response 75 of 409:

Nov 9 17:14 UTC 2000

re 62 and such:  All she had to do then was punch an additional hole to
spoil her ballot.

The paperboard ballots of Pittsfield Township get validated by the 
mechanism that draws them into the machine.  It allows the discovery
of a spoiled ballot while the voter is still there.  A rather nifty
addition to a people and machine readable form.

response 77 of 409:

Nov 9 18:28 UTC 2000

Re 71,72,73,74.  This is pretty much a myth that Republicans have been
repeating since 1960, that "Mayor Daley stole the presidential election." 

Well, first of all, Kennedy won the popular vote by a margin of over
100,000.  If Nixon won the electoral college, he would have done so
despite losing the popular vote, just as George W. Bush is about to do.
It's beyond fantasy to think that Kennedy benefited from 100,000
fraudulent votes.

Second, as Aaron pointed out, in the Electoral College, Kennedy didn't
need Illinois.  He had enough electoral votes elsewhere.  So nothing that
Daley did in Illinois could possibly have changed the outcome. 

Republicans, challenged on this point, immediately say, well, there's also
Texas.  But while Kennedy won Illinois by less than 9,000 votes, he won
Texas by more than five times as much.  I don't know much about what was
happening in Texas at the time, but I'm skeptical that somebody could have
stolen 50,000 votes without anybody noticing.  And blaming Mayor Daley for
Texas is a stretch, to say the least.

If Illinois was tipped to JFK by stolen votes, it would have taken a much
smaller number.  If Illinois and Texas were both tipped to JFK by fraud,
the Texas story should have been much bigger.  In truth, I doubt that
election fraud changed either state's outcome.

One of the things which aroused attention at the time was Kennedy's very
high percentage in black precincts, I think something like 75%.  Nowadays,
we would be surprised to see a Democrat getting only 75% in an all-black
area, but at the time, it was surprising.

But before the election, Martin Luther King was arrested in Atlanta, and
Kennedy phoned to offer support.  This act got enormous attention among
black voters nationwide, and it helped trigger the movement away from the
Republican Party that was already under way since FDR.  White Republicans
who thought of King as merely some Negro troublemaker probably either
didn't realize the significance of Kennedy's gesture or didn't like
Kennedy getting anything positive for consorting with a criminal. 

Either way, a lot of the hullabaloo over "vote fraud" in Chicago reflected
concern or anger that black voters were affecting the outcome.  Four years
later, the Republican Party nominated Barry Goldwater, who endorsed
states' rights to enforce segregation -- and the black community has been
over 90% Democratic ever since. 

What has been dropped from the Chicago 1960 election story that circulates
among Republican is that Chicago was both recounted and studied by
independent observers, and no evidence was found of any actual vote fraud.

The recount of Chicago's 1.7 million votes found a net gain of 312 for
Nixon.  The recount then moved to the Cook County suburbs, where paper
ballots were in use.  Counting paper ballots is not as simple as you might
think, because there are complex legal rules that apply to the ambiguous
cases, e.g., did the X cross inside the square.  With a scrupulous recount
of the paper ballots, directed by attorneys for both parties with
reporters and observers watching, suburb by suburb by suburb, Kennedy
gained over 2,000 votes, bringing his statewide margin from six thousand
to over eight thousand.  Before they were halfway done, the Republicans
called off the recount.

Recently, Seymour Hirsh wrote a book critical of JFK and Kennedy family
shenanigans.  The book got a lot of press attention because it detailed
Kennedy's unusual sexual activities, but it also discussed the various
underhanded things Kennedy did to win the 1960 nomination.  Note that
presidential primaries were a joke until Kennedy came along: nominations
were decided by party leaders in "smoke filled rooms."

One of the key turning points in the campaign was the West Virginia
presidential primary. In certain counties in West Virginia, you win a
primary by paying off the county officials, who control the outcome either
by leadership or intimidation of the handful of voters in a low-turnout
primary, or though outright fraud.  The Kennedys paid their money, didn't
ask questions, and won the primary. 

I mention this because the West Virginia primary is the one place where
Hirsh found Kennedy complicit in vote fraud.  As to Chicago, he documents
a previously undisclosed meeting a year before the 1960 election between
JFK's father Joe Kennedy and Chicago's Mafia leaders.  Some kind of deal
was made to make the Teamsters pension fund available to the Kennedy
campaign, and to pressure members of corrupt labor unions to vote for
Kennedy.  Not something that reflects well on the Kennedys, certainly, but
pressuring someone to go to the polls is not vote fraud.

