Chronicle Readers Speak Out on Attempts to Dismiss & Misrespresent Vote Fraud

Don't dismiss vote-fraud signs

Editor -- Wyatt Buchanan's article on charges of voter fraud too easily skimmed over the problems ("If it's too bad to be true, it may not be voter fraud," Nov. 11).

Instead of questioning sources on both sides of the Florida issue, he quotes Lana Morgan, supervisor of elections in that state's Lafayette County, as though she were an impartial observer, when she clearly has a stake in dismissing any allegations of fraud.

Morgan would have us believe that Democratic Floridians who voted for Bush were actually only nominal Democrats because "tradition dictates that local officials are Democrats."

You'd think that such a mysterious tradition would deserve some explanation, but all Morgan tells us is that Floridians will elect local Democrats but will not extend their party allegiance to congressional and presidential contests because the Democrats are "ungodly."

So local ungodly Democrats are OK, but national ungodly Democrats are unacceptable? The sad part is that the writer seems to accept this explanation without question.

In another equally puzzling example, the article tries to explain away the taint of fraud in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, where "it appears that the number of actual voters exceeded the number of registered voters by huge margins in some precincts."

Buchanan quotes Kathy Dreamer, ballot department manager for the board of elections -- another impartial observer. As Dreamer explains it, "in even- numbered years when there are congressional elections, the county's results are grouped by the larger contests on the ballot, not by precincts."

I'm not sure I even understand the explanation. It's impossible to know whether her explanation is credible.

Why do I feel that serious questions are being swept under the rug?


DAVID KELSO

Oakland
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Editor -- Wyatt Buchanan's piece with the sub-headline, "Most statistical enigmas in recent election have logical explanations, despite Web rants," misses the mark.

The article builds a case against a straw man: Web ranting and conspiracy theories.

Within 48 hours of the finding that small Florida counties with high Democratic registration went heavily for Bush, a group of professional people and academicians who are investigating the election and focusing on Florida were aware that those Florida counties were an anomaly explained by history, not systematic error.

However, restriction of the same analysis to medium-size counties (none in the Panhandle and a good number in central and southern Florida) with optical scanners rather than touch-screen machines still shows the same aberrations.

A new analysis shows that a significantly unexpected number of Democratic voters in the U.S. Senate race had crossed over to vote for George W. Bush in these same optical-scan counties. There is no clear explanation.

No one working on this effort has claimed fraud. The group is studying systematic errors that deserve public scrutiny and further investigation, and possibly recounts with the optical-scan paper ballots.

The media can crush this effort with caricature or it can play the story neutrally. Be more objective and let the story unfold.


MARC SAPIR

Berkeley

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Original article:

If it's too bad to be true, it may not be voter fraud
Most statistical enigmas in recent election have logical explanations, despite Web rants
Wyatt Buchanan, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, November 11, 2004

Those who believe the Nov. 2 election was fraught with fraud or conspiracy that kept Democrat John Kerry from winning the White House should talk to Lana Morgan, supervisor of elections in Florida's Lafayette County.

That county, along with about two dozen others in the state, has been the subject of intense speculation on the Internet because while 83 percent of residents are registered Democrats, Republican President Bush won 74 percent of the vote.

But that's the way it always has been, Morgan said.

"We're in the Bible Belt. There's still enough people that have got enough Christian in them that they vote their morals over the pocketbook and praise God, because I'm one of them," she said.

Accusations of widespread organized voting fraud elsewhere in the country similarly wilt under scrutiny. Academics and independent groups watching closely for shenanigans say that, so far, no evidence has emerged that suggests a "stolen election."

Still, articles and postings on the Internet scream "fraud" and "hacked election." Six members of Congress have called for an investigation of the election because of problems in individual precincts and counties, including the delay in ranked-choice results in San Francisco Board of Supervisors races.

The BlackBoxVoting.Org Web site, a driving force in the scrutiny of electronic voting machines prior to the election, says it has "taken the position that fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines." That group has made a large Freedom of Information Act request for documents related to the election.

