Dr. Eggman writes "Ars Technica has posted a lengthy follow up analysis of the 2008 New Hampshire Primaries outcome. The article deals with the O'Dell machine/hand-count table that has been circulating through emails. It also points out the combination of factors that resulted in such an odd symmetry of numbers, although the article notes that these numbers have been corrected. The corrections still indicate a discrepancy among the tallies. The article also goes on to talk about the nature of the communities that arrived at these numbers and what/how the handcounts proceeds. This process has been inconclusive; something that does not bode well for the rest of the primaries and indeed the election itself, as only 16 states currently mandate both a voter-verified paper trail (VVPT) and a random manual audit of election results."
It doesn't matter which way the popular vote goes, the electoral college elects the president... if you really wanted to screw with the election in this country, it would be WAY cheaper just to buy some electoral votes than to try to manipulate tons of ballots which won't have any effect on the actual election outcome.
That's not insightful. You need to convince the citizens that the outcome is legitimate or there will be rioting in the streets. Tampering with ballots preserves the illusion of legitimacy. Buying electoral college votes puts the fraud right out in the open, it's basically a big "fuck you!" to the American people. That's the last thing anyone in power wants, the entire electorate questioning their legitimacy.
The article at the link suggests that a majority of NYU students would give up their right to vote for $1 million. Supposing you could scale that up to the size of the population, for 1/2 * (population of USA) * $1,000,000 = $151 trillion, you could obtain a
The GDP is GROSS domestic product. Someone who "owned" the US wouldn't be able to pull a profit anywhere close to $13 trillion per year. The slaves have to eat something.
That's not insightful. You need to convince the citizens that the outcome is legitimate or there will be rioting in the streets. Tampering with ballots preserves the illusion of legitimacy. Buying electoral college votes puts the fraud right out in the open, it's basically a big "fuck you!" to the American people.
You forgot that when you're caught committing fraud (or caught for being completely incompetent), you haul the court system into it. Then, no matter how pissed people are, you can blow them off by saying, "sorry, the courts say *I* won."
All of human history (particularly nations like France) would seem to contradict that. There definitely is a point beyond which courts are powerless against the pissed-off citizenry.
I disagree that the message was flamebait. When you have Al Gore receiving -16,000 votes in an area where there are only a few hundred voters and when you have signed off numbers that have Al Gore having thousands votes more than Bush (this is in another district) but the NON signed off tallies have Bush ahead of Gore, and have many, many more examples of such fraud, the people of the U.S. did, indeed, roll over and take it. I'm sure most people here have seen the plethora of examples that suggest, quite loudly, that vote fraud did occur. There are a number of credible documentaries done on the subject.
In most cases the electors have absolutely no legal obligation to vote by the will of the people.
For relatively small values of "most". 27 out of 51 states (and the District of Columbia) require electors to vote for the winner of the popular vote (Maine and Nebraska can split the electors, but they are still required to vote for the candidate that they are assigned to).
Faithless electors [wikipedia.org] can be punished in 24 states. Furthermore, most electoral college voters are established party faithful -- it'd cost an awful lot of money to start swinging their votes since their political career would be destroyed.
At $1 million each, buying enough would cost $270 million. For that kind of money, why not just run for president and sink it in your campaign like Mitt Romney. How many politically connected folks would throw away their career, their connections, and their source of future income for less than a mil?
We're way offtopic from the article, but you should probably read the Wikipedia article on faithless electors [wikipedia.org]. Faithless electors can face consequences for their actions. So far, there haven't been severe consequences, but then so far a faithless elector has never turned the tide of an election. If that started to happen, it would be likely that political parties, states, and the federal government would make consequences more severe.
That's retarded sir. You'd have to be within a vote or two to actually pull it off, since states can make their representatives sign a contract stating that they'll vote the way the state wants them to vote. If a significant number of electoral college members were to break lines and vote against their state, there'd be massive investigations. You'd also (as mentioned by a sibling) have to get on the ballot in the first place and come close enough that you wouldn't be bribing too many people.
Before you can even bring the EC into play, you have to actually win the party nomination. And to do that, you have to win the primaries (still not the popular vote, though). And the best way to win the primaries (or to not lose them) is to win one of the first couple of states. I don't think NH was "rigged" by any means, but the motive is certainly there. Obama was riding the wave of popularity, and it may have gotten a little out of hand had he beaten Clinton in NH. She always has the advantage with
Can we PLEASE stop this nonsense about a "popular vote" for US President? There simply IS NO popular vote, at least not on a national level.
