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Carl Brennan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 12:00 PM
Original message
Four unspinnable crucial questions on voter fraud.

Four crucial questions:

Why were exit polls in crucial states wrong?

Why were they all wrong in the same direction, giving Kerry more votes?

Why were they wrong in states with electronic ballots, but not in states with paper ballots?

Why were they wrong only on the Presidential race, and right on other races?


In addition the exit poll data from non-battleground (non-rigged)states need to be analyzed to see how exit polling squared with actual count. This would neutralize the "Dixiecrat factor.
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Pacifist Patriot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 12:03 PM
Response to Original message
1. Do you need to edit your second question?
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AmyCrat Donating Member (721 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 12:04 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. I thought so too...
I initially thought so too... the wording feels funny, but it's right -- "why did the exit polls predict more votes for Kerry"
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Pacifist Patriot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 12:20 PM
Response to Reply #2
7. Ah, now I see it. *doh*
I associated "they" with vote errors. Thanks!
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Carl Brennan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 12:18 PM
Response to Reply #1
6. It's OK. It is in reference to the exit polls.
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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 12:08 PM
Response to Original message
3. Liberty or Death Fighting the Stolen Election of 2004
A Sit-In of Massive Proportions

http://www.freewebs.com/libertyordeath/index.htm
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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 12:31 PM
Response to Reply #3
10. Statement from Cam Kerry
from LBN

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x972741

HPLeft (481 posts) Tue Nov-09-04 11:28 AM
Original message
Statement from Cam Kerry


Dick Bell just forwarded me this message. This is authentic.

I am grateful to the many people who have contacted me to express their deep concern about questions of miscounting, fraud, vote suppression, and other problems on election day, especially in Florida and Ohio. Their concern reflects how much people care about the outcome of this election.

I want to you to know we are not ignoring it. Election protection lawyers are still on the job in Ohio and Florida and in DC making sure all the votes are counted accurately. I have been conferring with lawyers involved and have made them aware of the information and concerns people have given me. Even if the facts don't provide a basis to change the outcome, the information will inform the continuing effort to protect the integrity of our elections.

If you have specific factual information about voting problems that could be helpful to the lawyers doing their job, please send it to [email protected] rather than to me.

The election protection effort has been important to me personally, and I am proud of the 17,000 lawyers around the country who helped. It's obvious that we have a way to go still, but their efforts helped make a difference. Their work goes on.

Thank you,

Cam Kerry


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donkeyotay Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 12:12 PM
Response to Original message
4. there is no such thing as an unspinnable question
Regarding the exit polls favoring Kerry, I don't even watch TV anymore and I caught the airborn meme on that: Republicans are rugged individualists like Reagan, the Marlboro Man or John Wayne. They don't give those pansy, liberal exit pollers the time of day when they are asked if they voted for the Disaster Monkey. (Well, I wouldn't want to admit it either.)
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Woody Box Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 12:24 PM
Response to Reply #4
8. Problem

Assumed these proud Republicans who didn't tell pollsters who they voted for really exist - why do they only exist in swing states?

You could ask the same question regarding Mikofsky's obtrusive Democrats - why are they obtrusive only in swing states?

They seem to think we're dumb. That's really offensive.

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donkeyotay Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 03:20 PM
Response to Reply #8
15. say, woody, I'm with you. I was being sarcastic about spin, but about
Edited on Tue Nov-09-04 03:21 PM by donkeyotay
how dumb you'd have to be to fall for the spin...

Anyway, someone had a thread here the other day about how the spin itself - and how quickly it was implemented - should add, not subtract, to suspicions that the election was stolen.

The plausible explanations were all in place:

That republicans are so superior that they don't respond to exit polls.

That both democrats and republicans voted moral values by voting for *. (How believable is it that * is moral?)

I heard that while liberal television cameras were trained on the long lines of urban voters, the rural ones turned out smartly and efficiently to vote.

The democrats fell for the youth vote again, and etc.

It's all just a plausibility story told to go with the stolen election. I don't believe ANYTHING the corporate media is selling these days.

