Reply #18: Well, to take you last point,

[Febble]

I think that's a little unjust. We are bothtrying to be scrupulously fair about this. We are not acting for the defence. We would both, I think, prefer to be acting for the prosecution. Think of us as the poor guy in your office who has to probe the weaknesses in your client's case, not the guy you actually face in court.

If I had to defend the case that the exit polls proved that there was no fraud (bear with me, I do not believe this) the argument is very simple.

M'lud, the prosecution claims that the votes were fraudulently altered to benefit Bush. And his evidence? That the "exit polls" indicated that Kerry had won. But I have here x hundred precincts in which the exit polls that indicated that Bush had won. And in these very precincts, Kerry was massively in the lead. Are we to understand that "fraudsters" in these precincts were working for Kerry? And I have here y hundred precincts in which the exit polls indeed indicate that Kerry won - and the count indeed shows that Bush gained more votes. Are we to assume that fraud was responsible for this? And yet, I will demonstrate to you M'lud, that in these very precincts, Bush did rather worse than his success elsewhere. I think Mr Rove needs to vet his fraudsters a little more carefully chortle chortle.... horse fanciers, were they?

And, yet again, M'Lud, we have z hundred precincts in which the polls indicate that Bush is in the lead. And the count declares Kerry the victor. But in these polls, Bush does rather better than his national trend. Are we to assume that fraudsters working for Kerry were recruited by the same "talent scouts" as used by Mr Rove? Oh dear, dear, dear, the standard of organised crime in this country is plummetting, no?

It would appear, M'Lud, that the evidence for fraudsters working for Kerry is at least as strong as the evidence that fraudsters were workign for Bush! And not very successfully either! Neither pro-Kerry fraudsters, nor pro-Bush fraudsters seem to have succeeded in advancing their candidate's vote beyond the average trend for the country!

The case is absurd! Release my client without a stain on his character!

Well, you get my drift. I'm not very good at this. But what I am trying to say is that the latest analysis gives your opponent a rather better argument against fraud rather than it gives you an argument for it. Stack that up with copious academic works on the problems of non-response bias and measurement error in survey data, and I think you have just got yourself a proportionally spaced-font memo.

Use it if you want. But to me, it's worth checking out that memo pretty thoroughly and so far, to me, it looks like a fake.

So, to turn to your earlier point, where I think you are implying that these things should not be publicly rehearsed - well, you may be right. But we don't have much option. It is on forums like this that we have an opportunity to probe the case for holes. Several posters have suggested ways in which Mitofsky's alibi for the polls could be busted (and to give myself credit, I've been fairly active in soliciting them and trying to work them through logically - it's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it). But I have to say, I'm not convinced yet, or anything close. Mitofsky's evidence certainly suggests that something OTHER than fraud was responsible for a major part of the exit poll discrepancy. And once that's conceded, the case looks pretty thin.

On the other hand (boy, this is catching...) if we bite the bullet, and say, well, perhaps fraud was NOT the cause of the exit poll discrepancy, THEN perhaps we can develop hypotheses, given that we still have every reason to believe it was a filthy election, that will lead us to evidence that WILL stand up in court.

(Edited to remove snarky comment. Sorry, I'm still a bit cross.)