Tag Archives: Ohio

In honor of Sunday morning, a prediction about Sunday morning

Posted on by
Reply

In honor of Sunday morning, a prediction about Sunday morning

It’s Sunday morning, and we can expect that today’s morning talk shows will not be terse about the much-touted close and/or ‘tightening’ election. Close election is the moral indifferents’ ground game. It was their calling card; now it is their mantra. If it happens, it will be a defeat for the public.

Hence this article:

It is a given that pre-game armchair quarterbacking is going to be weaker than post-game ditto. But with due respect to some of the established journalists who get on air while people like me never do,* I still cannot  understand the excessive chatter about a 2012 ‘close election’. If a close election is such a given, why do they talk about it so unceasingly? –They don’t keep reminding us that we have two major parties, one Democratic, you know, and the other Republican.

Sigmund Freud

Professor Sigmund Freud and I hypothesize that in fact the hysterical insisters on a ‘close election’ fear that it might be, or might have been, otherwise. As Gertrude said, Methinks somebody doth protest too much.

(Freudian slip: When you say one thing but mean your mother.)

Summary analysis, so far as I can figure it out:

Some Washington insiders (as Chris Matthews called them, without irony) are making common cause with the Republican noise machine, up to a point.

A close election is a GOP win

They’re doing so not because they have a committed belief that rich-get-richer is the best fiscal policy, not because they have any fantasy that Mitt Romney will produce ‘jobs’, and not because they want all abortions, etc., illegal; quite the contrary. They are simply afraid on grounds of short-term self-interest to call an issue for the guy who’s winning it. Like other established but under-qualified persons, they’re not eager to see merit rewarded. It’s the gut response, when you don’t have guts.

Thus, while no one in his right mind could think that a Romney-Ryan administration would be other than economic disaster, we still have serious news people treating the GOP ticket as though it embodied gravitas. The same people insist on a close election.

Electoral map, 2008

As to the election, predictions are vain, of course. But we do have ‘facts on the ground’, a phrase deferred to ad nauseam in lip service, less in accuracy. Among tangibles, we have a popular incumbent president. Incumbency in every other national election in memory has been considered a fundamental by the national political press. The guys on the bus accorded incumbency fundamental status even with the troubled administration of George W. Bush. (They unceasingly touted GWBush’s ‘likability’, too.) In 2012, the incumbent is being challenged by a discredited party–the Republicans continue to lose in party identification. At the top of the ticket, the minority party has a lackluster candidate who has never been a powerful national figure. Romney’s unfavorables, for people who track that kind of thing, are near-record. The candidate has proven himself so willing to say anything, depending on audience, that virtually every adult citizen knows about the propensity. His defining visual, the Etch-a-Sketch quality, is a staple for late-night comics. Again, in any other election years the guys on the bus would have made a big deal of this kind of thing. (On the other hand, Romney’s flip-flopping has become such a given that it’s in danger of becoming passively accepted, and thus acceptable.)

Then there’s Romney’s vice presidential pick. The fact that Paul Ryan is still running for Congress suggests that he doesn’t see the upcoming election as a win for Romney.

 

Ryan gets pans for washing clean pots

Clearly, what should be reported most about the election is what it means for the country. A Romney win would be disaster, given the foreign-policy recklessness and domestic reverse-Robin-Hood the candidate has upheld during the campaign. Thus most political reporting is a loss from the get-go.

Even in narrowly political terms, however, the trend of much political reporting recently has been disturbing. Recent signs of the times have gone unstated or understated. Early voting is up in 2012–up even over the strong early vote of2008–and analysis of early voting consistently gives the advantage to Obama and the Democrats over Romney and the GOP. Swing state polls continue to give Obama the edge. Gaffes and missteps continue for the Romney-Ryan campaign. Opinion polls on the second debate give Obama the win, rightly. One poll is linked here; the consensus is advantage-Obama, from immediately post-debate to the present. Vice President Joe Biden is universally considered to have won in his appearance with Paul Ryan. Numbers from number man Nate Silver continue to give Obama the lead, as they have for months. A short article from Silver on occasions when Gallup has been the outlier is linked here. Virtually every electoral college map gives the win to Obama, and has for months, even while published opinion polls continue to undercount some demographics including cell-phone users. Even the published polls indicate that Obama sweeps the youth vote.

