Talk:2004 United States election voting controversies/Archive 2

Exit poll - vote count discrepancies

I noticed this was mentioned above, but it really deserves a section. I created the images for it in Flash 5. (i.e. i have them in vector graphics format) If anyone wants the .fla's or any thing that flash exports, i can email them. Checking out the exit polls here: [1] (which unfortunately one has to do some math to get an estimate on bush-kerry votes) I noticed that the sample size for ohio was 2,020; for florida was 2,862; and for new hampshire was 1,883. Those should give a pretty accurate prediction. Without even doing the math I can tell that these discrepancies are way outside the margin of error. Less than 14,000 people were polled in the U.S., so assuming equal population distribution, we should expect these to be some of the most accurate polls. But what are the populations? We should gather sample size data, population data, poll data, so we can make statistical maps. Kevin Baas | talk 00:23, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

Nice work KB, thats better than I imagined in terms of information. The only problem is, theres no official source for the data, and there needs to be, otherwise the images could be anyones imagination. The data doesnt have to be processed as you used it, but it must be the raw data you used so that someone else could process it and agree and ... well, you know what I mean :) And needs to be something that has an official source (or sources) really.

My other request is a copy of the data you used, I want to try something too. What I would like is a table with column 1 = state, columns 2 3 and 4 = popular votes (election result) GWB/JK/Other, columns 5 6 and 7 = exit polls GWB/JK/Other. Paste it on my talk page if you like, comma separated. Can you?

If however you really want a challenge, can you source and put together 3 more similar maps and matching tables of reported vote vs exit polls?

• the 1996 presidential election
• the 2000 presidential election
• some other matter (senate races? local dogcatcher?) which was voted on nation-wide on the same day in Nov 2004, and which the same voters would have voted on. (The least connected to the presidency the better, so any voting for county or state officers is more useful than voting for senate, etc)

Basically the same simple table for those too, again with links for the source data.

My reason here is, I think it would be useful to check how exit polls and actual votes compared in 1996 (before voting machines really took off), 2000 (1st widespread use and 1st allegations of machine issues) and also 2004 (some other universal election NOT the presidency held at the same time). Were they good predictors in other elections? Which states and what types of variations arose? Was it random? How do variations of popular/exit poll compare if you put the presidential vote and some other simultaneous vote side by side which was held simultaneously on the same machines, same voters? This would be important to the article because its evidence for "How well did popular vote and exit polls track each other elsewhere, both different time, and different election issue".

You forgot to sign your post, so I couldn't respond on your talk page. I got the vote count from the 2004_U.S._election_in_progress page, and the exit polls from this source cited in the article. The only source I'm aware of for state exit polls is CNN, but the GWB/JK percentages have to be derived from other stats (such as male/female, I have the impression is the most common) as has been done in this article. You can also get sample sizes there. BTW, can someone make an excel spreadsheat for all this info? That would be really usefull. We could also link to it in the article, for public domain. Kevin Baas | talk 20:12, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

Someone on this blog says that Edison/Mitofsky did the exit polls for this election for CNN, CBS, and NBC. I heard elsewhere on the web that the Roper Center is a poll data repository that stores election polls. (raw data?) Kevin Baas | talk 20:07, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)

I don't get this stuff about the exit polls - are we even sure we know how they work? Normal polls work by selecting people randomly from a population until the sample size is large enough that you can be confident that the sample represents the population. But the exit polls did not select precincts randomly. They pre-selected them. I thought the intent of exit polls was to capture the data from these precincts, and then actually take the resulting data from the real vote totals, and the apply them TO the exit polls (rebalancing or renormalizng the numbers) to get a more accurate idea of the makeup of the electorate. So in short, you'd *expect* the exit polls to be wrong throughout the day. You'd *expect* them to only give you a very rough idea early in the day. But they aren't random samples, so we can't expect the raw exit poll data to be representative of the voting population. I think it's a whole lot more complicated than that. (This paragraph from a miscellaneous reader who has been trying to learn about how exit polls actually work.)

Well, the thinking is, and it's been proven so I believe, that exit polls are more accurate than regular polls because your are "polling" people right after they've done the thing you want to test for, it's not like a phone call "will u vote next week?" etc. Though that does not mean there isn't something wrong with the data in this case, it just needs explaining. Zen Master 08:52, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

But that doesn't mean the exit polls are balanced correctly to properly reflect the 2004 voting population though, right? All it really does is know the preferences of the people it asked. But if the selection criteria wasn't random, why would we expect that the raw exit polling data would reflect the preferences of the overall voting population?

Case studies of states

Perhaps have section that study particular states, such as Florida, Ohio, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvannia? And speaking of Florida, how do we put this into the article?:[2] Kevin Baas | talk 00:52, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

I am hugely supportive of that idea KB, I think even if lets say Diebold or Op-scan occurs in multiple states, the evidence we need to build will still be dependent upon calculating on a per-county basis of expected/registered voters versus actual votes and compare them to distribution of e-voting machines and types. --kizzle 01:24, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Sure sounds like kizzle wants to do original research. No POV there of course. 216.153.214.94 03:12, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

combining research done by others into one central article is not original research. I'm not going to Florida door-by-door and asking if they registered to vote. Hence the multiple citations on this page. --kizzle 03:44, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, state by state would be useful, but only insofar as it wouldn't just be a regurgitation of other more general information. If there is genuinely specific information about a satte that's not part of the more general article then that would be a good way to do it. (And maybe if the maps get too big, a section for "maps related to voting issues" too?) FT2 15:22, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Sure, if someone else has done a case study. If you're doing a case study, Wikipedia is not a venue to publish your original research. --Delirium 11:31, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

Democratic abuse?

Why is there no discussion of Democratic attempts to abuse the system? Examples are numerous and rampant, yet no mention?

If you have cited evidence please contribute :) --kizzle 06:31, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Feel free to add such info if it exists. The philidelphia one has been debunked. Also realize the much much greater potential for fraud from hackable voting machines, this is much more serious than the regular "they BOTH do it" sort of thing. Ideally no one should cheat, but that belief is no longer cultivated it seems.

My question is, if there is evidence of massive fraud in favor of republicans would the bush whitehouse arrest and charge those responsible? Would they really? I'd have utmost respect for them if they did.

Let me be the first to call "do over" for the 2004 US election in at least the 10-12 swing states, if not everywhere. Zen Master 06:34, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Actually, "Democratic Abuse" is a very important part of this story and should be covered. A crucial part of the ground game was for the Republican campaign to make as much noise about supposed Democratic abuse, preemtively, in an attempt to ambiguate the issue in the public eye. However, the second after Kerry conceeded the noise stopped. For more information check out | Act Two from last weeks "This American Life" on NPR. Morgan Patrick

This article is not about all election controversies, it's about significant controversies which could have changed the results of the election. If you have any information on a capability by democrats to rig voting machines or otherwise massively swing an election feel free to post it, though I am not neccesarily saying that happened. It's either fraud or the data irregularities need explanation. Zen Master 02:59, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wow. I used to think Wikipedia was a place to come and get valuable verifiable information. Now I realize that anyone...even myself can simply type up some drivel and pass if off as the truth. Here is an interesting article from today's Boston Globe http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/11/10/internet_buzz_on_vote_fraud_is_dismissed/ No one would be more interested than me in finding out that we really won, but that ain't the case," said Jack Corrigan, a veteran Kerry adviser who led the Democrats' team of 3,600 attorneys who fanned out across the country on Election Day to address voting irregularities.

I get why people are frustrated, but they did not steal this election," Corrigan said. There were a few problems here and there in the election. But unlike 2000, there is no doubt that they actually got more votes than we did, and they got them in the states that mattered.

How about this group ACORN and it's less than honest voter registration drive? ..the kid in Ohio that was paid crack cocaine by the NAACP to get democrats to register? ....The extra 90K votes than voters in Cayhoga county (democrat stronghold)? The slashed tires of republican GOTV cars? The machines with votes already on them when the poll opened in PA? How about here in New York you don't get a paper reciept of your vote and Democrats have been winning here for years...nobody ever complains about that?

How about you guys in the interest of preserving our national unity and imperfect democracy just accept the results with the understanding that any endeavor of this magnitude will have some discrepencies. But there is no evidence of systematic fraud by either party.

I hadn't heard about any of the cases you brought up just there (except the Cayahoga County one, which is not, in my opinion, Democrats' fraud). Please amend the article and put some of this info in there. That's what it's there for. Spud603

Actually, I had heard the cases he brought up. So did everyone on the RNC's mailing list. The pamphlet that was mailed out warned of massive Democratic voter fraud. When they got to specifics, however, the examples were things such as having chumps hard up for change registering Jeffrey Dahmer and Mickey Mouse because they were getting paid for every completed registration form.

And yes, there was even a guy who's boss, another hard-up shlub in charge of rectuiting registars, paid his guy with a nice chunk of crack.

Now: I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, that Cayhoga county went for bush this year. If one were alleging conspiracy you would think that would be cause for the concerns raised in this article... except it turns out that story about more votes than voters was false. See that's kinda the point of Wikipedia, to get to the root of things. That's also the sole point of analyzing this election for the sake of future elections.

To repeat the specific talking points verbatim, and to believe the horrendously racist and absurd claim that the NAACP paid people with crack, and to add that invective into an argument about the accuracy of votes as though the two have any correlation, reveals a lot about your character, sir. Morgan Patrick

You aren't interested in getting to the truth. You're only interested in casting doubt on a legitimate election because you detest the outcome.

Here is a link to the crack for votes story curtesy of the Toledo Blade http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041019/NEWS09/410190343 (quote)Defiance County Sheriff David Westrick said that Mr. Staton was working on behalf of a Toledo woman, Georgianne Pitts, to register new voters. She, in turn, was working on behalf of the NAACP National Voter Fund, which was formed by the NAACP in 2000 to register new voters. Sheriff Westrick said that Pitts, 41, of Toledo, admitted she gave Mr. Staton crack cocaine in lieu of cash for supplying her with completed voter registration forms.

Cuyahoga county went for Kerry 67% to 33% http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/OH/P/00/county.000.html

I doubt you will add the info from this link to your phony encyclopedia http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?Entry=409

That's not crack for votes. That's someone falsifying registration to get crack. Now if Mary Poppins, Jeffrey Dahmer and Janet Jackson actually SHOWED UP to the polls there might be reason to call that voter fraud. But those are fake people who were never going to show up to vote. All you're doing is making noise and diluting the issue.

The first step to voting is registering to vote. The title of the article is "2004 U.S. Election controversies and irregularities". The purpose of which appears to be exposing voter fraud. Falsifying voter registrations regardless how clever the alias would be the starting point of a particular form of fraud. Even if the phony registrants don't show up to vote their addition to the voter roles furthers the confusion, chaos and possibilities of mischief. Finally this is only an example of a glaring irregularity. Who's to say there aren't other examples of falsified registrations that would easily pass muster with stressed, over worked and underpaid poll workers. If you are looking to get to the bottom of "2004 U.S. Election controversies and irregularities", you must consider all evidence. Not just that which supports anyone's particular position.

I apologize if I came off harsh before. To say "That speaks to your character" is an ad-hominem attack and I shouldn't have said that. However, we do need to look at all voting irregularites. We need to look at a historical precedent for voter irregularities, starting with JFK, who was voted for by many a cadaver, and ending with the most recent election. I stand corrected anout Cayhoga county and I strongly agree that all irregularities need to be addressed in this article. However, the crack thing is just inflammitory and while it makes a good story, it is of little value and unfairly detrimental to the NAACP as an organization. It does, however, raise an important question which should be addressed, which is what irregularities were honest errors, which irregularities can be attributed to lazyness or lack of forethought, and which were systematic, intentional dirty tricks. No matter how you slice it, it appears Bush still won -- however, after 2000 we owe it to ourselves to identify what went wrong and protect against it in the future. Morgan Patrick

NPOV tag

I have added an {{npov}} tag. It can be removed once this article is sufficiently expanded to reflect all viewpoints. For example, the article currently includes a great deal of content expounding on the viewpoint of one side with much shorter descriptions of rebuttals from the other side. Note also there is a space at the bottom of the page for the viewpoints of several groups that has not yet been completed. Once most sides' viewpoints have been added, not just in the bottom section but throughout the article, I would fully support removing the {{npov}} tag. —Lowellian (talk)[[]] 07:13, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Those empty headers shouldn't be included at all. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Make comments invisible. When someone writes an appropriate addition, the person writing it should just add it. It's also not consistent with the way Wikipedia works to want the tag to stay on until something "has been added". The passive voice is often a bad idea but particularly so here. There's no one whose responsibility it is to add anything. If you think something more should be said, go ahead and post it (to the article or to this talk page) and see what other people think. You can't justify the NPOV tag by expressing the desire that something else be added by an unspecified someone.

I believe that the NPOV tag and the empty headers should all be removed. (Oops, passive voice. Well, my excuse is that I don't want to get into a revert war, so I'll hold off from deleting those things myself until other people have a chance to chime in.) JamesMLane 08:31, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Regarding "You can't justify the NPOV tag by expressing the desire that something else be added by an unspecified someone.": If the flat Earth and spherical Earth articles presented all the claims of flat-Earthers, with no rebuttals from the other side (I am not claiming this is the current state of these two articles; I am just saying that if this were so), and you wandered by and saw the pages but were not someone familiar enough with the physics to write the justification for a round Earth yourself, I think you would still nevertheless be justified in adding an {{npov}} tag to the articles and keeping it on the articles indefinitely until someone properly qualified in the physics wrote a section answering the claims of the flat-Earthers. —Lowellian (talk)[[]] 09:08, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

And this would apply in the opposite case as well, if the articles cited above completely dismissed and refused to even mention flat Earth claims. Articles that are POV should be NPOVed for all viewpoints, and if necessary, a tag should be added to prompt editors sufficiently versed in the subject to do so. —Lowellian (talk)[[]] 09:11, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

I disagree. There are several articles I know of that I consider biased, some in the way they state things and others in what they omit. We're all volunteers, though, and I don't have time to work on everything. It would be irresponsible for me to slap the NPOV tag on everything I don't like, without even having made an effort to correct the situation.

