Steven F. Freeman takes on Salon: Supports RFK Jr.'s 2004 election report

[pnwmom]

You'll have to watch an ad, but the article's worth it:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/06/12/freeman/


"June 12, 2006 | Because Robert F Kennedy Jr. based much of the discussion in his Rolling Stone article on interviews with me and on a close reading of my new book, coauthored with Joel Bleifuss, "Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count," and because Kennedy cites in his thorough footnotes many of the same key sources we worked from, I feel compelled to address directly several statements that Farhad Manjoo makes about the exit polls, both in his original Salon article and in his response to Kennedy's response to that article -- statements that are either incorrect or based on misunderstandings about exit polls and the 2004 results.

"We regret that Manjoo did not request an advance copy of our book before writing his article. Had he done so, I'm confident that many of the basic errors he made could have been avoided. . . . "

[oldtime dfl_er]

1. recommending!

and kicking!
:kick:

please sign our guestbook: www.ThankYouRFK.com

[pnwmom]

3. Thanks for the link, oldtime.

I've been wanting to thank him.

[salvorhardin]

2. Here's a mathematician's perspective on RFK's article

and why he believes RFK's article was flawed. And this particular mathematician, Mark Chu-Carroll does think there was election fraud that took place. He just thinks RFK's article could have been a lot better.

RFK Jr's article tries to argue that the 2004 election was stolen. It does a wretched, sloppy, irresponsible job of making the argument. The shame of it is that I happen to believe, based on the information that I've seen, that the 2004 presidential election was stolen. But RFK Jr's argument is just plain bad: a classic case of how you can use bad math to support any argument you care to make. As a result, I think that the article does just about the worst thing that it could do: to utterly discredit anyone who questions the results of that disastrous election, and make it far more difficult for anyone who wanted to do a responsible job of looking into the question.

Let's get right into it. He starts his argument by claiming that the exit polls indicated a different result than the official election results:

The first indication that something was gravely amiss on November 2nd, 2004, was the inexplicable discrepancies between exit polls and actual vote counts. Polls in thirty states weren't just off the mark -- they deviated to an extent that cannot be accounted for by their margin of error. In all but four states, the discrepancy favored President Bush.

The key sentence that indicates just how poorly RFK Jr understands the math? "they deviated to an extent that cannot be accounted for by their margin of error". That is a statement that is, quite simply, nonsensical. The margin of error in a poll is a statistical measure based on the standard deviation. Contrary to popular opinion, a poll with a margin of error of "4%" doesn't mean that the actual quantity being measured must be within plus or minus 4% of the poll result.

Much more...
http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2006/06/election_fraud_or_just_bad_mat.php

[pnwmom]

4. So what do you think about Steven Freeman's article?

He's a statistician, so I would think he knows what he's talking about.

[salvorhardin]

5. I don't know

and I don't think I know enough to judge either way. I'm not a statistician and I'm not a mathematician. For me the critical thing comes down to whether exit polls are really as accurate as Freeman says they are. I've heard people I respect on both sides of this debate. MarkCC for instance says that exit polls always favor Democratic voters. Why do those two very talented people, who both think there was election fraud, disagree on that point? I don't know. In the end I don't think it matters.

Here's two comments on my site made by me (I post as 'tng' on my site) that explains my position. It's complex. Realize that I also think there was fraud. I don't think there was a widespread conspiracy though, but keep in mind that I do think there was fraud.

The comments are from this thread: http://www.neuralgourmet.com/2006/06/05/diebold_disinfo_dealers_demasked

I don't trust it either

I just think we have to exhaust all other options before we start going down the conspiracy theory route.

But you're right… National standards would be nice and I don't trust the process. First and foremost, at the local level districts have been so gerrymandered that it becomes almost impossible to vote the incumbent party out of office. Secondly, we have a long history of corruption in this country when it comes to voting — everything from legislated disenfranchisement (literacy tests, poll taxes, etc.) to voter initimidation to vote tampering. And third, we have demonstrably faulty machines. Whether they're faulty by design for nefarious purposes (big conspiracy theory), faulty by design due to greed (little conspiracy theory), faulty by incompetence and greed (no conspiracy theory needed, most likely in my opinion) the fact of the matter remains that they are indeed flawed and these flaws could be exploited.

I don't know if the 2004 election was stolen. I don't think so. In fact, I'm highly skeptical of such claims. They don't seem to hold up. But I am skeptical of the voting process too. I just require more solid proof than anecdotal evidence, and that's all we have right now I'm afraid.

J.R., I don't think you're crazy and I don't think you're over reacting. Foisting these machines (and it's not just Diebold remember) on the American electorate through HAVA is just another example of Bush administration criminal negligence and croneyism. I just don't think we need to resort to conspiracy theories to explain why this is all playing out as it has.

But this is certainly an issue we can agree to disagree on and I can easily respect why you think the 2004 election was stolen. Really, I can. And in the end I don't think it matters for all the reasons I outlined in my second paragraph. The system might not yet be broken, but it's certainly not structurally sound.