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Carl Brennan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 03:03 PM
Response to Reply #4
13. Be my guest and spin away
;)
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donkeyotay Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 03:33 PM
Response to Reply #13
16. thanks Carl, don't mind if I do
The Evil Doers say that if you're going to lie, tell a really big one. That's what the argument that a vote for bush was a vote for morality and values is; it's laughable on its face. He lied. People are dying and will continue to die, and Mr. Accountability hasn't even held Rumsfeld responsible for his part in this mess. Republicans believed that welfare mothers should be held accountable, but apparently not defense secretaries.

The evil neocons also said, according to Suskind's NYTs article, that they don't deal in reality, they create it. The left trails behind responding to the reality they have created, while they keep creating more.

Given the outrage fatigue liberals experienced during the first 4 years, I can hardly imagine what the second four will be like. We already have a stolen election (should I say another, this one even more blatant that the last?), a media that sounds like the Soviet's Pravda, the offensive on Falluja - a plan that was put on hold for political reasons, and the privatization of social security. And we haven't even made it to the inauguration. Think we can keep up?

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Carl Brennan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 03:44 PM
Response to Reply #16
17. Good post! I guess I should have said spinnable for the
"Reality based Community". We already know that converting the neo-con constituency is like, well, trying teach a "chimp" calculus.

This fight is not over. I'm listening to Randi Rhodes now talking about he "miracle" of this election as she lists all the areas where turnout exceeded registered voters. She's been at it for a good 20 minutes shouting about it being miracle with church music in the background. HAAA, HAAA.
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Carl Brennan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 06:46 PM
Response to Reply #17
18. kick
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BlueCaliDem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-16-04 03:52 PM
Response to Reply #4
39. Republicans are SHOW "Rugged NATIONALISTS" Who Are...
...proud to bellow with red face, and cheeks puffed wide, from the rooftops, that they're Republicans "Do or Die", so your theory that they wouldn't talk to "pansy, liberal exit pollers" doesn't coincide with their fascist beliefs, and documented behavior--especially NOT in the so-called "battleground states".
America uber ales is their credo. And they're proud of it, just like the Nazis were of Germany.
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papau Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 12:17 PM
Response to Original message
5. Reprint w/permission of entire Dave Swanson Ohio vote theft article
Note: link to
http://ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=950

http://www.counterpunch.org/swanson11082004.html

Votes Aren't the Only Thing Missing in Ohio
Media Black Out on Vote Fraud Allegations
By DAVID SWANSON

The "mainstream" media has fallen down on the job by failing to cover efforts since November 2 to ensure that all votes in the presidential election are accurately counted. The conclusion by John Kerry that an investigation could not possibly reverse the election may quite possibly have been premature. But the question that both activists and the media should be asking is not whether there was enough fraud and errors to decide the election, nor even whether there was more than is usual, but whether there was any fraud or errors, where the problems occurred, how they can be prevented in the future, and -- in particular -- whether new kinds of fraud were permitted by new technologies and by the privatization of our election process.

The International Labor Communications Association is particularly concerned, because of indications, detailed below, that fraud may have occurred in areas where there are heavy populations of workers, African-Americans, and other progressive voters that our member organizations represent. People deserve to have their votes counted, and the strategists who will spend four years studying the election results deserve to have the facts. Some citizens and independent media outlets are raising these issues, but the corporate media is AWOL. An investigation by the media would seem especially appropriate, since the 2000 election led to investigations in Florida that determined the loser was occupying the White House.

Evidence existed before this election that quite possibly "the fix" was in: the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio was running the 2004 election in that state and had for weeks been demonstrating every intention to disenfranchise Democrats; the head of a company manufacturing electronic voting machines for use around the country had announced his intention to help Bush stay in the White House. The weaknesses and susceptibility to abuse of electronic voting machines, including the machines that many people vote on and the machines that add up the votes from multiple precincts, had been well documented.

