Fitrakis responds to Manjoo's Salon article:

Mods, I have been given permission to post this entire piece by Bob Fitrakis:

Salon.com gets it all wrong
by Bob Fitrakis

In Farhad Manjoo’s “Was the 2004 Election Stolen? No” he claims Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s article in Rolling Stone contains “numerous errors of interpretation and his deliberate omission of key bits of data.” As an Election Protection legal observer in Columbus and one of the four attorneys who challenged the Ohio election results, I was struck by Manjoo’s own numerous errors of fact and deliberate omissions of widely-known studies and data.

In his first claim that the Ellen Connally anomaly, where an under-funded retired municipal judge from Cleveland ran ahead of Kerry in rural southwestern counties fails to indicate vote-shifting from Kerry to Bush, Manjoo deliberately omits several well-known facts. The obvious fact on record is that Democratic nominee Al Gore pulled his campaign out of the state six weeks prior to the 2000 election while Kerry and his 527 organization supporters spent the largest amount of money in Ohio history. So to compare the non-Gore campaign in 2000 to the massive Democratic effort in 2004 seems disingenuous. Moreover, Manjoo conveniently ignores the fact that sample ballots were everywhere in the state of Ohio and voters in these rural counties were repeatedly mailed and handed both party’s sample ballots. There were large and active campaigns in the key counties in question – Butler, Clermont, and Warren – passing out Republican and Democratic sample ballots. This is a major omission. Also, Manjoo might actually want to do some research on the amount of money Eric Fingerhut spent vs. John Kerry. Fingerhut’s major effort was walking across the state of Ohio because he didn’t have any funds. Hardly Kerry’s problem.

By the way, it is easy to shift votes on punchcard machines due to the ballot rotation law in Ohio. For instance, the hole to punch for Kerry would be “4” in one precinct and the hole to punch for Bush would be “4” in the next precinct. Public records reveal that in key southwest Ohio counties, ballots were counted at the county level, not the precinct level, to save money on counting machines. Thus, all one has to do is shift Kerry cards to a Bush tabulating machine to get a shift. There was more than enough time to do this, when votes came in during the wee hours of the morning. In fact, when we finally got to look at the ballots from four precincts in Warren County, we were surprised to discover that two the pink “header” cards used to separate precinct ballots had holes punched for Bush.

It appears Manjoo knows very little about Ohio election law. As a licensed attorney in the state and involved in the practice of election law, I’m stunned by the obvious errors that Manjoo makes. The purges in
Ohio were, in fact, deliberate, and they occurred in Democratic strongholds. Cuyahoga County records indicate 24.93% of all voters in Cleveland were purged between the 2000 and 2004 election. Census data indicates that most of the people who move in urban areas move within the county, which would make them still eligible to vote under Ohio law, and not be purged. What Manjoo leaves out is the standard practice by counties, which would have moved these individuals to “inactive” status before purging them. Additionally, numerous surveys as well as reports by the Toledo Blade and other newspapers reveal that many of these people had voted in local elections or had contacted their county board of elections, which under voting directives indicates activity. This activity would prevent them from being purged.

Yes, there was the deliberate purging in the Democratic strongholds indeed. The Toledo Blade reports 28,000 voters purged from the Democratic stronghold of Toledo in late August 2004. Perhaps Manjoo should make it a practice to do a Lexus Nexus search prior to attacking people for omitting data. The key here is that it is standard for counties to purge in odd-number years, 2001, 2003, etc. Manjoo also ignores the fact that 95.12% of all the provisional voters in Hamilton County came from the Democratic city of Cincinnati, where only 32% of the county’s voters resided. Less than 5% of the provisional ballots were handed out in the lily-white suburbs. Perhaps Manjoo has a hard time imagining a man of Karl Rove’s high standards targeting black and poor voters.

Manjoo’s claim that the missing voting machines did not impact the African American communities is bizarre and laughable. As an election observer who witnessed lines at 9 inner-city African American precincts, I counted an average of 80 voters leaving per hour without voting in precinct after precinct. I have my logs from that day, if Manjoo would care to see them. I find Manjoo’s comments both preposterous and possibly racist. The reality is, Franklin County needed 5000 machines. They went into the election with 2886, but they only put out 2741 on Election Day. I have in my possession a document that shows 125 machines that had been previously allocated, but were blackout out and held back on Election Day – all 125 from the Democratic stronghold of Columbus. Forty-two percent of the African American wards had machines held back at the last second. This constitutes 74% of all the majority African American wards in Franklin County. Perhaps if Manjoo had actually called and asked for the documents, he may have had a better perspective. Mark Crispin Miller, Rolling Stone and Bobby Kennedy all verified their facts before they wrote their pieces. Election Protection volunteers, attorneys and eyewitnesses have yet to hear from Mr. Manjoo. Perhaps this is a new style of investigative reporting. As an award-winning investigative reporter, I’m also quite interested in how salon.com fact checks their writers.

While Manjoo’s errors are legion and will clearly pass into infamy, one of his most absurd is pretending that Bill Anthony, the Franklin County Board of Elections Chair, had anything to do with the actual allocation of the machines. The allocation of voting machines was drawn up by Matt Damschroder, the Director of the Franklin County Board of Elections. Manjoo actually, in a major error, refers to Damschroder, as the Chair of the Election Board. Manjoo incorrectly cites both Anthony and Damschroder as chairs of the Franklin County Board of Elections. Under Ohio law, there’s only one Chair and Damschroder has never been chair. I’m surprised that Manjoo would make an error of this magnitude. Anthony is the Chair. The Board he chairs deals with general policy matters. Damschroder is the Director who deals with the nuts and bolts of Election Day activity. For example, it was Damschroder who admitted going back to 1998 and purging 3500 felons in Franklin County at Blackwell’s request. In a given year, Damschroder told WVKO he only purges between 200-300 felons. In 2004, Damschroder admitted that he went back and purged people indicted, but not convicted of a felony. By the way, Damschroder is also the former Chair of the Franklin County Republican Pary. It is Damschroder who admitted that when 356 people showed up to vote at the right polling site, the vast majority from the inner city, he refused to have their votes counted because his election workers gave them a provisional ballot in error. This is listed in his official voting log as “Voted on Paper, Should Have Voted on Machine.”

In conclusion, it appears that Manjoo, in his zest to be the great “de-bunker” of grassroots activists and progressive writers, simply creates his facts as needed. No surprise that he thinks Bush won. After all, he seems to adopt the same intelligence-gathering methods Bush used in Iraq which are favored by Fox News. His approach reminds me of that famous quote from Ronald Reagan "Facts are stupid things".

facts and science.

Thanks so much, mod mom!

Manjoo.

it to several ER list servs.

Thanks!

at least not yet.