The lie about Illinois in 1960 has been repeated for so long and so often
that most people assume it's true.  It's like the old line that "Mussolini
made the trains run on time." -- he didn't, but everyone now assumes he
did.  A lie repeated often enough becomes truth.

Well, now the Democrats have their own myth to harp on for the next forty
years.  Unlike Illinois in 1960, Florida really DOES determine the
Electoral College winner.  And JFK's 1960 margin in Illinois was more than
ten times higher than GWB's current lead in Florida.  Though I personally
doubt that the most exacting recount of Florida's votes could change the
outcome, the feeling is going to persist that because of "irregularities," 
in a state drenched in drug money, led by the candidate's brother, Bush
won the presidency on fraud.

Add that to the fact that, unlike Kennedy in 1960, Bush really did lose
the popular vote.

Decades from now, when Bush's name comes up in conversation, people will
say, "Bush?  Oh, right, you mean the guy who stole the election."  And no
matter how often it gets debunked, people will keep repeating it.  Another
lie will turn into truth.

And history will suffer.

Today's Republicans should think about this the next time they're about to
glibly repeat the Chicago lie.

response 79 of 409:

Nov 9 19:29 UTC 2000

Re 78.  Which other state was as close as Florida?

response 81 of 409:

Nov 9 19:56 UTC 2000

I found this position clear and concise so I pass it along to you..

MEINTEXAS
1. In Florida, all ballots must be printed publicly in the paper prior to the
election. Additionally, all voters are sent a sample ballot for their careful
review and consideration prior to the day of the election. NO ONE had any
grievances about the so-called butterfly ballot in the West Palm Area prior
to the election. A little known fact regarding this ballot is that it was
created by a DEMOCRAT who supervises the elections in that area. This was not
a right wing conspiracy, folks. 
2. Last time I checked, it was a privilege to vote. If you are so lucky as
to be given the chance to express your right to vote, you should take this
responsibility seriously. It is that person's RESPONSIBILITY to be diligent
in how they mark their ballots. The sample ballots explain in detail that if
a mistake is made, the voter simply must request a new ballot and one will
be given to them. Why is there people in West Palm CRYING that they voted for
the wrong person? Why didn't they request a new ballot when they noticed that
an error had been made? Maybe they did vote for the right person, but now wish
they had voted for someone else. Who will ever really know? The press is
making a big scene about all those ballots in that area which had been
disqualified because multiple candidates for the same position had been
punched. This is human error. The ballot had large print to facilitate seniors
being about to read the ballot and also had an ARROW pointing to the
appropriate punch. How much simpler can this get, people? I for one believe
that if you couldn't take the time to responsibly vote for your candidate,
then you blew your chance. This is not anyone's fault but the voters. Yet
another example of certain segments of our society blaming ANYONE else other
than themselves for their personal transgressions. Get over the whining and
accept that you blew it. Blah blah blah...Maybe you will be a little more
careful next election. If you don't, oh well.... 
3. I am absolutely incensed that the media has played off their meddling with
this election as just "technical difficulties" with their statistical models
which chose projections. What hogwash!!!! Anyone that knows anything about
statistics knows that you cannot project final results from a miniscule sample
size of six precincts reporting. I, for one, think that the press should be
blacked out until every poll in the US is CLOSED. No projections or biased
accounts of what will happen need to influence voters in any other area of
the country. I was sitting at a GOP party in Hillsborough County Florida at
7:45 pm when Fox called Florida for Gore. People were incredulous. How could
they accurately predict anything with no information? The answer...they
couldn't!!!! So why did it take them two hours to say that Florida was too
close to call? Did anyone else check their watch and notice that west coast
polls were about to close? If those desperate people in West Palm Beach get
a revote (the most insane suggestion I have ever heard in my life), then every
other citizen who had a possibility to vote after the first media outlet
reported that Florida had gone to Gore and virtually given him the electoral
college should stand up and ask for a new election for themselves. Also, the
fact that a multimillionaire from NY who is one of Gore's supporters showing
up in Minneapolis to bribe the homeless should be investigated. She was giving
out cigarettes to them in exchange for absentee ballot votes for Gore. Oh,
yes, and what about that Democratic judge in St. Louis county who kept open
the polls in a predominantly Gore precinct? What about the 4000 count
difference in Wisconsin or the 6000 count difference in other states that went
to Gore? Let's just redo the entire election and show every other country in
the world that democracy cannot work and so they shouldn't even bother risking
their lives. This insanity is going to cause a constitutional crisis in this
country which is unprecedented. 
At times in the past two days, I have questioned the process. Yet one thing
I am sure of is this: I voted for the right person on Tuesday. There is no
doubt in my mind that I voted for the only person in this election who really
has any integrity left. Bush will concede to Gore if the votes come out
against us. He will not jeopardize our system by challenging the voice of the
people. While I am still very confident that we will prevail, it only
reinforces my choice when I watch Bush. I really can't take four more years
of Clinton/Gore.

