Wired: Researchers: Florida Vote Fishy

[Evan Daniel Ravitz <evan@xxxxxxxx>]

http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65757,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1

(see the web page for links to the report, etc.)

Researchers: Florida Vote Fishy

By Kim Zetter

12:18 PM Nov. 18, 2004 PT

Electronic voting machines in Florida may have awarded George W.
Bush up to 260,000 more votes than he should have received,
according to statistical analysis conducted by University of
California, Berkeley graduate students and a professor, who released
a study on Thursday.

The researchers likened their report to a beeping smoke alarm and
called on Florida officials to examine the data and the voting
systems in counties that used touch-screen voting machines to
provide an explanation for the anomalies. The researchers examined
the same numbers and variables in Ohio, but found no discrepancies
there.
 Today's the Day. Their aim in releasing the report, the researchers
said, was not to attack the results of the 2004 election in Florida,
where Bush won by 350,000 votes, but to prompt election officials
and the public to examine the e-voting systems and address the fact
that there is no way to conduct a meaningful recount on the
paperless machines.

The analysis -- which hasn't been formally peer-reviewed, but was
examined by seven professors -- showed a discrepancy in the number
of votes Bush received in counties that used the touch-screen
machines and counties that used other types of voting equipment.

The researchers examined numerous variables that might have affected
the vote outcome. These included the number of voters, their median
income, racial and age makeup and the change in voter turnout
between the 2000 and 2004 elections. Using this information, they
examined election results for the Republican and Democratic
presidential candidates in the state in 1996, 2000 and 2004 to see
how support for those candidates and parties measured over eight
years in Florida's 67 counties.

They discovered that in the 15 counties using touch-screen voting
systems, the number of votes granted to Bush exceeded the number of
votes Bush should have received -- given all of the other variables
-- while the number of votes that Bush received in counties using
other types of voting equipment lined up perfectly with what the
variables would have predicted for those counties.

The total number of excessive votes ranged between 130,000 and
260,000, depending on what kind of problem caused the excess votes.
The counties most affected by the anomaly were heavily Democratic.

Sociology professor Michael Hout, who chairs the university's
graduate Sociology and Demography group, said the chance for such a
discrepancy to occur was less than 1 in 1,000.

"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," he said
in a statement. "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 three counties where anomalies were most prevalent were Broward,
Palm Beach and Miami-Dade. In Broward, statistical analysis showed
Bush should have received 13,000 fewer votes this year than in 2000.
In fact, he received 59,000 more votes than expected, for a net gain
of 72,000 votes. 1

In Palm Beach county, analysis showed that Bush should have gained
only 17,000 votes. But instead he gained 57,000. In Miami-Dade
county he was expected to gain votes, but by much less than he
actually did. According to the researchers he should have received
only 29,000 more votes, but he actually gained 44,000 votes.

Both Broward and Miami-Dade counties use machines made by Election
Systems & Software, while Palm Beach county uses machines made by
Sequoia Voting Systems. No Florida counties used touch-screen
machines made by Diebold Election Systems, the company whose
machines have received the most scrutiny over the last year.

A representative for Election Systems & Software called the study
"hypothetical."

"If you consider real-world experience, we know that ES&S'
touch-screen voting system has been proven in thousands of elections
throughout the country," said Jill Friedman-Wilson in an e-mail.
"Based on this solid track record -- as well as the extensive
testing process that is required before equipment may be used in an
election -- we are confident in the security, reliability and
accuracy of all of our voting systems."

Susan Van Houten, cofounder of Palm Beach Coalition for Election
Reform, was not surprised by the Berkeley report.

"I've believed the same thing for a while that the numbers are
screwy and it looks like they proved it," Van Houten said.

Van Houten said her group had received a number of reports from
voters who said that when they voted for Kerry on the Sequoia
machines, the review screen showed that the vote had been cast for
Bush. The review screen lets voters review their choices before
casting their ballot. Van Houten said she was concerned that the
same thing may have happened to many other voters who didn't
carefully check the review screen before casting their ballot.

"From the computer experts I spoke to, its relatively easy to
program something into the system so that only every 50th vote would
automatically go to Bush," Van Houten said. If this were the case,
election officials would be less likely to think there was a problem
with the machine if only a few voters noticed it.

But Walter Medane, a professor of government at Cornell University,
said the study showed no indication of fraud or that something was
out of place with the election results.

"All their study truly demonstrates is what was already well known,
which is that the counties that used electronic touch-screen
machines differ from the counties that used optical scan ballots in
many respects," Mebane wrote in an e-mail. "Whether those
differences include fraud specifically involving the electronic
machines cannot be determined from regression models such as the UC
Berkeley study uses."

Jenny Nash, press secretary for the Florida Department of State,
said she would not comment on a report that she had not yet read.
She said Florida had been using its current voting systems since
2002 and had "delivered hundreds of successful elections using the
systems."

"Florida has one of the most rigorous certification processes in the
nation," Nash said. "After a system is certified for use ... then
every single voting systems is tested prior to the election, sealed,
and then that seal is not broken until Election Day. We have never
had any reports from supervisors of machines malfunctioning or of
votes being lost."

"I think that's a joke," Van Houten said. "As a poll worker in the
primary (election), I personally witnessed three machines go down."

Van Houten's group, which monitored polling places on Nov. 2, found
that at least 40 of 798 machines they monitored were unable to print
out a final tally tape at the end of the night. In Florida, poll
workers are supposed to print out two tallies from each machine --
one for county officials and another for posting at the polls so
that voters can see what the tallies were.

"In around 40 cases that didn't occur," Van Houten said. "I
personally observed that during the primary as well. A machine just
went down and flashed a message that it needed service repair. It
didn't print out a tally."

Graduate students from Berkeley's Quantitative Methods Research Team
launched the research project after following debates in the
blogosphere about possible fraud in the election. After examining
and discounting many other theories, such as ones involving
optical-scan machines in Florida, they decided to look at counties
that used touch-screen voting machines.

Touch-screen machines became the focus of much debate last year when
computer scientists who examined the systems released several
reports showing that the machines were vulnerable to hacking and
vote manipulation. The testing and certification process for
approving voting systems has also been roundly criticized by
computer experts and voting activists as being inadequate.

The researchers would not speculate on possible causes for the vote
discrepancies in Florida; they said they would leave it to officials
to figure that out.


1 Correction, 11/19/2004 09:38 AM: The vote numbers originally cited
by the researchers were incorrect. The story has been modified to
reflect their revised numbers. (Return to the corrected text)



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