The Constitution defines how we elect the pres and VP. It says nothing about a nationwide popular vote. The STATES pick their allocated number of electors, and it is those electors who vote for specific people to be pres and VP. It is not even specified in the Constitution that the electors must vote for the people that the state picked them to. Some states don't even mandate that.
It is emotional hyperbole to pretend that someone is "screwed out" of winning a vote that doesn't exist. It makes no more sense to say that someone won the "popular vote" for US president than to claim that someone was elected president of north america because he got more votes for president of his country than others got to be president of theirs.
Whoever it was that started adding up the state-by-state vote counts and calling it the "popular vote" should be shot. Any school that teaches it should by decertified.
Not only is the "popular vote" undefined, it is not a true representation of popularity. People vote not just for who they prefer, but for who they think can win. If you prefer A over B and B over C, but you know that A cannot win, you'll probably vote for B to prevent C from winning. B's good showing in the "popular vote" is biased; no, rather A's low "popularity" is biased based on expected failure. A self-fulfilling prophecy. In any case, in the US, there IS NO popular vote, so wasting time talking about it is just wasting time.
The Electoral College mitigates the effects of mob rule, which is exactly what it's supposed to do. It gives the least-populous states slightly more power than they would otherwise have, and gives the most-populous states stlightly less power than they would otherwise have. I don't see it as "screwing" anybody out of the Presidency at all. The issue only arises in closely-contested elections where one or both candidates are having difficulty appealing to a broad majority of different regional voter blocs. North Dakota's Electors rarely matter, but when they do, and you fail to sway a majority of North Dakotans...
The effect of the Electoral College is that smaller jurisdictions MUST be considered when campaigning. Otherwise, a candidate would just hit a dozen major metro areas and they'd have the numerical advantage sewed up.
Instead, they have to take into consideration (somewhat) what happens in KY, WY, and MT, even though these states don't have enough numerical population to make a significant diff without the EC.
Elections are one of the most visible embodiments of state's rights. As long as my state doesn't violate federally guaranteed rights, we can make all the weirdo election laws we want, or choose our reps for the EC by flipping a coin. It's up to my state to determine these things, and the other states can't say (or do) squat about it. - Tim
Should a person in the middle of a sparse state such as Montana naturally have more say (admittedly only more to a very small degree) than a person in Los Angeles?
Given the fact we are a federation of states... YES
Just talking about election fraud is tired old conspiracy-theory mongering! Election fraud never happens! Bush really did win! When you claim election fraud, the terrorists win! Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor! That does not make sense!
I really hate how having the idea that a group of people ever sat down to do something bad or dishonest together is immediate cause to be branded a lunatic.
Yes. Even paranoiacs are right some percentage of the time. But, probably not this time. Or at least I haven't seen any reason to dust off my tin-foil hat yet. Its just the usual election SNAFU action, there is no need to confuse gross incompetence for conspiracy, the former covers most things pretty well. What gets me is that the media is choosing yet another president. No conspiracy there, just morons voting. Democracy depends on an informed public, which is antithetical to the modern American way of
The article doesn't even mention Romney's unusually high numbers when optical scanners counted the vote. Oh, and I support Ron Paul, so arstechnica has called me loopy because of my political beliefs. Looks like there is one more location I won't be going for any kind of news in the future!
Yeah, you can't be too careful; you might hear a contrary opinion. You must nurture your beliefs, and protect them from criticism. It's kinda like Scientology that way.
So, I like a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy. But has anyone who has gotten excited about this even bothered looking for unobserved variables. I don't know say, the affluence of a community and the likelihood that they have expensive voting machines. And that affluent communities might have different voting preferences that poorer communities?
Are we going to start banning ice cream to lower the murder rate next??
RTFA. We controlled for % holding bachelor's degrees, median household income, and population density - that's why this is newsworthy. The diebold effect is still significant.
Forget the "skew", there was clear evidence of fraud in certain towns where they reported zero votes for Ron Paul, and a couple of supporters who lived in that town came forward and said "uh, I don't think so, I KNOW I voted for him, as did several friends"?
The town did a re-count and magically those votes re-appeared. This wasn't a case of "oops, we were off by a few"- every single vote for a particular candidate was GONE. What's fascinating is that all of the news stories I've read about the NH primary concerns have neglected to mention this, and far as I can tell, nobody has done jack shit to figure out why it happened.
Furthermore, if they lost ALL of the Ron Paul votes- how many other votes did they lose?
I thought it was just one county, and they simply forgot Paul because he was at the bottom of the list when they sent in their report (even write-in candidates beat him). Nothing nefarious, or even electronic, just simple human error.
