stop hiding the GOP CHEATING - Ruy Teixeira DOES NOT dump on fraud idea

[papau]

stop hiding the GOP CHEATING - Ruy Teixeira DOES NOT dump on fraud idea

http://www.tcf.org/publications/pow/nov17_2004.pdf

He says exit polls are always off - and always corrected - but he concedes that this years corrections may be much larger than the usual corrections (The raw before "corrections" exit polls were in 88 50.3 Dukakis vs 49.7 Bush, in 2000 Gore 48.5, Bush 46.2)

DOES UNWEIGHTED/UNCORRECTED RESULTS - MEANING RAW USING THE 4 PM STAT MODEL - ALWAYS BEING DIFFERENT FROM ACTUAL MEAN EXIT POLLS ARE ARE DEM BIASED - OR DOES IT MEAN THE GOP ALWAYS CHEAT?

So was there a cultural surge at the end of the campaign -as occurred in the past per the "plausible" explanation of Democracy Corps' exit poll statement for 2004-

or was there there the usual GOP fraud.

In other countries there would not be a question - we know the math - we know that exit polling works - and we'd cry foul. But in the US we want to "fix" the problem by finding out where exit pollsters stood relative to the accuracy of the exit poll in their area.


http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/11/10/voting/ind...

Was the election stolen?
The system is clearly broken. But there is no evidence that Bush won because of voter fraud. By Farhad Manjoo

Nov. 10, 2004 | Election Day 2004, like all national elections, saw its share of glitches, ineptitude, fraud, and intimidation. ...Salon has examined some of the most popular Kerry-actually-won theories currently making the rounds online, and none of them hold up under rigorous scrutiny.

[TruthIsAll]

1. He's seemed to have blinders on at first.

I hope he comes around 100%

[papau]

2. Washington Monthly quoted Teixeira and got some interesting posts

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_11/005178.php
November 17, 2004 Kevin Drum 5:48 PM
EXIT POLL UPDATE....The exit polls this year indicated a big lead for John Kerry, but when the final vote tallies came in George Bush had earned a decisive victory. Should we be suspicious of this? Is it evidence of possible vote fraud?

I've already expressed my skepticism about this, but last week I posted a paper by Steven Freeman that laid out the exit poll case so that people could judge for themselves. Today, though, Ruy Teixeira throws yet more cold water on the fraud thesis by taking a look at raw exit poll results from past years. Here's the basic data for the popular vote:

Some extracts from the posts at that site made in response to the above:

Or maybe Republican vote fraud has been going on for a lot longer than we thought. ;)

I should also add that aside from pollster incompetence, there is also the possibility that Republicans have been perpetrating fraud back since 1988 (seems unlikely, but never eliminate without reason), or that the polls are right but the vote count is wrong (which is not fraud). Both of these seem unlikely, but the second is a real possibility -- actually, a reality, but it would not seem to shift polls by this much. It is possible more people vote Democrat, but many more Democratic ballots are spoiled. In which case the exit poll would be correct, and the vote count wrong.

This chart doesn't pass the first sight bullshit detector test. Getting the numbers so completely wrong, from actual voters to boot, requires a level of incompetence only seen in the current administration. This is like MNF missing two field goals and calling the wrong game winner.

You can't even remember your Supreme Court Justice Rehnquist who harassed minority voters during the early 1960's.

I am not willing to rely on untested hypotheses to explain away irregularties in something that attempts to measure a quantity so vital to our democracy.

Ummm...I hate to burst your bubble, but most exit poll results are available through the Roper Center archives. Membership is not free however, but people afiliated with most major Universities can get access through their school.

I find it absolutely astonishing that results can be off from the exit polls by as much as 9 or 10% here, and we hardly bat an eye, but in the Ukraine, the results and exit polls are mismatched to the same degree and we use that fact to call their entire election illegitimate.

The problem with exit polls is that spoilage is not taken into account because the voter that is polled does not know that there is a possibility that his vote will not be counted. So in Florida in 2000, the exit polls were off the final total because they polled people who thought they had voted for Gore, but for whatever reason (butterfly ballot, hanging chad which caused the vote to be spoiled, etc...) that vote was never counted. So in the end, it wasn't really the exit polls that were off, it was the counting of the votes that was off. BTW, its interesting that in Bush v Gore, the SC was very worried about equal protection problems when different counties hand-counted punch card ballots in different ways (or at least used different methods to determine the intent of the voter), but was not concerned about the fact that people in one county were as much as 6 times more likely to have their votes thrown out based on the voting technology used than people that lived in the next county. Now which of these seems like the bigger equal protction problem to you?