Yet with all the plus factors touched on here, and more, the Obama campaign itself has started doing what the John Kerry campaign did in 2004–focusing too much on a few swing states. This is a tactic too politically transparent and too liable to breed cynicism. It brings a danger that people will forget that the president governs, watching him campaign. There is a margin of diminishing returns. Look how it worked for Kerry.**

It’s great for the president to visit Florida, which needs all the help it can get. But the president should also come to Baltimore (and to Prince George’s County, Md.), go to Richmond, to New Mexico, and to North Carolina, time permitting. Also, Obama’s team is undervaluing the incumbent. Let him spend more time governing: New Orleans also needs all the help it can get. So does Arizona. So does New Jersey, for that matter. Look at N.J.’s governor. So do all the states and localities where vote suppression tactics are taking hold.

 

Lining up to vote early

Obviously I do not belong to the brigade of highly paid experts with a track record of winning (or losing) national campaigns. My views are offered here simply as those of a voter, a writer and journalist, and an observer. I am offering them not to fill up air time but because I think I’m right. Viz.: People in the rest of the U.S. don’t appreciate being ignored because a few less than truthful pundits are again pretending to consider ‘undecided voters’ seriously. The rest of the country doesn’t appreciate being ignored while up-and-down voters keep wobbling with every opinion poll. For that matter, it doesn’t make a handful of states feel all that special to be wired like paramecia under a microscope, within days of a national election. The nation is more important than they are, as on some level they themselves know.

Bainport, Illinois

Let the ground game take up some of the slack on the campaign trail. Admittedly, some who perceive themselves as strategists could perceive limiting swing-state visits as a disadvantage. GOP opponent Mitt Romney, after all, doesn’t have to spend his time and energy governing. He could visit Florida another twelve times. But that’s because Romney hasn’t been elected to anything lately. Let Fox News have its polls, let the same crew of Washington insiders who boosted the Iraq war boost ‘centrists’, a ‘close election’, and ‘undecided voters’. These are not people to be influenced by. After all, if we actually have a close election in this country, the press will have failed the public.

To sum up, the administration has a good record, and should run on it. One of the uglier examples of the big lie in election 2012 has been Romney’s pretense that the Obama record is one to run away from. The GOP, in contrast, has an execrable record. Any good television ad campaign could condense the mortgage-derivatives crisis in a few spots. We’ve got upside-down mortgages because we had an upside-down Wall Street. Financial insiders touted disastrous products for the public and got out with billions themselves, everybody else paid the price, and Romney-Ryan and the congressional GOP have banded together to protect the privileged. Their slogan: Prevent improvement.

 

*I have not tried to get on television.

**Qualifier: Kerry won Ohio in 2004. He thus won the electoral college vote; most of the same media figures touting a close election this time swept Ohio under the rug in 2004.

Positive harbingers for Obama-Biden

Posted on by
Reply

Pre-election, looking warmer

2012 harbingers

Yet another positive harbinger for the election, from a Democratic and democratic perspective: Citigroup’s CEO just abruptly resigned. Wall Street this fall did a little quiet house-cleaning. Doesn’t suggest that insiders see a wildly lenient Romney-Ryan ticket winning. Rep. Paul Ryan doesn’t seem to see that in his crystal ball, either: he is still on the ballot in Wisconsin, running for reelection to Congress just in case things don’t pan out elsewhere.

 

Ryan with budget

Funny how little attention the hand-wringing liberalish cable commentators have paid to that Wisconsin race.

 

WI challenger Rob Zerban

But then a near-hysterical insistence on closeelectioncloseelectioncloseelection offers little political acumen or illumination.

 

Mad man

Close or not, take a look at some of the hard numbers:

  • by all accounts, the advantage in 2012 early voting is heavily Democratic
  • President Obama outraised Mitt Romney in September, $181 million to $170 million
  • retail sales are up in September, unemployment is down, consumer confidence is up, house sales up, housing permits up; etc
  • Dem Senatorial candidate Tim Kaine is outraising George Allen (R) in swing-state Virginia
  • Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren is outraising incumbent Sen. Scott Brown (R) in Massachusetts in spite of a national lobbyist-superPAC campaign against her
  • compilations of polls and polls of polls still show Obama significantly ahead of Romney in electoral college votes
  • Nate Silver’s micro-tuned statistics continue to predict the win Obama

Even as nominally pro-Democratic commentators keep instilling fear, cherry-picking the most negative opinion polls in order to seem influential, RealClearPolitics makes the picture clear.