Be sure to bookmark http://www.freepress.org , lots of interesting stuff posted there by Fitrakis and Arnebeck (that's org, not com--com takes you to Detroit Free Press).

:bounce:

Thanks for exposing another smarmy Ohio election "expert" who deliberately ignores the most compelling evidence of election fraud and (I reckon) who's never set foot in Ohio.

until 2 months ago, I can tell you, without a doubt, the chimp stole the election.

In Miami County, Ohio, during the late Fifties and the Sixties. Even when I was but a small child lo these MANY years ago, there was NEVER a 98.55% voter turnout!

:eyes:

Even if Manjoo were right/correct, he'd still be way wrong <http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2661019>

Manjoo can not prove that Bush won. Period. All he can do is cite the totals and in various ways demand belief in them. The electronic total (most of the US) can not be duplicated, reproduced, or verified. There were never witnesses to most of the vote counting in 2004, the ballots - they're invisible electrons for touch screens, and they whiz by too fast with opscans and the recounts in Ohio especially were non-meaningful to say the least.

Look Manjoo, to simplify only slightly, if the state requires election proof by a preponderance of the evidence, that means that there's more evidence of irregularity (say 51%) than there is evidence the other way (49%). But this does not mean that 49 out of 100 equally weighted pieces of evidence don't point the other way. There are so many fallacies involved in responding with Manjoo's "plausible explanations" of the asserted evidence of fraud, that it's neither fun, nor funny.

I've assisted my firm a few years ago in a death penalty case, where we saved our client's life, even though (you might laugh) we really hoped she'd be not guilty because it was undisputed she killed no one, it was a claim of a contract killing with weak evidence. The jury thought otherwise, so that must now be accepted as the truth. Let's assume the case was weak as we know but hoped it was not. The moral of the story is: THERE IS ALWAYS SIGNIFICANT EVIDENCE FOR THE OTHER SIDE. No lawyer is left speechless and without argument. Thus, the existence of a long article by Manjoo is meaningless in its claimed 'rebuttal' of various points, even if they were all nominally correct points.

It's the overall weight of the evidence that counts.

In many conspiracy and other similar cases the plaintiff looks to build a "totality of the evidence" case while the defendant points to individual facts and states that there's NOTHING about that one fact that proves anything. ANd that's usually true, what the defense says. Then they lose in the end when the jury, with a long attention span, focuses on EVERYTHING, not just what fits magazines and blogs.

To prove a stolen election, you look at the mass and totality of many facts. The fact that there are numerous facts that seem to point the other way or claims of misquotes or what have you - is relevant but not very powerful at all. In the end, after days of testimony the plaintiff or prosecutor shows quite convincingly that the evidence is only consistent with the crime or wrong charged.

But, in shorter time frames like a Salon article vs a Rolling Stone article, a deceptive impression can be created. To be most fair to both sides, a multi-day trial to put on evidence should be afforded.

LIke citizen jurors, if you haven't done the research yourself you should keep your mind open to both possibilities until the very end of the evidence and argument. So, Manjoo is not being fair by not acknowledging that he's not seen the entire case, he even admits that certain types of evidence should have been substituted in Rolling Stone: there's more "out there" in terms of evidence. The reverse is not true: The "defense" provided by Manjoo does not require the long space and time that the plaintiff's case does, so we are more justified in judging Manjoo's case at this time. Were he to fall down on a couple of points, we could conclude the preponderance tipped in favor of a stolen election, if the weight was otherwise equal.

I've a fraud trial to litigate today and this week, so I may miss some of this later discussion. But I wonder if Manjoo is willing to spend a good part of his life and fortune investigating this like movement activists and attorneys, and not just spending others' Honor. Because quite a few lawyers have looked at this, especially Fitrakis, over countless hours, and he's not disclosed and can not disclose the entire case, which is necessarily large, fo reasons of time, privilege and so forth.

Perhaps Manjoo would like to hire a law firm and do a mock trial. If he is willing to drop several hundred thousand to start, we will know he is more serious.

But to be fair to the plaintiff side in an election irregularity or fraud case, one must understand that each and every fact will be contested or capable of a different meaning according to the defense. But that DOES NOT MEAN there is no case.

But, as explained in the link above, the election protection movement is right even if it's "wrong" (though that can not be proved short of a weeks long trial) because of the secret vote counting revolution in our democracy placing vote counting outside the viewing and checks and balancing of the people. Though he has a right to speak, if Manjoo's article is interpreted as putting a damper on inquiry into these massive and anti-democratic changes, Manjoo will have affected the history of his country in an extraordinarily negative way. I would urge him to be much more measured in his criticism, and to acknowledge what he may not know. Not all will, or can be, disclosed to you, Mr Manjoo.

I really appreciate it, and it will help me talk to others about this.

Manjoo's article. He seemed to take Manjoo's word over RFK's.

If anyone is registered for comments over there...it might be good to post.

http://haloscan.com/tb/digby/114935027329276958

and I'm glad he was nailed for it.

The rest of the rebuttal was surprisingly weak, especially about the "Ellen Connally effect." Fitrakis neglected to mention the exit poll debate at all because Manjoo was basically correct. I don't particularly care about minor inaccuracies -- apparently both Kennedy and Manjoo got some things wrong.

The registration purges should be the focus, plus anyone involved with the evoting machines that decides to squeal.

(1) Did 308,000 cancelled Ohio voter registrations put Bush back in the White House?
by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
February 28, 2006

<snip>

It turns out, we missed more than a few of the dirty tricks Karl Rove, Ken Blackwell and their GOP used to get themselves four more years. In an election won with death by a thousand cuts, some that are still hidden go very deep. Over the next few weeks we will list them as they are verified.

One of them has just surfaced to the staggering tune of 175,000 purged voters in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), the traditional stronghold of the Ohio Democratic Party. An additional 10,000 that registered to vote there for the 2004 election were lost due to "clerical error."

As we reported more than a year ago, some 133,000 voters were purged from the registration rolls in Hamilton County (Cincinnati) and Lucas County (Toledo) between 2000 and 2004. The 105,000 from Cincinnati and 28,000 from Toledo exceeded Bush's official alleged margin of victory---just under 119,000 votes out of some 5.6 million the Republican Secretary of State. J. Kenneth Blackwell, deemed worth counting.

<snip>
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2006/1832



(2) Franklin County (Dem Stronghold-Columbus):

“Finally on Voter Registration Mr. Chairman, as the Committee is well aware, there were innumerable political parties and 537’s spending tens of millions of dollars on voter registration drives. In Franklin County alone, we processed more than a quarter of a million voter registration forms between January 1, 2004 and the close of registration in early October. This was twice the registration activity as compared to the same period in 2000.”

