Talk:2004 United States presidential election controversy, voting machines

For a December 2004 deletion debate over this page see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/2004 U.S. presidential election controversy, voting machines

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From article

File:Voting incidents.jpg

Above are maps of electronic voting machine incidents reported to the EIRS. On the left are county maps of Florida and Ohio, showing the Democratic-voting counties in shades of blue proportional to the population, and on the right are maps with the machine incidents in yellow, orange, and red. Electronic voting machines were primarily placed in Democratic counties. In Democratic counties in Ohio with voting machine problems, there were, on avg., over 8 times as many machine problem reports per voter than there were in other counties.

I can't fit this anywhere. Kevin Baas | talk 01:03, 2004 Dec 1 (UTC)

Affidat

An update on Dec. 9 can be found in this news article. Kevin Baas | talk 23:31, 2004 Dec 9 (UTC)

info to be added

[1] Kevin Baas | talk 22:01, 2004 Dec 21 (UTC)

Article size

This article is huge. Would it not be better to make it more concise? Trampled 21:27, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It's unreadable, needs to be trimmed down. -Brendan OShea 19:41, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

I read it just fine. Very comprehensive, very informative. This is a very complex and incredibly important topic (we can all agree on that), therefore, it shouldn't be surprising that the article is "huge". Sometimes bigger is better. Cowicide 13:44, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Less is More (in this case)

Something smaller would make more of a point. The volume of this page reads like an Air America discussion forum, and conveys appoximately the same sentiment, NPOV efforts notwithstanding. In short, it preaches to the choir because few who don't already agree with the basic premise will be willing to read through the whole thing. Brog 6:47 PM, Apr 19 2005 (PDT)

I disagree completely with both your characterization of the article, and of the readers who come here. Please edit or point out POV problems here - it's illogical to argue for brevity while making an overt snark re POV. It weakens what could have been a valid point. -- RyanFreisling @ 15:51, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind a case for further organization of the page, but removing information from a valuable article is the wrong way to go. It is very rare if not discouraged altogether IMHO to remove information from Wikipedia, we should endeavor to further classify and organize pages which are deemed too long. Also, keep in mind the people who are visiting this page probably clicked on it from the main controversies page, which gives a brief synopsis of the effects of voting machines, thus anyone visiting this page will be searching for more detailed information on the subject. --kizzle 19:02, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

Are you really suggesting that all of the information on the page is vital to an encyclopedia article? Why is this valuable exactly? Because you've contributed to it? By all means set up a website for this, but I don't think it requires such detail on an encyclopedia, when important articles about lengthy subjects can be kept brief. Trampled ^talk 20:27, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Tell me exactly what about an encyclopedia necessarily includes a limit of information in an article. In traditional print encyclopedias, the sheer massive amount of topics forced them to be concise and brief about topics, Wikipedia however does not exhibit this weakness. --kizzle 21:44, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

The whole point of an encyclopedia is to be discursive and thorough; to be "lenghtly". In general, wikipedia is failing in this respect in comparison to print encyclopdias. (the "recommended size" of an article is for browser compatibility, not for the intrinsic merits of different sizes, and is much disputed, largely on the basis of this premise) Those that hold wikipedia to a higher standard than a print encyclopedia should endeavor to make it more "encyclopedic" than such; more thorough and discursive. It is valuable because it provides the reader with a central, coherent, organized, and relatively thorough source of information that would otherwise be much more fragmented and less accessible. This is the value of an encyclopedia, the raison d'etre. Kevin Baas^talk 20:40, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

It simply isn't possible to have a lengthy article on every minor POV related subject. To put it in perspective, this article is almost 3 times the size of the article on World War 2. It is not even as if the article particularly needs the excessive detail. Why do we need 5 big paragraphs by experts saying pretty much the exact same thing? Why can't this be summarised? Trampled ^talk 20:54, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It can, and is, in the main Election 2004 Irregularities document. This document, focusing on the role of voting machines in the as-yet-unresolved irregularities surrounding Election 2004, is a work in progress (as are all wikipedia articles). And of course you're welcome to participate and improve it by editing. Are you concerned we're somehow running out of hard drive space or something? Or do you simply feel this isn't 'important enough' to warrant discussion? If so, you're welcome to browse other pages and save your own time, while leaving that same decision to others. -- RyanFreisling @ 21:10, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I do not have the time to shorten this article currently. However, I'm pretty sure any removal of information would be reverted. An article being 125kb isn't the problem though, assuming the article is well written and NPOV. Hopefully someone who hasn't contributed to this article can give some reason for why it needs to be this long. Trampled ^talk 21:28, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What is this need for you to remove information? What benefit will arise out of reducing this page size? Of course you can make an argument for better organization and possibly creating even more sub-pages, but your incessant need to remove information page is something which boggles my mind. And at some point you might want to substantiate these half-assed allegations of POV on this page with more than vitriol. Or keep them vague and unspecific, that way you can cry POV without justifying why. --kizzle 21:44, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