RCP, be it noted, accords the incumbent Obama-Biden only 201 electoral votes, and 191 to Romney-Ryan. RCP designates the other 146 electoral votes ‘toss-up’.

That toss-up category includes the following states, in alphabetical order:

What these five ‘toss-up’ states have in common is, among other things, that Obama is ahead in all or most polls in all five of them. Not much surprise there; Obama also carried all of them in 2008. All five also have a history of going Democratic in presidential elections for the past quarter-century. Iowa has voted Republican only once (2004) since 1984. Michigan has voted Dem every time since 1988. Ohio has gone Dem in three of five elections since 1988. Pennsylvania has gone Dem every time since 1988. ‘Swing state’ Wisconsin has gone Dem in every election since 1984.

Jobs minus before, jobs plus after

Meanwhile, Michigan and Ohio are also home to industries that Romney-like policies have damaged. Iowa and Ohio tend to be politically tuned in as state electorates–never a blessing to Romney-type policies. Wisconsin has a history of populism, Pennsylvania of religious freedom, all five states are heartland bastions of the large, self-confident working class called middle class in this country’s sociology.

And as mentioned, every recent opinion poll or almost every recent poll, in all five of these swingy swing toss-up states, puts Obama ahead.

I am beginning to think that the mass media effort to drive every national election to ‘closeness’ bears a strong and unsavory resemblance to price-fixing in retail.

 

The 2004 election revisited, part 4: Ohio

Posted on by
Reply
Rep. Conyers

Revisiting the 2004 election. Part 4–Ohio.

Heading toward the new year, following up previous 2004 election entries. This history may become newly relevant.

GWBush and his ‘brain’

On Election Day 2004, the close states were hit hardest: Voters in some areas in Ohio, Florida, Iowa and New Mexico suffered significant problems casting their votes successfully. Most of the problems were not widely reported, although subsequent efforts in Congress to address the situation did draw some media attention.

Ad hoc committee on election abuses 2004

Anecdotal evidence bears out the thesis presented by statistical researchers, posted previously, that the problems were indeed widespread.

Take for example Mercer County, Ohio, where following the election the information below was relayed to me.

At the time, Washington Journal had just run an article titled “How the Bush camp won Ohio,” remarking that “in some small conservative counties which have experienced net job losses nearing 10% of business payrolls, Republicans still lined up for the president. In Mercer County, which has lost 5% of its jobs in the last four years, residents voted 3-to-1–15,022 to 4,924–for Mr. Bush, a sharp increase over his winning margin in 2000.”

The none-too-subtle subtext here seems to be either that voters in Ohio were peculiarly dumb or, putting the same idea more charitably, that Team Bush successfully persuaded people to vote against their own interest.

book: What Happened in Ohio?

The voter on the ground in Ohio offers a rational second opinion, noting that “this is very peculiar since over 4,800 people voted in this year’s Democratic primary” in Mercer County. So “Mercer County has over 30,000 registered voters and yet Kerry was only able to pick up a measly 87 additional votes compared to the March primary”?

Not only did Kerry allegedly receive only 87 votes above the total cast in the Democratic primary, but Gore had over 5,200 votes in 2000 (when there were 6,227 fewer registered voters in Mercer County).

The reader provides some relevant numbers:

Mercer County, Ohio:

Year 2000:       25,079 registered voters; 18,285 votes cast

Bush 12,485

Gore 5,212

Ralph Nader 392, Howard Philips 13, John Hagelin 24, Pat Buchanan 125, Harry Brown 43

Year 2004:       31,306 registered voters, 20,058 votes cast

Bush 15,022

Kerry 4,924

Other 112

The same reader adds that people might think “this is a conservative county and that many voters may have switched to Bush especially with gay marriage on the ballot. But with 5 percent of the people losing their jobs in the past four years in this county, I think people are far more concerned about putting food on the table and meeting mortgage payments than worrying about gay people getting married.”

Be it noted that Mercer County, Ohio, is among the places where turnout increased in 2004 over 2000. As the researchers previously quoted point out, higher turnout historically favors the challenger, not the incumbent. Voter registration also increased from 2000 to 2004 in Mercer County, by 6,227.

