Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org
Just as newspapers used their headlines to lead their readers in how they wanted them to understand the California Field Poll mentioned in yesterday’s DVN, the voting industry’s trade group has attempted to do the same. The Election Technology Council reads the poll as saying 82% of the voters polled are confident in the vote counting process. In fact, only 44% have great confidence in the process. The ETC also ignores the rest of the poll which shows that 32% of the respondents have the most confidence in paper ballots while 31% have the most confidence in touch-screen voting and an equal number, 31%, have the most confidence in punch-card voting. So, while Michelle Shafer and David Beirne of the ETC seem to like to add findings together to make a point, we can show that 63% of the respondents like paper based voting systems and have little confidence in touch-screen voting….
County to use lever machines for election LINK
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Great deal of confidence: 44%;Some confidence: 41%;Only a little confidence: 11%;No confidence: 3%
Try as I might, I cannot figure out how the Election Tech people came up with 82%. Unless I’m missing something, the the Field Poll report does not contain any numbers that add up to 82% (although I suppose they could make a case that 85% “have at least some confidence”).
These people can’t report the results of a 402-person poll honestly or accurately, and they want us to trust them to count the vote??!!
But wait, there’s more.
The ElectionTech people state that “researchers from the University of New Mexico, Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project and University of Utah released polling data from the November 2006 election in Colorado and New Mexico suggesting a voter confidence level of 86 and 82% respectively.”
To back this up, they link to a document that does not mention Colorado, but shows the following results for New Mexico.
New Mexico 1: “How confident are you that YOUR VOTE in the November 2006 election will be counted as you intended?”
Very confident: 38.6%
Somewhat confident: 43.9%
Not too confident: 11.5%
Not at all confident: 3.8%
DK/NS: 2.2%
New Mexico 2: “How confident are you that the bubble paper ballot used to record votes will prove an accurate reflection of ALL THE VOTES?” (italics added by me)
Very confident: 20.4%
Somewhat confident: 46.0%
Not too confident: 18.4%
Not at all confident: 7.2%
DK/NS: 8.0%
Though not linked, I did find the Colorado results here
Colorado 1: “How confident are you that YOUR VOTE in the November 2006 election will be counted as you intended.”
Very confident: 45.4%
Somewhat confident: 40.6%
Not too confident: 8.2%
Not at all confident: 3.7%
DK/NS: 2.1%
Colorado 2: “How confident are you that the touch-screen ballot used to record votes will provide an accurate reflection of all the votes?”
Very confident: 20.5%
Somewhat confident: 30.1%
Not too confident: 17.4%
Not at all confident: 13.7%
DK/NS: 18.4%
Colorado 3: “How confident are you that the bubble paper ballot used to record votes will prove an accurate reflection of ALL THE VOTES?”
Very confident: 20.4%
Somewhat confident: 46.0%
Not too confident: 18.4%
Not at all confident: 7.2%
DK/NS: 8.0%
There are plenty more details here: http://vote2006.unm.edu/ea2006.htm
I must say, the ElectionTech people have a very interesting interpretation of a poll that really suggests that only 50.6% of people are at least “somewhat confident” of the overall results of a touch-screen election, and only ~20% are “very confident” of the overall results using bubble paper ballots or machines.
Note: It would be nice if this forum would accept a “BR” HTML tag for somewhat better formatting, and it would also be nice if the “published” formatting actually matched the preview. Thanks! 🙂
Ditto all deja vu again 🙂
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