A Florida "Election Miracle" for Republicans?

[SmallIsPower]

Here are the official results. Of 25 districts, with #2,#3 unreported and #13 too close to call its:

18 Republicans

4 Democrats

3 Unknown

 

Does this strike anyone else as funny in a state that was a swing state in 2000 and 2004, with the rest of the country going Democratic?

[ecoli]

It's odd, but it's not unusal for politicians on one level of government to be from one party, but officials one another level of government to be from a different party. It all depends on demographics.

[Pangloss]

Well if we were all THAT conservative then we would have put Katherine Harris in the Senate yesterday. Also the E. Clay Shaw loss in 22 is one of the two or three HUGE defeats for Republicans yesterday. Shaw had 13 terms in the House AND they just got through redistricting him for protection (so much for the power of gerrymandering!).

 

But yeah, it's a generally conservative state. No surprise there.

[SmallIsPower]

The numbers are funny. This is a hypothesis, only, but it was worth emailing my congressman about.

 

How conservative can it be? Given that (assuming no election fraud in 2000), the governor's brother won there by a few hundred votes. The hurricane season of 2005 certainly did not swing voters to the Republicans.

 

I've thought about gerrymandering, and I'd expect that if the Republicans gerrymandered it they'd use the following algorythm:

 

A majority of strongly Republican seats

A few less EXTREMELY Democratic seats

 

That way the Republicans can eke out a few extra seats by concentrating the Democratic voters. The system works fine for Republicans until there's a big shift.

[SmallIsPower]

Maybe this is much ado about nothing, In the above, I only saw 2 disticts missing, there are 6, and it's because 6 Democrats ran unopposed, so it was 16-8-1, still quite skewed, though. The CNN exit polls tend to corroborate this.

[Sisyphus]

Gerrymandering is a powerful tool. Luckily, it's apparently not powerful enough to get Cruella de Ville elected.

[SmallIsPower]

Actually, she was in the Congress, she couldn't use gerrymandering to get in the Senate. Her former district is so close in the official results, it's the only one I left out, so maybe she alienated people there.

 

I'm surprised no one number crunched my 16-8-1 numbers for statistical significance here. If it had been a coin flip, one standard deviation = sqrt(24*.5*.5) 2.5 congressional districts, so this is 1.6 SD from a 12-12 tie, not statistically significant for 16-8-1, but almost (1.8 SD) significant for 17-8 as the 13th is leaning Republican, for a 1 tail test. Not conclusive eigther way. Someone who takes a good look at all 435 races should be able to ascertain if there is more than a slight bias.

[Pangloss]

I don't really see what you're getting at.

[SmallIsPower]

It's important to be vigilant, especially when changing 100,000 votes is as easy as altering the voltage of a single transistor in a touch screen system. N

 

There certainly was enough debate about the fairness of the 2000 election(esp Florida), as well as the When I counted 18-4-3, I thought looked every suspicious. Now, much less so. There have been recent alegations of election theft, RFK Jr. claimed the Presidential election was stolen, and a Nebraska Senator won 84% of the vote with machines from a company he owned. Stealing elections is not new to the computer age, but it's easier. Fortunately, the net has made it easier to discuss the mathematics of fraud, and as we enter the age of open sourcing, we should volunteer as open source volunteers for elections audits.

[ParanoiA]

It's important to be vigilant, especially when changing 100,000 votes is as easy as altering the voltage of a single transistor in a touch screen system. N

 

There certainly was enough debate about the fairness of the 2000 election(esp Florida), as well as the When I counted 18-4-3, I thought looked every suspicious. Now, much less so. There have been recent alegations of election theft, RFK Jr. claimed the Presidential election was stolen, and a Nebraska Senator won 84% of the vote with machines from a company he owned. Stealing elections is not new to the computer age, but it's easier. Fortunately, the net has made it easier to discuss the mathematics of fraud, and as we enter the age of open sourcing, we should volunteer as open source volunteers for elections audits.

 

That Rolling Stone article reminds me a little of how the media gets all bent out of shape when the accused in a high profile case goes free - like O.J. They are so conditioned to their own method that they forget that's what courts are for - to keep you from punishing someone due to faulty deduction of said guilt - for whatever reason.

 

Exit polls are not valid. Otherwise we'd just use them to elect people. We wouldn't need any machines. That's why we have an actual voting process. How silly to think that because exit polls showed Kerry in the lead, that the real vote is wrong. That's weird. That's more than weird. That's nutty. Tinfoil hat kinda nutty.

