GUN IS SMOKING - 2004 Ohio Irrefutable Evidence of Vote Miscount

[kpete]

The Gun is Smoking - 2004 Ohio Precinct-Level Irrefutable Evidence of Vote Miscount


The National Election Data Archive (NEDA) is the first mathematical team to release a valid scientific analysis of the precinct-level 2004 Ohio presidential exit poll data. NEDA's analysis provides virtually irrefutable evidence of vote miscount.

(PRWEB) January 17, 2006 -- There is significant controversy about whether the 2004 presidential election was conducted fairly and its votes counted correctly. According to results of the major national election exit poll conducted for the National Election Pool by Edison/Mitofsky (E/M), Kerry won Ohio's pivotal vote, though the official tally gave the state, and thus the presidency, to Bush. The conduct of Ohio's election was formally debated by Congress in January 2005.

The National Election Data Archive (NEDA) is the first mathematical team to release a valid scientific analysis of the precinct-level 2004 Ohio presidential exit poll data "The Gun is Smoking: Ohio 2004 Exit Poll Discrepancies Are Consistent with Outcome-Altering Vote Miscount" available at http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/OH/Ohio-Exit-Polls-2004.pdf. NEDA's analysis provides significant evidence of an outcome-altering vote miscount.

The analysis is based on the most accurate statistical method yet devised for determining whether exit poll error, random variations, or vote count manipulation cause the discrepancies between exit polls and official vote tallies. This analysis method was made public recently by NEDA in "Vote Miscounts or Exit Poll Error? New Mathematical Function for Analyzing Exit Poll Discrepancy" available at http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/Exit-Poll-Analysis.pdf

Exit Polls were conducted in 49 of Ohio’s 11,360 precincts. At least 40% of Ohio's polled precincts show statistically significant differences between Kerry’s exit poll percent and official vote count percent. 35% of these discrepancies underestimated the Kerry official vote share. This is five times the number expected. Three of the most glaring examples are:

Tons more at:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/1/prweb333209.htm

[liberalhistorian]

1. Nominated.

We must get the truth out about this and not let people get apathetic about it or let the other side keep getting away with their "it's over and done with, forget it, get over it" routine.

And being from Ohio, none of this surprises me at all. Especially considering that Sec. of State Blackwell was co-chair of Bush's Ohio campaign, just like Katherine Harris was in Florida during the 2000 campaign. Blackwell is a tool of the highest order, as are the majority of the OH statewide officeholders.

[Kansas Wyatt]

15. The media sued the State of Florida in the SCOTUS before the 2004

Election. In that lawsuit, the media was suing Florida to make their "purge" list public before the election, so voters had a way to correct mistakes before the election and be able to vote.

In The Supreme Court Of The United States, the State of Florida admitted that it had wrongfully purged several thousand voters in heavily democratic precincts in the 2000 Election. The SCOTUS did not touch the fact that, "officially" Gore lost by less than 600 votes, and Florida had just admitted that it wrongfully did not allow several thousand people to vote in heavily democratic precincts. Nope, the SCOTUS just told Republican controlled Florida that it could not cheat that way again, and they had to give voters an avenue to see if their names were wrongfully placed on the purge list.

The Supreme Court Of The United States had proof that they had screwed up in their 2000 Selection, and could not bring themselves to acknowledge it. Why?

Because the SCOTUS did not want to get into who actually cheated in the 2000 Election, and who really won. That says a Hell of a lot about our democracy and rule of law, as we go around the world to 'spread democracy' and enforce 'the rule of law.'

[FreedomAngel82]

28. Yes it does

It shows that they know the truth and don't want other people to know.

[Kansas Wyatt]

37. It also proves that we are being ruled over, instead of

With the consent of the governed.

I guess the SCOTUS figured that 2004 would correct the error on it's own. Little did they know (or not) that 2000 Florida was just a model for 2004, with regards to more sinister covert activities on a national level.

I tried to point it out yesterday, but the recent revelation of Bush spying on American citizens and data mining through the NSA may be related to something Ken Mehlman was bragging about right after the 2004 election. Mr. Mehlman bragged about how the Bush campaign targeted voters much like companies target consumers, by data mining. Coincidence, or NSA help for the Bush campaign?

[donkeyotay]

41. I hear you Kansas, and I don't think it's a coincidence either. nt

[Fredda Weinberg]

54. Proof that we can make a difference

The CD with the scrub list sat in the Brennan Center desk drawer for months 'till I asked for it ... the rest is history.

But I'm afraid that we've gone off the rails - to make progress, we need to have real evidence, not comparisons between exit polls and election results.

[papau]

2. OUR MEDIA - will ignore because it might cause trouble. n/t

n/t

[ClintonTyree]

124. Of that you can be sure...........

this will never be seen by by a vast majority of Americans. It's not "news-worthy", it's sooooo 2004! :eyes: The Corporate Media has had this story since shortly after the 2004 election and has failed to do anything with it. They're not about to start now.
I don't know if it's because it will cause trouble or they just don't care. Probably both. There has to be a missing white woman somewhere or more saber rattling from bush about Iran, what would be the point of reporting this? Just to let us know what we already know, bush is an illegitimate president and an abject failure at the job he stole.

I guess if it gives us some validation it's good in that respect. If it spurred election reform that would be the best outcome but they're certainly not going to recall bush. (Oh, how I wish we could)

[McCamy Taylor]

136. And because they participate by withholding the exit polls for W.

[Cooley Hurd]

3. K&R!

:wow:

[still_one]

4. and this is what is so frustrating

in 2000 we were promised that they would have the voting fixed by 2004.

[liberalpress]

5. and, indeed, the voting WAS "fixed" in 2004

[still_one]

6. yup, they sure did

[hootinholler]

70. We can thank Ney for sitting on all the HAVA ammendments to require paper.

Along with the usual suspects in Ohio.

-Hoot

[inchhigh]

7. K&R

[kpete]

8. "He wasn't even elected."

"What will it take to impeach George Bush?" George Clooney was asked after he won the Golden Globe for supporting actor in the political film Syriana. "He wasn't even elected."

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/6851

[QuettaKid]

16. Did Clooney say that on live T.V. ? nt

.

[kpete]

18. It was an answer to a journalist I believe (not live, not sure)

Although he did say - Live on T.V.:

George Clooney just received tempered applause and laughter while accepting the Golden Globe's first award of the night after asking rhetorically, "Who would name their kid, 'Jack' when 'off' ends his last name?"

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/1/16/201611/582

[liberal N proud]

9. Kick

[AtLiberty]

10. Nothing to see here, folks...

Move along, please...

We're walking, we're walking...

[undeterred]

11. old news for DUers

[stepnw1f]

12. kick (nt)

[linazelle]

13. So THAT's why they hate science. Let's see how they debunk it.

And it WILL be debunked--or buried amongst other contrivances.

[drm604]

14. They'll debunk it

with terms like "conspiracy theory" and they'll say things like "that's not what exit polls are designed for". People will buy the debunking because they don't have the mathematical knowledge to evaluate the actual arguments and, for the most part, will be too lazy or busy to even try.

[Febble]

46. They will indeed

not because "they don't have the mathematical knowledge to evaluate the actual arguments", but because they do and find the paper junk.

Tell me what arguments you find convincing.

[FogerRox]

64. Feeble-- is this better or worse than TIAs work?

[Febble]

93. Worse

Less thorough and more pretentious.

And actually less logical.

But both bodies of work are based on unsupported assumptions regarding the nature of the data. This paper certainly isn't going to pass any serious peer-review, and yet it's incomprehensible as a lay document. Actually it's incomprehensible as an academic document as well.

I've begun a few posts trying to say what's wrong with it, but it's actually hard to know where to start.

The election reform movement deserves better.

[FreedomAngel82]

29. It's one of the many reason's of course

[oc2002]

114. Why debunk something that is not even reported?

they control the media.

[Loge23]

17. How many smoking guns does it take?

...'til we know,
That too many lies have been told?
The answer my friends,
is buried in the spin
The answer is buried in the spin.

(with apologies to Mr. Dylan and Peter, Paul & Mary)

[EuroObserver]

19. Something Al Gore didn't mention... n/t

[never_get_over_it]

33. Since he was involved in a stolen election

Al Gore couldn't or shouldn't have mentioned that in his speech. Would have given them ammunition that his feeling that his election was stolen is his motivation to speak out against Bush. Better he left it alone.

[ohtransplant]

20. They also destroy the current wisdom about the exit polls.

snip...

On June 6, 2005 The Election Sciences Institute (ESI) with Mitofsky12 released a report on the Ohio
precinct level exit poll data purporting to rule out vote fraud as the cause of the discrepancies. The (ESI)
report entitled “Ohio Exit Polls: Explaining the Discrepancy” by Susan Kyle, Douglass A. Samuelson,
Fritz Scheuren, Nicole Vicinanza, Scott Dingman and Warren Mitofsky, concluded:
“...the data do not support accusations of election fraud in the Ohio Presidential election of 2004”.13
ESI’s premise is that if there were vote fraud, then the 2004 exit poll discrepancy would be correlated
with Bush vote share increases from the 2000 election. Finding no such correlation, ESI ruled out vote
fraud as an explanation of the exit poll discrepancies.14 ESI's method of exit poll analysis was included
on October 14, 2005, in a presentation by Warren Mitofsky to the American Statistical Association fall
conference in a talk entitled “The 2004 U.S. Exit Polls”.

In an October 31st paper, NEDA mathematically proved that ESI’s and Mitofsky's analyses were
incorrect because many counterexamples exist to its basic premise.15 In other words, NEDA proved
mathematically that ESI's and Mitofsky's analysis of Ohio's and national exit poll data is of no
analytical value and no conclusions about the presence or absence of vote fraud can be drawn from
them.16

[OnTheOtherHand]

38. that's one of the worst arguments in the history of data analysis

The argument is, more or less, that comparing 2000 results to 2004 results doesn't prove anything, so we should ignore the 2000 results.

That wouldn't just "destroy the current wisdom about the exit polls" -- it would basically blow up the entire enterprise of statistical analysis, and rule out a whole lot of common sense. Republican precincts tend to remain Republican from election to election; Democratic precincts tend to remain Democratic. Of course there are exceptions and complications, but it's sort of willfully dumb to ignore the rule.

[Chi]

42. I would think to assume accuracy in the previous election,

in an environment of proven corruption like Ohio, would be a worse assumption.

But hey...that's just me.

"Republican precincts tend to remain Republican from election to election; Democratic precincts tend to remain Democratic."
And corrupt, fraud laden precincts/B.O.E.'s, tend to remain so, unless caught.

