fishy votes, fishy science

wired.com reports that electronic voting booths may have registered between 130,000 and 260,000 more votes for dubya than voters really cast. as bush won by a little more than that (350,000), the article is concerned that florida's electoral college cast their ballots for the wrong guy.

what i found incredibly interesting when reading this article is the methodology used to determine that a potentially crucial number votes were waged for the wrong candidate:

The researchers [berkeley grad students] examined numerous variables that might have affected the vote outcome. These included the number of voters, their median income, racial and age makeup and the change in voter turnout between the 2000 and 2004 elections. Using this information, they examined election results for the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates in the state in 1996, 2000 and 2004 to see how support for those candidates and parties measured over eight years in Florida's 67 counties.

They discovered that in the 15 counties using touch-screen voting systems, the number of votes granted to Bush exceeded the number of votes Bush should have received -- given all of the other variables -- while the number of votes that Bush received in counties using other types of voting equipment lined up perfectly with what the variables would have predicted for those counties.

the article admits that the technique "hasn't been formally peer-reviewed," but it has been backed up by seven professors, although they never claim these professors were nonpartisan or unbiased - or even good scientists. it sounds like quite shaky science to ground such serious allegations. instead of making sure their facts add up, they went straight to the press, which is both unprofessional and not academic.

based on previous voting behavior and personal characteristics, researchers made some sort of algorithm to determine how many votes would be cast this time around. age, race, and income were all factors in their determination of how each individual would vote. to make such assumptions about someone's voting behavior based on those factors electorate is disturbing and probably inaccurate.

towards the end of the article we get activists touting interesting conspiracy theories, such as, "it’s relatively easy to program something into the system so that only every 50th vote would automatically go to Bush." the allegations may be true, and there are significant flaws with the evoting system to be sure. i certainly can't understand why so many people would vote for such a turkey. however, just because i can't understand it doesn't mean it didn't happen, and you need a little more than this to make a convincing case.

on another note, the study was prompted after the grad students read about voting controversies in the blogosphere.