Well, Steve Freeman's analysis of the stats of the exit polls

Showed highly significant anomalies, but those anomalies have been explained by arguing that exit polls over-sample Democratic voters. Both arugments are equally credible to me, and I do not understand the actual statistics involved. Here's a direct link to Steve Freeman's page. I recommend his FAQ where he states:

Have you been able to obtain the "pure" data from the polling consortium? Data has been made available, but not the data that could be used to verify the validity of the election

Has evidence come to light since the publication of these pieces which would explain this exit poll discrepancy? No such evidence has come to light. All indications are that if the primary exit poll data were made available, it would conclusively show count corruption and identify where count corruption occurred. Unless there is some great public pressure or successful legal action, none of this primary exit poll data will be released.

Frankly, I don't consider myself credible to determine whether or not the election was rigged. I do know that there were numerous reports of what I would call voter hampering in Ohio in predominantly Democratic districts (moved polling places, inadequate numbers of voting machines, etc.). Was that enough to swing Ohio to Bush? Probably not. And Ohio was always dubious.

As for the rest of the states, as with the election, I just don't know. It seems unlikely but…

However, as I said in my response to J.R. above, gerrymandering + legislated disenfranchisement (it still goes on! remember Florida voter roll purges?) + voter intimidation + vote tampering + demonstrably faulty (unverifiable too!) machines = structurally unsound elections. You don't need to show a rigged 2004 Presidential election in order to show that elections in the U.S. are not fair, transparent and accountable. And that to me is the bigger picture here and why all this talk of stolen elections when we have no real proof. All those things I talked about above should be enough for anybody, no matter what we suspect.

And as always, I don't think anyone who believes in a stolen election is insane or stupid. There's good reason! We just can't prove it. And as always… I remain skeptical.

[pnwmom]

10. I would ask you to read the Salon article then. Like you, I'm no

mathematician, but I think Freeman did a good job in taking on Manjoo.

For example, Freeman does not dispute Chu-Carroll's point that there has historically been a Democratic "overcount" in election polls. This is what he says:

"Democratic overrepresentation, or overstatement, in the exit polls is the same thing as Democratic undercount in the vote tallies. And, as we point out in the book, a Democratic undercount is historically established. The undercount is the votes that are discarded, such as overvotes, undervotes and uncounted provisional ballots. In each presidential election a documented 2 to 3 percent of total votes are discarded."

So Freeman agrees with Chu-Carroll that there has been a historical discrepancy between the exit polls and the vote count. But Freeman's saying that that might not have been a polling error. The historical discrepancy might have been caused by a consistent UNDERCOUNT of the Democratic vote. And since it is well established that voters in highly Democratic precincts are more likely to vote on old machines, fewer machines, and to end up being forced to use more uncounted provisional ballots -- why should this be surprising?

[OnTheOtherHand]

22. neat idea, but not well supported

First of all, a residual vote of 2% to 3% isn't likely to translate into a 2-point Republican advantage nationwide. Bear in mind that the 2000 Florida residual vote has been scrutinized ballot by ballot, and Bush got a crucial advantage there -- but I don't think any serious observer has claimed that it was a 100,000-vote advantage (that would be about 2% of the 2000 Florida vote).

In a paper that Freeman posted in early 2005, he argued that the likely net Dem undercount due to residual voting was 0.36%. He managed to come up with an estimate of average exit poll red shift that was exactly the same, and said, hey lookie here, they match! Then the Edison/Mitofsky report came out and showed that in five presidential polls, the mean precinct-level red shift has never been smaller than 1.8%. Has Freeman found a way to multiply his estimate of net Dem undercount by 5, so that they still match? I don't know.

Also, even in past years, the big red shifts don't seem to be in places where they could plausibly be attributed to residual votes. New Hampshire has generally been where exit polls go to die, and its residual rates don't stand out.

It's true that exit polls 'ought to' pick up some partisan differential in residual votes -- but based on Freeman's own work from early 2005, that differential isn't going to account for the historical red shift.

[Joe Chi Minh]

29. I think you have highlighted a gap between legal proof and

absolutely compelling, but, as yet perhaps non-legal, proof, including the most voluminous anecdotal proof, though without intending to do so.

In fact, I think it inexplicably remiss of you not to have made this distinction, other than in a patronizing and dismissive way, i.e. as merely anecdotal proof. The actual chasm between the two concepts is not necessarily at all in favor of legal proof. Quite the contrary.

The world is full of the most egregious de 'facto', white-collar criminals, who routinely escape the law all their lives; legal systems, being human constructs, are always set up with that bias. That is what you should have given due weight to, not the defectiveness of the US legal systems, aggravated as it is in some cases that have been brought, by shamelessly dishonest obstructionism on the part of certain partisan Republican judges and kindred election officials without number.

Again, since the wordly-wise throughout the political spectrum are, at their most unregenerate level, quite heavily right-leaning in their natural, as opposed to principled, thinking, for it to be overlaid by such overtly partisan behavior on the part of Republican judges is, in my view, one of the worst and ugliest aspects of this whole business.

One of the most extraordinary features of that essential lawlessness on the part of those judges seems to be that the shamelessly partisan character of their mindset has on occasions been explicitly expressed (Sandra Day O'Connor, for one); but that too has been part of a pattern contributed to by Wally O'Dell, Jeb Bush, the drunken mutt videoed stating the election was all over bar the counting, and that they'd won, because they were doing the counting.

