What is wrong with Florida?

The New York Times reports today that Florida has lost voting records from the 2002 elections, and surprise, surprise, the problems are in....Miami-Dade county and Broward county. You may recall that both of those counties were at the center of the recount controversy in the 2000 Presidential election along with Palm Beach County, which has "suffered" from voting irregularities for quite some time.

During the 2000 election, I did some research on the recount problems, and I uncovered problems that were disturbing enough that I sent the information to the Florida Attorney General's office. I never received a response, and I have no way of knowing if any follow up ever occurred, but this report from the times is not encouraging.

Most of the statistical analysis done of the voting patterns in the 2000 Florida election "proved" that Gore lost votes to Buchanan in Palm Beach County, but a statistical analysis I saw indicated that this was not the case. Buchanan is from Palm Beach County, and his proportion of the vote in the election was similar to his proportion of the vote in the primaries. Ditto for the raw data rather than percentages.

ONLY in Palm Beach did Buchanan get less than HALF the of votes he received before in 1996. Buchanan's "lost" votes in that county in 2000 were much greater than in any other district in Florida. (Buchanan received over 8,000 votes in 1996 Republican PRIMARY (where only registered Republicans can vote; but he received only 3,407 under the Reform Party from ALL voters in the 2000 Presidential election. (Pat Buchanan has relatives who live in Palm Beach County, and this local support greatly increases the number of local voters who choose Buchanan, compared to every other region of the country. There are over 14,551 members of the Reform party in Palm Beach County - which indicates that less than 1/5 of the Reform voters voted for their own candidate. The Fraud is NOT whether Gore voters were "confused" and voted for Gore, but rather WHY Reform Party and Libertarian voters were prevented from registering THEIR vote!)

What caught my eye was what appeared to be deliberate alteration of ballots after they were cast.

Assume 45,000 ballots were stuck with a stiff wire or pointed tool. It would take somebody a little bit of privacy and about 15 minutes. A ream of paper is 1 inch thick, 45,000 many ballots can be carried by one person in one handcart or box, damaged, and returned to position very quickly. More simply, they could be punched several hundred at a time while the stack is lined before being read at the voting machine - since all the ballots would already be lined up and stacked neatly in order at that time.

Originally,
3,000 = Buchanan
15,000 = Bush
25,000 = Gore (Gore has approximately a 2:1 margin over Bush in Palm Beach Cty.)
1,250 = other parties and random existing errors
750 = "blank" or "protest votes"- No vote for President; other spots may be filled in.

After ....
3,000 Buchanan + Gore = thrown out.
15,000 Bush + Gore = thrown out.
25,000 Gore (+ Gore) = GOOD VOTES for Gore = counted already
1,250 + others + Gore = thrown out.
750 = "blank" + Gore = Gore additional "free" votes

Stamping 45,000 ballots with a tool (or other device) THROUGH the Gore slot gives:

Every Gore vote = still a valid Gore vote. (No change in the total, no change in the recount.)

Every Bush, Buchanan, Workers Party, and Libertarian Party ballot IS IMMEDIATELY INVALID. They will be thrown out because they have two votes. They NEVER were counted in the first place = no change in the recount. The double-punch occurs ONLY in the presidential race, and no position on the ballot is disturbed. All other races are correctly counted.

EVERY ballot that had no vote (a "protest vote" against both major candidates) becomes a Gore vote. All other races on the ballot are not disturbed, and are correctly counted.

To my knowledge this was never investigated.

I had hoped that electronic voting would make ballots untamperable, but it appears that this may not be the case. Is Florida headed for another election day disaster?