I've contributed, so i don't meet that description. I share your view that it is long, and that it could benefit from making it more concise, though please understand that concerns about sacrificing information are legitimate. I welcome you, as well, i think we all do, to give it a shot, respectfully. I think we all would like some fresh perspectives of this page, as we've all become so used to it, that it is difficult for us to see a way to edit it anymore. As you can see by the main article, we've welcomed other fresh perspectives, and i think they have helped out a lot. We would be happy to see the same kind of improvements to this page.

I think some of us where just a little put off by what was construed as accusations on our person, which we resent and don't consider valid critiques of the article. That, I think, explains the friction. None of us are opposed to you working constructively on the article.

I didn't contribute to this article; I merely found it by following the links from the 2004 voting controversies page (so I meet said description). With that said, it is long and highly detailed, unnecessarily so in places, making it more tedious to follow. (Meaning that it is easy to skim through some sections, raising the possibility of missing valuable information.) To improve its readability it would be useful if it was better organized (e.g. introductions, conclusions/summaries) so that it could be more easily understood.

I retract this statement - I don't see anything you've written that could be construed as offensive. As I'm sure you can tell, we've become a little sensitive, as we have fended off some rather vitrolic attacks on related pages from people who seem more concerned about the reputation of their beloveds than representing important information fairly and accurately. I recognize that this is not the case with you, and apologize for any displaced frustration. Kevin Baas^talk 23:59, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

I just interpreted his earlier remark "can't cover every minor POV event", reducing my reluctance to withdraw info simply due to my contributions, "reads like an Air America forum", and "assuming the article is well-written and NPOV"... not the most friendly start to concensus building, but I could be over-reacting, you're right that I've been in many battles over this and other stuff (i.e. Rex) :) --kizzle 01:38, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

However, when you do, bear in mind that the title is "election controversy", specifically in regard to voting machines. All content is thus relevant to controviersies regarding voting machines, in concern to the reguality/accuracy of the election. The article is thus bound to be nothing but content supporting the "POV" that there were controviersies regarding voting machines, in concern to the reguality/accuracy of the election, because that's what it's about: these controversies which in fact do exist. Kevin Baas^talk 22:04, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

Fair enough. I realise that all of the information is relevant, but that doesn't mean that it is all necessary. Perhaps if I do get some time to summarise parts, I will put the suggestion here first. For instance, in the experts section under Hopkins, it seems to go into every detail of how the machines could possibly be abused, but do we need that?

One of the main reasons I've been looking at this article critically is because the subject interests me (I wanted Kerry to win), but the length of the article disuades me from reading it. The detail seems excessive, and doesn't seem particularly note-worthy in some cases. Trampled ^talk 22:23, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

One idea to remove such info is to find a source that basically states the same thing, link to it, and summarise the info in the link. This would be an acceptable way of shrinking the information on this page, by still allowing access to such information to curious visitors. --kizzle 22:28, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

Respectfully KB, I'm not sure if I agree with your assessment that this page is "nothing but content supporting the POV"... I'm interpreting you as saying this page is necessarily representing a POV, whereas I think this page is not representing a POV but contains information which one can use to support their POV. Controversy does not mean that the page represents one controversial view, as the exit polls section includes critiques of theories that support the fraud POV. In addition, in all honesty I do not like any information being removed unless it is either redundant or insignificant. We can always place information deeper into the file structure so that it is barely visible but for a link for more info that only the most curious would click on, but this is always better IMHO than removing the information altogether. If the same info can be represented in less words, then I welcome it, but deletion of passages altogether is something to be treaded on very lightly. --kizzle 22:17, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

Granted. Kevin Baas^talk 23:57, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