That's strange. He seems to be beating Thompson and Guilliani in nearly every primary. Yet, I continue to see both those candidate receiving significant news coverage. Lots of face time, and constant reports that Guilliani is going to win in Florida (as if that one state can get him nominated). What's more, neither of those two seem to have anything significant to say. Voting for Paul is a least a call for doing things that are significantly different than the status quo.
I can only say that the major media have gone out of their way to actively ignore Ron Paul. When they have provided any modicum of coverage to his campaign, it has been in the form of slander or ridicule. Why did Paul get a derisive question about "electability", instead of the policy issue everyone else was sidestepping, when he had won more of the vote than the proclaimed 'winner' of the debate?
If they'd forgotten Thompson and Guilliani, I might agree, but given the evidence, there seems to be a concerted effort to keep Paul from running at all.
I don't like Ron Paul, but I find it appalling that he can't get a single mention in the big news channels without being referred to as 'fringe candidate Ron Paul'. If Ron Paul is a 'fringe candidate', what does that make Fred Thompson - some lint under the carpet?
This was on the news, and was attributed to 'human error'. Meaning some nonagenarian didn't bother to report those because there was literally a handful (or less).
In absolute terms, it was a handful: 31. In absolute terms, it was VERY relevant: that number is 7% of the total for that precinct. I know because I checked up on that on one of the vote-watch sites that listed by precinct. I apologize, however, for not knowing how to quickly get back to that so I can post a link; I'm sure you will discover the same, however.
I don't have to tell you what adding 7% of the voters to Ron Paul's *aggregate* NH total would be, do I?
And supporting Ron Paul is great and idealistic and all, but a complete waste. He has 0% chance of winning anything, especially after those racist newsletters came out with his name on them, regardless if he wrote them.
You think this is just about making Ron Paul president? No. This is a long-term fight to move the nation in a more libertarian direction. This surge in grassroots support (compared to what libertarian-minded candidates used to get) is a culmination of all the "internet-only" support the libertarian movement built up beginning in the late 90s, as those younger voters aged, and it's only getting bigger.
The more publicity we can get for libertarian ideas, the better, even and especially of Ron Paul doesn't win. I would know. I'm a local organizer.
The news about the racist remarks worries me, of course, but I think Paul is still at the stage where "any publicity is good" esp. as he gets endorsements from those minorities who have worked with him.
And supporting Ron Paul is great and idealistic and all, but a complete waste. He has 0% chance of winning anything, especially after those racist newsletters came out with his name on them, regardless if he wrote them.
Actually, voting your principles is never a waste. In the primaries and all elections I vote for a candidate that shares my principles even when he has no chance in hell of winning. At least at the end of the day, I can look myself in the mirror and say I stood for something. It sure beats the hell out of looking in the mirror and seeing someone that sold out, rationalized, made excuses, and wasted potential and opportunity.
I also try to live my principles, but being human, I am not 100% on that.
The status quo has a lot to gain by suppressing the idea that he has a lot of support because he's the only candidate that _doesn't_ represent some permutation of the status quo, which every other candidate not only supports but is heavily invested in. The whole corrupt, corporacratic (or "coprocratic?") edifice of the Republican and Democrat parties comes crashing down if the notion begins to percolate in Joe Twelvepack's head that there are real alternatives and that it isn't inevitable that our country
From what I understand (from across the Atlantic) Paul is not a big contender anyway.
And I presume that, as someone across the Atlantic, you got that understanding primarily from his coverage (mainly, his lack of coverage) on old-media outlets, right?
In case you hadn't noticed, Ron Paul has a very large following among those who have actually HEARD his political positions and voting record. And it is growing, doubling about every two months.
His meet-up groups alone - people actively getting together to plan and execute activities to promote him - now number over 1,500 with members totaling over 108,000 members (about 9% waiting for a group to form), more than 2/3 the US troop strength in Iraq.
In the fourth quarter he raised nearly twenty million dollars. Volunteers unconnected with the campaign staged two "money bomb" donation days, with the first breaking the previous one-day fundraising record for a Republican candidate with over four million, the second shattering that (and the Democrats' record, too) with over six million. And all this from hundreds of thousands of individual contributors and an average donation of about $100 - no PACs, corporate contributions, etc.
Meanwhile, separately, his fans raised about another half-million to rent a blimp and fly it around the US. His signs are hung and posted all over - many handmade. Banners on overpasses. Signs in yards. Clusters of people on streetcorners waving them. And so on. He wins most straw polls. He dominates online call-in polls (such as the "who won the debate" polls - which, counter to claims, allow one vote per cell phone number.) Make a post critical of him and see how many people respond to defend him. B-)
The problem, though, is that virtually all this support comes from people whose primary news source is the Internet. On the old media his name is virtually never mentioned - to the point that people have been cracking jokes about "He who Must Not be Named". The popularity of both Ron Paul and his message crosses party, age, education, race, and income distinctions. So if he got anywhere near as much exposure as the "annointed" candidates get, one could expect him to be a leader in the nomination process and the probable landslide winner in the election if he got the nomination.
