were 93% and 41%
respectively). If this gave enough votes for Bush to explain the county's
results, I left the amount of Democratic registered voters ballots cast for
Bush as they were predicted by CNN (14% voted for Bush). If this did not
explain the result, I calculated how many Democrats would have to vote for
Bush. <BR><BR>In 41 of 52 counties, this did not explain the result and Bush
must have gotten more than CNN's predicted 14% of Democratic ballots - not
an unreasonable assumption by itself. However, in 21 counties more than 50%
of Democratic votes would have to have defected to Bush to account for the
county result - in four counties, at least 70% would have been required.
These results are absurdly unlikely. <BR><BR>The Second Rat <BR><BR>A
previously undiscovered species of rat, Republicanus cuyahogus, has been
found in Ohio. Before the election, I wrote snide letters to a state
legislator for Cuyahoga county who, according to media reports, was
preparing an army of enforcers to keep 'suspect' (read: minority) voters
away from the polls. One of his assistants wrote me back very pleasant mails
to the effect that they had no intention of trying to suppress voter
turnout, and in fact only wanted to encourage people to vote. <BR><BR>They
did their job too well. According to the official statistics for Cuyahoga
county, a number of precincts had voter turnout well above the national
average: in fact, turnout was well over 100% of registered voters, and in
several cases well above the total number of people who have lived in the
precinct in the last century or so. <BR><BR>In 30 precincts, more ballots
were cast than voters were registered in the county. According to county
regulations, voters must cast their ballot in the precinct in which they are
registered. Yet in these thirty precincts, nearly 100.000 more people voted
than are registered to vote - this out of a total of 251.946 registrations.
These are not marginal differences - this is a 39% over-vote. In some
precincts the over-vote was well over 100%. One precinct with 558 registered
voters cast nearly 9,000 ballots. As one astute observer noted, it's the
ballot-box equivalent of Jesus' miracle of the fishes. Bush being such a man
of God, perhaps we should not be surprised. <BR><BR>What to Do? <BR><BR>This
is not an idle statistical exercise. Either the raw data from two critical
battleground states is completely erroneous, or something has gone horribly
awry in our electoral system - again. Like many Americans, I was
dissatisfied with and suspicious of the way the Florida recount was resolved
in 2000. But at the same time, I was convinced of one thing: we must let the
system work, and accept its result, no matter how unjust it might appear.
<BR><BR>With this acceptance, we placed our implicit faith in the Bush
Administration that it would not abuse its position: that it would recognize
its fragile mandate for what it was, respect the will of the majority of
people who voted against them, and move to build consensus wherever possible
and effect change cautiously when needed. Above all, we believed that both
Democrats and Republicans would recognize the over-riding importance of
revitalizing the integrity of the electoral system and healing the bruised
faith of both constituencies. <BR><BR>This faith has been shattered. Bush
has not led the nation to unity, but ruled through fear and division.
Dishonesty and deceit in areas critical to the public interest have been the
hallmark of his Administration. I state this not to throw gratuitous
insults, but to place the Florida and Ohio electoral results in their proper
context. For the GOP to claim now that we must take anything on faith, let
alone astonishingly suspicious results in a hard-fought and extraordinarily
bitter election, is pure fantasy. It does not even merit discussion.
<BR><BR>The facts as I see them now defy all logical explanations save one -
massive and systematic vote fraud. We cannot accept the result of the 2004
presidential election as legitimate until these discrepancies are rigorously
and completely explained. From the Valerie Plame case to the horrors of Abu
Ghraib, George Bush has been reluctant to seek answers and assign
accountability when it does not suit his purposes. But this is one time when
no American should accept not getting a straight answer. Until then, George
Bush is still, and will remain, the 'Accidental President' of 2000. One of
his many enduring and shameful legacies will be that of seizing power
through two illegitimate elections conducted on his brother's watch, and
engineering a fundamental corruption at the very heart of the greatest
democracy the world has known. We must not permit this to happen again.
<BR><BR><BR><BR><I>(11/15/2004)</I> <BR> - By
Colin Shea, <I>The Sierra Times, Freezer Box</I> </FONT><FONT lang=0
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" face=Arial color=#000000 size=3
PTSIZE="12" FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
BACK="#ffffff"><BR><BR>---------------------------------------------------------------<BR><BR>V2020
Post by Ted Moffett<BR><BR><BR><BR></BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></FONT>
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