great article, Michael! the next step, as I see it, is to get the word out. If everyone reading this article posted it around to their network, that would be a GREAT start! joan b, voting integrity ed., OpEdNews

by Joan Brunwasser (206 articles, 3757 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 751 comments [4 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Jan 15, 2007 at 7:43:53 AM

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Thanks joanb. I like the idea of getting this around. It's short and sweet and even I can do the math. Heres a little thought problem: A) Candidate A loses by 329 votes district wide. B) In A's stronghold, 19,287 ballots are cast. 3,199 (16%) of the ballots have no mark for candidata A's race (called undervotes) but marks for most/all of the other races on the ballot. C) This was in a part of the district where candidate A won 68% to 32%. D) The undervote rate should have been 3% for this race; that's 3% of 19,287 total ballots cast for his stronghold. E) What happens to the 329 loss if candidate A has a reasonable rate of undervotes like 3%. This is from Larry Kissell's loss in the NC8th. The undervotes hammered him and a win turned into a loss. Amazing isn't it. Hint: Kissel wins by _________ votes.

by Michael Collins (130 articles, 20 quicklinks, 7 diaries, 484 comments [42 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, Jan 16, 2007 at 12:35:50 AM

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Nice work. I checked you link to part 1 as well. Amazingly, the high profile attorney for one of the cheated Democratic candidates implies that this was probably an accident instead of election fraud: "Of real interest, Coffey offers an explanation for the phenomenon. He claims that poor ballot design interacting with ES&S source code was the culprit that caused voting machines to malfunction. The configuration of the ballot, he asserts, probably triggered problems with the ESS computer source code that denied the voting rights of thousands for whom no vote was recorded." I wonder why these accidents always happen to Democrats, and always to subtract rather than add votes.

by Yaybob (12 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 174 comments) on Monday, Jan 15, 2007 at 11:13:54 AM

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I'm not familiar with any software that randomly makes mistakes. Professionally writen compouter code does what it is written to do. It may do the wrong thing or annoy us, it may foul up a business process, but the code does what it's programmed to do. So.....I agree. There may be intervening variables but sh*t code sure worked well for the Republicans in another one of those close races that Democrats always seem to lose. Cheers!!! Nice to be here.

by Michael Collins (130 articles, 20 quicklinks, 7 diaries, 484 comments [42 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, Jan 16, 2007 at 12:39:20 AM

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Time to Doff the Tin Foil Hats - No Suspicious Undervote in Meck/NC-08 by The Southern Dem Thu Jan 18, 2007 at 08:14:43 AM PST Unless you've been in seclusion or you've been living under a rock, you've heard about the alarmingly high undervote rate in Florida's 13th Congressional District race. According to The San Francisco Chronicle piece linked above via CommonDreams, the undervote of somewhere around 15% in Sarasota County means that close to 18,000 people voted for other races, but failed to select a choice for the Jennings/Buchanan race. Unlike North Carolina, Florida does not require a paper trail for its touch screen machines. There are several theories floating around as to what happened to those 18,000 votes, but with no paper trail, it is difficult, if not impossible to verify the count from the machine. Grab a cuppa and get comfy. This one's looooong.... The Southern Dem's diary :: :: Now, conspiracy theories are cropping up surrounding the 4.2% Mecklenburg County undervote in the 8th Congressional race between Larry Kissell and Robin Hayes. It started with an email going around with lots of THESE and quite a few of !!!!!!! these. According to the author of the email the Mecklenburg County Board of Elections was negligent in its execution of the 3% eye-hand recount performed on November 29, 2006. The author also claims that there is an unprecedented undervote in Mecklenburg County for the 8th Congressional District race. The undervote rate of 4.2% is unprecedented in this race for Mecklenburg County, however, in light of circumstances surrounding November's elections, it is not surprising, shocking or significant and all the CAPITAL LETTERS and !!!!! exclamation points!!!! in the world will not change that fact. Why address this publicly? The email has had broad enough distribution that it deserves to be addressed publicly. Not only that, diaries are showing up on Daily Kos, Democratic Underground and now BlueNC. A new web site asserting this claim also exists. It isn't my intention to call out any one person or to try and embarrass someone, therefore I'm not addressing the author of this email or the web site by name.... Another reason to address this publicly is the spread of faulty data that is now getting wider distribution. A couple of days ago, Kirk Ross brought our attention to a writer who is spreading confusion by using a completely inaccurate undervote total for North Carolina's 8th Congressional District. Michael Collins has a post at Scoop Independent News, OpEdNews.com and it was taken to Crooks and Liars by Nicole Belle. In this article Collins claims that the undervote percentage in the 8th Congressional race in Mecklenburg County was over 15%. I'll refute his numbers later in this post. The most important reason to address this publicly is that there are valid complaints with election procedures and results in some states. Any time a false claim is made or a problem created where none exists, it dilutes the importance of other, more valid claims and takes attention and possibly resources away from where they are most needed. The rest of the article here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/1/18/111023/378#c5

by ncvoter (19 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 112 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Thursday, Jan 18, 2007 at 10:34:57 PM