[anaxarchos]

51. And some seem to have remained "fraud laden"...

...since just after the Civil War.

Hiya, Chi.

Nah, it ain't just you...

[OnTheOtherHand]

52. we may have an apple-and-truck comparison here

I am tempted to say that no one "assumes accuracy" in the previous election, but I'm sure someone does, which is indeed a terrible assumption.

What drives me nuts about the NEDA "refutation" of ESI's analysis is that if you take it literally, as I said, you pretty much have to chuck statistical analysis out the window, and you have to set aside any expectation that "Democratic" and "Republican" precincts are even likely to run true to form. Swallow that pill, and I don't see how we can ever again do forensic election analysis.

I think the NEDA argument could be recast in less terrible form. Mostly, I think that if there was vote count corruption in Ohio, you will find dozens of solid candidate precincts in Phillips' and Mebane and Herron's analyses for every dubious candidate in the exit poll rubble-bouncing. (Not all of them will be solid candidates -- e.g. I don't really believe in the "Connally anomaly.")

[CornField]

21. A question

I've asked this before and to date have not received any answer. Why didn't the powers-that-be (the powers which set off to rig the election) buy off the exit pollsters before the fact?

Historically, elections have turn suspicious based on exit poll data when compared to reported vote data. Knowing this, why would those who wanted to do harm buy off the exit pollsters prior to the election (in lieu of the morning after)?

[John Q. Citizen]

23. Because the true exit poll data appeared accidentally on the

TV screens of millions of viewers for a few minutes. Some one took a sceen shot before it was pulled off the sceen and that's how the real data got into the public domain.

The "official" exit poll data was altered to make it look like bush won.

The accidental release of the true exit poll data is what tipped off people to the fix.

[Febble]

44. Well, this is the kind of

misinformation that gives tinfoil a bad name.

It was on the screen for long for millions to see it and to know that John Kerry was running ahead. I believe the shots are still archived.

There was no "official" "exit poll data". The projections were initially based on weighted exit poll responses in combination with pre-election polls, and then, as the vote-count data came onstream, with that too. It is the way it has been done for years, and is basically the way it is done in the UK as well (with slight differences as we only have one time zone and only one poll closing time). The details of the procedure are given in the Edison-Mitofsky FAQ, and were available well before the election.

Feel free to believe there was a conspiracy to steal the election. But not that there was a conspiracy to rig the exit polls. It flies in the face of verifiable facts.

As for this report, it is one of the worst pieces of statistical analysis I have ever seen, with the exception of its predecessor which was so flawed it was withdrawn.

My view is that NEDA/USCV has jumped the shark (some time ago) and I say this more in sorrow than in anger. Although this kind of misuse of statistics does make me angry.

[Usrename]

57. So where is the "misinformation"?

What, statement did the previous poster make that you think is not the absolute truth?

IT IS ALL TRUE!!! Isn't it? Or can you handle the truth?

[Febble]

60. Here:

The "official" exit poll data was altered to make it look like bush won.

The accidental release of the true exit poll data is what tipped off people to the fix.

The "release" was not "accidental" nor was it "the true exit poll data" (it was fairly heavily weighted) and it was not "official", nor was it "altered to make it look like bush won".

What happened is what was always going to happen, which is that the projections based on the exit poll data (but not the "true" exit poll data) were increasingly also based on the vote-count data as it came in.

Details are given here:

http://www.exit-poll.net/faq.html#a10

and were available before the election. The idea that there was a "true" exit poll that was "fixed" in some kind of cover-up is the tinfoil part. If it was a conspiracy, it was a bit odd to post the details on a public website before the election. In any case, it's what they do every year. It's probably how this myth got about that exit polls are so "uncannily" accurate. The projections tend to be, because they also incorporate data from the vote count. But the raw polls aren't, and for at least the past five presidential elections, they have consistently predicted a larger Democratic vote share than the count.

[OnTheOtherHand]

62. well, also, the other poster seems confused about "screen shots"

The preliminary national exit poll tabulation was up on the Internet for hours, not accidentally displayed on "TV screens" for "minutes" (well, hours do consist of minutes, I admit). Likewise many of the state tabulations. (Mostly echoing what you said.) If all that was a cover-up, it was incredibly poorly done.

All this is quite apart from arguing about whether the exit polls were basically right or not.

[John Q. Citizen]

154. Why would the Sec. of state and country election boards fix

the recount if there weren't any reason to?

Why not just randomly pick 2% of the ballots per county, (as per state law) take a look and show the world that every thing was on the up and up?

When we look at the election in it's totality it clear to see that the election was manipulated on many levels, from long before the election, during the election and after the election.

I find it hard to believe the only part of the election that wasn't fixed were the exit polls, which according to your argument were just wrong. Why would the exit polls be wrong and the election results be wrong also?

We already have many proven examples of tabulation error in many places in Ohio (as well as nationwide) You are saying that the official vote count is wrong and the exit polls were wrong.

Others argue the exit polls were right as evidenced by the facts that the official vote count is wrong.

Am I missing something here?

[Febble]

160. A good question.

And it could be that the exit poll discrepancy was due to fraud, just as the non-random recount selection was to hide fraud.

However, this paper attempts to find a smoking gun for fraud in the exit poll on the basis of the exit poll. Not on the basis of the recount. And I think the statistical analysis is deeply flawed. So I don't think it is a smoking gun. There may be a smoking gun in Ohio, but I don't think it is in the exit poll.

Moreover, I think other analyses of the exit poll have demonstrated a fairly strong case for bias in the poll. However, when it comes to analyes of individual states, the statistical power is weak. There are only 49 precincts here. So it is difficult to draw strong conclusions either way. What evidence there is, on my reading, tends to support bias rather than fraud as an explanation for the exit poll discrepancy. I think the ESI study was essentially a good study, and that was their conclusion.

I also think the case for vote-switching fraud in Ohio is weak. I think there is more evidence for corruption that took the form of voter suppression of various sorts, including the rationing of DREs in Franklin county, high rates of spoilage in Democratic precincts, and inequitable allocation of provisional ballots. But these things wouldn't show up in the exit polls necessarily.

So I think it is perfectly possible that there was corruption in Ohio, which the non-random recount was designed to hide (I also think it is possible that the non-random recount was designed to avoid hassle, which is also a form of corruption, although less heinous). I am sure that Kerry lost far more votes to voter suppression and spoilage than Bush did.

And I confess to being fairly irritated by this paper, which, as a conscientious data analyst, I find not only flawed but shoddy, and I think the election reform movement deserves better than a supposedly scientific study that claims to demonstrate "virtually irrefutable" evidence of vote-corruption from an inadequate analysis of inadequate data. There are good people doing hard work investigating real evidence of vote-corruption in Ohio, wearing out shoe leather and calculator batteries in the process (Richard Hayes Phillips for one). I don't think this analysis fares well by comparison.


(edited for stupid mistake)

[Febble]

95. "misinformation" - an apology

I think I need to apologise: by "misinformation" I simply meant that the information was wrong. I didn't mean to imply that the poster had any intention to believe.

The word doesn't imply that in English English, but I gather it does in American English. I speak English English, I'm afraid. So let me back up:

I think the information in this post is incorrect, and dangerously so, as it suggests that the pollsters were in a conspiracy to cover up a fraudulent win by Bush.

This is belied by the actual evidence: the data was on screen for hours, not minutes; it was not "official" data, and had already been weighted in various ways, probably partially by vote-count data; the weighting by vote-count was explained in advance, is how the projections are made every year; it would have been done that way even regardless of which direction the discrepancy had been in; it was not "fixed". There are other errors down thread, but I'll deal with those separately.

Again, apologies for inadvertently suggesting you were intending to mislead.

[Febble]

100. Sorry, freudian slip:

I meant, of course:

"I didn't mean to imply that the poster had any intention to deceive".

[helderheid]

140. yes

http://www.exitpollz.org/cnn2004epolls/Pres_epolls/US/P/00/epolls.0.html

http://www.exitpollz.org/

Never forget what happened on November 2nd, 2004... Here's a video to help...

We've updated the short video compiled by a few Velvet Revolutionaries from Democratic Underground.

It is our hope that this video may serve as the definitive record of what happened in American during the 2004 Presidential Election. It documents -- in a few short minutes -- how your American right to a free, fair and transparent electoral system has been taken from you by the cynical and un-democratic powers-that-be.

This sort of thing should never happen in the world's most important democracy. And yet -- again in 2004 -- it did. Enough is enough.

It's time for the people to take both our country and our democracy back. If you still have any questions about that, please take a look at this video:


http://www.velvetrevolution.us/#020505

[Lasher]

26. That would have involved too many people

When you increase the number of people who know of a conspiracy, you also magnify the risk of exposure.

[samhsarah]

22. K&R

[anarch]

24. one in a big old pile of smoking guns n/t

[blm]

25. Please make certain to send the article to Kerry's offices - ALL OF THEM.

.

[FreedomAngel82]

31. Good idea

Don't they still have the court date in Ohio for August?

[McCamy Taylor]

142. Send it to Olberman, too, even though NBC was part of the MSM that sat on

the exit polls for W. so they probably wont let him say anything about this.

[FreedomAngel82]

27. So what now??

[mdmc]

30. Kerry didnt fight, Very Dem - like

[FreedomAngel82]

32. Correction

They still have a court date in Ohio for August.

[mdmc]

34. what is K&R

Kellog and Root.

The GOP didn't need to "sell" Ohio's election results... The Dems bought the results hook, line, and stinker...

[blm]

36. If you listened to mainstream media, that's what you'd believe.

Just like the media made most people believe that it was OK to impeach Clinton, Gore lied, Bush is a hero for 9-11, Dean screamed, swiftlies deserved airtime, DSM wasn't important, Dems made Mrs. Alito cry, etcetera.....

[never_get_over_it]

35. My question is

since Bush stole both 2000 and 2004 when he goes shouldn't all his appointment go with him. I know that would never happened - but it frosts me to no end that he is putting at least two supreme court justices in and countless other judges to freaking life time appointments and the son of a bitch was NEVER ELECTED.

[AuntiBush]

39. For All Those Naysayers, For Once Read Some Raw Evidence.

K/N!

[OnTheOtherHand]

40. why don't you summarize the parts you find convincing? n/t

[Febble]

45. This isn't raw evidence

it's evidence cooked to the point of inedibility.

