Something Smells Fishy in San Diego!

[RonB]

See:

www.Baiman.blogspot.com

Please call, email, Busby campaign about this!

Francine Busby for Congress

Cardiff Office - Main Headquarters
2121 Newcastle Ave.
Cardiff by the Sea, CA. 92007
[phone]

Encinitas Office
144-C W. D St.
Encinitas, CA. 92024
[phone]
[phone] (Toll-Free)
[phone] (Fax)

Email:
[e-mail]
[e-mail]

and Lou Dobbs:

http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form5.html?9

See:

URL: http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002924.htm and updates.

for more on the San Diego Special election.

[msongs]

1. didnt she already kerry? maybe she could unkerry :-) nt

[davidwparker]

4. I heard on AAR that conceding doesn't matter there. It was some

caller from San Diego.

[sandnsea]

29. Conceding doesn't matter ANYWHERE

Al Gore unconceded too. If they had found fraud, Kerry would have unconceded. Do you honestly not know that??

[bleever]

2. First rec!

Thank you, Ron!

:yourock:

[yellerpup]

3. Very interesting, RonB

Can't wait to see how this turns out but am sincerely hoping for a fair election. Welcome to DU! :hi:

[bleever]

5. Ridiculous numbers supposedly voted third-party:

Unless San Diego is a veritable “hot bed” of third party and independent candidate activism (something that I wasn’t aware of), I find it hard to understand how a full 35% of voters (6,914 out of 19,739 votes) in the Busby/Bilbray 20th Congressional District run-off election who did not vote in the primary (on the same ballot in the same election) would vote for Libertarian and Independent candidates.

This represents an increase in third party and independent vote of 1,143% in the Run-Off relative to these votes in the primary! From 605 (69 for Clark of the Peace and Freedom Party and 535 for King of the Libertarian Party) to 6,914. Clark was replaced by Griffith, an Independent candidate, in the Run-Off. This is more than an 11 fold increase. Where did this huge increase in “militant – I will vote third party or independent no matter what the consequences in terms of who actually gets elected” voters come from?

/snip/

What's really strange about the huge increase in third party and independent votes in the Run-Off is that you'd expect this to go in the opposite direction in such a high profile contested election. Voting for a third party in the primary gives an opportunity to register a protest vote without being a "spoiler". Here its as though the newly appearing 6,914 third party voters in the Run-Off positively went out of their way to risk the defeat of Busby or Bilbray by voting in the Run-Off for an Independent or Libertarian, and not voting in the Primary where they could have registered their protest without the risk of contributing to the defeat of one of the major party candidates!

www.Baiman.blogspot.com

[LA lady]

6. Much PR for Griffith

Immigration was a huge issue and the Minutemen threw their support to Griffith. That number really didn't surprise me. We needed a higher turnout.

[bleever]

9. Bilbray credited his "victory" to his opposition to amnesty, and

bucking the White House.

Were those Minutemen willing to risk electing a Democrat because Bilbray wasn't anti-amnesty enough?

Does not compute.

[LA lady]

13. DCCC weblog

Could be Griffith's pro-life stance too.


* The Rise of Minutemen-Endorsed Candidate Bill Griffith: Independent Bill Griffith is the candidate with the furthest-right stance on immigration and is the only pro-life candidate in the race. Lately, he has been gaining steam in an election where even mid-single digits for him could make an impact. A recent local column points out his possible impact:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/...

http://www.dccc.org/stakeholder/archives/004814.html

[RonB]

10. Still looks fishy to me - also a huge increase in Libertarian vote

Its hard to understand why one would throw away a protest vote even if you were
a minuteman or some such. You'd want Bilbray to win!

Also the Libertarian candidate King went from 536 to 2201 - almost a four fold increase.

It still looks fishy to me.

[emlev]

42. Welcome to DU, RonB

Another prominent election integrity statistician who is also doing a bit of work on the Busby/Barclay bunglewould like to contact you. Would you please email me at [e-mail] and give me a way for him to contact you? I'd be helpful if you'd let me know you've done that (or aren't willing to) in a response to this post, so that I'll check that temporary email address. Thanks much. And welcome to DU!

[unlawflcombatnt]

26. And that's the Entire reason Griffith got so many votes

The blog's author is surprisingly un-knowledgeable about that race.

Comparing Griffith with Clark of the Peace and Freedom Party, and with King of the Libertarian Party, is ludicrous.

