In his news conference yesterday at Berkeley (who attended? Who phoned in to the conference call? Why didn't they try?) Professor Hout analogized the report to a ''beeping smoke alarm.'' It doesn't say how bad the fire...is, it doesn't accuse anybody of arson, it just says somebody ought to have an extinguisher handy.
Without attempting to crack the methodology, it's clear the researchers claim they've compensated for all the bugaboos that hampered the usefulness of previous studies of the county voting results in Florida. They'e weighted the thing to allow for an individual county's voting record in both the 2000 and 1996 elections (throwing out the ''Dixiecrat'' effect), to wash out issues like the varying Hispanic populations, median income, voter turnout change, and the different numbers of people voting in each county.
And they say that when you calculate all that, you are forced to conclude that compared to the Florida counties that used paper ballots, the ones that used electronic voting machines were much more likely to show ''excessive votes'' for Mr. Bush, and that the statistical odds of this happening organically are less than one in 1,000.
They also say that these ''excessives'' occurred most prominently in counties where Senator Kerry beat the President most handily. In the Democratic bastion of Broward, where Kerry won by roughly 105,000, they suggest the touch-screens ''gave'' the President 72,000 more votes than statistical consistency should have allowed. In Miami-Dade (Kerry by 55,000) they saw 19,300 more votes for Bush than expected. In Palm Beach (Kerry by 115,000) they claim Bush got 50,000 more votes than possible.
Hout and his research team consistently insisted they were not alleging that voting was rigged, nor even that what they've found actually affected the direction of Florida's 27 Electoral Votes. They point out that in a worst-case scenario, they see 260,000 ''excessives'' - and Bush took the state by 350,000 votes. But they insist that based on Florida's voting patterns in 1996 and 2000, the margin cannot be explained by successful get-out-the-vote campaigns, or income variables, or anything but something rotten in the touch screens.
Without attempting to crack the methodology, it's clear the researchers claim they've compensated for all the bugaboos that hampered the usefulness of previous studies of the county voting results in Florida. They'e weighted the thing to allow for an individual county's voting record in both the 2000 and 1996 elections (throwing out the ''Dixiecrat'' effect), to wash out issues like the varying Hispanic populations, median income, voter turnout change, and the different numbers of people voting in each county.
And they say that when you calculate all that, you are forced to conclude that compared to the Florida counties that used paper ballots, the ones that used electronic voting machines were much more likely to show ''excessive votes'' for Mr. Bush, and that the statistical odds of this happening organically are less than one in 1,000.
They also say that these ''excessives'' occurred most prominently in counties where Senator Kerry beat the President most handily. In the Democratic bastion of Broward, where Kerry won by roughly 105,000, they suggest the touch-screens ''gave'' the President 72,000 more votes than statistical consistency should have allowed. In Miami-Dade (Kerry by 55,000) they saw 19,300 more votes for Bush than expected. In Palm Beach (Kerry by 115,000) they claim Bush got 50,000 more votes than possible.
Hout and his research team consistently insisted they were not alleging that voting was rigged, nor even that what they've found actually affected the direction of Florida's 27 Electoral Votes. They point out that in a worst-case scenario, they see 260,000 ''excessives'' - and Bush took the state by 350,000 votes. But they insist that based on Florida's voting patterns in 1996 and 2000, the margin cannot be explained by successful get-out-the-vote campaigns, or income variables, or anything but something rotten in the touch screens.
[...]
But more importantly, they say that they ran a similar examination on the voting patterns in Ohio, comparing its paper ballot and electronic results, and found absolutely nothing to suggest either candidate got any ''bump'' that couldn't otherwise be explained by past voting patterns, income, turnout, or any other commonplace factor.
And as he says, no mainstream media are anywhere near this. He suggests it's because it's hard work.
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