Saturday, November 20, 2004
The Vote Watchers
Living in Florida as I do, I can't help feeling both embarrassed and defensive by the state's recent electoral history.
Bev Harris, whom I do not know but wish I did (unless I were playing poker with her, in which case I'd prefer that she not be present at all thank you), is the (justifiably) widely proprietor of the organization, I guess you could call it, named Black Box voting.
A recent report by the Daytona Beach News-Journal describes Ms. Harris's run-in with election officials in Volusia County, which includes Daytona Beach. The fracas apparently included a tug-of-war over a garbage bag (destined for the dumpster) between Ms. Harris and one of the officials; the bag split open and out tumbled paper tapes -- signed and dated by precinct workers -- which were at variance with the results actually reported by the county. Whoops.
In the meantime, eRiposte sums up the conflicted feelings of many (both down here and, I'd bet, around the country):
Over at USCountVotes.org, Kathy Dopp proposes a detailed statistical analysis of the counts (not only in Florida but elsewhere as well).
Ms. Dopp's analysis is recrunched and reformatted by Lynn Landes at her ecoTalk.org site. I'm not always a believer in the "Where there's smoke, there's fire" way of thinking -- sometimes smoke is just smoke, even just a cigarette -- but it gets awfully hard to ignore all these glimpses at the same data, from different angles, all pointing to what might be called "anomalies" only in the politests company.
And finally, a little retrospective perspective: Back in October, a contributor to the Kuro5hin "Technology and Culture, From the Trenches" site described some possible problems we would face with the whole concept of voting, regardless of whether it's electronic or otherwise. Well worth a read.
Update: The Daily Howler responds to recent punditiotic critiques of the vote-(re)counting advocates.
Bev Harris, whom I do not know but wish I did (unless I were playing poker with her, in which case I'd prefer that she not be present at all thank you), is the (justifiably) widely proprietor of the organization, I guess you could call it, named Black Box voting.
A recent report by the Daytona Beach News-Journal describes Ms. Harris's run-in with election officials in Volusia County, which includes Daytona Beach. The fracas apparently included a tug-of-war over a garbage bag (destined for the dumpster) between Ms. Harris and one of the officials; the bag split open and out tumbled paper tapes -- signed and dated by precinct workers -- which were at variance with the results actually reported by the county. Whoops.
In the meantime, eRiposte sums up the conflicted feelings of many (both down here and, I'd bet, around the country):
Folks, I am of the belief that before a claim of a "stolen election" is made, incontrovertible proof must be shown that it was indeed "stolen". Based on the data I have seen so far, I can't say there is incontrovertible evidence proving Bush was wrongly awarded millions of votes by voting machines - namely, by a margin sufficient to overturn the current verdict.The key word in that passage is, I think, the final one.
Having said that, there is growing evidence of suspicious results - especially in Florida (and possibly in Ohio). There is significant evidence that vote suppression, especially in Ohio, was extensive. There is incontrovertible evidence that the Bush campaign and the GOP ran a sometimes fraudulent and a general vote-suppressing campaign. Just as there is no proof (yet) that Bush illegally got millions more votes than he did, there is also no proof that the irregularities, suspicious results and full range of dirty and fraudulent tactics employed by the Bush campaign and the GOP did NOT add up to suppress Democratic votes by a large margin. So, here is my conclusion (for now).
The only way we can sustain this democracy is by allowing free speech and allowing people to bring up all irregularities and fraud to the surface and investigating it to the end, with the full resources that such investigations require. Nothing short of the future of our democracy depends on it. It is from the results of these investigations that we can educate people about the country they live in, about who really is on their side and who really won and lost. It is the only way to find better means to run elections the next time. So, I say, keep the investigations and analysis going, but let's not get too carried away by the rhetoric just yet.
Over at USCountVotes.org, Kathy Dopp proposes a detailed statistical analysis of the counts (not only in Florida but elsewhere as well).
Ms. Dopp's analysis is recrunched and reformatted by Lynn Landes at her ecoTalk.org site. I'm not always a believer in the "Where there's smoke, there's fire" way of thinking -- sometimes smoke is just smoke, even just a cigarette -- but it gets awfully hard to ignore all these glimpses at the same data, from different angles, all pointing to what might be called "anomalies" only in the politests company.
And finally, a little retrospective perspective: Back in October, a contributor to the Kuro5hin "Technology and Culture, From the Trenches" site described some possible problems we would face with the whole concept of voting, regardless of whether it's electronic or otherwise. Well worth a read.
Update: The Daily Howler responds to recent punditiotic critiques of the vote-(re)counting advocates.