[Marie26]

49. Maybe

What's hard is that for most of us, this type of statistical analysis is almost impossible to understand. Maybe it's cooked, maybe it's the smoking gun - I've got no way of knowing. Even if the exit polls are wrong, could that be attributed to something other than fraud? (like the misleading "butterfly ballots" in Fl.) It's suggestive - but this still isn't proof of that actual fraud occured. If someone found proof of discarded ballots or 200,000 deleted electronic votes, then I'd believe it 100%. But it seems like a lot of investigations have been done, yet no one's found that smoking gun yet.

[Febble]

50. Yes, I think you are right

on a lot of these counts. Yes, the exit polls could be attributed to many things other than vote-switching fraud, including biased polling, and including things like more Kerry voters being issued with provisional ballots and not having them counted, or more Kerry voters votes not counted due to over- or under-voting. We know, to a statistical certainty, that such things cost Gore the presidency.

But it is my considered view that the exit poll evidence is not a smoking gun for vote-switching fraud, in Ohio or elsewhere, and if anything, is evidence against it. That does not mean that the election was fair (I am sure it wasn't); that Kerry didn't lose more votes due to that injustice (I'm sure he did); that Kerry wouldn't have won Ohio on a level playing field (maybe, but I doubt it); that electronic voting systems are secure (they aren't, see GAO report); or that Blackwell presided over a legal recount (he didn't).

But IMO, this kind of headline grabbing analysis, which I find flawed in almost every particular, does nothing but harm for the case that American democracy needs radical reform.

[Stevepol]

55. The Exit polls are "evidence against" fraud???

Now let me get this straight.

The exit polls show that Kerry won certain precincts by a certain margin or that he got a certain percentage of the vote. Then, the actual results show that he did not come w/i a statistical margin of error of this number, and THIS IS EVIDENCE THAT THERE IS NO FRAUD????

What kind of reasoning is this?

Maybe in a few cases the exit polls can be written off or at least their results qualified, but when you have overwhelming evidence of discrepancies between good polls in GA 02, in MN 02 as well (tho a little less striking), in 96 in NE, in 04 in the national election in multiple states and in the country as a whole, in OH with the 5 initiatives on the referendum all of these in places where the electronic voting machines were in place and humming away. And you're telling me this is evidence that fraud DOESN'T exist?

Do you wonder why I don't give any weight to what you "reason" out w/ regard to these exit polls that you and OTOH so adamantly object to?

I've had statistics courses in cognitive psychology as well and I can't understand much of what you say in objecting to the polls and I certainly can't make heads or tails of a statement like the above.

[Febble]

56. Well, I understand why you don't understand

because I didn't explain. The exit poll discrepancy was caused by something, not chance. No doubt. No scintilla of a doubt. The question is: what?

It could have been fraud. I thought it might have been. But it could have been bias in the poll. I won't rehearse the arguments again, but I laid it out here,

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=398267

and there was a good discussion in the thread as to how substantial fraud might be compatible with the evidence. But I think it's a stretch. I think that polling bias is the more parsimonious explanation, for a number of reasons, but this one is a strong one. I've had a pretty thorough search for loopholes.

Now I am aware that Kathy Dopp has posted a paper claiming the analyses I refer to are "illogical". I think she is incorrect. But you will know how to access her paper.

I'm not quite following your code, but regarding the Ohio referendum, I do regard Philip Klinkner's analysis pretty convincing,

http://polysigh.blogspot.com/2005/11/fraud-in-ohio-doubtful.html

as well as Mystery Pollster's piece on the subject.

http://www.mysterypollster.com/main/2005/11/columbus_dispat.html

But I understand that your interpretation may differ.

I certainly don't think your elections are clean, and I can become pretty passionate on the subject of disenfranchisement of black voters which I still think is the cinderella subjec regarding election reform. I also think that DREs are an abomination. But I think that the exit polls, if anything, argue against massive vote-switching.

[OnTheOtherHand]

63. BTW, to answer a question you asked long ago

Sometime in the last two weeks, I stumbled across an old post of yours. I had thought that you had dropped the conversation, but I recently discovered that I had -- I just missed your last post.

I don't remember the whole thing, but you asked where I had gotten the exit poll data from Georgia 2002.

The answer is that, as with most exit poll data going back to 1976, it is archived with an organization called ICPSR (icpsr.org). (The Roper Center has even more extensive exit poll archives, but I don't have access to those.) In 2002, as you know, the data collection system failed catastrophically on election day (here's AFAICT a pretty good article about it). VNS asked the interviewers to mail in their questionnaires, which most of them did. In most years, the exit pollsters haven't bothered to keypunch all the questionnaire data because they already keypunched as much as they needed in real time -- but in 2002, as I understand it, they keypunched everything that got mailed to them. I don't know what the attrition rate was in Georgia, but it certainly looks like the exit poll results were doomed to be inconclusive.

[Stevepol]

98. Thanks OTOH. I'll ck out the source you mention.

[Name removed]

138. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[helderheid]

112. Maybe so - but doesn't it deserve proper investigation to rule that out???

[Febble]

129. Sure.

It's what I've spent rather too much of my time doing for the past fourteen months. But I don't think bad analysis does the case any favours and I happen to think this is a bad analysis.

I think if you want to find a smoking gun in Ohio, you have to look at the actual vote data in Ohio. There were 49 precincts in the poll. Do you have any idea how many precincts there are in Ohio? I don't, but I happen to know that there were 788 in Franklin County alone.

Trying to prove fraud from the needle in the haystack seems like a lost cause to me, especially when you believe, as I believe, that those 49 precincts don't actually indicate fraud.

But there are plenty of other precincts in Ohio.

[Usrename]

59. Carefully read post 23 above.

Everything the poster claims is a fact. And yet look at the response. These two are not believable, IMHO. When they resort to calling FACTS misinformation, well then, what does it say about the rest of their argument? I wouldn't believe a word they are saying, but then I have felt that way for a long time. Numbers are innocent. Numbers have no motive to lie. People do.

[FogerRox]

65. I would suggest that youhave not been hanging out at the Electionj Reform

Forum for the last year or so-- and could use a dose of history.



Carefully read post 23 above. Everything the poster claims is a fact.

Wrong, go here-

http://www.progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=120&topic_id=1583

Nov.3, 2004, Exit poll timeline

12:22am (13047 respondents) showed Kerry winning

1:25pm Final (13660) showed BUSH winning

These are considered facts. They are well documented. There was no accidental release, the information is well known-- to those who care to have looked at it over the last 13 months.

Please go over this info

http://www.truthisall.net/

And tell me if it makes more or less sense than the OP.


And yet look at the response.

I would suggest your response is based on a lack of understanding who & What has been talked about her at DU for over a year.

These two are not believable, . I object to this characterization.

There has been a debate going on in the DU ELection Reform forum since Nov. 3rd, 2004. I dont ever recall your particapation.

ANd you seem unaware of the Bonafides of lizzie & OTOH, let alone TIA or Kathy Dopp.

[Usrename]

74. So this bit is in dispute? Sorry, didn't know that.

Why not just say this is a lie? I mean if it's not true, it must be a lie. And yet I don't hear anyone saying that.

Before the election, TIA produced a daily update of his Election Model site. On 11/1/04, based on extensive statistical analysis, he projected a Kerry win of 51.63% to 48.38%, using a combined average of national polls, and of 51.80% to 48.2% using a Monte Carlo simulation of individual state polls. After the polls closed, data from the Edison Mitofsky NEP survey (sponsored by the major television networks and CNN) was unintentionally released over the Internet. This was internal network data, embargoed from public use, data with statements like “Estimates not for on-air use” and “This page cannot be displayed.” The networks had locked down this data for their own use in an “electronic cover-up” that was offensive to those who knew the story. Luckily for all of us, Jonathan Simon downloaded the exit poll data and saved the CNN screen shots! The Edison-Mitofsky (EM)-Corporate Media (CM) “embargoed data” was available for anyone with eyes to see it and a mind to review it.

Seems odd that nobody knows where the data came from. Sounds disingenuous.

Also sounds odd that they (Edison-Mitofsky) were under contract (I assume) and didn't deliver anything, according to one poster: """There was no "official" "exit poll data". """

Also sounds disingenuous, but gee, I'm no math wizz.

So, which facts are not facts. Not trying to be dense. Someone is lying here. Any guesses as to whom?

[FogerRox]

75. the networks paid Mitofsky-- they own the data- its not his to hand out

[OnTheOtherHand]

101. more likely someone was confused

If you poke around on exitpollz.org, you will see at least two sorts of things. One is what looks like CNN.com exit poll reports. I suspect that these are not literally the "screen shots" saved by Jonathan Simon, but rather they are digital recreations. Either way, they pretty much live up to their billing as "CNN AS IT WAS ON ELECTION NIGHT." I checked for the Ohio exit poll results a few minutes after the polls closed at 7:30 pm, and I was as pumped as anyone when they showed Kerry ahead. (By the way, those were not raw results. They actually incorporated pre-election expectations, as well as a bunch of funky weighting.)

The other sort of thing you will see on exitpollz.org is what appear to be scans of NEP confidential estimates. As far as I know, there isn't much difference between these and what was posted on CNN.com except that they include an explicit "topline" estimate of Bush and Kerry vote share. (On CNN.com, everything was broken into tables by gender, party, etc.) Of course, estimates and tabulations produced at different times would disagree. As far as I know, these confidential estimates didn't get out until later. It really didn't matter, since essentially the same information had been publicly available on CNN.com for hours. The CNN screen shots had not been "embargoed," and the results did not "leak." If I remember correctly, the CNN web site actually announced in advance that it would post exit poll results within minutes after the polls closed, and that's why I was looking for them.

As far as I know, there is no mystery about where the CNN.com figures came from, so I don't know what you find disingenuous there. Do you have a question about that, or do you just like the word "disingenuous"?

As for Febble's statement in #44 about official exit poll data, maybe it makes more sense after reading her other posts. No one disputes that the exit poll interviews turned out a lot differently than the official results. What we dispute is the narrative in which the 'real' data leaked out, and then were replaced with fake data. I don't think that narrative is a deliberate lie, and it contains a kernel of truth -- the tabulations on CNN.com did change.

