This bill would prohibit, on and after January 1, 2005, the Secretary of State from approving a direct recording electronic voting system that does not include an accessible voter verified paper audit trail, and prohibit, on and after January 1, 2006, a city or county from contracting for or purchasing a direct recording electronic voting system that does not include an accessible voter verified paper audit trail. In addition, the bill would require that, as of January 1, 2006, all direct recording electronic voting machines in use on that date, regardless of when contracted for or purchased, shall have received federal qualification, as defined, and shall include an accessible voter verified paper audit trail.

You should probably spend some time here.
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[ Parent ]

My comment didn't include the selection bias issues, deliberately contradicts the wikipedia entry's claim that exit polls were important to establishing electoral fraud in the Ukraine (they weren't), includes important details about the Carter Center's refusal to use exit polls as a check, and points to a joint US/UN study that found their worth questionable.

I feel these differences alone are enough to show that I didn't just wiki my claims. The insinuation that I did it exemplary of your MO though: find a link, read it poorly, make an unsupportable accusation based on it, and hope nobody follows up on it.

Let's look at the other links:

The Freeman paper isn't, in fact, about the Clinton/Obama campaign and does not support your claims that Clinton cheated in primary elections at all. It is about the 2004 elections and, if you read closely, says that Freeman found some statistically anomalies that he proves are most likely not random. However, he never goes on to say this proves fraud. Why? Because he's not like you and doesn't jump to conclusions. Systematic failures in polling procedures or sampling methods would also produce non-random statistical anomalies. Proof of a crime requires not the possibility that it could happen, but evidence point to the fact that the events that occurred happened, and only happened, because of a criminal act.

In fact, Mark Blumenthal, whom Freeman calls (in that very same paper) "the single best source that I have found for information on exit polling and polling in general" has found numerous flaws in Freeman's paper:

http://www.mysterypollster.com/main/2004/12/what_is_the_sam.html

http://www.mysterypollster.com/main/2004/12/what_about_thos.html

So Freeman's best source is telling him that he got it wrong. And Blumenthal isn't alone. In an effort to reproduce his findings, two other political scientists (one who didn't believe fraud occurred and one that did) found numerous mistakes, misrepresentations, and errors in Freeman's paper. Here you go:

http://www.neuralgourmet.com/2006/07/17/of_public_opinion_exit_polls_and_fraud_or_the_lack_thereof_an_interview_with_mark_lindeman_part_i

Now all that's fun – except it doesn't support your first assertion, which is that Clinton is stealing the primary in key states.

Nor does the link to the "independent" group you mentioned. But it does let us examine just what you consider a disinterested third party. This "independent" group counts a chapter of the Democratic Party among its affiliations. Members of its Coordinating Council include former Democratic politicos, a founder of the anti-Bush "We Do Not Concede" group, a former Howard Dean (current President of the DNC) staff manager, a former Democratic "cluster captain" (ward-heeler), a Kerry volunteer, and . . . are we seeing a pattern yet?

I'm not sure where you're going with the Russian link. It actually undermines your argument. The story states that the exit polls show Medvedev the winner, failing to alert us to the widespread fraud that monitors reported witnessing. If anything, this further underscores my point that claiming a comparison between exit polls and vote counts is a specious indicator that fraud occurred. If we treated the Russian election the way you treated the Clinton/Obama primary in California, we would conclude that the vote was legit. For the record: No, I don't believe it was a fair vote.

Again, I'm not sure what the point of the next two international stories are. But, um, the more links the merrier, I guess. Links replace thought on the internet, so the more one's got, the more seriously you're bound to be taken. Are you trying to suggest that because election fraud occurs, Clinton must be guilty of it too?

Finally, the real issue at hand: the Clinton/Obama primary and the claim that Clinton cheated.

