Mother Jones magazine lets Hertsgaard hack on democracy and elections

[Land Shark]

Mother Jones magazine says they will publish my letter on Hertsgaard's hack job on democracy, Fitrakis, Wasserman, Rosenfeld, elections and Mark Crispin Miller's book "Fooled Again". Here's a partial preview.

For those that haven't read the MoJo article, in the context of a book review of several election fraud books, on the question of the exit poll discrepancy Hertsgaard remains firmly skeptical that anything is amiss in the election, though allows it might be.

Hertsgaard selects New Hampshire for focus, where a Nader-paid hand recount of 2004 presidential ballots basically matched the reported vote count. As a result of this, on the Democracy Now radio program, Hertsgaard proclaimed that the New Hampshire "hand recount confirmed the actual vote totals and showed that the exit polls were, in fact, wrong."

Both Land Shark and his evil twin were mightily pissed off by this statement, though for different reasons. (LandShark's evil twin resents his handiwork not being recognized, which the evil twin took great pains to ensure would not be recount-detectable)

Then, in Mother Jones magazine, Mr. Hertsgaard asks "How do skeptics explain New Hampshire?"

Is this supposed to be a hard question? :rofl:

First, Recounts only detect certain types of errors and cheating, not all, and not even the most likely frauds. But let's instead propose a test to see if Hertsgaard really believes what he's written and said:

THE HERTSGAARD TEST: I propose to hand Mr. Hertsgaard a ballot box stuffed with a thousand bogus votes replacing a thousand legitimate votes, then leave him alone and totally free to recount all of these ballots by any method or series of methods he chooses. After all of the recounts he desires are completed, we can gather together again with Mr. Hertsgaard to review any lessons learned and see whether he thinks the recounts have in fact confirmed the election results and been different from the exit polls. When he says they have, we will then show him the videotape of the 1000 ballot replacement, and ask him to comment, for the record, about the utility of recounts in catching ballot stuffing error, replacement error, vote switching error, and so forth. Finally, we can pop the question on Mr. Hertsgaard: How is it that a RECOUNT matching a REPORTED ELECTION RESULT means that EXIT POLLS WERE WRONG, as he quite clearly stated on the Democracy Now radio show? :wtf:

Note that in the democracy now interview, Hertsgaard concluded that "EXIT POLLS WERE WRONG". Far from it. Exit polls measure what people who SHOWED UP on election day and THOUGHT they voted for, in fact state that they intended to vote for.

In contrast, recounts measure only those ballots that exist at the time of the recount. There are many steps along the way were ballots are altered, switched, overvoted, erased, obfuscated, rejected, lost, burned, replaced, repaired, denied, found, spoiled or suppressed.