Forum analyzes voter fraud consequences

By Haley Beck\nIndiana Daily Student\nA forum discussed the possibility of voter fraud and its implications in the recent presidential election Friday in Wylie Hall. \nAudience members packed the room as two speakers presented and offered analysis of information relating to the theme "Does your vote count?"\nThe forum was sponsored by the IU Progressive Faculty Coalition, which according to its Web site http://www.bloomington.in.us/~pfc/, "recognizes a responsibility to foster informed and critical dialogue in classrooms, on campus, in our community, and in national and international forums."\n"We have known about the possibility of election fraud for three or four years," said Cynthia Hoffman, a senior lecturer in the psychology department, during her presentation. "Now we have an election with surprising results and need to thoroughly analyze the results."\nHoffman discussed the vulnerability of voting machines and central tabulators to hackers or system glitches and the problems presented with machines being manufactured by owners with political agendas.\nHoffman cited an instance of machines reporting inaccurately because of a possible corrupt memory card. \nShe also expressed concern with what she said were "unusual sets of data," which raise the question of whether votes were shifted during the election.\nSteve Hockema, a postdoctoral psychology student, discussed issues of discrepancies between exit polling data and election results, and their implications on the possibility of voter fraud.\n"This year, something happened that has never happened before in the U.S.," Hockema said. "Not only were the exit polls wrong, but the degree by which they were wrong is not only unheard of but impossible."\nHockema said it is a myth that exit polling is not accurate, and stressed that the system is used around the world for verifying and legitimizing election results.\nIn Germany, he said, exit polling results are accepted as actual results, and never have been wrong.\nHockema also discussed the "red shift," which was a shift in the exit polls from Kerry to Bush.\nHe showed results of an analysis by a former MIT math professor and current University of Pennsylvania professor who found the likelihood of such a shift are greater than 500,000 to 1 and 250 million to 1, respectively.\n"This means that in some states, you have a better chance of winning the lottery than betting this shift would happen," Hockema said.\nHockema offered several explanations for the shift, such as republicans lying or refusing to respond to exit pollers, a surge of Bush supporters after 4 p.m. or a miss-weighing of poll results.\nHockema said these are just hypotheses, but noted exit polls were accurate in Senate races which showed Republicans in the lead.\nHockema said he believes reform is needed within the voting system to eliminate such questions.\n"There is no hard evidence and I'm not alleging fraud," He said. "I am requesting an investigation and reform. If we have certain common sense reforms, we won't have problems like this. This issue is extremely important to get resolved."\n-- Contact staff writer Haley Beck at habeck@indiana.edu.