Theres a formal "Wiki" statement of what NPOV means in an evidence-based article above, but as "flat earth" is an "argument by analogy" let me give a less formal kind of reason why I believe it's wrong.

Not every statement of fact needs the associated press comments to make them "valid" or "neutral". Provided there is no significant error or omission in fact or evidence, the facts stand alone. If there are omitted facts, thats what counts. Think of it like court and the reader as the judge, he doesn't need to know what this or that party's opinion is, or if they claim without backing evidence that the evidence against them is all meaningless. He wants the evidence on the table, both sides, and if they have anything to say let them add further evidence of their own to be weighed, not mere opinions. Evidence, not opinion. I don't think anything here taken one at a time are beyond the ability of the average person to comprehend or even to check for themselves if they wish, so the "Flat Earth needs a physicists answer to be neutral" argument to my mind is inapplicable. This is an informal description, the previous one is the important statement regarding NPOV, this (whilst not intended to be rigorous), I hope helps. FT2 15:22, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

In this particular case, the discussion on the talk page doesn't justify the tag. We have no reason to believe that there even exists any material that might go under those empty headers. For example, has either of the two major parties yet issued an official comment on the subject? I don't know. I'd find it quite plausible that they're both lying low for now, waiting to see which way the winds blow. The Democrats might not want to go out on a limb and later find that the current evidence could be refuted. The Republicans might decide as a tactical matter that they'd give the story more publicity by denouncing it. Of course, if either party has said anything substantive, it should be included. The tag would be justified if and only if a user had made a good-faith effort to expand the article appropriately and had encountered resistance. JamesMLane 09:30, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Theres a mistake in some of the above logic. The sections referred to are not "empty". They are each making the positive non-trivial assertion "at this time, there has been no significant formal comment". There is a strong, although unproven, likelihood, that there will be further valid information to go into each of these subsections at some point, and the sections are therefore not idle, they serve as a reminder to some wiki-ist to add them when appropriate. Speaking informally I'd be amazed if there weren't ongoing developments or additions to these various responses eventually, and adding the sections is a good guide to any such contributor of a suitable section for them to keep the article "clean" and in good quality. FT2 15:22, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

It's a question of how to interpret the phrase "(none yet)" under a header. You're interpreting it to mean what it's now been changed to: a statement that the party has made no official comment. (I'm not sure that the rewording is true in this instance; it's certainly something to be checked.) The other interpretation is the one Lowellian gave, which I agreed with. Lowellian said, "Note also there is a space at the bottom of the page for the viewpoints of several groups that has not yet been completed." JamesMLane 19:30, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think it's fine if the NPOV tag is put on the page, it will inspire additional beneficial clean ups. I disagree with them but I suppose a disagreement on scope (what the article should be about) can be considered a POV violation? I absolutely do not believe the "acts of violence" stuff belongs on the page, it's possible republicans did that to themselves to offset any expected vote machine controversy backlash. Zen Master 21:42, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Quick questions and quick votes

(1) One of the section titles was changed a couple of days ago from "Voting machine companies with political ties" to "Voting machine companies with political ties to George W. Bush". Whilst at present no voting machine company has been stated or is alleged to have major political ties with Kerry, the possibility does exist. So although this is factually accurate, I'm concerned whether this new title gives the impression of POV. Votes for keeping current title or reverting to previous one? FT2 15:22, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Previous

1. Kevin Baas | talk 20:20, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

Current

(2) Source (or at least county name) needs adding for the 77% county in Florida? FT2 15:22, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

(3) Good introductory quote found, where should it go? For now I've put it at the top.

(4) The text accompanying the maps need a couple of minor gaps filled in before it's really solid evidence:

• The maps don't show "areas where no auditability was available", so there might not be evidence right now in the article to support the statement that those areas correlate.
• The phrase "potentially higher" might need tightening up.
• The underlying data needs some kind of source.

exit polls: CNN, vote count: wikipedia Kevin Baas | talk 20:20, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

• Some kind of support's needed for the 10 ^ -6 odds.

We need an excel spreadsheet as discussed in the vote count - exit poll discrepancy section, before the calculations can be done rigourously and verifiably. Kevin Baas | talk 20:20, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

(Also, the 3rd map has many states in grey, but there isn't a grey on the color key. Should these be white?)

Grey is "no data" (yet). The second map just matches the first where there's no data - kind of a cheat, but it's bound to be close, it shouldn't introduce confusion, and it saves time for now. Kevin Baas | talk 20:20, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

(5) A lot of introduction and background information was removed for the sake of making the article more streamlined, but I'm concerned too much got removed. I've often found that in a topic like this, a section of background summary is useful. So I've provisionally edited as follows:

• Introductory sentence edited, now describes the article's purpose rather than summarising the article. FT2 15:22, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)
• I've tried to balance the gains during the cleanup with a limited reversion of the background material removed. FT2 15:22, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)
• Last, I've also temporarily reverted the "scale and significance of issues" because I feel this usefully sets out the potential scale of the issue which may not otherwise be apparent from a schedule of individual evidence.

These are provisional only - can we briefly discuss and get different views before any editing? FT2 15:22, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

acts of violence edits

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think 216.153.214.94's additions of acts of violence should be part of this page, since their implications fall under the idea of voter suppression, which is already mentioned. [[User:Lachatdelarue|Lachatdelarue (talk)]] 15:44, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yup - vandals, offices, and Bush's likely wire, seems like these all move to the main election page as being distractions to the main issue of the article. I've also reverted the recent edits from 216.153.214.94, who already has an alert on WP:VIP.

To the author, please discuss matters here before adding stuff like that, as there is a lot of interest here and many points of view to consider. Thanks  FT2 16:03, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

I Don't Like The Scale and Significance of Issues Section

It is written poorly, doesn't really say anything, and seemingly violates NPOV. I was going to clean it up but I didn't know where to begin (I commented it out yesterday but someone undid that). I think it's incorrect to say there is substatial information in the "media" about fraud with this election, where are any citations for that claim? If anything the media have been completely silent on the issue of massive vote fraud. Any scale and significance section should address the much greater potential for fraud from voting machines, in my opinion. What was the original author of that section trying to convey? The florida discrepancies between registered democrat percentages and actual results could be in there or near there, that section could become a one level higher section heading (after being rewritten) that introduces that largest instances of potential fraud? Zen Master 18:21, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

That was me, Zenmaster, apologies, the history page lets you trace who edited what. I put it back as a temporary thing - I liked your cleanup but was anxious if too much was removed. So I wrote the section above to discuss it and get a consensus if some parts of it were of value. Thanks for the explanation, and Ive moved both up to that section with other comments. FT2 21:01, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Regarding the section itself, I feel the section is reasonably accurate. I wrote that section originally, and if it doesnt belong or its inaccurate then it needs to go, but for now I'd like discussion 1st, because it may have stuff of value, and subject to discussion, it's factually accurate as best I can see. Specifically:

• It says there is substantial comment online including online media (not "in the media"). You might've misread this.
• Should address the potential scale? I figured that would be obvious, I focussed on how much would really be needed to make a difference, I saw 500 votes in florida not 2 million votes in texas (so to speak) as the "significance", because thats the size you need to get wrong to affect an election.
• As for the size of the whole thing, anyone reading the article can draw that conclusion - i didnt feel right pushing it at them that way, its enough to go over this much evidence this thoroughly.

Hope that helps, I have provisionally removed the NPOV tag, again thats no criticism, its just I am hoping these points make it clear that it was "online" not "printed media" and you might've misread it. But yes, we do need discussion of those sections. FT2 21:01, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Here specifically is what I don't like about that section, the way it's written seems rather POV, words like "teething" and "troubles" are out of place, and "irregularities due to these concerns were probably insignificant compared to the number of votes cast" seems to be in opposition to what the first part of that paragraph is saying, big deal about "comment" online -- this article should focus on statistical analysis of the data irregularities -- not on comments, the entire section appears to just be saying "some people are commenting that vote fraud is significantly plausible". That really isn't capturing the scale or significance of the issues. Zen Master 21:09, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

As a mark of respect while you were writing that, I added a tag to mark that section as being discussed. Gotta go out, will review your points later when I get back :) FT2 21:23, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

I realized the page was headed for protection so I cleaned up the significance section a bit beforehand :-) It currently captures what I think it should capture and leaves in the heart of what was there before I believe. If you disagree with any of it we can change it. Zen Master 22:15, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I like it, the only thing I'd add is an extra sentence or so, that explains due to the US electoral college system, it isn't the popular vote, but the electoral college vote which counts, and therefore in the past (ref to 2000 election) sometimes only a few hundred votes in a critical location have been enough to swing the entire national election. Therefore small discrepancies in voting as well as big ones are important, as an election fraud could be perpetrated with a few thousand votes in the right place. To my mind thats whats left missing. Comments? Agree? FT2 00:45, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

Scope of the article

The article devotes most of its space to possible miscounting of votes cast, but it also refers to voter suppression, some of which occurs before Election Day. It may be hard to draw lines here, but I suggest that the article should be about reasons for concern that the officially announced totals don't reflect the decisions of the people who were entitled to register and vote.

• Included: Voter registration problems and disputes, like the Ohio ruling that rejected some registration forms because they weren't on 80-pound stock, or the cases of voter registration forms that went astray; difficulties in obtaining or submitting absentee ballots; activities intended to keep voters away, such as the distribution of fliers in minority neighborhoods stating if there was rain on Tuesday then people could vote on Wednesday.
• Excluded: Controversies (like the Bush bulge and the Kerry pen) not directly related to voting; campaign finance issues, including complaints and counter-complaints about 527 groups (except complaints about, for example, a 527 group engaging in voter suppression or the like); campaign improprieties, ranging all the way from the theft of yard signs to the break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters in Toledo. (See "Thieves hit Democratic Party offices; computers containing sensitive data removed".)

This division seems to reflect what most people understand the article to be about. Things like the Toledo break-in are "controversies" or "irregularities" but aren't what the article is about. That's why I think that the title should be something like "2004 U.S. election voting controversies". The title we eventually settle on should reflect a consensus of what's to be included and what's excluded. JamesMLane 20:36, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I can see the point of that. Issues that meant the vote tally might have not reflected the decision of the people in, and issues that may have affected the decision of the people (albeit in an unfair/unacceptable manner) out? Is that broadly your suggestion? I could go with that. FT2 21:01, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, that's the kind of distinction I have in mind. JamesMLane 21:43, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"irregularities" refers to statistical problems with the results and exit poll data, nothing more. The title you propose isn't bad, though "voting" may open up the article to excluded category stuff. Zen Master 20:51, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The statistical problems are the discrepancies between exit polls and the officially reported totals, right? The only reason to pay attention to those discrepancies is the possibility that the official totals are wrong. If so, the irregularity would be that the machine didn't produce an accurate result. That kind of irregularity is part of the controversy, because people are raising charges about the machines. I think "2004 U.S. election voting controversies" would include these statistical issues. If you think it might suggest to some people other issues, that aren't actually covered, we could put a scope note at the beginning, referring readers to U.S. presidential election, 2004 or whatever other article(s) might be appropriate. JamesMLane 21:43, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It does look like this article will be on voting issues, only, with "other election controversies" or "campaign controversies" in a separate article. So a cleanup between the 2 might be good if thats how we go, although this article's mostly on voting anyway. Separately, I want to steer clear of any word that suggests a conclusion (eg "conspiracy" or "fraud") in the title, its a neutral evidence summary is all. Discussion? FT2 00:45, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

Side note

Just a side note, watch countdown tonight on MSNBC with Keith Olbermann, he's going to be covering it today and tommorow. --kizzle 20:38, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

What time? Kevin Baas | talk 20:55, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

8pm ET... not sure if its going to replayed at 8PT for west coast. --kizzle 21:27, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Excel Spreadsheet

I'm working on a template. Anyone want to claim responsibility for aggregating a particular type of data? Kevin Baas | talk 20:58, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

Uploaded base excel spreadsheet to [3]. Kevin Baas | talk 21:32, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

I've filled in the popular vote count and uploaded. My totals don't match wiki's totals, though. Kevin Baas | talk 23:55, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

Does someone want to gather for the polls from CNN, top down, and someone else do bottom-up? Kevin Baas | talk 23:55, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

And send the excel file to me through email. (You don't need to be able to upload it.), and I'll copy and paste the data. Kevin Baas | talk 23:57, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

KB i'm going to be off for today, if you provide a little detail as to what I should do, I'll help fill in tommorow during the day.--kizzle 00:01, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

I'd love a copy of spreadsheet data as you produce it :) FT2 00:45, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

The latest version will always be at [4]. Over to the far right there's a kery-bush-nader percentage calculator that uses male-female voting pattern. This will fill in the poll data. just copy the percentages from (CNN exit polls), by state. i'm going top-down, so Kizzle, you can go bottom up. Interesting enough, most of the discrepancies are less than one percent. On the map I made (3rd us map), they would be white.