Bill Anthony testimony on March 21 2005
http://cha.house.gov/hearings/Testimony.aspx?TID=477

Mr Anthony’s testimony stated that in Franklin County alone, more than a quarter million voter registrations forms were processed between Jan. 1 2004 and the close of registration in early October. Yet when the registered voter numbers are compared from 2003 to 2004, we see a change of 120,869.

google: Ohio voter registration historical data
http://elections.ssrc.org/data/voterreg/

Ohio Election Data - Registered Voters before Certification
The Feminist Majority Foundation
Detailed chart of annual changes in Ohio voter registration numbers from 2000 to 2004. The data demonstrates a large voter roll purging in 2002 and relatively high numbers of new registrants from 2002-2004.
voters in 2004 = 845,720
voters in 2003 = 724,851
# Changed
from 03-04 = 120,869

http://www.feminist.org/pdfs/OH_election_precert.pdf


(3) Lucas County (Dem Stronghold-Toledo)

-October 4, 2004 was filing deadline for new voter registrations. At that point there were approximately 20,000 unprocessed voter registration applications with less than a month before the election. One mail tray containing 4,500-7,000 (estimates vary) unprocessed “Project Voter” registrations were discovered on or about October 18,2004.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation pg 10

***Of interest here is information obtained from the SOS website entitled ElectionsVoter/results 2003 and 2004 which show the # of registered voters number change from ‘03-’04 was 11,947 in Lucas County: reg voters 2003 in Lucas=288,190 ; registered voter in 2004=300,137.

http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/elections/lucas.htm

I hope the registration issue has legs. That is where it is easiest to prove malfeasance, and that is where the Manjoo article had the most serious flaws. The fact that he tried to present spoiled ballot issue as affecting both candidates equally (which is clearly not true) suggests that Manjoo wrote the article in bad faith.

I'm sometimes suspected of being a troll by dismissing exit polls and other arguments which seems to me inconclusive. What I'm worried about is a Dan Rather situation in which the Ohio issue gains visibility, is presented as proof that the election was stolen based on a mixture of good and bad arguments. What I think will happen in that situation is that the bad arguments will be shot down and used to discredit the entire process. And if that happens, the issue will be politically dead, just as Bush's National Guard service is today.

It's important to go ahead only with good arguments and only make claims that can be substantiated.

Manjoo wrote the article in bad faith, but otherwise I agree with you.

I do think it is important to go ahead only with good arguments, which is why I was so disappointed that Kennedy led with the exit polls, and with bad sources at that.

Dan Rather haunts me too.

but everything I've seen about the purged registrations suggested they were concentrated in heavily Democratic areas. Is there a legitimate source Majoo could have been depending on showing that both parties were equally affected? That's where I was wondering how he could claimed that in good faith.

Hi, ribofunk. Good to hear from you again (maybe you've been around, but I've missed you).

If we're talking about provisional ballots not counted, then the DNC's provisional ballot study (only in Cuya) suggests that maybe 3/5 of uncounted PB were Kerry votes. (The proportion in Cuya would be greater because there are more Kerry voters to begin with -- but if we assume that we can extrapolate from the county to the state, which after all is what RFK did, then that part should balance out, and we are left mostly with the disparity in proportions of ballots counted.) That's a substantial disparity, but it yields a much smaller net than if we assumed that, say, 80% of these voters were Kerry voters.

If we're talking about people who left long lines, we're basically stuck with the cryptic Feldman/brilliant corners estimate that 2 to 3% (count me among the many who can't figure out why they seem to use both figures) of potential voters did not vote because of long lines, and those "divided evenly" between Kerry and Bush voters. I take that to mean that they got something like 30 such people out of 1200 interviews, and indeed that small sample divided evenly. Based on the sample size and what we know about Franklin County, I don't believe that estimate; I think we can fairly guess that more people who left lines were Kerry voters. But the survey result is at least a caution that again, an "overwhelming" skew in these numbers isn't a slam dunk.

Also, they seem to have found exactly one respondent who reported that s/he wasn't given a ballot at all because of a registration challenge, leading to the whimsical text: "A smaller group of potential voters (0.08 percent) were not given ballots at all due to registration challenges. These approximately 4,798 voters favored Kerry, according to the poll (extreme sample size caution)." (PDF p. 20 of the DNC full report) I'm inclined to guess that the actual number was higher than 4,798, especially since people likely to be turned away may also be harder to reach by phone. But how much higher, and how many net votes?

DNC report at http://a9.g.akamai.net/7/9/8082/v001/www.democrats.org/pdfs/ohvrireport/fullreport.pdf

Incidentally, if we are speculating about the impact of the late-August purge in Lucas County, the Toledo Blade article reports that 405 uncounted provisional ballots were from people who were purged in August (some 28,000 in all). http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050109/NEWS09/501090334/-1/NEWS

So you can see why I find it hard to come up with big totals that I feel confident about. I would rather stand on solid principle than speculative inference.

EDIT to add links

I mean switched in the machines.

I have seen no persuasive evidence of any votes being switched in the machines. Some votes were switched in Cuya as a result of caterpillar crawl, for sure, and the same could have happened in other counties. I could be blanking out other entire categories of vote miscount -- I'm working on other stuff right now.

... is that the only thing that can show the machines switched votes, setting aside the fact that the machines CAN, is the raw exit-poll data. Data that has been released, evidently, in Ohio. AFAIK, Ohio data is the only state where such data has been released.

Here is a link to the study done with that data:

http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/exit-polls/Ohio2004-US-future.pdf

The study claims that the exit-poll data shows machine miscounts are the only reasonable explanation for the discrepancies.

As has been pointed out on DU -- not by me -- at one of the two precincts with the largest WPE, 31 voters were interviewed out of over 1700 voters (four precincts at the same polling place). The exit poll result was 68% Kerry support, in a precinct that Bush carried about two-to-one in 2000. I don't think anyone could persuade an impartial jury that "machine miscounts are the only reasonable explanation."

That is just one precinct of many. As noted, that precinct was one that was squished in with 3 others, and probably one of those where the ballots at one precinct had hole #3 a Kerry vote and in the other precint hole #3 was a bush vote? A situation that lead to ballots being miscounted as detailed by Phillips?

It is amazing that anyone uses an outlier to try and explain the whole story. That outlier precinct was screwed up three ways to Sunday. What about the other thirty+ precincts? The study of those, as a whole, is where the idea of machine miscounts rises.

a single example is sufficient to disprove an inference. I agree with you that that outlier precinct is screwed up three ways to Sunday, but if actually read that smoking-gun paper, it's one of their strongest pieces of "Virtually Irrefutable Evidence of Vote Miscount." (Then there's another precinct where the reported completion rate seems to have been around 15%. Yeah, I'm sure that was an unbiased random sample.)

I don't think the idea of machine miscounts rises from the exit polls, but even if it does, other evidence would be a heck of a lot better.