[Pangloss]

Hey, here's my question...

 

Why aren't we hearing a tumultuous outcry of voter fraud today? Did the American voting system suddenly become valid in the eyes of the electronics-are-evil crowd? Why aren't Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson marching in the streets, crying foul?

 

Or are we seeing the truth today, that most of the objections were based on the party affiliations of the winners of previous elections?

[Sisyphus]

Hey, here's my question...

 

Why aren't we hearing a tumultuous outcry of voter fraud today? Did the American voting system suddenly become valid in the eyes of the electronics-are-evil crowd? Why aren't Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson marching in the streets, crying foul?

 

Or are we seeing the truth today, that most of the objections were based on the party affiliations of the winners of previous elections?

 

Were there electronic machines used in the closest elections? Were there significant discrepencies between exit polls and official results? Were there any suspicious results at all surrounding potential conflicts of interests of officials? If the answers are "no," then that probably answers your questions.

 

Anyway, the "electronics are evil" crowd, as you call it, was worried about potential tampering. There is still potential for tampering, but there isn't any evidence that there WAS any, as far as I know. So why would anyone be crying foul? I think you may be too quick to call hypocrite.

[Phi for All]

Exit polls are not valid.

Tell that to the news networks who pay big $$$ to have them done so they can predict winners early, risking their reputations by relying on the poll's accuracy. Done well, exit polls are the next best thing to tabulated official results.

[Pangloss]

Actually the errors in this election were pretty much what people predicted/expected. Problems with broken equipment and untrained employees topped the list.

 

And yet -- no Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson storming the streets, marching on Washington.

 

Huh.

[Sisyphus]

Again, why would they? The main concerns were about the potential for malicious tampering, no?

[ParanoiA]

Tell that to the news networks who pay big $$$ to have them done so they can predict winners early, risking their reputations by relying on the poll's accuracy. Done well, exit polls are the next best thing to tabulated official results.

 

Well sure, it's the next best thing, but it's not the best thing. Besides, alot of national politics can change quite locally. Talent was the winner over McCaskill by 7 or 8 percentage points per exit polls, but some areas around St. Louis surprisingly voted heavily democratic and gave McCaskill a solid lead and eventually the win.

 

Of course, I wasn't glued to the TV, so I might have missed something too. Either way, I'm just saying that there's a good reason why we actually count every vote - it's more accurate and objective. So if I'm getting a discrepancy between exit polls and actual counted votes, I'm more likely going to blame the exit polls.

[Pangloss]

Again, why would they? The main concerns were about the potential for malicious tampering, no?

 

Of course. And since their proferred candidates won, how can there be any malicious tampering taking place in the system? Democrats are victorious, therefore (according to the Al Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons) we can automatically assume that nobody is being disenfranchised.

[ParanoiA]

Of course. And since their proferred candidates won, how can there be any malicious tampering taking place in the system? Democrats are victorious, therefore (according to the Al Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons) we can automatically assume that nobody is being disenfranchised.

 

Nice point. And the thing is, the republicans won't get any credit for NOT crying about voter fraud and so forth. One could argue that the republicans actually get that the country rejected them, whereas when the democrats came up short they got that there were mistakes and voter fraud - never rejection, oh no.

 

But only time will tell. Personally, I'm praying for a libertarian emergence to displace both parties and that Wynona Ryder will stalk me for a one night hookup. Which do you think will come true first?

[Phi for All]

Hey, here's my question...

 

Why aren't we hearing a tumultuous outcry of voter fraud today? Did the American voting system suddenly become valid in the eyes of the electronics-are-evil crowd? Why aren't Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson marching in the streets, crying foul?

 

Or are we seeing the truth today, that most of the objections were based on the party affiliations of the winners of previous elections?

What if the Dems found the Rep's Diebold hacker and simply paid him more? How could the Reps complain?

 

Electronics are evil until we figure a way to get evil on *our* side.

[SmallIsPower]

Actually the errors in this election were pretty much what people predicted/expected. Problems with broken equipment and untrained employees topped the list.

 

And yet -- no Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson storming the streets, marching on Washington.

 

Huh.

In 2003, the Chief executive of Diebold in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0828-08.htm

That would tend to back up the Rolling Stones article. I don't know if there was fraud in 2006, but given the past, we should look carefully.

[Pangloss]

Absolutely. But we won't, because Jesse and Al aren't on the case.

 

Ok I guess I beat that horse to death... Just to be an optimist, perhaps the new Congress will be able to take a closer look at it.