Then does anyone know how to calculaute variance and margin of error from the sample size and voter turnout? We need some stats people to calculute the ultimate probs. Kevin Baas | talk

The CNN poll, in Florida, gives bush 51%, kerry 49%, but this source gives kerry 49%, bush 51%. Was the CNN poll modified post-facto in Florida as well as Ohio? Kevin Baas | talk 19:16, 2004 Nov 9 (UTC)

In fact, the CNN exit polls are uncanny, so far they are all (except florida) within 1%, and i noticed there's a percentage difference in some cases with the above source. Are they all post-facto adjusted? Kevin Baas | talk 19:46, 2004 Nov 9 (UTC)

They must be: New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Minnesota are within 1%. All that work! Don't use the CNN exit polls. They'll correspond exactly with the vote count because they were adjusted post-facto so as to do so. Kevin Baas | talk 20:06, 2004 Nov 9 (UTC)

adding incident + discussion of organizational layout

Keith Olbermann reports "the Cincinnati Enquirer reported that officials in Warren County, Ohio, had “locked down” its administration building to prevent anybody from observing the vote count there.

Suspicious enough on the face of it, the decision got more dubious still when County Commissioners confirmed that they were acting on the advice of their Emergency Services Director, Frank Young. Mr. Young had explained that he had been advised by the federal government to implement the measures for the sake of Homeland Security.

Gotcha. Tom Ridge thought Osama Bin Laden was planning to hit Caesar Creek State Park in Waynesville."

I wanted to add this, but I'm not sure where it would go. I think the layout of the page needs to be discussed, as I feel somewhat its starting to take a feel of randomness to it. Any thoughts on whether it needs to be re-organized at all, and if so what it should look like? --kizzle 21:29, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

I don't like the current organization very much. I agree with you about the feeling of randomness. One possibility would be to have one article about electronic voting machines and one article about all other voting controversies. They'd link to each other, of course, and the one about controversies in general would summarize the facts about voting machines, without presenting the maps or otherwise getting into such detail. That would make it easier for readers to find specific topics. If the subjects are all to remain in one article, the beginning should be rewritten; the quotation about machines should be moved down to the machines section, and the reader given a more general overview of the scope of the article. JamesMLane 21:59, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

A category of 2004 election issues? Surely it can be fitted into one article? Maybe with a subsidiary article for "detailed list of evidence" summarised in the main article? So we can offload stuff like dozens of maps, or dozens of incidents, to a 2nd article thats non-controversial, and keep the main article more concise? Would that work? FT2 00:45, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

Acts of violence

As long as this article is titled "2004 U.S. Election controversies and irregularities", the acts of violence fall under this topic. 216.153.214.94 22:03, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The acts of violence you keep adding fall under the category of voter intimidation, which is already in the list of key issues. [[User:Lachatdelarue|Lachatdelarue (talk)]] 22:17, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Did actual violence occur? I know there were some republican challengers etc present, but didn't know anything about violence. Pakaran. 22:29, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Nothing reported inside voting places, all stuff cited was external to voting, though tangentially related. Zen Master 22:34, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm not aware there was significantly more violence than previous elections, as it says under "misrepresentations" (or did till commented out), stuff like that was agreed to be excluded. FT2 00:45, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

Protection

Rex (216.153.214.94), please do not keep on adding stuff to the article when there's consent that your edits are inappopriate; rather, discuss your proposed edits here on the talk page. Thanks. -- Schnee 22:12, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This latest episode by Rex/216 has been added to the evidence in the arbitration proceeding. See Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Rex071404/Evidence#Further misconduct as anon IP. We've now entered our fourth month of adding evidence. JamesMLane 22:54, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

So is there any reason to keep this locked? Pakaran (ark a pan) 18:56, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Kerry surrendered

In view of the fact that Kerry already surrendered the election, can anything now be done, even if criminal rigging occured? Especially in view of the fact that the "original" vote totals can't be recovered from Diebold machines? Pakaran. 22:31, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I read on another message board that there is nothing in the Constitution that makes a consession stick. Gore took back his consession in 2000 briefly. The key is these problems would have to be resolved before state elections officials certify their results, and definitely prior to when the electoral college meets December 12th I believe. After that point it's definitely too late. Currently there is no evidence of massive fraud investigations/indictments pending or a massive democratic challenge, but it's still possible. Zen Master 22:37, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Concur. A concession is not legally binding. There is, however, a deadline. Kevin Baas | talk 22:43, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

I see. I just don't think the Kerry campaign really wants to cause a huge uproar by launching a challenge. And, again, if a challenge succeeds, there's no way to get the "correct" totals out of those Diebold machines in Ohio/Florida. Pakaran. 23:15, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

There are all sorts of extra-legal consequences that can be inflicted by both the magnitude of validity of the charge and the amount of people that hear of it. That is a few steps ahead though. We must only worry about bringing together the evidence. --kizzle 23:25, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Ideally law enforcement agencies would be the ones that prosecuted justice in the case of massive election fraud (if true), but I admit to being rather doubtful since the fox is guarding the hen house. If the evidence is not overwhelming enough to convince law enforcement to act, then there isn't much kerry's campaign can do. Perhaps all we can do is steadily work towards auditability and traceability for future elections and put pressure on voting machine companies. I already called a "do over" if that helps, though the logistics of a do over are likely impossibly large. What happens if a state elections board is unable to certify their results as accurate? That seems like an accurate description of the state of things in at least a few states. Zen Master 23:42, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Action will only be taken when there is public pressure, no earlier. In order to generate public pressure, they must be aware of what happened first. A full recount is unlikely, more like a case brought to the supreme court or anything generated from the court of public opinion which does have power given enough concensus and motivation. Look at the 60's civil rights movement. --kizzle 23:50, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Luckily thats speculation and controversy, not related to the evidence gathering (both sides) within this article :) FT2 00:45, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

Indeed :)... FT2, you're always there to bring us back to the business at hand ;) --kizzle 00:47, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

Supposedly Kerry's brother is asking people to send evidence of fraud to him - see http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/11/ale04089.html Waitingtoderail

Stuff AGREED BY CONSENSUS to do, when PROT tag comes off

(this section contains a LIST of reasonable edits to process once the PROT tag is removed. These are edits which have gained broad (> 50% but not necessarily 100%) agreement as reasonable by those who contributed and voted on them. It does not contain the edits, but just an indication what's been agreed)

http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/index.html - Judiciary democrats are starting to look into it. Can this have consensus? Or if not move it to another section, before I abuse my sysop privs and get impeached. J/K Pakaran (ark a pan) 22:29, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

new format

Please feel free to modify the following post to formulate an alternative organizational layout. Edit away! --kizzle 23:00, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

P.S. if you're going to significantly modify it, you might want to copy and paste and start your own. --kizzle 00:52, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

---

Proposal 1

1. Background
2. Pre-ElectionControversies
   1. Voter Suppression
      1. Long Lines
   2. Vandalism
   3. Blah
3. Post-Election Controversies
   1. Regional Issues
      1. Florida
         1. Op-Scan vs. E-Touch
         2. Blah
      2. Ohio
         1. Gahanna, Franklin Co.
      3. California
      4. Anywhere Else
   2. Electronic Voting
      1. Diebold
         1. Republican ties
         2. Insecure hardware/software
         3. Certification controversies
      2. General electronic voting problems
   3. Exit Poll versus Vote Count discrepency
4. Official Responses/Viewpoints
5. External Links
   1. Specific incidents of discrepency (emphasis on facts)
   2. External analysis of data (analysis of these facts)
   3. Related articles

---

Proposal 2

1. Introduction
   1. Background on 2004 election (brief)
   2. Scale of potential for fraud (brief)
   3. Significance of controversy (brief)
2. Voting machines
   1. Background
   2. Usage Statistics
   3. Insecure hardware/software overview
      1. lack of auditability or paper trail
      2. Lack of certification
      3. Expert testimony
   4. Alternative open architecture voting machines
   5. Vendors
      1. Diebold
         1. Ties to the Republican Party
         2. Specific criticisms
      2. Optical Scan voting machines
3. Data Irregularities (<-- all results statistics and charts would begin here)
   1. Voting machine complaint maps
   2. Exit poll discrepancy map
   3. Specific Locations
      1. Florida
         1. exit polls vs actual results
         2. registration stats vs actual results
         3. turn out vs support for kerry
         4. comparision with other elections
         5. "Examples of other complaints and abberations" (pre-existing stuff sorted by state minus stuff that should be elesewhere)
         6. Evidence of bias (pre-existing " " " )
      2. Ohio
         1. same as above in florida
      3. Other states
   4. Potential manipulation of exit poll data
      1. Lack of details on exit poll data change
4. Investigative Organizations and Individuals
   1. Blackboxvoting.ORG
   2. External analysises of data
      1. Other charts and graphs
5. Official viewpoints and responses
6. Related articles
7. External links

---

I believe we kind of decided in the talk pages above that we wouldn't include "pre-election" controversies and vandalism in this article at least. The 2004 prez debate article already has info on the debate controversies (bush supposeded wire, kerry pen). The point of this article really is evidence of massive vote fraud, need to separate small scale issues from the massive potential for fraud with no paper trail or auditable voting machines. Small scale incidents are not likely to change the outcome of the election after the fact, really only machine fraud or hacked machines evidence can do that. Though, I am not saying such information does not have its place on wikipedia somewhere, I just don't believe this article is the right location. Grouping such issues together implies they are of the same "scale" when clearly they are not. Voter suppression information then is only relevant for large scale incidents. Zen Master 23:19, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Well, If we are going to hold to that I believe we should rename this article to "2004 U.S. Election Voting controversies" (who needs the irregularities anyways)

That is what this page is really about anyways. Otherwise, if we keep 2004 U.S. Election controversies, I would have to say that those debate controversies would technically fit under the title. --kizzle 23:36, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

I think that a few topics deserve some degree of prominence: exit poll - vote count discrepancy, long lines (this may seem banal, but it really makes a dramatic difference), die-bold, machine problems. Kevin Baas | talk 23:34, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

how about now? --kizzle 23:38, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Looks fine. Except long-lines being a pre-election controversy? Kevin Baas | talk 23:49, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

Pre- is on or before Nov 2 (or actual election process), Post is after... does that work? --kizzle 23:56, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure that works, because a lot of the things in the post section really belong in the pre section. There was controversy about the die-bold machines years ago, it's just noone thought that anyone would have the idiocy/audacity to actually use them. Maybe we can do away with pre/post? Kevin Baas | talk 00:00, 2004 Nov 9 (UTC)

Whatever you think. --kizzle 00:23, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

irregularities was a term added because of statistical analysises. I didn't like it originally but it is important to note there is a mathematical basis in fact for the belief in serious discrepancies. Certainly the title needs to be more explanatory than just the catch all word "controversies". I propsed "data irregularities" earlier. Zen Master 23:48, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't disagree with you KB, I just think "2004 U.S. Election Voting controversies and data irregularities" is a bit long. 2004 U.S. Election Voting controversies is enough to distinguish it from any other article and can be applied to all information in this article, data irregularities does not help in this process of distinction IMHO, but if you want to keep it i'm ok with it. --kizzle 23:54, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Let me clearly state that I DO NOT support any of the proposed titles in this section, the current title is better. You guys are also getting WAY ahead of yourselves with the proposed formatting (i do not agree to it). The current title does not include "voting" in it; we spent a lot of time arriving at the current title yesterday, do not discount that discussion please.

Also, I do not believe vandalism should be included, do you think it should? "Voting Machines" should be a top level section with different types of machines then regional issues underneath that. Though, what is wrong with the current format exactly (please list your concerns relative to the current formatting)? The point of this article is about the potential for vote fraud and significant mathematical evidence of such, it's NOT' a place for listing all election controversies. How do you plan to move current information not include in your proposed format (currently there is no place for exit poll manipulation and registration vs results discrepancies listed)? Zen Master 00:04, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't think kizzle intends to obscure or excise information. i agree that it feels kind of unorganized. Probably because of the speed at which all the info was put together and the sheer volume of information. Just looking at the TOC, it doesn't seem so unorganized, thou. Nor does it look that much different than kizzle's original suggestion, after pre/post is removed and the headers promoted. Kevin Baas | talk 00:11, 2004 Nov 9 (UTC)

Zen, first of all JML and I just agreed that the layout seemed a bit random, thus I proposed an alternative organizational layout. By all means if you have disagreements please voice them, I'm not trying to force this down your throat, its just a suggestion. Secondly, my concerns relative to the current formatting is what exactly is a "Key Issue"? I get the feeling when I read the article that it is hopping around to many different issues without a clear organization.

I would think that sorting by region above machine failure will better accommodate the information, as if we use types of machines above regional issues, then we will have to incorporate regional specific incidents outside the top level of types of machines, whereas if we sort by region above types of machines we can accomodate for all information without spillage.

