I'm a conspiracy theorist, and I don't subscribe to the belief of some that we should quickly "move on" after an apparent election loss. If something smells, we should hunt it down and rid ourselves of it; to allow such a serious transgression as election fraud to go unpunished is -- dare I say it? -- un-American.
With that in mind, taking a look at various analysis of the Florida voting totals, something sure looks fishy at first glance.
I'm no statistician or accountant, so I want to keep this as simple as possible. What other folks (thank them very much) have done is put those numbers in a spreadsheet, comparing the number of votes gathered by Bush and Kerry to the number of registered Republicans and Democrats. In short, the analysis basically shows what the vote would have been had everyone voted their registration vs. what the vote actually was.
Statistically speaking, one might expect both parties to capture a like percentage of the vote compared to their registration, while of course sharing any registered independents. So the key comparison is percentage of votes for each candidate compared to their total registration.
What makes this comparison noteworthy is that in the Florida counties using touchscreen voting machines, the numbers are pretty equal. In Broward County, for example, Bush got 236,794 votes in a county where 283,736 are registered Republicans, while Kerry got 441,733 in a county where 533,976 are registered Democrats. So Bush's vote total was 83.5 percent of the total registered Republicans, while Kerry's was 82.7 percent of registered Democrats. The key here is in the percentages, not the raw vote totals, and these percentages are reasonably equal in all the 15 touchscreen counties.
What's raising eyebrows are the totals in the counties which use ballots that are fed into optical scanners. In these counties, the trend has a heavy Republican tilt; in many counties, Bush's total is 200-300 percent or more of the total of registered Republicans, while Kerry's is often at 50 percent or below that of registered Democrats. Statistically speaking, it's hard to figure why the 15 touchscreen counties would be so different from the 50-some optical-scan counties.
Now, as I said, I love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy, but if we are to be taken seriously, we need to take a long, hard look at this. I'm no expert in Florida politics (I've spent a total of around a week in the state), so it's hard to get a grip on these numbers, but one thing jumps out at me when comparing the touchscreen counties with the optical scan counties. In the TS counties, the numbers of registered Republicans vs. Democrats is generally quite equal, so statistically, there will be less deviation from the expected percentages. The fact is that the higher the number of people registered with a certain party, the more likely it is that the percentages will be off in the real vote totals.
That brings us to the OS counties. In a large number of those counties -- many of which went 60-40 percent or better for Bush-- we find that registered Democrats make up 60, 70 and even 80 percent of the total. That sounds mighty odd; why would a county with a large number of registered Democrats vote overwhelmingly Republican? Sure sounds like tampering.
Or maybe not. This is where my lack of knowledge of Florida politics sticks out like a sore thumb, so I'm going to assume a few things.
I notice that in some of these counties where the numbers are the most lopsided, 80 percent are registered Democrats, with less than 10 percent registered as independents; in many of the touchscreen counties, 20 percent or more are independents.
In my lovely Southern state, we have open primaries, where you pick which party you're going to vote for just before you walk into the booth. The local county races -- for sheriff, property assessor, etc. -- go through primaries and then a general election (why it matters whether the circuit court clerk is a Democrat or Republican, I'll never know). My state is certainly a red state, but it wasn't so long ago that it was a solid Democratic state, and so it goes that the real race for county offices comes in that Democratic primary; if there's anyone in the Republican primary, they're a lock to get beat in the general election. Therefore, many staunch Republicans will vote (and even run) each year in the Democratic primary, because that's what you have to do in order to have a say in who wins county offices. In February's primary with only a couple of minor county offices on the ballot, 6,517 people voted in the Democratic Presidential primary, 549 in the Republican. But the county went 15,619-10,549 (59-40 percent) for Bush in November. I imagine 75 percent of the voters would be registered Democrats if that was required, just so they could vote in those county races.
When I see all but eight percent of a Florida county's registered voters picking a party -- the majority of them the Democratic party -- I wonder if it works the same way there, despite Florida's recent (1960-on) history as a solid Republican-voting state.
The way to check this would be to see how these counties have voted historically. Have they normally voted closer to their registration? That's research for someone other than me, although I hope it gets done.
I'm not wanting to sound like a Republican apologist here -- those exit poll numbers make me believe something may well have gone awry in Florida and Ohio -- but I'd like for us to have good, solid facts before we go off tilting at windmills.
No comments:
Post a Comment