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Florida 2000 and Washington 2004
A Study of Two Elections
Based on the combined Republican and Democrat felon lists for Washington State as of May 22, 2005 and conservatively assuming no overlap in the lists. A total of 1,740 names statewide were provided (946 listed by Republicans and 794 by Democrats) with the majority of the Republican list coming from King and other pro-Gregoire counties and the Democrat list coming predominately from Rossi counties. By May 21, 2005 the Republican list had been reduced to 883 giving the 1,677 figure cited here (Seattle Times, 2005). The Seattle Times conducted a 3 month study of the original 1,740 name total using data from the Washington State Patrol, Dept. of Corrections, and county court record for a subsampled list of 289 names from the Republican list. Of the subsampled group, 33 were identified as erroneously listed. Extrapolating to the larger sample gives an estimated error rate of 11.4 percent for the original combined list (Seattle Times, 2005; 2005b). The Possible felon figure conservatively assumes that all remaining names on the May 21 combined list are valid listings and the Probable figure assumes the Times estimated error rate applied to the 1,740 name list from which the subsample used for its calculation was taken. Wrongful felon status figures are calculated in an analogous manner. One important difference between this list and its Florida 2000 counterpart is that everyone listed in Washington did actually vote. Therefore, the actual disenfranchisement of wrongfully listed voters will only impact those whose names remained on the list when the final tally of felons was removed from the 2004 count.
The year 2000 Florida felon list was derived from comparisons between the January 2000 Florida Central Voter File and FDLE and Motor Vehicle Dept. records, with FDLE records providing the bulk of the data--39,259 out of 42,322 records on the fall 2000 list used on Election Day Stuart, 2004). Comparisons were based on 80+ percent match to name and matches to approximate birthday, actual or derived Social Security Number (SSN), death records and a few other metrics. The combined year 1999 and 2000 list on file with FDE contains some 57,000 total unique records (Stuart, 2004; Wikipedia, 2005b). Its true error rate may never be known, but the 3 best estimates are based on post election comparisons with exact matches of Social Security Number name and birthdate, and more rigorous examinations of Florida state records. These yield error rates ranging from 15 to 97 percent--the higher being based on a July 2002 ChoicePoint re-analysis using exact name and SSN matches to a larger list of possible felons (Kissell, 2002) and a post election screening by Leon county of all ballots and listed names (Wikipedia, 2005c), and the lower on county record comparisons after the election. Most fall between 20 and 30 percent (Stuart, 2004; Smith, 2003; Kissell, 2002; Palast, 2000; 2001; Wikipedia, 2005). What is likely the best analysis yet was done in 2003 using the revamped and more rigorous Florida felon screening standards applied to the total FDE felon list which yielded a figure of 21 percent (Smith, 2003). ChoicePoint has admitted to an error rate of at least 15 percent, which agrees reasonably well with the lower range of these figures (Palast, 2001; Balkin & Levinson, 2001; Smith, 2003).
Possible and probable estimates for actual felon voters are derived from comparisons of the April 2001 Florida Central Voter File with the year 2000 felon list as reported by Stuart (2004). Names present on both lists are voters listed as felons who were retained on the CVF by county supervisors on Election Day. Post Election Day surveys provide data on actual felon purge rates for counties that did and did not use the list (Stuart, 2004). Independently, the Palm Beach Post conducted a computer match study that found exact matches between FDLE records and the felon list that identified 5,683 names of people who voted that were exact matches between the two (Hiaasen et al., 2001). The USCCR (2001) conducted a study of the FDLE records used by Database Technologies (DBT) to generate the felon list. Based on FDLE's checks of 13,190 of their own records and inquiries to 5,000 of those listed, they found error rates ranging from 19 percent assuming that all who responded were actual felons (very conservative) to 50 percent assuming that the error rate among the 5000 people who responded to inquiries was representative of the list as a whole (very likely given the sample size and random record selection). Possible and Probable felon voter numbers reported here assume the following. LOW END: The highest estimated error rate for the FDLE list applied to the 5,683 listings found by the Palm Beach Post. This figure is smaller than the same error rate applied to the total of all non-purged records from counties that did not use the felon list and is therefore conservative; HIGH END: The lowest estimated error rate for FDLE records applied to all non-purged records from counties that did not use the felon list, assuming conservatively that no actual felons were not purged in counties that did use it; PROBABLE: Same as the HIGH END estimate but using median to most probable FDLE record error rates (35-50 percent).
