pissed offDoes it seem off to you- maybe even just a little- that for small Florida counties, Democrat registration was inversely proportional to Kerry votes? That the more people who registered as Democrat, the better Bush did?
Also see the diagram at this link, which compares exit polls to results. They seem to be pretty accurate- when the state isn't using electronic voting macines. But when they do, the exit polls are very consistently showing a better response for Kerry than was actually voted.
Imagine that. What a coincidence.
Yes, there is a conspiracy theory here, and I'm giving it some serious credibility.
I did *not* take probability!
The selective use of statistical data by various bloggers as "evidence" of vote tampering is not enough to sway me. While the link you provided regarding the inverse relationship between registration and votes in Florida is interesting, until they have been through a rigorous statistical analysis by a reputable and unbiased source I must continue to consider it merely interesting as opposed to compelling. The very fact that the smaller counties seemed to have a larger divergence between registration and actual votes can also be attributed to the fact that the smaller set of numbers involved is more prone to error - statistically speaking, larger samples are inherently less likely to show false trends in the data.
All in all, while I won't discount the idea that there were irregularities in the useage of voting machines, I am still at this point unwilling to attribute them to a willful conspiracy to make sure that Bush retained office. I am more likely to subscribe to the theory that our country is increasingly populated by morons and thus more likely to vote for morons :p
I haven't wholeheartedly thrown myself behind the "there's fraud here" camp, I just suspect they may be on to something.
Maybe even just a little, yes :)
As for exit polls, I was using Google and came across this article from the Khaleej Times (in the U.A.E.).
As far as overall election results of predicted versus actual... I did some number crunching... Florida isn't too far a stretch there in difference between "predicted" (based on party registration) and "actual" (based on reported results). (Admittedly my sample size is ridiculously small, but already Florida's numbers look relatively tame compared to Massachusetts...)I suspect that if there really is some truth to the conspiracy theory that the popular newsmedia would report on it pretty quickly, as such a controversy would be big ratings (== big money).
These results being suspected here were actually based on optically scanned paper ballots. If it's a problem, let's look at the ballots themselves by hand recount. We did it before...
Well, not quite. The central tabulators are connected by modem to a phone line; it's direct phone communication using Internet-like protocols, but it's not directly connected to the Internet.
Oh, and there is a known hack that works even if the modem is set to "inactive." It has to be unplugged. It's got the front page at http://blackboxvoting.org if you want more information...
I chose these counties because they had particularly high %Change Rep and "high" negative %change Dem. on this page. Unless these counties have drastically changed party association in the last few years, I would take it as a sign that, despite their Democratic registration, they vote Republican for President. All the other years from 1980 to present are available from the Florida Election Results page, but I don't feel up to trudging through spreadsheets from the other years at the moment. It does weaken the conspiracy theory a bit, though.