Rampant problems voting in Ohio

Many Americans saw the video footage of voters patiently waiting in line to vote in Ohio, in 2004. Mercer County was by no means the whole story, and the previously indicated statistical anomalies were amply reinforced by anecdotal report from around the state.

Readers and other correspondents sent me an ongoing and growing list of anomalies, deceptions and intimations of vote fraud in Ohio. Part of the list follows.

Discrepancies:

  • Returns certified by officials recorded that all but 10 registered voters in the Miami County, Ohio, town of Concord voted on Election Day. So far, the election challenge team has identified more than 10 registered Concord citizens who did not vote.
  • About 580 more absentee voters were certified in Mahoning County than election board officials identified.
  • Cleremont County was among the counties with challenges to contested returns. In December 2004 a team of volunteer attorneys pored over election records at the Cleremont County Board of Elections, with the Board’s cooperation.
  • In Lucas County, four elections officials were suspended after mistakes or worse in the election.
  • In Cuyahoga County, a third of all provisional ballots cast were thrown out because of alleged registration irregularities.
  • The Associated Press reported a difference of over 17,000 votes in Kerry’s favor after the election more than in the initial vote tallies.
  • In December 2004, Rep. Conyers and Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee asked Ohio Secretary of State Blackwell to respond to inquiries about voting irregularities.

Problems with voting-machine technology:

  • In Mahoning County, election observers have testified under oath, more than a dozen voting machines switched Kerry votes to Bush votes repeatedly, while voters watched.
  • Citizens in Trumbull County using electronic machines, who voted for Kerry, saw their votes register as votes for Bush. Subsequent hearings in Trumbull County, as elsewhere, partially brought to light further possible election fraud.
  • A public hearing at the Warren Heights and Trumbull Library, in Mahoning Valley, where the vote count went to Bush, recorded thousands of complaints of voting irregularities.
  • Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus pointed out that more than half the votes cast in Ohio and the nation were recorded on electronic voting machines owned by Republicans, with no audit trail. One voting machine company, Diebold, also manufactures ATMs (automated teller machines) that do provide a paper receipt for transactions.

Low-tech old-fashioned vote suppression:

  • In Franklin County and other counties, largely Democratic precincts suffered a shortage of voting machines. All the precincts where voting machines were short and lines were long were Democratic precincts. Voters in more affluent neighborhoods reported no shortage of voting machines and no problem with long lines.

Obstruction and failure to investigate by public officials:

  • In December 2004 a legal team partly comprising volunteer attorneys issued subpoenas to top election officials in ten counties where vote-count fraud was suspected.
  • The subpoenas, a first step in interviewing people under oath, were rejected by the Ohio Secretary of State, Republican Kenneth Blackwell. Blackwell served as co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio.
  • Ten depositions were served by the election challenge legal team; the other side filed a motion to stop the process; the challengers responded.
  • A lawsuit was filed at the Ohio Supreme Court, charging that a fair vote count would give the state and the presidency to John Kerry rather than to Bush. Notice of depositions was sent to George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell to appear and give testimony in Moss v Bush et al. The election challenge lawsuit was filed Dec. 17. Blackwell, the Bush-Cheney campaign, and Ohio’s Republican electors had ten days to respond. Each side then had 20 days for discovery or to gather additional evidence, plaintiffs going first. The Bush-Cheney team moved as slowly as possible, to run out the clock until the Jan. 20 inauguration.

Company logo

Subsequently, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee found that one precinct in Youngstown, in Mahoning County, recorded a negative 25 million votes. Back in Mercer County, Judiciary found that only 51 votes were recorded for one voting machine showing that 289 people cast punch card ballots president–a loss of 248 votes. The county’s website reported that 51,818 people cast ballots but only 47,768 ballots were recorded in the presidential race, including 61 write-ins, meaning that approximately 4,000 votes, or nearly 7%, were not counted for a presidential candidate.

Problems with Triad GSI voting technology company in Ohio reported on the Internet, not in print

Problems with vote technology in Ohio were not restricted to Diebold. Some concrete information is provided below, involving another major voting machine company, Triad GSI, based in Xenia, Ohio.