[Marie26]

109. Post 23

If I'm understanding, post 23 claims that the actual exit poll numbers were covered up & manipulated, as well as the election votes. And that the only reason that we know the true exit poll numbers is because one screenshot was accidentally released. So... this would mean that in addition to stealing the election, the Republicans also managed to buy off exit polling companies, right? If this is the case, why would these exit polls show Kerry leading at all? Wouldn't they carefully poll Bush winning to reinforce the "stolen" election results? In addition, other people dispute that the polls were altered & say they just changed based on projections. W/o knowing more, I'd tend to believe that the exit polls themselves are kosher - the whole point of this paper is that the "correct" exit polls had Kerry winning. The dispute is whether this proves that the victory for Bush was fraudulent. Numbers are innocent, but it takes someone to interpret them, & that's where the disputes begin. I don't doubt that Bush would steal an election; I just haven't seen the clear evidence that he did (in 2004, at least).

[AuntiBush]

53. Do You Start at DU's Main Page & Read the Top Articles?

Have you read today's DU main page link (below) by Ernest Partridge of the Crisis Papers http://crisispapers.org/?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/crisis/06/044_ep.html

[Febble]

58. I confess

that DU is not my main source of news. Mostly I listen to the BBC and read The Guardian.

But thinking that the Bush gang didn't pull off a vote heist isn't tantamount to thinking that they wouldn't have done if they could, or that the election was fair, or that they shouldn't be hounded out of office.

But just because you think someone's a crook doesn't mean you don't have to question whether a particular crime might not have been committed. I just happen to think this particular bank wasn't robbed. I thought it was at first, but eventually I reached a different conclusion, not out of ignorance, but out of fairly study of quite a lot of evidence, some of which I think points to large-scale voter disenfranchisement.

But I don't think the exit poll evidence suggests that Kerry won either Ohio or the popular vote. Other evidence may or may not suggest he won Ohio. I think the odds are long, but the fact that we can't be sure is itself a prima facie reason for radical election reform. Your democracy is broken.

[Usrename]

61. """There was no "official" "exit poll data". """"

Bwahahahahahahhaa :rofl: That's funny. Is that your theory?

[FogerRox]

66. actually its true

No raw data has been released by Mitofsky international. Another point of contention at the DU Election reform forum over the last year or so. I think Most agree it would be good if Mitofsky released the data. There was a project here at DU to compare deomgraphics of actuall Ohio Precincts and the Exit poll data that was released-- trying to figure out the real ID of the Precincts.

Mitofskys data uses codes for precincts-- not the actual Ohio precinct ID #s.

[Usrename]

77. Bwahahahaha!!!!

You're funny too!!

Here's the remark - read it:

"The "official" exit poll data was altered to make it look like bush won.

The poster used quote marks around the word "official". So as to make this "very"clear that it was not raw data they were referring to. It couldn't be raw data. That is just crazy talk now!!

Once the "official" exit poll data was altered (weighted) it was no longer raw data, now was it?

[FogerRox]

80. maybe you could cite the post

since it wasnt my post...

And then read my posts, which go into greater detail.

[Usrename]

82. It is post number 23, the supposedly "misinformation" .

This post was challenged as being "missinformation".

I don't think it is missinformation at all. It fits squarely into my (small and perhaps distorted) view of the world. Maybe the response could have been longer, to ward off attacks from some people, but it is, in my view an honest, if brief, response.

To be attacked (challenged) for it is wrong. The truth does not bend that far. Sorry.

<edit> It was a response, given fairly, to an equally fair question posed in #22.

[FogerRox]

84. ah yes-- read my post 65

Notice the time line-- up untill 12;22am Kerry was leading the exit polling

All of us at the DU Election reform forum have this info. There was no leak of
'KERRY Wins exit polls." The so called exit polls were public as it went down. Yes there were screen shots-- the first one prior to 12:22 am and the second after that time.

[Usrename]

85. Yes, I thought so.

Thanks.

[FogerRox]

86. the CNN web site had these up for hours, and

the 12:21 am polls are most likey weighted-- just not as much as the FINAL.

Post 23 says accident-- it wasnt. This was up since the Polls closed. Like every election in the internet age.

Anything else I can search for- let me know.

This study is based on data that is 1 year old, many others have done similar work, that is possibly more credible. The whole paper provides arbitrarily selected simulation results.

[Usrename]

87. So, what convinces you that the people behind this fraud KNEW?

Of course I can believe that they didn't know the data would become public. They wouldn't have allowed it. Hence, the "accident". No one (that I know of) is insinuating that the exit pollsters were complicit in the fraud. But the ones who were/are complicit cleary didn't/don't want this info out there or they would release it. Quite simple. Release the data or become part of the scheme, willingly or unwillingly, knowingly or unknowingly, who cares.

It would have been much easier to prevent this info from becoming public than it would have been to bribe the exit pollsters into a large scheme. This, I think, was the member's original question. And the answer, though short, was very truthful, IMHO, and should never be characterized as missinformation or disinformation or anything else except, possibly, too terse and brief to cover the entire spectrum of "OPINIONS" which are not facts.

[freebrew]

127. These results are confusing

Just by using the male/female ratios in the post, something doesn't add up.
Numbers always do, these don't.
If the results are accurate, Kerry lost 40 votes. That isn't possible using the methodology that they've claimed.
Figure it out yourself. It's not hard.
In the first pass, out of 1963 votes, Kerry got 1022.
In the second poll screen, 2020 votes cast, Kerry got 982.
Face it. Votes were switched on the Exit Poll to match the votes switched on the ballots.

These results were portrayed as raw information, not altered data, which they, in fact, were.

[Febble]

130. I agree it's confusing

but they weren't portrayed as raw information. If you check out their website it explains clearly what they were. They were projections based on: exit polls; vote counts from precincts; tabulations from counties. In fact I think pre-election polls were also used for early projections.

I do realise they were interpreted by many as "raw information". Even CalTech got it wrong. And sure, CNN could have been clearer. But no-one has ever attempted to claim that the later projections weren't re-weighted in line with the vote count. The website actually explained that before the election. Not only that, it promised it would do that so as to make sure no state was called "wrong".

See my other posts for links and more details if you want to be unconfused.

[Febble]

96. Well, tell me what you think the "official" exit poll data were?

here are some possible candidates:

• The raw responses from every respondent to the presidential vote question


• The raw responses from the subsample of questionnaires that went into the crosstabs (past vote; moral values)


• The weighted estimates based on the above responses, adjusted for non-response bias by age, sex and gender


• The weighted estimates based on the above response, adjusted for any other factors that led the pollsters to
consider that their responses might be biased, including pre-election polling.

..........................................................................................................


• The above weighted by precinct vote returns,


• The above weighted by count vote returns.

My guess is that you would draw the line where I typed the dotted one. But what was captured on the screen shots probably straddled those three dots, as the weighting is a continuous process designed to adjust the raw responses for bias, which the pollsters know always happens, and as soon as vote-count data arrives, that goes into the pot too.

If you want to know more, you can the Edison Mitofsky FAQ, which appears to be unchanged since before the 2004 election. OTOH recently found an archived version which was identical.

The other thing you should bear in mind is that the exit polls are commissioned by the TV networks largely for two reasons:

• To enable them to "call" the states for one candidate or the other, before all the votes are counted


• To give them stuff to talk about re why people should have voted the way they did.

They are not "official" exit polls designed as a check on the election. If they were, they wouldn't be designed to include vote-returns. That would be absurd. But BECAUSE they are designed to include vote-returns, it means that the actual data collection methodology is nothing like as rigorous as it would be if you were running an exit poll in some banana republic and needed to check for hanky panky.

The fact that America is something of a banana republic, and that we all suspect hanky panky means that there is a legitimate interest in the unadjusted poll data because we would like to reverse engineer the poll in order to provide us with a post hoc auditing tool. But the trouble is, for that purpose it is lousy data.

I understand from your other posts that you think I am lying. Well, you are welcome to check out my statements. I can only state that I am honest but not infallible. If I have made any errors, I would be delighted to have them pointed out.

[yowzayowzayowza]

97. EXCELLENT POST. Suggest...

you repost as a discussion thread as "2004 Exit Poll Mythology" er sum such. I will GLADLY K&R. This misconception has gone on waaaaaay too long.

[Usrename]

118. Errrrr...

How about the contract deliverable data?? Now that would be "official" wouldn't it? It could even be tested in court for compliance/non-compliance with the contract, I would think. Got a copy of the contract? If so, let's review it and I'm pretty sure we could muddle through it and figure this "perplexing" problem out if you think it is so gravely important.

But I don't think you are lying here, your just missing the point entirely. The point is, there was something that was purchased/commisioned here. What was it?

Your argument is semantic, and that makes it suspect. If you object to the term "official" so strongly, why don't you just say so up front. Tell people that you prefer the term "commissioned" data, or whatever. The data was "commissioned" acccording to you, wasn't it? So lets just agree to call it the "commissioned" data, OK? See, I'm trying to be reasonable here. Let's try to work this problem out.

[mgr]

120. Bullet 4 n/t

[Febble]

122. I obviously don't have access to the contract

but you will find what E-M were offering their clients here:

http://www.exit-poll.net/

And the FAQ is here:

http://www.exit-poll.net/faq.html

This (from the FAQ) would appear to address your question directly:

What will Edison/Mitofsky provide to NEP?
Edison/Mitofsky will conduct exit polls in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. In addition, it will collect the vote count in sample precincts. From the exit polls it will provide analytical tabulations of vote. It will make projections, where possible, from the exit polls, from the vote returns and from the county vote tabulations for President, Senate, Governor and selected state referenda and initiatives.

Of note are that:

• It will provide tabulations of vote (crosstabs by demographic, responses to questions on questionnaire etc)


• It will make projections (i.e. predict the counted result) where possible from


1. the exit polls


2. The vote returns


3. the county vote tabulations

Well, you can browse the site yourself. But the point is that what the networks bought was a package designed to allow them to call the states (what the projections are for) and to discuss who had voted for whom and why (what the crosstabs are for).

No-where on the site does it say that it will provide an estimate of the intended vote proportions so that the official count can be monitored. Sure, exit polls are sometimes used for that, in which case they are designed rather differently (see my other posts). And sure, it's worth trying to reverse-engineer this one to try to make it tell us something about the way the votes were counted. After all it's the only interest I have in the polls. I wanted to know if Kerry really won. I didn't trust the Bushies an inch, after Florida, and after Wally O'Dell. But I do think we have to understand the nature of the data, how and why it was collected, and what exactly was screened on election night when. As I understand it, Jonathan Simon's screen shots are projections made mostly from exit polls weighted for non-response bias by age, race and sex, and possibly also by pre-election polls, but may also include some weights from the early vote returns. The later projections would have had greater input from the vote-returns.

Anyway, check out the website. I checked it out before the election (being an election junkie) and it doesn't seem to have changed. In any case, the pages will be archived.

[Usrename]

123. From the site you reference:

This, I guess would be a description of the “commissioned” data.