In addition, the reason why I wanted to change the name is because I agree with you completely that this article is the "potential for vote fraud and significant mathematical evidence of such", but that is not reflected in the current title, that's why I proposed the alternate. But the main thing is, I'm just offering suggestions, I'm not trying to dictate the course of this article. --kizzle 00:15, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

Also, I let everyone know that my proposed layout is completely editable, so if I missed something please add it. --kizzle 00:20, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

ok, my bad. It just seemed like a lot of effort was going into your format seemingly without considering raised issues. Also, we should consider cleaning up the parts of the text that are "hopping around", I suspect we will need as large a text cleanup as we need a reformatting, for clarity's sake. Is this what we must do for the protected flag to be released? They are rather separate issues (organization vs reason page was protected) in my opinion, but we should organize and clean up the page anyway. I am weary of modifying your proposed formatting since it would look radically different (more like the current formatting). ;-) Zen Master 00:29, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

If you want, copy and paste my layout and modify all you wish, unless you just agree with the current organization.  :) But do you get my point though, that if we organize using "Types of Machines" above "Regional Issues", there will be events that do not deal with electronic machines that will have to be sorted by region as well, thus leading to information spillage. If we use "Regional Issues" as a top-level, we won't have to divide by region twice, both under "Types of Machines" and "Non-machine related discrepencies" --kizzle 00:34, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

Zen Master, you say that this article is "NOT a place for listing all election controversies". If you mean to exclude the bulge/pen type controversies, along with the Toledo break-in, I agree. There are, however, many controversies that relate to voting but don't relate to voting machines, which are being considered (outside Wikipedia, that is) in the same general context as the concerns about the electronic machines. These include voter suppression, voter registration issues and absentee ballot issues. I think those belong in an article on "voting controversies" or some such. Maybe we should split things up, as I suggested before? One organizational problem for this article is that the voting machine stuff is (right now at least) so much longer than everything else. We could have one article with all the detail about voting machines, and another article about voting controversies generally, which would summarize and link to the article about the machines. If we agree on that setup, we could then decide the appropriate name for each article. JamesMLane 01:43, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

JML, I personally think that splitting up the article would be a bad idea. If we add "Voting" to the title, It would correctly weed out the unrelated debate issues and arguably remove the vandalism sections... but I would like to see one article containing everything about the 2004 voting irregularities. I think that anyone who wants to know more about all the hooplah will always end up reading both articles if we split them up. I personally vote to keep all voting-related controversies in the article while keeping the debate and other issues out. --kizzle 01:52, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

FT2 comments on structure

I've been looking at how fast folks are finding new evidence to add (great job!), and the volume of interest in this article. Although I'd hoped to keep it to one article overall, we've already decided at least 2 articles (splitting out Pre-Election) and I've been looking at what kind of stuff's being added.

There seems to genuinely be potential for 3 articles here:

• A core article on "election issues" (or whatever title). But if this contains all the maps and analysis and reports then it will be very long and it really needs to be a bit shorter and more readable.
• A daughter article specifically on "pre-election (campaign) controversies" such as violence, postal vote errors, the bulge, etc.
• A subsidiary article something like "further details and analysis of voting discrepancies" containing any overflow, further information and analysis not really essential for the main article. The in-depth county and state analysis would go here, too.

What I'd have is the core article briefly mention key pre-election concerns in a bullet list and then"For more on pre-election issues see (Link)". It lists a selection of incidents, and "For other incidents see (Link)". It summarises the conclusions of analysis, and shows the most important maps and summaries and "For more in-depth analysis maps and sources see (Link)".

This gives 3 clearly-differentiated articles, and the main article stays clean and effective. Would this work? The main article's already getting quite big and thats even with pre-election left out and further technical analysis (not to everyones taste) to come, so I think its a good possibility. FT2 02:36, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

If people like that, then I have a Suggested structure for the articles:

1 Background

1.1 Brief overview (scale, significance)

1.2 Summary of problem areas

1.2.1 Pre-election (Campaign) issues

1.2.2 Voting issues

2 Voting issues

2.1 Electronic Voting issues

2.1.1 Examples of electronic voting incidents

2.1.2 Voting machine companies with political ties

2.1.3 Evidence of electronic voting bias

2.2 Voting Machines

2.2.1 Reliability, auditability and security

2.2.2 Expert testimony

2.2.3 Specific criticisms levelled at Diebold's voting machines

3 Exit poll and final vote controversies

3.1 Historic comparison of Exit and popular votes

3.2 This election's comparisons

3.3 Further analysis (by state, county, type of machine etc)

4 Voting interference and prevention

4.1 Suppression

4.2 Non-delivered votes, provisional votes, etc

5 Official viewpoints and responses

5.1-5.5 rep, dem, experts, US media, overseas

6 Related Articles
7 External links

7.1 Incidents

7.2 Relevant organisations

7.3 Pages presenting, analysing and discussing evidence

7.4 Pages analysing and discussing the controvery

7.5 Informal references and interesting pages

7.6 Useful data sources

The daughter articles would then cover:

• Pre-election issues - vandalism, violence, fear tactics, misrepresentations of self/other, "the bulge", voter suppression

• Details of anomalies and detailed analysis of discrepancies - the long long lists that otherwise will terminally confuse readers of the main article, offloading them into a daughter article means we can keep the main one shorter and stop it sprawling.

• Reported voting anomalies and incidents
• Analysis of exit polls and reported results

(Maps, by state or county, statistics, whatever)

FT2 02:46, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

Comments on organizational proposals

1. I thought that the relevance of the discrepancies between exit polls and reported results was that they were considered evidence of problems with voting machines. The current article states, "Voting locations that used electronic voting machines that did not issue a paper receipt or offer auditability correlate geographically with areas that had discrepancies in Bush's favor between exit poll numbers and actual results." If indeed the "discrepancies" point relates to electronic voting machines, then it should one of the subheadings under the higher-level heading about electronic voting machines. Yet, Proposal 1 has "Exit Poll versus Vote Count discrepency" parallel to "Electronic Voting", and Proposal 2 has "Data Irregularities" parallel to "Voting machines". In each case, the discrepancy/irregularity point should be made a subhead under the other.

I've commented elsewhere that this is a different claim, not as yet evidenced. I think it's just in need of a wording change (if its a wording error) or evidence (if accurate) is all. FT2 03:31, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

There are other means of fraud which have had at least as big of an impact as voting machines, and the discrepancy does not relate uniquely to voting machines, but is an overall measure. I want to throw out the idea of giving it independant status, and putting it before sections which account for the discrepancies. Kevin Baas | talk

The current text of the article gives no indication of any relevance of exit polls to any subject other than voting machines. I think exit pollers usually begin by asking a person leaving the building, "Did you vote?" Therefore, someone who was improperly prevented from voting wouldn't show up as such a discrepancy. (I don't know what the exit pollers do if the person says that he or she cast a provisional ballot. My guess is they don't count that response for the poll.) Therefore, while I strongly agree with you that there are other means of fraud, the question is whether there's enough of a nexus between those issues and this particular datum (exit poll discrepancies). So far I haven't seen any such tie explained. JamesMLane 20:02, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

True enough. And that should be noted in the article: exit polls do not include provisional or absentee ballots, or people who were discouraged by long lines. Kevin Baas | talk 20:35, 2004 Nov 9 (UTC)

Hence why I asked KB if he knew how to do a similar table and map of exit poll vs popular vote for 1996, 2000 and a different Nov 2004 issue. We cannot be sure how well exit and populatr track, without those. We suspect they track very well, enough to be good evidence, but this data would possibly show how they tracked in identical elections with lesser machine voting, or lesser political significance.

A difficulty with this is we'd have to get the exit polls before they were weighted by the actual vote count. It's difficult enough to get those just for 2004. This is the closest I've gotten: [5] I read on some website that this is a kind of "repository" for election exit polls. Kevin Baas | talk 19:01, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)

2. Both proposals have a separate section for responses ("Official Responses/Viewpoints" or "Official viewpoints and responses"). That would mean that a charge that some election official committed fraud could be followed by a great deal of other material before the official's response was reported. I suggest that responses should instead be integrated into each subject where appropriate. If, for example, the Democratic Party comes out with a sweeping statement that the election was stolen (which I very much doubt the party apparatchiks will do), that might merit a separate heading, but until it happens, the responses we have are keyed to individual subjects. For example, we should add in the visits by Florida State Police to elderly black voters, note the charge that this was an effort to intimidate them, and, immediately after that, report the Florida officials' explanation about what they say they were up to.

3. Both proposals violate the capitalization rule for headings: "Capitalize the first word and any proper nouns in headings, but leave the rest (including ordinary nouns) lower case." (See Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Headings.) Incidentally, both proposals are already getting buried in this talk page. The proponent of each might do better to set it up as a subpage. They would be at User:Kizzle/Election controversies organizational proposal and User:Zen-master/Election controversies organizational proposal. Then we could find them more readily. My comment here doesn't cover FT2's proposal because I saw it only on getting an edit conflict message, and I haven't had time to consider it in detail yet. JamesMLane 03:15, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I vote we keep it one article, initially at least. We should not hold back development of this article because daughter articles are not ready. I also would like to point out new allegations could come out tomorrow negating any organization. This article grew out of the election in progress article which changed rapidly, as this one should at least until the electoral college votes on december 13th. After that time this article can switch to more of a historical vibe. Does a title "2004 U.S. election controversies in progress" seem reasonable until then? Though, that might encourage too rapid a pace of changes. Perhaps we should pay more attention to fixing the wording of the text, organization can come at anytime. This does not mean to say we can't find a compromise organization, but every proposal so far has only led to additional proposals and a larger scope of changes -- change small, change often is what I vote for (organic process, more people will join in). Proposal 2 may be too complex and illogical, and all criticisms in this section are valid, I will think about it some more. Zen Master 04:23, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

There would be no holding back for an article not yet ready. I would just take the EVM-related material from this article and cut-and-paste it into a new article. Each resulting article would need some editing -- the EVM article to set the context, the general "controversies" article to include a summary of the EVM issues. Thereafter, the two articles would each grow as new information became available. JamesMLane 05:38, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I meant for my proposal to be vastly overhauled by other users, I think the wikiquette of not editing other users posts has stopped people from doing that... I only really have 2 main concerns. Ideally, I would like to have some sort of way to be able to detail on a county-by-county basis extraordinary circumstances (like 80% democratic counties voting 80% for Bush), and to accomplish that use some sort of organization by state, as this I believe is a key in mathematically proving beyond margin of error that something fishy occured. The other concern is that the organization needs to be a little bit more intuitive for finding information. Otherwise, I don't care what the page looks like, as long as it stays as one article :) --kizzle 04:53, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

Can the Protected Flag Be Removed?

If it's protected for fear of vandalism I vote for an admin to remove the protected flag, at least during daylight hours. :-) We did a pretty good job of watching the page yesterday. There is a treasure trove of information to add to the article today. For instance, absentee ballots are confirming the discrepancies between exit polls and actual results, even in a state like North Carolina where exit polls indicated bush would win there by 6%, but the final results say bush won by 13% (a 7% and statitically impossible difference if the data is sound), someone took a look at the results for absentee ballots (which are much harder to tamper with) and low and behold they show the expected 6% victory for bush. If you extrapolate this to the other swing states with exit poll discrepancies there can be little doubt Kerry won the election. Also, there is numerous instances of Ohio counties with precincts that reported more votes than the number of voters. Zen Master 17:35, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I would very much like the dispute lifted. It presents us from adding any new information (new sources, etc.) of an objective nature. Thus, the disputed status is preventing updated information from being posted - contradicting the very purpose of the page. Thanks. "mickazoid" 1:00pm EDT 9 Nov 2004

Schnee has unprotected the page. Although this makes sense -- with the source of the problem, Rex, having announced his (second) departure from Wikipedia -- I actually have slight regret that we didn't settle the scope, title and organizational questions before the protection ended. If the article gets edited for each new news story that comes out, the randomness problem will worsen. JamesMLane 20:08, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I actually have started to like Proposal 2... I have a few minor gripes about specific subcategories but I like the general feel of it. I must reiterate however that if we are to exclude vandalism, debate controversies, and other stuff, we really should make this 2004 U.S. Election voting controversies and irregularities, or else I would have to say those issues would technically fall under this specification. --kizzle 20:47, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

[Responding to JamesMLane] We need to keep in mind this article is effectively an "in progress" article so our thinking and how we go about adding to and cleaning up the page should be inside that context. In a few weeks the article can switch to a historical context, at that point the formal effort to organize the page would actually start to make sense. I hope I don't sound too harsh if I comment that the effort to clean up the article yesterday was detrimental, leaving obvious fixes on the page uncompleted. If there are things u don't like with the page, just fix them on a small scale, others will change them or modify making sure to capture the essence of everyone's points and tying it with everything else. I propose we use the "divide and conquer" method for cleaning up the page, lots of small scale fixes, change small, change often.

We could add the rapidly changing current events header to the article? Zen Master 20:51, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"Change small, change often" isn't a proposal. It's SOP here. My experience, though, is that any reorganizing is easier when there's less to be moved, and also that a good structure makes it easier for people to come along and make small improvements in the right place. Well, for the moment, an easy one to do is the article title. No one has disputed that the current title must be changed. I'll put a new section on the subject at the bottom of this talk page, because the earlier discussion is so far up by now. JamesMLane 21:31, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

If it's not a proposal then let me formally propose it, I propose no major re-organizational changes be made in one fell swoop to this article (i.e. change small, change often), how else are "in progress" articles maintained on wikipedia? SOP applies to in progress articles? In my opinion "change small, change often" is actually the wikipedia way, especially when talk page discussions led nowhere, I've seen numerous articles substantially improve this way, especially for articles where accuracy is not disputed. I guess my main point against your position is my belief that the initially proposed format change was worse than the current format, so the status quo is preferred by me until something drastically better comes along (it likely will, and soon enough this article will be moot anyway).