...taken as a whole, the evidence leads to the conclusion that the election was stolen. On the other hand, the evidence does NOT lead to the conclusion the election was clean.

Cherry picking evidence and using that to claim the election was therefore clean or whatever it is you are trying to do, is patently unfair, and unscientific.

Clearly, I am biased. I admit it. But given that I have no personal interest in the outcome - save that it is my democratic republic's health that is of concern - I am on the right side of this issue, and stand with Kathy Dopp.

Well, assuming that you read my posts, you ought to know by now. It certainly isn't claiming that the election was clean. It is, inter alia, distinguishing between good evidence, bad evidence, and ugly evidence.

Congratulations on standing on the right side. Are we done?

No, we are not done. Vigilance, son, vigilance.

Your work, such as it is, makes sense to me in only one regard: that it shows you are against a fair and open examination of the process. Your professional alliances speak volumes.

1,597 Provisional Ballots from Franklin Co categorized as Status 200-”Not Registered”, yet voters were registered

http://my.core.com/~rhh/index.htm

Of these 1597 ballots, 203 are matched in this study as registered before the deadline; 1255 as having registered after the deadline (1105 of them on 11/17 through 11/19) ; and 139 as not registered.

It seems likely that those are processing dates, and that many or most of these people attempted to register on time or almost on time. We would need to know more. How many of these were received after the deadline (and what exactly does Ohio law say about applications received after the deadline)? How many were received before the deadline and sat in cardboard boxes, or whatever? People who register to vote should be able to vote and have their votes counted.

As you know, it isn't very meaningful to refer to Franklin County as "1 out of 88" counties because it is one of the largest counties, contributing 9-10% of the 2004 vote. Statewide, over 123,000 provisional ballots were counted, and a bit over 35,000 weren't. I'd say that if we extrapolate from the Cuyahoga provisional ballot study and squint, maybe 3/4 of those were Kerry votes, which nets Kerry 17K or 18K votes.

-October 4, 2004 was filing deadline for new voter registrations. At that point there were approximately 20,000 unprocessed voter registration applications with less than a month before the election. One mail tray containing 4,500-7,000 (estimates vary) unprocessed “Project Voter” registrations were discovered on or about October 18,2004.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation pg 10

***Of interest here is information obtained from the SOS website entitled ElectionsVoter/results 2003 and 2004 which show the # of registered voters number change from ‘03-’04 was 11,947 in Lucas County: reg voters 2003 in Lucas=288,190 ; registered voter in 2004=300,137.

http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/elections...

(OH, BTW, JFK Jr included this telling investigation in this Rolling Stone article)


Blackwell only investigated 1 county-Lucas. (Why Lucas? Perhaps he knew the Noe Scandal was about to explode and he wanted to look like he was above the corruption. Bernadette Noe was Chair of the Lucas County BOE) Anyway, there were problems in getting the registrations processed-wasn't there?

While there wasn't an investigation on Franklin Co., we do have this sworn testimony:

“Finally on Voter Registration Mr. Chairman, as the Committee is well
aware, there were innumerable political parties and 537’s spending
tens of millions of dollars on voter registration drives. In Franklin
County alone, we processed more than a quarter of a million voter
registration forms between January 1, 2004 and the close of
registration in early October. This was twice the registration
activity as compared to the same period in 2000.”

Bill Anthony testimony on March 21 2005
http://cha.house.gov/hearings/Testimony.aspx?TID=477

*Mr Anthony’s testimony stated that in Franklin County alone, more
than a quarter million voter registrations forms were processed
between Jan. 1 2004 and the close of registration in early October.
Yet when the registered voter numbers are compared from 2003 to 2004,
we see a change of 120,869.*

google: Ohio voter registration historical data
http://elections.ssrc.org/data/voterreg/

*/Ohio Election Data - Registered Voters before Certification/*
/The Feminist Majority Foundation/
/Detailed chart of annual changes in Ohio voter registration numbers
from 2000 to 2004. The data demonstrates a large voter roll purging in
2002 and relatively high numbers of new registrants from 2002-2004./
/voters in 2004 = /845,720
/voters in 2003 =/ 724,851
*# Changed *
*from 03-04 = 120,869*

http://www.feminist.org/pdfs/OH_election_precert.pdf

What happened to all those registrations that were concentrated in Franklin-a high Dem % county?

If you think that over 100,000 voters in Franklin County alone were turned away at the polls because of registration challenges, then there should be other evidence. Do you have any?

I'm not at all convinced that it happened, but that isn't the point. The point is that quoting this testimony over and over again isn't getting us anywhere.

(EDIT to fix grammar)

full investigation.

I believe it was a combination of purges, failure to process and possible malfeasance (remember the issue of the Blackwell paper weight directive as one example).

We (I'm a board member of two parties who participated in the legal action)in Ohio attempted to prevent the seating of the Ohio electorate and suggested a re-vote due to the huge number of problems.

Why continue to bring up this information? (1) Because virtually nothing has been done to prevent it's re-occurrence in the future and in fact the OH GOP dominated legislature have passed legilation (HB 3) that will prevent more voters, especially low income, elderly and college students) from voting and will cause bottlenecks (read: more long lines) in precincts where they vote.

and...

(2) because I believe a travesty of justice occurred. I believe I was a witness to one of the largest crimes (because of the damage it caused) in history. I promised voters in the low income, near east, neighborhoods of Columbus, where I canvassed that every vote would be counted, and I intend to do what I can to make sure they are.

I have never used exit polls discrepancies (although I have heard from some very bright people educated in their use that they are very relevant) to make my case. I have always felt that the civil rights abuses that I personally witnessed were sufficient to make the case. It must be easy to sit at your high fallutin campus and dismiss what we in Ohio witnessed first hand. Come to Columbus and talk to people on the street in the precincts where it transpired as I have and you will hear overwhelming support that the election was not only dirty but stolen.

BTW. Did you ever consider that many inner city residents only use cell phones or have no phones thus could not be accurately represented in a poll?

I think there is a lot of nonsense in RFK's paper, and I am angry about that. But we need to learn as much as we can about how/why registrations weren't processed, and how to make it better in the future. If some money will help, let me know, and I will send it.

I did not dismiss what you witnessed. Please judge me on what I write, and if you see errors, by all means correct them. I have not attacked you, and you do not need to attack me.

Yes, many people have considered that people who use only cell phones or have no phones aren't represented in polls. There are lots of folks who work on these polls full-time, and they can probably tell you a lot more about the problems with their methods than you think you know. They have specific reasons for believing that the phone issue didn't much affect the estimates. (Scott Keeter has an article on the cell phone part of this in, if I remember rightly, the most recent Public Opinion Quarterly. The no-phone group is much smaller.)

