Reply #84: He refuted it in spades

[WillE]

TruthIsAll
Feb. 26, 2009

The original TruthIsAll (TIA) FAQ was written in late 2006 by Mark Lindeman, an Assistant Professor of Political Science. Mark has frequented election reform sites since 2004, relentlessly attempting to rebut the analyses of many researchers that indicate Bush stole the election beyond a reasonable doubt. He has focused most heavily on the statistical analysis that I have presented on the 2004, 2006 and 2008 elections in various election forums. Most election researchers agree that the election was stolen in 2004. The statistical evidence is just as strong that election fraud cut the 12% Democratic landslide margin to 6% in the 2006 midterms, costing them 10-20 House seats. And fraud reduced Obama’s 15% margin to less than 7%, reducing his mandate from over 20 million to 9.5 million recorded votes.

That is what the evidence shows, regardless of whether or not it is ever discussed in the media. Statistical analysts and political scientists who have looked at the evidence are well aware of the fraud, but are still waiting for the Democratic politicians and the GOP controlled media to get the ball rolling. In the meantime, only a handful of bloggers and truth-seekers will even touch the subject. Books hane been written which show that massive fraud in the form of voter disenfranchisement and vote miscounts occurred in 2000-2008, yet not one that presents a statistical analysis to show how Bush won in 2004.

The TruthIsAll FAQ Response was written within a month of Mark’s posting. Now that the 2008 election is history, the National Exit Poll and other anomalous results confirm to a virtual 100% probability, that the 2006 landslide was denied, just like 2006 confirmed that the 2004 election was stolen. This update to the original response will show why 2008 is further confirmation that the elections were stolen in 2000 and 2004, and that landslides were denied in 2006 and 2008.

In order to help the reader quickly become familiar with the main areas of focus, I have included a brief summary of the questions posed to Mark in the original FAQ – along with a short (often a one-line) summary of our responses. The full text follows the summary.

A TruthIsAll (TIA) FAQ
by Mark Lindeman

TruthIsAll (TIA) is the pseudonym of a former Democratic Underground (DU) regular who now posts elsewhere. Many of his writings are available at http://www.truthisall.net. TIA argues, among other things, that the 2004 U.S. presidential pre-election polls and the exit polls both indicate that John Kerry won the election.

Who is TruthIsAll (TIA) and why do you care what he says?
I don't know who he is. Apparently he has worked in quantitative analysis for many years; he has described himself as an "Excel expert." His allegations of election fraud -- in particular, his enumeration of (presumably far-fetched) things one must believe in order to believe that Bush won the 2004 election -- formed the template for the 2005 Project Censored story making the same case.

Many people believe that TIA's arguments irrefutably demonstrate that John Kerry won the popular vote and the election. Many more people believe that TIA's arguments have no merit whatsoever, and therefore don't bother to try to refute them. I do not like to see weak arguments go unchallenged. (But plenty of people have criticized TIA's arguments -- I make no claim to originality.)

I also think that these particular weak arguments lead to poor political judgments. If TruthIsAll is right, it follows that the 2004 election was obviously stolen. So, one might conclude, among other things, that (1) most voters preferred Kerry to Bush, (2) Democratic political leaders are effectively complicit in a cover-up, and (3) Democrats cannot win crucial elections until and unless the current voting systems are thrown out. I disagree with all of these conclusions.

(Now that the Democrats have won House and Senate majorities in the 2006 election, argument #3 must be modulated. Fraud-minded observers now often argue that the Republicans stole some votes and even some seats, but that either for some reason they could not -- or did not dare? -- steal enough votes, or that they had to decide how many votes to steal several weeks in advance, and were caught flat-footed by a late Democratic surge. As I address on the Miscellaneous page, I have seen no convincing evidence of widespread vote miscount.

OK, so what are TIA's arguments?
He has many posts, but many of them make these basic claims:
Pre-election polls (both state and national) gave Kerry better than a 99% chance of winning the election.
Well-established political generalizations, such as the "incumbent rule," buttress the conclusion that Kerry should have won.
The exit polls gave Kerry a lead in the popular vote well beyond the statistical margin of error, and diverged substantially from the official results in many states, generally overstating Kerry's vote total. (This claim is largely true, although not everything TIA says about it is.)