First, let's discuss my list of states. My list included only those states that have neither mandatory paper-trails of some sort nor mandatory voter verification. You can find a handy map of the states that do and do not here:

http://www.verifiedvoting.org/

I never claimed that it was a list of electronic voting states – mainly because electronic voting does not mean you are automatically unable to leave a paper trail. The terms aren't mutually exclusive. Unlike you, I don't see that electronic voting as an inherently bad thing. Electronic voting that leaves no paper trail is, admittedly, a crappy idea. But a list of states that allow e-voting won't tell you anything about who or who does not keep a paper-trail. We need to know who keeps a paper-trail and who holds mandatory checks.

Now, let's look at your list. Again, no matter how you cut it, Obama's victory entirely depends on delegates won in states that you claim are unreliable because they do not have secure voting systems. He's the one who has gained the lead in states that you think are wrecks. This seems to be the obvious lesson here. If e-vote = fraud, the Obama and not Clinton is the candidate that has benefited the most from it.

Still, we march on.

Here's what is wrong with your list:

1. Your cite for the voting processes of your first list of states is a report on their transition from e-voting. It is out of date.
2. None of your links let us know just how common paper-trail free electronic voting is. In a few cases, you cite places that keep paper trails as place that do not on the confused basis that no electronic system allows you to keep a paper trail.
3. The case of South Carolina (the link no longer goes to the story you think it does, but I know what you're talking about), you've passed off a incident that occurred in the Republican primary (which is closed to Democrats and has no impact on the Clinton/Obama race) as if it was evidence of the unreliability of the voting system used by Dems. (I DON'T SEE HOW YOU MISSED THIS!?)

California:
By the time of the primaries, 20 of California's 58 did not use their electronic machines at all and all those that did were required to produce a paper trail. There was no paper-trail free voting in California.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18672642

Colorado:
Colorado decertified nearly 40% of its electronic machines and the largest voting population – Denver – went all paper. How many people voted and didn't leave a paper trail? Unfortunately some, in a rush to get machines back in service, some of the old machines were supposedly fixed. This means some people might have; but the majority of voters use certified machines or paper ballots. Though all this is immaterial as the Obama won this one.
http://www.govtech.com/gt/260016
http://www.govtech.com/gt/262390
http://www.govtech.com/gt/271231

New Mexico:
This is a bit deceptive as New Mexico residents vote on paper ballots that are then scanned for counting purposes. But the paper ballots are the "vote." Some early voters might use an all-electronic process, but the majority of New Mexico voters use paper.
http://www.sos.state.nm.us/Main/Elections/FAQ's2.htm

Ohio:
Now Ohio is a mess, but it has shit-all to do with electronic voting systems. It has to do with the fact that 44 to 52 percent of the state's Democratic voters turned up to vote and people got turned away from the polls BECAUSE THEY RAN OUT OF PAPER BALLOTS. About 300 to 400 were turned away. There were 90,000 in total. Less than half a percent of the voters were left out. That's not good. But it also means that even if every single one of those voters cast a vote for Barack, it wouldn't have changed the final result.
http://www.wbns10tv.com/live/content/local/stories/2008/03/05/voter_turnout.html

We could go on, but there's hardly any point. You have no firm statistical reason to assume the vote totals are consistent with fraud and you have no evidence aside from you conviction that Clinton is evil that any fraud has taken place. You've got no witnesses to the planning and execution of a plot. You've got no records of the Clinton campaign organizing machine tampering. You've got absolutely nothing that would make the gossip column of any newspaper with an editorial board, let alone pass a grand jury.

We are partially in agreement. There's ample evidence that, through what may well be a combo of incompetence and corrupt self-interest, the American electoral system is an embarrassing shambles. It needs some real cleaning up. There's too many people being denied votes, miscounted, or purposefully ignored. Your links prove that. What they don't prove is criminal activity on the part of Clinton.

[ Parent ]

Present some evidence. Not "someone stole an election once" evidence but evidence that she actually stole the election in, say, my home state of California.

Yes, I know about Diebold and all that crap. I'm not asking for that. I'm asking for some proof of your claims about Clinton.
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[ Parent ]