Ten Thousand Voter Registration Documents May Have Been Shredded in Hocking County, Ohio
July 13, 2005

Members of the Progressive Ohio Backbone Campaign traveled to Hocking County on Monday morning, July 11, and filed an affidavit of fact alleging criminal conduct with the Hocking County Sheriff’s Department against the county’s Board of Elections (BOE) Director Lisa Schwartze.

Schwartze had previously admitted at the July 5 BOE meeting that she had used the office to promote a Republican Party fund-raiser last fall. The affidavit of fact alleging criminal conduct filed against Schwartze, however, does not to pertain to Schwartze’s use of the BOE office for partisan political fund-raising. Rather, the affidavit filed pertains to her alleged illegal shredding of election documents, the Free Press has learned.

Sherole Eaton, the fired Hocking County BOE deputy director and Congressional whistleblower, who swore an affidavit against a Triad company technician for allegedly offering a cheat sheet and replacing the county’s central voting tabulator hard drive during last year’s presidential recount, says that Schwartze may have destroyed up to “ten thousand documents.”

“I told her that she couldn’t shred and delete the changes of addresses that were coming in from registered voters during the election year, but she wouldn’t listen to me,” Eaton explained, “In order for Lisa to destroy those documents, she’s got to go to the Board of Elections, state officials, and then ask the Ohio Historical Society if they want them. And even then, she can only destroy them according to a public records retention schedule that requires they are kept for four years.”

<snip>

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2005/1164

I don't what possessed me to write "spoiled ballots" -- the subject was purged registrations.

On the long lines, Manjoo makes a case with at least some logic to it: counties and municipalities did not respond to the surge in registrations and were not prepared and the levers were just as much in Democratic hands as Republican. Don't know whether it's true, but it's at least a reasonable story line.

OOH, his claim that both parties were affected equally is really puzzling, since the lines were concentrated in large urban precincts with punch-card machines. It would seem odd to have a 50-50 split in those areas.

although he is an excellent fellow to be confused with, thanks. ;)

Again, my take on the claim that both parties were affected equally: Manjoo is drawing on the DNC voter experience survey, which is important but clearly doesn't tell the whole story. In Franklin, long lines clearly disproportionately clobbered Kerry voters. (One part of that story that deserves a closer look is Fitrakis's document that purports to show something like 125? machines that were scheduled to be delivered to city precincts, but weren't.) The Franklin voters who actually didn't vote due to long lines apparently are a small enough proportion of the total state vote that they could easily wash out in a small statewide survey, and it appears that they did. Rather few respondents in that survey admitted to not having voted because of long lines, and those who did, apparently, were evenly divided. The survey has little power, and I agree with you: it is hard to believe that the statewide split was really 50-50.

One can't be sure from the write-up of the survey, but the long lines seem much worse in Franklin than in most other places. Benjamin Highton's article in PS: Political Science and Politics estimated about 22,000 lost votes with a net Kerry loss a bit under 6,000 (i.e., the split would be on the order of 14K Kerry to 8K Bush). ("Long Lines, Voting Machine Availability, and Turnout: The Case of Franklin County, Ohio in the 2004 Presidential Election" -- you can google a cached version, at least.) I think Mebane may have a higher estimate. I don't know what Febble thinks. I don't even know what I think, although I don't have any immediate basis for assuming that the figure is much larger. That's just in Franklin. If Franklin was the most extreme case (at least on a population-weighted basis) -- which I don't claim to know, although it seems plausible -- and if the split of lost votes there was something like 62%:38%, then I wouldn't be surprised if the statewide split were something shy of 60%:40%, indistinguishable from "divided evenly" given the survey's small sample size.

Have been completely brain-dead recently.

Thank you for the background -- that explains it pretty well. I understand how Manjoo can make his claims, although he's selecting the facts and interpretation most favorable to his point of view (which of course is not unusual). 62-38 sounds like a more reasonable split.

I also pretty much disregard polls taken well after the vote. The DNC attempt to uncover discouraged voters (if that was really the intent) was doomed from the outset. Many people will not be honest with an interviewer if it puts them in a bad light. It's the exit poll problem on steroids.

I now suspect that the Diebold machines were not a part, certainly not a major part, of the irregularities. This from the fact that exit poll discrepancies were smaller in electronic precincts than in punch card. Dieblod fraud might have been "held in reserve" as a last resort in case it was needed, but was never put into effect.

The purged ballots and discouraged voters certainly narrow the 118,000 gap a lot. Whether it surpasses it is still an open question. I just hope the issue stays alive and the best facts and arguments rise to the surface.

I know a thing or two about disrespect, and that was not it. Beyond a certain wholesome severity be gentle with yourself, or whatever that shtick from Desiderata is. ;)

Manjoo might have pushed the DNC survey a bit harder on this point, but he is accurately referencing the only attempt I know of to calculate a statewide estimate without a heavy thumb on the scales. (At least, as far as I know, the DNC survey was on the square regardless of its inadequacies.) As you say, the effort had inherent problems even if the sample had been much larger. BTW, just to be clear, I'm not endorsing 62-38 for the state; it's just one estimate for one county.

Let's make sure we keep the issue forward-looking, not that I'm averse to looking back as well. People shouldn't have to wait in line for hours to cast their ballots, period. (And so on.)

When I first looked at this, my estimate was that around 18,000 votes were lost, of which about two thirds would have been for Kerry, 40% for Bush, and the remainder for independents, making an 8000 dent in Bush's margin.

This was assuming that the turnout differential observed in precincts in which the supply of machines per active voter was below the median would have been the same as that in precincts above the median.

However, on further investigation, I found that turnout in 2000 figures appeared to have been used to allocate machines (or similar figures) which meant that it is not legitimate to extrapolate observed turnout figures from the adequately-supplied precincts to the potential turnout in the inadequately supplied precincts. So I think the 8000 is probably a generous maximum, although I am prepared to be persuaded otherwise.

What is absolutely clear is that Democratic precincts in Franklin county were systematically provided with fewer machines per active voter, although whether this was due to conspiracy, incompetence or bad luck is up to you to say. I'd put it somewhere between the first two, but I'm not in a position to judge.

My paper is still posted here:

http://uscountvotes.org/ucvAnalysis/OH/FranklinCountyReport_v2.pdf

despite the fact that the site host thinks I am an incompetent liar.

Sorry, too crazed to check myself, but you can't have meant 2/3 + 40% + the remainder. 30%, maybe?

30% for Bush. Can't seem to type from my own typescript. OK, maybe I am incompetent.

www.fraudbusterbob.org

Please post this link:

Salon.com gets it all wrong
by Bob Fitrakis

In Farhad Manjoo’s “Was the 2004 Election Stolen? No” he claims Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s article in Rolling Stone contains “numerous errors of interpretation and his deliberate omission of key bits of data.” As an Election Protection legal observer in Columbus and one of the four attorneys who challenged the Ohio election results, I was struck by Manjoo’s own numerous errors of fact and deliberate omissions of widely-known studies and data.