But his programs, if adopted, would amount to a major defeat for both major factions currently in power. So he gets major opposition from them.
As for the US (old)media, you need to understand that they are partisans as well. "Freedom of the Press" doesn't mean that the press is unbiased. It means the government must keep hands off while the operators can bias it any way they want. The hope is that all significant opinions will be represented. In current practice not all of them are.
To oversimplify: The (formerly) mainstream media (MSM) are in virtual lockstep, carrying the "progressive" (big-government left-wing) viewpoint while talk radio carries conservative stuff but mainly the Neocon (big-government interventionist) faction. Newscorp (especially Fox News) was thought to cover the conservative side of things but has come out of the closet as being strictly Neocon and blatantly partisan. The other conservative factions (such as the libertarian and paleoconservative, to name two) are still under the cone of silence when they aren't being directly attacked or ridiculed.
Ron Paul is primarily a libertarian with paleoconservative leanings. His candadacy, and the progressively more blatant attempts of the media to squash it, is what shone the spotlight on Fox News' partisanship - especially during the debates. (Turning off his monitor earphone, and the way he exposed that, was particularly ludicrous. See the link in my current sigline for where they cut one of his best comebacks from the west-coast delayed version of last Friday's debate.) But Fox News is not alone in this unintentional humor. For instance: The New York Times real-time election result page had the othe
It's good to know they're doing a public hand recount of paper ballots (which is exactly what they need to do), but the primary result of the New Hampshire primary is the media coverage of the winner the day after, so even if the Diebold machine count was wrong by such a huge margin, the damage is already done because the media has already crowned Clinton as the winner of the New Hampshire primary.
I have always found it incredibly curious how, of all countries, the United States has such big problems for vote counting. I know that problems like these are everywhere to be found, and that the US hava a very atypical election machinery (with each state presenting votes as they see fit, and other decissions based on a per-county basis, etc etc), but all in all, it should be pretty obvious that you have some serious election problem.
Down in my country (i'm form Chile), the electoral system is incredible clean and efficient. Every vote is hand counted, and the aggregated results of the election are official one or two hours after the last table closes, with a certainty of about 99.9%... and it's not a technological wonder: just ordered hand counting, and coordinated recollection of results. i know, we are a small country, but the voting population is about 4 mill people... more than NH in any case.
And in the event that there's a problem (i don't remember any in the last 20 years), we can track each ballot to the specific table where it was counted and check it all the way down to the ballot.
And Chile is a country with a reputation for chaos and disorder. Should i be amazed for our electoral system, or be amazed for how crappy the united states' system is?
in other words... with all due respect (and i mean it, it's an honet question...), why do you have such a crappy system? wouldn't it be cheaper to implement a low-tech, efficient and accountable sytem rather than risking every election with a thrillion different systems for each district and all this eternal debate about who probably got more votes?
How is graft and corruption ever the have chance in this country if we make it so simple? What would the talking heads talk about if there was a Obviosly, your oblivious to the complication of the American electorate and our diverse needs. Jeesh, dude. Would you think of the CHILDREN?
Canada crosses 5 time zones, and we always have a result before midnight EST. And we don't have any electronic voting machines - every thing is done by hand. A couple of hours to tally results? Most polls report results in under an hour after closing.
Maybe it's because you have that ridiculous system where you vote for 20-30 offices on a single day. We only have to count for one.
First, I have a bachelor's in math and a public policy masters (we took stats classes). So I know enough to know that the kind of analysis I've been seeing is leaving gaps.
Example:
What if the precincts with higher proportions of Obama supporters happen to be those with hand counted ballots? This is well within the realm of possibility, and from a statistical standpoint, just as likely a hypothesis as wrongdoing.
So, what's the answer? Regression. Regression not only gives you the correlation (which everyone knows is high), but also explains the significance of that correlation - how much it matters.
The result? I ran regressions of Clinton/Obama total vote percentage against hand/machine counted from the first 150 or so precincts (alphabetically) from the list of results and there were two important figures:
p-value of less than.05 (the relationship between method of vote counting and the final vote breakdown was significant).
Adj R-Squared less than 0.10 (the method in vote counting explained less than 10% of the variation in vote totals).