In other words, Republican operatives, not least at the highest levels, had becomes so de-sensitized by their own wantonly and aggressively unethical behavior, confident that it would not be condemned by "anybody who was anybody", still less punished, that they felt no qualms about explicitly proclaiming their dereliction of their professional ethic, in furthering such unambiguously anti-democratic operations; indeed, in a spirit of great amusement, when face to face with their interlocutor, thereby, breaking the golden rule of all right-wing government, a mendacity more than matched by a pompous, self-righteous hypocrisy. "We don't need to pretend to be "respectable" any more, because we will never be held accountable. Isn't absolute power a wonderful thing? The way we got it is just the icing on the cake!" is apparently the subtext.

What sort of people has the US spawned at the highest levels, and in such numbers, that even the most modest Christian diffidence about their own moral dereliction seems to have been wholly absent; indeed, that they have come to rejoice in it?

[foo_bar]

14. re: "He's a statistician, so I would think he knows"

I come to the subject not as a specialist, and least of all in statistics, but rather as an interdisciplinary scholar familiar with the fields in question...

http://www.appliedresearch.us/sf/Documents/ASAP-Improbabilities051014.pdf

[OnTheOtherHand]

20. no, Freeman really isn't a statistician

Most of his work is business case studies. That's OK. Most of the statistical debate has been within the competence of anyone who ever took a statistics course. Actually, that's sort of like the dirty little secret of the debate. A small number of people who think the exit polls prove fraud get held up as Statisticians, whereas many people with equal or better training who don't think so never get noticed.

It's sort of like looking for the debate on geocentrism. The debate is pretty one-sided, not because all the good arguments favor geocentrism, but because most academics have better things to do. (Yes, I think the argument that "the exit polls were right" is just about that bad. There are much better things to be said about the 2004 election.)

Freeman's problem generally is that he stops when he gets the result he wants. Like when he adopted the argument that the 2004 exit poll proved fraud because it had too many Bush 2000 voters, but (presumably) never looked at the 2000 exit poll to notice that it had too many Clinton 1996 voters.

[pnwmom]

25. Point taken. And Mark CC isn't a statistician either. He's a computer

guy. So can you point to any statisticians who have studied the election poll results?

[OnTheOtherHand]

31. good question, and, yes I can

Charles Stewart III, http://www.vote.caltech.edu/media/documents/Addendum_Voting_Machines_Bush_Vote.pdf

Henry E. Brady et al., http://elections.ssrc.org/research/InterimReport122204.pdf

Election Science Institute, http://electionscience.org/Members/stevenhertzberg/report.2005-07-19.7420722886/report_contents_file/

moi, http://inside.bard.edu/~lindeman/beyond-epf.pdf

Febble, passim

I, for one, don't generally call myself a "statistician," but then, neither does Freeman. I'm actually a public opinion analyst; Freeman isn't. Of course, at the end of the day, it's about the arguments.

[foo_bar]

6. 'goodmath' missed the more glaring problem

A margin of error is measured to within a level of confidence. Most of the time, the MoE that we see cited is the MoE with 95% confidence. What this means is that 95% of the time, the sampled (polled) result is within that +/- n% range. But there is no case in which a result is impossible: the margin of error is an expression of how confident the poller is in the quality of their measurement: nothing more than that. Like any other measurement based on statistical sampling, the sample can deviate from the population by any quantity: a sample can be arbitrarily bad, even if you're careful about how you select it.

http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2006/06/election_fraud_or_just_bad_mat.php

This much is true, but the Stone piece actually passes a 68% confidence interval off as 95%:

Polls in thirty states weren't just off the mark -- they deviated to an extent that cannot be accounted for by their margin of error.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen

Per RS's "Web-only citation" to NEP (p.5):

There were 26 states in which the estimates produced by the exit poll data overstated the vote for John Kerry by more than one standard error, and there were four states in which the exit poll estimates overstated the vote for George W. Bush by more than one standard error.

http://www.exit-poll.net/election-night/EvaluationJan192005.pdf

Plus or minus 1 standard error is a 68% confidence interval, plus or minus 2 standard errors is approximately a 95% confidence interval, and a 99% confidence interval is 2.58 standard errors on either side of the estimate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margin_of_error

Mark B. didn't point this out directly, but there seems to be a specific problem with RFK's first claim: he meant, or should have meant, that results in 30 states were off by more than one standard error, not by more than their "margin of error." Plus-or-minus one standard error is roughly half the conventional margin of error (a 95% confidence interval, roughly plus or minus two standard errors).

http://www.mysterypollster.com/main/2006/06/is_rfk_jr_right.html#comments

So "they deviated to an extent that cannot be accounted for by their margin of error" is false on two counts, like "Two Hindenburgs Explode, Helium to Blame"

[pnwmom]

7. Your mathematician is Mark Chu-Carroll, who describes himself as

"a Computer Scientist working as a researcher in a corporate lab. My professional interests run towards how to build programming languages and tools that allow groups of people to work together to build large software systems."

The man whose work he disputes is Steven F. Freeman. Dr. Freeman is hardly a quack. His background includes an MS degree from U. Penn and a Ph.D. from M.I.T. He is a visiting scholar at U. Penn, where his work focuses on research methodology.