What will Edison/Mitofsky provide to NEP?
Edison/Mitofsky will conduct exit polls in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. In addition, it will collect the vote count in sample precincts. From the exit polls it will provide analytical tabulations of vote. It will make projections, where possible, from the exit polls, from the vote returns and from the county vote tabulations for President, Senate, Governor and selected state referenda and initiatives.

This other stuff here, is just crap. Shame on them. Mistakes in 2000? By VNS? Shame on them, the lying bastards.

Are these new models and procedures going to assure the public that there will be no mistakes?
The mistakes made during the 2000 election were unusual. During the 10 years before that VNS and the poll before it made only one mistake from 1990 to 1998. Before that, when the broadcast networks made their own projections, there were similarly very few mistakes during the 1970s and 1980s. There were no mistakes during the limited coverage in 2002. There were no mistakes made during the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries. Many lessons were learned from the 2000 experience and changes were made to see that mistakes like the ones in 2000 would be very unlikely to occur again. Having said all that, there is no way to guarantee that a mistake in identifying a winner will not happen again. If it does, the public can be assured that the mistake will be publicly acknowledged and corrected as soon as possible. Even in 2000 the mistakes were corrected by the same people who made them within a short time.

You should have warned me that there was puke material there...:puke:

[Febble]

125. Sorry, you got there before I did

and yes, maybe I should have issued a PG certificate.

But the take-home message all the same is that the pollsters made no secret of the fact that they were not going to allow any state to be called before they were sure of the count*. Which mean they raised the level of statistical certainty required - which, in close states, would have meant waiting for a lot more vote-count returns before calling a stated.

But my point remains: there was no "official" exit poll, but rather a series of projections, of varying degrees of certainty. If what you want is to reverse-engineer an audit out of the raw data, then you have to do the kind of analyses ESI has done, and that NEDA has tried to do without the actual data.

Unfortunately I don't think you CAN do this analysis without the actual data, and that NEDA's conclusions are therefore flawed. There may have been fraud in Ohio - but I don't believe they have found a smoking gun in the exit polls. ESI's conclusion was not "there was no fraud" but that "the exit polls are not a smoking gun".

I think, myself, there was fraud in Ohio. But I don't think you will find it in the exit polls.

Calculatus Eliminatus.


*if it eases the nausea, the fact is that on 2004 criteria, they wouldn't have called Florida at all. They certainly wouldn't have called it for Bush.

[Usrename]

126. That FAQ site is disturbing.

And your footnote just increases my nausea. Don't you see that because of the 2000 VNS polling we know that the overvotes in some precincts in Duvall county were something like: one out of five Gore voters chose two candidates for President? And this was in addition to the much celebrated butterfly ballot in Palm Beach. What were the numbers? Off the top of my head it was something like 50,000 missing votes for Gore. 15 or 20k missing in the black precincts in north FL. This is exactly what led to the Voter's Rghts Act. History repeating, and all that.

It sounds like you are saying that Edison/Mitofsky was designed to mask or hide these kind of things. Is that what you are saying? That in itself would be a smoking gun, IMHO, and it would also mean that they were in some kind of conspiracy. Is that right?

[Febble]

128. No, I'm not saying that.

There were only a handful (40 or 50) precincts sampled in Florida. Who knows whether one of them was in Palm Beach or not? And the overvote/hanging chad stuff came out afterwards. The E-M vote count data is from a "quick count" at the precinct, not the official tabulations.

What I was saying is that if 2004 criteria had been used to call Florida in 2000, Florida wouldn't have been "called" at all. It certainly wouldn't have been called for Gore on the basis of overvotes, which are not actually legal votes, even if morally they mean Gore clearly won. Same with the butterfly ballot. But nor would Florida have been called for Bush. Even the count couldn't call it for Bush - the SCOTUS did that.

Statistically, in terms of legal votes, Florida 2000 was a tie. Morally, Gore won, because of the overvotes, the butterfly ballots and the fact that he won the popular vote.

But if statistically, in terms of legal votes, it was a tie, it would certainly have been a tie in the exit poll projections.

I worry we are talking at cross purposes here, Usrename. I'm not seeking to defend the pollsters, just trying to explain what they do, which is simply predict the counted winner. You might wish they were for something else, but they are not. They are like bookies - they tell the TV networks the odds. Their job isn't to determine whether the horse has been nobbled or not - all they are interested in is which horse wins, and whether they get the odds right. The odds would have been even on Florida, because whatever E-M thought about who OUGHT to have won the vote in Florida, had the election been fair, their job is to predict the legal winner. And there wasn't one. They had to make a new law.

Yes, it makes me puke too. It's why I was glued to the election in 2004.

[Usrename]

131. Your just plain wrong.

The county that I live in did a hand count. The overvote was counted. Pictures of the votes appeared in the papers. They were certified by Kathleen Harris. They were legal. What kind of dumbass do you think I am?

Believe what you want to believe about it, but I choose to believe my own eyes.

And I suppose bookies have never rigged a bet. Yeah, I wish you lots of luck with that. They are beyond corruption because they are like bookies. Right.

[Febble]

132. Sorry, again we've misunderstood each other

of course I don't think you are a dumbass. I completely agree with you about Florida in 2000. What I'm saying is that the pollsters wouldn't have called it if they'd been going by their 2004 rules.

It's great that the overvote was counted in your county. But it wouldn't have appeared in the "quick count" used to weight the projections. And of course many overvotes were not counted, as Walter Mebane reported in his analysis The Wrong Man is President.

And of course bookies rig a bet. And I didn't use the analogy to prove the pollsters were either corrupt or not corrupt. I was trying (unsuccessfully it would seem) to explain what they are actually trying to do, which is to predict the count, not audit the election.

And my point simply was that they increased the criterion by which they would decide to call any state after the disaster of repeatedly calling Florida (either way) when it should never have been called. By 2004 rules it wouldn't have been. Ever.

And if all the counties had counted their overvotes, as yours did, Gore would be president. We know that. It still makes me weep.

Peace.

[Usrename]

145. I thought I understood your post. It is not all that complicated.

But, you are right, maybe I don't understand your position.

Are you saying that it is OK to throw out legal votes in their projections if they are overvotes? If so, what purpose does that serve?

[Febble]

146. No, I'm not saying it's OK to throw out legal votes

What I'm saying is that they use the "quick count" - the precinct count at the precinct on election night to make their projections. So if a handcount subsequently increases the Gore vote by counting overvotes that the machine didn't count, that won't enter into the projections at all.

But what I'm also saying is that Florida was, in fact too close to call by the quick-count, and by the exit poll. But, tragically, IMO, they called it, then again, and I can't remember what else now. I seem to remember Fox going one way and CNN going the other. So E-M resolved not to let that happen again (who knows what would have happened if Gore had never conceded, even though he unconceded).

So if they'd run 2000 by the 2004 rules Florida would never have been called at all. Not for Gore, not for Bush.

We'd simply have had to wait for the recount, including the recount of your over-votes.

The exit poll has no legal status at all, as you probably know. But I think it had a huge psychological effect on Gore, and on the subsequent events. Do you agree? If he'd never conceded, and if the race had never been called, he'd have had the upper hand all through the recount, because he had the popular vote AND he had the butterfly ballot on his side, which everyone agreed had cost him thousands of votes.

:)?

[Usrename]

151. I'm not sure we agree on anything, to be honest.

I don't really understand what you are saying to do with the overvote in the quick-count. Surely if they are legal (this varies state-to-state) they should be carried in the projections, shouldn't they. Or is the purpose of the whole exercise to mislead folks on the actual vote, instead of being an exercise to project the winner? See what I mean? What you choose to do with the overvote/undervote is important.

Before vapor-voting, the overvote (spoiled ballots) determined who the President is. Now with the vapor-voting that is in place here, who knows who wins an election. Exit polling is the best way to get a handle on it. That is not my opinion, that is just the science of it, all experts know this.

My particular county (as with many others in the deep South) has a long and glorious history of election fraud, using all of the methods you know about and probably some you haven't ever heard of. In '96 or '98 the local sheriff had his deputies mark all the absentee ballots with a vote for him. It went to the FL Supreme Court in a challenge. The votes were 'legal' because even if they are unsure of the legitamacy of the vote, the courts are not want to throw them out. The illegal ballots for Bush in 2000 were in the thousands. Many were cast after the election was over. This is the truth about elections here. It is ugly.

My opinion is that we need to amend the Constitution to make election theft an act of treason. Do you agree?

[Febble]

155. On your last - yes I agree

although I expect it already is.

On your earlier point, we seem to have got stuck in a different grooves. All I'm saying is that the projections are based on the count made on election night. Any vote counted at the precinct, or in the initial tabulations, goes into the projections.

But any vote counted the next day, or later, won't because the exercise is over by then. That's all.

The exit polls are for TV on election night. That is their entire purpose. We may want them to do something else, and maybe they can, but their actual purpose is for election night TV. Entertainment. In the UK the catch phrase of the poll guy is "it's all a bit of fun". They aren't official at all.

On your other points I agree in principle, I think, although I think exit polls are not the best way to get a handle on vote corruption. I think random audits are the way to go. Exit polls are fraught with problems, as you will be aware.

As for history of vote corruption, I believe you. And in the continued large-scale, systematic disenfranchisement of black voters.

[Usrename]

161. I strongly disagree about audits after the fact.

To be effective, both methods require a good deal of statistical analysis. The exit-poll data is gathered before the outcome is known, and thus is more reliable. The thing about post election audits is that they won't catch many (most?) methods of election theft that are being used. Look at the demonstration performed in Leon County FL.

"A test election was run in Leon County on Tuesday with a total of eight ballots. Six ballots voted "no" on a ballot question as to whether Diebold voting machines can be hacked or not. Two ballots, cast by Dr. Herbert Thompson and by Harri Hursti voted "yes" indicating a belief that the Diebold machines could be hacked.

At the beginning of the test election the memory card programmed by Harri Hursti was inserted into an Optical Scan Diebold voting machine. A "zero report" was run indicating zero votes on the memory card. In fact, however, Hursti had pre-loaded the memory card with plus and minus votes.

The eight ballots were run through the optical scan machine. The standard Diebold-supplied "ender card" was run through as is normal procedure ending the election. A results tape was run from the voting machine.