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Larry Kissell, Democratic candidate for Congress in the 8th Congressional District, NC requested and got what NC calls a 3% "hand to eye" recount" of the 10 counties that comprise his district. He was half way through the recount, which the state paid for when he conceded. Mecklenburg County was the last county recounted. Do you know who advised him to give up the recount? As far as the article goes, the data for this article came directly from The Mecklenburg County Board of Elections web site, (links below).. I linked the three congressional races individually as reported on the Mecklenburg Board web site and I also show screen shots of those individual sites here. For each of the three races, there's a figure for Voter turnout and then the Republican and Democratic candidate. That's where the difference comes from. Here are the links to the Mecklenburg Board of Elections web sites for each race with the figures below 8th Dist. Results, 9th Dist. Results, 12th Dist. Results. Now, if you and the Board are telling people that the 19297 voter turn out and the 16,088 combined votes for Democrat Kissell and Republican Hayes, my response is that's a reason to question everything. Now if there is some vote incorporation process where absentees get allocated arbitrarily, my response is that's another reason to question everything. In San Diego, California 50th, (Busby-Bilbray) there was an allocation of absentees in a way that made no sense. The ballots were not assigned to precincts weeks after the election. They lost any claim to validity. Same here. I'm happy and justified to use their published figures until they open the whole operation up for a forensic examination...of everything. Otherwise, their race by race figures for Turnout stand and the undrevote/difference comes from the chart above. Presenting contradictory evidence is a sign of serious problems. The Board can't give with the hand of individual reporting showing major differences between vote totals and turnout and take away with the other of cryptic reconciliation that makes no sense. The results are competently produced or they are suspect. And, of course, these are touch screens. For all anybody knows, they're off in all different directions and there's no way for us to tell. If the county changes its reporting and numbers on the their official report, they I'll have to write a different article "County Changes Results in NC 8th. Which Numbers Can We Believe?"

by Michael Collins (130 articles, 20 quicklinks, 7 diaries, 484 comments [42 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Friday, Jan 19, 2007 at 1:49:14 AM

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The Scoop article is wrong. Inaccurate information hurts us all. The author has been advised that he is using incorrect information. Mecklenburg/NC 08 is not same as Sarasota/NC 13 Sarasota had: -drastically high undervotes (18,000) -paperless iVotronics -no recounts allowed (of paper if you have it) -candidate has not conceded -reports of votes being changed Meck had -moderate undervotes of 4% -new iVotronics with VVPAT -manual recount was ordered for 10 counties (NC 08 Dist) -candidate had observers, lawyers, NAACP and reporters at recount -candidate conceded and stopped the recount after 5 counties -no reports of votes being changed Several of us already reviewed the NC 08 election weeks ago, looking for a story. Some reviewed the vote data after the election. I spoke with an observer for the Kissell campaign, and the reporter Carrie Levine of the Charlotte Observer who was at the recount in Mecklenburg County. We did not find any "dirt", and there was NO "Sarasota-Size" undervote. The actual problem in Mecklenburg is that: The county is reporting incorrect turnout figures on the website,a fact that can be easily seen by examining the precinct data. available from the County website. Go here and select the second link from the top on the left side. click here The main problem was the inclusion of all absentee, curbside, and provisional ballots in the turnout figures for all three House districts in Mecklenburg. Even though most of the district was in NC-12, all the NC-12 (and NC-09) absentee etc. ballots were included in the NC-08 turnout. The manual recount of 5 counties (a 3% sample) turned up 2 more votes for Kissell. He might have turned up 2 more votes by recounting the other 5 counties.

by ncvoter (19 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 112 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Thursday, Jan 18, 2007 at 10:41:48 PM

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Larry Kissell, Democratic candidate for Congress in the 8th Congressional District, NC requested and got what NC calls a 3% "hand to eye" recount" of the 10 counties that comprise his district. He was half way through the recount, which the state paid for when he conceded. Mecklenburg County was the last county recounted. Do you know who advised him to give up the recount? As far as the article goes, the data for this article came directly from The Mecklenburg County Board of Elections web site, (links below).. I linked the three congressional races individually as reported on the Mecklenburg Board web site and I also show screen shots of those individual sites here. For each of the three races, there's a figure for Voter turnout and then the Republican and Democratic candidate. That's where the difference comes from. Here are the links to the Mecklenburg Board of Elections web sites for each race with the figures below 8th Dist. Results, 9th Dist. Results, 12th Dist. Results. Now, if you and the Board are telling people that the 19297 voter turn out and the 16,088 combined votes for Democrat Kissell and Republican Hayes, my response is that's a reason to question everything. Now if there is some vote incorporation process where absentees get allocated arbitrarily, my response is that's another reason to question everything. In San Diego, California 50th, (Busby-Bilbray) there was an allocation of absentees in a way that made no sense. The ballots were not assigned to precincts weeks after the election. They lost any claim to validity. Same here. I'm happy and justified to use their published figures until they open the whole operation up for a forensic examination...of everything. Otherwise, their race by race figures for Turnout stand and the undrevote/difference comes from the chart above. Presenting contradictory evidence is a sign of serious problems. The Board can't give with the hand of individual reporting showing major differences between vote totals and turnout and take away with the other of cryptic reconciliation that makes no sense. The results are competently produced or they are suspect. And, of course, these are touch screens. For all anybody knows, they're off in all different directions and there's no way for us to tell. If the county changes its reporting and numbers on the their official report, they I'll have to write a different article "County Changes Results in NC 8th. Which Numbers Can We Believe?"

by Michael Collins (130 articles, 20 quicklinks, 7 diaries, 484 comments [42 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Friday, Jan 19, 2007 at 1:47:18 AM

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