There are probably very few people who could mediate an argument between these two. Certainly not me. But since Dr. Freeman's the one with the book out, and Robert Kennedy also is well-positioned to be heard, I'm going to be spreading the word about THEM.

[salvorhardin]

8. I didn't say he was a quack!

In fact, I said I admired him. I admire both these men. And as I said, I don't think I have the skills to make this decision. But re-read my comments. Whether or not the election was "stolen" is almost beside the point before we even have the election. Rampant gerrymandering, vote suppression and the machines are faulty (probably crooked too, but we know they're faulty). How can you even think about having an honest election given those initial conditions? It just doesn't matter. The game is rigged beforehand. It may well rigged on the outcome too, but we need to deal with the initial problems as well.

[pnwmom]

11. I agree with you -- the "game" was rigged in just about every way.

But unfortunately, we still have to convince most Americans that this is real.

And for that, I think the RFK article will be helpful -- if only it gets more attention. Though I wish the cover that week had been a little different!

[salvorhardin]

9. And he's not disputing Freeman's work

He's disputing RFK's article.

[pnwmom]

12. From what I read on the Chu-Carroll site, he is

disputing statements in RFK's article that are BASED on Freeman's work. And Freeman is supporting RFK's summary of his work, and the Rolling Stone piece in general. So there does seem to be a dispute between CC and Freeman.

[glitch]

13. Thanks for posting pnwmom. Good to see Freeman supporting RFKjr

and good for Salon for printing his rebuttal.

Edit: I didn't have to watch an ad to read it either, how nice!

[Awsi Dooger]

15. Steven Freeman needs to address the voting history of those states

Kerry got 54.2% in Ohio. Kerry got 52.9% in Nevada. Lovely.

If I sent Steven Freeman an exit poll indicating Kerry got 56% in Utah, would he blindly accept it? There's no evidence he would not.

This isn't rocket science or anything threatening that level. States have a predictable level of support for the two main parties. Much more than in senate or gov races. I've been extremely successful in a 16-man political betting pool since '96 using basic numbers. The national popular vote margin is essentially plopped onto each state, which adjusts it according to the statewide partisanship, and the predictable result spits out. For example, if you tell me the Democratic candidate wins nationally by 3 points in '08, I can give you the margins in one state after another: we win Wisconsin by 5, we lose South Carolina by 12, we win New Mexico by 4, we lose Missouri by 1. And so on. Always a few tricky states, ones shifting in partisanship due to demographic changes or key local issues, or ones where the state economy varies dramatically from the national economy. Some states are batteground in one cycle and not in the next, moving the index number due to lack of emphasis, or increased emphasis, more than actual partisan shift.

Where does Kerry threaten to earn 54.2% in Ohio or 52.9% in Nevada, to use the examples Freeman provides in this Salon article? Those states historically tilt several points Republican. Although the Ohio projection, including my one, was the state would mirror the national partisanship in '04, due to the horrific state economy. That was predicted here and elsewhere for at least a year before the election, even partisanship in Ohio, and the result backed it up, actually .36% tilting toward Democratic.

The two specific charts, in comparison to the national popular vote average:

Ohio:
'88: Bush (55.00 - 44.15) = + 3.13% Republican
'92: Clinton (40.18 - 38.35) = + 3.73% Republican
'96: Clinton (47.38 - 41.02) = + 2.17% Republican
'00: Bush (49.97 - 46.46) = + 4.02% Republican
'04: Bush (50.81 - 48.71) = + 0.36% Democratic

Again, how does a Democrat manage 54.2% in '04, considering the Ohio numbers from '88 to '00? Clinton had a 6.36% margin in Ohio while winning nationally by 8.53% Steven Freeman wants to pretend Kerry defeated Bush 54.2 - 45.4, using the supposed 10.9% disparity from exit poll to actual count. Hooray, we win Ohio by 8.8%! On what planet? To feign sensible, you would have to give Kerry virtually the same number nationally, 54.2% of the popular vote.

Nevada:
'88: Bush (58.86 - 37.92) = + 13.22% Republican
'92: Clinton (37.36 - 34.73) = + 2.93% Republican
'96: Clinton (43.93 - 42.91) = + 7.51% Republican
'00: Bush (49.52 - 45.98) = + 4.05% Republican
'04: Bush (50.47 - 47.88) = + 0.13% Republican

This is my home state. I have a test for Steve Freeman: why doesn't he call Jon Ralston of the Las Vegas Sun, or any of the major political analysts in this state, and give them his 52.9% number for Kerry? The over/under is 7 minutes, for Ralston and others to pick themselves up off the floor after a seizure of laughter. This isn't a 53% Democratic state in a presidential election, in anything other than a national landslide for our candidate. The old numbers clearly demonstrate that. From '88 until 2004 the state tillted at least 2.93% Republican compared to the nation. The downtick to .13% Republican in '04 was extremely predictable, given the Hispanic demographic and increased emphasis Democrats placed on Nevada in '04.