Correct results should have been: Yes:2 ; No:6

However, just as Hursti had planned, the results tape read: Yes:7 ; No:1

The results were then uploaded from the optical scan voting machine into the GEMS central tabulator, a step cited by Diebold as a protection against memory card hacking. The central tabulator is the "mother ship" that pulls in all votes from voting machines. However, the GEMS central tabulator failed to notice that the voting machines had been hacked.
The results in the central tabulator read:

Yes:7 ; No:1 "

http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/15595.html

Of course this kind of thing is easily exposed with exit-polling and totally invisible in a post-election audit.

But for the treason question, that word is bantered about a lot. Evidently the founding fathers thought it had been overused by the crown to put down political opposition, so in the Constitution they wrote:

Article III. Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

Not to worry though, most Americans probably don't know this about our own Constitution. Our Constitution seems to be another one of those well-kept secrets.

[Febble]

162. I certainly agree that a vital

component of any audit is secure custody of the ballots, as we have in the UK. And by audit I mean a proper random recount.

But exit polls are not more reliable except in that sole way you mention - that they are gathered before the fact. But they are actually no more secure than the ballots, probably rather less, if you suspect tampering with either. And the fact is that randomly sampling people is virtually impossible, whereas randomly sampling inanimate objects (precincts; ballots) is perfectly possible. So the first is prone to bias; the second is only prone to bias if it's conducted by Kenneth Blackwell's BoEs.

Ask Kathy Dopp about audits.

[Vektor]

43. K&R - Very compelling stuff.

[helderheid]

47. more from that release:

1. In E/M precinct 27, with an estimated 100 respondents, Kerry’s official vote count was 29% less than his exit poll share, creating a 58% difference between Kerry and Bush exit poll and official vote margins. There is less than a one in 867,205,500 chance of this occurring due to chance.

2. In E/M precinct 25, with an estimated 62 respondents, Kerry’s official vote count was 28% less than his exit poll share, creating a 56% difference between Kerry and Bush exit poll and official vote margins. There is less than a one in 234,800 chance of this occurring due to chance.

3. In E/M precinct 48, with an estimated 100 respondents, Kerry's official vote was 16% less than his exit poll share, creating a 32% difference between Kerry and Bush exit poll and official vote margins. There is less than a one in 17,800 chance of this occurring due to chance.

There are also two precincts where the Bush official vote count is significantly less than the Bush exit poll share. The number of significant discrepancies and the pattern of Ohio's discrepancy shown in the NEDA report provide strong support for the conclusion that vote count errors converted a Kerry win to a Bush win.

New electronic voting equipment without voter verified paper ballots, implemented under the 2002 Help America Vote Act, makes it easier for a small number of people to manipulate vote counts and nearly impossible to independently audit vote count accuracy. Virtually every county in America today publicly reports its vote counts in a way that hides evidence of miscounts. This allows those with access (whether authorized or not) to manipulate or make mistakes in vote counting with negligible possibility of detection.

Without accurate elections, America is not a democracy. NEDA urges the media to publicize the results of this report and its recommendations, in order to return to the American people their right to determine the country’s leaders.

About the National Election Data Archive
The National Election Data Archive is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is to scientifically investigate the accuracy of elections through the creation and analysis of a database containing precinct-level vote-type election data for the entire United States. By making detailed election data publicly available NEDA furthers its goal of providing the means for independent analysts to evaluate the accuracy of vote counts in time to ensure that properly elected candidates are sworn into office following future elections.

###

[OnTheOtherHand]

103. E/M precinct 27

I've discussed E/M precinct 25 at length on the ER board. It'a a Cincinnati precinct that we know was part of a four-precinct polling place, and where DU researchers reported eyewitness evidence that the interviewer was ineffectual. As for #27 --

The ESI data table indicates that precinct #27 had an exit poll Kerry proportion of 67%, but with a possible range from 11% to 95%. Those ranges are based on the recorded numbers of completions, refusals, and misses. We can estimate this using fractions: 67% is about 2/3, and 11% is about 1/9 or 2/18. So, in order to get down to 11% (or up to 95%), we need approximately five times as many refusals + misses as there were completions. (For instance, if we suppose that there were 30 completions in this precinct -- 20 for Kerry and 10 for Bush -- then adding another 150 refusals plus misses, all for Bush, would give us 20 Kerry and 160 Bush, which is 11%. Making all 150 refusals plus misses for Kerry would give us 170 Kerry and 10 Bush, which is almost 95%.)

So, the reported completion rate in E/M precinct #27 must have been about 1/6 or about 17%, compared to over 50% nationwide. (I suspect that the actual completion rate in precinct #25 may have been similarly low, since there were over 1700 voters at that polling place and we only know of 31 completed interviews. By protocol, the lowest interviewing rate is one out of every ten voters.) That should be a big warning that the data may be unreliable.

NEDA gets consistency points for stating, "There are also two precincts where the Bush official vote count is significantly less than the Bush exit poll share." In other words, they see possible evidence that Kerry also stole votes in Ohio. Well, it's possible. But I think they are basically taking the exit poll data way too literally.

As for election transparency, I favor it.

[AuntiBush]

48. First Off...

The analysis' alone were achieved "scientifically." And, any Mathematician would understand the numbers-method and it's validity in a heartbeat. Quite frankly, I don't see how it would take (even) a rocket-scientist to comprehend - what's not to understand. 2 plus 2 always equals 4.

Exit Polls: When the numbers do not "jibe," some "thing" is obviously wrong. When you add the numbers, the scientific analysis, and the on-the-scene evidence from more then several creditable sources/eye-witnesses (countless from FL 2000 to OH 2004), and merge all of this information with statistical impossibilities, what more proof does anyone need?

I'm finding it harder by the day to comprehend myself why no M$N report comes out with this.

Wolf Blitzers double-take on election-eve, Nov. 2004 with just minutes before midnight was enough for me. CNN's exit polls that night were right on target with every other station that night. I know. Flipped around, back and forth and was as stunned as Wolf.

Did I mention photos, Blackwell and court findings, all swept conveniently under the rug. AND, all the other electoral investigations, too many to list here that all agree - there was NO WAY Kerry lost. Mathematically impossible.

Note: We sure do like our Mathematicians, and Scientists when they're working on NASA and other significant things within our civilization to keep things running smoothing, but boy, one mention of election-vote-fraud and you'd think someone used that other propaganda bull-crap word: Conspiracy Theorist or Freak.

[lonestarnot]

67. Another rip off confirmed! They have staged a coup twice now!

[FogerRox]

68. I seem to recall another scientific analysis, done by a DUer

many moons ago

Wonder if the guy has a web site-- hmmm

Yeah here it is--

http://www.truthisall.net/

Ohh pictures

I know some of you folks are a little newer and dont know the personalities involved. Please consider that you may be stepping on some toes that have already been stepped on before, which might not be necessary. TO the Veterans on this subject, remember the newer members may not understand the history of this topic. And may not have all the facts at their finger tips.
I would ask everyone to let calmer heads prevail

. Lets jump into the WAYBACK MACHINE and take a trip: PS look at the dates of these posts, they are much older than the work posted in this threadAnd then ask your self why are they older, and why the OP makes certain claims.--

The Election Model projected a Kerry victory, based on final state and national pre-election polls (two separate models). State polling data was input to a Monte Carlo Simulation model consisting of 5000 trials to determine the probability of Kerry winning the electoral vote, assuming a range of undecided vote split scenarios. The National Model calculated the probability of Kerry winning the popular vote based on an average of 18 national polls over a range of undecided vote scenarios.
http://www.geocities.com/electionmodel /


To believe that Bush won the election, a number of implausible circumstances had to occur.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...


To throw doubt on the exit polls, tortured hypotheticals were put forth by the naysayers who have been very prolific myth promoters. Now they are left with rBr, the Mother of All Myths, which has being thoroughly debunked by USCV and informed DUers. Here's a timeline of threads which refute the myths.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...


Much evidence (polling, political, anecdotal and incidental) pointed to massive fraud.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...


How does one explain the exit poll discrepancies?
Mitosksy states that Final Exit polls have always been weighted to match the actual vote. Now we know the reasons why. His statement, though literally true, is a canard. In fact, the vote count should be re-weighted to match the exit polls. Mitofsky would have us believe that the vote counts are correct and therefore preliminary exit poll numbers must be re-weightedto match the actual vote. That's why the final, weighted exit poll matched the votes. But this assumes the vote counts are accurate. Is this a valid assumption to make? The re-weighted exit polls are "correct" only if one defines “correct” as exactly matching bogus vote counts.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...


Given the recorded vote, exit poll response rate and error by precinct partisanship category, the EXIT POLL RESPONSE OPTIMIZER calculates Kerry’s true vote and refutes the rBr (reluctant Bush responder) hypothesis.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...


It’s the naysayer’s Hobson's Choice: Which do you believe,the Final NEP or rBr? One can argue, against all mathematical logic, that the Final National Exit poll was correct (43% is a valid weighting multiplier for Bush and 37% for Kerry). Therefore the Final Exit Poll correctly matched to the recorded vote count, as reflected by the 51-48% Bush win.

Conversely, one can hypothesize the reluctant Bush responder (rBr) theory. Of course, by doing so, one must must reject the 43/37% split, since that weighting mix implies that Bush 2000 voters outnumbered Gore 2000 voters by a whopping six percent.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...


Assume that 100% of Bush 2000 voters still alive (48.7 million, or 39.82% of 122.26) turned out to vote in 2004 and that the Final National Exit Poll "How Voted in 2000" weighting for Gore (37%) was correct. Also assume that the voting percentages are correct (the Final was the only poll Bush won.). Kerry still wins by 50.22% - 48.4%, a 2.23 million vote margin. In fact he wins all 120 scenarios.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...


This is an Exit Poll Analysis by Time Zone. The bulk of the damage was done in the East. All 22 states deviated to Bush from the exit poll to the vote. The odds: 1 in 4 million. Of the 22, 12 deviated beyond the MOE to Bush. The odds: 1 in 16 trillion.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

Of 16261 respondents in the East, 40.40% said they voted for Bush. But Bush received 43.91% of the 2-party vote in the region.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...


According to the census, 125.7mm voted on Nov. 2 but only 122.3 million according to the vote count, so 3.4 million votes are missing. We know that millions of democratic votes are spoiled in minority precincts in every election. Naysayers would have us believe that the 2.70% census discrepancy is due to polling error, but the census margin of error is 0.30% for the gender question. The discrepancy dovetails with national and state exit poll deviations.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...