In his first claim that the Ellen Connally anomaly, where an under-funded retired municipal judge from Cleveland ran ahead of Kerry in rural southwestern counties fails to indicate vote-shifting from Kerry to Bush, Manjoo deliberately omits several well-known facts. The obvious fact on record is that Democratic nominee Al Gore pulled his campaign out of the state six weeks prior to the 2000 election while Kerry and his 527 organization supporters spent the largest amount of money in Ohio history. So to compare the non-Gore campaign in 2000 to the massive Democratic effort in 2004 seems disingenuous. Moreover, Manjoo conveniently ignores the fact that sample ballots were everywhere in the state of Ohio and voters in these rural counties were repeatedly mailed and handed both party’s sample ballots. There were large and active campaigns in the key counties in question – Butler, Clermont, and Warren – passing out Republican and Democratic sample ballots. This is a major omission. Also, Manjoo might actually want to do some research on the amount of money Eric Fingerhut spent vs. John Kerry. Fingerhut’s major effort was walking across the state of Ohio because he didn’t have any funds. Hardly Kerry’s problem.

By the way, it is easy to shift votes on punchcard machines due to the ballot rotation law in Ohio. For instance, the hole to punch for Kerry would be “4” in one precinct and the hole to punch for Bush would be “4” in the next precinct. Public records reveal that in key southwest Ohio counties, ballots were counted at the county level, not the precinct level, to save money on counting machines. Thus, all one has to do is shift Kerry cards to a Bush tabulating machine to get a shift. There was more than enough time to do this, when votes came in during the wee hours of the morning. In fact, when we finally got to look at the ballots from four precincts in Warren County, we were surprised to discover that two the pink “header” cards used to separate precinct ballots had holes punched for Bush.

It appears Manjoo knows very little about Ohio election law. As a licensed attorney in the state and involved in the practice of election law, I’m stunned by the obvious errors that Manjoo makes. The purges in
Ohio were, in fact, deliberate, and they occurred in Democratic strongholds. Cuyahoga County records indicate 24.93% of all voters in Cleveland were purged between the 2000 and 2004 election. Census data indicates that most of the people who move in urban areas move within the county, which would make them still eligible to vote under Ohio law, and not be purged. What Manjoo leaves out is the standard practice by counties, which would have moved these individuals to “inactive” status before purging them. Additionally, numerous surveys as well as reports by the Toledo Blade and other newspapers reveal that many of these people had voted in local elections or had contacted their county board of elections, which under voting directives indicates activity. This activity would prevent them from being purged.

<snip more at link>

www.fraudbusterbob.org

Wondering if Manjoo will bother to follow up on his laughable attempt at journalism and respond in some way to this excoriation.

Salon.com owes us all an apology, it seems to me. Or else start printing up retractions/corrections for their next edition.

http://www.fraudbusterbob.com/blog/

Bob and Harvey emailed me this am and asked me to post it on DU.

it doesn't matter what the issue is -- their demographic target DEMANDS that they reach for the VAST CENTER no matter what.

Salon/Majoo first attacked the election truth movement way before there could have been any meaningful dialogue -- proving to me, that they were adopting the IMAGE of being HOLIER THAN THOU -- they were staking a claim to the highest peak of righteousness, while everyone else was a CONSPIRACY THEORIST.

it's not 'journalism.' it's sales.

BTW -- it's the same disease that the Nashville Scene had right before they formed the company that bought the Villiage Voice and LA Weekly.

link to DU discussion:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x431683

link to Freepress:

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2006/1996

He protests too much I think. I often wondered why they kept him on. I don't think he ever wrote anything I agreed with, and he has been "debunking the grassroots" for several years now. Not very well, though.

I found DU through Salon, and I'm grateful for that, but I've never trusted Manjoo, and found most of his articles suspect in their motivation.

lettersproblems@salon.com

...must be too hard for Manjoo, because as he adds up 1+1+1, he comes up with negative 1.

I think it would be best for Salon to pay dearly for a counter view of Manjoo's. The reputation of the site is at risk as long as they let his nonsense stand.

Manjoo cites the DNC report as saying that even the Dems say there is nothing that would change the Ohio results. That's correct. But what do you EXPECT the Dems to say, after they allowed the GOP to out-fox them throughout the election process?

It's worth noting what I wrote with Bob for the Free Press in June 2005 after the DNC report came out.

The link is: http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1335

The DNC report, curiously, has some good data that actually disproves that claim, but you have to look for it. Like many political reports (ie, the Edison-Mitofsky exit poll report from Januray 2005 that said more Dems talked to pollsters then Repubs), what is in their text is contradicted by their data. In the case of the DNC, they say 2-3 percent of OH voters were not accomodated on election day. That percentage is 120,000-180,000 people. As we all know, Bush's final margin was 118,775. And the DNC estimate is conservative.

The Dems, even in RFK's article, are getting off lightly. They failed their party and everyone who expected a free and fair vote. In our book that's coming out from The New Press this fall, we document how the GOP stole the election, don't let Dems off the hook and offer solutions. Stay tuned.

me that the DNC would not want to get to the bottom of what occurred and attempt to make sure it never occurs again. With HB 3 in place there is a new "poll tax" that will hit low income and elderly and college students hard. It will also cause bottlenecks in precincts where the IDs will be an issue(read more long lines). Fitrakis has called for Voter IDs to be issued by the BOEs, yet I don't understand why the Dem party has not fought for their base voters to receive IDs. It's as if they keep hoping the GOP will play fair. Ain't gonna happen, especially with Blackwell at the helm.

It is also worth noting that Kevin Dewine (brother of Mike) recently attempted to get the Reform Ohio Now plan for redistricting passed but the Dems didn't want anything to do with it. Why can't both parties support a fair plan? Why can't the Dems take the high road, especially since nothing is guaranteed?

It will be interesting on June 20th, when Greg Palast is in town.

:tinfoilhat:

concerned about the DISGRACEFUL state of electoral affairs, they could have fixed this problem long ago. They have not. It seems no one, save certain members of the Black Congressional Caucus, are interested in protecting the basic tenant of Democracy--one person, one counted, fair vote.

:kick:

:shrug:

Salon for several years. I stopped being a paying Premier member after Manjoo's piece in 2004 about the "non-theft" of the election. My research, my common sense and my intuition told me that 2004 was as dirty as 2000, maybe even more so. I not only question Manjoo's facts, I question his intentions.

Memo to Salon: You want me back as a paying member? Send Manjoo packing.

I still don't understand what happened, but it's clear that Manjoo isn't smoeone who has the facts.

