[North-NV-Greens] Fwd: [usgp-dx] UC Berkeley research team: Likely e-vote irregularities in Florida

[Paul Etxeberri]

>
>
>http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/1118-14.htm
>
>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
>NOVEMBER 18, 2004
>1:01 PM
>
>CONTACT: Berkeley Media Relations
>Marie Felde mff at uclink.berkeley.edu
>510-642-3734 
>
>
>UC Berkeley Research Team Sounds 'Smoke Alarm'
>for Florida E-Vote Count
>
>Statistical Analysis - the Sole Method for
>Tracking E-Voting - Shows Irregularities May Have
>Awarded 130,000 - 260,000 or More Excess Votes to
>Bush in Florida
>
>Research Team Calls for Investigation 
>
>
>BERKELEY, CA -- November 18 -- Today the
>University of California's Berkeley Quantitative
>Methods Research Team released a statistical
>study - the sole method available to monitor the
>accuracy of e- voting - reporting irregularities
>associated with electronic voting machines may
>have awarded 130,000-260,000 or more excess votes
>to President George W. Bush in Florida in the
>2004 presidential election. The study shows an
>unexplained discrepancy between votes for
>President Bush in counties where electronic
>voting machines were used versus counties using
>traditional voting methods - what the team says
>can be deemed a "smoke alarm." Discrepancies this
>large or larger rarely arise by chance - the
>probability is less than 0.1 percent. The
>research team formally disclosed results of the
>study at a press conference today at the UC
>Berkeley Survey Research Center, where they
>called on Florida voting officials to
>investigate.
>
>The three counties where the voting anomalies
>were most prevalent were also the most heavily
>Democratic: Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade,
>respectively. Statistical patterns in counties
>that did not have e-touch voting machines predict
>a 28,000 vote decrease in President Bush's
>support in Broward County; machines tallied an
>increase of 51,000 votes - a net gain of 81,000
>for the incumbent. President Bush should have
>lost 8,900 votes in Palm Beach County, but
>instead gained 41,000 - a difference of 49,900.
>He should have gained only 18,400 votes in
>Miami-Dade County but saw a gain of 37,000 - a
>difference of 19,300 votes.
>
>"For the sake of all future elections involving
>electronic voting - someone must investigate and
>explain the statistical anomalies in Florida,"
>says Professor Michael Hout. "We're calling on
>voting officials in Florida to take action."
>
>The research team is comprised of doctoral
>students and faculty in the UC Berkeley sociology
>department, and led by Sociology Professor
>Michael Hout, a nationally-known expert on
>statistical methods and a member of the National
>Academy of Sciences and the UC Berkeley Survey
>Research Center.
>
>For its research, the team used
>multiple-regression analysis, a statistical
>method widely used in the social and physical
>sciences to distinguish the individual effects of
>many variables on quantitative outcomes like vote
>totals. This multiple-regression analysis takes
>into account of the following variables by
>county:
>
>- Number of voters
>- Median income
>- Hispanic/Latino population
>- Change in voter turnout between 2000 and 2004
>- Support for Senator Dole in the 1996 election
>- Support for President Bush in the 2000
>election.
>- Use of electronic voting or paper ballots
>
>"No matter how many factors and variables we took
>into consideration, the significant correlation
>in the votes for President Bush and electronic
>voting cannot be explained," said Hout. "The
>study shows, that a county's use of electronic
>voting resulted in a disproportionate increase in
>votes for President Bush. There is just a trivial
>probability of evidence like this appearing in a
>population where the true difference is zero -
>less than once in a thousand chances."
>
>The data used in this study came from public
>sources including CNN.com, the 2000 US Census,
>and the Verified Voting Foundation.
>
>For a copy of the working paper, raw data and
>other information used in the study can be found
>at: http://ucdata.berkeley.edu .
>
>###
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Paul Etxeberri

"Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow"   ---Chateaubriand