I made the article ( slightly ) shorter, without deleting a single word. I hope that makes all of you (slightly) happier. kizzle asks "What benefit will arise out of reducing this page size?" Does Wikipedia:Summary style answer that question? --DavidCary 21:56, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Of course, see where I say info should be offloaded "deeper into the file structure", I'm ok for producing daughter articles but not removing info. --kizzle 22:45, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

This article is comprehensive and EXCELLENT. Sometimes bigger is better. This is a complex issue to say the least and a historic one as well. While pruning redundancies wherever found is a great idea, simply chopping away at this because it's long... is weak. Wacking this thing off will only make it shorter, not better. Cowicide 13:50, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

• I routinely use this page as the textbook example of what's wrong with the 2004 election subpages. The idea that anyone might come to this page and be accurately informed about the controversy regarding electronic voting machines is laughable, and not just because the page appears to have been run back and forth through a foreign language translator several times. (Basically, what's wrong is that as far as I can tell, there has been almost no effort to (1) scrutinize data supporting the fraud hypothesis or (2) search for and include data contradicting the hypothesis.) Just as an example:

1. One would think that one of the lead statements in this article would refer to the broad consensus that no wide-spread fraud limited to electronic voting machines occurred in 2004, because statistical analysis does not show a significant difference between EVM and non-EVM precincts. (See, for example, this Democratic National Committee analysis ). However, that is apparently not significant enough to make the grade on this page, much less the introduction.
2. On the other hand, the article has plenty of space for such encyclopedic "facts" as the fact that a guy who "initially funded" a company at which the brother of one of the guys who actually has something to do with Diebold later became vice president donated money to conservative causes and the german shepard of a guy who has signed an affidavit that he was asked to write code to produce fraudulent elections has died. (More specifically, the whole Clint Curtis section is an embarrasment. The page explains that Blackboxvoting.org has "retracted many of its doubts," but doesn't explain what those doubts were or what doubts remain unretracted. It presents the opinion of everyone who has said anything positive about Curtis, but none of the easily findable sources casting doubt on his story.)

TheronJ 15:30, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Kiewit and CalEnergy

Not sure of the reason for this deletion (probably extraneity), but I thought I'd provide a source after I saw it mentioned. In 1996, apparently Kiewit owned 30% of CalEnergy Corp. [2]

Peter Kiewit Sons', Inc. (the "Company") is one of the largest
construction contractors in North America and also owns energy, 
telecommunications, and infrastructure businesses.  The Company 
pursues these activities through two subsidiaries, Kiewit  
Construction Group Inc. ("KCG") and Kiewit Diversified Group Inc. 
("KDG").  The organizational structure is shown by the following 
chart.

    Peter Kiewit Sons', Inc.
     Kiewit Construction Group Inc.
       Construction Operations
       Materials Operations
     Kiewit Diversified Group Inc.
      PKS Information Services, Inc.
       Kiewit Energy Group Inc.
        Kiewit Coal Properties Inc.
        CalEnergy Company, Inc.(30%)
        International Energy
        C-TEC Corporation (62%)
        Infrastructure Projects

Related news event

[3] Kevin baas 05:14, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

More Random Suggestions

A bunch of my random suggestions:

1) More generally, the farther away we get from 2004, the more useful a general article on electronic voting in the US would be, rather than an collection of every allegation relating to 2004 voting. Has anyone thought about starting a new article, looking at the issues relating to electronic voting without the connection to a specific election? (I'd recommend starting with the official reports to set up a framework). I also note that there's a bunch of stuff on here that's not specifically relevant to the 2004 election, such as the allegations of Chuck Hagel rigging vote counting machines in 199-whatever.

2) The Control, ownership, and political ties section is incoherent.

2.1) It would help someone could write a topic sentence at the top of the subsection that clearly indicates the point.

2.2) What is the possible point, in an encylopedia, of pointing out the guy who initially funded the brother of the guy who actually runs Diebold (i) contributes to CalTech or (ii) contributes to fundamentalist Christian causes? It's like some kind of ad hominem attack twice removed - because Howard Ahmonson contributes to CalTech(!) and fundamentalist christian groups(!!), and because Howard Amonson was an investor in a predecessor company to Diebold, therefore Diebold steal elections!!! Even if Diebold's CEO was personally contributing to conservative Christian groups, I don't see how that is evidence of election fraud.

If the point is that some of the owners of the major vote machine companies are conservative, I don't think that's surprising. If it's that they're all conservative, then I think one or two sentences saying exactly that, plus an authoritative cite, would be enough for what is at best a tangential point.