QUESTIONS ABOUT EXIT POLLS

If the pre-election context wasn't enough to put the media on alert, the exit polls on election day should have been. The polls by the National Election Pool, throughout the day, showed Kerry ahead in a number of swing states. Media commentators made it quite clear that they had seen and took seriously the polls. Professional pollster John Zogby took them seriously enough to call the race for Kerry. Wall Street took them seriously enough to start dropping stock prices.

Back on September 28, the New York Post, in agreement with other U.S. media outlets, editorialized that the results of a recall election in Venezuela had been proven fraudulent by exit polls. "It is unconscionable," the Post quoted Jimmy Carter as saying, "to perpetuate fraudulent or biased electoral practices in any nation." The Post then commented:

"Oh, really? Funny, Carter quickly endorsed the results of last month's recall effort against Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez. Chavez, a pal of dictators from Saddam Hussein to Fidel Castro, officially beat back the recall with nearly 59 percent of the vote. Oddly, that result was completely opposite the findings of an exit poll conducted by a well-regarded polling firm used often by the U.S. Democratic Party, which showed Venezuelan voters booting Chavez by the same 59 percent....Yet Jimmy Carter said that the election was 'free and fair.'"

Other U.S. media coverage was similar. The Miami Herald ran this headline: "Find Out If Chavez Stole Vote." United Press International ran a column arguing that Carter was unqualified to criticize voting procedures in Florida because exit polls had proved him wrong in Venezuela. Carter had said that Florida's voting arrangements didn't meet "basic international requirements."

On October 17, the New York Times ran an article on the use of exit polls to identify and prevent election fraud in a number of countries. The article suggested that exit polls might play a similar role in the upcoming U.S. election.

A November 5 New York Times article, and the rest of the U.S. media's coverage after the election, sang a very different tune, building in as an unargued assumption that the November 2 exit polls had been proved wrong by the official vote counts. The Times' article sought to determine in a very "balanced" and "objective" manner exactly what went wrong with the exit polls, but not whether they were wrong or right.

The New York Post switched song books as well, running on November 3 in its online edition a column by Dick Morris demanding to know who had rigged the exit polls. Exit polls, according to Morris, cannot be off by as much as they were this time without intentional fraud. Morris presented no evidence of fraud in the exit polling and no evidence that it was the polls rather than the official counts that got it wrong.

As pointed out in various analyses, the exit polls were accurate within their margin of error in many states but were surprisingly far off in a number of swing states, and always off in the same direction, showing more support for Kerry than was found in the official counts. Warren Mitofsky, co-director of the National Election Pool, told the News Hour with Jim Lehrer that "Kerry was ahead in a number of states by margins that looked unreasonable to us." Mitofsky speculated that perhaps more Kerry voters were willing to participate in the exit poll, but did not suggest any reason for that speculation other than the difference between the exit polls and the final counts. He and his colleagues have since produced other speculative reasons why the exit polls could have been wrong, all grounded in circular reasoning. Mitofsky told the News Hour that on the evening of November 2 he decided to wait for the official counts and then use those to "correct" the exit polls, thus rendering the hugely expensive exit polls useless as either predictors of the election outcome or measurements of the count's accuracy. Media outlets "corrected" the exit polls on their websites early in the morning of November 3. Mitofsky promised in the future to keep exit poll results secret, thus fully rendering them useless for any stated purpose related to election outcomes (they will still be able to tell us after the fact how many voters were female or Jewish or go to church weekly or believe health care is the most important issue, etc.).

Other surprising outcomes should stimulate investigation, including the low gain in voter turnout for Kerry in Florida despite massive get-out-the-vote efforts and widely reported record lines at polls on election day and in early voting.


MISCOUNTING DOCUMENTED

Reasons for concern over this election are, however, no longer limited to surprise over the outcome. Nor need this issue be focused on the uncountable votes of those wrongly denied voting status, turned away, intimidated, forced to vote on provisional ballots, or discouraged from voting by long lines.

