New Hampshire Primaries Follow-Up Analysis 315
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."
doesn't matter (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:doesn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
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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
Re:doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'd tend to think that the actual rate is quite a bit less, considering that most people don't vote anyways.
Of course, as a fiscally responsible person, I'd be 90% of the way towards early retirement if you handed me $1M. Might be sad, but I wouldn't consider $1M sufficient without having time to figure out my taxes, figure out a budget and investments, get legal advice, etc...
Meanwhile I'm keeping my jo
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The article at the link suggests that a majority of NYU students would give up their right to vote for $1 million.
I don't know about NYU students, but my price would not be the same if it was just me losing the right vs millions of people losing their right; if it was some weird experiment involving just me, a million dollars sounds about right, but if it was an open offer to anyone and everyone who wanted it, I would turn it down (both because the vote I'd be keeping would be much more valuable, and because the hyper-inflation that would result from making most of the population millionaires would make being a milli
Re:doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
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."
Re:doesn't matter (Score:4, Informative)
Re:doesn't matter (Score:4, Interesting)
Regards,
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You sure you don't have that backwards? (Score:2)
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Internationally, exit polls are pretty good because they are handled in a completely different manner, but within the US they are little more than a tool to keep political junkies busy during the day.
Now thats not to
Re:You sure you don't have that backwards? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:doesn't matter (Score:4, Informative)
Source: http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/laws.html [archives.gov]
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'
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Makes sense to me. How long before this starts to happen? The electoral college is a joke, and still doesn't represent voters evenly across statelines.
Check this out if you would like more information on the discrepancy: http://www.vastlyimportant.com/vastly/files/vote_power.htm [vastlyimportant.com]
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They would risk jailtime to put the one person into power that can pardon them of all wrongdoing with a stroke of a pen?
Right, because if they went to jail for being bribed, the person who bribed them wouldn't suffer the same consequences. If only there were 4 months between the election and the swearing in of the president, where things like this could be investigated.
The electoral college is a joke, and still doesn't represent voters evenly across statelines
The electoral college is doing exactly what it was intended to do when it doesn't represent voters evenly across state lines. The needs of people in large cities are vastly different from the needs of people in rural areas. In order to have them both represe
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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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To get rid of the EC would require a constitutional amendment.
I personally wish there were positive votes and negative votes. So many times I don't believe in the candidate I vote for, and would rather cast a negative vote for the candidate I am most fearful of winning. I think this could open up the system to more than two parties. While the L
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No there is not but if you want to talk about bad for representative government. Can you imagine I run on a platform that would destroy the economy of a hand full of states and people of those states have to watch their electors vote for me because I won the popular vote?
I like the Nebraska system. EC's are awarder per congressional district wi
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It's "popular" not as in "best-dressed" but as in "of the populace":
From the dictionary:
3. of, pertaining to, or representing the people, esp. the common people: popular discontent.
4. of the people as a whole, esp. of all citizens of a nation or state qualified to participate in an election: popular suffrage; the popular vote; popular representation.
Aside from that, the electoral college for each state is defined by the
Re:doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
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The tyranny of the majority is ALWAYS an inherent problem in democracy--probably the greatest flaw in this system of elections. All the Electoral Col
Re:doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the fact we are a federation of states... YES
Don't blame me (Score:2, Funny)
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
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Romney. (Score:3, Interesting)
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And all Ron's people said, "Paul-men."
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Yeah, you can't be too careful; you might hear a contrary opinion.
The name calling on the part of the Ars Technica article's author casts doubts about how informed, objective, rational, or intelligent he is when considering the subject under question - with the implication that he might have similar problems with other issu
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I don't have time to pitch a hissy-fit every time my particular political persuasion gets smeared or name-called. You do what you do with all news: skim it to glean soft, chewy nougats of wisdom, and discard the cheap almonds and chocolate coating. That last
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I don't mind dissenting opinions. A dissenting opinion is 'libertarianism fails because of xyz'. Saying 'supporters of XYZ are loons/terrorists/etc' isn't dissenting opinion, it is the slander of a group of people you disagree with politically
Correlation and Causation (Score:5, Interesting)
Are we going to start banning ice cream to lower the murder rate next??
Re:Correlation and Causation (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Correlation and Causation (Score:5, Informative)
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2. affleunt people might be more reticent in telling an exit polster how they voted
Just like the differences in 2004. Democratic voters are typically younger and/or poorer. Also more vocal. Older/richer voters might not want to give out that info as much.
