Monthly Archives: November 2004

So Much for Denials About Explosives Really Being at Al Qaqaa

The LA Times has the story a couple of days late: Soldiers Describe Looting of Explosives.

Four more years of incompetence to look forward to. Followed in each case by coveups and lying. What a delight.

Actually, the next act in this play, if it follows the script, is the 'breaking of the President' moment, whose ordinary run was delayed by 9/11. But consider that the 9/11 commission will be getting to the good stuff, the Plame investigation should lead somewhere, and perhaps now that the election is over some honest Republican in Congress will start to investigate torture by US armed forces and (I can dream, can't I?) by the CIA.

Posted in Iraq | Comments Off on So Much for Denials About Explosives Really Being at Al Qaqaa

Democrats Got Creamed in the Florida Rural Vote

Surprising Florida Presidential Election Results: I'm not one who follows the Florida county votes, but if I read this right, this chart seems to say that the GOP get-out-the-vote operation worked well statewide. In urban counties they tended to get more new voters than the Democrats; in rural areas they either got Democrats to switch or Democrats stayed home.

Posted in Florida | 10 Comments

Thought for the Day

Thought for the day:

“There is a lot of ruin in a country,”
—John Maynard Keynes1


1 Brad's right—Adam Smith said it first.

Posted in Politics: US | 8 Comments

Tinfoil or For Real?

A scary item (is it true?) submitted to Dave Farber's Interesting People mailing list by one Ken Deifik:

It occurs to me that one of the questions that could be answered without too much trouble, at least for someone with lots of access to data and a knowlege of statistics, would be: is there any difference in the Bush – Kerry percentages in precincts that used eVoting, especially Diebold but all eVoting machines, as opposed to those that used paper ballots or some other method of voting.  If this question has any meaning for you, I'd ask you to pose to the list, to see anyone with the proper skills and access could carry out such a study.

I hope in the next few days statisticians examine the issue of the exit polls.  Since the early 70's the exit polls have always been spot on.  I feel ashamed for any journalist who says the exit polls got it wrong in FLA in 2000, because it is clear they got it right.

I have to wonder how John Zogby, who predicted 312 electoral votes for Kerry at 5PM EST 11/2, could have gotten the exit polls so wrong.  Or really if he did.

One reason may be who votes at what time of day?

I just found this posting in the Democratic Underground site
…on several swing states, and EVERY STATE that has EVoting but no paper trails has an unexplained advantage for Bush of around +5% when comparing exit polls to actual results.

In EVERY STATE that has paper audit trails on their EVoting, the exit poll results match the actual results reported within the margin of error.

So we have MATCHING RESULTS for exit polls vs. voting with audits
vs.
A 5% unexplained advantage for Bush without audits.

Say it ain't so…

Posted in Politics: Tinfoil, Politics: US: 2004 Election | 17 Comments

Phonecams and the Secret Ballot

Here's Ed Felton with a more elegant discussion of the verifiable voting problem I mentioned yesterday: see his Phonecams and the Secret Ballot.

Posted in Politics: US | 1 Comment

Avi Rubin, Cryptographer, On His Day as an Election Judge

Avi Rubin blogs My day as an election judge – take 2. Everything looks like it works, but the system has vulnerabilities…and the worst ones are not ones you could detect….

Posted in Politics: US: 2004 Election | Comments Off on Avi Rubin, Cryptographer, On His Day as an Election Judge