If It Comes Up “Tails” a Hundred Times…
Via Kevin Drum, more evidence that the election was rigged, this time in the form of an academic paper by Steven Freeman (PDF file) on the subject, doing a statistical analysis of the exit poll numbers versus the actual tallies. Take a look at this chart showing what the exit polls predicted, what the actual counts were, and–most significantly–what the difference was between exit polls and the reported counts:
Note how the tallied votes in every battleground state save one just happened to differ from the exit polls in favor of Bush. Had this been simple statistical margin of error in the exit polls, then roughly half the error should have gone towards Bush and half to Kerry. Instead, we see a near-universal shift from exit polls to tallies favoring Bush–a near statistical impossibility.
Look at Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, the key battleground states. In Florida, final exit polls showed Bush leading by only a fraction of a percent–but Bush walks off with a 5% win. In Ohio, Kerry was ahead by 4% in the exit polls, but the tally gave the state to Bush by 2.5%, a 6.7% surge. And even in Pennsylvania, where Kerry won, Bush still surged 6.5% in the tally vs. the exit polls. Only in Wisconsin did the polls hit the nail on the head. But outside of Wisconsin, the final Bush tally exceeded exit polls by an average of about 5%. None of them showed a shift to Kerry.
Freeman still gives the benefit of the doubt to the idea it might have been a methodological flaw in the exit polling consortium, one that we don’t know about, but frankly, this is yet more evidence to me that there was indeed fraud involved. My reasons: almost all the errors favor Bush. In Florida, the statistics for the voter turnout increases in counties using voting machines made by Bush-friendly Diebold and ES&S… all favor Republican turnout. In Ohio, machine miscounts went to… Bush. Reports of errors by voting machines almost universally reported votes being switched from Kerry to Bush.
It’s like flipping a coin and having it come up “tails” a hundred times, like dropping toast and having it fall butter-side up a hundred times, like rolling dice and getting snake-eyes a hundred times. Once, fine, three times, OK, ten times, maybe… but almost every time? There is a point where you have to suspect that something is seriously wrong.
Assuming there is something to this, how would one even go about exposing fraud? With a lack of paper trail connecting electronic votes to the actual voters, wouldn’t you literally need someone testifying “Yes, in fact, I helped rig this election.”
Doesn’t seem likely to happen.
Um… you’re missing a very simple possibility.
It is entirely possible that a lot of people, when asked, *claimed* they voted for Kerry… but that they’d actually voted for Bush.
Don’t get me wrong- I’m swinging more and more to the viewpoint that there might have been something funny going on with the vote- but it’s also entirely possible that for some reason, the message that the media and “culture” in general sent is that voting for Kerry is cool and voting for Bush meant you were a idiotic bigot.
Given that impression (and trust me, it’s entirely possible that impression was one that was received by a LOT of people) it’s quite possible that people lied to the pollsters outside of the voting places.
And it’s also possible that for this reason, by and large they lied in favor of claiming they voted for Kerry when actually they voted for Bush.
I have no doubt that some of the guys I work with, where the consensus opinion was to vote for Kerry, voted for Bush- and aren’t saying so. I sincerely doubt there’s many for whom the opposite is true.
I’d say stay away from this (if you must keep bringing up the vote) and instead, keep hammering home the things like the Florida vote totals, the comparison of voting irregularities in certain brands of E-vote machines, and so forth.
But more than that, it’s time for the Democrats to get their collective asses together and get on the same wavelength, and figure out how to do to the R’s what the R’s have been doing for years to the D’s.
Paul
Enumclaw, WA
Stewart:Assuming there is something to this, how would one even go about exposing fraud? With a lack of paper trail connecting electronic votes to the actual voters, wouldn’t you literally need someone testifying “Yes, in fact, I helped rig this election.”What’s been mentioned so far is evidence suggesting the crime was committed. What is needed is proof that the crime was committed. Whether that is retrievable is in question–it would depend on how it was committed. Was the fraud limited to the voting machines? If not, was it committed on tabulation machines? Did the fraud occur on voting machines that left a paper trail? Probably the only way that fraud could not be proven would be if there were no hard-copy record, in the form of something produced by or verified by the voter. If the fraud was completely on machines with no paper trail, then it may not be possible to prove anything. But if the fraud was in any form that a recount could reveal, then that would be the course to take–ergo the recount in Ohio could be a key factor. Still, one would assume that the GOP would cover their asses a bit more securely than that.
Nevertheless, this is not about getting anyone to admit to a crime–even if massive fraud is exposed, it is likely the real perps would never be caught (though fall guys might, like at Abu Ghraib)–it is more about finding out what the real vote was, who really won the election. If Bush, then OK. But with all these “accidents” and “malfunctions” overwhelmingly favoring Bush, I want to make sure they’re very sure the silverware is still in the drawer.
