by TChris

As TalkLeft has noted, despite the absence of mainstream media coverage of election irregularities, there remain unanswered questions about the 2004 presidential vote. In light of a new study of the Florida vote count, it's time to start demanding answers.

A nationally renowned expert on statistical research and a team of graduate students at UC Berkeley yesterday sounded another alarm bell about the Nov. 2 elections, releasing a study suggesting that irregularities in electronic voting machines in Florida may have awarded hundreds of thousands of “excess” votes to George W. Bush.

The report, published by the Berkeley Quantitative Methods Research Team, said Bush picked up 130,000 to 260,000 votes the group’s statistical analysis can’t explain from three heavily Democratic south Florida counties that used touchscreen voting equipment this year. The probability of such a discrepancy arising by chance is less than one in a thousand, according to Michael Hout, professor of sociology at the campus, member of the National Academy of Science, and leader of the research team.