Caltech Study On Exit Polls - Is This Why The Media Backed Off?

[althecat]

My guess is that this has been widely distributed to the media. Do we know anything about the: "CALTECH/MIT VOTING TECHNOLOGY PROJECT"?

I am not sure where I found the link to this on DU but I have copied it holus bolus to here anyway for safekeeping.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0411/S00140.htm

VOTING MACHINES AND THE UNDERESTIMATE
OF THE BUSH VOTE
CALTECH/MIT
VOTING TECHNOLOGY PROJECT
NOVEMBER 9, 2004

VIEW ORIGINAL PDF VERSION

Voting Machines and the Underestimate of the Bush Vote

Summary

1. A series of claims have been made in recent days alleging that discrepancies between exit poll results and the presidential vote in certain states provides evidence of malfeasance in those states. These claims seem to be concentrated on states using electronic voting systems.

2. Exit polls predicted a significantly greater vote for Kerry nationwide than the official returns confirmed, but there is not any apparent systematic bias when we take this same analysis to the state level.

3. Analysis of deviations between the exit polls and the official returns show no particular patterns for states using electronic voting; nor does this analysis reveal any patterns for states using other forms of voting systems.

4. We conclude that there is no evidence, based on exit polls, that electronic voting machines were used to steal the 2004 election for President Bush.

MUCH MORE:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0411/S00140.htm

*********

Premilinary comment will follow... there is some very interesting and important clues in this.

[flowomo]

1. who they are:

[althecat]

2. Yes.. but who are they really :)

[flowomo]

14. oh, you mean, who ARE they?

or do you mean who are THEY?

[althecat]

20. Precisileydoodly

:evilgrin:

[ahimsa]

18. FWIW

http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/search.asp?txtName=vest%2C+charles&NumOfThou=0&txt2004=Y&submit=Go%21

http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/search.asp?txtName=baltimore%2C+david&NumOfThou=0&txt2004=Y&submit=Go%21

[althecat]

22. So who is David Baltimore.. he is in charge of this I guess

[JPJones]

66. Here's his Nobel prize citation

http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1975/index.html

[donachiel]

32. Thx for the link!

I'm bookmarking that one. Never knew it existed. I'm just a newbie Dem who finally said "WTFDIHTL?" after being so utterly depressed this year.

[donachiel]

39. Just a bunch of speculations to me.

Nothing concrete. Nothing in depth enough. Sounds to me like another way for them to use big-name universities to make out a "conspiracy theory" a joke.

If this was indeed something that could be used, why wasn't it done by their Computer Science, Engineering and/or Mathematical departments?

[oldmanpeacenik]

54. Well...

...if you take a look at the affiliation of the members, there ARE folks from those departments. By my count:

1 Biology (including a Nobelist)
1 Electrical Engineering and Computation and Neural Systems
2 Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
6 Political Science (whatever that is)
1 Mechanical Engineering (MIT President)
1 Media Arts and Sciences (not sure what that is, but looks like he's involved in designing some computer hardware)
1 Management Science (is that a science?)

That doesn't mean they're right, but it does mean that they have the sort of folks you're looking for.

[donachiel]

86. Guess I must be getting tired eyes - Time to go to bed

Thanks! Missed that in the read. :)

[spooky3]

149. Management Science departments usually house mathematical

modelers of operations research and statisticians.

The answer is "yes."

[shelley806]

64. Your link says that David Baltimore contributed to both Kerry and

the DNC...

[ewulf]

114. and Specter!

[illuminaughty]

142. I was going to e-mail Chris Dodd

He was the first Dem out flapping his lips about it being over, won fair and square and all that rot. Very interesting link.

[SomthingsGotaGive]

38. How about this for a start.....

looks like he might have an axe to grind with the Dem's

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Baltimore

For most people outside of science, Baltimore is best known for his role in an affair of alleged scientific misconduct. In 1986, Baltimore had co-authored a scientific paper on immunology with Thereza Imanishi-Kari and others. After Imanishi-Kari was accused of fabricating data, Baltimore refused to retract the paper. Since the research had been funded by the U.S. federal government through the National Institutes of Health, the matter was taken up by the United States Congress, where it was aggressively pursued by, among others, Representative John Dingell. Due to the ensuing controversy, in 1991 Baltimore was forced to resign from the presidency of Rockefeller University, to which he been appointed only one year earlier. In 1996, an expert panel appointed by the federal government cleared Imanishi-Kari of misconduct.

[donachiel]

41. *rofl* I'm lovin' it.

[althecat]

67. I Love it!!! Looks like he is up to his old tricks...

peddling frabricated data

[Nothing Without Hope]

71. The Imanishi-Kari thing was a witch hunt

My husband was on the faculty of Tufts when the Tereza
Imanishi-Kari thing went down and had a ring-side seat.  I
know her myself.  Basically she is an honest person and went
through hell while Dingell conducted his witch hunt.  She was
exonerated of any wrongdoing.  She should have been more
careful at checking the original notebooks of one of the
people in her lab, but that is not the same as attempted
fraud.  Baltimore himself had his reputation sullied partly by
having his name on the disputed paper -- which was withdrawn
-- and partly by the way he responded during the crisis, which
ticked people off.  Overall, I think the damage to both of
their reputations was not warranted by what they actually did.

I would certainly not automatically assume the worst about
something with David Baltimore's name on it!  (And I am a
progressive Democrat who is deeply suspicious about this
election.)  I was a cell biologist at MIT when he was there,
and he had been greatly respected for years for very good
reasons; his Nobel Prize is deserved.

So I would recommend looking instead at the specific
statements that the study is claiming to be true and asking if
they really answer all the possible types of election fraud. 
(Whether all the study's assumptions and statistical
calculations are correct is another question that very few
people are qualified to assess -- and I'm not one of them!) 
Specifically, do they address whether central tabulating
computers might have been manipulated, as Bev Harris has been
warning about?  I have not read the entire report, but the
excerpts above suggest that this possibility isn't addressed
by this study.

[newyawker99]

126. Hi Nothing Without Hope!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[spooky3]

150. I agree--I think people here, since their training is likely in other

fields, are probably having trouble assessing the quality of the report, and instead are getting perilously close to the RW tactic of attacking the credibility of the speaker rather than the validity of his/her argument.

[althecat]

74. This has some very significant implications

The whitewash department of a major university - headed by a (rich - see his campaign contributions) fraudulent data peddler - who has a score to settle with at least one Democratic Rep is now implicated in a hastily prepared whitewash designed to shoe off the media from some reports published on some obscure websites.

What does this tell us about these people.

Nothing that we didn't know I guess.

What is remarkable though is how effective this report has been.

Someone should do the same thing with the report on Kathy Dopp's Data. I had been starting to get a bit queasy about that analysis myself - partly becoz I didn't understand it. But I am wondering now.

[BREMPRO]

77. debunking the WW department

it would be useful if someone here with some objective credibility could pick apart this report- and get it out to the media ASAP. shouldn't take too many brain cells..

[althecat]

85. Are you suggesting I do not have objective credibility?

Plus I am part of the media.... part of the better part of it - online, independent and cheerful.

[BREMPRO]

98. well, now that you bring it up...

What i meant was a trusted MSM expert voice (if there are any left) would be useful to knock down this weak and biased report posing as definitive science, and keep it from being accepted as the final word out there in TV land. I'm new to the blogs, and realize now that "media" needs to be qualified. Given the circumstances we are facing here, it's impressive that you can still be cheerful Athecat!

[KansDem]

157. "Tenured University Professors for Truth..."

Damn!...should've saw it coming... x(

[BlueInRed]

152. On the figures Cal Tech used (disputed by Verified Voting)

Olbermann covered the Cal Tech report and the one by Steve Freeman of U of Pa, noting they reached opposite conclusions. The problem is the source of the data -- Cal Tech used corrupted exit polls, while Freeman used uncorrupted data.

Freeman based his report on screen shots taken of exit polls at about 12 am Eastern. Jonathan Simon of Verified Voting also took similar screen shots of 47 of the exit polls. Mr. Simon e-mailed me about the exit poll issue in response to an inquiry about the accuracy of an article (http://globalresearch.ca/articles/KEE411A.html).

Simon says (ha!) that the Cal Tech people used flawed data, while Freeman used accurate exit poll data. Here's the full text of Simon's explanation:

"Please distribute this clarification as widely as possible.

Okay, here's the deal. These data points for national # of respondents are undoubtedly correct. My screen shot for the 12:23 a.m. national update says 13,047; although I don;t have a second national screen shot for comparison, I do have several individual states which reflect a major change in candidate preference with little (OH, e.g.: 1963 @ 7:32 pm to 2020 @ 1:41 am) or no (CT, e.g.: 872 unchanged) increase in # of respondents.