There is one fly in the ointment this time. If you accept the screen captures by Jonathan Simon at ~12:20 Am on Nov. 3, prior to full correction by weighting or whatever procedure, there is a more substantial `red shift' to Bush (shift from exit poll to vote tally) in several critical states (identified by candidate/media attention prior to the election) than in the rest of the states (though some other states had large red shifts). Among those critical states, with the exception of Wisconsin, there is a correlation with either electronic voting or computer compiled optical scanned voting. What I don't know at this point is the extent to which the other red shifts
(outside critical states) correlate.

http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm
November 17, 2004 at 10:00 PM | PERMALINK
Volusia County election records just got put on lockdown
Posted by BevHarris on Tue Nov-16-04 07:26 PM

Dueling lawyers, election officials gnashing teeth, Votergate.tv film crew catching it all.

Here's what happened so far:

Friday Black Box Voting investigators Andy Stephenson and Kathleen Wynne popped in to ask for some records. They were rebuffed by an elections official named Denise. Bev Harris called on the cell phone from investigations in downstate Florida, and told Volusia County Elections Supervisor Deanie Lowe that Black Box Voting would be in to pick up our Nov. 2 Freedom of Information request, or would file for a hand recount. "No, Bev, please don't do that!" she exclaimed. But this is the way it has to be, folks. We didn't back down.

Monday Bev, Andy and Kathleen came in with a film crew and asked for the FOIA request. Deanie Lowe gave it to us with a smile, but I noticed that one item, the polling place tapes, were not copies of the real ones, but instead were new printouts, done on Nov. 15, and not signed by anyone.

I asked to see the real ones, and they told us for "privacy" reasons we can't have copies of the signed ones. I insisted on at least viewing them (although refusing to give us copies of the signatures is not legally defensible, according to our attorney). They said the real ones were in the County Elections warehouse. It was quittin' time and we arranged to come back this morning to review them.

Lana Hires, an employee who gained some notoriety in a Diebold memo, where she asked for an explanation of minus 16,022 votes for Gore, so she wouldn't have to stand there "looking dumb" when the auditor came in, was particularly unhappy about seeing us in the office. She vigorously shook her head when Deanie Lowe suggested we go to the warehouse.

Kathleen Wynne and I showed up at the warehouse at 8:15 this morning. There was Lana Hires looking especially gruff, yet surprised. She ordered us out. Well, we couldn't see why because there she was, with a couple other people, handling the original poll tapes. You know, the ones with the signatures on them. We stepped out and they promptly shut the door behind us.

There was a trash bag on the porch outside the door. I looked into it and what do you know, but there were poll tapes in there. They came out and glared at us. We drove away a small bit, and then videotaped the license plates of the two vehicles marked 'City Council' member. Others came out to glare and soon all doors were slammed.

So, we went and parked behind a bus to see what they would do next. They pulled out some large pylons, which blocked the door. I decided to go look at the garbage some more. Kathleen videotaped this. A man came out and I immediately wrote a public records request for the contents of the garbage bag, which also contained ballots -- real ones, but not filled out.

A brief tug of war occurred, tearing the garbage bag open. We then looked through it, as Pete looked on. He was quite friendly.

We collected various poll tapes and other information and asked if they could copy it for us, for our public records request. "You won't be going anywhere," said Pete. "The deputy is on his way."

Yes, not one but two police cars came up and then two county elections officials, and we all stood around discussing the merits of my public records request.

They finally let us go, about the time our film crew arrived, and we all trooped off to the elections office. There, the plot thickened.

We began to compare the special printouts given to us with the signed polling tapes from election night. Lo and behold, some were missing. We also found some that didn't match. In fact, in one location, precinct 215, an African-American precinct, the votes were off by hundreds, in favor of George W. Bush and other Republicans.

Hmm. Which was right? Our polling tape, specially printed on Nov. 15, without signatures, or theirs, printed on Nov. 2, with up to 8 signatures per tape?

Well, then it became even more interesting. Lana Hires took it upon herself to box up some items from an office, which appeared to contain -- you guessed it -- polling place tapes. She took them to the back of the building and disappeared.

Then, voting integrity advocates from Volusia and Broward, decided now would be a good time to go through the trash at the elections office. Lo and behold, they found all kinds of memos and some polling place tapes, fresh from Volusia elections office.

So, we compared these with the Nov. 2 signed ones and the "special' ones from Nov. 15 given to us, unsigned, and we found several of the MISSING poll tapes. There they were: In the garbage.

So, Kathleen went to the car and got the polling place tapes we had pulled from the warehouse garbage. My my my. There were not only discrepancies, but a polling place tape that was signed by six officials.

This was a bit disturbing, since the employees there told us that bag was destined for the shredder.

By now, a county lawyer had appeared on the scene, suddenly threatening to charge us extra for the time we took looking at the real stuff they had withheld from us in our FOIA. Other lawyers appeared, phoned, people had meetings, Lana glowered at everyone, and someone shut the door in the office holding the GEMS server.

Andy then went to get the GEMS server locked down. He also got the memory cards locked down and secured, much to the dismay of Lana. They were scattered around unsecured in any way before that.

We then all agreed to convene tomorrow morning, to further audit, discuss the hand count that Black Box Voting will require of Volusia County, and of course, it is time to talk about contesting the election in Volusia.

Bev Harris
Executive Director
Black Box Voting