Zen, what we probably should do is open up a temp page at 2004 U.S. Election controversies and irregularities/Newlayout or something like that, and keep the page as it is due to the incredible rate information is being added, and we can leisurely update the newlayout page with the information as we get to it. --kizzle 03:29, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

I like your proposed new title but am concerned "voting" may actually open the article up to issues of election day violence which we've excluded? Zen Master 23:04, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Right, but the exclusion we agreed was simply due to dialog, more specificity in the article title is better, as other election issues may come up later not related to the voting project that will technically be able to be included here. --kizzle 03:29, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

Links to put in article

• [6] -80% registered democrats, 80% voted for bush, charts of florida counties.

This could be explained by old time dixicrats that vote republican and the county sample size is small, though it is significant. The following is more significant:

• [7] Dozens of precints in at least one county in Ohio reported more votes than the total number of registered voters. I am contemplating how to add all this information to the page, to save space perhaps just the precints that report greater than 100%

Easy. Anything under 80% probably isn't worth noting as many places expected 70%+ turnout, so:

Precincts reporting 80-90% turnout - A, B, C

Precincts reporting 90-100% turnout - D, E, F

Precincts reporting 100-125% turnout - G, H, I

Precincts reporting 125% + turnout - J, K, L

FT2 03:05, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

• [8] [9] - discussion of exit poll tampering. (I need untampered exit polls for every state, with sample size!)

• [10] - location of e-voting machines

• [11] - Palm Beach Deputy tackles, arrests journalist for photographing voters. A sheriff's spokesman and a county attorney later said the deputy was enforcing a newly enacted rule from Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore prohibiting reporters from interviewing or photographing voters lined up outside the polls.

Article title

Not many people have chimed in on this issue, but my impression is that there's more agreement than disagreement about inserting the word "voting" to make clear that tax cuts and suspicious bulges aren't the kind of controversy being addressed here. Also, inclusion of "irregularities" in the title seemed to have no strong defenders. Accordingly, I'd like to move this article to "2004 U.S. election voting controversies". I'll do so in several hours unless comments here indicate a need for further discussion. JamesMLane 21:31, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Phooey, I should've just done it instead of being collaborative. Now this title is fixed until the protection ends. JamesMLane 20:22, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

on a side note

I happened upon this picture, which shows the correlation between states that "voted" for Bush, and the states where slavery was legal before the Civil War. I thought some of you might find this amusing. [[User:Lachatdelarue|Lachatdelarue (talk)]] 23:11, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Voting (round 2)

Two straight votes here, to see if we have a viable consensus without further discussion. FT2 02:10, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

1) Please state your preferred title(s) including acceptable alternatives, or that you are OK "as is".

As long as alleged election day violence is not appropriate I am fine with "2004 U.S. election voting controversies" or add the prefix "data" to "irregularities", but I defer to the consensus of the group on the title (I am still tired from the original title change discussion of a few days ago). Zen Master

"2004 U.S. Election voting controversies" with a slight hesitations adding "and (data) irregularities", but if someone wants it i'm ok. --kizzle 03:33, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

I'm fine with what Zen and Kizzle say on this matter. Kevin Baas | talk 19:06, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)

2) Move detailed backing evidence and further in-depth analysis to a separate article at some point? (see note below)

Yes, the article is getting too long, I removed commented out debate controversy section. I do not believe we need the 9 state exit poll discrepancy map, that can be accomplished almost as easily with a chart, and ideally we should include all states and the map is slightly misleading since some of those states use a combination of voting methods. Zen Master 02:56, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Defer for now, we need one place to put all info, and later on when it gets too large we'll split off. --kizzle 03:33, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

(Reasons for vote 2:

The article is long, and getting much longer. Part of that is the sheer volume of supporting data, subsidiary graphs, tables and incident reports we're finding. Whether or not one article would be desirable, this may actually become self-defeating, because the purpose of wikipedia is to be an information source, and information is as much about easy of digesting as sheer data. Put simply, too much detail may be counter-productive (as witness how reports always have "summaries").

I feel that a lot of the raw data, incident lists, regional analysis etc should be placed in a separate article, so that this article can describe, cite and refer to evidence, not just list reams of it. The backup article contains the full details of all incidents, all analysis, and people who want to will be able to look it up.

This way, readers are more likely to get interested and read the rest without losing the plot; organisationally it's simpler for collaborators too) FT2 02:10, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

I agree that we cannot sufficiently represent the relevant information in a single article. Kevin Baas | talk 19:06, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)

I think we'll need a page per state, for at least Florida and Ohio. How about "2004 Election (voting) controversies, Florida" for the title convention for state pages? Kevin Baas | talk 19:35, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)

i'm ok with that. --kizzle 19:38, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

Wed Nov 10th Vandalism Due to Increase Traffic?

Much vandalism attempted this afternoon, I believe it may be due to other election fraud sites and message boards linking to this article, is there a way to check traffic stats for this article for today? Zen Master 19:41, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

5 bucks says Rex went and cried to all his freeper friends to help him out. --kizzle 19:44, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

Sorry Zen Master, your first protection went right before I did a revert and it removed your protect. As for the vandalism...people need to grow up. I've said on the POTUS talk page that I'm not interested in political views, I'm interested in reporting facts. Let the people decide for themselves. -- Jwinters | Talk 19:55, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It's no use to add a vprotected tag to a page when it's not actually protected - you should either request protection on WP:RFPP or ask an admin directly. -- Schnee 20:00, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

you are saying only admins can add protection? sigh, ok. The nice header of protection didn't scare anyone away from vandalism it seems. very suspicious the counter kerry supporter vandalism, seemed odd. You are an admin Shcneelocke, can you protect the page? Zen Master 20:03, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sure, I did (and also listed the vandalising IPs on WP:VIP). And yeah, only admins can protect a page; the added tag is merely to inform viewers of the page. It doesn't have any effect itself. -- Schnee 20:09, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Someone had vandalized the talk page too... *sigh* Jwinters | Talk 20:05, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

That was the most humerous and ineffectual protection I've ever witnessed. - Lifefeed 20:10, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

True, was funny. I figured only admins could protect an article for fear of a vandal protecting a page in a vandaled state, but I thought i'd give it a try at least, nothing to lose as I had to get lunch. Maybe the protected header did actually scare some people away, I don't think the page is actually protected currently and there is no vandalism? Zen Master 20:16, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It is protected now. I went back to the article and the Edit tab is gone -- Jwinters | Talk 20:19, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Oh, it is. As I said above, I protected it a few minutes ago. :) -- Schnee 20:20, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

BTW, that was my first excersize in reverting an article :-) -- Jwinters | Talk 20:21, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Congrats. :) And thanks for helping out with it, BTW! -- Schnee 20:26, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Having just started looking at this article, I found the edit history just confusing. I wish that MediaWiki would show page protections and unprotections in the edit history somehow. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 21:04, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

That would be nice indeed. You can roughly judge by the addition and removal of the appropriate tags, but of course, that's just a kludge. -- Schnee 21:11, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

New pages created

• 2004 U.S. Election voting controversies, Florida
• 2004 U.S. Election voting controversies, Ohio

Or should they be true subpages?

• /Florida
• /Ohio

(I already started Florida, so we'd have to delete it if we go true subpages route.) Kevin Baas | talk 21:14, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)

In my humble opinion we should keep the article one page until its eventual switch to more of a historical context. Zen Master 21:22, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Subpages are deprecated (see WP:SP), so they shouldn't be used. -- Schnee 21:30, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Insert non-formatted text hereInsert non-formatted text here could someone dig up by-county or by-precinct exit poll data ? Please post here

Unprotected

Since this article is now featured on the Main page in the In the news section, I unprotected it again. Let's hope this works out and actually attracts valuable contributions, not just more vandalism. ^_~ -- Schnee 22:33, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

No way. I removed it from "In the News". If it is disputed, it doesn't belong on the Front page.

As a side note, this article is nothing but POV original research, since the Wikipedia authors are relying conjecture. We aren't citing any sources for the "controversy" – rather we're using points of data to fit a model which the authors already have determined to be the truth. Where is one reputable organization that has spoken about any massive irregularities? Many states haven't even released final numbers, let alone has there been enough time for any external sources to write a conclusion of their own investigations. We should be ashamed for violating our own principles be supporting this article. -- Netoholic @ 22:41, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)

The neutrality is not disputed. Nor is the content. The title, scope, and layout is disputed. We are all in strong consensus here. All the material is cited and verified. Kevin Baas | talk 22:48, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)

Does MSNBC count as reputable? Certainly more reputable than CBS. --kizzle 22:45, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

Rubbish. It's a statement of facts, and there's plenty of sources in the article given to back up everything. -- Schnee 22:43, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

There is also a plenty of sources claiming the opposite. For example, this weblog [12] which used to have fraud allegations and has now replaced them with a study from MIT/Caltech debunking the allegations. Andris 22:47, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

Great story, my favorite part is Anick's hypothesized reasons why Bush gained...

1. Significantly greater lying or refusal to speak to pollsters in Bush voters versus Kerry voters
2. Consistent/systematic errors in weighing demographic groups (are you kidding?)
3. A surge of Bush voters after 4 p.m., in all states (hahahahaha)
4. Systematic tampering/hacking of reported vote totals, in Bush's favor (this is a link debunking it, right?)

At most he's claiming that the relationship between exit polls and actual votes isn't far off, but I don't think he's even going that far. Definetely not debunking. --kizzle 22:56, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

It debunks the claim that there were significant differences between the states that used "e-vote" vs. other types of machines. It does not debunk the difference between exit polls and votes, as you correctly noticed. 69.157.79.73 23:59, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The study is pointing in the wrong direction, its concluding on a national level the difference between e-vote and other methods rather than focusing on swing states, thus even if it were true, it does not help to refute the premises, that key swing state votes via op-scan were modified, by using national statistics of e-vote vs. paper-trail voting. --kizzle 04:17, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Lying in polls has happened in other countries. In my country, we have far-right parties hated by everyone except their supporters. There have been occasions, when they got 10% in polls and 20% in actual election, because their supporters were too embarassed to tell the truth. Something like that might have happened in UK 1992 general election, when polls showed Labor ahead, but Conservatives won the election by 7%. Andris 23:44, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC) 23:43, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hypothesizing an across-the-board lying tendency only to one party would require an incredible amount of research, experimentation, and studies on the matter. One cannot simply throw a claim like that out without any justification. --kizzle 03:48, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

If this is POV original research then is all data analysis also POV research? Are you just saying it's impossible for someone to objectively statistically analyze election results? I admit parts of the article could use a clean up, but i'd hardly call it a disgrace of wikipedia POV principles. Please list your specific concerns with the article, I think we've been careful presenting it as data irregularities, not as a statement of fact that fraud definitely occurred. You seem to be saying the article is beyond hope of clean up? Does election controversy information not belong on wikipedia at all then? This article is effective an "in progress" article, your point about final results not being out yet is a poor one, we can only hope to work off of data that is available.

Please add all information debunking the allegations to the page. Zen Master 22:50, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Then that should be incorporated into the article as well. -- Schnee 22:51, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

There's more vandalism, specifically the disputed icon. -- Jwinters | Talk 23:17, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

And more vandalism. I'm not sure such a "controversial" or disputed article should be a "featured article" due to the likelihood of vandalism -- Jwinters | Talk 23:29, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Final votes

Naming

1. "2004 U.S. Election voting controversies"

1. If we keep it as it is, debate controversies and any other controversies would technically fall under the category --kizzle 22:44, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)
2. Kevin Baas | talk 22:53, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)
3. Assuming "Election" is changed to "election". JamesMLane 22:16, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

2. "2004 U.S. Election voting controversies and irregularities"

3. "2004 U.S. Election controversies and irregularities"

1. [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (hopefully!)]] 22:54, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)
2. Schnee 22:52, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
3. Zen Master 23:03, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC) (responding to Kizzle above: We will have scope problems regardless of the title, we should define the scope no matter what, the title is somewhat secondary)

I'll have to come back later to look over all the new talk comments and cast any votes I choose to, but I just have to point out one thing now, which has been mentioned on this page by me and others: Wikipedia style, for article titles and for internal headers, uses sentence case. Specifically, for article titles: "Do not capitalize second and subsequent words unless the title is a proper noun (such as a name) or is otherwise almost always capitalized, e.g. use John Wayne but Computer game." (from Wikipedia:Naming conventions#Lowercase second and subsequent words) Would anyone who's already voted object or change their votes if the alternatives were brought into conformity by lowercasing "Election" in each? JamesMLane 00:35, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

fine by me :) --kizzle 04:20, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Sub-pages

1. The page should be maintained as one for the time-being

1. kizzle 22:44, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)
2. Schnee 22:52, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
3. Zen Master 23:03, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
4. If the article gets too long, daughter articles are a better solution than sub-pages. JamesMLane 22:16, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

2. The page should have separate pages that go in-depth about certain states (such as 2004_U.S._Election_voting_controversies,_Florida & 2004_U.S._Election_voting_controversies,_Ohio)

1. Kevin Baas | talk 22:53, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)
2. [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (hopefully!)]] 22:54, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

New Organizational Layout

1. Proposal 1

2. Proposal 2

1. kizzle 22:44, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)
2. Zen Master 23:03, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC) (Note: Proposal 2 was not a final proposal but more importantly it was mostly implemented on the page yesterday, no one seems to have noticed/complained... :-)

3. None of the above'

'

1. JamesMLane 22:16, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Original research

From Wikipedia:No original research:

Wikipedia is not the place for original research such as "new" theories (Wikisource is).