What this indicates, however, is simply that in these later updates the exit poll results were being "corrected" by inclusion of increasing amounts of actual tabulated data (known as "quick counts") from target precincts. It is not so much that "the fix was in," but that the "exit polls" were no longer exit polls at this point, but were still being called such in the screen shots and by the media in general.

There was a lot of confusion about this and it has led to some very serious analytical error, such as the Cal Tech/MIT paper which uses the corrupted late "exit poll" results to conclude erroneously that the exit poll/tabulated vote discrepancies are not worth shouting about. This was, unfortunately, picked up by Keith Olbermann as a valid refutation of Steve Freeman's excellent work using the pure exit poll data and analyzing these red flag discrepancies.

The "official" exit polls were not designed to serve as a check mechanism on the vote totals, so Edison/Mitofsky had no compunction about conflating them with tabulated vote data (and thereby contaminating them with the very data stream we were relying on them to check, and rendering them useless for this purpose) as the night wore on. Fortunately I was able to secure the screen shots for 47 states (incl. DC) before the tabulated data was mixed in; and this data, of course, has proven to be a gold mine for analysis.

Would it have been swept under the carpet if someone had not been awake at the swtich to pick it up? Doubtless. Does that mean it was part of a "fix?" Not necessarily, just that this is a very tricky game (which it shouldn't be!) and you have to stay awake and keep on your toes. Are the lack of cooperation by the pollsters and the glib misinterpretations by the media evidence of a cover-up, an attempt to make the whole thing just go away? Very probably.

Can we still get at the truth? Yes, if we keep sorting through the rubble, learning as we go, and not taking "no" or "i dunno" for an answer.

Please post this information widely.
—Jonathan Simon "

[chomskysright]

158. the VTP letter re: 'public data'

I mean to harrange these people now. Spread this around.

marsha hammnond, phd

Ms. Krebs: what data are you speaking about when you say:"the data that was publically available to us. "


At 01:37 PM 11/17/2004 -0800, Karen Kerbs wrote:

Dear Dr. Hamm,

Thank you for your questions and comments about our report. We did the analysis reported there on the data that was publically available to us.

We plan to do an update on the

report, once the final election results are in. At that time, we'll incorporate the official election returns into the analysis, as well as add information about what happens when we analyze the data that some on the web claim were posted on the cnn web site earlier in the evening. Our preliminary analysis of this other data is consistent with our original finding that there is no relationship between the type of voting machine used and the size or direction of the discrepancy.

K





From: Marsha V. Hammond, PhD, Licensed Psychologist
Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 2004 12:54 PM
To: [e-mail]
Cc: [e-mail]; [e-mail]
Subject: query from Dr. Hammond re: VTP: FL results



Marsha Hammond, PhD: Licensed Psychologist: GA & NC
e mail: [e-mail]

November 17, 2004

Hello:

In psychology, the authors are always listed. Can you tell me who are the authors associated with this report:
CALTECH/MIT
VOTING TECHNOLOGY PROJECT ?

This is in no way associated with a desire to harangue someone(s).

I am trying to understand the difference between the two main exit poll vs actual vote papers (one by Freeman at U. PA) and this study. The understanding of such is associated in professional circles with being able to ask questions about the research.

Have you seen this research? http://www.jefffisherforcongress.com/Campaign2006/SurprisingFloridaPresidentialElectionResults.htm

Here is the author: Kathy Dopp: [e-mail]

I would be very interested in your comments. As time is of the essence, the sooner, the better.

Marsha Hammond, PhD

[chomskysright]

159. DID U SEE THIS? IMP

YES, ITS ME, UNDERLINING MY OWN POSTING.

[e-mail]

[GuardingVirginia]

3. caltech-mit

That's the one the Post mentioned. I was reviewing the site and they did a big white wash of the Georgia election (see BBV) where the state dumped a Dem senator and Gov after installing E-vote machines.

damn... what's up when we lose the colleges too?

[Ducks In A Row]

4. Just because it's a college, doesn't mean they're into truth.

Too many get their money from the feds and the neo-cons

[Eloriel]

8. And a lot of "professors" are owned by corps that fund them n/t

[althecat]

12. What's this I hear about you and the FBI and have you read your PM?

[Eloriel]

112. Shhh, don't be starting rumors about me

(He's kidding, folks.)

[DURHAM D]

19. A big Ahmen to that. n/t

[99Pancakes]

5. I believe in the power of truth!

No matter how many colleges, media outlets and judges are bought off, I believe that truth will previal in the US of A. People like us will make it happen!

[althecat]

9. Can you find a link to this white wash...

I am surprised that the report has no author - perhaps nobody wanted to be held responsible for such a shoddy job.

But there is one part of it that I particularly like which I shall reveal as soon as I get some free time.

[dbonds]

11. link

http://www.vote.caltech.edu/

[althecat]

24. Check this link...

http://www.vote.caltech.edu/Election2004.html

I see they have a report debunking Kathy Dopp's analysis too...

http://www.vote.caltech.edu/Reports/Florida_discrepancy3.pdf

These people appear a little trigger happy to any suggestion that E-Voting has problems.

I bet they are monitoring this forum.

Hi VTP guys/gals

:hi:

[dbonds]

30. Both are half ass done reports.

I would expect more depth from a big name college. Although there are lots of scatter graphs they rely on the dixi-crat thing. As an x-florida resident I don't buy that. Maybe there are a few, but using 2000 as comparison is not evidence in my book (definitely questionable).

[prairierose]

43. I haven't even read the report but

the misspelling in the title and no authors' names would have made me flunk them.

What's up with colleges? The curriculum is being dumbed down & now we have to deal with NCLB too. At least where I am it's biting us.

:grr:

[BREMPRO]

73. agreed, this is "fuzzy science" n/t

[alittlelark]

44. OMG it's a college WHITEWASH dept.

Gee, haven't come across many of them before..... yeah.



:crazy: :crazy:

[dbonds]

56. Defending Voting Technology

Look at the rest of the reports on that site. They are advocates for the technology. I don't think there agenda is for the outcome of the election, I think it is to keep the technology from getting a bad name.

[Eloriel]

113. Ding, Ding, Ding!!! THANKS for noticing and pointing that out

WONDERFUL.

I was frankly a little quizzical about their #4 point, insisting that the exit polls hadn't "proved" fraud -- well, of COURSE not. At best they point to it as a strong (VERY strong) probability. I just couldn't see a bunch of academics relying on exit polls alone to prove or disprove fraud. I mean, there has to be intent, and I don't think exit polls can show that. It's like lying: you can tell an untruth and NOT be lying (you can merely be mistaken). You have to know the speaker's INTENT -- to intentionally deceive or not.

Same with the "actual" results versus exit polls -- they don't match and they should. None of the "explanations" for why the exit polls showed a different outcome have so far held water. We're a long way from proof, though, of either fraud or its absence.

IMNSHO.

Except that DUers (for the most part) know what went on. Further, when you have such an overwhelming incidence of vote suppression just about everywhere you look, and factor in the Stolen Election of 2000, the inherent fatal flaws of these machines, and so forth and so on, we KNOW what went down. Now all we need is enough supporting documentation to make the case for real.

[Peace Patriot]

156. An interest in the technology

Yeah, I'm picking this up, too--people defending, and probably having an interest in, the technology. I'm even seeing it in some non-profit voter advocacy groups. This may be the explanation, finally, for the most inexplicable aspect of this story--why the Democrats would permit a voting system with secret, proprietary source code, owned and controlled by Bush Republicans, with no paper trail in a third of the country. You'd think they would have burned down the Capitol to get this changed--or at least warned everybody loud and clear.

Can you imagine putting such a temptation in front of Karl Rove? How could they have let this happen?

Could it have been simple pork-barrel corruption (HAVA money to the states)? (I can't imagine Dems being involved in an electronic voting conspiracy to elect Republicans.) But I hate to believe it's just money, or some other personal investment.

I know Sec's of State were bedazzled (both Dem and Repub), and according to something I heard Bev say, some of them are really, really ignorant of what they purchased. Still, no paper trail and private source code would set off some alarm bells, wouldn't it?

I wrote to Kerry and the DNC that they should apologize for letting this fraudulent election system happen (fraudulent on its face)--especially to all those folks who stood out in the rain for ten hours, passionately determined to vote for them--and come out and fight it, and back us up.

Maybe they have their own strategy, but their silence sure is deafening.

I'm not at all down, by the way. I have profound respect for the American people. I think they overwhelmingly voted to get rid of Bush and his stinky crowd, and to elect Kerry and Edwards, and have been thwarted in exercising their will. And I'm joyous at the new democracy movement that has arisen around this election. "We shall overcome!"

