The DavidCyrus Blog of Wisdom

W - T - F '04 ?! (part 4)
Berkeley Analysis of Bush's Amazing Florida Victory

The UC Berkeley Quantitative Methods Research Team examined the Florida election results. They argue that the electronic voting machines themselves helped add over 130,000 votes to Bush (and if the votes were actually "taken" from Kerry, that counts for over 260,000 votes). This isn't simply good luck- this is a virtually inarguable indictment, if the data are truly represented. To quote from the Report Summary, "The data show with 99.0% certainty that a county’s use of electronic voting is associated with a disproportionate increase in votes for President Bush."

By the way, income, hispanic ethnicity, and previous voting patterns were controlled for in this analysis. We're running out of confounding factors to explain this curiosity.

W - T - F '04 ?! (part 3)
Further Analysis of Bush's Amazing Florida Victory

Although everybody in the mainstream media is calling those who question the election outcome "kooks", here's a straightforward article that ponders-

(1) the serious discrepancy between Florida exit polls and Florida election results
(2) the curious positive correlation of Bush votes to optically scanned paper ballots (versus touch-screen voting machines)

hmmmm.....

Bang! The Runners Are Off...
...as DavidCyrus's car pulls into the runner's parking lot

Today I ran in the Celebration, Florida's Founders Day 5K race. I had originally signed up for the 10K, which started at 7:30 a.m. I have an annual problem arriving to this early race on time. Last year, I was able to place myself within ~200 yards of the starting line as the starter's pistol fired (however, I was approaching along the running path, facing the runners who were leaving the line and running toward me). This year I barely caught a glimpse of the police car's flashing lights, trailing the last of the 10K runners and disappearing around a corner as I pulled into the parking lot. Fortunately, the race organizers allowed me to transfer into the 5K race, which began at 9:15. Daybreak runs are not for me.

My uninspired training schedule was probably better suited for a 5K run anyway.
Final time: approximately 24:00 minutes, which extrapolates favorably to my original mediocre goal of breaking 50 minutes for the 10K race. (Calculation provided by the Race Time Calculatorfrom the Running Times website.)

Ashcroft Resigns- Immediately Calls For Greater Executive Priviledge
Was he fired because he wasn't dictatorial enough?

Immediately after the big election win, Attorney General John Ashcroft resigned, inexplicably stating in his resignation letter, "The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved,". Today he stated that judges who question President Bush's decisions during war are threatening national security.

Let's just ignore, for the moment, Ashcroft's hallucination that a big "Mission Accomplished" sign hangs over our crime-free nation. I want to know what could motivate him to campaign for more Presidential authority in the war on terror?

Does Bush's war decisions and the results thereof warrant less scrutiny? There is apparently a major divide among Americans on this issue. Concerning the Iraq war, for example, many Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein and his Iraqi regime were involved in the 9/11 attacks. Some may even still believe that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that threatened America, requiring an invasion and overthrow.

But factually, none of this is true, and none of it was true when the President told us these stories. When Bush told us he knew where Iraq's WMD stockpiles were located, he was wrong. When he said, "We found them!" in reference to the mobile hydrogen balloon trailers (believing they were poison gas weaponry), he was wrong. When he told us that the Iraqi people would welcome us with open arms, he was wrong. When he decided to attack without a stabilization plan for the country, he was wrong. When he proudly proclaimed that major war efforts in Iraq were complete and our mission was accomplished, he was wrong.

The list of Bush's bad calls, misreading of critical situations, and downright obliviousness to facts on Iraq goes on and on. Who could possibly argue that judicial oversight to temper this wild shotgun approach to national security harms us in a manner greater than the actions itself?

W - T - F '04 ?! (part 2)
Examining Bush's Amazing Florida Victory

Here's a link to an article statistically examining the voter turn-out and exit polls for Florida. The author makes a strong case that there was just too much of a disagreement between the final vote count and all the predictors.

Watch for more analysis of the election on www.blackboxvoting.org . (Caution: bandwitch is slim)

W - T - F '04 ?!?!?!
Weren't we supposed to win this one?

Prior to the election, Florida seemed like a lock for Kerry. Even with Ohio in Bush's pocket, the full bright sun-shiny day in Florida meant high voter turnout, and we all agreed that that means a high Democratic voter turnout.

W-T-F Happened?

Kerry was supposed to gain an immediate 3000 votes compared to Gore in 2000, by using a non-butterfly ballot. Kerry was supposed to gain thousands of votes from newly registered students. Kerry was supposed to gain thousands of votes from repentant Nader fans. Polls just prior to the election predicted a Kerry win.

...and all this was to guarantee a Florida state win, 27 electoral votes, and the U.S. Presidency for John F. Kerry.

Upon simple analysis, the bottom line was that more Democrats voted for Bush than anybody expected. The youth vote (ages 18-29) went to Kerry, as did first-time voters, as did voters making less than $100,000 a year.

However, the percentage of Democrats voting for Bush was twice as high as the percentage of Republicans voted for Kerry. A larger percentage of Democrats voted for Bush in this election than in 2000.

You can check the poll data for yourself here.
I don't really have an understanding of why this happened. Perhaps the fear of terrorism scared people into believing that Bush was handling threats well, and convinced voters that we shouldn't change generals on the battlefield. It all seems so unbelievably backwards, like a Bizzaro universe. For example, voting for Bush correlated strongly positive with years of education!

The optimistic exit polls that started out on Tuesday morning aren't hard to explain. Democrats who came out to vote for Kerry came out early. The after-work crew then went strongly to Bush. Of course, the paranoid right-wingers are explaining this with a typical persecution complex (which makes no sense, considering the election outcome). Ann Coulter, for example, states that, "Only monkey business can explain the wildly pro-Kerry exit polls," and supports speculation that Democrats secretly discovered polling locations, and then shipped Democrats to those locations to skew the polls.

"...and it all would have worked perfectly!" sneered the evil Democrats, if only they (and Ann) had remembered that voters have to cast their votes in their home precincts, so shipping voters from one precinct to another gains nothing.