Specific evidence of miscounting has been uncovered. And, despite the national media's near-blackout of the issue, local reporting has documented some of the problems. In fact, although you won't learn it from the corporate media, three members of Congress have asked the General Accounting Office to investigate irregularities with voting machines in the November 2 election. The Congress Members, John Conyers, Jerrold Nadler, and Robert Wexler, cited a few of the problems that have already arisen, including a machine in a single Ohio precinct awarding Bush an extra 3,893 votes, machines in North Carolina losing 4,500 votes, machines in Florida miscounting absentee ballots, and voters in both Florida and Ohio reporting machines registering votes for Bush that were intended for Kerry.

More troubling than these problems and others like them is the fact that much of the electronic vote counting is in the hands of private companies, produces no auditable record, and can easily be tampered with. A leading investigator of this problem, BlackBoxVoting.org, appeared in 23 "mainstream" media articles or transcripts in the weeks leading up to the election, according to a Nexis search, but only one since then, and that was a mention by a caller to a radio show. BlackBoxVoting has not vanished from the media because it's ceased activity. Rather, it's launched the largest series of FOIA requests in history and announced that it believes fraud took place in the election.

An analysis reported on by Thom Hartmann found that in Florida, in the smaller counties in which optically scanned ballots were counted on a central computer the results were quite surprising. For example, Franklin County, with 77.3 percent registered Democrats, went 58.5 percent for Bush. Holmes County, with 72.7 percent registered Democrats, went 77.25 percent for Bush. "Yet in the larger counties," Hartmann noted, "where such anomalies would be more obvious to the news media, high percentages of registered Democrats equaled high percentages of votes for Kerry. And, although elections officials didn't notice these anomalies, in aggregate they were enough to swing Florida from Kerry to Bush. If you simply go through the analysis of these counties and reverse the 'anomalous' numbers in those counties that appear to have been hacked, suddenly the Florida election results resemble the Florida exit poll results: Kerry won, and won big."

According to Hartmann, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District, Jeff Fisher, claimed to have evidence of hacking that would explain these results, and to be turning that evidence over to the FBI. Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org explained how easy such hacking is on a CNBC talk show some months back. Watch the clip. The "mainstream" media has not touched this story.

Nor has the corporate media touched on the topic of spoiled ballots and hanging chads in Ohio, which BBC reporter Greg Palast believes wrongly cost Kerry the election there.

The stories of election problems that would seem to merit investigation are numerous. See, for example, these:

one, two, three, four, five, six. In New Hampshire, the Nader/Camejo campaign has challenged the electronic voting results. In Auglaize County, Ohio, in October, a former employee of Election Systems and Software (ES&S), the company that provides the voting system in Auglaize County, was allegedly on the main computer that is used to create the ballot and compile election results, which would go against election protocol.

The mainstream media will not report these claims unless indisputable evidence is produced that Kerry won the election. And, if the 2000 election is any guide, the media will bury the story even then. In the meantime, following the narrowest win for a sitting president since Woodrow Wilson, the media has announced that Bush has a "clear mandate" to enact his agenda an agenda that the media is reporting on more now than prior to the election.

Clearly the top agenda item for those who care about democracy in this country must be reshaping our media. Passing media reform through Congress presents the same chicken-and-egg problem as campaign finance reform or term limits or instant runoff voting or greater access for third parties: how do you force politicians to oppose their own interests and those of their funders?

An alternative is to build our own media to compete with the corporate version. Rebuilding labor media is the mission of the ILCA, and we see that mission as having just grown more important than ever.

David Swanson is the media coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association. He can be reached at: [email protected]

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Carl Brennan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Nov-11-04 02:19 PM
Response to Reply #5
24. More info on "lockdown". Thanks
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Maine-i-acs Donating Member (989 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 12:31 PM
Response to Original message
9. "If Repubs are so confident about the outcome ...
... would they oppose a complete recount of FLA, OH and NM?"
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ROH Donating Member (521 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 12:41 PM
Response to Original message
11. The last point question you raise...
"Why were they wrong only on the Presidential race, and right on other races?"

Do you have any links for information on this?
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Carl Brennan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 03:05 PM
Response to Reply #11
14. here
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msongs Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 12:59 PM
Response to Original message
12. what happend to the Nader efforts to recount in
new hampshire?