Educate A Freeper - Flaunt Your Opinions!
http://brainbuttons.com/home.asp?stashid=13

on my blog at http://www.baiman.blogspot.com

Everyone, Please keep an eye on Dr. Fitrakis' blog. There is more to come I am sure and it is nothing less than great!

(check out the site-Fitrakis in tights:

The Republicans Stole It Blind
Posted by Bob Fitrakis on June 6th, 2006

RFK, Jr. wrote to my good friend Harvey Wasserman this quote from pollster Lou Harris: “’They stole the Democrats blind in the exurbs and rural counties. It’s obvious what they did – they stuffed the ballot box.’” Coming from a pollster with the credibility and experience of Lou Harris, this is an astonishingly powerful indictment.”

Farhad Manjoo, denialist for salon.com fails to note similar quotes from Harris that appear in Kennedy’s Rolling Stone article. The fact that a pollster of Harris’ stature would go on the record is precisely what’s new in the Kennedy article and of major significance.
As a Ph.D. in Political Science, I find the “reluctant responder” hypothesis by Warren Mitofsky implausible, as does pollster John Zogby. Basically, reluctant responders tended to be extreme third party candidate supporters, or voters for a major party candidate in an area dominated by the other major party. Mitofsky would have you believe Republican woman only became too shy to talk to pollsters only in the late afternoon and only in areas where people voted in a majority for Bush. This mythology fits into the Rovian spin that fundamental evangelical raced to the polls at the very last second to save W Bush. Local newspaper accounts and eyewitness observers reported no such surge.

The data from the Moss v. Bush election challenge in Ohio, the exit polls, the statistical analysis by Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips and the bizarre illegal behavior in Auglaize, Miami and Warren counties all point to voter theft in these counties.

<SNIP:Read the rest of this entry »

<www.fraudbusterbob.com >

that you have as yet responded to none of my comments on your Ohio paper, a version of which you presented at AAPOR, at a panel in which, as you know, I was the discussant. I have made these comments to you repeatedly, and have now assembled them into a review here:

http://www.geocities.com/lizzielid/TheGunIsSmoking_Review.pdf

Your paper, cited by Kennedy, contains, in my view, serious flaws. I am more than happy to read any response or rebuttal you may have to my criticisms, but to ignore them seems odd from one who writes:



In the absence of a response to my critique I must assume you simply "refuse to accept" what seem to me to be pretty egregious errors.

A new paper on the National Election Data Archive
http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/IncorrectElectionDataAnalysis-06.pdf

Shows that everything in your paper (that you mention above) has already been mathematically proven to be incorrect - sophisms (plausible but misleading or fallacious arguments).

Have you ever performed any mathematically valid exit poll analyses?

Well, the paper you cite might make its case better if it actually quoted correctly the statements it attempts to rebut.

If you check the sources given, you will find that the words attributed to me, to Lindeman, or to ESI do not appear. I do not feel I need respond to rebuttals of arguments I have not made, nor to mathematical proofs that inferences I have not drawn are invalid.

And yes, I have performed a great number of mathematically valid exit poll analyses.

(edited for clarity)

Here is a website devoted to arguing the case for geocentricity -- the belief that the earth is the fixed center of the univers ("fixed" as in "does not rotate") -- apparently maintained by Gerardus D. Buow, a Ph.D. astronomer. (You can see the good doctor on the page about the association.) Buow's extensive "geocentricity primer" is at http://www.geocentricity.com/geocentricity/primer.pdf. This paper presumably "shows" that modern cosmology is riddled with plausible but misleading or fallacious statements.

If folks have a sufficiently strong Will to Believe that Kathy Dopp has refuted the work of a past president of the American Statistical Association (Fritz Scheuren, a coauthor of the ESI study) as "sophisms," then mere force of argument is unlikely to shake them. It seems to me that if Scheuren is so clearly wrong, that someone could take the time to make the argument right here. If linking to an external paper is enough to make the case, then we should now all be geocentrists -- at least until someone links to a contrary paper.

Folks, you need to read the link.

What we must all understand is that the reason the exit-poll data has been withheld is that that data shows machine miscounts as a chief possibility of the exit-polls being skewed.

Now, who, you must ask, would not want the proof of machine fraud to come to the surface? Is it the vendors? Is it Rove? Is it the republican party? Yep, those are precisely the people who do NOT want the truth to rise. They are suppressing it at every turn.

Its big money and entrenched politicians who we are at war with in our quest for the Truth. Don't let them sway you. Don't let them into your head with their false analysis and hidden secrets.

Read the pdf at charlie's link and use the info found there to purge the crooks and their minions from your mind. Or, if you disagree and find yourself on Rove's side, come back and tell us why.

Another response that I just posted on Salon - I will also put it up at http://www.Baiman.blogspot.com.

In his June 7, 2006 reply to Kennedy’s rebuttal of his earlier critique Farhad Manjoo citing Mark Blumenthal, claims that:

a) The exit poll margins of error for Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, and Ohio were between 5% to 7%. This is preposterous. Rather than relying on Mark Blumenthal (an unreliable source for quantitative analysis), I urge Manjoo to download the National Election Pool a “Methods Statement” for the Edison Mitofsky (EM) exit polls (produced on Nov. 2 2006) at:

http://www.exit-poll.net/election-night/MethodsStatementNationalFinal.pdf

The second page of this statement sets 95% confidence intervals for these polls (for a “characteristic” i. e. Presidential candidate preference for which there is a close to even split) squarely at 3% for sample sizes of 951-2350 – the range of reported sample sizes for these states. However, as Blumenthal knows, the reported sample sizes (also in the methods statements) are about half of what they really are (see Mitofsky correspondence in Baiman June 5 Free Press AAPOR report). For these true doubled sample sizes of 2351-5250, NEP’s own estimated confidence interval falls to 2% - which matches my own (and I believe Freeman’s) estimates with a 30% cluster adjustment factor. As I have stated in my earlier response to Manjoo, this puts Ohio well outside the margin of sampling error with odds of less than 1,900 that Kerry’s reported result is true given the exit poll result. This is not “slight” evidence but rather highly statistically significant, especially one considered with the inexplicable pro-Bush exit poll discrepancies in the two other key battle ground states of Florida and Pennsylvania. As Freeman and I have stated, the odds that these “sampling errors” (in the same direction and of these magnitudes) would occur for these three states simultaneously in less than one in 182,000,000 (i.e virtually impossible - this number is based on doubled sample sizes). Moreover, when one looks at precinct level exit poll data , and not just aggregate state polls, the evidence in even more striking and inexplicable. A fact that Manjoo has not addressed at all.