Fraud is the only good explanation of the exit poll discrepancies. In particular, there is no good reason to believe that Kerry voters participated in the exit polls
at a higher rate than Bush voters. Since Kerry did better than Bush among people who did not vote in 2000, Bush would have had to do much better among Gore 2000 voters than Kerry did among Bush 2000 voters -- and that can't have happened.

It is pretty easy to look around and determine that not many political scientists are expressing agreement with these views. But why not? It could be that political scientists have a status quo bias and/or are afraid to rock the boat by confronting unpleasant truths; perhaps some are even paid by Karl Rove. It could be that political scientists simply haven't looked at the evidence. It could be that political scientists see gaping holes in TIA's arguments. It could be some combination of those factors, and others besides. For what it's worth, I will explain at some length why I don't agree with TIA's views.

Please note that this is not a one-size-fits-all election integrity FAQ.

Do you think that electronic voting machines are almost ridiculously insecure and unreliable?
I do, although I certainly don't agree with every word of every critic. Do you think that John Kerry won or should have won Ohio? You may be right. I don't know. I doubt it, but I haven't set out to knock down each and every argument about fraud or vote suppression in the 2004 election -- in fact, I agree with several of them. But the arguments (by TIA and others) that Kerry won the popular vote are not at all likely to be true, in my opinion.I have rarely quoted TIA at length because (1) the FAQ is already very long and (2) TIA's writing is often hard to read. But if you think I have mischaracterized one of his arguments, or if you have other questions or comments about the FAQ, please feel free to contact me at @bard.edu.

TIA:
These are just a few well-known researchers whose analyses confirm mine: Steve Freeman, Ron Baiman, Kathy Dopp, Greg Palast, RFK Jr., Mark C. Miller, Bob Fitrakis, Michael Keefer, John Conyers, Richard Hayes Phillips, Paul Lehto, etc. At least four have advanced degrees in applied mathematics or systems analysis. I have three degrees in applied mathematics.

It would be useful if you would mention the names of the political scientists or statisticians who disagree with my analysis and believe that Bush won the election fairly in 2004. How do they account for his 3 million “mandate”? How do they explain where Bush found 16 million new voters net of voter mortality and turnout? What are their confirming demographics? Do any of the analysts you refer to have degrees in mathematics or statistics? Did their 2004 projections match the exit polls? Or did they match the vote miscount? Have any of them ever written about or considered election fraud in their analysis? Have they analyzed the impact of uncounted votes on election results? What is their track record? Were their projections based on economic or political factors or did they use state and national polling? What was the time period between Election Day and their final projections?

FAQ Summary and response
(click the chapter title and scroll to view the full text)

1. The Pre-Election Polls

1.1. What did the national pre-election polls indicate?
According to most observers, most pre-election polls put George W. Bush slightly ahead of John Kerry.

TIA: That is simply not true. The final pre-election polls had the race essentially tied, with Kerry slightly ahead. For example, Gallup’s final had it 49-47 Bush leading, but they allocated 90% of the undecided to Kerry to arrive at a 49-49 tie. Real Clear Politics lists the final LV samples and not the RVs. Kerry and Obama did better in the RVs since there were many newly registered voters. In 2004, the final five pre-election polls understated registered voter turnout by approximately 6% based on post-election Census data.

1.2. How does TIA come up with those 99+% probabilities of a Kerry victory?
Basically, those probabilities (for both state and national polls) assume that all his assumptions (for instance, about how "undecided" voters will vote) are right, and that the only source of uncertainty is random sampling error.

TIA: The probabilities do not assume a specifc undecided voter allocation (UVA) percentage; it shows a range of outcomes for UVA from 50-87%

1.3. Doesn't the high turnout in the election mean that the registered-voter poll results are probably more accurate than the likely-voter results?
No, high turnout is not a reason to dismiss the likely-voter results. Most pollsters already expected high turnout.