[Chimpanzee]

120. This is total bullshit!

Following study and action by the state legislature, Cox decided to purchase the Diebold AccuVote-TS touch screen system. After a series of trials, the Diebold machines were first used statewide in the 2002 general election.

Georgia's use of the AccuVote-TS machines has enfolded the state, and Cox particularly, in a controversy over the security and accuracy of electronic voting. In the midst of implementing the new machines, computer scientists came upon versions of the Diebold computer code, analyzed it, and concluded that it was riddled with programming lapses, especially security vulnerabilities. The implementation in Georgia was further clouded by difficulties encountered with the machines that were delivered, and the necessity to apply an uncertified software patch to the equipment as the election was imminent. If this was not enough, the actual results of the election excited the more conspiracy minded to wonder whether the machines had been tampered with to produce the “surprise” defeat of Governor Roy Barnes and Senator Max Cleland.

In the midst of this controversy, one important question has been left unaddressed by the scientific community: Did the Diebold machines perform better than the collection of older voting technologies that Georgia had used before? The purpose of this research is to answer this question. The answer is yes.
Unfortunately, the computer security controversy surrounding the 2002 election clouds any assessment of the Accuvote-TS's reliability, since any reliability assessment must rest on an assumption of a “clean” election. Still, policymakers and Democratic party officials in Georgia, along with most of its citizens, believe the election was clean; no concrete allegations of vote tampering have survived the legal system. Therefore, recognizing the controversy surrounding the implementation of the Diebold machine and the skepticism that many people will cast toward any analysis that assumes the machines were not systematically tampered with, I address the question of technology reliability using the standard tools that have emerged to judge voting technology efficacy.

[illuminaughty]

143. You are talking about robgeorgia.zip

They white washed that?

[kostya]

6. Plus, they completely ignore the issue of hacking the PCs that

transmit or tabulate the votes. Those are the weak links in the system. They also appear to not even acknowledge the many irregularities across the country. I smell a whitewash. - K

:eyes:

[dbonds]

7. They seem to have an agenda

Reading their site it looks like they are advocating using technology in elections and trying to prove it helps the process.

[never_get_over_it]

10. So are they using the actual exit polls

or the ones that were doctored in the middle of the night after the polls closed...becasue CNN CHANGED their exit polls from Tuesday night to Wednesday morning...

[msongs]

13. cal tech are the people here in Southern California who are

all over the TV and radio telling us we just had an earthquake as we pick up the pieces of our broken belongings LOL

And they are very tied into government contracts and funding for all their space exploration stuff. Big Time!

Msongs
Riverside CA

dean obama 2008 shirts
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

[bleever]

15. Having been on a steady diet of statistical analyses for the

last nine days, I predict that a closer look will find that they didn't do the heavy lifting that's been done here, and that they did not (of course) think the "unthinkable" in terms of all the ways that things could be influenced.

Final grade for this paper at this time: Incomplete

[dbonds]

17. They left wiggle room

They just said the exit polls vs results did not constitute proof.

Edit: spelling

[Verve]

16. Isn;t Bev Harris basically saying you have to look at it county

by county to distinguish if optiscan counties are significantly different from neighboring counties that use other methods? Did CALTECH/MIT look at this? I think there are optiscan counties in over 30 states so I don't know if an analysis performed on a state by state basis would really uncover anything. I'm not an expert though so I may be wrong.

[Zookeeper]

21. Unless I missed something...

I didn't notice that they addressed the issues of whether or not the optical scanners could have been "adjusted" somehow or the possibility of hacking into a central computer.

Also, their suggestion that anyone who is questioning this election believes that hundreds of local election officials are part of a conspiracy is condescending and disingenuous.

[Robert Oak]

23. there are some assumptions here...

1. they claim exit polls are inaccurate. I have yet to read that at all. I've read the opposite. 2000 exit polls from all of my readings
were accurate. The problems were the butterfly ballots and other problems where people thought they had voted corrected, but it wasn't counted.

2. they are calling optical scanners paper ballots. But I just read that the Diebold GEMS system is used to tabulate optical scanner ballots. By moving optically scanned ballots to paper ballots,
they moved the anomaly to paper.

3. They do not site which exit polls they are using.

One strongly missing piece to all of this is the raw exit data, not
compensated from the exit poll vendor.

We have some snapshots, I've heard about "corrected" exit polls, but no details on specifics of 'correction. My understanding is exit polls sample 40%, at random, done by counting and taking the 4/6th voter coming out.

[mirandapriestly]

25. I DEFINITELY read somewhere that they used the ADJUSTED

exit polls, and now I do not remember where, but it was a trusted source. I know I read that without a doubt, but I've been reading so much I have lost track I will try to find it.

[Roger_Otip]

35. they have a link to the adjusted polls on cnn

this link appears in their footnotes
http://edition.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html

that's the exit polls mixed with the actual results i think.

[althecat]

26. This paragraph is key

If we look at the 51 separate exit state polls, we see that 30 predicted more votes for Kerry than he actually got, while 21 predicted more votes for Bush than he actually got. Therefore, at the state level, the polls favored Kerry less than the sum of all the polls aggregated up to the national level. Furthermore, if we do a statistical test to see whether the differences between the exit polls and the official returns are significant, only three out of 51 are.5 Therefore, while it is fair to say that the exit polls predicted a significantly greater vote for Kerry nationwide than the official returns confirmed, it is not immediately apparent that any systematic biases are revealed when we take the analysis down to the state level.

[bleever]

33. "Not immediately apparent"? Yeah, that's a good standard

for ensuring the integrity of an election. Like I said before, an unrigorous analysis.

And I don't believe this is why the media is off the story; I think they are nowhere near (yet) this kind of election minutiae.

Rock on Al, for indeed you rock.

[althecat]

34. Here's the corresponding data from Jonathan Simon's study

State	BUSH	KERRY	#Resp	Time	Red Shift
Vermont	33.3	63.7	685	12:22	5.2
New Hamp.	44.1	54.9	1849	12:24	4.90
Delaware	40.7	57.3	770	12:22	4.8
SC	53.4	45.1	1735	12:24	4.4
Nebraska	62.5	36	785	12:22	4.3
Alabama	58.1	40.5	730	12:17AM	4.2
Alaska	57.8	38.8	910	01:00AM	4
Mass	32.9	65.2	889	12:22	3.7
Penn	45.4	54.1	1930	12:21	3.4
CT	40.9	57.7	872	12:22	3.4
RI	34.9	62.7	809	12:22	3.4
Miss	56.5	43	798	12:22	3.3
Ohio	47.9	52.1	1963	7:32PM	3.1
Minnesota	44.5	53.5	2178	12:23	3
Wyoming	65.5	30.9	684	12:22	2.7
Idaho	65.7	32.9	559	12:22	2.6
Florida	49.8	49.7	2846	12:21	2.5
Arizona	52.8	46.7	1859	12:19	2.5
Utah	68.1	29.1	798	12:22	2.5
Nevada	47.9	49.2	2116	12:23	2.2
Georgia	56.6	42.9	1536	12:22	2.2
Louisiana	54.7	43.9	1669	12:21	2.1
Iowa	48.4	49.7	2502	12:23	2
New Mex.	47.5	50.1	1951	12:24	1.90
WV	54	44.5	1722	12:24	1.8
Illinois	42.4	56.6	1392	12:23	1.6
Indiana	58.4	40.6	926	12:22	1.6
Wash	44	54.1	2123	12:38	1.6
Missouri	52	47	2158	12:21	1.5
Arkansas	52.9	46.1	1402	12:22	1.1
Michigan	46.5	51.5	2452	12:21	1
Kentucky	58.4	40.2	1034	12:22	0.9
Maine	44.3	53.8	1968	12:22	0.8
OK	65	34.6	1539	12:23	0.8
Maryland	42.3	56.2	1000	12:22	0.5
DC	8.2	89.8	795	12:22	0.3
(CT	44.4	54.7	872	12:53)	0.2
Colorado	49.9	48.1	2515	12:24AM	0.03
Wisconsin	48.8	49.2	2223	12:21	-0.3
Montana	58	37.5	640	12:22	-0.3
Hawaii	46.7	53.3	499	12:22	-1.2
Oregon	47.9	50.3	1064	12:22	-1.3
Calif	46.6	54.6	1919	12:23	-1.5
Tenn	58	40.6	1774	12:23	-1.7
SD	61	36.5	1495	12:24	-1.8
Texas	62.2	36.3	1671	12:22	-2
ND	64.4	32.6	649	12:22	-2.4
Kansas	64.5	34.1	654	12:22	-2.7

[althecat]

40. As a graph...

[althecat]

42. They claim that this graph should be balanced.. when it plainly isn't.

[bleever]

46. Al, can you graph this now on the same axes, changing

% values for each state to actual votes? Thanks.