3) The "programming fraud" affidavit section is incoherent. As a reader, all I can tell is that (1) some guy somewhere signed an affidavit for somebody that he was asked to write fraudulent code for somebody; and (2) his german shepard died.

3.1) Is it really the standard of encyclopediaworthiness that that programming fraud affidavit guy's German Shepard died? I would delete it, but I don't understand the point of the section enough to try to capture the essential meaning. I generally don't advocate the removal of information either, but are we going to start entering the pet deaths of all noteworthy people?TheronJ 21:01, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

i removed a section from the article

I removed the "Voter suppression and racial discrimination, Florida 2000" section because it didn't have anything to do with voting machines. the section follows.

Source for this section globalresearch.ca, written July 2003:

To understand how George W. Bush will win the next presidential election, it helps to understand how he won the last one. While all public attention rested on hanging chads, butterfly ballots and a skewed recount in the wake of the 2000 Presidential election, the root of the problem has been overlooked. As investigative reporter Greg Palast uncovered, the state of Florida purged over 90,000 people from their list of eligible voters under the guise that they were felons. In fact, almost none of the disenfranchised voters were felons...but almost all were blacks or democrats.

Palast's investigation revealed that at the heart of this ethnic cleansing of voter lists was the creation of a new centralized database for the state of Florida. In 1999, the state fired the company they were paying to compile their "scrub" lists and gave the job to Database Technologies (DBT, now ChoicePoint). DBT, a private firm known to have strong Republican ties was paid $2.3 million to do the same job that had previously been done for $5,700.

The first list of felons from DBT included 8,000 names of felons from Texas supplied by George Bush's state officials. The state government said they were all felons, and thus barred from voting under federal law. Local officials complained about the list and DBT issued a new one, this time naming 58,000 felons. Palast discovered that the one county that went through the process of checking the new list name by name found it was 95% wrong ... Florida voters whose names were similar to out-of-state felons were barred from voting.

DBT didn't get names, birthdays or social security numbers right, but they were matched for race, so a felon named Joe Green only knocked off a black Joe Green, but not a white person with the same name. There was no need to guess about the race of the disenfranchised: a voter's race is listed next to his or her name in many Southern states including Florida because racial ID is required by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

DBT's fee of $2.3 million was supposed to include verification that the individuals on their list were actually felons, but Palast's investigation showed that DBT could not provide any evidence that they made a single phone call to verify the identity of the names scrubbed prior to the 2000 Presidential Election.

Unfortunately, nothing is preventing this purge from taking place again on a national scale ... Martin Luther King III and Greg Palast recently co-authored a piece on the dangers of such databases, recalling the Florida debacle. Their conclusion: "Jim Crow has moved into cyberspace -- harder to detect, craftier in operation, shifting shape into the electronic guardian of a new electoral segregation."

Kevin Baas^talk 15:40, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

recent news (2006-06-29)

• WaPo
• USA Today - this was pretty big on the second page of the politics section. (On the first(front) page was blackwell)

Kevin Baas^talk 13:50, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

princeton voting machine study 2006.09.13

• http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3467 Kevin Baas^talk 15:57, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

reorganization

Current organization:

   * 1 Specific issues related to voting machine companies
         o 1.1 Control, ownership and political ties
         o 1.2 Specific issues relating to Diebold machines and practices
         o 1.3 Specific issues relating to ES&S machines and political links
         o 1.4 Specific issues relating to Sequoia machines and practices
         o 1.5 Industry collusion
   * 2 Evidence of electronic voting bias
         o 2.1 UC Berkeley Data Archive
   * 3 Certification and legislation controls
         o 3.1 Certification of voting machines
         o 3.2 Legislative regulatory regime for voting machines
   * 4 BlackBoxVoting.org Investigations
         o 4.1 Diebold Security and internal email Investigation
         o 4.2 Volusia County Fraud Investigation
   * 5 Similar anomalies in recent history
         o 5.1 Volusia, Florida 2000
         o 5.2 Riverside County CA., March 2004 Primary (litigation)
         o 5.3 Georgia 2002
         o 5.4 Other
   * 6 Expert testimony on quality of current voting machines
         o 6.1 Dr. Professor Avi Rubin
         o 6.2 Dr. Professor Rebecca Mercuri
         o 6.3 Hopkins, SAIC and RABA (from Concerned individuals vs.Maryland State Board of Elections) (litigation)
         o 6.4 Manipulation of punch-card voting machines
         o 6.5 Triad Engineer, interview by House Judicial Committee
         o 6.6 Other professional studies
   * 7 Technical overview: Ease of hiding "back doors" in computer source code
   * 8 The "programming fraud" affidavit
         o 8.1 Summary of affidavit
         o 8.2 Key points from background comments
   * 9 See also
   * 10 Official Reviews
         o 10.1 Diebold
   * 11 External links

how about:

