By Brad Friedman on 11/4/2004, 5:37pm PT  

Though Ohio got all the Florida-like attention this year from the mainstream media (who can't seem to focus on more than one thing at time, and at that, for only mere seconds) back in Florida --- where nobody is looking, and yes the results were close though less so than in 2000 --- something also doesn't add up.

Kathy Dopp has been crunching hard election result numbers and a strange --- yet very clear pattern --- is emerging.

Using the very rough gauge of comparing Republican and Democrat registrations county by county to the actual final voting results, she finds that the percentage change of "Expected Votes" versus "Actual Results" are fairly consistent in counties that used E-Voting machines.

But in counties that used Optical Scan Voting the "Expected Votes" versus "Actual Results" are wildly discordant to say the least.

For example, look at just one sample from Baker County, FL...

Registered Voters
REP: 24.3% DEM: 69.3%

Actual Votes
REP: 7,738 DEM: 2,180

Change from Expected Results
REP: 220.4% DEM: -68.4%

That's a sample from just one county, but the majority of counties that used Opti-scan systems, particularly those systems made by "Election Systems and Software (ES&S)" show the same wildly discordant pattern.

Such a disparity between Actual Results and Expected Results (based on voter registration) could well be explained if the voter turnout was simply far and away in favor of Bush in Florida due to any number of factors. But why then do virtually none of the Electronic Voting counties in Florida show anything like those kind of disparities in the Expected versus Actual Results?

She's been updating her data throughout the day, adding info as it's made available by the state of Florida.

(Thanks reader Teri K. for the tip)

UPDATE: ES&S, together with Diebold Election Systems, are responsible for tallying some 80% of votes in the U.S. The CEO of Diebold Election Systems is also the founder of ES&S according to this interesting report from July 2003. It's also an interesting report because it seems to describe yesterday's results "to a T" in many ways...More on that soon...

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