Democratic media rigged the exit polls

[chrisclub]

"OR...you could believe that that 5% loss was attributable to the "democrats" that the Democratic media had lined up to take the exit pole?
Interesting concept eh? "
===================================
Anyone see this argument?

Chris

[OnTheOtherHand]

1. Dick Morris said something like this right after the election, no?

(EDIT -- ) well, maybe not that the media had lined up Dems to participate, per se, but that the exit poll must be deliberately biased.

[...of J.Temperance]

3. The rule of thumb regarding Dick Morris is...

That everything the asshat says, the opposite is true. Therefore, take what he said and interpret it to mean that the Republican media rigged the exit polls...which is true, as we all know.

[OnTheOtherHand]

4. (grin)

I don't think anyone rigged the exit polls, but I have to agree that your rule of thumb is a good one!

[...of J.Temperance]

6. Well you know

Dick Morris should just stick to sucking the toes of two-bit hookers, because he's not much use for anything else.

[RC]

2. For those of us not mind readers, what are you talking about?

[applegrove]

5. There is something wrong with exit polls. Even in places that had

no diebold.

[liam_laddie]

7. exit poll accuracy

I believe it was the "banned" TIA who correlated reported results
with exit poll predictions and type of ballot used. IIRC, (sorry, too
tired to go back to references this a.m.) the paper ballot states
...Maine was one...had the best "match-up" and DRE's the worst. This was across the 70-some thousand reponses to the E-M pollsters. And before E-M jiggered with the "final results" which used 13,047 and then 13,660 responses, to get "alignment" with the "reported" vote. Whether bias and other adjustments used by pollsters were applied to the 70+thousand, I cannot say.
Perhaps Febble could address this issue within the entire 70k+ sample. Uncertain what stats or records are available for that.

[OnTheOtherHand]

8. hey there

Maine isn't really a paper ballot state, at least not in the sense of hand counts. According to verifiedvoting.org, Portland and Bangor both use op-scan -- in fact it looks like there is op-scan in every county. If anything, maybe a higher proportion of folks vote by op-scan in Maine than in Vermont, where the exit poll discrepancy was awful (probably partly because of absentee voters).

I don't think there really _is_ a "paper ballot state."

On a precinct level, the highest "WPEs" were in mechanical voting machine precincts (levers and push buttons). The lowest were in paper hand count precincts. DRE, punch card, and op scan were all fairly similar to each other in between. See p. 40 of the E/M report.

[liam_laddie]

9. Thanks, OTOH

I mis-typed...should have been precincts rather than states.
Yes, hand-count paper ballots seem to be the most accurate
or "jigger-proof" system. HAVA plays directly into eternal
rethug control. So many elections officials have either drunk the kool-aid or are actually "in on it." Must be one or the other, unless the vendors have actually convinced them that they can do better than local BoE's. Damn, this is a mess!

[OnTheOtherHand]

10. "the good old days weren't always good, and tomorrow..."

well, tomorrow is still being formed.

Hand-counted paper ballots are pretty straightforward, yes, although of course plenty of elections have been stolen on them. (I'm not convinced that there was vote theft on a national scale on any particular voting technology in 2004, but some approaches have obvious vulnerabilities that others don't.) I think we've blunted the rush to pave the country in paperless DREs, but there's a lot of work left. All in all, I guess I see the mess somewhat differently than you do, but I agree that it's a mess.