Msongs
liberal t shirts
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm
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Imnorepublican Donating Member (12 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 07:04 PM
Response to Original message
19. bump
bump
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FlaGranny Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 07:17 PM
Response to Original message
20. Perhaps, the way to go about this
election fraud thing is to just come right out and tell them that if they believe there could be no election fraud - PROVE IT. That's all. You say there were no problems? Just prove it. Just prove that it can't happen. Just keep at it until everyone demands fair and auditable elections. Republican fraud will never be proven in this climate. We might have to wait for a crooked Democrat to rig an election.
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FREEDOMRULES3 Donating Member (45 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 07:21 PM
Response to Original message
21. HOW COME ALL GO ONE WAY
MOST STATES HAVE A 1.5% DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE PRESIDENTIAL AND SENATE VOTE COUNTS. PEOPLE WHO SIMPLY DONT VOTE FOR EITHER SENATOR. IN FLORIDA AND OHIO THE DIFFERENCE IS 4.5 IN FLA, AND 4.9% IN OHIO. BY FAR THE HIGHEST TWO IN THE NATION. KERRY GOT 3.5 MILLION VOTES IN FLA AND THE DEM SENATOR GOT 3.4 .VERY NORMAL. BUSH GOT 3.9 MILLION WHILE THE GOP SENATOR ONLY GOT 3.5 MILLION. SEEMS THE GHOST VOTERS FOR * FORGOT TO VOTE GOP IN THE SENATE RACE. HIGHLY UNLIKELY.FUNNY DIDNT * WIN BY JUST OVER .4 MILLION VOTES THE SAME AMOUNT THAT THE GOP SENATOR FAILED TO GET. I FIND IT FUNNY THAT * GAINED ALL OF THE OVERCOUNT( I WILL CALL THESE VOTES) THAT THE SENATORS FOR THE STATE FAILED TO PULL TO EITHER SIDE. JUST SEEMS FUNNY HOW IN EVERY KEY STATE * PICKED UP ALL OF THE OVERCOUNT.IMPOSSIBLE
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Carl Brennan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Nov-15-04 04:24 PM
Response to Reply #21
26. Damn! Welcome to DU
That is very interesting.

:toast:
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BlueDog2u Donating Member (692 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Nov-15-04 04:53 PM
Response to Reply #21
28. Kick this to a separate thread
We need to talk more about it.
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newyawker99 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Nov-15-04 06:58 PM
Response to Reply #21
31. Hi FREEDOMRULES3!!
Welcome to DU!! :toast:
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cdp Donating Member (127 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 07:47 PM
Response to Original message
22. Please try to debunk the exit polls
I have seen all of the graphs of discrepancies in non paper states. Does anyone have any info that casts doubt on those?
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CAcyclist Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-09-04 08:13 PM
Response to Reply #22
23. Check my posts down this list - it shows how screwy the exit polls are
For one, Bush has a 69% increase in minority voters over 2000 and Kerry only has a 5% increase in white voters over Gore's numbers in 2000, which is basically the same as the rate of growth in the population (4.5%)
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tommcintyre Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Nov-15-04 03:38 PM
Response to Original message
25. EXCELLENT! n/t
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faithfull Donating Member (154 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Nov-15-04 04:44 PM
Response to Reply #25
27. SHUT UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Edited on Mon Nov-15-04 04:45 PM by faithfull



Thats a foolproof spin

:donut:
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mountebank Donating Member (755 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Nov-15-04 05:23 PM
Response to Original message
29. Point #3 is anything but solid. Please read.
The original analysis of this "trend" included many states in the "electronic ballot" category that should have been in the paper ballot category (NH, MN, WI). Switching them to their proper categories basically erased the trend. Also, two different indepedent analyses, one article on RAW STORY (http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=405) and a Cal Tech analysis, debunked this theory.

HOWEVER: If you simply rephrase the comparison to "swing-states" and "non-swing-states" there is certainly a suspicious trend.