TIA: As stated above, the final five LV poll sub-sample average turnout was 82.8%; the actual turnout was 88.5%. A regression analysis showed that Kerry had 49% given the 82.8% turnout, but had 52% given the 88.5% post-election Census. RV polls are more accurate then LV polls by definition, since they would include new voters while LV polls in general do not. Since a high turnout means a large number of new (mostly democratic voter), they would be missed by the LV polls that understate the Democratic total share. In 2004, there were approximately27 million new voters. Depending on the Final NEP timeline, Kerry won new voters and others who did not vote in 2000 by 57-62%. In the Final NEP, which was forced to match the recorded vote, the exit pollsters lowered Kerry’s share to 54% while changing the returning Bush/Gore voter mix to 43/37% (13660 respondents) from 41/39% (1222am, 13047 respondents)

1.4. How about the state polls?
There TIA's data hold up somewhat better, although his probabilities don't. While the national polls (prior to TIA's massaging) fit the official results rather closely, the state polls do not fit as well.

TIA: The RV polls, adjusted for undecided voters, did in fact confirm the unadjusted state exit polls: Kerry was a 52-47% winner

1.5. What about cell phones?
TIA and others have argued that the pre-election polls were biased against Kerry because they do not cover people who only use cell phones -- and these were disproportionately young voters who favored Kerry.

TIA: It seems to most to make sense intuitively. Young people (Democrats) are out and about; older voters are home with their landlines.

The "Rules": Did They Favor Kerry?

2.1. Don't undecided voters break sharply for the challenger?
Undecided voters probably sometimes break sharply for the challenger. But I can find no evidence that this rule is useful in "allocating" reported undecided voters in presidential elections.

TIA: Yes, they do. Pollsters know that. Gallup has a policy of allocating up to 90% of undecided voters to the challenger, especially when the incumbent is unpopular. Bush had a 48% approval rating. In 2008, the average pollster allocated undecided voters to Obama by 62-37% .

2.2. What about the rule that incumbents don't do better than their predicted shares in the final polls?
On average, it is true that incumbents don't do better -- or, rather, much better -- than their predicted shares in the final polls.

TIA: And since incumbents don’t do better than their final polling, it is another way of saying that undecided voters break for the challenger.

2.3. What about the rule that incumbents don't win when their final approval rating is below 50%?
TIA has stated that Bush's approval rating on November 1 was 48.5% based on the "average of 11 polls."

TIA: That is true. You can look it up in the 2004 Election Model.

Describing the Exit Poll Discrepancies

3.1. How do the exit polls work?
Let me say first of all that the main point of the exit polls is not to project who will win the election -- although the exit poll interviews are combined with vote count data in order to make projections.

TIA: They work just fine – until the “final” exit poll is forced to match the recorded vote. That makes no sense at all. It assumes the election is fraud-free. We know 2004 was not fraud-free.

3.2. How accurate are exit polls?
It depends, of course. Most attempts to argue that exit polls are highly accurate strangely steer around U.S. national exit polls.

TIA: It depends on whether they are the initial, unadjusted, pristine polls or the Final exit poll, which is always forced to match the recorded vote.

3.3. Couldn't spoiled ballots and/or fraud account for these past discrepancies?
Probably not, although they certainly may contribute. Greg Palast offers an estimate of 3.6 million uncounted ballots in 2004 alone.

TIA: Definitely, yes. In 2004, uncounted votes accounted for 25% of the discrepancies. Approximately 3.4 million were uncounted in 2004 and 5.4 million in 2000. The best evidence indicates that 70-80% are democratic. Had 3.44m uncounted votes been counted in 2004, Bush’s margin would have been cut from 3.0 million to 1.3m. In 2000, 5.4m uncounted votes reduced Gore’s margin from 3.0 million to 540,000.

3.4. What about exit pollster Warren Mitofsky's reputation for accuracy?
Here is how Mitofsky International's website puts it: " record for accuracy is well known”.

TIA: Mitofsky’s accuracy is near-perfect if you are referring to the Final National Exit poll, which is always forced to match the recorded vote (Bush 50.7-.48.3%). And it is also quite accurate if you mean are referring to the unadjusted state aggregate exit poll (Kerry 52-47%), which matched closely to the True Vote. Either way, yes, Mitofsky is quite accurate.

3.5. Didn't the exit polls indicate that Kerry won by more than the polls' margin of error?
It depends on what one means by "the exit polls" and "won."

TIA: The question needs to be rephrased: in how many states the the exit polls exceed the margin of error? The unadjusted exit polls exceeded the margin of error in 29 states – all in Bush’s favor. The probability of that is ZERO. Included were Ohio, Florida, NM, Iowa – which all flipped from Kerry to Bush. How does one explain that none of the solid Bush states exceeded the margin of error? Well, for one thing,they were states with a small voting population (not good for vote padding).

