Graduate students put statistics to the test and find 'ghost' votes for Bush.

t r u t h o u t - MIT Scientist Backs Berkeley Voting Report
MIT Scientist Backs Berkeley Voting Report: " Berkeley: President Comes Up Short
By Ian Hoffman
The Tri-Valley Herald

Friday 19 November 2004

Graduate students put statistics to the test and find 'ghost' votes for Bush.

In the nation's first academic study of the Florida 2004 vote, University of California, Berkeley, graduate students and a professor have found intriguing evidence that electronic-voting counties could have mistakenly awarded up to 260,000 votes to President George Bush.

The discrepancy, reported Thursday, is insufficient by itself to sway the outcome of the presidential race in Florida, but the UC Berkeley team called on Florida elections officials for an investigation.

'This is a no-vote-left-behind kind of project, not a change-the-president project,' said UC Berkeley sociology professor Michael Hout, who oversaw the research. 'We're as interested in the next election as the one just over.'

Broadly speaking, the UC Berkeley team found that President Bush received tens of thousands more votes in electronic-voting Democratic counties than past voting patterns would have suggested. No such pattern turned up in counties using optical scanning machines.

The UC Berkeley report has not been peer-reviewed, but a reputable MIT political scientist succeeded in replicating the analysis Thursday at the request of the Herald and The Associated Press. He said an investigation is warranted.

'There is an interesting pattern here that I hope someone looks into,' said MIT Arts and Social Sciences Dean Charles Stewart III, a researcher in the MIT-Caltech Voting Technology Project."

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