NEWS: Release of Future Election Day Poll Results Is to Be Delayed

[AmyCrat]

Release of Future Election Day Poll Results Is to Be Delayed
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/19/politics/19exit.html
<snip>---
The news organizations overseeing the polling system that served as an early handicapper of the presidential race on Election Day have decided to delay the release of future races' results by at least three hours.

Their decision is intended to remedy one of the main breakdowns associated with the new $10 million system: that preliminary results showing Senator John Kerry with an apparently sizable lead over President Bush began appearing on Internet sites in the early afternoon, not long after they had been released, on strictest confidence, to newspaper editors and television producers at 1 p.m. Eastern time.

The decision to delay future release of data until at least 4 p.m., and perhaps as late as 6 p.m., was made on Wednesday by representatives of the six news organizations that monitor the system: the three main television networks, CNN, Fox News and The Associated Press. The decision was first reported yesterday by USA Today.
---<snip>

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[ogradda]

1. translation:

the cheating would have gone smoother without those damn exit polls!

[magellan]

2. Outrageous

When is someone in these organizations going to start doing something that's actually productive, that's what I want to know.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

3. And again, like 2000.......

....the MSM apologizes for doing their job.......revealing the truth.

What a fucking crock.

[buzzard]

4. They may as well not release it at all in that case.

[RuleofLaw]

5. May I suggest for the next election

that DU, Moveon or some other organization conduct its own exit polling?

Shouldn't be too hard. All you need are volunteers with a clipboard and a pen asking voters who they voted for, and then submit the results to a central database.

Just an idea.

[Fortunato]

6. A little more difficult

Polling a single precinct is easy.

But if you're going to poll a state, the precincts you pick must accurate comprise the cross-section demographics of the state. Much of the error (if error occurs) comes up in the strategic selection of where to take the polls.

Of course (and here's the funny part) $10 million and the immaculate stategy of the "father of exit polling" himself (Mitofsky) doesn't seem to have worked at all for this election... :)

...what the heck. Grab a pen.

[nashville_brook]

7. has everyone lost their minds?

wag that dog, baby -- work it.

[Hobbes199]

8. Journalists Code of Ethics

Posh.

[jsascj]

9. Yep. Feeding right into the Republicans hands

Then we'll never how much they stole.

How conveeeeeeeenient!

[nashville_brook]

10. Mitofsky - USA learning about exit voting polls from Russian election

by "Stefan Lemieszewski" <stefanl@ > Nov 2, 2004 at 03:39 PM

http://www.talkaboutculture.com/group/soc.culture.ukrainian/messages/119611.html

In USA, it used to be that a single private company, in effect a monopoly,
called News Election Service (NES), would provide the voter exit
poll data to NBC, ABC, CBS, UPI and AP to predict who won
elections. In 1990, NES died and was replaced by the Voter News
Service (VNS) providing election exit poll data to ABC, CBS, NBC,
CNN, Fox, and AP. After the 2000 scandal in Florida where execs
at media networks rushed announcing close results (which were
within statistical margins of error) in a race to be first, VNS suffered
a painful death. In year 2004, VNS has been replaced by National
Elections Pool (NEP). But doing the actual polling will be two firms:
Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International. You may recall
that Mitofsky International did the exit polling for the presidential
elections in Russia in 1996 and 2000. Mitofsky International was
founded by Warren J. Mitofsky in 1993. Mitofsky will now apply his
Russian experience to better polling in USA in 2004.

so, he is schooled in Russian election-stealing. good resume.

[Helga Scow Stern]

15. Here is interview from 2000 by V. Collier with head of VNS

http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/votescam/collierinterview.htm

[nashville_brook]

17. WOW -- this really deserves more attention

they are in total control of the exit polls AND the adjust the polls to reflect the actual vote, and the exit polls are STILL off! the theives couldn't even cheat enough to make it LOOK unrigged. we might have won this by a freakin landslide!

everyone needs to read this!

WHO COUNTS THE AMERICAN VOTE?
http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/votescam/collierinterview.htm
Despite the wide-spread, and perfectly reasonable belief that the government counts the national vote on election night, the reality is entirely different: The vote is counted by a little-known private corporation named Voter News Services (VNS -- now NEP) located in New York City. VNS is a major media conglomerate comprised of all the major networks, including Fox and CNN, and also the wire services, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.