3.6. Why are the pollsters' estimates of uncertainty larger than the ones calculated by TruthIsAll and others?
TruthIsAll sometimes has argued that the exit polls should be treated as simple random samples (like drawing marbles from a hat). In this instance, the margin of error for Ohio, with a reported sample size of 2040, would be about 4.5 points on the margin using the 95% standard.

TIA: Not true, the MoE for Ohio is closer to +/- 2.2%. Mitofsky states that exit poll respondents are randomly selected and that the National Exit Poll MoE is 1.0%. He says it right in the notes.

3.7. Doesn't E/M's own table show that the margin of error is plus-or-minus 1% for 8000 respondents or more?
That table (on page 2 of the national methods statement) applies to percentages in the tabulations, not to the vote projections.

TIA: The 1.0% MoE applies to the total vote share for any given category sample in which at least 8000 have been polled. Over 13,000 males and females were polled.

3.8. Doesn't everyone agree that the exit poll results were outside the margin of error?
Yes: overall, and in many states, the exit poll results differed from the official results by beyond the margin of error, overstating Kerry's performance.

TIA: More accurately, the official vote understated Kerry’s True Vote. The Edison-Mitofsky Evaluation of the 2004 Election System, reported than the MoE was exceeded in 29 states – all in favor of Bush.

3.9. Aren't survey results far outside the margin of error prima facie evidence of fraud?
Margins of "error" refer to random sampling error. Most survey researchers would say that results outside the calculated margin of error most likely evince non-sampling error in the survey, such as non-response bias, sampling bias, or measurement error.

TIA: They evince non-sampling error? What about a fraudulent vote count? Or is that inconceivable?

3.10. Which states had the largest exit poll discrepancies? Wasn't it the battleground states?
No, the largest exit poll discrepancies were generally not in battleground states.

TIA: The fact is that the largest numerical exit poll discrepancies by vote count were in democratic strongholds like New York, California, Ohio and Florida. The New York discrepancy accounted for 750,000 of Bush’s 3.0m vote margin. Kerry won the unadjusted exit poll by 64-35% winner; his margin was cut from 29% to 18% in the recorded vote (58.5-40%). Furthermore, the key battleground states (FL, OH, NM, IA) flipped to Bush and except for IA, all exceeded the exit poll margin of error. Again, it must emphasized that the exit poll discrepancies exceed the margin of error in 29 states – and none were red states.

Explaining the Exit Poll Discrepancies

4.1. How did the exit pollsters explain the discrepancies in 2004?
In their evaluation report, they stated Within Precinct Error was "most likely due to Kerry voters participating in the exit polls at a higher rate than Bush voters".

TIA: How do they know that? Where is the data? How does E-M explain the mathematically impossible 43 / 37% returning Bush/Gore voter mix in the final National Exit Poll? They cannot have it both ways. No, most likely it was due to vote miscounts. And the Final NEP was forced to match the miscounted recorded vote.

4.2. What is the "reluctant Bush responder" (rBr) hypothesis?
What the pollsters concluded in the evaluation report was simply that Kerry voters apparently participated at a higher rate.

TIA: It was a trial balloon floated by the exit pollsters to explain away the discrepancies; it had no basis in fact. But no one in the media called them on it. And the exit poll report data suggested otherwise. It has been disproven mathematically by the impossible returning voter weights in the Final Exit Poll. Unfortunately, few read the report.

4.3. Does the participation bias explanation assume that fraud is unthinkable?
I will present several lines of argument that participation bias accounts for much of the exit poll discrepancy, and that fraud does not.

TIA: Do the “lines of argument” include any facts from the E-M report that indicate Bush voters participated more readily?

4.4. Don't the high completion rates in "Bush strongholds" disprove the rBr or bias hypothesis?
No, and I'm amazed how much mental effort has gone into elaborating this very weak argument.

TIA: Amazed that a regression analysis shows that the completion rate trend line declined moving from Bush to Kerry states? Mark calls the regression analysis a “weak” argument even though the regression graph clearly proves it.

4.5. How can you explain the impossible changes in the national exit poll results after midnight?
As I explained above, the tabulations are periodically updated in line with the projections -- and, therefore, in line with the official returns.