The following is a 2004 affidavit by the Hocking County, Ohio, deputy director of elections, Sherole Eaton. It deserved wider dissemination than it received. Ms. Eaton deserved not to be fired for being a whistleblower.

[Text follows:]

  “On Friday, December 10 2004, Michael from TriAd called in the AM to inform us that he would be in our office in the PM on the same day. I asked him why he was visiting us. He said, “to check out your tabulator, computer, and that the attorneys will be asking some tricky questions and he wanted to go over some of the questions they may ask.” He also added that there would be no charge for this service.

He arrived at about 12:30PM. I hung his coat up and it was very heavy. I made a comment about it being so heavy. He, Lisa Schwartze and I chatted for a few minutes. He proceeded to go to the room where our computer and tabulation machine is kept. I followed him into the room. I had my back to him when he turned the computer on. He stated that the computer was not coming up. I did see some commands at the lower left hand of the screen but no menu. He said that the battery in the computer was dead and that the stored information was gone. He said that he could put a patch on it and fix it. My main concern was – what if this happened when we were ready to do the recount. He proceeded to take the computer apart and call his offices to get information to input into our computer. Our computer is fourteen years old and as far as I know had always worked in the past. I asked him if the older computer, that is in the same room. could be used for the recount. I don’t remember exactly what he said but I did relay to him that the computer was old and a spare. At some point he asked if he could take the spare computer apart and I said “yes”. He took both computers apart. I don’t remember seeing any tools and he asked Sue Wallace, Clerk, for a screwdriver. She got it for him. At this point I was frustrated about the computer not performing and feared that it wouldn’t work for the recount. I called Gerald Robinette, board chairman, to inform him regarding the computer problem and asked him if we could have Tri Ad come to our offices to run the program and tabulator for the recount. Gerald talked on the phone with Michael and Michael assured Gerald that he could fix our computer. He worked on the computer until about 3:00 PM and then asked me which precinct and the number of the precinct we were going to count. I told him, Good Hope 1 # 17. He went back into the tabulation room. Shortly after that he (illegible) stated that the computer was ready for the recount and told us not to turn the computer off so it would charge up.

Before Lisa ran the tests, Michael said to turn the computer off. Lisa said, “I thought you said we weren’t supposed to turn it off.” He said turn it off and right back on and it should come up. It did come up and Lisa ran the tests. Michael gave us instructions on how to explain the rotarien, what the tests mean, etc. No advice on how to handle the attorneys but to have our Prosecuting Attorney at the recount to answer any of their legal questions. He said not to turn the computer off until after the recount.

He advised Lisa and I on how to post a “cheat sheet” on the wall so that only the board members and staff would know about it and and what the codes meant so the count would come out perfect and we wouldn’t have to do a full hand recount of the county. He left about 5:00 PM.

My faith in Tri Ad and the Xenia staff has been nothing but good. The realization that this company and staff would do anything to dishonor or disrupt the voting process is distressing to me and hard to believe. I’m being completely objective about the above statements and the reason I’m bringing this forward is to, hopefully, rule out any wrongdoing.”

This dramatic material was ignored by the larger media outlets. It was followed up in the online Free Press, by Ken Hoop here and by Victoria Parks here. Investigation by the House Judiciary Committee found copious indications of problems with Triad GSI. Daily Kos pointed out that the Rapp family behind Triad GSI was headed by a longtime contributor to the Republican Party.