Wikipedia is not a primary source. Specific factual content is not the question. Wikipedia is a secondary source (one that analyzes, assimilates, evaluates, interprets, and/or synthesizes primary sources) or tertiary source (one that generalizes existing research or secondary sources of a specific subject under consideration). A Wikipedia entry is a report, not an essay. Please cite sources.

My contention is that we are drawing conclusions of our own with this article, not reporting the conclusions of reputable primary sources. The individual data points are not the issue, as those are from good sources. The problem is the words being put around that data, and the conclusions being reached. That is the major problem with this article right now. -- Netoholic @ 22:57, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)

Well, let me clarify, is there a difference between a conclusion of fraud and a conclusion of data irregularity? If so would your point only apply to conclusions of fraud, so data irregularities would be more allowed? Either way we should fix it. Zen Master 23:20, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Cite sources? The article is a deluge of citations. There are too many sources. If you see anything missing a source, I'm sure we can find 10-20 sources for you upon request. Kevin Baas | talk 23:31, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)

Cite sources for the conclusions (see below). The data is one thing, but this article draws its own serious conclusions based on that - and that is the Original Research problem I'm talking about. -- Netoholic @ 23:37, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any conclusions. Kevin Baas | talk 23:45, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)

Then this article should not draw any of its own. That leaves us with an article that is simply a collection of external links to news articles that each only discuss small aspects of the "controversy". That is not worthy of our encyclopedia. -- Netoholic @ 00:00, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

I meant that I'm not aware of this article drawing any conclusions. Remind me to be less laconic when talking with you.

So you're saying that we have to choose between two supposed evils (which in theory apply to any articlem, and therefore your complaint is reducto ad absurdum), and therefore that this article shouldn't exist?

You are exagerrating something that is to an extent unavoidalbe and is being seriously worked on via organization and scope discussions on this page, in order to persuade. That kind of talk goes in one of my ears and out the other. Sorry for my irritated tone. Kevin Baas | talk 00:18, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

IMO, this article is somewhat POV, even if it's a POV I agree with. There are no good sources cited, mostly some rather cursory correlations with no controlling for known demographic factors. For example, optical-scan machines are not evenly distributed, so demographic changes may correlate with changes in optical-scan results simply because of where they're located. Would other explanations, such as an across-the-board increase in Republican turnout in all counties (optical-scan and not) result in the same correlations seen here? There's no attempt to answer questions like that. This is why they are just some guy with a webpage, not actual published studies: They don't meet any reasonable criteria of statistical analysis, and would never make it through peer review. Until we have some reliable sources, I don't think this article really has anything worth writing. --Delirium 00:09, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Delirium, you are concluding for the reader by stating alternative conclusive theories, or basically conclusive theories in general about op-scan machines. This page should and is entirely justified to note the correlation between discrepencies of counties with optical-scan and those without. To conclude that this alone constitutes "proof" that the voters were duped is an entirely different matter. Stating the mathematical correlation is *not* POV. Stating that because of this fact, there is voter fraud or anything of the nature "because X is Y and P is Q, this is wrong" is concluding for the reader and might evidence POV.

Just on a side note, your hypothesis about across-the-board voter turnout seems highly unlikely, how is it that a significant amount of counties leaning strongly towards the democratic side in registered voters become "republican strongholds overnight" as Keith Olbermann points out. And how is it that in all those counties there are tens of thousands of extra votes above and beyond the total registered voters? Your theory could not account for either of these two facts and is directly contrary to both. (in the nicest way possible) ;) --kizzle 03:46, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Please offer evidence for your claim that it does not "meet any reasonable criteria of statistical analysis"? How can you possibly say that? Election results should be given the same consideration as statistical analysis on this page, why do you favor "official" sources?. Anyone is free to offer evidence against the current statistical analysises with their own on the page. Isn't the point of wikipedia as a 'peer reviewed encyclopedia? Again the article really should be thought of as "in progress", I suggested putting the rapidly changing current events header on the page a few days ago. Zen Master 00:37, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The evidence is that none has been published: Just some guys with websites. They have not even submitted their analysis to peer-reviewed journals or conferences, much less had it accepted there. There is no controlling for demographic factors; no discussion of various causational hypotheses and relative likelihoods; and in general none of the work that is standard in statistical analyses. It's just a dump of raw correlations, which are useless: Correlation does not imply causation, as anyone working in the social sciences knows, so if you're making causational hypotheses (such as "this data suggests voter fraud"), then you need to back them up with discussion other than raw correlations, such as correcting for known factors and discussing why alternate explanations are less likely. --Delirium 00:40, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

One of those guys with websites is the official Florida vote count website, check the external analysis where she gets her numbers from. Be patient, MSNBC's Countdown will not be the only major news network to carry it. --kizzle 03:51, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

They have submitted it for internet peer review, how is that different from wikipedia? I can provide articles about the mainstream press "supressing" this story for one reason or another, would that allay your concerns as to why such stories don't exist? These statistical analysises have given a very low probability that the data irregularities appeared by chance. I've seen no counter statistical analysis that explains the data irregularities -- feel free to perform one. Zen Master 00:53, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"Internet peer review" is not peer review. I'm talking about submitting it to actually competent journals or conferences, not some guy with a geocities site. --Delirium 02:02, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Primary sources

First step, and I'll need all your help, is please add to this list links or citations to primary sources that have drawn conclusions (positive or negative) on the issue of election irregularities. From these, we will summarize the views, and present them. -- Netoholic @ 23:12, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)

I agree with the request. If people here are going to argue that Wikipedia users doing analysis on raw data doesn't constitute original research, the least you could do is post your data sources and methods so that they can be verified. Particularly in the Ohio article, I'm concerned that some of the conclusions, such as the Cuyahoga County correlation, are not statistically sound. Rhobite 14:03, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Sources which have drawn a conclusion about overall election irregularities

The stop hand totallydisputed image is BUSH? wtf

Someone is messing with the totallydisputed header image? Zen Master 23:25, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

What is being disputed?

I am completely unaware of any significant dispute of neutrality or factual accuracy on this article. Why does it have the dispute tag? Kevin Baas | talk 23:36, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)

For one, the "results plot -- Florida" is speculation on causation from correlation without discussing why this causational hypothesis is likely. One explanation for the data is that in rural areas (which correlate well with small precincts), support for Bush among Democrats was relatively high. Another explanation is that there was vote fraud. The article currently suggests the latter explanation without explaining why the former explanation is less likely. Indeed, exit polling shows the former explanation to be much more likely, as many more Democrats voted for Bush (14%) than Republicans voted for Kerry (7%): So the 45-degree line is not what you'd expect from the exit polling. --Delirium 00:35, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

[13] Don't forget to scroll down. Kevin Baas | talk 00:47, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

I don't see how that link addresses my points. It's still using registered voters by party as its baseline, which will over-predict Kerry votes since many Florida Democrats did not support Kerry, according to exit polls. Using exit poll numbers as the baseline would predict a trend line of closer to 50 degrees than 45 degrees. --Delirium 02:05, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Firstly, you should be using the raw data from exit polls, not the ones on CNN or what have you. (otherwise you're tacitly assuming a conclusion) Secondly, you should use the ones for Florida, not the national. And finally, you should go ahead and factor that in, and see if there's still a significant discrepancy. Just looking at the scale of the left axis of this graph, I'm guessing it's not going to make a lot of difference. Kevin Baas | talk 03:01, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

I think we need to find (or emphasize if its not found) the distribution of rural areas using op-scan and those that aren't and compare registered voters to actual votes by party. That would clear a lot of these issues up. --kizzle 03:54, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Concur. --User:Mickazoid 04:54, Nov 11, 2004 (EDT)

No, I emphatically should not go and factor that in and see if there's a significant discrepancy, and your amateurish analyses should be removed as well. Wikipedia is not a venue for original research. --03:21, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

Put differently (in order to preserve the intent I interpret in Kizzle's post), would your concur with "Important to the validity of this issue is the distribution of rural areas using op-scan and those that aren't and a comparison of registered voters to actual votes by party. That would clear a lot of these issues up."?

It is certainly one of many factors that ought to be studied, but not by us. We ought to wait until someone respectable has completed a reasonable statistical analysis of the available data. Until then, simply saying "there are no conclusive analyses" is better than quoting some guy with an ImageShack account. --Delirium 03:31, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

And what process, other than the reasoned discourse here, do you propose for examining the factors and issues? Prejudice or bias about ImageShack or GeoCities (hosting companies) is a weak assertion of invalidity about the content at issue. Do you have relevant statistical analyses to share? Do you have specific information invalidating current assertions? That's where we should be concentrating.

Look, that's unfair. It was reasoned argument, I think characterising what Delirium had said to be bigoted it not very nice. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:52, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

By 'bigoted', I didn't mean a racist correlation. I've changed the word to 'Prejudice'. My apologies for any offense. - User:RyanFriesling 11:15p, 12 Nov 2004 (EDT)

I sitll think you're missing the point: It is not our job to perform statistical analyses, validate or invalidate assertions, or do any of this. We are an encyclopedia, and report on the state of accepted knowledge. If there is no accepted knowledge, we report that too. The fact that things are hosted at ImageShack and Geocities is prima facie evidence of their amateurish nature, and this is further confirmed by the poor quality of the statistical analysis, which is simply a raw correlation in a domain in which raw correlations are worse than useless. Saying "look at this correlation relating to voting machines!" is no more useful than pointing out the (true) fact that ice cream consumption is highly correlated to murder rates. They both happen to be facts, but neither fact alone is actually useful. --Delirium 11:24, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

I truly wish you would expend your knowledge of statistics in refining the information already present rather than opting for its complete removal. --kizzle 20:33, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

I would also like to call for those that dispute the factual accuracy of the page to copy and paste any potentially infringing sections verbatim here for further discussion as to remove the tag as quickly as possible. --kizzle 04:08, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

News page?

This article was on the news list on the main page a few minutes ago. What happened? --ComplexZeta 00:01, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

Ah it's back now. --ComplexZeta 00:06, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

User:Netoholic seems to be intent on keeping it off of the frontpage at all costs. -- Schnee 00:17, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

That's not too surprising if he's a Bush supporter, given how many people view the main page. --ComplexZeta 00:21, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

I am not a Bush supporter, could care less. The problem is that this article is poorly written, such that front page prominence is damaging to Wikipedia. It also is prone to vandalism, and is still in what I consider very rough draft form. The data and wording is also controversial. Any one of these would be reason not to have it on the front page. Please don't attribute qualities about me without warrant. -- Netoholic @ 01:27, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

I agree with netoholic, while he may support Bush, that is irrelevent. This article is firstly not in a state where it should be featured on a main page, and we need to heavily check sources before we can place it on the news page. Constructive criticism of this page is vastly important, as it only helps refine the evidence and material we already have. --kizzle 03:57, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

I don't think this belongs on the front page as it currently stands. It's not very much in the news, and there are no peer-reviewed studies (or even reasonably comprehensive studies) we cite, just some quick calculation of correlations and conjectures of causation with no controlling for demographic or other factors. Until it's either in the news more or we get some solid statistical analysis, I don't think it belongs on the mainpage. --Delirium 00:22, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Delirium, if you would like to help contribute, please list any sources or calculations at the present moment which you feel are inaccurate or irrelevent. :) --kizzle 03:58, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

To pick just one of literally hundreds of problems with these amateurish calculations, the correlation between e-voting and exit poll discrepancy is meaningless. It's only an even remotely suggestive correlation if you assume the distribution of e-voting vs. paper voting is random, which does not appear to be the case. The standard way of doing statistical analyses like this is to identify a set of potentially relevant factors, and then try to show that one of them is highly predictive even when the others are controlled for. This analysis has not even attempted to do that. --Delirium 03:35, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

The 'There were two kinds of issues:' section says nothing in my opinion

What is the "There were two kinds of issues section" in the intro trying to say? It makes no sense, is very confusingly worded and seems in opposition to the essense of the intro paragraphs. I vote for its removal or significant clean up. Zen Master 00:29, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Concur. Kevin Baas | talk 00:35, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

Note on exit polling

Exit polling is reliable and should be thought of as a check and balance against fraud (as I originally wrote in the article). That is why it is important to address the current election's "data irregularities" (assuming no fraud took place) because errors does NOT mean we should completely discount exit polling, instead we should figure out the irregularities to improve exit polling techniques for the next election (again, assuming no fraud took place this time). Completely discounting exit polling is an election fraudster's dream, but that does not mean to say exit polling can't be improved or that the data is not in fact wrong in this case. There should be more independent exit pollsters anyway, especially now that it has pointed to potential fraud ("they" will not make that mistake again [this time assuming there was fraud]) Zen Master 00:47, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Concur. The argument that the exit poll was simply flawed, according to statistical analysis performed by a former MIT professor, has a 1 in 50,000 chance of being sound. Kevin Baas | talk 00:50, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

Mainstream opinion appears to be split on this. Turn on the TV and you'll hear people arguing the point. Wikipedia is not a site for original research, so if people are split on it, all we do is report that people are split on it. --Delirium 02:03, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Don't think of it as "original research", I think of it as being potentially valid criticisms of official election results, it was only broken off of the election article(s) because of size. Zen Master 02:07, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

But it is original research. --Delirium 02:20, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

It is the only kind of research that can possibly exist on this topic right now. Kevin Baas | talk 02:27, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

Then this article should be deleted. Wikipedia is not a place for original research. If there is no research to summarize, it does not belong in this encyclopedia. In any case, it's not even good original research. It just dumps correlations, which are useless. It makes no causal arguments and performs no rigorous analysis. --Delirium 02:31, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

While I do not personally believe this fits under "original research", I do believe that its inclusion in such a term is arguably possible. However, we are merely striving to collect together as much as possible evidence from other sources. The inclusion of material not being blasted on CNN now and then I think would be acceptable as long as all the material is incredibly sourced. Talk of deletion to me is a little dramatic. And I see you have a background in statistics from the manner in which you talk.

