Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but e-voting vs polls....

[HardWorkingDem]

Has anyone thought that since 2000 there has been an erosion in the use of exit polls that may allow for more and more acceptance when it comes to the disparity between e-vote tabulation and what exit polls find?

Take the 2000 election in Florida. Because of the terribly designed butterfly ballot, the exit polls were actually correct even though the ballots when counted showed Bush getting the votes when Gore should have. After the election, all the networks decided to limit the use of exit polling while exit poll experts said exit polls are remarkably accurate. And this year the networks are again saying their use of exit polling will be limited.

So my question is, when things like this happen, citizen speculation of e-voting accuracy is less intense because every day American's don't believe in the accuracy exit polling. With this thought, it could be easier and easier for these e-voting machines to throw out completely different numbers and fewer people will be surprised when these numbers don't equal those of the before-election polls.

Therefore, it would be easier for someone to rig these machines because of American dependence on electronics.

[FloridaPat]

1. The difference between exit polls and ballots is always in favor of

the repubs. This is statistically impossible. The media is the propaganda arm of the gov't. They get their monopolies from the gov't. The more the difference, the more people know they've been screwed and it's possible someday to actually do something about it.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Why would you not want to be a conspiracy theorist? n/t

[bobthedrummer]

3. There are corrupted networks of conspiracy, not "theories" eom

[teryang]

4. RFK Jr., documents evoting discrepancies

...both articles are posted at www.globalresearch.ca

Will The Next Election Be Hacked?


by Robert F. Kennedy Jr

November 3, 2006
Rollingstone.com


The voting-machine companies bear heavy blame for the 2000 presidential-election disaster. Fox News' fateful decision to call Florida for Bush - followed minutes later by CBS and NBC - came after electronic machines in Volusia County erroneously subtracted more than 16,000 votes from Al Gore's total. Later, after an internal investigation, CBS described the mistake as "critical" in the network's decision. Seeing what was an apparent spike for Bush, Gore conceded the election - then reversed his decision after a campaign staffer investigated and discovered that Gore was actually ahead in Volusia by 13,000 votes...

The primary author and steward of HAVA was Rep. Bob Ney, the GOP chairman of the powerful U.S. House Administration Committee. Ney had close ties to the now-disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff...,


Ney also made sure that Diebold and other companies would not be required to equip their machines with printers to provide paper records that could be verified by voters...

(in 2004) Electronic voting machines also caused widespread problems in Florida, where Bush bested Kerry by 381,000 votes. When statistical experts from the University of California examined the state's official tally, they discovered a disturbing pattern: "The data show with 99.0 percent certainty that a county's use of electronic voting is associated with a disproportionate increase in votes for President Bush. Compared to counties with paper ballots, counties with electronic voting machines were significantly more likely to show increases in support for President Bush between 2000 and 2004." The three counties with the most discrepancies - Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade - were also the most heavily Democratic. Electronic voting machines, the report concluded, may have improperly awarded as many as 260,000 votes to Bush. "No matter how many factors and variables we took into consideration, the significant correlation in the votes for President Bush and electronic voting cannot be explained," said Michael Hout, a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

In Florida, an astonishing new law actually makes it illegal to count paper ballots by hand after they've already been tallied by machine.

Much more...

Incidentally, the Voter News Consortium of the major news media exit polling was inexplicably rendered inoperative by a defense contractor Battelle Memorial Institute in the 2002 midterm elections.

[HardWorkingDem]

5. What I am wondering - gasoline example...

The thing that has caught my interest is how this falls along the same thing as gas prices - the industry gouges us up to three dollars from a buck fifty until we are happy (or seemingly happy) paying for two dollar gas.

So what I am wondering is if these folks are thinking if they can show exit polling and the like to be unreliable, then the e-voting must be right, therefore, easier to hack and with fewer people asking questions.

In HBO's documentary "Hacking Democracy" Gore had a negative vote total of 16,000 votes and in the documentary it said no one ever explained this count.

A sort of death by one thousand nicks I guess.

[teryang]

6. The reduction of oil and gas prices was planned

Goldman Sachs (their man is Secretary of the Treasury) reduced the percentage of energy contracts in its commodities index forcing sales by index funds across the market. The strategic petroleum reserve hasn't been refilled after the Katrina rundown. It has been alleged that this is in violation of government regulations. It has also been rumored that Defense department the single largest energy consumer has been selling energy contracts on the open market.

Thirdly and most importantly are the actions by Saudi Arabia, the most powerful bushite ally in the oil markets. Thus far they have done nothing to protect oil price stability on the downside but will do so "in December."

Of course, the lack of gulf hurricanes and the expectation of a mild winter season, made the price reductions that much easier. The only thing holding up prices at this point is the expectation of war with Iran or some other outrageous political developments after the election.