Researchers Claim Large "Unexplained Discrepencies" In Florida E-Voting Machines

A research team at UC Berkeley will report that irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000 - 260,000 or more excess votes to President George W. Bush in Florida in the 2004 presidential election. The study shows an unexplained discrepancy between votes for President Bush in counties where electronic voting machines were used versus counties using traditional voting methods. Discrepancies this large or larger rarely arise by chance – the probability is less than 0.1 percent. The research team, led by Professor Michael Hout, will formally disclose results of the study at the press conference.

The press conference is at 1 p.m. Eastern.  Please note the weasel words and qualifications: "associated with", "may have", "rarely arise by chance." 

At this point, all I will say is, I look forward to reading the study with interest.

(From Mark Blumenthal at Mystery Pollster.)

Update:  Here's the report.  From the summary:

- Irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000 excess votes or more to President George W. Bush in Florida.
- Compared to counties with paper ballots, counties with electronic voting machines were significantly more likely to show increases in support for President Bush between 2000 and 2004. This effect cannot be explained by differences between counties in income, number of voters, change in voter turnout, or size of
Hispanic/Latino population.
- In Broward County alone, President Bush appears to have received approximately 72,000 excess votes.
- We can be 99.9% sure that these effects are not attributable to chance.

The report also claims that the pro-Bush e-vote discrepancy is directly proportional to the Democratic makeup of the county; that is, the more Democratic, the higher the apparent discrepancy.  Although the report does not make this point explicitly, reading the details of the report it seems clear that this correlation is significant because it suggests that the actual difference is closer to the upper end of the range, 260,000 votes, rather than the lower end. This is because there are two possible ways that vote fraud could create the discrepancy: (1) a hack or other manipulation could simply add additional votes for Bush, or (2) votes for Kerry could have been switched to votes for Bush.  If the second mechanism was used, the discrepancy would have a double effect - an additional vote for Bush and one less vote for Kerry. (Also, please note that a sophisticated vote fraud would tend to avoid the first method, because it potentially could result in the total number of votes being greater than the number of registered voters.)

Update 11/19/04: Kieran Healy analyzes the data and concludes two counties - Broward and Palm Beach - account for the entire discrepancy.  It could be an unusual 3% swing in just those counties, or it could be cheating in just those counties. (I've read one comment elsewhere that complained that the regression should factor in number of Bush visits as a variable.  I don't know if that's it, exactly, but it's on the right track.  It could be in-person visits, or media saturation.)  At least it narrows the focus. 

Comments

[Denny Henke]

there is little doubt in my mind that this election was stolen (again) and that it is only a matter of time before the truth is revealed. the question, what are americans going to do about it? i think bush and co. rely on the evidence that americans are too comfortable to really do anything. sure, we may vote in record numbers but what then?

they rely on our fear and a culture consumerism that has been created... they believe the people (and certainly the democrats) will back down before they will fight. maybe kerry has a hidden strategy and will jump back into the fray but at the moment he seems to have rolled over like a good dog. others on the ground, such as the greens and libertarians seem to be fighting for recounts. i'd guess hard core rank and file democrats as well but the high ranking dems, what are they doing?

i've been checking the web for signs of large scale protest and i'm not seeing it. seems like early january, inauguration day would be a day to shut d.c. down in a way it has not been in a long, long time... not just a protest of the stolen vote but against the war.