Freeman has no trouble placing odds like 1 in 660,000, exit polls erring and in the same direction. I'd like to see his probability assessment regarding individual states suddenly and inexplicably deviating from their historical voting trends, compared to the nation itself. And not by a little bit. The two states Freeman isolates mirror the national margin. It's much more likely for a state to change dramatically in partisan index from one cycle to the next if it previously leaned 10+ points toward one of the two parties. These two states were +4 Republican in '00. When there is a monumental change from one side to another, and only West Virginia from '96 to '00 fits, once I began charting the states, it was predicted and for logical reason, and showed up in the pre-election polls. The 2004 pre-election polls didn't give Ohio or Nevada to Kerry by 5+ points. Not unless you cherry picked perhaps one poll from the months prior. Consensus pre-election polls had Bush leading both states.

The actual results make sense when I plug them into the partisan charts. Freeman's statewide numbers, based on exit polls, do not. I would have to flush everything since '88, long before Diebold paranoia, and start from scratch if Steven Freeman's numbers threatened to be accurate.

I'll be assaulted for this post. Background: on November 2, 2004 I lost thousands betting on Kerry after sneaking a look at DU during a break from GOTV. There was midday euphoria here, based on early numbers. Tradesports.com was still taking bets and my friend and I plunged bigtime. Hours later I took a more specific look at the exit polls and knew Kerry was finished. The exit polls had stupid numbers like Kerry up 17 in New Hampshire, up 10 in Pennsylvania, down 3 in North Carolina. Then I peaked at the vital states and flimsy 1 and 2 point supposed margins in Ohio and Florida. It was obvious everything was flawed in Kerry's direction. If so, no way those 1 and 2 point "leads" would hold up. So, if anyone had a stake in the early exit polls, it was me.

[pnwmom]

16. But how do you know that it wasn't, in actuality, going to be

a landslide for Kerry?

I can tell you that, based on our friends and family in Nevada, I wasn't surprised about the 52% number at all. They had all voted for him in 2000 and changed their minds by 2004.

[Awsi Dooger]

17. It's not supported by the numbers in other states

Kerry got less than 45% in Arkansas. Only 54% in Hawaii. Only 42% in Louisiana. Just 46% in Missouri. Less than 53% in New Jersey. Just 43% in West Virginia. Many more examples.

I suppose Freeman could claim Kerry won 53 or 54% nationally. Someone told me Freeman estimates Kerry won by 5 to 7 million votes nationwide.

IMO, that's wacko. Numbers in states not in dispute scream that Kerry fared worse than Gore. In fact, Kerry surpassed Gore primarily in states where Nader was not a much of a factor in '04, plus states like Virginia and Colorado that have been trending Democratic since 2000.

If Freeman thinks Kerry earned 3-5% more than Gore did, it should show up in the undisputed states, like the ones in my first paragraph of this post. Instead, those numbers are below what Gore received.

The problem in Nevada was 9/11. Our big hotels were feared to be an obvious target for subsequent terrorist attacks, especially after high profile reports of Atta and the other 9/11 hijackers meeting in Las Vegas months before 9/11. Whenever I quizzed locals, especially women, before the election, national security was very high on the priority list and the hotels mentioned specifically. Also, in 2000 Yucca Mountain was a vulnerable issue that Gore could have exploited. By 2004 Bush had already set that in motion and I didn't sense the fury that was anticipated nationwide. From 2002 to 2004 I posted those themes repeatedly on DU, that national security was underrated and Yucca overrated in terms of Nevada 2004. I walk the Strip every day, in and out of sportsbooks, and get a good feel for the consensus opinion, from locals and tourists, whether I agree with them or not.

[althecat]

19. I suppose you claim Bush won by 3 million + votes nationwide

IMO, that's wacko. That would suggest that as the GOP was doing its best to suppress the vote it managed the most incredible GOTV campaign in US history and did so seemingly without getting any press about it? That is completely whacko.

[OnTheOtherHand]

23. well, it's consistent with pre-election polls

I know that some folks have convinced themselves that they know far more about pre-election polling than the pollsters do, but I have to say that the evidence isn't very compelling.

Actually, there was press about the Republican GOTV campaign, but I suspect that is probably beside the point.

[pnwmom]

27. Can you point us to the polls on election eve that had Bush ahead

nationally by three million votes or so? As I recall, it was tighter than that at the end.

[OnTheOtherHand]

32. the pollingreport.com roundup is fine

http://pollingreport.com/2004.htm

I'd score that an average 1 or 1 1/2 point edge to Bush. All within the slop of the polls. I wouldn't say that the polls pointed conclusively to a Bush victory -- in fact, I was hoping that Kerry would pull it out. But to say that Kerry won by 3 points -- and by up to 8+ in Ohio, and 30 or more in New York, etc. etc. -- based on the exit polls certainly doesn't fly for me.

[Awsi Dooger]

39. I must have mentioned Republican GOTV 20 times in 2004

Saying it was the hidden factor in the election, what I was most worried about. Normally I was condemned for it, or assurances our unions and ground game were still superior. That happened again just the other day in regard to 2006. On dcpoliticalreport.com they have links to local media at the bottom of each state's page. I sample those links constantly and there have been dozens and dozens of local articles since 2002, mentioning Republican emphasis on GOTV, record numbers of poll workers and the email lists and 72 hour blitz, etc. It's true the GOP doesn't brag incessantly about the GOTV advances, certainly not to the point we talked up the registration drives in late 2004.

I believe the actual vote tallies from 2004. I'm convinced the low tech theft via suppression was widespread and hurt Kerry, specifically in Ohio. But I severely doubt it was 118,000 worth in Ohio.