   * 2 Evidence of electronic voting bias
         o 2.1 UC Berkeley Data Archive
   * 3 Certification and legislation controls
         o 3.1 Certification of voting machines
         o 3.2 Legislative regulatory regime for voting machines
   * 6 Expert testimony on quality of current voting machines
         o 6.1 Dr. Professor Avi Rubin
         o 6.2 Dr. Professor Rebecca Mercuri
         o 6.3 Hopkins, SAIC and RABA (from Concerned individuals vs.Maryland State Board of Elections) (litigation)
         o 6.4 Manipulation of punch-card voting machines
         o 6.5 Triad Engineer, interview by House Judicial Committee
         o 6.6 Other professional studies
   * 7 Technical overview: Ease of hiding "back doors" in computer source code
     -> * 8 The "programming fraud" affidavit
            o 8.1 Summary of affidavit
            o 8.2 Key points from background comments
   * 1 Specific issues related to voting machine companies
         o 1.1 Control, ownership and political ties
         o 1.2 Specific issues relating to Diebold machines and practices
         o 1.3 Specific issues relating to ES&S machines and political links
         o 1.4 Specific issues relating to Sequoia machines and practices
         o 1.5 Industry collusion
   * 5 Similar anomalies in recent history
         o 5.1 Volusia, Florida 2000
         o 5.2 Riverside County CA., March 2004 Primary (litigation)
         o 5.3 Georgia 2002
         o 5.4 Other
   * 4 BlackBoxVoting.org Investigations
         o 4.1 Diebold Security and internal email Investigation
         o 4.2 Volusia County Fraud Investigation
   * 9 See also
   * 10 Official Reviews
         o 10.1 Diebold
   * 11 External links

Kevin Baas^talk 19:13, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

IMHO, the best way to improve this page would be to:

1. Copy the current version to a talk subpage for reference purposes;
2. Start over from scratch; and
3. In the new article, apply the following guidelines:
   1. Use broad reliable sources as the framework of the article, and make an effort to present all POV;
   2. Have a summary section that fairly summarizes current knowledge of the issue; and
   3. Remember that this article is about (1) voting machine controversies in the (2) 2004 presidential election. To the extent that this article collects random "troubling anecdotes" from the various congressional elections and pre and post-2004 elections, it's becoming a POV fork of a general voting machine article, not a subarticle devoted to the 2004 general presidential election.

Thanks, TheronJ 14:16, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Just want to pop in to show I didn't just place the tag on the article as a drive by. This article needs a reorganization pretty badly; that's clear. It study after study, most of which could have been summed up in a few sentences. A lot of the information is helpful, but at the moment, it's just too much. Patstuart^{(talk)(contribs)} 22:17, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi folks - just a note. I've got a few weeks of down time before my next semester begins and I'm hoping to be able to 'kick start' the reorg TheronJ mentioned above in the coming days. -- User:RyanFreisling @ 02:47, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Voting system certification

The section seems to have little if anything to do with the 2004 United States presidential election, which is unfortunate. It is however, completely inaccurate.

• CIBER (the Independent Testing Authority) not Cipher company
• The reference to VoteHERE is completely inaccurate as they've never been used in a public election in the U.S..
• The entire "Legislative regulatory regime for voting machines" section is without reference, irrelevant and inaccurate.

--Electiontechnology 08:48, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

back doors

The section "Technical overview: Ease of hiding "back doors" in computer source code" is completely irrelevant to this article. It makes no claim to be relevant and only discusses references to UNIX in the 1970's. It has absolutely no place in this entry. --Electiontechnology 08:56, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Ohio’s top elections officials

This section seems poorly titled and covers a December 2007 study. I don't see how this is appropriate for this article. Thoughts? --Electiontechnology (talk) 01:10, 18 December 2007 (UTC)