All of the vote results tabulated in each county, mainly by computer, are transferred to VNS where they are tabulated in secret and disseminated to the public, who accepts them without question. The computer tabulated votes at the county level leave no paper trail. Only the corporations who program the software to count votes in each state know for sure if the results are fair, or if fraud has indeed been committed. There are no checks and balances. The software is not open to public scrutiny. Neither is VNS.

Created in 1970 as News Election Services (NES), VNS has existed in near total secrecy for thirty years and may well be the most powerful corporation in the world. Most people who know of their existence incorrectly believe they are little more than a polling organization. The fact is that they have co-opted the vote count in America, despite their claims that the results they disseminate are "unofficial."

These results are accepted across the board on election night by Americans and election officials. VNS is very well aware of this uncontested power. They know that very few Americans have the time or inclination to challenge the vote count. They also know that when they are challenged, they have little to fear. Understandably, they have responded to accusations of vote fraud with the arrogance befitting the power of a private and unaccountable media corporation.

[nashville_brook]

11. ah-HA! if i'm reading this right, it explains why NEP is back peddling

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=8540

The safeguards put in place by the AP are statistics-based systems. A vote total from a particular precinct that is significantly different, in a statistical sense, from totals in previous elections or from results predicted will raise red flags. For instance, the Volusia County error that caused confusion on election night would be flagged immediately by such a system. But errors of smaller magnitude would not. And in 2004, as in 2000, errors of small magnitude may be more than enough to create the temporary impression that the wrong candidate has won.

-- there are statistical safe-gaurds -- if the polls are out of whack they raise red flags.

[Lisabtrucking]

12. Dont give up!

I just wanted to say. The fraud of this election is being proved, by a wonderful thoughtful woman (Bev Harris) ‘Blackboxvoting.org”. We all need to thank this woman, for she is protecting our rights for a truthful election. I ask everyone to send her a thank you at her web site.

We need to keep up the fight to have our voices heard, send these media outlets an email demanding they report the news accurately. If we don’t keep up the fight they will have won.

We now see that the republicans in our government are immoral. By allowing an indicted person to keep their job in our government is beyond reasoning.

These people have stolen our election, and they need to be held accountable for the theft.
Send John Kerry a message let him know we have not given up the fight for our right to elect who we want for our president, so don’t give up on us. Send all democrats a message that we expect them to join John Kerry in the fight for our presidency, and we will be there to back them up. Let them know we have their backs, now help protect our backs. This needs to be done now.

[nashville_brook]

14. right on!

we're here! we're here.

we have the flag -- it has not touched the ground.

[Helga Scow Stern]

13. Thread from post of MSNBC in latest news

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1003688

Tace's Post there:

>There's A Dynamic Evident Here That Is Fascinating

The major corporate owned US media outlets band together to control exit polling and to withhold the results of the polling from the public, citing the internet.

It is clear that the power of these media outlets to control public perception is being undermined by non-corporate internet information sources.

As a journalist with a degree in mass communications (Journalism major, Broadcasting minor), I find this to be fascinating and proof that we need independent exit polling of future elections. This is a BIG deal.<

[nashville_brook]

16. am i reading this right?

did they really change the exit polls to match the actual vote BY DESIGN? isn't that -- on its face -- polluted? doesn't that undermine the only reason to do an exit poll -- to check the accuracy of the vote? what's the point of doing an exit poll if the exit poll numbers are averaged with the actual vote.

OMG we are thru the looking glass!


from Mystery Pollster
Demystifying the Science and Art of Political Polling - By Mark Blumenthal

http://www.mysterypollster.com/main/2004/11/vote_fraud_.html

..."Second, regarding the exit poll results captured at various times of the evening: We may know the time they appeared on a given website, but we do not know how old those tabulations were when they were posted, and more important, we do not know the extent to which any given sample was corrected to conform with the actual vote.


That last point is important and not well understood. Remember two things: First, the weighting of exit polls to match actual results is not new, but a standard procedure used since the early days of exit polls. Second, the weighting to actual returns does not occur all at once but continuously, precinct by precinct, over the course of election night. The exit pollsters weight their sample to match incoming actual results for each sampled precinct as actual returns become available. Thus, the exit poll results get continuously updated in what bloggers might call “real time.” Some of the online postings may reflect that updating; some may not. We have no way of knowing. There is also one more step: The sampled precincts are still just a sample, so even when all the sampled precincts have been weighted to the actual result, sampling error may cause the survey to differ from the statewide result. At that point, near the end of vote counting, the exit pollsters will apply another overall weight so that the vote on the survey matches the actual statewide result.