Comment Re:Two things (Score 2, Interesting) 1237
The authors state flat out: "Electronic voting raised President Bush's advantage from the tiny edge held in 2000 to a clearer margin of victory in 2004."
No self respecting scientist would state such an absurdly strong conclusion based on a simple correlation. At most, it could be claimed that there was a correlation between the use of electronic voting machines and Bush's margin.
The authors go on to show that Bush's percentage increased most over 2000 in the heavily Democratic counties. In other words, Republican counties stayed loyal to Bush, and he picked up some votes in Democratic counties. What's surprising about that? That's the nature of elections. People make choices that are often different from the way they voted last time or their party affiliation. That's why we have elections instead of just counting the number of voters registered to each party.
No self respecting scientist would state such an absurdly strong conclusion based on a simple correlation. At most, it could be claimed that there was a correlation between the use of electronic voting machines and Bush's margin.
The authors go on to show that Bush's percentage increased most over 2000 in the heavily Democratic counties. In other words, Republican counties stayed loyal to Bush, and he picked up some votes in Democratic counties. What's surprising about that? That's the nature of elections. People make choices that are often different from the way they voted last time or their party affiliation. That's why we have elections instead of just counting the number of voters registered to each party.
