Reply #57: OK, I take your point, and here's what I think

[OnTheOtherHand]

I don't think that E/M conducting that test and reporting the result is much like your forgetting to look for your wife's keys. E/M has said all along that their exit polls aren't intended to be used to audit elections, which is true. If their statements about exit polls are interpreted as statements about the election, I frankly think that their critics are more to blame than they are.

I don't mind disagreeing about this, but I'm sharing my view because I don't think many social scientists can live up to the standard of never saying anything about the 2004 election that couldn't be construed as trivializing the need for reform. I don't think you would find many survey analysts who would agree with your assessment that the E/M report is "very misleading" on the issue of voting technology -- because the analysts, like E/M, take for granted that the report is about the exit polls, not about the election. That's as succinctly as I can frame the difference in perspective.

Maybe this is a quibble, but I don't think you could find millions of Americans who have any clue who Mitofsky is. But indeed some reporters may have wondered, "Does this story has legs?", and asked survey experts about it, and got those experts' candid and considered opinions: Not. The emphasis on exit polls is absolutely self-defeating. The reporters should be asking different experts different questions. (Of course the media coverage would probably still be pretty poor -- but I still think that the e-voting coverage is distinctly more sympathetic, in part because the experts are.)