TIA: But what if the official returns are corrupted through vote miscounts? Doesn’t matching to the vote count require a major leap of faith – especially since we all know what occurred in 2000?

4.6. Why were the tabulations forced to match the official returns?
If the official returns are more accurate than the exit polls -- and bear in mind that exit polls have been (presumably) wrong in the past -- then weighting to the official returns should, generally, provide more accurate tabulations.

TIA: That’s a BIG if. One cannot just assume that the exit polls have been wrong in the past. For one thing, we know that part of the discrepancies could be explained by largely Democratic uncounted votes.

4.7. Wasn't there an effort to cover up the exit poll discrepancies?
Not that I can see.

TIA: That’s because you refuse to consider the evidence. The media and the pollsters have not been very forthcoming in providing the data for peer review. When they did provide “blurred” Ohio unadjusted exit poll data (without divulging the precincts), a comprehensive analysis pointed to a solid Kerry victory. But of course the main stream media will never (not even Keith and Rachel) will discuss it..

4.8. Is there any specific reason to think that the exit poll discrepancies don't point to fraud?
One of my favorites is based on TruthIsAll's observation: "Based on the pre-election polls: 41 out of 51 states (incl DC) deviated to Bush. Based on the exit polls: 43 out of 51 deviated to Bush."

TIA: Is that supposed to be sarcasm or just a joke? Mark, you cannot be serious. How can you say that even if the pre-election polls (adjusted for the allocation of undecided voters) match the unadjusted state exit poll aggregate, the exit poll discrepancies don’t point to fraud? How can the margin of error be exceeded in 29 states, all in favor of Bush (with ZERO probability) not point to fraud?

4.9. Is there any specific reason to believe that participation bias does explain the discrepancies?
Yes, beyond the facts that participation bias is common, that past exit polls have overstated Democratic performance, and that the exit poll discrepancies don't correlate with pre-election poll discrepancies, "swing" from 2000, or electronic voting machine use, there is also some evidence indicating participation bias in 2004.

TIA: No, not participation bias, it’s because the Democrats always do better in the exit polls due to vote miscounts: a) uncounted, b) switched and c) stuffed ballots.

4.10. Aren't you offering a lot of unproven speculation?
You could call it that, or you could call it scientific reasoning on the basis of incomplete evidence.

TIA: It is by now expected that nothing would convince Mark. In fact, he has seen more than enough evidence – and has never accepted any of it.

4.11. Are you saying that the exit polls disprove fraud?
No. As noted earlier, many forms of fraud may be compatible with the exit poll results. However, it seems hard to reconcile massive, widespread fraud – on the order of many millions of miscounted votes -- with the exit poll results unless one begins by discounting the details of the exit poll results.

TIA: When votes are miscounted by unverifiable machines at touch screens or at the central tabulators a 4-5% vote switch is very possible. What is a “massive”? Uncounted votes alone accounted for over half of Bush’s 3 million margin. There were 122 million recorded votes in 2004. There were only about 95 million returning 2000 election voters, therefore there were 27 million new voters. How did they vote? There were 3 million returning Nader voters. How did they vote? Of the 30 million new and returning Nader voters, Kerry had about 18 million (60%), a 6 million vote margin – and that is apart from the fact that Gore won the popular vote by 540,000. So how did Bush turn a 6 million deficit into a 3 million surplus? That’s a 9 million net vote switch. Are we to believe, as Mark maintains, that 9 million more returning Gore voters defected to Bush than returning Bush voters defected to Kerry? That is beyond implausible.

4.12. Are you saying that you are sure Bush didn't steal the election?
No, depending on what one means by "steal." In particular, I think it is at least possible that some combination of vote suppression (purges, long lines, intimidation, etc.) and uncounted votes cost John Kerry a victory in Ohio, and therefore in the election. (Obviously "uncounted votes" can be regarded as a form of vote suppression.) I doubt it, but I am not arguing against it here.

TIA: There you go again, refusing to even consider the real probability that votes may have also been miscounted electronically. At this point in time, after all the anecdotal evidence of vote miscounts, you are still denying that it could happen and throw will only go as far as “vote suppression”. That’s what “steal” means. But why do you exclude the possibility that votes were miscounted at the central tabulators or in the touch screens where there is no paper trail? To put it bluntly, why would fraudsters utilize highly visible vote suppression methods but not resort to invisible, unverifiable machine vote miscounting?