Just some possibilities. There are probably about 50 other parameters that could affect it.
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However, in the 2004 presidential election, we saw much larger discrepancies between the exit polls and the actual results than we've seen in the past. Why?
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.
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*
We have simple human errors in the South too (Score:3, Interesting)
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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http://www.reason.com/news/show/124426.html [reason.com]
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Slavery, up through the Civil War.
Internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry in WWII.
Military draft at various times until ended by Nixon.
Did you fail to think of these things before posting, or are you just ignorant?
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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
This would be important for an actual election... (Score:2)
New Hampshire primary is about media coverage (Score:3, Interesting)
Hillary Bought Diebold (Score:2, Troll)
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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:2)
Honest answer: because not everyone is aware of the problems. And some of those who are aware don't consider them to be major problems.
So how would we fix it? Elections in the US are run by the states, so in order to implement a consistent, well-designed system nationwide we would have to take that power from the states via a Constitutional amendment - something rather difficult to do without broad su
Re:Why do you always have this vote counting issue (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Why do you always have this vote counting issue (Score:2)
The UK hand counts all its votes too, it's not a small country (~60m people) but we still get the results in 4-5 hours after the polls close. The reason always given is that the US is too big, but that's a very poor argument. If you have more voters you also have more counters. There is never a lack of volunteers at e
Re:Why do you always have this vote counting issue (Score:2)
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Great, Yet another stolen election in the US (Score:2)
It's a pattern!
Wake up USA.
The Muslim religion got hijacked by extremists.
You're getting your entire country hijacked right in front of you!
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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.
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That is, there is a 1/1000 chance that it's just a coincidence.
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.
anyone who cant steal an election ... (Score:2, Insightful)
2012 only four years away. . . (Score:2, Insightful)
I've heard that the whole 2012 thing is a bit of a bugaboo, that nothing is quite so clockwork; that time is somewhat squishy. --Or as the Doctor put it, "Timey-Whymie".
Still. . , as looming and catastrophic endings/beginnings go, the milestones keep piling up, don't they? --And they have an interesting story to tell to anybody who is paying attention.
The U.S. goose is cooked, and there doesn't seem to be anything anybody can do to stop it. People are too fa
In Soviet United States... oh wait (Score:2)
Yeah, you are all sheeple...
Wake up... (Score:3, Interesting)
Just like it was clear (and proven conclusively) that there was fraud that altered the outcome of the 2004 presidential election, and 2000 as well.
The mainstream media is completely compromised. Anybody who is waiting to hear this proclaimed on NBC wil be waiting forever (stupidly).
Many people just don't understand that this isn't a right/left dem/rep issue - The powers that be have a vested interest in ensuring that if it's democrat it is Hillary - if it is a republican it is MCCain or Giuliani.
They also want to limit mainstream exposure of Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich...They certainly couldn't have straight shooters like these guys on a live TV major network debate speaking truth right next to a bunch of controlled corporatists who want to talk about the crap the mainstream media has been forcefeeding the public without making media darlings look like the cardboard kleptogarchs they are.
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Media consolidation is a massive problem, with this I agree with you - and I think that when you look at Ron Paul's open market theories you have to keep in mind that I do
Re:Big Story Ignored (Score:4, Insightful)
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Read. Think. Research. Post. Not the other way around.
Re:Face Facts (Score:5, Informative)
OSCE sent 92 observers to monitor the '04 election (Score:3, Informative)
"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.
You and your '+5 Informative' are so very wrong:
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A team of international observers will monitor the presidential election in November, according to the U.S. State Department. [...]
Thirteen Democratic members of the House of Representatives, raising the specter of possible civil rights violations that they said took place in Florida and elsewhere in the 2000 election, wrote to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in July, asking him to send observers.
After Annan rejected their request, sayi
Re:Face Facts - they were asked (Score:3, Informative)
I believe that the U.S. government denied them permission. Too bad. They are certainly needed.
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
Minor problems? WTF (Score:3, Insightful)
The 2004 presidential election was decided by a few key battleground states, most notably Ohio. Oddly enough there were strange exit poll discrepancies [appliedresearch.us] in many of these states including Ohio where the outcome in hinged on less than 20,000 votes. Due to a host of peculiarities, a recount was ordered in Cuyahoga County. Last year the two people who performed that recount, Jacqueline Maiden and Kathleen Dreamer were convicted of negligent [washingtonpost.com]