[bleever]

48. Although you can just aggregrate votes that went each way. n/t

[althecat]

49. Nope... sorry.. that's all I have at present.. but it is a good idea.

That said.. I haven't yet delivered by coup de'grace...

[bleever]

52. But you're right, the graph should be balanced, and it ain't.

Redoing it based on raw vote totals would confirm this, or even accentuate it.

And I can't wait for that coup de grace.

[vision]

94. As a former Kansan

I could guess pretty reliability where the Kansas numbers could be wrong. If polls were done in Wyndotte County or Lawrence it would have made the data look slightly more favorable towards Kerry. These are a couple of the Democratic areas in Kansas, the rest is strongly Republican.

So if any polls from these areas were relied on they would not be that representative of the rest of Kansas.

[althecat]

37. Their data is not the same as ours...

"we see that 30 predicted more votes for Kerry than he actually got, while 21 predicted more votes for Bush than he actually got"

If you look at the table below we have 38 with more votes for kerry than he actually got and 10 with more for bush.

We are missing three states so at the most there could only be 13.

[althecat]

47. And then they say....

First, it is not clear where the exit poll numbers used in the analysis came from. Presumably they were from the initial exit poll results that were leaked on slate.com early in the afternoon of Election Day. These are the same numbers that immediately appeared suspicious to many analysts who saw them, since the respondents were too female, too Western, and too Democratic.7 If this diagnosis is even a partial explanation for why the exit polls seemed to be “off” in the early going, it may be reason enough to expect for the official results to favor Bush, compared to the early exit poll numbers.

*****

Except that Jonathan Simon collected his data at 12.20pm.

And given that they have the data how come they can't tell where it came from?

It was the final result before the big - lets get rid of the exit poll data edict came in and it all got zapped. I note that it would have been gone by around 11pm if Mitofsky's computer hadn't crashed.

[althecat]

50. .. ok.. so continuing to pull this paragraph apart.

Furthermore, if we do a statistical test to see whether the differences between the exit polls and the official returns are significant, only three out of 51 are.5

******

Only three out of 51.... look at the graph people!!!! All those above 2% are statistically significant.

20 of them are above 2.5%.

[althecat]

53. .. but here is the first real kicker...

Therefore, while it is fair to say that the exit polls predicted a significantly greater vote for Kerry nationwide than the official returns confirmed, it is not immediately apparent that any systematic biases are revealed when we take the analysis down to the state level.

********

I take this to mean that if their analysis is horribly flawed - then - inter alia - on the basis of Jonathan Simon's data it is immediately apparent that there is a systematic bias revealed when we take the analysis down to the state level.

That is this paper confirms the methodology that we have been using here on DU.

Note that earlier in their analysis they have already admitted that on a nationwide basis the poll deviation on the "popular vote" is statistically significant.

Therefore both are statistically signifcant. The popular vote error and the state level error.

WHICH BRINGS ME TO THE REAL CLINCHER - AND HERE IS WHERE WE OWE A HUGE DEBT TO JONATHAN SIMON AND HIS KNOWLEDGE OF THE EXIT POLL.

[althecat]

57. And here is the FULL ARM LOCK PULL YOUR HEAD OFF CLINCHER

Jonathan Simon's analysis shows that the 12 "Critical" states.. all of which had large samples and should have if anything been more accurate... have a huge systemic bias in favour of bush.

Since this report has already confirmed that a comparison of this nature is a statistically valid comparison. Their report in saying.

"Therefore, while it is fair to say that the exit polls predicted a significantly greater vote for Kerry nationwide than the official returns confirmed, it is not immediately apparent that any systematic biases are revealed when we take the analysis down to the state level."

Proves the exact opposite when you combine its analysis with the actual data.

& so I say

:toast:

To Jonathan Simon, Faun Otter, TIA and SoCalDemocrat

and

:wtf:

to myself

and

:hurts:

to Caltech/MIT

and

:spank:

to the brainless media who swallowed this tripe (which doesn't even have an authors name!!!) without blinking.
I.E. there is nothing cherry picked about these 12 states.. they just happen to be the close ones

[bleever]

70. Yeah! HERE's the beef!

That crap about how many states had exit polls skewed for one guy or the other just hide the fact that the variations were sufficient to influence the outcome, in both the popular vote and the electoral vote! You and TIA and the lovely (I presume) Eloriel and the rest have had this nailed from the beginning. You are the reason recounts are now unstoppable.

Now I can finally catch up on my drinking.:toast:

[dbonds]

72. I'll join you in that toast

Kudos

[shelley806]

78. My deep gratitude to the DU statisticians...Better ours than thiers...but

David Baltimore contributed to the DNC, Kerry, and Feinstein. Plus, he is brilliant. I was upset when he was forced into a mia culpa about the forgery issue of his fellow who (laugh) committed fraud! But it was a very frightening event in science at the time. Imagine, when a field in which people have to have faith in, as representative of 'truth' becomes distrusted. What is accepted as 'truth' no longer can be trusted with widespread fraudulent data. Isn't it ironic that we are facing the same thing with our reliance on the 'truth' of election results!

I'd say send our data to David Baltimore. He has put his name on this thing. Let him and his very fine team of statisticians, etc. refute ours.

[SmallFatCat]

100. wow, my faith has been restored

Thanks dude, you have made my evening. That'll teach them to try and debunk us... NEXT?

[bleever]

132. Kick, because now we need to be ready to refute the simple-

minded naysaying from the MSM.

[althecat]

65. Here's a link to the thread withl the Jonathan Simon analysis & Data...

I would dearly like someone to make up some better graphics than the two I made.. which are pretty crap really.

[enough]

27. This analysis is limited to the exit poll question only.

Which is not the strongest element of the case, in my opinion.


A rather odd statement at the end of the article:

snip>

Well, I don't want to write off legitimate questions about the integrity of the voting system. But turn the question around: Which is more likely -- that an exit
polling system that has been consistently wrong and troubled turned out to be wrong and troubled again, or that a vast conspiracy carried out by scores and scores of county and state election officials was successfully carried off to distort millions of American votes? I think the Kerry campaign concluded that the former is what happened. But we'll keep our eyes open for hard evidence of abuse, and we won't be afraid to investigate if we see something significant.

snip>


"we won't be afraid to investigate"??? Why would anyone think they would be afraid to investigate? It never would have occurred to me that they would be afraid to investigate until I read it right there. These are the two most powerful academic technological institutions in the world. Why would they be afraid to investigate?

[berry]

136. Is this stated without any explanation or caveat?

I decided to read the whole thread first and then go to the article, but this statement (that you quoted):

"an exit polling system that has been consistently wrong and troubled"

is very disturbing. The only exit polls that I have ever heard to be "untrustworthy" are 2000, 2002 and now 2004. And that is just too, too convenient for Rove et al. Is the US the only country now that can't do exit polls? And only since 2000? But by at least two (maybe 3?) different polling companies? (I don't know who VNS were in 2000, or who did the 2002 polls.)

UPenn professor Steven F Freeman offers a very different view of the reliability of exit polls. (Thanks to whoever posted his paper! I can't find it now, but it's here somewhere....) And Freeman is very clear about what data he is using, and how his analysis would benefit from access to the raw data--too bad he can't get it. He's using the CNN numbers from about 12:20 am.

Well, I guess I should at least try to read the CalTech-MIT paper too, but I'm not encouraged by the posts here to think it is a serious analysis. Ah well. This is going to take a lot of little steps, apparently. Thanks to all the statisticians right here on DU!

[berry]

139. By way of a too-late edit, the quotation is from the WaPo.

Which is not to excuse it, of course. Merely to add Steve Coll to the number of journalists who are casually dismissing serious doubts. And it's all the worse in someone whose paper is part of the consortium that sponsored the exit polls, and who should therefore have had access to the data. Irritating!

[ParanoidPat]

28. Hi Al! Remember the good old days before Bev's book was published

.......and the biggest problem we had was getting people to believe that the machines were easily hackable? :)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=2900&forum=DCForumID70&archive=#9

There were plenty of stories that said there was too much testing and ITA certifications that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the machines were perfectly safe.

In retrospect, it seems we were proven to be right as study after study subsequently confirmed. :evilgrin:

I know who Ive got my money bet on. ;-)

[althecat]

62. I do indeed Pat - those were the grand old days

when nobody believed us. It was a riot indeed...

:party:

Nobody was famous and everybody was on everybody elses side.

And now we have pretty much won that argument.