Griffith ran on a strong anti-illegal immigration position, and received the support of the Minutemen. The reason he did so well is because people in the district wanted illegal immigration stopped, and felt very strongly on this issue. That's why he received so many votes. And the lack of an equivalent position by Clark and King is why they did not receive many votes.

What should be really disheartening to Democrats is that Busby would have trounced Bilbray, had she taken the position on immigration favored by her constituents, and not that of McCain, Bush, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and all their corporate supporters.

Busby lost because of her unpopular support of the Senate Immigration Amnesty Bill. District 50 didn't like her position, and the election results reflect that.

unlawflcombatnt

EconomicPopulistCommentary

EconomicPatriotForum

___________
The economy needs balance between the "means of production" & "means of consumption."

[regnaD kciN]

12. Now, wait a minute here...

Did the "third parties and independent campaigns" even have contested primaries on the ballot? If not, I would think it no great surprise for those voters to be casting their ballots for their preferred candidate in the run-off, while not voting in the primary on the same ballot.

Sorry, but this looks like grasping at straws.

From what I've seen, there's one reason Busby lost, and it wasn't election chicanery. It was the six most unfortunate words ever uttered in public by a candidate leading in a close election: "You don't need papers for voting..." :-(

[OnTheOtherHand]

19. another problem here is

SurveyUSA ran two polls, and they both showed "Other" getting 9% of the vote. So the official returns actually seem to suggest that some folks who thought about voting third-party decided not to.

I'm not sure this link will work
http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReportEmail.aspx?g=c4c2efa1-cdaa-461f-8c18-733493cb9e2c
if not, it's not hard to find both polls at surveyusa.com under "Election Polls."

You may be right about Busby, but I have no opinion about that; I just like to sort out better vs. worse arguments. (Griffith didn't even run in a primary, so I don't know what we could possibly learn about his support by using uncontested third-party primaries as a baseline.)

[shance]

22. Same thing happened in the Russ Warner race. A man jumped in

at the last, and I mean very last minute and received 15%???

In another universe perhaps.

[babylonsister]

24. My sister voted absentee and was told, since she's a

registered independent, she couldn't vote dem. Does that make sense?
I will confirm that, but she said she 'had' to vote independent.:shrug:

[aquart]

38. Uh huh. But what did she vote in the RUN-OFF?

Or wasn't she aware there were two different elections involving Busby?

[babylonsister]

43. I'll have to ask her and I'm not home to do so now. But I'll just bet

she didn't know about a run-off.

[emlev]

39. She was given bad info

If she was registered independent, she should properly have been given the choice to vote in non-partisan races only, or to vote in one of these three primaries: Dem, Rep, American Independent Party.

Now, if by "registered independent" she meant she was registered with the American Independent Party, she would only have been able to vote in their primary.



(edited for CYA purposes)

[babylonsister]

44. I'm sure she's registered ind., not Am. Ind. Party. So she was

probably given crappy info - I'll have to get more info when we talk. But who gave her that info? Now I'd like to know what the absentee ballot stated.

[bananas]

7. k&r nt

[OneTwentyoNine]

8. Nothing to see here....keep moving,keep moving n/t

[bleever]

11. Libertarian Paul King got over 2200 votes in the run-off election,

but just down the page where Libertarians got to register a vote for King in the primary, only about a quarter as many people bothered to vote. Though it was an uncontested primary race, you would expect (as Ron points out) that more people would be sure to have their voice heard here, in the primary vote, for a third party candidate, in order to help the Libertarian party appear as popular as possible.

http://www.sdvote.org/election/primary.xml

[fooj]

14. Kinda like the Buchanan "vote" in 2000?

:banghead:

We need to strengthen our forces here in California. The RW is determined to turn this beloved state of mine BLUE!:grr:

[Patchuli]

25. You mean RED, right?

They're not going to do it. Nope.

[fooj]

35. Oops. Yep. I meant RED!!!!!

Got a little carried away! LOL!

[Patchuli]

40. California is NOT going to go red! nt

[LaPera]

15. Now San Diego is going to 100% Diebold touch screen in time for Arnold's

re-election in November...Asshole republican McPherson, CA appointed Secretary of State wants the unreliable proven, easily hackable Diebold touch screen electronic voting machines in San Diego and throughout the state...The only way the republicans can get control of California.

[bleever]

16. Please remember the "official" post-mortems on this race:

*Democrats should feel good about coming this close. It was a "moral victory".

*Busby blew the race because she made an immediately-corrected slip of the tongue about undocumented people being able to help with the campaign.

