"Those faulty exit polls were sabotage"

[bloom]

http://www.thehill.com/morris/110404.aspx

By Dick Morris
Nov. 4, 2004

Exit polls are almost never wrong. They eliminate the two major potential fallacies in survey research by correctly separating actual voters from those who pretend they will cast ballots but never do and by substituting actual observation for guesswork in judging the relative turnout of different parts of the state.

So reliable are the surveys that actually tap voters as they leave the polling places that they are used as guides to the relative honesty of elections in Third World countries. When I worked on Vicente Fox’s campaign in Mexico, for example, I was so fearful that the governing PRI would steal the election that I had the campaign commission two U.S. firms to conduct exit polls to be released immediately after the polls closed to foreclose the possibility of finagling with the returns. When the polls announced a seven-point Fox victory, mobs thronged the streets in a joyous celebration within minutes that made fraud in the actual counting impossible.

But this Tuesday, the networks did get the exit polls wrong. Not just some of them. They got all of the Bush states wrong. So, according to ABC-TV’s exit polls, for example, Kerry was slated to carry Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and Iowa, all of which Bush carried. The only swing state the network had going to Bush was West Virginia, which the president won by 10 points.

To screw up one exit poll is unheard of. To miss six of them is incredible. It boggles the imagination how pollsters could be that incompetent and invites speculation that more than honest error was at play here. <more>

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I think it is interesting how well he makes the case that we should respect exit polls. It apparently does not occur to him that the vote count might be flawed.
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Other opinions:

The Case For Fraud
http://www.counterbias.com/152.html

November 3 2004
by Joseph Cannon



A FIXED ELECTION, A FAILED PARTY, AND A FIRED UP MODERATE INDEPENDENT
http://www.moderateindependent.com/v2i21editorial.htm

by Thomas J. Bico



Never Say Die-bold: So You Don’t Think the Bush Campaign Stole This Election? Think Again
 http://www.opednews.com/thoreau_110404_diebold.htm

By Jackson Thoreau

[TomClash]

1. ???

Does he really think a Fox or ABC Exit Poll would intentionally assist Kerry?

You're right. He was worried that the election would be stolen in Mexico - why doesn't he think it wasn't stolen here?

[enki23]

2. whoever did it, did it to *hurt* kerry

but actually, it's no less difficult to believe the vote totals are a lie than to believe the exit polls are a fraud. either one requires a fairly equivalent conspiracy.

[Marnieworld]

3. mmmmm I don't think equal

Exit polls vs. voting machines.

Other than the question , "Why are the exit polls different than the vote tallies?" there is no proof or even theory as to how or why these exit polls would be false. On the other hand there are reams of data pointing to voter fraud, intimidation and computer hacking making the voting data suspect.

Once again, not a clue as to how exit polls could be wrong but much evidence explaining how the vote tabulations could be wrong. Not equal at all.

Exit polls involve coordinating people in a giant conspiracy. Hacking vote machine tallies involves possibly just one person with one computer with knowledge, ability and the welcoming spirit of voting companies to change results. Proven connections between the parties involved (diebold, ess, and sproul with republicans) vs. a theory about nameless, faceless, liberal pollsters skewing results. Plain hooey.

[mistertrickster]

4. Morris is exactly right--six exit polls all wrong and in Kerry's favor

cannot be explained as polling "invalidity". Exit polling is a science, not educated guesswork.

It's like "counting" thousands of bolts by weighing ten of them, dividing that number by ten to get an average weight per bolt, and then dividing the total weight of the bolts by that average. Using an accurate scale, it's not a guess--it's a calculation.

A blue-ribbon bipartisan panel needs to check this out. It may be something as simple as the exit pollsters were not properly trained. Ever since VNS got railroaded out of town for ACCURATELY calling Florida for Gore in 2000, the experts may not be running things, I don't know.

But there is an explanation--and it is not simply that exit polls can be wrong. That is just not right.