response 83 of 409:

Nov 9 20:45 UTC 2000

I'm sure part of the confusion of the florida ballots was not just the
form of the printed material, but the mechanical lineup of the actual
ballot with the form.  All evidence (such as the 19,000 ballots that
were "spoilt") indicates this was highly unreliable.  If automobiles had
tires *that* unreliable, not only would there be a massive safety
recall, there would be armed lynching mobs out.  In at least one case, a
person voting *knew* she was having trouble marking her ballot and was
*NOT* given the chance to get a fresh ballot, completely countrary to
all the rules.

Normally, I don't think anyone would get upset with all these
difficulties.  The problem is that the vote in floriday is *so* close
that it is within the error of margin for counting.  We might just as
well select presidents by roulette table as accept the current vote
count.

response 85 of 409:

Nov 9 21:49 UTC 2000

  For a similarly informative article about the myth of the 1960 election,
  see the "Recycled" column "Did Kennedy Really Steal the 1960 Election?"
  in this week's Slate -- http://slate.msn.com/recycled/00-11-08/recycled.a
sp

response 87 of 409:

Nov 9 22:53 UTC 2000

        I, too would like to know if there is any other state where a 
re-count would have a chance of a change of outcome.  Any other states
that automaticly do a recount on a % of votes basis?

response 89 of 409:

Nov 10 03:13 UTC 2000

Also, I would certainly hope that other states would show A LOT LESS
change in a recount than Florida has.  As I said elsewhere in Agora,
I am appalled at how sloppy Florida's election practices appear to be.

response 91 of 409:

Nov 10 04:33 UTC 2000

Yeah.  It's really something.  Is it this sloppy everywhere?

Michael Moore, on the Daily Show, has suggested that perhaps the UN should
send in election monitors. ;)

response 93 of 409:

Nov 10 04:58 UTC 2000

I should add one thing - apparently the recounts reflect any absentee
ballots that had not previously been processed. If Florida required that
ballots be received on election day, rather than requiring that they be
simply postmarked on election day, the variance in some counties might be
comparable to what one would see in Michigan.

response 95 of 409:

Nov 10 06:20 UTC 2000

You can ask for a new ballot.  If people were being denied new ballots upon
request, then that is definitely cause for a revote.  However, simply claiming
errors?  If they allow a revote in that county for that reason, I'd like the
rest of the country to get one too...

response 97 of 409:

Nov 10 06:34 UTC 2000

I finally got around to seeing one of the actual gif's of what the
voters in Florida saw.  In fact, it looks *very* like what I saw in
Ypsi, so it must be the same machine.  If so, I would guess there were
probably 3 technical problems.

The first is alignment.  As I said before, even on the machine I saw in
Ypsilanti, the paper and the arrows were misaligned with the holes--in
my case, by about 1/4 hole.  It was still possible for me to consciously
allow for this, but if the alignment had been worse, and the form had
been printed in a confusing fashion with a right vs. left shift, and I
wasn't voting for the candidate in hole #1, and this was the first vote
I was making so I hadn't had any "practice" with that machine, I can
well guess I might pick the wrong hole.  If I really wasn't sure, I
might even try again with the stylus in the right hole, just to be sure
the hole was punched through.  Also - the page is actually *raised*
relatively to the hole, by a significant amount.  So there's a parallax
problem, and someone who was very short, or tall and hunched, would see
very different alignments, which would also change as the book was
leafed through and the different sides shifted in alignment.  As I think
has been mentioned many times, the book in florida was laid out weirdly.
Normally, all the options are on one side of the paper, sometimes with
extra space if the text describing the options is big (as for a
proposal).  That means even if there is an alignment problem, there is a
consistent and simple pattern to how the holes line up.  In this case,
there would have been a more complex non-regular pattern going on.