The question that has to be asked is why are Manjoo (and Blumenthal) trying to dismiss the statistical significance of the exit poll discrepancies when even Mitofsky (in his January report) concedes that they were the largest on record and highly statistically significant?

b) Manjoo’s efforts to dismiss what he calls the “purported rural vote shift” is even more outlandish. As Kennedy points out he doesn’t seem to understand the difference between a popular incumbent who earned more votes statewide than Gore in 2000 and a former Republican judge from Cincinnati who got a “favored son” boost in that region; and an unknown, under funded, very liberal judge from Cleveland, who got 24% less votes than Kerry statewide, inexplicably getting more votes that Kerry in 12 of the most conservative counties (judging by their Bush vote shares) in Ohio!

Moreover, these same 12 counties just happen to be among the only 14 (out of 88 counties) where Bush’s vote is larger than Moyer’s (the incumbent conservative judge) by more than 43%. Moreover, the amount of “excess Bush” vote (more than Bush’s state average of 21% more than Moyer) just happens to roughly match both by county and for entire state the “lost Kerry” vote (what Kerry would have gotten if he had received his state average of 32% more votes than Connally in these counties) without any overall substitution from Moyer to Connally (Moyer’s vote is larger than the state average and Connally’s is smaller than the state average in all but one of these 12 counties).

Farhad, do you understand how absolutely remarkable such a series of “coincidences” is?!!

I challenge you or anyone else to provide a plausible non-vote shifting explanation for these patterns.

Note that the Bush to Moyer ratio is independent of the Kerry to Connally ratio when there is no substitution between Moyer and Connally. It is simply impossible to understand why, out of all the 88 counties, 9 out of 14 cases where Bush does extraordinarily well relative to Moyer, just happen to be in the same counties where Connally does extraordinarily well relative to Kerry?!!!! And it is even more impossible to understand why the relative magnitudes of these impossible undercounts for Kerry and over counts for Bush should so closely match!!!!

I would take this evidence to a trial. Clearly a crime was committed in Ohio. There is simply no other explanation for these patterns other than vote shifting. The only thing we don’t know is who did it and how. And exactly this kind of information is necessary to get serious electoral reform - that you claim to support.

to yourself.

Whose post did you think you were responding to?

I agree: "Clearly a crime was committed in Ohio."

"It is simply impossible to understand why, out of all the 88 counties, 9 out of 14 cases where Bush does extraordinarily well relative to Moyer, just happen to be in the same counties where Connally does extraordinarily well relative to Kerry?!!!! "

Leaving aside the issue as to whether the fact that Connally did better than Kerry in some counties is suspicious (it may well be - I am just concerned with the math here), there is a simple mathematical explanation for why this should happen in the same counties where Bush does well relative to Moyer.

If the judicial race is completely partisan i.e. Everyone who votes for Bush votes for Moyer, and everyone who votes for Kerry votes for Kerry, B/M = K/C = 1 right?

However, from the central limit theorem we can predict that the more independently the judicial race varies from the presidential race, the more likely it is that Bush will outperform Moyer in Bush strongholds, precisely where Kerry (who, by definition, will have less support) is more likely to be outperformed by Connally.

In other words, the fact that the judicial race appeared to vary independently from the presidential race may or may not indicate fraud; but the fact that where Bush outperformed Moyer, Kerry did worse relative to Conally is simply a consequence of the first fact. It is not additional evidence. What is potentially interesting is the degree to which the congruence between the two races may have been a function of the partisanship of the county.

As I've said elsewhere, Ron, I am an ardent supporter of election reform, because I think your democracy is broken, and for democracy to be broken in the world's most powerful nation is a problem for all of us. But precisely because I am so concerned about the state of your democracy, I think it is essential that the arguments made in support of the case that reform is required are solid.

And an argument in which one observation is cited as extraordinary corroboration of another when the two are not independent observations is not a solid argument.

Para 3 should of course read:

"If the judicial race is completely partisan i.e. Everyone who votes for Bush votes for Moyer, and everyone who votes for Kerry votes for Connally, B/M = K/C = 1 right? "

Thanks to OTOH for yet another bit of proofreading I should have done myself.

Ron, if you actually read Manjoo's article, you saw the part where he writes, "But nobody argues the errors happened by chance. Everyone in the exit poll debate agrees that there was a systematic cause for the errors in the poll." To paraphrase your rhetoric, the question that has to be asked is, why are you trying to rebut straw men?

In the passage of his response that you cite, Manjoo argues that Kerry's apparent exit poll margins in Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico and Ohio were all within the margins of error. Since you ignored this point, it stands unrebutted. Indeed, it is confirmed by the table on pp. 21-22 of the E/M evaluation report. A fact that you have not addressed at all.

As for the judicial races, will someone please forthrightly acknowledge that Kucinich's statement is completely unsupported? RFK writes, "'Down-ticket candidates shouldn't outperform presidential candidates like that,' he (Kucinich) says. 'That just doesn't happen.'" But so far no one has presented any race in which a presidential candidate outdrew a judicial candidate in every county in Ohio. I figure it probably happened sometime, but I'm not even sure of that. Maybe Kucinich had a different "That" in mind, but someone will need to define, and demonstrate, the That that just doesn't happen. Otherwise the argument reduces to hand-waving.

No one is confusing Resnick with Connally. Resnick beat Gore in 81 counties, and Black beat him in 40; Connally beat Kerry in only 12.

Ah, but isn't it inexplicable that those 12 counties were among "the most conservative counties (judging by their Bush vote shares) in Ohio"? No. Since the 2000 and 2004 presidential races unsurprisingly evince more partisan polarization than the judicial races, we can generally expect Dem presidential candidates to fare best compared with same-party judicial candidates in Dem counties, and worst in Rep counties. For instance, even though Resnick got over more 100K more votes than Gore statewide, Gore got about 50K more votes in Cuyahoga County than Resnick did. In Warren County, where Bush beat Gore by over 40 percentage points, Resnick received almost 5,000 more votes than Gore did, or over 25% more votes.

I share Febble's lack of surprise that Moyer did poorly where Connally did well, or whatever you think you have demonstrated. I think you will find it hard to surprise political scientists that one candidate did poorly where his opponent did well. I don't even much like your chances with economists.

In Iowa, a non-political scientist - just a lowly elections worker - did just that.....

She recognized that one candidate did poorly where his opponent did well. Only this time, she was honest, and instead of covering it up or keeping it a secret, she stopped the whole process and went to a hand count. The hand count convinced that lowly worker that the machines were FUBAR.

If only she had worked in Ohio 2004. <sigh>

the incorrect precinct header card because surprise in OH unlike Indiana punch card ballots do not use punches to identify a precinct, which is important to be identifie correctly every time because of ballot crawl.

Fritakis has images of a header card with a single Bush vote punched from Warren BTW.

rosebud a SW Ohio resident!

I'm not vouching for these counts -- one couldn't possibly. I am just explaining why the Connally argument fails.

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