*Bilbray pulled it out by having the courage to distance himself from the WH position on immigration (though the minutemen types turned out to vote third party and risk a Dem getting elected).

There is NO NEED to verify or in any way check or audit the actual vote totals -- we have been given plausible explanations, and better move along, at the risk of being "sore losers".

Only whiners talk about expecting transparency in their elections, and demand receipts when they go shopping.

:sarcasm:

[Botany]

20. I knew that as soon as i heard that Nathan's Spruoul's* group ....

...."Moving America Forward" was working on voter rolls it was all over.
Then I remember the "outrage" that was ginned up to Busby's comment
that was taken out of context. That was going to be the Gay Marriage/ Soft on Terror
/ Family Values / anti illegal immigrant / Jesus is a big Republican issue that
the fraud would be covered by.

In 2004 3rd party candidates got big #s and it always seemed to hurt Kerry.

Program the machines .... every 5th vote for a dem switch to a 3rd party person.

Fun Fact in Indiana in 7 counties a straight dem party ticket vote got your Presidential
vote switched to a 3rd party candidate.



* Nathan Sproul got 10 million from bush/Cheney 04.

http://baltimorechronicle.com/070505Miller-Irmus.shtml

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/13/32821/029

[mom cat]

17. Welcome to DU RonB.

:hi: Great post.

[benddem]

18. what did the exit polls say?

and once again...Conceding doesn't matter!!!!!

[RonB]

21. I haven't heard of any exit polls for this election

I haven't heard of any exit polls on this one. Since Mitofsky refused to back up the 2004 exit polls, media has little incentive to pay for them. In any case we need publicly funded transparent polls with all data released!

[Frank Cannon]

46. Exit polls? Surely, you jest.

They haven't done exit polling since it was determined that exit polls vary widely from the actual results of the election--which, coincidentally, started happening in 2000. Amazing, huh?

[skeeters2525]

23. Bravo

I thank you for the efforts and the activism.

But it would be a story if there were nothing fishy.

You are wasting your time though. Democrats did nothing about 2000 and 2004.

Don't hold your breath.

[althecat]

27. Ron.. I could use your input in the debate in this thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x432402

[understandinglife]

28. "Not One Line of Software Between A Voter And A Valid Election."

Recommended.


pro-Bu$h = Anti-America

[lindisfarne]

30. delete

[lindisfarne]

31. MORE EVIDENCE: compare LIB and IND votes cast in GOV and SEN

races from San Diego county to the number of votes cast in the 50th district alone. This comparison also shows there are WAY too many votes cast LIB and IND in the 50th district run-off election.

Somehow the Libertarian party in the 50th district ALONE got 2201 votes in the run-off election,
but from ALL of San Diego (=49th + 50th + 51st + 52nd + 53rd districts!), only 1745 votes were cast for the Libertarian Senate candidate, and 1727 for the Libertarian Governor candidate. Plus, for all House districts in San Diego county: 269+ 536 + 127 + 431 + 390 = 1753 (49th through 53rd district) were cast as Libertarian.

With the Independents, it's even worse: the Independent party in the 50th district ALONE got **5318** votes in the run-off election,
but from ALL of San Diego (=49th + 50th + 51st + 52nd + 53rd districts!), only 2438 votes were cast for the Independent Senate candidate, and 2340 for the Independent Governor candidate.

(all results here: http://www.sdvote.org/election/governor.xml)

======================================================
Where do the EXTRA THOUSANDS of votes come from in the Ind race and SEVERAL HUNDRED EXTRA in the LIB race?
====================================================

Run0ff: votes cast IND and LIB
W. GRIFFITH - IND 5318 3.78%
PAUL KING - LIB 2201 1.57%

COMPARE to TOTAL number of votes (LIB and IND) from ALL of San Diego County cast in SENATE and GOVERNOR races:
In the Senate Race:
DON J. GRUNDMANN - AIP (Independent) 2438 100.00%
MICHAEL S. METTI - LIB 1745 100.00%

In the Governor race:
EDWARD C. NOONAN - AIP Independent 2340 100.00%
ART OLIVIER - LIB 1727 100.00%

In all the House districts covering San Diego county for the PRIMARY (not 50th district special runoff election):
Votes cast LIB in 49 + 50 + 51 + 52 + 53 House districts = 269+ 536 + 127 + 431 + 390 = 1753
(no Independents ran in Primary races in San Diego county House districts)

By the way, the CA Secretary of State has the runoff results here (although the numbers don't seem to be as up-to-date as San Diego's, which is still counting absentee ballots):
http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/Special/cd50/elections_cd50_genresults.htm