Funny thing is though, while people are willing to accept that machines "can be hacked" they seem to find it completely impossible to beleive that they have in fact been hacked... even when three sets of Exit Polls go west in a row.

[donachiel]

29. We all need to do that. We need thousands of copies of

important documents so that if somehow, the originals come up missing, the world has their back. :)

I have a folder just for all of the statistical reports and whatever done by the reputable people out there.

[althecat]

31. Credit to flintdem - I have now found where I was told about this

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=38567&mesg_id=41532&page=

[loudsue]

36. This asshole was on NPR tonite in N.C. -- he's a MAJOR repuke, and

he showed himself to be TOTALLY uninformed about the literature on BBV. Thom Hartmann kicked his butt....but the NPR moderator still tried to pin him down & asked the hard questions (surprise, surprise!).

This guy is an IDIOT!! He's either being PAID to be an idiot, or he just comes by it naturally.

Don't listen to his spiel. Check any "data" he might come up with -- check it over and over against any other sources, if you consider taking him seriously.

:kick::kick:

[enough]

58. Which asshole?

I can't find anyone listed as the author of this work. Who did you hear on NPR?

[shelley806]

80. Ditto! What Asshole?..........eom

[jsamuel]

45. And I guess Watergate was a bunch of hoods

This doesn't PROVE anything and is just as dismissive as the "Dixiecrats" theory. All he is saying is when you look at every non-electronic voting state and look at every electronic voting state, there is no pattern. WELL DUH!!!

If Montana used electronic voting, I doubt we would find the same pattern in Ohio...

Shoddy work...

[Nothing Without Hope]

51. This study asks a narrow question, misses the point:

Check out these two statistical studies. It's not the paper vs electronic machines as much as the final tallies being potentially manipulated in a central computer -- just as Bev Harris has been saying -- that's in question.

1. Reported at The Raw Story on Nov 8, statistical study done by former MIT math professor. Title: Odds of Bush gaining by 4 percent in all exit polling states 1 in 50,000; Evoting/paper variance not found to be significant
Link: http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=405
Excerpts: ...A statistical analysis of exit polling conducted for RAW STORY by a former MIT mathematics professor has found the odds of Bush making an average gain of 4.15 percent among all 16 states included in the media’s 4 p.m. exit polling is 1 in 50,000, or .002 percent.....Anick reasons that there are four possible causes of the “Bush gains.” (1) Significantly greater lying or refusal to speak to pollsters in Bush voters versus Kerry voters; (2) Consistent/systematic errors in weighting demographic groups; (3) A surge of Bush voters after 4 p.m., in all states; (4) Systematic tampering/hacking of reported vote totals, in Bush’s favor.

2. Research paper cited today (Nov 11) as a BuzzFlash News Alert, PDF copy of paper posted at Buzzflash. Statisitcal study done by Steven Freeman, MIT PhD on faculty of Univ. of Pennsylvania, studies poll data from OH, PA and FLA. Title: The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy
Link: http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/11/The_unexplained_exit_poll_discrepancy_v00k.pdf
He calculates the odds against the observed exit poll anomalies in these three states as 250,000,000 to one.
Excerpt from his conclusion: Systematic fraud or mistabulation is a premature conclusion, but the election's unexplained exit poll discrepancies make it an unavoidable hypothesis, one that is the responsibility of the media, academia, polling agencies, and the public to investigate.

[On the Road]

122. I Agree -- The Analysis is Shallow

You can't just take someone from another field without a background or sense of history in the subject matter, ask an overly general question, and expect a strong analysis.

For one thing, the numbers use the final, revised exit polls which were reweighted to match the official results. We just don't know HOW they were reweighted.

[BattyDem]

55. So why is it that exit polls worked just fine until 2000?

That's the obvious question the media is not asking. How come the exit polls were accurate up until the time Bush ran for national office? :grr:


On edit ... and how come the polls were accurate in places that have paper trails? The polls were only wrong in areas that didn't have a paper backup to the actual vote. How does Caltech explain that? What are the odds of that? :eyes:

[Cadence]

84. The odds are 1 in 250 million

1 in 250 million that the exit polls were that far off in only the swing states.

http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/11/ale04090.html

[sharman]

154. The 2000 exit polls

Actually,the exit polls worked fine in 2000 as well. There was in fact an error in the numbers that called Florida early for Gore. Bad info was fed into the computer, simple human error. But that was an obvious error that was quickly discovered. (And also, at least 55,000 net Gore votes were lost to the exceptionally high overvote spoilage (source: WashPost) and the Buchanan butterfly ballot)

So, IMO, the exit polls didn't become weird until 2002, when we first saw pro-Repub upsets in states voting with new Diebold equipment.

[althecat]

59. RIGHT FOLKS... if you haven't already

read posts... #26 and its sub posts

AND NOW LETS DISCUSS WHAT WE ARE GOING TO DO ABOUT THIS!!!

ARE YOUR MEDIA A BUNCH OF WET LOSERS OR WHAT!!!

[dbonds]

60. We need to

find a statistician that is used for corporate crimes cases, a known reliable one, that will back up the DU data and conclusions. We need a report to counter that report sent to media outlets.

Edit: left out a word

[althecat]

63. Since these clowns are probably reading this... lets just ask

DEAR CALTECH MIT PEOPLE,

Can you please write us another report debunking this thread... we need it by morning.

Ta.

Althecat
on behalf of the
DU Presidential Results and Discussion Crew

[dbonds]

124. Saw this in another thread

http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/11/The_unexplained_exit_poll_discrepancy_v00k.pdf

It goes a long way to debunk the debunk.

[althecat]

68. Ok I have a good idea... KIM ZETTER AND FARHOOD MANJOO

Lets get this thread to them. Since they have probably been peddled this crap - they might like to expose it. There is a major scoop here.

[Gloria Days]

61. This report is filled with problems

They don't understand paper vs. electronic, as it pertains to possibility of being hacked, and they used the "corrected" exit polls. I want to write to them, but I haven't had time yet.

[newyawker99]

127. Hi Gloria Days!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Gloria Days]

135. Thank you!

This place is great. I don't know how I would have gotten through the past week without you DUers!

[libertypirate]

69. Additionally ---->

Wouldn't measuring the exit poll data results with actual results across all races establish a definitive trend? If a race was being skewed wouldn't it poll incorrectly only for those offices? If it shows only a few races had "corrected" numbers and the rest lined up within their traditional margins of error the dirty bastards took it.

Isn't that pretty much case closed?

Comments?

[althecat]

75. Since we do not know how the election was stolen

Any argument along these lines is pure speculation. Or in other words we don't know what the exit poll variations will be unless we know how they are stealing the election.

We do however know that the level of sqewing from the exit polls was was much higher in some states than others. Specifically the swing states.

Now we also know that they voting machine industry is lying about it.

[libertypirate]

108. Stop not apples to apples

Since exit polls have been proven to be accurate where they are not there is provably fire. But where they are proven to be correct in other local races then there is a high provability that alone this is enough evidence to get major public acceptance. It's not looking at one race or another separately it is seeing where one polled correctly and one polled incorrectly... This is more then just one office.

[Celebration]

79. shoddy study

This looks like it was just thrown together with whatever data they had around, with a result in mind that they wanted, kind of a typical spin thing. I am so confused by now about all the data, that I don't know what is true and what isn't, but I sure don't think they do. But IF the Senate race forecasts were correct, and the Presidential race forecasts were incorrect, then there is NO WAY this "study" holds any weight. Also, because of the sample sizes, it is not really appropriate to divide it up into each state individually. And though they SAY that past exit polls have been erroneous, I see no data in here to back it up, or to compare 2004 exit polls with any other year statistically--not to mention all the other problems with the study that have been noted here.

Of course, as everyone has pointed out, we would have a lot more information if we could have more detailed polling information. You would think that CalTech and MIT would be able to get their hands on it. If I were an academic person actually trying to do a topnotch job for the press, I would insist on having complete information-- times of the polls, no actual counts mixed in, Senate races, county and precinct information, etc.

Good grief, my experience in statistics is limited, but I can certainly see the flaws.............

[anamandujano]

89. "with a result in mind that they wanted"

This made me think of something.

It seems that the Bush team knew they wanted to win a huge popular vote so that there would be nothing to contest. Is there any chance that they needed the real exit polls to determine how much padding would be necessary to give Bush his insurmountable lead? So, they let it run until midnight, or whenever it was and then decided it was time to discredit the information.

Just a thought. No idea whether right or wrong.

