Please check out Russ Baker's article about no fraud in Ohio. and email

[Sandy_0]

Russ Baker is mainstream and has a broad readership. After you read his article, you might want to email him and let him know more about Blackwell, and point out to him that "It's the tabulators, stupid."



As time passes and allegations of fraud are investigated, it seems clearer that the story of the 2004 election is more about incompetence and dysfunction than intentional misconduct.

<snip>Many of us fear that the Ohio election was stolen because people – like talk-show sleuths, blogger number-crunchers, forensic attorneys, crusading professors and partisan activists – keep telling us so. We don't even know most of these people, yet we gladly forward their e-mails and web links, their pronouncements, analyses, essays and statistical exercises. While their credentials may not be that impressive, we listen to their conspiracy theories because – frightened by the direction our country has taken – we want to believe them. <snip>

Voting Irregularities

Charge: Misallocation of voting machines
Finding: True
Intentional? Probably not<snip>

<snip>Charge: Miscounting of absentee votes
Finding: False<snip>

<snip>Charge: Tampering with voting machines
Finding: Probably false<snip>

<snip>Challengers May Have Good Intentions But Bad Facts<snip>

<snip>Charge: Voting company fraud
Finding: Unlikely<snip>

>snip>Charge: Exit poll results were more accurate than actual ballots
Finding: False
Explanation of Problem: Imperfect nature of polls<snip>

<snip>Half-baked conspiracy theories are damaging to the public confidence in democracy. We could use a few less conspiracy theorists, and a few more Griffins. It takes a pretty big person to admit that one's own side screwed up, or was simply bested in a fight (even a nasty one), or to accept, and tackle, the growing alienation of potential voters in America. And the unexciting, labor-intensive process of analyzing and fixing the machinery of the people's will.<snip>

http://www.alternet.org/story/20934/

[e-mail]

[euler]

1. From your post, it appears you read the article.

From your post, it appears you read the article. But maybe you didn't ?

you say:

snip

you might want to email him and let him know more about Blackwell, and point out to him that "It's the tabulators, stupid."

snip


....but the writer *does* know about Blackwell. Here's the first sentence in a paragraph devoted solely to Blackwell's shenanigans.

snip

You wouldn't have much of a case for conspiracy if you didn't have Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell.

snip

He also mentions the role of the tabulators. He quotes Mark Griffin saying:

If there's fraud, it's in the tabulation


The best thing about the article is here:

Now to the central issue: the claim that exit polls, which never lie, showed Kerry winning. Our understanding of this – and the argumentation in the Contest – is based largely on an analysis by Steven F. Freeman, Ph.D. But Freeman is not an expert in polling. According to his affidavit, he is a visiting scholar in the Graduate Division, School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania Center for Organizational Dynamics.

To get some insight into this issue, I spoke with a source who, in the common parlance, is "familiar with the thinking of" Warren Mitofsky, the "father" of the exit poll.

Asked about Freeman's analysis, my source told me that it is "all wrong." We spent several hours going through Freeman's specific claims, and reviewed how exit polls – and Mitofsky's in particular – work.

Much of the belief that the election was stolen was based on "screen shots" of raw numbers provided by CNN. In exit polling, raw numbers mean almost nothing – since the essence of a successful exit poll is to interview a sampling of voters, and then apply a variety of methods in order to adjust to the most probable accurate assessment. "To say you want the raw data is ludicrous," said the source. "You can't use it until you do something with it. You're talking about a bunch of naïve people that had the first course in statistics."

A huge number of man hours have been wasted by TIA analyising the exit polls. And an even larger number of man hours were wasted by people who read his posts. But the worst of the whole affair is the number of people who based their work on the work of TIA, thereby making their work irrelevant. It was precisely all this focus on exit polls that caused MSM to not take us seriouly.

[Sandy_0]

2. Hmmm

I suppose you're right. The exit polls done by the same group in Ukraine were much more reliable than what they discovered here. Right?

