Jump to content
IndiaDivine.org

Florida Computers Snatch Thousands of Votes from Kerry

Rate this topic


Guest guest

Recommended Posts

Thu, 28 Oct 2004 02:25:29 -0400

palast

 

 

Florida Computers Snatch Thousands of Votes from Kerry

 

 

CONGRATULATIONS, MR. PRESIDENT!

FLORIDA'S COMPUTERS HAVE ALREADY COUNTED THOUSANDS OF VOTES FOR GEORGE

W. BUSH

 

Before one vote was cast in early voting this week in Florida, the new

touch-screen computer voting machines of Florida started out with a

several-thousand vote lead for George W. Bush. That is, the mechanics of

the new digital democracy boxes " spoil " votes at a predictably high

rate in African-American precincts, effectively voiding enough votes cast

for John Kerry to in a tight race, keep the White House safe from the

will of the voters.

 

Excerpted from the current (November) issue of Harper's Magazine

by Greg Palast

 

To understand the fiasco in progress in Florida, we need to revisit the

2000 model, starting with a lesson from Dick Carlberg, acting elections

supervisor in Duval County until this week. " Some voters are strange, "

Carlberg told me recently. He was attempting to explain why, in the

last presidential election, five thousand Duvalians trudged to the polls

 

and, having arrived there, voted for no one for president. Carlberg did

concede that, after he ran these punch cards through the counting

machines a second time, some partly punched holes shook loose, gaining Al

Gore160 votes or so, Bush roughly 80.

 

" So, if you ran the 'blank' ballots through a few more times, we'd have

a different president, " I noted. Carlberg, a Republican, answered with

a grin.

 

So it was throughout the state - in certain precincts, at least. In

Jacksonville, for example, in Duval precincts 7 through 10, nearly one in

five ballots, or 11,200 votes in all, went uncounted, rejected as

either an 'under-vote' (a blank ballot) or 'over-vote' (a ballot with

extra

markings). In those precincts, 72 percent of the residents are

African-American; ballots that did make the count went four to one for

Al Gore.

All in all, a staggering 179,855 votes were " spoiled " (i.e., cast but

not counted) in the 2000 election in Florida. Demographers from the U.S.

Civil Rights Commission matched the ballots with census stats and

estimated that 54 percent of all the under- and over-voted ballots had

been

cast by blacks, for whom the likelihood of having a vote discarded

exceeded that of a white voter by 900 percent.

 

Votes don't " spoil " because they are left out of the fridge. Vote

spoilage, at root, is a class problem. Just as poor and minority

districts

wind up with shoddy schools and shoddy hospitals, they are stuck with

shoddy ballot machines. In Gadsden, the only black-majority county in

Florida, one in eight votes spoiled in 2000, the worst countywide record

in the state. Next door in Leon County (Tallahassee), which used the

same paper ballot, the mostly white, wealthier county lost almost no

votes. The difference was that in mostly-white Leon, each voting

booth was

equipped with its own optical scanner, with which voters could check

their own ballots. In the black county, absent such " second-chance "

equipment, any error would void a vote.

 

The best solution for vote spoilage, whether from blank ballots or from

hanging chads, is Leon County's: paper ballots, together with scanners

in the voting booths. In fact, this is precisely what Governor Bush's

own experts recommended in 2001 for the entire state. His Select Task

Force on Elections Procedures, appointed by the Governor to soothe

public distrust after the 2000 race, chose paper ballots with scanners

over

the trendier option -- the touch-screen computer.

 

Although the computer rigs cost eight times as much as paper with

scanners, they result in many more spoiled votes. In this year's

presidential primary in Florida, the computers had a spoilage rate of

more than 1

percent, as compared to one-tenth of a percent for the double-checked

paper ballots.

 

Apparently some Bush boosters were not keen on a fix so inexpensive and

effective. In particular, Sandra Mortham - a founder of Women for Jeb

Bush, the Governor's re-election operation - successfully lobbied on

behalf of the Florida Association of Counties to stop the state the

legislature from blocking the purchase of touch-screen voting systems.

Mortham, coincidentally, was also a paid lobbyist for Election Systems &

Strategies, a computer voting-machine manufacturer. Fifteen of

Florida's

sixty-seven counties chose the pricey computers, twelve of them ordered

from ES & S which, in turn, paid Mortham's County Association a

percentage on sales.

 

Florida's computerization had its first mass test in 2002, in Broward

County. The ES & S machines appeared to work well in white Ft. Lauderdale

precincts, but in black communities, such as Lauderhill and Pompano

Beach, there was wholesale disaster. Poll workers were untrained, and

many places opened late. Black voters were held up in lines for hours.

No one doubts that hundreds of Black votes were lost before they were

cast.

 

Broward county commissioners had purchased the touch-screen machines

from ES & S over the objection of Elections Supervisor Miriam Oliphant;

notably, one commissioner's campaign treasurer was an ES & S lobbyist.

Governor Bush responded to the Broward fiasco by firing Oliphant, an

African-American, for " misfeasance. "

 

Even when computers work, they don't work well for African-Americans.

A July 2001 Congressional study found that computers spoiled votes in

minority districts at three times the rate of votes lost in white

districts.

 

Based on the measured differential in vote loss between paper and

computer systems, the fifteen counties in Florida, can expect to lose at

least 29,000 votes to spoilage-some 27,000 more than if the counties had

used paper ballots with scanners.

 

Given the demographics of spoilage, this translates into a net lead of

thousands for Bush before a single ballot is cast.

 

---

 

For the full story, read " Another Florida " in the November issue of

Harper's, out now. Mr. Palast, a contributing editor to the magazine, is

author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can

Buy. See the film of his investigative reports for BBC Television,

" Bush Family Fortunes, " out now on DVD. Watch a segment at

www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm

 

To sign up to receive Greg's writings

http://www.gregpalast.com/contact.cfm

 

For media contact media

==============================

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...