From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Thu Aug 09 2001 - 10:14:23 MDT
Charles D Hixson wrote,
> A small question occurs here: Is there any reason to believe that
> the computer ballot counting (where used) isn't "fixed"? Historic
> precedents would lead me to expect that it would be (even though
> usually the party in power can fudge enough things legally that it
> isn't necessary).
Exit polls done by the media seem to match the actual computer counts in
most cases. This is how the Palm Beach county problems were detected. The
polling numbers from the people didn't match the counts coming out of the
computers.
I don't know of any deliberate "fixes" in computers, but there are plenty of
errors. One county's computers was caught giving negative votes. One
county's computer counted all the votes for one candidate. One county's
computer counted a straight Republican or Democratic ticket based on the
presidential vote, and didn't really look at the other votes. This and
other problems were all attributed to "bugs". These seem to be caught
because the results don't add up or make sense.
The closest thing to a "fix" is the fact that voting machines that fail to
register enough votes are retired in richer counties that can afford to buy
new ones, and are shipped to poorer counties that can't afford new machines.
As such, the vote count in poorer counties is known to be less of their
total than the vote count in richer counties.
-- Harvey Newstrom <http://HarveyNewstrom.com> <http://Newstaff.com>
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