[lindisfarne]

32. Also, for the Lt. Gov IND candidate: 2431 votes; LIB: 1727 votes

(Results as of 06-09-06 at: 16:59:21 ; http://www.sdvote.org/election/congress.xml ; San Diego is still counting absentee ballots)

Lietenant Gov: votes from San Diego County
JIM KING - AIP Independent 2431 100.00%
LYNNETTE SHAW - LIB 1727 100.00%

Secretary of State:
GLENN MC MILLON, JR. - AIP 2649 100.00%
GAIL K. LIGHTFOOT - LIB 1782 100.00%

Controller:
WARREN M. CAMPBELL - AIP 2458 100.00%
DONNA TELLO - LIB 1772 100.00%

Treasurer
E. JUSTIN NOONAN - AIP 2537 100.00%
MARIAN SMITHSON - LIB 1767 100.00%

Attorney General:
KENNETH A. WEISSMAN - LIB 1752 100.00%

Insurance Commissioner:
JAY EARL BURDEN - AIP 2337 100.00%
DALE F. OGDEN - LIB 1777 100.00%

50th District Run-off Results: HOW IN THE WORLD DID SO MANY MORE INDEPENDENT AND LIBERTARIAN VOTES GET CAST IN THIS DISTRICT, COMPARED TO THE NUMBER OF VOTES CAST BY *ALL* OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY IN *ALL* THE OTHER STATEWIDE ELECTIONS INVOLVING IND AND LIB CANDIDATES??
BRIAN BILBRAY - REP 69617 49.51%
FRANCINE BUSBY - DEM 63489 45.15%
W. GRIFFITH - IND 5318 3.78%
PAUL KING - LIB 2201 1.57%

[lindisfarne]

41. Correction to msgs 31& 32: see my msg 37 n/t

[lindisfarne]

33. Why contact Lou Dobbs? I'm sending msgs 1,31,32 to Franken. n/t

[oasis]

36. Right, why waste energy there? Lou Dobbs is the Minutemen poster boy.(n/t)

[bleever]

34. Kick.

[lindisfarne]

37. 2006 results not so weird; look at 2004 primary &gen elections for 50th

In the 2004 general election, the LIB and IND candidates for the 50th dist House seat got a lot more votes than was the total for all LIB and IND candidates in the Primary.

This suggests the 2006 difference between the Primary and run-off is not so strange.

===========2004 primary results.==========
http://www.co.san-diego.ca.us/voters/Eng/archive/200403bull.pdf
50th dist House seat
a total of 1037 votes were cast for IND in the 50th district
a total of 804 votes were cast for LIB

======Comparing 2004 primary to 2004 general election=================
http://www.co.san-diego.ca.us/voters/Eng/archive/200411bull.pdf
2004 general election
50th dist House seat
a total of 4723 votes were cast for IND in the 50th district
a total of 3486 votes were cast for LIB

[Emit]

45. Utah Election Clerk 'in Shock' About E-Vote Security Breach Busby/Bilbray

From helderheid's GD thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1409972

Utah Election Clerk 'in Shock' About E-Vote Security Breach in Busby/Bilbray Election!

Emery County's Bruce Funk is Stunned by San Diego County Procedures Allowing Diebold Voting Machines to be Sent Home with Poll Workers Prior to last Tuesday's Special Run-off Election for the U.S. House
23-Year County Clerk Who Allowed a Security Analysis Uncovering the Most Alarming Diebold Vulnerability to Date Sends a Letter to The BRAD BLOG…
Bruce Funk, the 23-year Emery County, Utah county clerk who allowed computer security experts Harris Hursti and Doug Thomspon to examine the Diebold AccuVote TSx voting systems forced on him by the state last March — which led to the discovery of a massive security vulnerability in all Diebold touch-screen systems, as originally broken by The BRAD BLOG, and subsequently followed up by New York Times, NEWSWEEK, NPR and many other MSM outlets — writes in with his concerns about the results of last week's special election in San Diego between Francine Busby and Brian Bilbray to replace Randy "Duke" Cunningham in CA's 50th U.S. House congressional district.

(All of our reports on that race, so far, in which San Diego county blatantly defied the CA Sec. of State's own security mitigation requirements, not to mention common sense, by sending the voting machines home with poll workers days and weeks prior to the election can be read here .)

Funk writes: "Brad, After reading your articles on the Busby/Bilbray Election, I am in shock!"...

FULL STORY, COMPLETE LETTER:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=2950