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Paul:It is entirely possible that a lot of people, when asked, *claimed* they voted for Kerry… but that they’d actually voted for Bush.
Don’t get me wrong- I’m swinging more and more to the viewpoint that there might have been something funny going on with the vote- but it’s also entirely possible that for some reason, the message that the media and “culture” in general sent is that voting for Kerry is cool and voting for Bush meant you were a idiotic bigot.
Given that impression (and trust me, it’s entirely possible that impression was one that was received by a LOT of people) it’s quite possible that people lied to the pollsters outside of the voting places.I really don’t think so. I seriously doubt that one out of every ten Bush voters nationwide–one of every five in New Hampshire–lied to a pollster.
Yeah, I read the guy’s paper and it makes more sense to me now.
The problem is that I think it’s almost equally unlikely that the Bushies actually fixed the election in that many places at once. For one thing, it’d be a tremendous amount of work. For another thing, by doing it all over, they’d be putting themselves at huge risk of exposure.
Nonetheless, we MUST make as one of our primary goals in the next four years the re-establishment of the election system.
The best thing that could happen is Ohio recounts, enough BS is detected that something is discovered, and even if Kerry doesn’t win the anger/outrage is enough to force a true ballot system that works, is verifiable, and so forth.
It’s simply amazing and pathetic that the richest nation on earth, one of the longest-running democratic republics, and a grand experiment in freedom, can’t freakin spend the money to have actual paper ballots that are hand-counted.
Paul
Enumclaw, WA
The problem is that I think it’s almost equally unlikely that the Bushies actually fixed the election in that many places at once. For one thing, it’d be a tremendous amount of work. For another thing, by doing it all over, they’d be putting themselves at huge risk of exposure.I’d have to disagree with that. Even with paper systems–punch cards, cross-through-the-arrow sheets (op scans), it comes down to a computerized vote count.* All it would take is the hacking of software, or possibly even the end data of the vote counts. If it’s the software, it could be written to erase the incriminating code after a certain time, leaving an apparently innocent voting machine (which is why I suggested in earlier posts that machines be found that broke down in the middle of voting, not giving the software a chance to re-write itself). Even if the software could be found, it would have to be inspected–and the companies involved are keeping the source code secret, with the blessing of the government. A critical question would be, how many states had electronic voting machines with no paper trail, and how many of them were there? As for machines with a paper trail, recounts could find the miscount–but not prove any single person guilty of anything.
If it is hacking of data–well, as Stewart just pointed out, you’d need an admission of guilt by someone, unless the hack could be traced–unlikely, though. Even if such a thing is found–well, look how shameless the GOP was about the felon list in Florida, not just in 2000, but in 2004 as well, even after it was exposed from 2000. They don’t give a damn–they can call it a “mistake” or “malfunction” or whatever. They know that they won’t be caught or prosecuted, or even if there is a risk, maybe they felt it would be worth it–or more likely, have fall guys in place.
(*As a historical point, computers have been used to count votes in elections for at least 40 years. The government was using mechanical computers for census tabulation as early as 1890.)
What bothers me about this data is that I don’t see how fraud could be pulled off in this many states. I’m all for investigating fraud and conducting recounts, but I don’t understand why Bush would even screw with states like Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Minnesota, since they weren’t needed to win the electoral college.
That being said, I can see why Nader is going after New Hampshire. A 9.5 point swing???
Why can’t we just use paper ballots, counted by hand? Plain and simple.
I wonder how many states have Republican Secretary of States and what the correlation between statitistical anomolies and the occurance of Republican Secretary of states and/or electronic voting.
I think the election was stolen. I don’t know how, but four years of failed leadership, out and out right lies in misleading the nation into a moral and strategic quagmire, letting BinLaden get away, tax breaks for the rich at the expense of the entire nation i.e. fiscal irresponsibility, Abu Graib torture gate, diplomacy that isolates us instead of our enemies, 9/11 on Bush’s watch while he took (before and since) record amounts of vacation, and the list of incompetance goes on and on and on and on. Americans are stupid about a lot of things, but they aren’t that stupid. I am sorry, the election had to be stollen and the anomolies provide circumstancial evedence supporting this. Some where, there is some evedence. Someone will have to find it.
Somewhere there’s a computer programmer that served the Republicans interest – get him to caugh up his tale, he doesn’t go to jail, his employer does, he was just following orders – he coughs up his tail sells a million books and retires.
I don’t buy the idea that people lied to the exit pollers, I live in a swing state in Missouri, I have to keep my mouth shut at work because I am surrounded by engineers and finance types, and they are all republicans. I am the only Dem and I have to keep my mouth shut, but only at work. Give me an exit poll and I will tell them the truth times two.