[bloom]

6. I think it is something as simple as the votes were miscounted -on purpose

Juan G. on Democracy Now was saying that in Taos, New Mexico - one third of the voters did not have a registered vote for president. A Democratic precinct.

They had examples of other precincts where there the number of votes did not match up with the number of people voting.

There are many systematic mess-ups.

[teryang]

5. This is why BMI sabotaged the VNS consortium in 2002

Exit polls can be circumstantial evidence of fraudulent elections. Lenin and Stalin would do the same, under these circumstances.

[bemildred]

7. Indeed.

All the babble about Ohio, while the deal was going down in Florida.
It would look bad if it was Florida twice in a row, eh?

And no paper trail.

But this indicates that the required level of manipulation is higher
than it used to be, progress of a sort.

[teryang]

8. the ramifications of Republican electronic warfare

This is what "full spectrum dominance really means."

I posted this on the Mark Crispin Miller thread:

Crispin Miller is right. Tab Julius is right also. The other commentaries about how stupid people are and the cultural fundie bullshit are true but the main issue, the lack of legitimacy in rigged elections is what this is all about.

Why people would accept electronic voting, voting with electrons is beyond me. Electronic warfare has matured into a very sophisticated form of warfare. Its been around for over 60 years. Recording votes by electron and reporting vote tabulations by modem is insane! There is a fundamental paradox in electronic voting that is insurmountable. It was published on theBell.com for months before the electronic voting remedy (sic) to the Florida debacle in 2000 was proposed. There is a fundamental conflict between voter identity and vote secrecy and the ability to audit or recount. These two constitutional parameters cannot and will not be satisfied by BBV. Current legislators, party leadership, and judges ignore the paradox. This means that democracy is lost because the voting franchise is now owned by the corporate masters of the electronic spectrum. The meaningless and totally illegal recount rules put out by the Florida secretary state are symptomatic of the unconstitutionality of these past two election cycles.

The last sickening operational indicator of electronic warfare being used on American voting processes is that the so called Republican evoting corporations are actually supported by defense contractors. One of those defense contractors, Battelle Memorial Inc., a biowarfare defense contractor sabotaged the media consortium VNS exit polling organization in election 2002. It barely received a comment in the mainstream media when it was announced the night of the election. No exit polling! What a coinkidink! ( BMI also makes, organizes and maintains mobile units suitable for distributing and containing anthrax at any location. )

Remember that there is a litigation and judicial strategy to ban inauditable electronic voting. I proposed it right after the 2000 debacle when evoting was wrongly proposed as a remedy for Florida 2000. It will cost tens of millions and take years to implement. One has to conclude that the Democratic Party leadership just doesn't give a shit.

[bemildred]

11. Well, I think it's both parties.

The real tension is between state and national party rule and
grass-root populist sort of things. The grass roots political
movements headed by Perot and Newt got kicked in the nuts
politically just as firmly as we just did, or Eugene McCarthy,
The VietNam peace movement, George Wallace, John Anderson, and
others. Newtie's ideas about term-limits and right wing populism
are every bit as anathema as open primaries, and social programs,
and what Dean started with the internet. And you have to admit
Kerry did an excellent job of cutting Dean off, sucking the movement
in behind him and then kicking us in the nuts. The message is
clear enough: "Shutup, it's futile, you can't change anything."
But the internet is a new element, I dunno if it's going to work
this time. The message, if you know the score, is: "Hey, that worked
great, they had to expend a great deal of political capital and
take huge risks to cut us off, and they still barely made it, and
they are far from out of the woods." And I don't see much of anybody
giving up and going home this time.

[Fovea]

9. Gee Dick

Let me ask you a question.
Have you ever heard of Occham's Razor?

If you can't explain how these critical (and only these critical) exit polls were wrong, isnt it logically more sound to assume that the polls were not wrong, but rather the electronic vote tallies you can not reproduce?


Or is it just more fun to be a political analyst in a crimial conspiracy than a democracy?

[bloom]

10. ....

:kick:

[donhakman]

12. k