Bush was not as vulnerable as most Democrats wanted to believe. That is my starting point. An incumbent with his party in office only one term. I've stressed that many times, including warning TIA long BEFORE the election. It's now 9 of 10 successes since 1900, most by huge margin. 9/11 tilted party ID toward the Republicans. Here's a link from PEW in that regard. Again, I posted that here before election day 2004: http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=750. Late on election night I posted a thread here regarding the 37-37 party ID breakdown according to the national exit poll. That was devastating. When we were disputing the pre-election polls giving Bush a big lead, it was always based on party ID not weighted properly. We wanted +3 to +4 in our favor, same as '96 and '00. If it's even party ID then we basically can't win. Democratic betrayal is higher than GOP slippage.

The two critical variables before the election were party ID and undecideds toward the challenger. Kerry had a great chance if both broke his way; at least 2-3 points advantage in party ID and maybe 2/3 of the undecideds. It appears neither one favored us. Let me plug PEW again. Not only did they nail the party ID reality due to 9/11, their final election forecast was incredibly accurate: http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=232 "Pew's final survey suggests that the remaining undecided vote may break only slightly in Kerry's favor. When both turnout and the probable decisions of undecided voters are taken into account in Pew's final estimate, Bush holds a slight 51%-48% margin."

I guess everyone has a favorite source. I like PEW. Their stuff makes sense and is done in advance, numbers accompanied by logical related forecasts. Steven Freeman jumps into the game long after the crowd has gone home and wants to rewrite every possession. No thank you.

Bush's approval number wasn't horrible and was actually climbing toward 50% on election day. Many of the state exit polls had it above 50%. In Florida it was 54% according to exit polls.

Now, if we're disputing exit polls the number that shocked me most was the Bush approval number in Ohio. Nobody ever talks about that. Only 41% of Ohioans rated the state economy good or excellent. That's completely predictable. It's the reason we had a great chance in Ohio, the horrid state economy under Bush. But somehow Bush's approval rating is 53% according to the exit poll. I would have predicted mid-to-high 40s in that state. Certainly nothing close to 53%. It's true the party identification edge was 40-35 toward Republicans in Ohio, predictable and ominous for Kerry, but even with that breakdown I can't imagine 53% Bush approval in Ohio.

[Doremus]

43. "But I severely doubt it was 118,000 worth in Ohio."

118k only amounts to 4 or 5 votes/precinct. We're not talking about some glaringly obvious shift in a couple of counties. A minor tweak here and there by partisan hacks in charge of most election boards and viola! Mission accomplished.

When you consider that vote tampering is but ONE of the myriad of ways the repigs affected the outcome, including last-minute caging and court battles designed to disenfranchise thousands, I can't imagine anyone thinking they DIDN'T steal the election.

And if that isn't enough to sway opinion, consider the fact that the recount was a sham and is still being litigated in at least one county, irrc.

[Awsi Dooger]

45. 118,000 would be 4.3% of Kerry's vote total

Seems like a tall mountain to me, claiming he was robbed of an additional 4.3%. Kerry got 2,741,000 votes.

If we apply that 4.3% number to Florida 2000, then Gore wins by 125,000 votes. I can't remember any claim that optimistic. It would take all the net over votes, all the net under votes, plus all of the 57,000 purged voter roll number to get to 125,000 more votes for Gore.

I'd be much more interested if the margin was 1/2 or 1/3. Blackwell and Co. no doubt did everything they could to suppress likely Democratic votes but since I believe in suppression, not switching, then the burden is twice as high and I can't get to 118,000. Maybe one day I'll be proven naive.

[Doremus]

47. It would be a tall mountain only if accomplished in one fell swoop.

But it wasn't. It was only 4-5 votes per precinct. There were many times that many turned away for being in the wrong precinct or discouraged by long lines. Some were dissuaded from even going to vote at all after receiving deceptive phone calls that election day had been changed or that their names had been purged from the rolls.

One county banned the media from observing the count. How many votes did they switch that night? All they needed to change were 4-5 per precinct, no drastic feat, no smoking gun.

For months before the election and continuing right through election day, Hackwell conceived and orchestrated a multi-pronged plan to hijack the outcome ... and he succeeded.

What bites even more is that he's doing it again. Same MO, right in plain sight, and nobody's doing a damned thing about it. Dems are in denial and bickering as usual and the media (or most of it) is looking the other way. A couple of weeks, if not days, before the election, he'll announce that only state-issued photo IDs are acceptable for voter verification; the ACLU will sue at the 9th hour and, even if successful, voter confusion and the late hour will assure that many are again turned away from the voting booths.

Then we'll be back here arguing about whether he was responsible for Strickland's and Brown's losses .... bah.

[OnTheOtherHand]

44. I like Pew too, although

their writeups are so informative, you sort of have to pinch yourself and remember, it's just one survey at a time, sampling error still applies, all that stuff. (But to just assume that they never thought of the existence of cell phones, that sort of thing, is definitely Amateur Hour.)

Ohio looks to have had above-average approval of the Iraq invasion. Sigh. There was a good op-ed not long after the election to the effect that Bush might have run up the score in Ohio on gay marriage, but he basically won on security and patriotism. I've spent maybe two weeks in Ohio since 1990 or so, but I still do find that hard to accept.