In plain English: 90% of the variation in results across precincts CANNOT be explained by the counting method.
Furthermore, the even with significance, the model may merely pick up variables related to the ones being used. Perhaps precincts with machine counting are wealthier, and wealthier precints trended Clinton. In that way, machine-counted precincts would skew Clinton but with no sinister activity.
My look wasn't by any means fully rigorous or conclusive, and I can't claim to be expert enough to be certain. And there are probably a few Slashdotters with greater stats skills to puncture my amateur analysis. But I think this is overblown. Let's focus on the real enemy, vote machines with no paper trail.
Americans have been conditioned to accept the narrative that exit polls can be wildly askew from actual results and suspicious results (like Ron Paul's disappearing votes) can be ignored. Properly administered exit polls are highly accurate. Now, I'm not saying that New Hampshire was rigged, but I want to know EXACTLY what happened to change the outcome from a near certain expectation. Only two explanations that I see as viable.
Exit polls conducted by amateurs (I heard ONE comment that this might have happened from a witness).
High number of undecided or uncommitted voters swayed one way. Problem here is that Hillary would have had to have taken an enormous share of these voters.
Even if you discount any possible voting fraud something stinks here. Every news outlet across the country has reported NH as a win for Clinton. Yet, both Clinton and Obama won 9 delegates from NH. That my friends is a tie, but I have not heard one news outlet report that fact.
Probably because Clinton won in the way that matters. Look, nobody cares about the delegates. They matter, but they're really insignificant on a large scale. What the primary is about is the media event, the chance to establish momentum, and all that. If one candidate gets a couple percentage points more than another and the primary process says that comes to the same number of delegates, that's fine. But if the media event wants to call that a victory, that's fine as well. They're two separate playing fiel
"UN observers won't certify them".
UN observers are usually sent to third-world nations and "flawed democracy", not countries like the US or any other Western country for the matter. So, as a matter of mact, UN observers won't certify US elections because nobody asked them to, not because they were there and refused to do it in light of widespread fraud, as your message implied.
One thing I always find interesting about those who say the elections aren't fair is they are either not old enough to vote or they don't vote. This always concludes with some wild exagerations, half-truths and outright lies along with a typical statement of either "everyone knows it's true" or "go find the evidence".
The story above predates the 2004 election, interesting quotes from the article are:
"OSCE-participating [nations] agreed in 1990 to observe elections in one another's countries. The OSCE routinely monitors elections within its 55-state membership, including Europe, Eurasia, Canada and the United States," a State Department spokesman said.
In November 2002, OSCE sent 10 observers on a weeklong mission to monitor the U.S. midterm elections. OSCE also sent observers to monitor the California gubernatorial recall election last year.
A quick trip over to the OSCE office of democratic Institutions and human rights reveals the following page on the monitoring of the last three elections in the US:
http://www.osce.org/odihr-elections/14680.html [osce.org]
The 2 November elections in the United States mostly met the commitments agreed to
by the 55 OSCE participating States in the Copenhagen Document of 1990 - see
Annex I. They were conducted in an environment that reflects a long democratic
tradition, including institutions governed by rule of law, free and professional media
and civil society involved in all aspects of the election process.
The presidential elections took place in a highly competitive environment. In what
was perceived to be a very close race, the leading presidential candidates enjoyed the
full benefits of free and vigorous media coverage throughout the campaign. There was
exceptional public interest not only in the two main presidential candidates and
respective campaign issues but also in the election process itself. Civil society
contributed substantially towards greater awareness of election issues and promoting
voter participation. However, a number of significant issues were brought to the
attention of the EOM as set out below.
It should be noted that only the UN certifies elections, and generally doesn't send observers to countries such as those in western Europe, the US and Japan as these countries have a long tradition of democracy. OSCE found the US elections to have only some minor problems, mostly to do with laws that restrict felons from voting, no national system or nation requirements (voting is at the state level), some districts having problems with provisional ballots and the presence of party election observers in the polling place being possibly to close to the voting booths. The 2006 observers drew issue with electronic voting where there was no paper trail as their single largest issue, but also discussed were provisional ballot differences, absentee voting by fax (allowed in a few states), voter identification (requirement to show ID), better training for poll workers, absence of non-partisan observers, felon voting and district boundaries (a concern with gerrymandering).
I see nothing in the reports that tells me fraud is widespread. Actually in my experience voting judges and poll workers (all volunteers) are quite ethical and upstanding. Some aren't trained as well, the best poll workers are the ones who have done it for many elections but in general the system is incredibly fair. With both parties observing not only the voting but the counting and all tasks being handled mostly by volunteers the system actually seems to be very difficult to tamper with. Although voter fraud has occurred in every election in this country (name a single election where dead people didn't vote) I've never seen a situation where ther
doesn't matter (Score:4, Interesting)
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Well, given that most people wouldn't mind having their vote bought [foxnews.com], it's not so insulting to most people as you might imagine.
