Reply #2: Even though we've all seen the sampling difficulties with recent polling...

[Sancho]

TIA continues to raise the point that we MUST have accurate and transparent exit polls. Whether that takes the form of "re-elections" or community action group-run polls is irrelevant. The current "system" has too many patterns of manipulation, and TIA's analyses must also be seen in context with numerous reports of vote switching DREs, caging, hacking programs, unattended machines, crazy undervotes, weird contrasts between local and national election winners, butterfly ballots, hanging chads, etc... R. A. Fisher's p<.05 is an arbitrary number anyway. It's the logical pattern that is important.

So like our friend John Snow ( http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow.html ), the unlikely numbers, geography, and individual reports of problems are all important. I don't think that a "paper trail" will necessarily fix things, since the same folks who erase electronic votes can manipulate paper and tabulators in so many other ways. There simply needs to be an independent confirmation of the count. Precinct level exit polls, especially in contested areas and offered to all voters, are one logical and economical way to uncover election fraud.

In some areas of Florida, so many people are so frustrated that the vast majority of voters would participate in a transparent exit poll (ask the folks in Sarasota!).