Possible and Probable estimates of legal voters actually disenfranchised by a felon listing were calculated in a similar manner to that described above for actual felon voters but with the following assumptions. LOW END: An estimate reached by the Palm Beach Post from a comparison of FDLE records with the felon list and a selection of polling place records under some conservative assumptions (Hiaasen et al., 2001). HIGH END: The highest estimated error rate for the FDLE list (50 percent) applied to all purged records from the election, assuming that screening of the felon list for erroneous records by counties that used it was 100 percent accurate. The high end estimate of 97 percent for the felon list error rate (Kissell, 2002) was not used, again on the presumption that error screening by list users corrected many of these errors (only 2 counties are known to have used the list unquestioningly). PROBABLE: The most probable estimated error rate for the felon list (25 percent) applied to purged records from counties that used it, plus the median to most probable error estimates for the FDLE list (35-50 percent) applied to the purged records of counties that did not use the felon list. In this case the most probable felon list error rate was assumed for its users without regard to error screening because this yields a lower estimate than would the median FDLE list error rate, and is therefore conservative. All of these estimates assume that FDLE records were the main source of Election Day cross-checks of the felon list.
Includes ballots lost or counted illegally whether intentional or not. Does not include ballots discarded due to wrongful felon status (tracked separately) or ballots rejected where there was evidence of voter intent (also tracked separately). As these tallies are for reported instances only, they represent lower bounds and actual totals may be higher. All but 145 are absentee and provisional ballots counted without proper signature verification. Though required procedures were not followed, most were later found to be otherwise legitimate votes. The remaining 145 were unopened provisional ballots discovered after the election. The Possible figure includes another 566 ballots known to have been miscounted in 2 of the 3 counts. These however were not verified in that they were counted at least once and it has not been determined that this didn't happen in the final manual recount. Of these, the large majority were counted and not disenfranchised in any way. By the election challenge trial only 137 of these were verified as illegal. These and the 1,541 known felon votes brought the total illegal vote count to 1,678 (Brunner, 2005).
Includes the counting of ballots with late, illegible, or missing postmarks, ballots received after deadline, ballots from unregistered voters, ballots from dead voters, unsigned and/or unwitnessed ballots, and double ballots from voters known to have voted twice due to erroneous absentee ballot mailings or polling place recording errors. The figure cited reflects numerically verified instances only. Hundreds, and perhaps even thousands more are known to have occurred but lack verified counts. In Bay County for instance, "handfuls" of illegal ballots, and in at least one case an entire suitcase full, are known to have been turned in and counted (Slevin and Grimaldi, 2000).
