One Voter Fraud Theory debunked

[sbsquared]

Verifying Victory
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
By Brit Hume

Verifying Victory

Miami Herald reporters who conducted an independent recount in three heavily democratic Florida counties say that President Bush's lopsided victory there is legitimate. Critics have questioned the President's strong showing in the Florida panhandle (search), where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 3 to 1.

But after reviewing more than 17,000 optical-scan ballots in northern Suwannee, Lafayette and Union counties, the Herald reporters conclude that charges of voter fraud are unfounded. In fact, while those three counties have long been overwhelmingly Democratic, they have reguarly voted for Republican presidential candidates, including Senator Bob Dole in 1996 and President Bush in 2000.

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I'm sure that, with time, we'll see more of these stories - to bad for all the conspiracy theorists! :lol

[Nbadan]

This article may have inadvertently proved that John Kerry actually won Florida, unbeknown to the writer...(from another forum)...


Here are the tallies for Union County:

Bush original: 3396
Bush hand count: 3393 (-3)
Kerry original: 1251
Kerry hand count: 1272 (+21)
Net change: Kerry +24

Here are the tallies for Lafayette County:

Bush original: 2460
Bush hand count: 2452 (-8)
Kerry original: 845
Kerry hand count: 848 (+3)
Net change: Kerry +11

It's a bit more complicated for the third county they looked at, Suwanee County, because they only report the totals for a hand count of "almost 60%" of the ballots.

Bush original: 11153
Kerry original: 4522
Bush hand count: 6140
Kerry hand count: 2984

In the original count, 71.2% of the votes cast for Bush or Kerry (n=15675) went to Bush. In the hand count, this drops to 67.3%. That is a significant drop. Let's translate that into numbers. If you take the percentages from the hand count and extrapolate, here's what you get:

Bush = 15675 x .673 = 10549 (loss of 604)
Kerry = 15675 x .327 = 5126 (gain of 604)
Net change: Kerry +1208

A switch of 1208 votes in a county with less than 16K votes cast is obviously huge. Now maybe there's a very large percentage of Bush votes in that remaining 40% that they didn't count, but we can't know that because they didn't count them. Which begs the question...why did they stop counting in Suwannee County when their tabulation of 60% of the ballots deviated so much from the original total? And without actually counting those remaining ballots, how can they possibly report that nothing is amiss when the data they have so far suggests a possible problem?

They conclude that there's "no flaw in Bush's state win." Sorry, but what I see is a possible gain of 1243 votes for Kerry from three small counties in which only 23627 ballots were cast. That represents about 0.3% of the ballots cast for Bush and Kerry statewide. If Kerry gained votes at the same rate statewide, he picks up nearly 400,000 votes and wins Florida.

Thanks Miami Herald, you just revealed to us in your hand counts that there's a possibility that Kerry won Florida.

[Useruser666]

This article may have inadvertently proved that John Kerry actually won Florida, unbeknown to the writer...(from another forum)...



Thanks Miami Herald, you just revealed to us in your hand counts that there's a possibility that Kerry won Florida.

Um I think you need to reread that. The election is not based off of counties won or lost, but by total vote. The counties listed may or may not represent all other counties by voter split.

I think all of this talk about the election should just end. Some people will never believe in the results. That is just the was the cookie crumbles. Dan, everyone knows you don't believe Bush won, so can we just leave it at that?