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Talk:2004 United States presidential election controversy and irregularities

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  • Archive1 - November 5 2004 - November 9 2004

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: (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)

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?: 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)

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)

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 Misplaced Pages: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 Misplaced Pages 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. ] 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 . 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 . 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. ] 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 Misplaced Pages: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)

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 Misplaced Pages, 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: 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 Misplaced Pages: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 Misplaced Pages -- 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)

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

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

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. ] 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

Or should they be true subpages?

(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 Misplaced Pages 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 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)


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)

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)
2. "2004 U.S. Election voting controversies and irregularities"
3. "2004 U.S. Election controversies and irregularities"
  1. ] 22:54, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)
  2. Schnee 22:52, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  3. Zen Master 23:03, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC) (should election be lowercase regardless?)

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)
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. ] 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... :-)

Original research

From Misplaced Pages:No original research:

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

Misplaced Pages is not a primary source. Specific factual content is not the question. Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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)

then let's fix it. Zen Master 23:00, 10 Nov 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)

Sources which have drawn a conclusion about overall election irregularities