[Celebration]

93. maybe

Believe me, that certainly crossed my mind. That would be a REAL conspiracy. Coming from the let's out Valerie Plume crowd, it isn't *that* far out there. The preference would be to win the election outright. Given that losing was not an option, they could have Plan A, Plan B, Plan C, etc. depending on how much they needed. Plan H could have been the high risk plan. Ok we are losing big so we have to engineer something where there is no possiblity of a recount because of the size of the victory. Gosh I hope this farfetched sounding plot turns out to be true. It is kind of amusing to think about this possibility and just imagine how much crow would have to be eaten, all the trials, and prosecutions, etc. One problem with this is that according to the Democratic site in Ohio, no modems are used in transmitting votes, so I don't think the central tabulating argument works there. I am glad the Kerry lawyers, etc. are there. Hopefully they have a different mentality from MIT and Stanford statisticians.

[libertypirate]

110. Are Ohio County Computers Networked via WAN???

Can anyone answer if these sites are connected via wan?

If they are who needs a modem, much better bandwidth.

[tbuddha]

76. Don't let this bother you...

There are republicans everywhere, even at MIT. It would seem that MIT students would be too smart to be republican, but some people's intelligence is only in one area.

Same goes for this "study". It is very narrow and doesn't even come close to addressing all of the virtual MOUNTAIN of evidence that is being accumulated on www.blackboxvoting.org.

At any rate, the next phase of this election is coming, and that is the protest marches. The protests will be outside news outlets focusing on the Key Word: FRAUD. FRAUD, FRAUD, FRAUD. Say it over and over....

[Hobbes199]

81. It doesn't help

But even one of the guys that calculated a strong statistical anomaly with the exit polls also said there doesn't seem to be a correlation to the type of machine.

That is, just because it might not be tacked onto a particular type of machine does not mean there was no fraud. The study only says there's no correlation, does not say that the exit polls are probably fine.

[newyawker99]

128. Hi tbuddha!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[milkyway]

82. Piece of shit "pseudo" study--uses revised exit polls that were changed

to coincide better with the actual vote counts. They don't explain what exit polls they used, or even bring up the issue of the revised polls.

Their only reference to the exit polls was to say, in reference to Blue Lemur's study, "First, it is not clear where the exit poll numbers used in the analysis came from. Presumably they were from the initial exit poll results that were leaked on slate.com early in the afternoon of Election Day. These are the same numbers that immediately appeared suspicious to many analysts who saw them, since the respondents were too female, too Western, and too Democratic."

It's also not clear where your numbers came from, idiots. Then they throw out unsubstantiated repug spin that there was something wrong with the early exit polls which was immediately suspicious to many analysts. If so, then why did Karen Hughes inform bush on election night that he had lost the election? (as reported by AP). Even the repugs believed the exit polls.

After reading this nonsense, I skipped much of the rest of it. But I did catch this totally bizarre statement:

"This episode of trying to rely on the exit polls to verify the truthfulness of voting machines illustrates the weakness of this approach --- an approach that had gained currency among electronic voting opponents before the November election. Even when they work well, exit polls are too imprecise to lay against the official count, unless every voter is included in the exit poll."

HUH? Isn't this what probability and is all about? Are they saying that if we had an election with one hundred million votes, an exit poll of 99 million voters would not be useful in verifying the truthfulness of voting machines? What kind of nonsense is this-- every single voter would need to be included in the exit poll?

Remind me not to send my kids to MIT or CalTech.

[Cadence]

83. The report only goes back

As far as 1996 when the Diebold electronic machines were first put in place. If they want to really investigate and compare election results they need to go back to before the machines were installed. Plus it's focusing on the electronic voting machines only not optical scan.

[lizzieforkerry]

87. In Ohio the GOP mailed out

absentee ballots to every registered Rep, whether they asked for one or not. They also mailed them to anyone that had moved. If only 5% had double voted (it was not marked on the lists at the poles that these people had received an absentee ballot) that is Bush's lead in Ohio. In Ohio they counted the absentee ballots that they had Tues night. I believe that this is how they stole this election, through double voting and convenience absentee voting. Both is illegal in Ohio If enough Rep just sent in the absentee ballots out of laziness or double voted than the exit polls would have shown Kerry winning. Please don't get me wrong- they stole this election- I am just asking if maybe this is one way they did it.

[Verve]

88. Wow! Good thought. How would you catch them if they did double vote?

Isn't there some type of check and balance to make sure this doesn't occur?

[lizzieforkerry]

91. Well, the way it is supposed to work

is that when you request an absentee ballot, the BoE stamps "absentee" next to your name on the precinct lists and then if you went to vote they wouldn't let you. It says on the absentee ballot that if you receive one you cannot go to the polls and vote. However, the people who got them did not have the stamp. My friend received one and when she called to say she wanted to go and vote, they told her she could. I know someone out of state that got one and someone else who had moved to a different county that got one, with a return address to her old county. She could have easily sent it in and then went and voted in her new county. I don't know when it is looked at to see if someone voted twice...

[Carolab]

102. Wouldn't you have to check against

the precinct registration records? See if these people were actually eligible to vote there and whether they voted more than once?

[SoCalDemocrat]

99. This is a theory worth exploring

When all was said and done, a lot of counties showed more votes than registered voters. This would explain why that happened!

It will take a careful recount to find the double votes, unless the data is available electronically and can be trusted...

[BREMPRO]

105. please start a new thread to explore this in depth

SoCalDemo, If this is true, i think this could be the smoking gun in the blackeye state, so to speak. I'm not able to start a thread.

[BREMPRO]

103. This is very interesting

Do you have hard evidence that Ohio sent absentee ballets to every reg.Reb? This seems really significant and the type of evidence that could take down the rabid elephant.

[Verve]

106. Are you saying it was illegal for the GOP to send out absentees

without permission from individuals to do so? If this is the case it would be easy to prove by just finding individuals like your friend. Did she report this to the Kerry campaign or any of the other voting fraud outlets?

[lizzieforkerry]

107. She told our Kerry lawyer before the election

My friend that called is a Rep, so she won't help us. The state of Ohio says that you either have to be 65, infirm or out of the county to get an absentee ballot.

[The Flaming Red Head]

90. DoD grant money helps to reassure the public of Bush win

R. Michael Alvarez
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, CA 91125


And looky looky at where his main grant money is coming from. I have links to this.


U.S. Department of Defense, “Evaluation of the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting (SERVE) Project.” ($2,130,237). November 2002 – December
2005, Principal Consultant (with R. Michael Alvarez)and Thad Edward Hall


U.S. Department of Defense. “Evaluation of the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE) Project,” DASW01-02-C-0027, ($236,140), May 2002 - December 2002. Principal Consultant (with R. Michael Alvarez) and Thad Edward Hall
********************************************************************
This guy was on CNN the other day saying how smooth the whole election process went and saying that there were very few problems

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/05/evoting.evaluation/index.html

Jury's still out on e-voting
Critics say it's too early in process to evaluate how machines did

By Daniel Sieberg
CNN
Friday, November 5, 2004 Posted: 4:58 PM EST (2158 GMT)

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Can Chad finally go back to being an African nation?

This year, there was no mention of the hanging or pregnant variety of chad, no prolonged investigation into what went wrong, and lawyers for both sides got all wound up with nowhere to vent their litigation.

But the lack of a hotly contested outcome in 2004 may be a double-edged sword for electronic voting. (Special Report: America Votes 2004)

All eyes were on e-voting this time around as nearly a third of U.S. voters used some type of high-tech device.

The machines were designed to eliminate the problems associated with paper, but critics have been vocal in saying too many states jumped the gun to get them in place.

They worried about the lack of a voter-verified paper trail (only Nevada offers that to all voters in the state), weak software and the same digital disasters that come with computers. (Nevada improves odds with e-vote, Nevada election results)

So how did they perform?

The short, albeit unsatisfying answer is that it's still too early to know for certain.

But at least one member of the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, which has been studying e-voting since 2000, said overall the machines seemed to perform beyond expectations.

"We are not receiving any reports of any huge systematic meltdowns regarding electronic voting, and certainly e-voting seems to have had the same sort of glitches we've seen in other paper-based voting systems," said R. Michael Alvarez, professor of political science at the California Institute of Technology.

"I'd give it a good passing grade, maybe a B, and I'd give the paper-based analogs about the same grade."