Comparing 2004 to 2000

5.1. Why has TruthIsAll called the "2000 presidential vote" question the clincher?
TIA emphasizes two aspects of this table. First, he notes, it is impossible that 43% of the 2004 electorate voted for Bush in 2000. That would be over 52 million Bush voters, whereas Bush only got about 50.5 million votes in 2000. (Some of those voters must have died, or not voted for other reasons.)

TIA: Actually, these are the numbers: The 43% stat implies 52.6 million returning Bush voters – 2.1 million more than he had. But let’s not stop there. Approximately 2.5 million died, so at moist 48 million could have voted. Even if we assume that 46 million actually did (a 96% turnout), that means that the Final NEP overstated the number of returning Bush voters by 6.6 million. In 2008, it’s even worse. The returning Final NEP Bush/Kerry returning voter mix was 46/37%. Even if one believes that Bush won by 3 million votes and there was zero fraud in 2004, the returning voter mix implies that there were almost 12 million more returning Bush voters than Kerry voters.

5.2. What is wrong with the "impossible 43%" argument?
It assumes that exit poll respondents accurately report whom they voted for in the previous election. In reality, exit poll respondents seem to have overstated their support for the previous winner in every exit poll for which I could obtain data, ten in all, going back to 1976. Lots of other evidence indicates that people often report having voted for the previous winner although they didn't. Perhaps most telling is an (American) National Election Study (NES) "panel" in which people were interviewed soon after the 2000 election, and then re-interviewed in 2004.

TIA: Well, for one thing, Gore had 540,000 more official votes than Bush (actually 3 million were it not for uncounted votes). Number 2: would returning Gore and Kerry voters misstate past votes and not returning Bush voters? Number 3: The How Voted in 2004 question was only posed to 3,000 out of 13,000 exit poll respondents. The other questions based on voter demographics had nothing to do with past votes, such as by sex, race, income, party-id, location, when voted, military background, etc. The respondents were asked whom they just voted for in this election five minutes ago. No fog, no forgetting. The past vote question does not apply. And they said they just voted for Kerry. I cannot believe, Mark, that after all this time, you are still using that “false recall” canard. If anything Bush voters would be embarrassed, considering that he had a 48% approval rating in 2004, 30% in 2006 and 22% in 2008. Are we also to believe that the reason for the equally ridiculous 2008 Final NEP 46/37% Bush/Kerry returning voter mix is also because Kerry voters lied to the exit pollsters? You might as well argue that returning Kerry voters were reluctant to be interviewed by the exit pollsters.

5.3. What is wrong with the second argument, where new (and Nader) voters break the stalemate in favor of Kerry?
The second argument assumes that Kerry did about as well among Bush 2000 voters as Bush did among Gore 2000 voters. Superficially, the exit poll table supports this assumption.

TIA: In fact, the 12:22am National Exit Poll said that Kerry did better among returning Bush voters (10%) than Bush did among returning Gore voters (8%) – but that was before the numbers were changed to 9% and 10% in the Final in order to match the recorded, miscounted vote. And in the Democratic Underground “game” thread you had to change the Final shares to have Bush winning 14.6% to force a match to the Bush vote. You agreed to the stipulation than that no more returning Bush voters could have voted than were still living. But when that meant that you had to raise the Bush vote shares to implausible levels, you had to abandon that argument like a hot potato, and revert back to “false recall”, the final Hail-Mary argument that has been laid to rest in 2006 and 2008 when we see that the Final is always adjusted to impossible weightings to force a match to the “official” count. The Democratic landslide was denied in 2006 midterms and the Obama landslide was denied in 2008.

5.4. But... but... why would 14% of Gore voters vote for Bush??
If one thinks of "Gore voters" as people who strongly supported Gore and resented the Supreme Court ruling that halted the Florida recount, then the result makes no sense. For that matter, if one thinks of "Gore voters" in that way, it makes no sense that they would forget (or at any rate not report) having voted for Gore. Nevertheless, the NES panel evidence indicates that many did. (Of course, the figure may not be as high as 14% -- although it could conceivably be even higher).

TIA: It’s not just returning Gore voters that make no sense, neither do your vote share adjustments to new voters and returning Bush/Kerry voters in the “game” Yes, it is true. The results make no sense whatsoever.