The 2nd is the stylus itself.  In Ypsilanti, I was actually faced with
two pointed objects.  There was a pencil stub secured by an unbroken
ball chain to the booth.  There was also a stylus, attached to a
*broken* ball chain, just sitting loose.  I almost tried voting with the
pencil first although I quickly realized that the relatively fat pencil
point was *not* going to go through the hole & punch out a vote very
effectively.  I can *easily* imagine that stylus getting lost (it was
more than half-way there already!) and the next voter would have been
confronted with one bad choice.  In the web image I saw of the form in
the machine, it appeared to me there were pen or pencil marks in the
stylus holes, suggesting a number of people either made the wrong choice
of pointed stick, or in fact had no right choice.

The final problem is a design problem: once you've voted all your
choices, you *can* take out your ballot, read the punched out holes, and
compare it to the numbered choices in the voting forms.  You *can* also
check to see that all the bits of chaff got punched cleanly out of the
holes.  Neither of these is especially *OBVIOUS* however, and it mainly
occured to me because I've seen enough punched card equipment to know a
card when I see one.  I bet lots of people think the voting machine
itself actually records the vote, and the punched card is just for
verification purposes.  I certainly didn't bother to check *my* votes to
see if the numbered circles corresponded with the book, although I was
smart enough to hold the card up to the light and check (very cursorily
I might add) that there weren't any loose bits of chaff that hadn't come
out of the holes right.

I think it all fits to a pattern: the printed material worked *against*
the machine's design, in a way that was probably not obvious to *anyone*
until it was far too late to do anything about it.  Probably some of the
printed forms were misaligned and made it all worse.  I bet some or all
of those machines did not have the pointed metal stylus they were
supposed to have, and people were stuck using pens or pencils.  People
with completed cards did not stop to check the card to be sure all the
chaff was gone, and exactly only the choices they intended to punch out
were punched out.  The election officials were probably rushed, didn't
have the intelligence to realize the problem, and were evidently stupid
and pig-headed enough to bully the few who were brave enough to confess
they had a problem (such as the woman I mentioned whose "spoilt" ballot
was run through the counting machine in front of her very eyes).  The
double punched ballots would fit with people not being sure they voted
(and not realizing how the machine worked) and trying to be *sure* they
voted for the right candidate.  And *all* of this would be *far* less of
a problem for Bush than Gore, because Bush had that top hole (*Much*
less ambiguous), and people voting for Gore would have been doing so as
their *first* vote, before they became familiar with the ballot
machine's evils.

It may be as Larry says, that the Law won't care about such a mechanical
pattern of stupidity, or perhaps they would only care if it could be
proven to be an act of malice and not mere stupidity (and I do believe
it's at least 95% stupidity.)  If so, I can kind of understand it, but I
would still be pretty disappointed in the Law for doing so.  Frankly,
though, if I were Bush, I'd be insisting on that voting being done over,
and done right, because I would not want to be known as a cheat with so
little honor and integrity, it took a mechanical stupidity to get me
elected.  Then again, perhaps that's just not the FratBoy mentality.

response 99 of 409:

Nov 10 09:12 UTC 2000

I agree, the process is important, and the courts probably are the right
place in this case.  There are two other bodies that clearly have an
ability to muck around with the voting process (not just an ability, a
*duty*) - and they are the state legislature, and whatever executive
organ they create or delegate to the task.  The legislature works before
to set the rules, the executive body works during to implement the
rules, and the courts work afterwards to fix problems with the rules.

The courts have almost certainly got *some* sort of common law basis for
deciding when and how to intervene in elections, and I suspect they have
methods to deal with malicious tampering with the election process (in
which case I assume they can do fairly drastic things), and cases where
random bad luck destroys part of the election process (in which case I
gather they like to ignore the damage, on the theory that it hurts both
candidates equally).  It will be interesting to see how they act in a
case where random bad luck hurts one candidate more than the other,
*AND* the difference in error is a material factor in determining who
wins.