[Awsi Dooger]

46. I'm expecting something good from PEW this summer

They haven't updated the party ID findings in quite a while. That should be a natural heading toward the midterms. I was looking at something last night indicating the party ID switch post 9/11 was greatest among white women (3 points) and Hispanic men (7 points). Hispanic women didn't switch at all. That was interesting although I don't remember the source, buried among my dozens of PDFs.

I didn't see anything remarkable from the PEW cell phone report earlier this year. The aspect I remember is young people 18-34 are under sampled in landline surveys in recent years due to cell phones, dropping from 31% to 20% of the totals before re-weighting.

Good point about the write-ups. I wonder who does them? Looks like the same style in every one but never by-lined. And you're right, instead of merely presenting numbers they make definitive statements and offer the numbers as a late-sentence, "oh by the way..." Sometimes they'll have several paragraphs of analysis and conclusions before the survey numbers are mentioned at all.

[OnTheOtherHand]

48. hmm...

Do we really have enough data to distinguish reliably between Hispanic men and women? I suppose we do if a bunch of surveys are pooled. Interesting -- I haven't stared at that.

In case you missed it, I was alluding to the claim that the pre-election polls were biased against Kerry because so many young Kerry supporters only had cell phones. The basic response to that is that so far, young cell-only folks seem to be enough like young land-line users that weighting for age largely solves the problem. Presumably, like most survey assumptions and expedients, this will work until it doesn't.

I wouldn't have said that Pew offers the numbers as an "oh by the way...", but they do try to offer strong analysis supported by numbers, as opposed to lots of numbers glued together with snippets of analysis. Really good stuff. They write, "All of the Center’s research and reports are collaborative products based on the input and analysis of the entire Center staff...." (That happens to be on p. 14 of their May cell phone study, http://people-press.org/reports/pdf/276.pdf , in case anyone else cares.)

[Awsi Dooger]

49. It was an Annenberg Election Survey, polling 67,777 registered voters

October 2003 thru November 2004. So that's quite a database although I didn't notice a breakdown for each segment: http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/naes/2004_03_party-id_11-19_pr.pdf

Hispanic men drop from 43-23 to 39-26 in our favor from 2000 to 2004. White women switch from 34-32 Democratic to 35-34 Republican.

[OnTheOtherHand]

50. looks like about 3600 Hispanics

Assuming more or less evenly divided male/female, that's not enough statistical power to distinguish trends between Hispanic women and other subgroups, although it's at least suggestive. There may be other evidence that points in the same direction -- I just don't know.

[althecat]

18. Precisely... why couldn't the most unpopular president in history

HAve deserved a complete pasting in 2004?

[Awsi Dooger]

40. I hate Bush

He was the most unpopular president ever among Democrats and progressives. That hardly makes him the most unpopular president ever.

Quite the contrary. I've posted the PEW link saying Bush's supporters were incredibly enthusiastic: http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=232"As in previous polls, Bush's supporters are much more enthusiastic than those backing Kerry. In fact, Bush registers a higher percentage of strong supporters in the final weekend of the campaign than any candidate since former President Ronald Reagan in 1984. Fully 39% of likely voters support Bush strongly, while 9% back him only moderately. Roughly three-in-ten likely voters say they support Kerry strongly (32%), and 13% back him moderately, a pattern more typical of recent presidential candidates."

On DU we wanted to pretend the bulk of the country hated Bush as much as we did, and Republicans were not as motivated as we were. Two flawed conclusions.

The good news: recent studies by PEW and others indicates Democrats have regained the party ID edge. That bodes well for 2006 and 2008, especially if white women return to our camp and the GOTV aspect is neutralized.

[newspeak]

36. I voted in Nevada

and what shocked me was that I thought all of the machines were paper. When the presidential election rolled around less than half of the machines were paper and the others were paperless. I, of course, voted on those that had paper, but many voters did not. In my in-laws small town, all but two were paperless machines; and one of the paper machines was broke. There was a long line waiting to vote on the only paper machine, so my in-laws who are in poor health voted on the paperless (two Democratic votes). Also, nevada had the Voter Outreach scam (rip up those democratic registrations) and a judge deciding that those who registrations were destroyed could not re-register. Between voting disenfranchisement and paperless voting machines, I have my own suspicions on what went down in Nevada.

[Awsi Dooger]

41. There was definitely suppression in Nevada

The Voter Outreach scam, as you mentioned. That company had its dirty claws on many states and no doubt destroyed thousands of Democratic registrations.

I voted early on a machine with a paper trail. Once you got to election day itself, not all the machines were equipped with paper. The new machines had mandatory paper in 2004, and all Nevada voting machines must have paper beginning this year.

[DemReadingDU]

21. why MarkCC thinks the election was stolen

See this comment in the article...

There were a lot of irregularities scattered around the country in the last election. What I find most compelling is the well-documented actions of Ken Blackwell in Ohio. There is no denying that the guy deliberately tried to throw away voter registrations for being on the wrong thickness of paper when it was noticed that they were tending to be registering more democrats; to the outrageous voting delays in democratic districts; to the refusal to send extra voting machines to democratic districts, even though the state deliberately had a number of unused machines reserved for solving that problem, and so on. Mr. Blackwell quite clearly did everything in his power to depress the democratic vote, and to stand in the way of any investigation.