[Lurker321]

4. Let's take a look at how accurate Ukrainian exit polls were:

http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/10499250.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

The state-funded Ukrainian Institute of Social Research and Social Monitoring Center showed Yushchenko winning with 58.1 percent of the vote and Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych garnering 38.4 percent. The margin of error was 2 percentage points.

The Western-funded Razumkov Center of Political Studies and Kiev International Institute of Sociology showed Yushchenko winning with 56.5 percent and Yanukovych collecting 41.3 percent of the vote, with no margin of error given.

A third exit poll, by Frank Luntz, a pollster for the U.S. Republican Party, and Douglas Schoen, of the Washington-based market research company Penn, Schoen & Berland, showed Yushchenko winning with 56 to Yanukovych's 41 percent, Schoen said. The margin of error was 2 percentage points.

Ok so we have:

58.1 to 38.4 MOE=2
56.5 to 41.3 no MOE
56 to 41 MOE=2

What were the official results of the election?

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,11909776%255E2,00.html

51.99 to 44.20

So - how good were the exit polls? ALL of them were completely wrong and WAY OUTSIDE of the margin of error. Compared to these polls, US exit polls were a lot closer to the final result.

So - please explain to me why you hold up Ukrainian exit polls as some kind of example of accuracy?

[euler]

6. Can I answer ?

It lends an air of authenticity to a set of arguments that cannot stand on their own. But, as you point out (and I take your word for it.) they don't lend an air of authenticity at all.

Our counter arguments are not going to change any minds. Someone has taken the time to post this thread, therefore all claims in support of it are automatically true, and all claims to the contrary are automatically wrong.

[euler]

5. You seem to have the misconception that...

...al exit polls are the same. They are not. It all depends on what the person or entity paying for the exit poll want.

This quote from you is actually correct:


The exit polls done by the same group in Ukraine were much more reliable than what they discovered here. Right?


Remember, the design of the exit poll is not decided by Mitofsky, but by the requirements of the customer who is paying for it. The accuracy of a poll is one of the parameters in it's design. Historically, Europe has been more interested in election verification. When verification is the main focus of the poll, as in Europe, Mitofsky designs an exit poll that is robust enough to provide election verification. Such a poll bears little resemblance to the design of exit polls (up to now, at least) in the US where verification plays second fiddle to demographic analysis. Here in the US the entity that pays for exit polls is MSM. They don't really care about election verification. Instead, they want the exit poll to be able to explain the demographics of the election.

Two different countries, 2 different exit poll requirements, 2 different exit poll designs. Apples and Oranges, US and Ukraine.

Even the methodology used by European exit pollsters and US exit pollsters are different.

Here is some stuff about the difference between Europe (specifically Germany) and the US.

Here:

http://www.mysterypollster.com/main/2004/12/what_about_thos.html

[Laurab]

7. Well yes...

Of course the exit polls done by the same group in Ukraine were much more reliable than what they discovered here. At least THIS year. Now, I have a feeling they'll be reliable here again, maybe. Like, if * is no longer in office.

[Lurker321]

8. See post #4 - Ukrainian exit polls were less accurate than

the US ones.

[Laurab]

9. Explain then

Why Colin Powell and the rest of our great leaders kept spouting off about the exit polls in the UKRAINE, please. One web link is not enough.

[Lurker321]

10. One web link?

You can google around and find the exit poll numbers in Ukraine. Compare them to the election final results. Don't rely on what I posted. Find it yourself. You will see that the exit polls were very different from the actual results.

Why was the first Ukrainian election considered fraudulent? The proof of fraud was not exit polls. The proof of fraud was documented, massive, hard evidence. Read some of it: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/11/28/wukra28.xml

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. Welcome to DU

----------------------------------------------------------
Save this nation one town, county, and state at a time!
http://timeforachange.bluelemur.com/electionreform.htm#why

[locomotion]

11. Russ Baker

His take would be like saying that the two shuttles that blew up got most of it right