*******************************************************************


http://www.servesecurityreport.org/

[The Flaming Red Head]

96. Links to DoD grant money funding Cal Tech prof.

When you look at his the large, large grant isn’t included

http://www.hss.caltech.edu/vitae/alvarez.pdf

But if you do a little more research you’ll find more money allotted to him here. I wonder why he didn’t include all the correct statistical data in his Curriculum Vitae?

http://www.poli-sci.utah.edu/hall_cv.htm

******************************************************************

U.S. Department of Defense, “Evaluation of the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting (SERVE) Project.” ($2,130,237). November 2002 – December
2005, Principal Consultant (with R. Michael Alvarez)and Thad Edward Hall


U.S. Department of Defense. “Evaluation of the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE) Project,” DASW01-02-C-0027, ($236,140), May 2002 - December 2002. Principal Consultant (with R. Michael Alvarez) and Thad Edward Hall

[quoi]

92. might as well ... sigh

Dearest DU Presidential Results and Discussion Crew,

I am a lab rat, not a Voting Technology Person. But, here's two facts: 1) I have yet to rustle up a Republican who voted for Bush on campus. 2) If you want the straight poop, go to the horse. Contacts at --> http://pr.caltech.edu/media/contact/

And to those amongst you who have a problem with academia in general (aha! it's an evil, bad, misleading junk scientist, college professor), you've got to go sober up or pound a few more margaritas. You are starting to act like Republicans.

Love,

Caltech Clown

[Celebration]

109. to clown

Caltech Clown,

If you are a lab rat, you have taken statistics courses. This "study" doesn't seem professional to me, given all the reasons stated in this thread. Ignore the insults and focus on the facts-- wrong data used (corrected for "actual" votes), other races not included, considering each state separately, etc., not getting samples by counties, etc. Something is wrong with this picture............do you get it? Since you are at Caltech maybe you can find out more about it. There is another thread here where a statistics professor found odds against this at 250 million to one. This is just one example where one cannot trust an expert-- it helps to have an analytical mind. And I wouldn't mind a margarita. It helps me forget how much deeper in debt I am due to being a citizen of the USA, and helps me forget how beholden to the Chinese I am because they keep buying our treasury paper.

[quoi]

153. no stats necessary to work in a lab

I took an introductory stats class a long time ago. But, cooking school would have been more appropriate since most lab work is about following recipies and keeping the dishes clean.

But, it turns out that the professor R. Michael Alvarez is in the political science department. I didn't even know Caltech had one 'til I looked it up, but it means that he's a second stringer too lame to get an appointment at a university with a bona fide politcal science department. Now, if it were a math department (where the real statisticians live) professor, those numbers I would trust.

Conclusion: His numbers are as crappy as you would expect from anyone with a humanities degree. Lots of words, little substance.

[newyawker99]

129. Hi quoi!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[jimmyp]

95. MIT and CALTECH

Don't these schools get tons of funding from the government??? Maybe they have a stake in the outcome?

[newyawker99]

130. Hi jimmyp!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[SoCalDemocrat]

97. I bet they are using the fudged exit polls

Bet you a $1 they are not using the data before 1am CST Tuesday, the data before the AP modified it to better conform to Bush win results.

Seriously, we need to contact CalTech and complain and provide our counter to their analysis. We also need to email EVERY media outlet that runs their tripe and counter with our own analysis.

[phd_dude]

101. I analyzed original exit poll data

This report seems to use the 'reweighted' CNN exit poll numbers that were
changed at 1:20 AM on Nov 3. I analyzed the original numbers posted
on slate and raw story.

Here's ">the graph of exit poll vs returns.

I have not looked at which were electronic yet. I know NY is mechanical and it
deviates a lot. Strange that all deviation is for Kerry getting less returns.

Methods:
Election results from USAToday.com, Nov. 11. Exit poll results
are final election day numbers from Slate.com and RawStory.com. All numbers
are fraction of the major party vote, so that Kerry+Bush=1.0.
Error bars are
based on binomial distribution for sample sizes taken from CNN
exit poll website, plus a 0.25% correction for round-off.
States with more than 2 standard deviations are:
NC 3.89,
NH 3.78,
FL 3.65,
NY 3.45,
PA 2.15,
MN 2.11.
Ohio would come next at 1.97.
If polling data were unbiased and returns were correct, one would
expect most points to be within one error bar of the green line,
and randomly distributed above and below.

[phd_dude]

119. Link to analysis

Sorry, here's the link

http://dnamining.com/exit.html.

[newyawker99]

131. Hi phd_dude!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[bleever]

133. Welcome! Let's see more of this from you!

[berry]

137. That is VERY clear. Thanks!

The chart you posted here on this thread came up as an "X" for me, so I had to go to your link to see it. Good thing I did!

This is so clear and concise, I think this is a good link to send to people to challenge the CalTech-MIT "study." It's short enough that even media people might take the time to read it through.

[andym]

104. Paper is lacking in critical details about methodology and is odd

Very limited scope in its analysis.

It is written by a single (use of the pronoun I) anonymous author.
Odd...

He considers optical scans the same as paper, which negates possible errors in compiling votes at higher levels than the initial vote gathering.

Strange reasoning that would not be used by a good statistician:
" Even when they work well, exit polls are too imprecise to lay against the official count, unless every voter is included in the
exit poll."
No statistician would ever state that a 100 percent sample size is necessary for comparisons.

It does have one good idea: to correlate vote movement based on voting machine type on a per state basis. But this analysis should be taken further. Within the context of a state's vote, look at aggregates of precincts that used a particular voting methodology, not just assign average use of a particular method to the state's results.

[imaginary girl]

111. In addition to what's been mentioned, this paper is rhetorically terrible

They are drawing conclusions here, yet they state ...

... we suspect that ...

... exception proves the rule ...

Calling things "facts" when they are only theories (never been proven)

What kind of logic is this?

Besides, the comparisons are all based on the last couple of elections, which doesn't definitively address the current one.

Dixiecrat explanation = theory
Questions about vote manipulation = theory

Neither have been substantiated or proven false ...

[EST]

117. Worse yet-

Too limited on sources, and the nearly gratuitous, offhand mention of Illinois (I live here,) which is so deep blue (especially with Obama) that the required depth of obvious fraud needed to shift us to bushiites would be so egregious as to discolor the entire Mississippi river with its stench.

[ewulf]

115. Interesting comparison:

Compare and contrast their discussion with that of one Professor Freeman from the University of Pennsylvania, discussed here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=43917&mesg_id=43917 .

I wonder if the MIT-Caltech crew had access to the raw National Election Pools data that Prof. Freeman was trying to get a hold of? If they are legitimate academics, they should share their sources and raw data.

[ewulf]

116. This MIT-Caltech article really doesn't look professional,

Its chocked full of errors. At one point, it claims that Kerry only about 30% of the vote in Rhode Island!

[EST]

118. Mega-dittos!

(Cough, splutter, cough, cough)(snicker)

[txindy]

121. Up we go - Kick

:kick:

[txindy]

123. kicking

:kick:

[Lone_Star_Dem]

125. kick

[althecat]

134. 4000 Views of this story and climbing..

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00142.htm

Mainly thanks to Buzzflash mind... But that is considerable interest in Scoop terms.

[GettysbergII]

138. David Baltimore/ CalTech connection to Howard Ahmanson Jr

Follow the money as deep throat advised and that means follow Howard Ahmanson Jr

http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12380.html

Caltech to Renovate Historic Dabney Hall

PASADENA, Calif. -- The elegant but aged Dabney Hall of the Humanities at the California Institute of Technology will be renovated this year, thanks in part to funding from the Ahmanson Foundation. Adjacent to the university's chemistry, math, and physics departments, Dabney Hall bridges the humanities and sciences, both physically and figuratively, on Caltech's campus.

The project donors to date include the Ahmanson Foundation, Caltech alumnus Martin D. Gray, BS '71 engineering and applied science, Caltech staff member Evelyn J. Cederbaum, and Dabney family members Tom and Diane Kettering.

The project includes renovation of Millikan Library where staff and administrators will move to from Dabney; the total cost is $12 million.

The renovations will "not only help reclaim the beauty of an extraordinary building invigorate the humanities for students through space enlivened by study, research, lectures, and performance" said Caltech's president David Baltimore.

A longtime friend of Caltech, the Ahmanson Foundation has supported the Institute's capital projects, student financial aid, and endowment for academic research and a humanities fellowship. The foundation concentrates its funding on cultural projects supporting the arts, education at the collegiate and precollegiate levels, medicine and delivery of health care services, specialized library collections, and programs related to homelessness. Most of the foundation's philanthropy is directed toward organizations in the Los Angeles area.

