San Diego Paper Sees Voter Confidence in Elections Where Others See Vote of No Confidence

"Electronic voting trusted, poll shows," reads the headline of an article published today in the San Diego Union-Tribune in California.

Yet the headline of an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about the same poll reads, "Most voters suspicious of ballot's accuracy, Field Poll finds."

So which is it? You be the judge.

The Field Poll (pdf), a telephone survey of only 402 likely voters, found that fewer than half of those surveyed (44%) said they had "a great deal of confidence" in the accuracy of California voting systems, while 41% said they had only "some" confidence in the voting systems.

The San Diego Union-Tribune interpreted this to mean that 85 percent, or "the vast majority of California voters," have a great deal or some confidence that their votes would be counted accurately. The paper also declared this to mean that voters trust electronic voting machines.

If you just add those two figures together (44% and 41%) and don't really look at what they mean individually, you'd come to the same conclusion that the Union-Tribune's reporter and headline writer did. But is that really an accurate interpretation of what the numbers mean? The SF Chronicle takes a different view. Per that paper's story:

Fewer than half of California voters are firmly convinced their votes are being accurately counted, either on paper ballots or electronic systems, a Field Poll released today reported. Only 44 percent of the state's likely voters said they had a great deal of confidence in the vote count, while 14 percent had little or no confidence that their votes are being tabulated correctly, the poll showed.

The Chronicle goes on to add some context:

The fact that almost 1 out of every 7 likely voters, those most apt to pay close attention to politics and cast ballots in every election, don't think those votes will be properly counted is a huge change in the country's attitude.

"If you'd asked this question 20 years ago, people probably would have said 'Sure, votes are counted accurately except for a few scattered places. This is America,' " DiCamillo said.

But hanging chad, butterfly ballots, electronic voting glitches and the 2000 presidential election have changed voter perceptions dramatically.

While the Field Poll looked just at likely voters, a 2004 study of occasional and nonvoters by the nonprofit California Voter Foundation found that an even larger percentage believed their votes would not be counted accurately, said Kim Alexander, the group's president.

So who's misinterpreting the numbers?

Update: After I posted this, I received a list of links to other schizophrenic stories about the poll from reader John Gideon:

Many skeptical on vote counting

Voters confident in counts

Touch-screen machines OK with California voters but most like old way better