The article at the link suggests that a majority of NYU students would give up their right to vote for $1 million. Supposing you could scale that up to the size of the population, for 1/2 * (population of USA) * $1,000,000 = $151 trillion, you could obtain a
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That's not insightful. You need to convince the citizens that the outcome is legitimate or there will be rioting in the streets. Tampering with ballots preserves the illusion of legitimacy. Buying electoral college votes puts the fraud right out in the open, it's basically a big "fuck you!" to the American people.
You forgot that when you're caught committing fraud (or caught for being completely incompetent), you haul the court system into it. Then, no matter how pissed people are, you can blow them off by saying, "sorry, the courts say *I* won."
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Regards,
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Re:You sure you don't have that backwards? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Source: http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/laws.html [archives.gov]
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Faithless electors aren't so common, or always leg (Score:5, Insightful)
At $1 million each, buying enough would cost $270 million. For that kind of money, why not just run for president and sink it in your campaign like Mitt Romney. How many politically connected folks would throw away their career, their connections, and their source of future income for less than a mil?
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So, if you'
We're talking about Primaries here... (Score:3, Insightful)
The Electoral College... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:doesn't matter (Score:5, Informative)
The Constitution defines how we elect the pres and VP. It says nothing about a nationwide popular vote. The STATES pick their allocated number of electors, and it is those electors who vote for specific people to be pres and VP. It is not even specified in the Constitution that the electors must vote for the people that the state picked them to. Some states don't even mandate that.
It is emotional hyperbole to pretend that someone is "screwed out" of winning a vote that doesn't exist. It makes no more sense to say that someone won the "popular vote" for US president than to claim that someone was elected president of north america because he got more votes for president of his country than others got to be president of theirs.
Whoever it was that started adding up the state-by-state vote counts and calling it the "popular vote" should be shot. Any school that teaches it should by decertified.
Not only is the "popular vote" undefined, it is not a true representation of popularity. People vote not just for who they prefer, but for who they think can win. If you prefer A over B and B over C, but you know that A cannot win, you'll probably vote for B to prevent C from winning. B's good showing in the "popular vote" is biased; no, rather A's low "popularity" is biased based on expected failure. A self-fulfilling prophecy. In any case, in the US, there IS NO popular vote, so wasting time talking about it is just wasting time.
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Instead, they have to take into consideration (somewhat) what happens in KY, WY, and MT, even though these states don't have enough numerical population to make a significant diff without the EC.
Elections are one of the most visible embodiments of state's rights. As long as my state doesn't violate federally guaranteed rights, we can make all the weirdo election laws we want, or choose our reps for the EC by flipping a coin. It's up to my state to determine these things, and the other states can't say (or do) squat about it. - Tim
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Given the fact we are a federation of states... YES
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Diebold Effect Persists (Score:3, Interesting)
No! No! Shut up! (Score:3, Insightful)
I really hate how having the idea that a group of people ever sat down to do something bad or dishonest together is immediate cause to be branded a lunatic.
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What gets me is that the media is choosing yet another president. No conspiracy there, just morons voting. Democracy depends on an informed public, which is antithetical to the modern American way of
Romney. (Score:3, Interesting)
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And all Ron's people said, "Paul-men."
Correlation and Causation (Score:5, Interesting)
Are we going to start banning ice cream to lower the murder rate next??
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what about the fraud with Ron Paul votes? (Score:5, Informative)
Forget the "skew", there was clear evidence of fraud in certain towns where they reported zero votes for Ron Paul, and a couple of supporters who lived in that town came forward and said "uh, I don't think so, I KNOW I voted for him, as did several friends"?
The town did a re-count and magically those votes re-appeared. This wasn't a case of "oops, we were off by a few"- every single vote for a particular candidate was GONE. What's fascinating is that all of the news stories I've read about the NH primary concerns have neglected to mention this, and far as I can tell, nobody has done jack shit to figure out why it happened.
Furthermore, if they lost ALL of the Ron Paul votes- how many other votes did they lose?
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Re:what about the fraud with Ron Paul votes? (Score:5, Interesting)
I can only say that the major media have gone out of their way to actively ignore Ron Paul. When they have provided any modicum of coverage to his campaign, it has been in the form of slander or ridicule. Why did Paul get a derisive question about "electability", instead of the policy issue everyone else was sidestepping, when he had won more of the vote than the proclaimed 'winner' of the debate?
