Blatant Exit Poll - Final Count Disparities

[Pink Spider]

Blatant Exit Poll - Final Count Disparities
Analysis By Faun Otter
Vote Fraud Expert
11-5-4

http://rense.com/general59/blatantexitpollfinal.htm

So, what do we actually see when comparing exit polls with actual results? There is skew - but ONLY in states which the Republicans had previously stated to be target states in play. The skew is in the same direction every time; that is to say in favor of Bush. The exit poll results are not scattered about the mean as the alternative theory predicts. They are all on the Kerry side of the vote counts as issued by the states except for a hand full of states which hit amazingly close to the exit poll figures.

Here are the figures. They list the four contemporaneous and uncorrected exit polls. Kerry is listed first and Bush second in each pair of figures.

'Published' is the figure presented as the official vote count as of 10.00 am EST on 11/3/04, the morning after...

ARIZONA
Poll one 45-55
Final poll 45-55
...Published 44-55

COLORADO
Poll one 48-51
2nd poll 48-50
3rd poll 46-53
...Published 46-53

LOUISIANA
Poll one 42-57
Final poll 43-56
...Published 42-57

MICHIGAN
Poll one 51-48
...Published 51-48

IOWA
Poll one 49-49
3rd poll 50-48
Final poll 49-49
...Published 49-50

NEW MEXICO
Poll one 50-48
2nd poll 50-48
3rd poll 50-48
Final poll 50-49
...Published 49-50

MAINE
3rd poll 55-44
...Published 53-45

NEVADA
3rd poll 48-49
...Published 48-51

ARKANSAS
3rd poll 45-54
...Published 45-54

MISSOURI
Final poll 46-54
...Published 46-53

These tracking polls were right where you would expect them to be and within the margin of error. However, if we look at some other states, the figures are beyond curious. Either the exit polls were wrong or the vote count is wrong:

WISCONSIN
Poll one 52-48
3rd poll 51-46
Final poll 52-47
...Published 50-49

PENNSYLVANIA
Poll one 60-40
3rd poll 54-45
Final poll 53-46
...Published 51-49

OHIO
Poll one 52-48
2nd poll 50-49
3rd poll 50-49
Final poll 51-49
...Published 49-51

FLORIDA
Poll one 51-48
2nd poll 50-49
3rd poll 50-49
Final poll 51-49
...Published 47-52

MINNESOTA
Poll one 58-40
3rd poll 58-40
Final poll 54-44
...Published 51-48

NEW HAMPSHIRE
Poll one 57-41
3rd poll 58-41
...Published 50-49

NORTH CAROLINA
Poll one
3rd poll 49-51
Final poll 48-52
...Published 43-56

Taking the figures and measuring the size and direction of the poll to supposed vote count discrepancy, we find the variance between the exit poll and the final result:

Wisconsin: Bush plus 4%
Pennsylvania: Bush plus 5%
Ohio: Bush plus 4%
Florida: Bush plus 7%
Minnesota: Bush plus 7%
New Hampshire: Bush plus 15%
North Carolina: Bush plus 9%.

[TongueNGroove]

Bush won, get over it.

[Pink Spider]

I don't really care who won. But, do you care to dispute the numbers?

[Big Train]

I would wager on vote count being correct and exit polls being wrong, either actively or through massive error.

[aesop]

The conspiracy was that the exit polls were rigged, not the votes themselves. Dick Morris is calling for a federal investigation.

[Pink Spider]

Kerry Won.
Here are the Facts.
TomPaine.com

Friday, November 5, 2004
by Greg Palast

I know you don't want to hear it. You can't face one more hung chad. But I don't have a choice. As a journalist examining that messy sausage called American democracy, it's my job to tell you who got the most votes in the deciding states. Tuesday, in Ohio and New Mexico, it was John Kerry.


Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. At 1:05 a.m. Wednesday morning, CNN's exit poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47 percent. The exit polls were later combined with—and therefore contaminated by—the tabulated results, ultimately becoming a mirror of the apparent actual vote. Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51 percent to 49 percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the state.


So what's going on here? Answer: the exit polls are accurate. Pollsters ask, "Who did you vote for?" Unfortunately, they don't ask the crucial, question, "Was your vote counted?" The voters don't know.


Here's why. Although the exit polls show that most voters in Ohio punched cards for Kerry-Edwards, thousands of these votes were simply not recorded. This was predictable and it was predicted. [See TomPaine.com, "An Election Spoiled Rotten," November 1.]