[GettysbergII]

140. Charles M. Vest ties to the Bush admin and $300 million funding for MIT

http://foi.missouri.edu/controls/vezner.doc


Dr. Postol, saying the POET report�s conclusions were �false and unsupported,� asked for an investigation by the institute on April 26, 2001. He approached Charles M. Vest, M.I.T.�s President; one year later, he approached Alexander V. D�Arbeloff, chairman of the M.I.T. corporation, saying Dr. Vest had failed to investigate �a serious case of scientific fraud.�
Pg. 25
Dr. Postol also contended that President Vest was hopelessly conflicted, due to the fact that he now sits on the White House council of science advisers and �knows that the missile defense system won�t work and that his own organization has lied about its capabilities.�

Pg. 26

Three examples of tainted authoritative �oversight� include the Department of Defenses� initial investigation (whose findings were allegedly sabotaged/misrepresented by the Army�s own Legal Service); the two �independent� investigations into TWR; and President of M.I.T. Charles M. Vest � who sits on the White House council of science advisers � who, as Dr. Postol contends, �knows that the missile defense system won�t work and that his own organization has lied about its capabilities.� While it is debatable whether this last example is true, the fact remains that Dr. Vest has a significant conflict of interest in monitoring/advising a program that brings over $300 million into the Institute over which he presides.

Pg. 35


You can get an abreviated version of this affair at:
http://smirkingchimp.com/viewtopic.php?topic=1091&forum=7


Here's another blurb on the affair

For MIT physicist Theodore Postol, a frequent critic of the Pentagon's missile defense plans, the omissions of his colleagues and their stamp of approval for the Missile Defense Agency amounts to scientific fraud. Postol recently lodged complaintswith the MIT Corporation about the study - charging that the university's president, Charles M. Vest, knew of the allegedmisconduct and did nothing about it.''This certainly has the appearance of a well-orchestrated fraud,'' Postol said. ''The managers at Lincoln Lab either knew orshould have known that this experiment was a total failure - and they falsely represented it as a success. The implications ofthat deceit could cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.''

[GettysbergII]

141. For those unaware of Ahmanson's ties to ES&S and Diebold

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm

In the early 1980s, brothers Bob and Todd Urosevich founded ES&S’s originator, Data Mark. The brothers Urosevich obtained financing from the far-Right Ahmanson family in 1984, which purchased a 68% ownership stake, according to the Omaha World Herald. After brothers William and Robert Ahmanson infused Data Mark with new capital, the name was changed to American Information Systems (AIS). California newspapers have long documented the Ahmanson family’s ties to right-wing evangelical Christian and Republican circles.

>

According to Group Watch, in the 1980s Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr. was a member of the highly secretive far-Right Council for National Policy, an organization that included Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, Major General John K. Singlaub and other Iran-Contra scandal notables, as well as former Klan members like Richard Shoff. Ahmanson, heir to a savings and loan fortune, is little reported on in the mainstream U.S. press. But, English papers like The Independent are a bit more forthcoming on Ahmanson’s politics.

>

Bob Urosevich was the Programmer and CEO at AIS, before being replaced by Hagel. Bob now heads Diebold Election Systems and his brother Todd is a top executive at ES&S. Bob created Diebold’s original electronic voting machine software. Thus, the brothers Urosevich, originally funded by the far Right, figure in the counting of approximately 80% of electronic voting in the United States.

[illuminaughty]

144. kick; olbermann just pointed out flaws to CalTech/MIT study

and pointed to University of Pennsylvania study that said odds of exit polls being incorrect 250 million to one.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/

[GettysbergII]

145. Caltech/ MIT VTP July 2001 Report tells differeent tale

Wow! These guys sure have changed their tune from their concerns about vote fraud delineated on Pp. 45-47 of the July 2001 95 page report from the Caltech/ MIT VTP titled Voting: What Is, What Could Be.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2001/VTP_report_all.pdf
Electronic Voting and Security
Pp 45-47
We are concerned that we are moving away from these general principles that help guarantee the security and integrity of voting.
We are in an era of electronic voting. Almost twothirds of all votes in 2000 were counted using electronic tabulation, including computers, punch cards, scanners, and DREs (Direct Recording Electronic devices). Hand-counted paper, despite its advantages and wide use in Europe, is infrequently used in the U.S

Electronics are increasingly used to record votes. DRE machines require that voters generate votes and
record votes electronically. Scanners and DREs are where the growth in the industry is occurring.

The computerization of election systems introduces significant security risks but also significant opportunities for fraud prevention and detection. For example, electronic transmission of vote tallies, so long as that transmission is secure, means that we do not have to have police ferrying ballots around on election night.

We see the following security risks associated with electronic voting.

First, we are losing openness. Electronic voting machines are completely closed. We can no longer observe the count.

Second, we are losing the ability for many people to be involved. Election equipment tries to do it all. A single computer system generates votes, records votes, counts votes, and produces the final tallies. Without openness, we lose the advantage of having many eyes on the count.

Third, separation of privilege is lost. We are headed toward monolithic systems—one machine that does it all. This risks vesting too much control over the system in the vendor’s hands or in the hands of any hacker who can get inside of that monolithic system.

Fourth, many electronic devices lack redundancy and true auditability. To audit a voting machine, one needs a redundant recording of what the voter intended. There is the initial recording that the electronic
machine made, but there must also be a separate recording against which the machine recording is tested— an audit trail. The problem for many electronic devices is that their audit trails are simply another
recording of what the machine recorded. Roy Saltman,a leading expert on voting technology, has long advocated that the true stand

ard of auditability is that the audit trail is produced by the voter and not by some intermediary machine. This is an important insight. It is the only way to guard against a fraud scheme in which the code occasionally drops votes; it also protects against machines that accidentally lose votes, say
because of a power surge.


Fifth, we are losing public control over voting equipment. One worry with electronics is that they are sufficiently complex machines that administrators cannot inspect the inside of the devices. Even the independent testing authorities have difficulty completing speedy certification reviews of the hardware and software on new electronic devices owing to the increased complexity of the hardware and software. Administrators must trust manufacturers, as must the voters. We prefer transparent voting systems where the operations are observable and verifiable by anyone.

All of these problems are solvable. We strongly believe that the principles of openness, many eyes, separation of privilege, redundancy, and public control must guide the design of electronic equipment.

First, we should move away from complex, monolithic machines. It is very difficult to design secure systems that must meet a complex set of requirements. Extreme simplicity is strongly recommended. We think that a better approach is to have a very simple electronic vote-recording device that is separate from other parts of the system. A machine used to prepare a ballot can be as complicated as one likes, and could even be used for other things when elections are not happening, such as classroom instruction.

The vote-recoding device is the critical device in securing the vote. When the vote is recorded is the moment that the voter loses control over the vote. All of the problems of tampering emerge at this moment.
If the vote recording is secure, then we can truly heighten the security of the entire system.

What must be secure are the devices that record and count, not the user interface that generates ballots. The device that records votes must be very secure. And it should not be expected to do anything other than record votes. It should be a very simple machine, nothing as complicated as a personal computer. This suggests that the industry and administrators use separate devices for recording and
for generating votes. That will be explored in the final section of this report.

Second, the source code for all vote recording and vote counting processes must be open source. The source code for the user interface can and should be proprietary, so that vendors can develop their products. There are many protocols for open source. We think REPORT OF THE CALTECH/MIT VOTING TECHNOLOGY PROJECT that a national commission consisting of experts on security from outside the voting industry, including other industries such as banking and Internet security, should determine the appropriate protocol for open source in the voting equipment industry.

Third, all recording software should be openly audited in the same mode that is used to conduct the counts. “Test” modes should be eliminated. Counting and recording devices should be “modeless.” The test mode feature is a security vulnerability because it creates a way to cover a hack. To truly reclaim the openness of the count,interested parties (candidates, party organization, groups, etc.) should be allowed to inspect the software as it is formatted for Election Day. All interested parties should be satisfied that votes will be
counted appropriately.

Fourth, equipment should be adapted so that voters can create a record of the vote that they can examine directly, for the sake of auditing equipment and elections. This might require some sort of simple paper recording that the voter can check and submit separately.

Fifth, we recommend audits of votes and equipment, even without a recount. Total votes and votes for each office and proposition should be logged on all equipment and recorded electronically. Election
officials should inspect these recordings to detect irregularities on particular machines or at particular precincts. In addition, election officers, especially in larger jurisdictions, should randomly choose a small percent of the machines (say one percent) each year for thorough inspection.

Sixth, all equipment should log all events (votes, maintenance, etc.) that occur on the machine. The information on the log should include what was done, when it was done, and who authorized the activity. The election office should keep those logs.

[GuardingVirginia]

146. Aussie do it right: E-voting

http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0%2C1272%2C61045%2C00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1

[GuardingVirginia]

147. BBC news: How to vote.

How the British do it:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/vote2001/hi/english/voting_system/newsid_1171000/1171838.stm

[GuardingVirginia]

148. French Election: Credibility Through Hand Counting

and the french counting by hand.

http://www.americanfreepress.net/NWO/23%20French%20Election-%20Credibility.htm

[Zhade]

151. kick

kick

[regularjoe]

155. Kick!