If they'd forgotten Thompson and Guilliani, I might agree, but given the evidence, there seems to be a concerted effort to keep Paul from running at all.
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Re:what about the fraud with Ron Paul votes? (Score:4, Insightful)
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As a matter of fact, yes! *sweeps Thompson farther under carpet*
Re:what about the fraud with Ron Paul votes? (Score:5, Informative)
In absolute terms, it was a handful: 31. In absolute terms, it was VERY relevant: that number is 7% of the total for that precinct. I know because I checked up on that on one of the vote-watch sites that listed by precinct. I apologize, however, for not knowing how to quickly get back to that so I can post a link; I'm sure you will discover the same, however.
I don't have to tell you what adding 7% of the voters to Ron Paul's *aggregate* NH total would be, do I?
And supporting Ron Paul is great and idealistic and all, but a complete waste. He has 0% chance of winning anything, especially after those racist newsletters came out with his name on them, regardless if he wrote them.
You think this is just about making Ron Paul president? No. This is a long-term fight to move the nation in a more libertarian direction. This surge in grassroots support (compared to what libertarian-minded candidates used to get) is a culmination of all the "internet-only" support the libertarian movement built up beginning in the late 90s, as those younger voters aged, and it's only getting bigger.
The more publicity we can get for libertarian ideas, the better, even and especially of Ron Paul doesn't win. I would know. I'm a local organizer.
The news about the racist remarks worries me, of course, but I think Paul is still at the stage where "any publicity is good" esp. as he gets endorsements from those minorities who have worked with him.
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Re:what about the fraud with Ron Paul votes? (Score:4, Interesting)
I also try to live my principles, but being human, I am not 100% on that.
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Here's why hiding his votes is a big issue: (Score:4, Interesting)
And I presume that, as someone across the Atlantic, you got that understanding primarily from his coverage (mainly, his lack of coverage) on old-media outlets, right?
In case you hadn't noticed, Ron Paul has a very large following among those who have actually HEARD his political positions and voting record. And it is growing, doubling about every two months.
His meet-up groups alone - people actively getting together to plan and execute activities to promote him - now number over 1,500 with members totaling over 108,000 members (about 9% waiting for a group to form), more than 2/3 the US troop strength in Iraq.
In the fourth quarter he raised nearly twenty million dollars. Volunteers unconnected with the campaign staged two "money bomb" donation days, with the first breaking the previous one-day fundraising record for a Republican candidate with over four million, the second shattering that (and the Democrats' record, too) with over six million. And all this from hundreds of thousands of individual contributors and an average donation of about $100 - no PACs, corporate contributions, etc.
Meanwhile, separately, his fans raised about another half-million to rent a blimp and fly it around the US. His signs are hung and posted all over - many handmade. Banners on overpasses. Signs in yards. Clusters of people on streetcorners waving them. And so on. He wins most straw polls. He dominates online call-in polls (such as the "who won the debate" polls - which, counter to claims, allow one vote per cell phone number.) Make a post critical of him and see how many people respond to defend him. B-)
The problem, though, is that virtually all this support comes from people whose primary news source is the Internet. On the old media his name is virtually never mentioned - to the point that people have been cracking jokes about "He who Must Not be Named". The popularity of both Ron Paul and his message crosses party, age, education, race, and income distinctions. So if he got anywhere near as much exposure as the "annointed" candidates get, one could expect him to be a leader in the nomination process and the probable landslide winner in the election if he got the nomination.
But his programs, if adopted, would amount to a major defeat for both major factions currently in power. So he gets major opposition from them.
As for the US (old)media, you need to understand that they are partisans as well. "Freedom of the Press" doesn't mean that the press is unbiased. It means the government must keep hands off while the operators can bias it any way they want. The hope is that all significant opinions will be represented. In current practice not all of them are.
To oversimplify: The (formerly) mainstream media (MSM) are in virtual lockstep, carrying the "progressive" (big-government left-wing) viewpoint while talk radio carries conservative stuff but mainly the Neocon (big-government interventionist) faction. Newscorp (especially Fox News) was thought to cover the conservative side of things but has come out of the closet as being strictly Neocon and blatantly partisan. The other conservative factions (such as the libertarian and paleoconservative, to name two) are still under the cone of silence when they aren't being directly attacked or ridiculed.