What happened in Ohio? The exit poll showed that Kerry was a solid winner. He won the majority of every demographic category. If you believe the Exit Poll, Kerry won OH by 160,000 votes. If you believe the count, Bush won by 119,000. If Kerry won this solid Republican state by 51-48%, he must have done better than this nationally - which means he won the election by 6-8 million votes.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

Kerry held a steady 3-4% lead at each point in the timeline of the National Exit Poll, starting at 4pm (8349 respondents) to 7:33pm (11027) to 12:22am (13047). The Final Exit poll(13660) was released 1:25pm and radically changed the consistent timeline weightings and percentages in order to match the recorded vote.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

State (73,000 respondents) and National (13047) exit polls were in agreement: Kerry was the winner. The fact that they matched within one tenth of a percentage point is further confirmation that they were accurate.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

Analysis of state and National exit poll by region provides further confirmation and shows where the discrepancies were most dramatic.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

In Florida, two voting methods were used. The party registration percentage split in counties using touch screen computers were virtually identical to counties using Optical scanners, with Democrats holding the edge. Why did Kerry do so much better in touch screen counties then he did in optiscan counties?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

Even assuming 100% voter turnout for Bush 2000 voters and 88% for returning Gore voters, Kerry is a winner, using realistic weightings for the national exit poll. The Final Exit poll -- How Voted in 2000: demographic (43% Bush/ 37% Gore) is impossible, since 43% of 122.3mm voters is 52.59mm. Bush received 50.45mm votes in 2000. Since the number of Bush 2000 voters still living in 2004 was approximately 48.7mm, his maximum percentage is 8.7/122.3mm or 39.8%.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...


Regardless of the percentage of Election 2000 Gore voters returned to the polls his winning margin hardly changes. The percentage turnout factor is of minimal effect. However voter turnout weighting is the major factor in the wide discrepancy between the mathematically impossible Final Exit Poll at the 1:25pm timeline (13660 respondents) and the plausible 12:22am timeline (13047 respondents).
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...


Based on the pre-election polls, 41 out of 51 states deviated to Bush. Based on the exit polls, 43 out of 51 deviated to him .
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...


Exit Poll Margin of Error vs. Vote Deviation. Here’s a table of probabilities.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

What are the odds?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...


Which of these facts convinced you that the election was stolen?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

[Moochy]

71. waiting for the flying mitofsky brothers to chime in on this one...

[autorank]

90. You talking about these brothers?

[Moochy]

94. LOL

I know they juggle balls, but do they have a side job, juggling the numbers? :evilgrin:

[Febble]

99. Differences between the two analyses

TIA's until recently have assumed that most if not all exit poll error is random sampling error. That's the error conveyed by the Margin of Error (MoE) also called a "confidence interval". I'm not clear what his assumption is now, as his latest analyses seem to be weighting the crosstabs in order to correct for the Gore/Bush proportions reported in the How Did you Vote in 2000 crosstab. In order to straighten this out, he has to assume (or I assume he has to assume - I don't know how he does it otherwise) that there was bias in the poll that actually went the other way - pro Bush bias.

So TIA, of late, seems to have accepted that polls may be biased - he just doesn't accept that responses were biased towards Kerry. Against this is evidence that the WPE (the nearest data we have to "raw" exit poll data) has consistently favoured the Democratic candidate for the last five presidential elections, one of the least biased years, ironically, being 2000. 1992 and 1988 appeared to have large pro-Democratic bias in the raw poll.

The Baiman-Dopp analysis, on the other hand, accepts the possibility of pro-Kerry bias in the poll; limits it to non-response bias or lying (leaves out selection bias, for which there is now substantial evidence); makes assumptions regarding sample sizes which are not justified given the data they have; makes some kind of assumption about the maximum effect of non-response bias (not supported by anything other than a hypothetical as far as I can see), and I think concludes that the redshift was greater where Bush's vote share was greater at a high level of statistical significance, and that this is smoking gun evidence of fraud, because, I believe, they find it psychologically implausible that Bush voters would be more shy on home territory, or that Kerry voters would be more enthusiastic in Kerry territory. But it's not an easy paper to read so I may have got that wrong (IMO one of the problems of the paper is that it is extremely badly structured and trying to pick the methods and results from bits of polemic is like walking through a minefield).

I won't argue with the psychology because I don't accept the premise. I don't believe that there is any significant correlation between redshift and Bush's vote share in Ohio, and I don't believe that they have demonstrated that there is.

For further discussion, including a response by Baiman to his critics (Dopp, alas, is unavailable here for further comment), see here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=409512&mesg_id=409512

[tyedyeto]

69. So what if the evidence is there?

We are stuck with this administration even tho the actual votes say otherwise. Just like we have been since the election of 2000. The question is, what will happen in the next election? Will the Dems roll over when exit polls tell us we won?

Nothing changed between the 2000 and 2004 elections so what will bring about fair and honest vote counting this time?

[FogerRox]

72. IIRC there will be no exit polls in 2008

Without getting into another debate on DREs opscans Tabulators HAVA etc, I have fought the purchase of computerized Voting Machines this t=year in my County. I lost.

NExt is to work for getting the House back, I have 5 fundrasing events for a House Candidate in NJ to do organize over the next month, Raise money-- got to- its part of the process, and then campaign like crazy & HOpe its a blow out.

I think ELection reform and DEMs candidates who have spine-- go together. THE HAVA deadline was Jan 1, 2006. so the money has been spent-- the machines have been bought, now we have to campaign and campaign hard.

[tyedyeto]

76. It is very scary... what can be done with electonic voting machines.

Where I live, we have the older scantron machines. There is still a reliable paper trail. Those votes can still be counted as to the little blackened 'bubbles' on the paper. But with Diebold-style machines, that is impossible.

[FogerRox]

78. pardon my French-- we are Fooked

My county in NJ just bought new DREs to replace our lever machines-- I founded a group and we fought the purchase for 6 months, and lost-- ARRRGGgg

[tyedyeto]

79. Your French is pardoned... we are indeed fucked. n/t

[FogerRox]

81. Another debate which has gone on in the Election reform forum

is just how to steal an election-- how not to make it too obvious-- etc.

1/2 the states have a VVPB law on the books-- this is good-- Long story made short-- an example--

NJ my home state-- its a good DEM state, ELections run by DEMS--- It may be easier to kick out a repub from the House in this situation-- I think we can take out 2 repubs in NJ---

I guess what I mean is -- I 'm not sure how effective the Inside Vote hack is. Or how massive the fraud can be. Too much would draw attention to itself.

[OnTheOtherHand]

117. whoops, whoa there (just on the first part)

I know of no reason to think there won't be exit polls in 2008. All I know is that they are trying to crack down on results leaking out before the polls even close. Just to mention.

As for the rest, yeah: don't mourn, organize.

[demo dutch]

135. Pretty futile.. 2006 and 2008 probably already decided

[OnTheOtherHand]

137. well, OK, forget organizing, let's just drink heavily??

The fatalism really spooks me. I guess it's possible that Kaine only won in Virginia last November because THEY allowed him to win. But I betcha Kaine couldn't have won in Virginia if he hadn't campaigned, or if no one had worked for him.

[demo dutch]

144. Heh when you live in FL you become pretty disgusted!

[OnTheOtherHand]

147. you got me there -- if I were in FL, I might drink heavily

Hang in there.

[FogerRox]

149. Quit my job in NJ- spent Oct. '04 in Broward, FL- I hear ya

John COnyers marched with MLK, COnyers has never given up.

Rosa Parks ended up working her whole life in Civil rights-- if Rosa Parks never tired. Then how can I be tired.

[upi402]

73. K/R

:toast:

[FogerRox]

83. Election reform forum

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=203

Election reform news thread for Jan 16th

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=409487&mesg_id=409487

[rg302200]

88. This just backs up what everyone in Ohio

already knew...Hell the voting was screwed up in my rural county...I could only imagine what went on in the cities!

Is there any chance that the '06 midterm elections could be fair?

[sasquatch]

108. Where do you live in Ohio?

I actually live in Warren County Ohio.

[rg302200]

153. I live in Guernsey County....My U.S. Rep. Is Bob Ney!!

Now tell me how screwed over I got....

[Marie26]

111. Ohio voting

I was in Ohio too during the elections, in a very Democratic district, and I know the voting was a mess. People had to wait in huge lines, some voting machines malfunctioned, etc. It seemed like there was a shortage of machines & the polls closed before some people could vote. But there's one real reason why I think Ohio went for Bush - that stupid gay marriage initiative. The second I saw that on the ballot, I knew we'd lost. Ohio itself might be almost evenly Dem/Rep., but there is a strong element there is a strong element of Christian conservatives, and they vote in large numbers & mostly as told. Bush used that gay marriage ban to turn out the fundies, & the people who hate gay marriage are the same people who then voted for Bush. That right there could help explain the increase in support for Bush in Ohio.

And ancedotally, there really wasn't a huge upsurge in support for Kerry in my hometown. The same people who usually vote Dem voted for Kerry, the same few Repubs voted for Bush. The Democrats were angrier & more driven, but the Republicans didn't abandon Bush. If Ohio went for Bush the first time, it's not a huge surprise that they'd do it again. Most people didn't seem to change. And in fact, Bush beat Kerry in Ohio by almost the exact margin he beat Gore in 2000 (50% to 47%). So, I think there's adequate explanations for Bush's win w/o resorting to election fraud. Guns, gays, & God will do it every time. Add in all the Republican corruption & money in Ohio, and it's almost a guarantee. They didn't really need to steal the election if they could buy it.

[OnTheOtherHand]

148. I often wish I had been in Ohio too

although the day after, I was happy to be with my students, who looked genuinely grateful to have someone say "Hey, I survived Reagan, you will probably survive W." I lived in Columbus (actually a burb) for about 8 years.

I just can't decide whether I think Issue 1 made the difference in Ohio, but it had to have been part of the impulse that made a lot of people turn out and vote for Bush there. I dunno -- it was complicated. One of the things I really appreciated about your post was that you made more than one point.

[pa28]

89. One more K&R

for the single most important issue in this country.

[autorank]

91. This is who we're dealing with. PRESUME FRAUD!!!

...OR FAIL TO DO SO AT YOUR OWN PERIL.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0601/S00122.htm

(Gore) then cited Yale Law School’s Harold Koh who says that the chief executive who assumes the power to commit torture “…has the power to commit genocide, to sanction slavery, to promote apartheid, to license summary execution.”

“The Executive Branch has now put our constitutional design at grave risk. The stakes for America’s representative democracy are far higher than has been generally recognized."

Bush is..."...…a threat to the very structure of our government."