Causations cannot be proven, only highly probable correlations yield a belief in causation. We can only infer causation and thus we must use correlation in order to do so. Many of the external analysis in this page feature numbers of statistics extremely well outside the margin of error, thus if you find it to be poor research, please help us by telling us specifically what is wrong with the external analysis' usage of methodology or source data. --kizzle 04:07, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

You are still missing the point. It would be and was acceptable inside the election results articles in the "election controversy" sub-section, as such it only exists currently as its own article because of size. It's not "original research", it's the other half or balance of point of view of the election articles which present the official view of what happened on Nov 2nd. Zen Master 02:42, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Point 2: If an event is going on, whether the fact that it is going on is significant enough to justify an article, and whether there is sufficient material, is the pre-emininet criteria for having an article. From there, you do the best with what you got and don't complain. Kevin Baas | talk 02:51, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

"orphaned"

I have de-linked this article from most of the visible encyclopedia articles (leaving talk pages, etc.). I strongly feel that this article is going in a direction we at Wikipedia do not want to go. We're not a news agency, we aren't a primary source. We cite reliable sources, and if that means we have to wait, then we wait. We do not need to be on the cutting edge. We need to wait until other reliable groups have made their analysis. This article is currently just a laundry list of external links (most to partisan sources), along with a lot of number-crunching done by a few very resourceful Wikipedians. This is not how we should be doing this, though. We must wait for other groups to come to their own conclusions, and then summarize those findings.

I supported Kerry, and I do worry about irregularities, but we are not here to do the work of those who have stronger issues with the election. Please join me in sourcing this article properly. At a future date, we should merge a minimal section into the main election coverage. Please don't let Wikipedia become a soapbox. Thank you all. -- Netoholic @ 04:46, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

I explained to netholic in #wikipedia on IRC earlier how and why he was wrong, but he failed to even address my counter points. He should be reported. Zen Master 04:51, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

He also removed that whole section from the 2004 U.S. election in progress [14] - Ta bu shi da yu 04:58, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Why duplicate the same content all over? Centralize it here until RELIABLE sources say there is even a controversy. -- Netoholic @ 05:01, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

Well, you blanked this page and removed that other section also. Call me suspicious, but that looks like you want it gone totally, and you don't want to centralise the info. - Ta bu shi da yu 05:20, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes Netoholic is suspicious, since others that supported him on IRC suggested the article be condensed and moved back to the election in progress article, not orphaned/deleted. He claims he orphaned it so it could be "worked on". His argument is full of contradictions and insults, I have an IRC chat log. Zen Master 05:59, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm a non-US citizen, so I didn't vote for anyone, and I think that there are better ways to rig an election than with the vote tallies. In other words, I don't think Bush rigged the election though electronic voting machines.

That said, this article is worth keeping. More people believe the stuff presented here than truly wacky crap like Time Cube. That mainstream news aren't reporting it does not make it original research. As far as I can tell, the article mostly consists of summerising various statistics that can be independently varified at numerous locations. How is that original research? If wikipedians were out doing polls, that would be original research. Colating already existing statistics is exactly what most articles that use statistics do.

The rest of it seems to be quoting web sites. So what if they're not CNN? There are a heck of a lot of articles on stuff that was not sources from major news organisations on here. Surely the NPOV means that we can't just accept major news sources as gospel!

I think this article is about seeing gremlins where none exist. That said, I think it's important this article does exist. Wikipedia aims to document human knowledge. Some people hold the view that the Republicans may have rigged the election. For that reason, we should document that view. Shane King 05:12, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Netoholic, if you think this article shouldn't exist, you can list it on VfD. If you think particular passages are inappropriate, you can discuss them here, as you've done. If you think the article is becoming a soapbox, you can make sure that the opposing POV is properly presented. You can use RfC to invite wider participation in making sure that all the contents are properly factual and NPOV. Deliberately making an article an orphan until it meets your personal standards is not an acceptable practice, though. I've been restoring the links, and I ask you to stop deleting them while we work on improving this article. JamesMLane 07:25, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The page is more like a collective blog than an encylopaedia entry. It's interesting, and as I have a long-standing concern about vote rigging I'm all for it being discussed - but it just doesn't seem quite Wikipedia material. Maybe a different wiki is needed for this kind of in-progress news discussion, because having too much of it risks changing the character of Wikipedia as a an encyclopaedia, i.e. a source of established knowledge. Rd232 20:01, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I have suggested we add the in progress current events header to the page. Also note Netoholic has only discussed things after being rebuked for making changes he knew many disagreed with, which harms his case because some of his concerns are valid. Check his history. Zen Master 20:40, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Unreliable data

Can we hash this out on this page, rather than have an edit war? For instance, can we say how the data is unreliable? - Ta bu shi da yu 06:37, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Unless anyone can provide verifiable sources for these items, they should be removed from the article. -- Netoholic @ 17:23, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

Information updated.

Manipulation of exit poll data

I moved "Manipulation of exit poll data" here because it is a conclusion based on two un-verified screenshots hosted on "some dude's" ISP. Worthless. Source it verifiably, and I'll add it back myself. -- Netoholic @ 06:51, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

umm, what if whoever put that up is the only person who happened to take screenshots of CNN.com at those times, and they didn't alter it? are we just going to forget about it? Is there any viable way of finding it another way, maybe google or other search engine caches? --kizzle 06:58, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, we on Wikipedia will forget about it if it cannot be verified. Leave speculation to other websites. It is not how we operate. -- Netoholic @ 07:01, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

It is sourced as coming from cnn.com, please prove that it did not. Also please work towards consensus building rather than acting unilaterally all the time. I deleted the redundant pasting of the content, no need for that, we have it in the history. Others note: he is removing links to this page on the other election pages. Zen Master 07:03, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Images can be faked. Find me a reliable source for that data. -- Netoholic @ 07:11, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

That's why it should be in the article, but clearly marked that it is an allegation that is in no way proven. That's the wikipedia way. We can verify that people are making the allegation, even if we can't verify the allegation is true. Shane King 07:15, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

prove that is was faked. Zen Master 07:13, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hi guys... reality check for the new editors here... it is YOUR burden to verify the info. and we do not post unverifiable data. IF this is going to continue to be a fight, I will give up and list this on VfD. -- Netoholic @ 07:20, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

I saw it with my own eyes. I'm sorry I don't have a time machine for you. It appears that the section should be modified, though, because apparently the manipulation of the exit poll data is standard procedure. Kevin Baas | talk 18:47, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

Exit Polls vs. Machine Tallies, by State (9 States)

I moved this out of the article. Source again is an image file from a non-verified source, this time stored on ImageShack. -- Netoholic @ 07:11, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

I respectfully request that you stop pasting article data into the talk page, we have it in history. Zen Master 07:13, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Seriously, we all need to chill before A) Deleting the Article and putting up a Re-direct or B) removing pieces altogether and putting them somewhere else. Dialog first. That's why there's a talk page, man. --kizzle 07:15, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

OK, I agree with Netoholic on this one. Unless the wayback machine or something else can verify the screenshots, they are pretty worthless. I more object to not discussing this and having revert wars over it. I also object to people blanking the page. Truly, unless someone can give us more reliable data then this stuff shouldn't really be used. - Ta bu shi da yu 07:19, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

But we can verify the screenshots exist, we just can't verify they're really of what they claim to be. Analogy time: we can't verify Jesus Christ is the son of God, so should we not mention that in the article? Of course not, we mention who thinks he's the son of God. Same here, we mention that there are some people who feel exit poll data was manipulated, without taking a stance whether it was or not. Shane King 07:28, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Shane, bad example. There is far more evidence that Jesus really existed than there is those screenshots were doctored or altered in some way! - Ta bu shi da yu 07:30, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Good example: can you verify Jesus was the son of God? check netaholic's history, he is allergic to debate. Zen Master 07:34, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm not saying Jesus didn't exist. I'm saying is Jesus the son of God? You can't prove it, it doesn't mean you shouldn't mention some people believe he is. Likewise, I don't think we can prove those screenshots are real. It doesn't mean we shouldn't report on them if we can find people who believe they are real. See Time Cube for a more extreame and probably less controversial example. Nearly everyone believes it's a complete load of crap crank theory. Doesn't mean we don't report on it. We have a duty to report what people believe. We do not have a duty to determine whether what they believe is true, that would be original research! Shane King 07:47, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Look, you're talking about belief in a religious figure. Yes, that can't be proven. This is a different argument however: this is not the same as saying that facts taken from a screen capture of the CNN website, which is highly unreliable, should be included in this article. Either these screenshots or facts, or they aren't. It has nothing to do with my beliefs. Can we verify them or not? - Ta bu shi da yu 08:00, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You're confusing my argument here. I'm acknowledging we can't verify them. But we can (and have) verified that some people believe them to be true, and should report them as such. I don't care whether you believe them to be true or not: all we need is for some people to believe them to be true, and we can report on those people's beliefs. Something like "Such and such people claim that CNN was involved in a coverup of the exit poll data, because blah blah blah". The reader is left to make up their own mind whether they feel the screenshots are credible, and if so, whether there are other explainations. That's our job here: report on things as they are, let the reader decide whether the screenshots are real or fake. As a reader, I believe they're probably real, but they also probably just show data entry or some other issues at CNN and nothing more sinister than that. I think other people should be allowed to make up their own minds like I have. Shane King 08:08, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Do we "have a duty to report what people believe"? We have to draw the line somewhere. We can't report every allegation in every blog. If an argument based on the screenshot is being advanced by only one person, or a handful of people (none of them experts), then I think we should exclude it. If it reaches some minimal (and admittedly ill-defined) level of attention, we can mention it in passing. If it becomes a substantial public issue, we can present it in more detail. On the present state of the evidence as presented on this Talk page, the point is too marginal to include. ShaneKing, if you think that "Such and such people" are talking about it, who are they? JamesMLane 08:24, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

A google search for CNN "exit poll" cover up finds a lot of blogs. So I guess you could attribute them as "political bloggers". There's no reason people have to be experts: wikipedia is written from a NPOV, not an expert POV. I think it's worth including, as we seem to have a low standard for the number of people who hold views: once again, I point to Time Cube, which as far as I know, Gene Ray is the only person who seriously believes it. We include that (in a lot more detail than just passing, look at how long it is) because it gets internet attention, this issue is also getting internet attention, so we should include it. Remember that wikipedia is not paper, there's no reason to exclude something on the basis that it takes too much room. If the article gets to big, we can just split it off into smaller ones. Shane King 09:43, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

I moved this back in, with more detailed source info. Removing it wholesale was, in my opinion, counter to the WikiWay.

Discrepancies Map

In this section, Image:2004 us discrepancy.gif has no source information for the data used to make this chart. As such, the whole section should be removed since it is using this information to draw it's conclusions. -- Netoholic @ 15:05, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

I made the map, source for the vote count is wikipedia, and source for the edison/mitofsky exit polls for battleground states released just before nov. 3 1am fitting of the exit polls to the vote count. Kevin Baas | talk 18:51, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

Protection

I have requested this page be protected. Far too many reverts. - Ta bu shi da yu 07:29, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The dubious tags are a better option. If they don't get reverted I'll remove my request. - Ta bu shi da yu 07:34, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

dubious sounds good to me. Zen Master 07:34, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Articles Dismissing Fraud Claims

Here are two articles dealing with many claims listed in this entry - [15] [16]. They're from Slate and Salon, neither of which can be considered conservative, and agree that much of the speculation currently circulating is baseless.

Also, could somebody please find what exit poll was used for the "Exit Polls vs. Machine Tallies, by State (9 States)" graphic? It isn't the initial leaked results, is it? Those would be from far too early in the day to predict anything. Also, how come only nine states are displayed in it? Giving all the information would be far better. Finally, the charts themselves seem slightly deceitful, as the scale on some of them ends at 60 and others at 55.

If anybody can find final, raw exit poll data, that would be very interesting to compare to the official count. I think that comparisons with the exit poll data from past elections would also be helpful.

Unless someone can find information on those two CNN images, it might be best to ignore them for now. We don't know what reasoning might be behind them. Futhermore, we can't even know that they're genuine. Anyone could take a screenshot from CNN and edit them so the numbers say something different. If the veracity of the screenshots can be confirmed, they should be considered. If not, regard them with suspicion. --Words to sell 09:46, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Supposedly no other states had exit poll vs results discrepancies, notice the exit poll discrepancy map above...

as far as scale goes, supposedly if exit polling techniques and data are both sound a greater than 3% error between exit polls and final results is statistically impossible. The problem starts because the exit polls are "weighted" after the fact to more conform which actual results (national vote sample size), which seems to me to defeat the purpose of exit polls.

Would finding the person that made those cnn.com screen shots and having them attest to creating them be enough? (i doubt it). I saw them linked off of democraticunderground.com before i saw them in this article. Those images are dubious at best yes, we could perhaps condense that section down to "there were accusations of after the fact exit poll data manipulation which was described as fixing an 'error', but no details on this error were provided". Ideally we need all versions of exit poll data, not just the final version (which is "weighted" for some strange reason). We also should have someone more knowledgeable fill out the exit poll article so we would have a small understanding of the math behind and reliability of exit polling. Zen Master 10:11, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Article tag

I have tagged the article with what seems the most appropriate tag, {{Controversial3}}.

