Analysis of the 2000 Florida presidential balloting with program code and graphical output by Roger Luebeck © 2000, 2017 |
home Balloting Simple trig Logistic map The Attractor of Henon Number doubling Barnsley's Fern The Sierpinski Triangle |
![]() |
Balloting This iterated balloting algorithm, using a random number generator, generated surprising patterns amidst chaos. I developed this algorithm in November 2000 as part of a DOS program I wrote to simulate the Florida presidential balloting, in order to predict who would win the recount - Bush or Gore. Undervoting (not voting for either candidate) occurs at a very consistent rate -- in a geographic, historical and voting machine-type sense. It is about 1.2 percent; i.e., about 1.2 percent of voters at a polling location choose to not vote for either presidential candidate. My DOS program predicted that if a standard for counting ballots was adopted that produced agreement in undervote between "Marksense" counties and "Optical" counties, then Gore would have an 80 percent chance of winning, with the most likely margin of victory being approximately 350 votes. (I had requested undervote data from all 67 Florida counties and promptly received the data from all but two small counties.) One year later such a recount was performed and Gore actually won by more than 100 votes, using the standard whereby "[pin] pricks" counted as votes, and therefore could also create an "overvote" (which is a throw-away). There was never anything to even think about. It was the only standard that ever made any sense: [Pin] pricks can't appear without the voter pulling the lever, as emphasized by the president of the company that manufactured the Marksense machines, and as verified by their own testing. All other standards for interpreting ballots produced results that fantastically failed to bring the undervote data in Marksense counties into agreement with Optical counties. In fact, all other standards were absurd on face value, without even considering the extreme undervote aberration. footnote: As intimated above, a few standards other than the sole rational standard were incorporated into studies in the months following the election. The absurdly irrational standards had Bush winning. Thus, the consensus among the media is that Bush must indeed have been the legitimate winner. Do I need to explain? There were about four irrational standards (Bush winning in each case) and only one rational standard (which had Gore winning). Well, as brilliant minds know.. truth is determined by majority, regardless of the characteristics of the majority, and it was four to one. The U.S. Supreme Court had ordered the manner in which the official recount was to proceed. I listened to their presentation on the radio. All nine justices were cluelessly out of their element, thought themselves brilliant, and were then fawned over by the media. Prior to that, Gore's barefoot lawyer was fawned over by the media. He had been unwittingly arguing for a standard that was both incorrect and would have mathematically eliminated his client. I was the only person aware of that fact. There are people who, after the study showed Gore to be the winner, said that they knew it all along. They did not. Anyhow.... Even though my program incorporated the BASIC random number generator, distinct patterns always appeared in the graphical output. This is an example of applying an algorithm to randomness. Without the algorithm, no number of iterations of XY plots, with Y being assigned randomly, will produce any pattern. The pattern that is generated matches that which is generated by three other very different algorithms: logistic map a repeating line drawing routine used to color a plane in a CAD program simple trig They are shown on other pages of this website. (VisualBASIC and DOS BASIC program code is displayed further down on page) The following graphs were generated using a slightly modified version of the DOS program using VisualBASIC: |
Output: First 20 percent Amplitude: .5 X increment: .04 Votes: 20000 Trials: 500 |