And he's still at it today.

http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2006/06/election_fraud_or_just_bad_mat.php#comment-104689

[salvorhardin]

33. Right

And all of that is vote suppression. I agree with MarkCC 100% on that. It is not however widespread systematic corruption of the vote by the electronic machines. Excuse me for repeating part of my earlier post quoting myself from my own site:

gerrymandering + legislated disenfranchisement (it still goes on! remember Florida voter roll purges?) + voter intimidation + vote tampering + demonstrably faulty (unverifiable too!) machines = structurally unsound elections. You don't need to show a rigged 2004 Presidential election in order to show that elections in the U.S. are not fair, transparent and accountable. And that to me is the bigger picture here and why all this talk of stolen elections when we have no real proof <I did not finish this thought for some reason>. All those things I talked about above should be enough for anybody, no matter what we suspect.

[Totally Committed]

24. Salon should be ashamed for their attack on RFK's article.

It is a position endemic in SOME Democrats that there COULDN'T have been voter fraud. It's just too scary for some to think that there is actually a Republican Party now that is ready, willing, and able to sh*t on the Constitution AND smother Democracy in full view of the American people. The probalem isn't just with those who are happy to have them do so, but those Democrats who haven't got the stomach to admit what's right before their own eyes.

VOTER FRAUD EXISTS. Beware of any Democrat who says it doesn't, because they have their head buried firmly up their own a** so far they make sure they can't see what's right in front of us.

TC

[pnwmom]

26. A lot of the arguments against election fraud affecting the election

results do seem like hair splitting to me . . . "experts" who will quibble over relatively small issues rather than face the fact that the Republicans moved in massive ways both to limit votes (disallowing registrations, limiting voting machines, requiring people in the wrong line to use provisional ballots that were never counted, etc.) and to use machines that were known to be hackable before they were ever installed.

Followed by the complete lack of transparency with regard to ballot counting, recounting, and the analysis of exit poll data. The whole thing sticks to high heaven. But Democrats would rather argue with each other's analysis of the precise number of votes that went awry rather than simply acknowledge that we will never know who really won. And that there is absolutely no reason to trust that the situation will be better in the next election.

[Totally Committed]

28. I totally agree.

Thanks for this thread! We need to talk about this... not only to figure out how it happened, but also to figure out ow to keep from having it happen again. Elections will never be fair again unless we do, and just denying fraud exists will never make it go away.

TC

[Joe Chi Minh]

30. I disagree with your comment that we will never really know who

won. Really, doesn't have to be 'accurate to the last vote' in this case, because the ball-park figures are such as to allow for substantial (theoretical) over-estimates of Kerry's wins, still without his losing, overall, as you really indicated earlier.

[OnTheOtherHand]

34. I don't think it's hair splitting at all

If RFK had stuck to arguing to stuff we know -- including the stuff we know that we don't know -- the article could have been excellent.

But various folks, including some people on DU, are arguing that we know Kerry won by millions of votes, and they have all sorts of specific arguments about how we know it. That may seem like hair-splitting to you, but in the real world, it matters. Think about what happened with the 60 Minutes TX Air National Guard memos. That really was pretty much a hair-split -- the case against Bush never hinged on the authenticity of those documents -- but look what happened with the coverage.

I liked Bob Herbert's New York Times op-ed this morning: leaned on the good stuff in the article, and sort of politely ignored the other stuff. But if we don't try to practice intellectual hygiene ourselves, we are gonna get... umm, I will let people extend the metaphor themselves as they see fit.

[faithnotgreed]

37. do you have a link to referenced article (bob herbert)

i checked out lbn but didnt see it though i thought i saw his name posted here today in a thread title

[OnTheOtherHand]

38. it would be behind a subscription wall, I think

Dunno if anyone has 'cheated.' But there is an excerpt in a thread on ER here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x433351

[salvorhardin]

35. Then why not focus on those important facts we do know?

Vote suppression is real. We have documented cases. Voter role purges, registration restrictions, inadequate appropriate of voting machines, shifting polling places, etc. These are all documented and they suppress voting.

The machines are faulty. This is also documented. Misaligned touch screens, failed memory cards, memory cards with votes already on them, buggy programming, lax security. Lack of verifiability, lack of transparency. All this is demonstrable as well and should give anybody pause. And it's not just Diebold machines.

And, I hate to keep harping on it, gerrymandering. Of course, we have to vote the crooks out before we can do much about this one, but we can raise awareness. BTW: Garrison Keillor had a great bit on gerrymandered districts in this week's Guy Noir segment on Prairie Home Companion. The problem is people do treat it like a joke when in fact in the long run, because of the winner take all system, it may do more to cook elections than all the vote fraud put together.

And nobody here is arguing about the precise number of votes that went awry. We're arguing that we need to do better in representing the facts and that we need to stick with the facts. RFK Jr.'s article had serious flaws in it. He's been called on it from several directions. That's the way it should work. It's the Republicans who like to play fast and loose with numbers and science. We neither need to do that, nor should we do it. And we must call out people who attempt to manipulate the consensus reality by doing so. Even when they're ostensibly on our own side.

[ooglymoogly]

42. excellent ...rec. nt