The Judiciary Committee’s analysis stated,

“Based on the above, including actual admissions and statements by Triad employees, it strongly appears that Triad and its employees engaged in a course of behavior to provide “cheat sheets” to those counting the ballots. The cheat sheets told them how many votes they should find for each candidate, and how many over and under votes they should calculate to match the machine count. In that way, they could avoid doing a full county-wide hand recount mandated by state law. If true, this would frustrate the entire purpose of the recount law–to randomly ascertain if the vote counting apparatus is operating fairly and effectively, and if not to conduct a full hand recount. By ensuring that election boards are in a position to conform their test recount results with the election night results, Triad’s actions may well have prevented scores of counties from conducting a full and fair recount in compliance with equal protection, due process, and the first amendment. In addition, the course of conduct outlined above would appear to violate numerous provisions of federal and state law. As noted above, 42 U.S.C. §1973 provides for criminal penalties for any person who, in any election for federal office, “knowingly and willfully deprives, defrauds, or attempts to defraud the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process, by . . . the procurement, casting, or tabulation of ballots that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under the laws of the State in which the election is held.” Section 1974 requires the retention and preservation of all voting records and papers for a period of 22 months from the date of a federal election and makes it a felony for any person to “willfully steal, destroy, conceal, mutilate, or alter” any such record.398 Ohio law further prohibits election machinery from being serviced, modified, or altered in any way subsequent to an election, unless it is so done in the presence of the full board of elections and other observers. Any handling of ballots for a subsequent recount must be done in the presence of the entire Board and any qualified witnesses.399 This would seem to operate as a de facto bar against altering voting machines by remote access. Containers in which ballots are kept may not be opened before all of the required participants in are attendance.400 It is critical to note that the fact that these “ballots” were not papers in a box is of no consequence in the inquiry as to whether state and federal laws were violated by Barbian’s conduct: Ohio Revised Code defines a ballot as “the official election presentation of offices and candidates…and the means by which votes are recorded.” OHIO REV. CODE § 3506.01(B) (West 2004). Therefore, for purposes of Ohio law, electronic records stored in the Board’s computer are to be considered “ballots.” Triad’s interference with the computers and their software would seem to violate these requirements.”

[emphasis added]

The 2004 election revisited, part 3

Posted on by
Reply
Election Integrity

Revisiting the 2004 election. Part 3.

Still working in the holiday season—a useful change of work from hearing about Gingrich/Santorum/et al. is to remember the problems in 2004. Whoever wins the GOP nomination this year will have to do some fancy stepping to win the White House. Re past tactics, forewarned is forearmed.

Title says it all

On March 31, 2005, a group of solidly credentialed faculty scholars and researchers released a comprehensive study of the discrepancy between exit polls, in the 2004 election, and the published vote results.

The researchers found no “statistically-plausible explanation for the discrepancy between Edison/Mitofsky’s exit poll data and the official presidential vote tally.” The irregularities in the presidential election thus posed “an unanswered question of vital national importance that demands a thorough and unblinking investigation.”

Election Integrity

The comprehensive investigation failed to take place, although some members of Congress including Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) pursued inquiries. Where did the information go? Not into print in major newspapers. Not onto the airwaves. Like the U.S. Constitution, it is accessible on the Internet.

The 27-page “Analysis of the 2004 Exit Poll Discrepancies” reinforces earlier studies along the same lines, with further detail on election 2004. Authors and endorsers include professors in statistics, numerical analysis, computer studies, finance and mathematics from the U. of Utah, U. Wisconsin, Cornell, U. Pennsylvania, U. Illinois, Southern Methodist University and Notre Dame among others.

The introduction notes numerous election problems, including

  • “voting machine shortages;
  • ballots counted and recounted in secret;
  • lost, discarded, and improperly rejected registration forms and absentee ballots;
  • touch-screen machines that registered ‘Bush’ when voters pressed ‘Kerry’;
  • precincts in which there were more votes recorded than registered voters;
  • precincts in which the reported participation rate was less than 10%;
  • high rates of ‘spoiled’ ballots and under-votes in which no choice for president was recorded;
  • a sworn affidavit by a Florida computer programmer who claims he was hired to develop a voting program with a ‘back door’ mechanism to undetectably alter vote tallies.”

Campaigning Florida-Feeney style, 2004

These authors are not political hacks, whatever that term means. They are not hired guns paid to spin election results. They are genuine experts with earned credentials in the fields of inquiry, not backgrounds in public relations. They show a scholarly and patriotic passion for the truth.

“Under such circumstances” as the problems in this election, the authors wrote,

“we must rely on indirect evidence–such as exit polls, or analysis of election result data–as a check of the overall integrity of the official election results. Without auditability or transparency in our election systems, the role of exit polls as a trigger for further scrutiny is of paramount importance.”

They conclude,

“If the discrepancies between exit poll and election results cannot be explained by random sampling error; the “Reluctant Bush Responder” hypothesis is inconsistent with the data; and other exit polling errors are insufficient to explain the large exit polling discrepancies, then the only remaining explanation – that the official vote count was corrupted – must be seriously considered.”