TruthIsAll FAQ:
Miscellaneous

M.1. What about the reports of flipped votes on touch screens in 2004?
Many people reported difficulty voting on electronic voting machines (DREs), in particular, that attempts to vote for one candidate initially registered as votes for another. The Election Incident Reporting System (EIRS), connected to the "OUR-VOTE" telephone hotline, recorded close to 100 such incidents. TruthIsAll has asserted that 86 out of 88 reports of electronic vote-flipping favored Bush. He cites the odds of this imbalance as 1 in 79,010,724,999,066,700,000,000.

TIA: Yes, the probability is correct. It is one in 79 sextillion that the switches were not a random occurrence. And these reports came from widely diverse precincts. The 88 reports were just a drop in the bucket. It seems most people know someone whose vote was switched right before their eyes. And you still refuse to accept that electronic vote-switching occurred – which of course is a major reason for the exit poll discrepancies? Besides, the switching was not only done on the voting machines; central tabulators sum up the votes for precincts by county and state. No one was around to report those vote flips to EIRS.

M.2. Did the 2006 exit polls manifest "red shift" compared with official returns?
Yes. For instance, the initial national House tabulation -- posted a bit after 7 PM Eastern time on election night -- indicates that Democratic candidates had a net margin of about 11.3 points over Republican candidates. The actual margin was probably about 7 points, depending on how uncontested races are handled.

TIA: Yes, they did. That’s true. What else is new?

M.3. Do pre-election "generic" House polls in 2006 match the initial exit poll returns?
Not really. A "generic" poll is one that asks respondents whether they would vote for (in Gallup's words) "the Democratic Party's candidate or the Republican Party's candidate," rather than naming specific candidates.

TIA: Yes, they did. The trend-line through 120 pre-election Generic Polls (which were all won by the Democrats) projected a 56.4% Democratic share.
THIS EXACTLY MATCHED THE UNADJUSTED EXIT POLL 56.4%. Most final pre-election polls had the Democrats winning by more than 12%.

Last edited by TruthIsAll on Sat Aug 08, 2009 8:52 pm; edited 3 times in total
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TruthIsAll
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 30, 2009 6:00 am Post subject: An Updated Response to the TruthIsAll FAQ Reply with quote
An Updated Response to the TruthIsAll FAQ

TruthIsAll

7/29/09

The original "Election Fraud Analytics/Response to the TruthIsAll FAQ" is here:
http://www.geocities.com/electionmodel/TruthIsAllFAQResponse.htm

This is an updated compact summary version. It includes my latest response to "False Recall" and "Swing vs. Red-shift". The original version has not yet been updated.

The original TruthIsAll (TIA) FAQ was written in late 2006 by Mark Lindeman, an Assistant Professor of Political Science. Since 2004, Mark has frequented election reform sites, relentlessly attempting to rebut the polling analysis of researchers that indicate elections have been stolen since 2000. “On the Other Hand”, his Democratic Underground screen name, is apropos to his mission.

In January 2007, I wrote "Response to the TruthIsAll FAQ" along with a detailed statistical analysis: "2000-2006 Election Fraud Analytics". Now the 2008 election is history and similar anomalous results indicate that election fraud cut Obama’s landslide in half, just like the Democratic margin was in the 2006 midterms. Furthermore, 2008 confirms that the 2004 election was stolen and that in 2000 Gore won the popular vote by close to 3 million.

Most election researchers agree that the election was stolen in 2004. But statistical evidence also indicates that election fraud cut the 12% Democratic landslide margin to 6% in the 2006 midterms, costing them 10-20 House seats and that Obama’s True Vote mandate was reduced from approximately 20 million to 9.5 million.

That is what the evidence shows, regardless of whether or not it is ever discussed in the media. Statistical analysts and political scientists who have looked at the evidence are well aware of the fraud, but are still waiting for the Democratic politicians and the GOP controlled media to get the ball rolling. In the meantime, only a handful of bloggers and truth-seekers will even touch the subject. A number of books have been written which show that massive fraud in the form of voter disenfranchisement and vote miscounts occurred in 2000-2008, but not one that provides a statistical analysis to prove that Bush won in 2004.

In order to help the reader quickly become familiar with the main areas of focus, I have included a brief summary of the questions posed to Mark in the original FAQ – along with a short update summary of his response followed by mine. The original full text response follows the summary.
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