Includes ballots where poll workers added missing information required by law, corrected ballots already submitted, and duplicated ballots. Any of these could have resulted from carelessness or misunderstanding of Florida law as well as overt election fraud. Duplicated ballots are allowed by Florida and Washington State law for the recovery of ballots that are unreadable by machines due to their having been damaged in handling. These account for the entire Washington State total reported here. This figure represents ballots recovered in King County during the machine recount and is a minimum because data for other counties was not available to me. The maximum represents King County's ballot recovery rate extrapolated to the entire state count (WA Sec. of State, 2004g; Sharkansky, 2004). Virtually all ballot alteration in Washington's fall 2004 election was for this purpose. As of this writing no evidence of any specific incident of ballots having been altered in the Gregoire/Rossi race for fraudulent or partisan reasons has ever been presented--only allegations. In 2000 Florida's standards for what constituted "damage" and "alteration" were fairly loose and left the door wide open for potential fraud. Lawsuits against Seminole and Martin counties were later dismissed on the grounds that there was no evidence of "intentional" fraud, that the legal definitions of ballot tampering were vague enough to allow the alterations that are known to have occurred (specifically, voter numbers), and that the elimination of all potentially affected ballots would have disenfranchised too many legitimate votes. But no one disputes that ballot tampering occurred, that the law was at least stretched if not broken, and that opportunity and motive for fraud were significant. In the case of Seminole and Martin Counties this is known to have been done selectively to Republican ballots only and not to Democrat ones despite the known existence of similarly damaged Democrat ballots and clear requests by Democrat election workers for their ballots to be included (Gold, 2000; Tapper, 2000; Moss, 2000; Shapiro, 2000; Bailey, 2000; Earlandson, 2000). Nothing comparable to this is known to have happened in Washington in the Gregoire/Rossi runoff.
Racial bias includes any factor known to have correlated either positively or negatively with race and does not imply intentional racist actions. Biases reported here may result from socio-economic factors, literacy rates, state, county, or precinct level funding, demographics, or any of a number of other variables. In some cases it has been shown to be a direct result of policy decisions that may reflect subtly racist attitudes or views, but there is little evidence that these were overtly racist in intent. The U.S. Department of Justice found no evidence for intentionally racist activity in their investigations of Florida 2000, and neither did the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (Boyd, 2002; USCCR, 2001). But Florida state elections policy and the Federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 cover subtle as well as overt racist biases and do not require a demonstration of intent as proof of racial disenfranchisement (USCCR, 2001; 2001b). In 2003 the NAACP won their racial disenfranchisement case against the state of Florida--one of the largest in U.S. history--and this led to sweeping reforms of county and state level election policies and equipment and training upgrades (NAACP, 2002; USGAO, 2004). Nothing comparable happened in Washington in 2004.
Negligence as I have used it here, presumes deliberate intent or evidence of neglect and/or rationalization as opposed to honest mistakes. A key determinant in this is the presence of foreknowledge of the impacts where someone’s personal benefit is involved. Misplacing ballots for instance, would be considered as ordinary human error unless there was clear evidence of premeditation or cover-up, even if the mistakes were egregious. On the other hand, using the legal resources and political powers of the Secretary of State's office to lobby for a particular candidate, using government offices and/or resources for a candidate's campaign effort, or relaxing felon list requirements even after having been shown that a significant increase in false positives against legitimate voters would result, would all constitute negligence. It's unreasonable to presume that the Secretary of State would be unaware that neutrality and a guarantee of due process for all candidates is a basic professional and ethical duty of his/her office, or that a potentially disenfranchising felon list policy could be implemented innocently by someone after data clearly demonstrating the impact had been provided to them. By themselves, actions like these do not prove a deliberate plot to steal an election. But when they benefit a preferred candidate, as with Bush and Katherine Harris in Florida 2000, they are not likely to be innocent and a charge of negligence or dereliction of duty is appropriate.
Figure 2: Washington 2004 Gubernatorial Base Count & Machine Recount Results as of November 24, 2004. Gain/Loss figures were only available for counties with 100% of precincts reporting. Taken from WA Sec. of State, 2004b
Figure 3: Washington 2004 Gubernatorial Manual Recount Results as of December 23, 2004. Gain/Loss figures were only available for counties with 100% of precincts reporting. Taken from WA Sec. of State, 2004c.
Figure 4: Washington 2004 Tabulation Invalidation Results as of November 24, 2004. Gain/Loss figures were only available for counties with 100% of precincts reporting. Taken from WA Sec. of State, 2004b.
Figure 5: Washington 2004 Federal Election Survey Results as of November 24, 2004. Gain/Loss figures were only available for counties with 100% of precincts reporting. Taken from WA Sec. of State, 2004b.
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