Regrettably, the polling company, Edison/Mitofsky, did not release all the raw data from the exit polling. Having published the exit polls–referred to in previous posts–the company went back later and changed the published exit polls to make them conform retroactively to published vote tallies. It also attempted to repudiate its own original exit polls.

The exit polls were dismissed with argument, not fact.  A typical argument was that Bush voters were more reluctant to be interviewed by pollsters than were Kerry voters.

The faculty scholars make short work of this claim. As they point out,

“The Senate and presidential races were both questions on a single exit poll survey. If Bush supporters were refusing to fill out this survey as hypothesized, the accuracy of the exit poll should have been just as poor in the Senate races as it was in the presidential race. The presidential and Senate poll results derive from exactly the same responders.”

However,

“In 32 states, Senate elections took place on the same ballot with the presidential race. The exit polls were more accurate for Senate races than for the presidential race, including states where a Republican senator eventually won (pages 19-24).”

[emphasis added]

As the researchers point out, even while exit polls across the nation were being debunked as unreliable by the White House and its partisans, the accuracy of those same exit polls for Senate races was not questioned. The conclusion: “There is no logic to account for non-responders or missed voters when discussing the difference in the accuracy of results for the Senate versus the presidential races in the same exit poll.”

Nationally,

“The many anecdotal reports of voting irregularities create a context in which the possibility that the overall vote count was substantially corrupted must be taken seriously. The hypothesis that the discrepancy between the exit polls and election results is due to errors in the official election tally remains a coherent theory.”

“In fact, the burden of proof should be to show that the election process is accurate and fair. The integrity of the American electoral system can and should be beyond reproach. Citizens in the world’s oldest and greatest democracy should be provided every assurance that the mechanisms they have put in place to count our votes are fair and accurate. The legitimacy of our elected leaders depends upon it.”

Then and now, the points are unassailable:

  • “Well-documented security vulnerabilities and accuracy issues have affected voting equipment” back to the 1960s.
  • “The recent and ongoing proliferation of sophisticated computerized vote recording and tallying equipment” has drastically enhanced capabilities for vote-tampering.
  • “That the lion’s share of this equipment is developed, provided, and serviced by partisan private corporations only amplifies these serious concerns.”
  • “The fact that, in the 2004 election, all voting equipment technologies except paper ballots were associated with large unexplained exit poll discrepancies all favoring the same party certainly warrants further inquiry.”

As previously written, close-outcome states needing attention after the 2004 election included Ohio, Florida, New Mexico, and Iowa. Some of the work on these problem areas will be posted.

One example: researcher Richard Hayes Phillips did magnificent work on election problems in Toledo, Ohio.

What we need meanwhile, among other things, is for our so-called ‘backwaters’ not to be left to the tender mercies of the GOP, corporate-funded influence groups, anti-human quasi-religious organizations, and the DC political press. It is wrong to neglect small towns and rural areas.

Returning to that interesting analysis from a reader in North Carolina who compared the NC 2004 early turnout to 2000 early turnout–

In 2004, the SBOE recorded 705,462 early voters. In 2000, there had been 393,152 early voters–an increase of 312,310.

Furthermore, in 2000, early voters were 46% Democrat and 38% Republican. In 2004, early voters were 50.4% Democrat and 36% Republican. That’s a 6-point net gain in Democratic turnout.

The reader points out that one would expect John Kerry to gain “at least several percentage points over Al Gore’s showing four years ago. But when the votes were tallied, Kerry registered virtually no improvement on Gore’s vote in North Carolina (Kerry 43.6%, Gore 43.2%).”

The reader anticipates possible objections:

  • Crossover voting might be a factor. But nothing indicates that crossover voting was bigger in 2004 than in 2000.
  • Southerners might have voted more for Gore than for Kerry. But that does not explain why Democratic turnout increased significantly, while GOP turnout decreased.

All in all, it was reasonable to expect Kerry to perform better in North Carolina in 2004 than Gore did in 2000, even aside from the fact that John Edwards was on the ticket. Although Kerry could not have won the state, there’s still an issue.

Again–as he points out–if Kerry got 47% in North Carolina, he would have another 130,000 votes in his column. “It’s not enough to win the state’s 15 electoral votes, but a 4-point upward shift across the country is in line with the exit poll projection of a 51-48% popular vote lead for Kerry.”

Four points or less would have moved close states to Kerry, costing George W. Bush the election.