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November 16, 2006

Don't Bother Me With Details

Kos is up in arms about a recount in Florida's 13th Congressional District. According to him, Diebold voting machines ate some 18,000 votes for the Democratic candidate, preventing her from winning as she should have. There appears to be something wrong in the race, as there were an inordinate number of undervotes, which are ballots that show no vote for the race in question.

But it's not enough to demonstrate that there's a problem. The left has built up Diebold as the capo di tutti capi of Republican voting fraud (fortunately for the republic, the Democrats never commit fraud). So where there's a case where something is suspicious, it's critical that it be tied to Diebold and therefore to the Republicans. That allows Kos and his friends to point to their prescience about Diebold; after all, contrary what some lefties were claiming prior to the election, there's no evidence of Republican vote stealing. When I joined Obsidian Wings, I quickly learned that for some on the left, it was an article of faith that whatever people voted for, the Republicans would ensure they won. And I'm sure that there are plenty of lefties who are convinced to this day that the Democrats really won by far greater margins last Tuesday, and that the Republicans just weren't able to steal enough votes to hold Congress.

Unfortunately for Kos, the voting machines used in Florida were not Diebold machines. They're made by a company called Election Systems & Software. To which Kos, with his usual penchant for factual accuracy, responds 'same difference.' Because what's more important to Kos is whipping his minions into a frenzy, and if a few facts have to be trampled to get that result, such is life. But to those of us who are concerned voting machines and fraud, the decision to focus on the alleged follies of Diebold rather than addressing the more significant concern that someone really will steal an election is decidedly frustrating.

Posted at November 16, 2006 09:16 PM

Andrew Olmsted

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Comments

Your prejudices are showing.

Kos has essentially the same opinion that you do about electronic paperless voting machines, and is not an advocate of the Diebold conspiracy theories (though plenty of Kossites probably are -- opinions vary a lot even among lefties on this issue, as several made it a point to post after the lastelection that it was time for the conspiracy theories to die). He has also written earlier more detailed posts about Fl-13 than the one you linked to -- maybe you did not know that.

The facts (detailed by Kos in an earlier post and elsewhere on the web)are that there was a 15% undervote rate for a total of 17,000 undervotes in Sarasota County (or 16% and 18,000, I have seen both figures), whereas the undervote rate elsewhere in the district is less than 1/6th that rate. Statistically, it does not make sense for the undervotes to be concentrated in this manner. The margin of victory in the race was only a few hundred votes, and the Democratic candidate carried Sarasota County 53 to 47 percent. If the undervotes were in the same range as elsewhere, and the "missing" votes broke in the same ratio, the election result is reversed.

The nature of the problem is not known, and is very difficult to figure out because of the paperless electronic machines. And realize that botched elections due to machine error or election worker error is as much as or a bigger problem than outright theft (I would say its far far more common) and just as impossible to remedy in the case of electronic machines. If anything, the seriousness of an electronic error is probably a lot greater because it is likely to be compounded over a lot more votes and much less likely to be caught at any time in the process.

If you truly are concerned about the problem with electronic paperless voting machines, then Fl-13 presents a typical scenario of that problem manifesting itself. Kos has pointed that out -- needlessly belittling him while ignoring the true seriousness of the issue in Fl-13 undermines your post.

The Kos post that you linked is a rah rah post to encourage donations for the legal fight and is not well written concerning the facts of the controversy, but it follows earlier much more detailed posts concerning the facts. And Kos is right -- it does not matter whether the machines are Diebold or another vendor, and Diebold has become the flashpoint for controversy on this. Maybe that has something to do with the questionable practices of that company and the blatant Republican partisanship of its leadership.

Posted by: dmbeaster [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 20, 2006 02:16 PM

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