Ron Paul is primarily a libertarian with paleoconservative leanings. His candadacy, and the progressively more blatant attempts of the media to squash it, is what shone the spotlight on Fox News' partisanship - especially during the debates. (Turning off his monitor earphone, and the way he exposed that, was particularly ludicrous. See the link in my current sigline for where they cut one of his best comebacks from the west-coast delayed version of last Friday's debate.) But Fox News is not alone in this unintentional humor. For instance: The New York Times real-time election result page had the othe
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New Hampshire primary is about media coverage (Score:3, Interesting)
Why do you always have this vote counting issues? (Score:5, Interesting)
Down in my country (i'm form Chile), the electoral system is incredible clean and efficient. Every vote is hand counted, and the aggregated results of the election are official one or two hours after the last table closes, with a certainty of about 99.9%... and it's not a technological wonder: just ordered hand counting, and coordinated recollection of results. i know, we are a small country, but the voting population is about 4 mill people... more than NH in any case.
And in the event that there's a problem (i don't remember any in the last 20 years), we can track each ballot to the specific table where it was counted and check it all the way down to the ballot.
And Chile is a country with a reputation for chaos and disorder. Should i be amazed for our electoral system, or be amazed for how crappy the united states' system is?
in other words... with all due respect (and i mean it, it's an honet question...), why do you have such a crappy system? wouldn't it be cheaper to implement a low-tech, efficient and accountable sytem rather than risking every election with a thrillion different systems for each district and all this eternal debate about who probably got more votes?
Re:Why do you always have this vote counting issue (Score:4, Funny)
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Correlation != causation (Score:3, Interesting)
Example: What if the precincts with higher proportions of Obama supporters happen to be those with hand counted ballots? This is well within the realm of possibility, and from a statistical standpoint, just as likely a hypothesis as wrongdoing.
So, what's the answer? Regression. Regression not only gives you the correlation (which everyone knows is high), but also explains the significance of that correlation - how much it matters.
The result? I ran regressions of Clinton/Obama total vote percentage against hand/machine counted from the first 150 or so precincts (alphabetically) from the list of results and there were two important figures:
p-value of less than .05 (the relationship between method of vote counting and the final vote breakdown was significant).
Adj R-Squared less than 0.10 (the method in vote counting explained less than 10% of the variation in vote totals).
In plain English: 90% of the variation in results across precincts CANNOT be explained by the counting method.
Furthermore, the even with significance, the model may merely pick up variables related to the ones being used. Perhaps precincts with machine counting are wealthier, and wealthier precints trended Clinton. In that way, machine-counted precincts would skew Clinton but with no sinister activity.
My look wasn't by any means fully rigorous or conclusive, and I can't claim to be expert enough to be certain. And there are probably a few Slashdotters with greater stats skills to puncture my amateur analysis. But I think this is overblown. Let's focus on the real enemy, vote machines with no paper trail.
The scary part about the New Hampshire results? (Score:4, Interesting)
Americans have been conditioned to accept the narrative that exit polls can be wildly askew from actual results and suspicious results (like Ron Paul's disappearing votes) can be ignored. Properly administered exit polls are highly accurate. Now, I'm not saying that New Hampshire was rigged, but I want to know EXACTLY what happened to change the outcome from a near certain expectation. Only two explanations that I see as viable.
Re:Big Story Ignored (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Face Facts (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Face Facts (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/08/08/international.observers/index.html [cnn.com]
The story above predates the 2004 election, interesting quotes from the article are:
A quick trip over to the OSCE office of democratic Institutions and human rights reveals the following page on the monitoring of the last three elections in the US: http://www.osce.org/odihr-elections/14680.html [osce.org]
It should be noted that only the UN certifies elections, and generally doesn't send observers to countries such as those in western Europe, the US and Japan as these countries have a long tradition of democracy. OSCE found the US elections to have only some minor problems, mostly to do with laws that restrict felons from voting, no national system or nation requirements (voting is at the state level), some districts having problems with provisional ballots and the presence of party election observers in the polling place being possibly to close to the voting booths. The 2006 observers drew issue with electronic voting where there was no paper trail as their single largest issue, but also discussed were provisional ballot differences, absentee voting by fax (allowed in a few states), voter identification (requirement to show ID), better training for poll workers, absence of non-partisan observers, felon voting and district boundaries (a concern with gerrymandering).
I see nothing in the reports that tells me fraud is widespread. Actually in my experience voting judges and poll workers (all volunteers) are quite ethical and upstanding. Some aren't trained as well, the best poll workers are the ones who have done it for many elections but in general the system is incredibly fair. With both parties observing not only the voting but the counting and all tasks being handled mostly by volunteers the system actually seems to be very difficult to tamper with. Although voter fraud has occurred in every election in this country (name a single election where dead people didn't vote) I've never seen a situation where ther
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