Florida E-Vote Fraud? Unlikely

Since the election, liberal blogs and discussion sites have been raising a ruckus over an analysis of Florida voting results that's been spreading on the internet, which shows President Bush received a much higher number of votes than the number of registered Republicans in many counties.

The analysis has led lawyers for the Democratic Party to look into allegations of fraud, and was cited in a letter sent by Democrats in the House of Representatives last week to the Government Accountability Office requesting an election investigation.

But academics at several universities, who received a flood of e-mail urging them to look into the matter, say the results are due to high numbers of Democrats in rural areas voting across party lines, and to independent voters who chose Bush in higher proportions to Sen. John Kerry.

The academics say the intense scrutiny has been good for democracy and has highlighted the need for instituting mandatory election audits that would help catch anomalies with voting machines and restore voter confidence in results. But Stanford University professor of government Jonathan Wand said the analysis can be harmful if done improperly.

"It's important that when allegations are made that people bring to bear the correct evidence and statistical analysis to actually back it up," Wand said. "What is destructive is when the allegations are made and they are misconceived or implausible. That's not helping anything. But the general process of people paying attention is a very good one."

It all began last week when a voter posted a chart online showing that in 47 of 67 Florida counties, Bush received more votes than there are registered Republicans. In 15 counties, Bush received two times more votes than the number of registered Republicans, and in four counties, he received more than three times the number of registered Republicans. In Dixie County, for example, 9,676 people registered to vote. Nearly 78 percent of them were registered Democrats while 15 percent were registered Republicans. Yet Bush received 4,433 votes, while Kerry received only 1,959. Overall, Bush received about 20,000 more votes than there are registered Republicans in the state.

Activist Sam Parry called the numbers "so statistically stunning" that they bordered on the unbelievable.

The counties with suspicious results all used optical-scan machines, made by various manufacturers such as Diebold Election Systems and Election Systems & Software. Ironically, in counties using touch-screen voting machines -- which activists predicted would be the source of fraud this year -- Bush's votes were more proportionate to the number of registered Republicans.

The optical-scan results could be explained if many so-called third-party voters -- such as those registered for the Green Party or those who registered independent -- voted for Bush. But Bush's votes exceeded the number of Republicans and third-party registrants in many counties, meaning that a large number of Democrats voted for Bush.

Activists and progressive commentators reject the notion that large numbers of Democrats voted for Bush, because the Democrats put a lot of effort into increasing turnout for their man, Kerry. And early exit polls showed that Bush would receive only about 14 percent of the Democratic vote in Florida (a figure that lines up with the 13 percent Bush received in 2000). The polls also showed Kerry winning Florida's independent votes 57 percent to 41 percent.

The discussion in online forums and on activist news sites suggests that the optical-scan machines may have been rigged or possessed glitches that gave Kerry votes to Bush. Parry wrote, "If Bush's totals weren't artificially enhanced, they would represent one of the most remarkable electoral achievements in U.S. history."

Activists have been calling for a manual recount of optical-scan paper ballots, which they say would show whether the computer-counted tallies match the paper ballots. They are urging presidential candidate Ralph Nader to request a recount in Florida, as he recently did in New Hampshire.

Although the 20,000 non-Republican votes for Bush would not change the election outcome -- Bush won Florida by about 350,000 votes -- activists say the optical-scan anomaly, combined with other problems in the state (such as touch-screen machines that registered votes for Bush when voters pressed the screen for Kerry) should be examined.