So, I have been advocating to chuck the paper/electronic meme in favor of swing v. non-swing states or critical v. non-critical states. The point is, the exit polls need to be explained.

The paper/electronic meme caught on fast and is getting repeated everywhere, to the eventual harm of credibility to various fraud theories.
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Dolphyn Donating Member (152 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Nov-15-04 05:36 PM
Response to Reply #29
30. Optical Scanners
My understanding is that optical scanners, tallied electronically, accounted for a lot of the exit poll vs "actual" results discrepancy.

The Caltech report placed the optical scanners in the "paper" column, but the results would be much different if they were placed in the "electronic" column.

One thing that struck me in the Caltech report is that the 2004 scatterplot appears a lot more "skewed" than the ones for 1996 and 2000, making their "no fraud occurred" conclusion dubious at best.
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Cadence Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Nov-15-04 07:14 PM
Response to Reply #30
32. Also my issue with
the Caltech report was that it only went back as far as 1996 which is when the diebold equipment was installed. I agree they needed to move the optical scan results to the electronic column because they are tabulated using the diebold software.
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mountebank Donating Member (755 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Nov-15-04 07:17 PM
Response to Reply #30
33. Still, the categories paper v. electronic are not accurate.
Hi Dolphyn,

I'm not sure which, if any, states would be left in the paper category if you put touchscreen voting states and optical scan states all in the electronic voting category. Seems that every state uses some amount of optical scan or touchscreen voting. And of course another problem with the analysis is that optical scan voting can be easily manipulated at the tabulator (as the BBV crew has noted).

So, to me, not only are the categories paper v. electronic specious bordering on misleading - but they also make it seem like "paper" states are "safe" (because exit polls supposedly matched vote tallies) when we know that paper states with optical scanning are anything but safe.

I can't vouch for the Caltech study. The Raw Story analysis (linked above) seemed solid. And my own ad hoc analysis when I switched states that were obviously paper states from the electronic category showed much diminished differences between the categories.


I still advocate for scrapping this paper v. electronic line of reasoning with regard to statewide exit polling discrepancies. Better to talk about the differences in exit polling between swing states and non-swing states.
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Carolab Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Nov-15-04 07:17 PM
Response to Reply #29
34. FYI the Cal-Tech "analysis" was itself DEBUNKED
Edited on Mon Nov-15-04 07:38 PM by Carolab
By Stephen Freeman

Go to http://www.ilcaonline.org/freeman.pdf

for THAT paper
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mountebank Donating Member (755 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Nov-15-04 07:34 PM
Response to Reply #34
35. All fine and good. BUT:
I don't want to get into an argument about a report I haven't even read (the Caltech report). All I suggest is that you take a good hard look at how the states are divided up in that paper v. electronic analysis of exit poll results and ask yourself if each state is justified. They had NH in electronic even though is has a paper record (yes, optical scan). But other optical scan states were left in the paper category. Basically, it was cherry-picked to put the most skewed exit poll results into one category to increase the differences. The Caltech report may be shit for all I know - but your eyes and brain will tell you that the analysis is not solid. It would be killed in two minutes flat.

This doesn't mean the exit polls don't require an explanation and it certainly doesn't disprove fraud.
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Carolab Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Nov-15-04 07:47 PM
Response to Reply #35
36. Read Freeman's rebuttal, above
He does just what you are talking about--speaks in terms of critical vs. noncritical

Try reading the material posted here at DU under the Forum heading "Voting Issues" and then ask questions.
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tommcintyre Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-16-04 03:34 PM
Response to Reply #34
38. Cal-Tech "analysis" includes ALL states - UPenn focus on Swing states
Obviously, Bush didn't really need to cheat in Idaho or Utah did he? That's why Caltech found a bias against Kerry nationally, but not state-by-state. Olbermann said so, so it must be true. ;~}
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tommcintyre Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Nov-16-04 03:28 PM
Response to Reply #29
37. GREAT INFO! Also, do more women vote in swing states?
That's one of the big arguments proposed againt the credibility of the exit polls. They were skewed toward women. But this only mattered in the swing states?
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