Hunting The Muse

2004 Voter Fraud

I've had some people I know start to ask me more about voter fraud.

First, I think it's a good thing that this is getting into the news cycle. There are a lot of problems with our voting system that need to be corrected. The worst problems in 2004 had to do with the lack of voting machines in Democratic precincts, leading to lines as long as nine hours. And that was with a less than 60% voter turnout. If people are motivated about protecting the right to vote, the best thing they can do is volunteer to become poll workers, and become active in the races for Secretary of State. Next is to lobby your representative to support HR 2239. I don't think Wu is signed on for that. Blumenauer might be. And, demand that voting machines have paper trails - not the kind that give a receipt that you take with you, but the kind that you examine and is then turned into the ballot box.

Now, as for the 2004 race. There's a lot of confusion about this. There have been reports of incompetence and of mistakes. That's not the same thing as fraud. They found out that 4,000 votes had been wrongly given to Bush in Ohio. That was an easy find and it was guaranteed that people would find it. It was a mistake, and not fraud.

Fraud is someone deliberately changing Kerry votes to Bush votes (or vice versa), or deliberately giving extra votes to Bush (or Kerry).

There is currently no evidence that fraud led to Bush winning when he otherwise would have lost. For that, you need to not only prove irregularities (which we have, and which every election has), but also someone doing it on purpose (which hasn't been discovered), and most importantly, it happening on a scale that would affect the election. We definitely don't have that.

People are looking for that. I support the search. We haven't found it though. So don't get your hopes up.

Now, as for Kerry's chances to somehow get the election back. The only hope is in Ohio. It's the only state with a less than 5% margin of victory that would make a difference in the election.

Kerry's margin is about 134,000 votes. Some absentee ballots may not be counted, we don't know how many. Absentee ballots usually go for the Republicans. There are also provisional votes, about 155,000 of them. Provisional ballots are cast when the poll worker can't find the voter on the voter rolls for their precinct. Ohio has a law that says that if someone casts a provisional ballot in the wrong precinct, the ballot gets thrown out. Many of these ballots will be thrown out. The rest of them might very well lean towards Kerry.

If a recount is requested, then 90,000 overvotes can be examined. They are like Florida ballots - dimpled and hanging chads.

Assume there are no really weird surprises left. Here's one best case. Say absentee ballots are 50/50, leaving the margin the same. Now, say that 15% of the provisional ballots are thrown out, leaving 131,750 of them. I've heard reports saying that 85% of the Ohio provisional ballots went to Gore in 2000. If that sticks, then 112,000 would go for Kerry, and 19,750 would go to Bush. That would knock the margin down to 40,000 votes or so.

Now, that isn't enough to trigger a recount automatically. I've heard that the needed margin would be 19,000 votes. But, a candidate could request a recount anyway. At that point, the spoiled ballots would come into play. Let's say that 30% of the ballots truly are spoiled, which seems conservative. That leaves around 60,000 ballots where you could determine intent of the voter. That would mean that 50,000 of them would have to go to Kerry, and 10,000 for Bush, to tie the race.

Kerry's concession wasn't legally binding. If some more surprises turn up - for instance, more lost votes, or actual evidence of fraud, you can bet he'll be back fighting for the presidency. But they have professionals on board, that did more to work for the presidency than the rest of us ever did. They looked at the numbers and decided that the votes they needed to win just weren't there. I trust their competence.

Posted by Curt at November 10, 2004 03:02 PM