[eomer]

102. Presume fraud - that says it for me.

My position is the same as it was shortly after the election, which is that the exit poll discrepancy is large and unexplained and (in an alternate universe where truth and rule of law prevail) requires a serious investigation with subpoena power and fitzian determination. I don't believe that either side in this debate has been able to deliver an explanation that is demonstrably true, that is based on data and analytical conclusions that clearly follow from the data without making some leaps of faith or some lapses of logic.

Ironically, a couple of the principals in this current dispute were co-authors of a paper saying exactly that (that the discrepancy is large and unexplained and justifies an investigation). That would be SunshineKathy (Kathy Dopp) and Febble (Elizabeth Liddle) as co-authors of one of the early USCV papers. After that brief moment of agreement it seems that the ensuing analysis took the analysts in two diametric directions. I, for one, am still unconvinced that the analysis proves there was fraud and unconvinced that the data proves there wasn't fraud.

But even though I'm unconvinced either way when we get going on statistical inference, mathematical proof papers and the like, I am firmly on the fraud side of the argument for other reasons, one of which is that it is only prudent given the fact that the "winning" side has been hell-bent to create a system that is totally unverifiable and non-transparent (opaque?), that has our votes counted in secret by partisan hacks. Add to that the myriad examples of fraud that are clearly supported by evidence and you can definitely show there was motivation (motivation is not a strong enough word, go for hell-bentedness), you can definitely show there was opportunity (once again, not a strong enough word since our election system is the biggest pile of crap I've seen) and you have at least one corpse (the demonstrably stolen 2000 election).

So while I tend to agree with Febble and OTOH when they argue that Dopp and Baiman haven't proved what they say they've proved, I am still on the side that says the 2004 election was stolen. I am in that camp not by way of mathematical proofs or statistical inference because I believe that neither side has mustered an argument that rises to that level of rigor. Rather I'm in that camp based on a less scientific rendering of a very large body of evidence into that conclusion with the help of a healthy dose of skepticism and suspicion that seems, to me, totally justified given all the other things we know about Bush and his team.

Edit: typos and minor wording

[OnTheOtherHand]

104. I think I have no problem with that

Some on nuances, but I won't belabor them. I think the belief that the 2004 election was stolen certainly is rationally defensible.

[OnTheOtherHand]

116. oh, to clarify, I don't want to "presume" one way or the other, but

I don't want everyone to approach the issue the same way that I do. We learn more by disagreeing. And we certainly learn more by being skeptical than by being credulous.

[DemExpat]

105. I, too, presume fraud

for the reasons that you note in your post.

DemEx

[yowzayowzayowza]

106. Concur.

Tho I do think the massive padding of * votes by many millions has been effectively ruled out.

[Febble]

115. A very fair and dispassionate summary

I think I agree with all of that, except that my sense from the balance of the evidence is that it is against theft of popular vote, and probably against outright theft of Ohio, although I wouldn't like to say how Ohio would have gone if all who had wanted to vote for Kerry had done so and had their votes counted. In any case, I think that if all who had voted had known what they should have known about 9/11, Iraq and WMD, then Kerry would have won a landslide. So the election was crooked in all ways from the immoral to the illegal.

I also agree that suspicion is justified, and that suspicion simply shouldn't be possible in a true democracy.

Regarding the early USCV paper. Yes, I was briefly a signatory, but it was a kind of accident. I contributed a little to the first paper, but hadn't been aware of the kind of billing it was going to have (a "peer-reviewed paper"). I didn't think it was, so I asked to be removed. One of my problems with USCV, then and now, is that it has the trappings of academic credibility, but not the rigor. There were many excellent people working on the papers, but there was no systematic review process, authors acted in both writing and reviewing capacity, and there was no independent editorial board. That wouldn't have mattered, had we not been implying that the output was in some sense "peer-reviewed". They were more like broad consensus documents, which would have been fine if that had been how they were billed.

However, consensus became increasingly hard to find, and the reviewing process became no more rigorous. I think, myself, that's the point at which things started to go wrong. Not only were papers not independently reviewed, but were constantly updated. Even the editor has recently been disowning earlier versions of papers, and complaining of having been unaware of re-edits. I would like to suggest that if USCV/NEDA want this paper to be taken seriously that either NEDA adopts the protocol of an academic journal, with independent reviewers and editorial board (which I think would be a good idea) or submit its papers to a peer-reviewed journal. Alternatively it should become a blog, and submit its thinking to open scrutiny, something that also can work extremely well, and often does on DU, thanks to people like you! Then we could keep track of the updates.

As it is, I think this paper is neither fish nor fowl - it hasn't survived either the rigors of true peer-review or blog comment. Maybe it will get the latter now.

[mgr]

119. And you think the executive branch of the US has not done this already?

Stare decesis.

Custom.

It's a mistake to argue that Bush will be the first, when other presidents have committed similar immoral actions. Whether that morality is incorporated into the constitution is unclear. Lincoln's suspension of habeus corpus during the Civil War was an abuse of the constitution, but I don't recall any historic accounts of attempts to impeach him over it--it's the first of many "we had to destroy it in order to save it" moments in our history.

The problem is not Bush per se, but a legislative branch that has abrogated many of its constitutional perogatives to the executive since the Tonkin Gulf.

Anyway, once you distance yourself from your Zell moment, you may observe that you are essentially arguing that because they could, they would as a fait accompli. It may work in the Napoleonic code, but not in common law. It's our obligation to show their guilt, not theirs to prove their innocence.

Mike

[Peter Frank]

92. K&R - The Far Right Might Call This Sour Grapes...

...but everyone should know how this admin came to power.

The future is safe for no one if an illegal infrastructure is in place.

[Zambero]

107. Saddam Hussein's elections were more honest

With only one candidate's name on the ballot, any portrayal of democracy is certainly a travesty. There's no need to manipulate the results in order to get the desired outcome, and what you see is what you get. The far greater travesty is a so-called democracy in which the electorate is allowed a choice, which can then be altered to assure a certain victory for a specific candidate or party. At least the Saddam Hussein model makes no such pretense. Never mind however, we're now in Iraq to move that country in a more positive direction following the overthrow of an infamous dictator. Perhaps, one day Iraq will have an electoral system that is similar to the U.S. But in doing so will there be any real change from went went on before that country was "liberated"?

[go west young man]

110. Any fool could see it was stolen by the way the MSM

dropped the issue like a hot potato and then decided to spend lots of time dwelling on the Ukranian election. Absolutely ridiculous country we live in.

[DirtyDawg]

113. Unless, or until....

...positive evidence of election fraud, or indeed charges and convictions for direct election rigging, carries with it imprisonment, or even the death penalty, these vermin will keep on keeping on. Hell, they can't afford to lose an election cause they know we'll never again let the bastards back in. I say 'up against the wall with 'em when the convictions come in. And you can be assured that somebody that knows the truth will ultimately come clean. Shoot, the hush money can't hold out forever. Can it?

[sojourner]

121. Done...actually for second time!

[McCamy Taylor]

133. Oh ho ho. I smell a Texas rat and a new Grand Theft Election Ohio coming.

Off to cut and paste in the literal sense.

[demo dutch]

134. 2006 and 2008 are already decided, why even bother to vote!

Supreme Court knew what happend in FL with purging voters in 2000, and gave the presidency to * anyway

[McCamy Taylor]

139. Apathy is an RNC strategy. They want you to stay home in disgust.

[Name removed]

141. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Febble]

143. Are you implying

that anyone who doesn't consider that the exit polls are evidence of election theft in Ohio is a freeper mole? That's me then.

It doesn't mean that I think the election was fair, just, or even won by Bush (although I do think that he won the popular vote, and I'm not sure about Ohio).

I think the election was a disgrace to democracy.

But I don't think the exit polls are themselves "virtually irrefutable" evidence of fraud in Ohio.

That's because I'm a competent data analyst, not because I'm a freeper mole.

And your allegation that the polls "were withheld for us except for one spunky hacker" is laughable. I was watching all night, and I saw them. For hours.

[tiptoe]

157. Eh? To whose deleted post and what content were you replying?

thanks

[Moochy]

158. Things us plebians were not meant to know

nothing to see here move along...

[Mistwell]

150. Yawn

No offense...it's just that it's seems so irrelevant at this point, relative to the other issues happening now and in the future. Particularly when the material itself is about as interesting as watching paint dry.

[OnTheOtherHand]

159. awwww...

I think the claim that the first "valid scientific analysis" of Ohio exit poll data provides "virtually irrefutable evidence of vote miscount" is inherently... interesting. Although probably not for the same reasons as the 122 people who recommended this thread for the Greatest page.

And you have to admit, if the exit polls could be used to show that Kerry actually won the popular vote by millions of votes (which is not the topic of this particular "valid scientific analysis"), that would not be so irrelevant. I empathize with people who believe that.

But if I venture my professional opinion about the status of that argument, someone will think I am just being mean. I think someone summed it up nicely recently in a response to one of the "TIA's Greatest Hits" threads. I think the response read in full: "Thanks for the numbers...they validate what I know in my gut." So, as you know, if one critiques "the numbers," it is sort of like strangling Santa Claus. What kind of sick person....

EDIT: BTW, thanks for the link to Singer's "Who Are the Non-Respondents?", which I dug out of one of your old posts. And let's all wish the E/M evaluation report a happy first birthday! Anyone have a cake?

[goodboy]

152. ANDY STEPHENSON IS SMILING DOWN ON US!! nominated

[Apollo11]

156. NEDA Press Release Correction

Here is my e-mail to NEDA:

There is one part of your latest news release I don't understand:

"Exit Polls were conducted in 49 of Ohio’s 11,360 precincts. At least 40%
of Ohio's polled precincts show statistically significant differences
between Kerry’s exit poll percent and official vote count percent. 35% of
these discrepancies underestimated the Kerry official vote share. This is
five times the number expected."

If the Exit Polls underestimated Kerry's official vote share - it means that
the official results were better for Kerry than the Exit Polls were
suggesting. This is not consistent with the suggestion that votes were
somehow shifted from Kerry to Bush, by fraudulent means.

I would be grateful if you could please clarify your findings.


And here is the reply I received from NEDA:

We fixed the press release per your coment.

It now states accurately that:

"35% of these exit polls overestimated the Kerry official vote share. This is five times the number expected."

Actually given the odds figures the expected number of these is far fewer than 5% ..

Thank you for pointing this out.

Best,

Ron ([e-mail])

[FogerRox]

163. I find it troublesome to see these announcements and then the

with drawls & re-edits. Honestly, I tired of the Hyperbole, 7 the mistakes. It maybe be, that at this time USCOUNTVOTES has suffered enough.

Heres the working thread-
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x409512