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Study proves with 99.9% certainty that somebody altered the Florida vote count in favor of GW.
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By Mike Cuenca | November 18, 2004
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Even though the story broke on November 18, there's been little or no
coverage by the mainstream media of the study from University of
California sociologists, indicating the 99.9% likelihood that GW got a
significant boost from deliberate fraud in the vote count after the
November 2 election. Added to the growing number of indications that
the presidential election results were manipulated, results of the
study indicate that the increase in support for Bush was directly
connected to whether or not a county used electronic voting, that the
impact of the manipulation was proportional to the Democratic support
of the county, and that the probability that this was due to chance is
nearly null.
The
study, now called the Hout Report, was conducted by Professor Michael
Hout, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the UC Berkeley
Survey Research Center, and a group of his sociology graduate students.
The researchers utilized publicly-available data from CNN.com, the 2000
US Census, the Florida Department of State, and the Verified Voting
Foundation.
In their summary of the study, the researchers
wrote, "The data show with 99.0% certainty that a county's use of
electronic voting is associated with a disproportionate increase in
votes for President Bush," and that "We can be 99.9% sure that these
effects are not attributable to chance."
In other words, somebody definitely monkeyed with the results and the monkeying favored Bush.
Even
more telling is the fact that the results were more likely to have been
skewed for Bush in those counties that had higher Democratic support,
such as Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade.
What remains
uncertain, though, is how many extra votes were attributed to Bush via
this fraud. The researchers found that Bush received 72,000 extra votes
in Broward County alone and as many as 130,000 extra votes across
Florida. The uncertainty about the true number of fraudulent votes
arises because the researchers can't determine the method or methods
used by those who hacked the electronic vote count. For instance, if a
voting machine was programmed to give Bush extra votes in addition to
the true number, then the number of fraudulent votes would be 130,000.
But if a voting machine was programmed to apply a vote for Kerry as a
vote for Bush, the discrepency would be the total number of extra votes
awarded Bush in addition to the same number of votes taken away from
Kerry, which would then amount to 260,000.
And in the case
that machines were programmed to actually dump votes for Kerry through
some other method, such as programming machines to count backward after
reaching a certain number, (which apparently occurred in a least one
county,) the number of votes for Kerry may have been much higher than
the sociologists' estimates. The sociologists mentioned this
possibility, but did not conduct an analysis of its impact.
The
sociologists utilized a multiple-regression analysis, which is a
standard statistical technique used by sociologists and physical
scientists to discern a pattern or result when multiple variables are
applied. Hout and his team of researchers analyzed election data,
demographic data, and voting-maching data. As variables, they applied
the number of voters, their median income, the Hispanic population, the
change in voter turnout between 2000 and 2004, the level of support for
President Bush in the 2000 election, and the support for Bob Dole in
the 1996 election.
The Florida Department of State certified
the election results with a gap of 380,978 votes between Bush and John
Kerry. If it's true that GW got at least 260,000 extra votes, that gap
would have been only 120,978. And even that gap may have been
fraudulently swollen by other methods used in addition to hacking the
electronic voting machines, that would not have been accounted for in
this study.
The results of this study cast serious doubt on
the integrity of those results, especially when combined with other
reported problems, such as errant results from computer-counted optical
scan ballots, votes counted twice, voting machines that began counting
backwards after reaching a certain threshold number of votes, and the
discovery of official poll tapes in the garbage in Volusia County. The
study is one more significant indication that the Republicans used
their control over the vote-counting process to retain the presidency,
if not other elected offices, as well.
What can we do about
it? Are we stuck with the results? We likely will be unless there's
widespread public outrage. If those who perpetrated this crime against
democracy are not held accountable and the results invalidated, we can
be sure that they'll continue to use these tactics until they are
required to pay a steep price.
There is no democracy, there is no hope for democracy, if the vote count is rigged.
The study is posted at http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/new_web/VOTE2004/index.html.
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