General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The reality about "vote flipping" machines in NC and elsewhere [View all]Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)(Caveat: I am not up to date on Florida voting law)
In this case, the ballot design was on a DRE. The authors don't really know what happened in 2006, but the claim the wrong person "won". In 2008 and 2010, we saw some similar patterns in several Florida districts that were not accounted for...and attempts to get data or programs from the DREs in court were not successful. My only explanation is a program (likely based on a prediction of registered voters or some formula) that avoids obvious detection by switching or causing an undervote on some DRE's in selected precincts. Random machine errors (such as a single machine with a screen alignment problem) would not account for a geographical undervote across several precincts as part of a district. Ballot design would also be a uniform error across the district. Meanwhile, a single race as inconsistent within a precinct seems strange. I can't think of any explanation other than a local manipulation that targets a given race in some precincts on DRE's. We don't see the weird stuff except on DRE's, so that's a given.
I agree the problem was not ballot design and again, the numbers would seem to call for an in depth audit to determine what really happened. Trouble is, unless the legislature puts laws in place that allows for such things, it can't be done. What makes the problem of voting machines vexing is that it would be pretty hard, absent stringent auditing and statistical sampling laws, to determine the difference between a programming error and tampering. In fact, this ambiguity is what makes the topic so attractive to folks who see skulduggery in the shadows.
Citizen activists have to address these issues in their own states. In NC I was "fortunate" to have been on TV in the Spring of 2004 predicting that the failure of voting machines was not an "if" event, but a "when" event. I then explained that if votes were lost the BoE better hope that the votes lost were not within the margin of victory of any particular race. The Director of the NCBoE was on the show with me and expressed total faith in the machines and said my scenario just couldn't happen.
The gods of fate never like being tempted and they were quite vindictive. A voting machine on the coast lost over 4,000 votes in the Fall election and the Agriculture Commissioner race was won with about 1500 votes. The day after the election my phone rang off the hook since the tape of the Spring interview was dug out and replayed on all the statewide channels. The story went national, and NC became the poster child for why you didn't want digital ballots.
Because of the uproar, the governor appointed a select committee to investigate the incident and draft new legislation to prevent it from happening again. I was appointed to the committee and things got heated from the get go with the battle lines being drawn between election officials and voting machines companies on one side, and voting activists and scientists on the other. In the end the bill passed in committee 6-5 (I voted in favor). The bill then passed both chambers of the legislature (a VERY rare thing) and was signed into law. Diebold sued to try and get the law overturned and failed. They then packed up and left the state rather than comply with the law.
This is what you have to do to change things in politics. There are no short cuts. It seems to me that there are more than enough problems with the machines in Florida to give activists leverage to get the laws changed, they just have to find the will (and the people) to do it. Until then, this kind of thing will happen and folks will never be sure whether it was accidental or intentional.