But VerifiedVoting.org, founded by a Stanford University professor to examine problems with electronic voting machines, counters that no evidence has been found of wide-scale problems or manipulation of those machines.

"As far as the information (BlackBoxVoting.Org) have presented publicly, we have not seen fraud and certainly not to the degree that would impact the election results," said Will Doherty, executive director of VerifiedVoting.org.

Other problems in individual precincts or counties are par for elections, said Thomas Patterson, Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

"If we held a contest where we had to start 500,000 automobiles around the country on a cold morning and have them all start ... it wouldn't happen," Patterson said.

There were problems -- such as in Carteret County, N.C., where 4,500 votes were lost, and in a precinct in Franklin County, Ohio, where Bush received about 3,900 additional votes that were nonexistent.

In Sarpy County, Neb., south of Omaha, a single voting machine recorded 10,000 extra votes. As in Ohio, election officials caught the problem the next morning and recounted all the votes from all the machines, said Kay Forslund, election commissioner for Sarpy County.

Similar corrections have occurred in other counties with flawed results, and most states take several days or weeks before finalizing their tallies to account for such inaccuracies.

The seemingly inaccurate Florida results occurred mostly in counties in the conservative panhandle. In every county flagged by Internet election skeptics, the result mirrored the 2000 presidential election -- Bush beat Democrat Al Gore by wide margins that year, too.

In those counties, tradition dictates that local officials are Democrats and those who want to vote in primary elections must similarly register, Morgan, the elections supervisor, said. Years ago, that party allegiance extended to congressional and presidential contests, but that's when Democrats "weren't ungodly like they are today," she said.

The other major incidence of alleged fraud occurred in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, where Kerry beat Bush by 220,000 votes. On the county's election result Web site, it appears that the number of actual voters exceeded the number of registered voters by huge margins in some precincts.

But that's because in even-numbered years when there are congressional elections, the county's results are grouped by the larger contests on the ballot, not by precincts, said Kathy Dreamer, ballot department manager for the board of elections.

"No, there's not a problem (with results)," Dreamer said.

Other less concrete examples of potential problems fanned by Internet chatter include the difference between exit polls and actual results in states that use optical scan voting machines versus those that use electronic touch screens.

Skeptics have said that election results and exit polls vary by a larger degree in states with electronic touch screen voting.

Such a claim glosses over the complexity of state elections -- voting machines vary county-by-county in almost every state, and the same type of machine may come from several different manufacturers.

"I would be really suspicious of any claim of that kind," said Harvard's Patterson, adding that such an analysis would take months and that getting the needed raw data might be impossible. But, he said, he would be interested to see the results of such a study.

Still others, such as the 65 people who demonstrated outside the federal building in San Francisco on Wednesday afternoon, point to spoiled ballots in Ohio and the difficulty some people had in voting there.

But those problems occur every election, Kerry himself conceded the race and his 135,000-vote loss in Ohio would be nearly impossible to make up based on spoiled ballots, Patterson said.

"It seems to me it's hard to make the case that the election hinged on these things," he said.

But that isn't likely to change the minds of those on the Internet claiming election fraud, said David Emery, a San Franciscan who debunks rumors and urban legends on the popular Web site at urbanlegends.about.com.

"Any discussion of a rumor or conspiracy -- even when people debunk it -- seems to help its longevity," Emery said. Most rumors start "out in the wild of the Internet," are passed by e-mail and on message boards and gain steam. Some, like the claims of the swift boat veterans who attacked Kerry's Vietnam service record, play out on the national media stage.

Emery researched and debunked some political rumors prior to the election, including a supposed meeting between Kerry and Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey (doctored photo included). He said he probably will avoid post-election rumors because the issues are too complex.

"The misinformation game seems to have exploded with the Internet," Emery said. "People just seem more inclined to want to spin things and convince people of the things they agree with."
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