Controversial3 means:

• This topic contains controversial issues ...
• Some of which have reached a consensus for approach and neutrality ...
• And some of which may be disputed.

This seems to describe the article perfectly. A large number of concerns have been agreed, and others remain still disputed.

Please sign below if you agree with this tag, in order that a consensus can be agreed and the article stops being revert/edited back and forth between no tag ("All OK"), "NPOV" and "totallydisputed". FT2 17:45, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

No, the "controversial" tag is one you just invented. It is watered down, and does not attract attention from people who watch for disputed articles. I dispute this article completely, and so I have placed the tag. Satisfy my concerns rather than watering them down. I insist that {{totallydisputed}} remain. -- Netoholic @ 18:11, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

Do you dispute: "Electronic touch screen voting machines. The reliability and accuracy has not been established, and in most cases they were not designed with a paper trail or auditability in mind. Many computer scientists have claimed the potential of these machines to be tampered with was high, citing such possibilities as the machines being reprogrammed on election day. The election incident reporting system (EIRS (http://www.voteprotect.org)) has recieved many reports from voters and election officials of votes for Kerry being recorded as votes for Bush. The fact that the CEO of one electronic voting machine company was quoted in 2003 as saying he wanted to "deliver" the next election for Bush has further fuelled suspicions of fraud."? What about the section Expert testimony on quality of current voting machines - do you totally dispute this section? - Ta bu shi da yu 02:14, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

If you check the templates section, you'll find I have an active interest in the Wiki Templates generally - its not just invented for today. Templates are very important, they are a way that articles become correctly tagged with appropriate descriptions, and like articles themselves, if an appropriate tag does not yet exist, and the matter is a general one for any article, then it is at times appropriate to create it as a template. It's more important if a correct Template does not exist, for then people will use a less appropriate one, and in Wikipedia, less appropriate is equivalent to more misleading. In this case, Wikipedia will have many articles which are controversial, and where some parts are agreed and others not. It is inaccurate to label all parts of such article, as disputed or factually incorrect, when this may not be the case, the same as it is inappropriate to omit a suitable tag when parts are in dispute. We aim for neutrality here. The acid test is not "which template is the one I'm used to or the one I want to prop up my side". Its "which wording will most accurately describe the full position to a reader". With respect, Controversial3 does that correctly and accurately, totallydisputed is less correct and less accurate. Translation - focus on what serves wiki best, you should have no personal stance on this article, but be utterly neutral when choosing how to amend it. FT2 19:11, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Please Be On The Lookout For Major Unilateral Changes, historically by User:Netoholic

I object strongly to the above section title. I have asked that it be changed, since it implies wrong-doing on my part. I choose to leave it here as an example to others about how not to handle conflict. -- Netoholic @ 18:13, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

(To: Netoholic) - I am not even neccesarily against it, but when you go off and nominate images used on this election controversy page for deletion without mentioning it here on the talk page and even worse you requested a "speedy delete" when you are definitely aware there are numerous people that disagree with you tells me you may not understand or respect the wikipedia guidelines on controversy resolution. Here is your request: http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Images_for_deletion#November_11 Even if the images are themselves unverifiable please give us time to find other sources for that data. Zen Master 16:37, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Update, Netaholic errantly decided to move this to a user talk page. Netaholic: you fail to realize there are many other people that contribute to this article, it's not just "me vs you". It is relevant here so everyone can be on the look out for your unilateral actions, which moving a talk page discussion somewhere else is just one more example of. I modified the section title to allay any of your talk page appropriate concerns. Zen Master 17:26, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

If you are going to continue to flame me openly rather than address the serious concerns about this article, you are not going to make any friends here nor help your cause. -- Netoholic @ 17:40, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

I would strongly advise you to stop editing the comments of others. Besides, with the speed that comments are removed by yourself from your talk page is extraordinary! - Ta bu shi da yu 03:20, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You do have some valid concerns about the page but you are not going about them in a consensus building manner. Zen Master 17:51, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Why is it those that are most guilty, throw the stones. I invite you to re-read #Unreliable data and #Original research above. No concerns about the data's verifiability or reliability have been addressed. -- Netoholic @ 18:04, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

You were present on IRC when User:Neutrality and others said it was not original research. I stand by my history in this matter, how do you explain your history? Zen Master 18:09, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Quite a few of us on IRC said it was original research. Don't cast this as a "unilateral" thing. Rhobite 21:35, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Which is why discussing on IRC is a Bad Idea. If this was on the talk page there would be some form of transparency. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:20, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The unilateral part is deleting/redirecting without asking first. Discussion first of portions that constitute original research is fine. --kizzle 21:38, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Yes that and please note the original research claim is but one small piece of Netoholic's unilateral action puzzle. By all means check his history for details, what I say here can not possibly convince you as much as that can. NH never debated or took opposing viewpoints seriously, to the detriment of some of his concerns which admittedly may be valid. Zen Master 21:43, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Reads carefully the article, reversions and history

Netaholic, I think that you need to pause and understand that the above is not a flame. Its not even a personal insult, except to the extent you feel upset at being singled out by its comments.

The first thing he says is "errantly" - that means without being asked he is crediting you that it was just a mistake and not accusing you of doing it deliberately. The rest of it is saying, a lot of people are working and interested in this article, so one shouldn't just make changes which affect it in a big way, without discussing. I don't think he was getting at you, you might re-read and see that it's not an attack.

If you've got real concerns, maybe you can list them below in a short numbered list, and lets quickly see if we can reach consensus, rather than "edit first, discuss later" which has characterised this article recently. FT2 17:55, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

(PS - Ive removed the name from the title of the section as that really does make him look bad, for the sake of less friction and fairness. Hope it helps consensus building) FT2 17:58, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

I've tried that in the sections above. Now users are re-adding those sections and dubious data and removing my disputed tags. That is why I have lost patience with this group. I have requested outside comment on this article, and if that does not work, then I will ask for deletion of this partisan junk. -- Netoholic @ 18:06, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

Had you gone about your editing in a less abrasive manner (yes, that's right, "abrasive" — my vote against your adminship was right all along!) then this article would not be such a hot-bed of controversy. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:20, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Incorrect claims of "original research" or "dubious data"

Netaholic, describing matters that respected House Committee members saw fit to write not one but two letters to the GOA, where Federal Hearings have heard expert testimony as to the seriousness and potential for these issues, which can be found in the reputable printed national papers of many countries, where many thousands of individual American voters have stated they witnessed incidents that suggested the same personally, and where official data of the US government itself suggests an significant issue, as "partisan junk" suggests you are highly partial in this matter. Are you?

I have also looked up the guideline pages you cite. They state as follows:

1. "Original research" - says specifically this is not original research in any way. Not only the article does not propose any original idea, but also the guideline states specifically "However all of the above constitute acceptable content once they have become a permanent feature of the public landscape, for example if ... the ideas have become newsworthy [or] they have been repeatedly and independently documented..."
2. "Unreliable data" - does not appear to exist when I search for the link, and I have not found a sysop who knows this page. Please relink correctly if it does.

Guideline Wikipedia:Cite sources states of opinions being used within Wiki articles: "If you consult an external source while writing an article, citing it is basic intellectual honesty. More than that, you should actively search for [but are not required to find] authoritative references to cite ... The main point is to help the reader * cite whatever you think will be most helpful. This applies when writing about opinions"

From this we conclude that Wiki's guides positively allow non-authoritative or partisan sources to be used (as they should for no source is guaranteed omniscient), and also explicitely allows citing of opinions. Provided their weaknesses if any are referred to in the article, the article itself will remain wiki-neutral. The only requirement is that the source, together with any clarification needed of its quality, is given, and with that I agree. Instead of reverting and complaining "its not neutral", why not ask yourself why users are re-adding things you delete, and then list here exactly the changes you want to see fixed so others can discuss rather than telling them "I'm doing this without consensus". FT2 18:32, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

The 'Opposing View' and discussion has been moved from the Vote page to the Talk page. At least it wasn't deleted. -- RyanFreisling

Might we aggree that it is Kerry not Gore in this election

In the section about Floridian tallies actually going down for the democratic contender, the candidate is given as "Gore". Whether this is sneaky vandalism (and, no, I will not check the history for it) or whether the whole quotation and/or section is a spoof, it probably had best be soonest mended by someone who gives a fig. -- Cimon 19:57, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

I investigated and it turns out that quotation referred to the 2000 election, clarified it and changed header to "Recent historical election irregularities". Zen Master 20:43, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Everything Contested

even the opening template to say this page is controversial is contested? sheesh. --kizzle 21:25, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, there was a systematic attempt using every "wikipedia trick in the book" by User:Netoholic to undermine the quality of the page. Note some of the article's images were also submitted for deletion as well, links removed, sections removed, orphaning attempt, stuff "moved" to talk pages, etc etc etc, all without comment (until after the fact). Not to mention various other things and a steadfast refusal to engage in an honest debate over the issues. This actually worked against his cause, some of his concerns are valid.

I am going to switch out the Controversial3 header for totallydisputed, that is less disputed currently. Zen Master 21:31, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yup, it was too controversial :) FT2 01:32, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

Arguing in the news articles section

I think this edit just says it all: [17]

Kevin baas is putting his own debate into the news articles section, attempting to discredit articles which don't fit his already-chosen theory: "Discusses a report that claims to outline problems with the early exit poll data wich "skewed" the data, but only makes one unsubstantiated hypothesis that would skew the poll: Repulicans were more wary of pollers. Also makes unsubstantiated ad hominem attack on internet users."

Rhobite 21:33, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Is there any hope of this article becoming NPOV when users are making edits such as this one? Rhobite 21:45, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Rhobite, I attempted to go closer to neutral with my original posting of the two additional "debunk" articles. I changed the wording to "purporting to debunk" rather than "allegedly debunks" which reads too negatively, and not neutrally.

--Radioastro 21:43, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"allegedly" and "purporting to" are pretty much the same in my opinion, why the tense change as well? Zen Master 21:46, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Pretty much the same, I just felt allegedly was more negative. I am truly striving for neutrality here. I do feel this is an important article, but I feel that it is highly biased still, and don't want to encourage negativity in any of the postings.

--Radioastro 22:00, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Rhobite, what I wrote was the truth. It takes about an elementary school education to know how to interpret poll numbers. there's nothing fancy or esoteric about it. and that unsubstantiated hypothesis is the only thing said in that article that could skew the data. I just don't want poeple to be misled. That article can be very misleading to a reader that doesn't employ critical thinking skills. Kevin Baas | talk 21:50, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

Kevin... sorry, but who cares that you "don't want poeple to be misled". Your agenda on this issue is irrelevant. We write encyclopedia entires here, and hopefully they have the benefit of time and reflection. Immediacy is not a requirement, and your strong convictions don't matter in that regard. Go climb a soapbox somewhere else while we try and fix this article. -- Netoholic @ 22:17, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

Since someone else returned your comment, I guess I'll have to waste my time responding to your invective. (BTW, I deleted it in accordance with the wikipedia policy on personal attacks.)

Firstly, I don't know who cares that I don't want to be misled. Probably the best way to find out is by doing a survey. But it's not really relevant who cares, as last time I checked, wikipedia had a policy of factual accuracy.

Secondly, I hope so to.

Thirdly, I don't have strong convictions.

Fourthly, I will not climb a soapbox somewhere, and next time phrase your suggestion as such and politely, rather than a command. I do not respond to commands, I respond to needs and polite requests.

Fifthly, I believe, and I think the majority will concur with me on this, that I have made more constructive edits than you have, so it seems that I am part of the "we" involved in the "fixing". Kevin Baas | talk 20:20, 2004 Nov 12 (UTC)

And lastly, I do not appreciate your invective. Kevin Baas | talk 20:20, 2004 Nov 12 (UTC)

I'll ignore the sideways personal attack, and remind you simply to follow NPOV and let the reader draw their own conclusions. Conducting and interpreting a statistically valid poll is not, as you assume, child's play. These people invented exit polls, and when they admit flaws in their own results, I believe them over you. Rhobite 21:54, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

These people are bs'ing. What is "vetted and processed" supposed to mean? all they did was weight it by the vote count. you're putting subtle pov in because you're believing people's propaganda. Kevin Baas | talk 21:59, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

Absolutely none of the suggestions above are the proper course to take in order to make this section, or this article better. Please read Wikipedia:Weasel words. -- Netoholic @ 21:55, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

Substantial->32

This definitely should be cited. Is this just in one state or nationwide? is this counted from voteprotect.org logs? Kevin Baas | talk 22:11, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

Until this is verified, I'm going to return it to the vague wording. Kevin Baas | talk 22:17, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

The article says 32. "Substantial" is not NPOV. If you have more cases, put in a cite, otherwise it's just editorializing.

I beg to differ. 32 is non-factual unless it is cited and supported.

"At least 32 have been reported" is more acceptable. Kevin Baas | talk 22:35, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

Here is the quote from the article that is sited to support the proposition: "The Election Protection Coalition received a total of 32 reports of touch-screen voters who selected one candidate only to have another show up on the summary screen, Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a coalition member."

There are other places that have probably recieved reports that have not been reported to the EPC. And the EIRS has been recieving about 350 reports a day. Kevin Baas | talk 22:43, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)

A county breaks breaks the reported 1,000 incident barrier!

[18] make that two. [19] Broward and Miami-Dade are very close. [20]