Once again, at the heart of the Ohio uncounted vote game are, I'm sorry to report, hanging chads and pregnant chads, plus some other ballot tricks old and new.


The election in Ohio was not decided by the voters but by something called "spoilage." Typically in the United States, about 3 percent of the vote is voided, just thrown away, not recorded. When the bobble-head boobs on the tube tell you Ohio or any state was won by 51 percent to 49 percent, don't you believe it ... it has never happened in the United States, because the total never reaches a neat 100 percent. The television totals simply subtract out the spoiled vote.


Whose Votes Are Discarded?


And not all votes spoil equally. Most of those votes, say every official report, come from African-American and minority precincts. (To learn more, click here.)


We saw this in Florida in 2000. Exit polls showed Gore with a plurality of at least 50,000, but it didn't match the official count. That's because the official, Secretary of State Katherine Harris, excluded 179,855 spoiled votes. In Florida, as in Ohio, most of these votes lost were cast on punch cards where the hole wasn't punched through completely—leaving a 'hanging chad,'—or was punched extra times. Whose cards were discarded? Expert statisticians investigating spoilage for the government calculated that 54 percent of the ballots thrown in the dumpster were cast by black folks. (To read the report from the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, click here .)


And here's the key: Florida is terribly typical. The majority of ballots thrown out (there will be nearly 2 million tossed out from Tuesday's election) will have been cast by African American and other minority citizens.


So here we go again. Or, here we don't go again. Because unlike last time, Democrats aren't even asking Ohio to count these cards with the not-quite-punched holes (called "undervotes" in the voting biz). Nor are they demanding we look at the "overvotes" where voter intent may be discerned.


Ohio is one of the last states in America to still use the vote-spoiling punch-card machines. And the Secretary of State of Ohio, J. Kenneth Blackwell, wrote before the election, “the possibility of a close election with punch cards as the state’s primary voting device invites a Florida-like calamity.”


But this week, Blackwell, a rabidly partisan Republican, has warmed up to the result of sticking with machines that have a habit of eating Democratic votes. When asked if he feared being this year's Katherine Harris, Blackwell noted that Ms. Fix-it's efforts landed her a seat in Congress.


Exactly how many votes were lost to spoilage this time? Blackwell's office, notably, won't say, though the law requires it be reported. Hmm. But we know that last time, the total of Ohio votes discarded reached a democracy-damaging 1.96 percent. The machines produced their typical loss—that's 110,000 votes—overwhelmingly Democratic.


The Impact Of Challenges


First and foremost, Kerry was had by chads. But the Democrat wasn't punched out by punch cards alone. There were also the 'challenges.' That's a polite word for the Republican Party of Ohio's use of an old Ku Klux Klan technique: the attempt to block thousands of voters of color at the polls. In Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida, the GOP laid plans for poll workers to ambush citizens under arcane laws—almost never used—allowing party-designated poll watchers to finger individual voters and demand they be denied a ballot. The Ohio courts were horrified and federal law prohibits targeting of voters where race is a factor in the challenge. But our Supreme Court was prepared to let Republicans stand in the voting booth door.


In the end, the challenges were not overwhelming, but they were there. Many apparently resulted in voters getting these funky "provisional" ballots—a kind of voting placebo—which may or may not be counted. Blackwell estimates there were 175,000; Democrats say 250,000. Pick your number. But as challenges were aimed at minorities, no one doubts these are, again, overwhelmingly Democratic. Count them up, add in the spoiled punch cards (easy to tally with the human eye in a recount), and the totals begin to match the exit polls; and, golly, you've got yourself a new president. Remember, Bush won by 136,483 votes in Ohio.


Enchanted State's Enchanted Vote


Now, on to New Mexico, where a Kerry plurality—if all votes are counted—is more obvious still. Before the election, in TomPaine.com, I wrote, "John Kerry is down by several thousand votes in New Mexico, though not one ballot has yet been counted."


How did that happen? It's the spoilage, stupid; and the provisional ballots.


CNN said George Bush took New Mexico by 11,620 votes. Again, the network total added up to that miraculous, and non-existent, '100 percent' of ballots cast.


New Mexico reported in the last race a spoilage rate of 2.68 percent, votes lost almost entirely in Hispanic, Native American and poor precincts—Democratic turf. From Tuesday's vote, assuming the same ballot-loss rate, we can expect to see 18,000 ballots in the spoilage bin.


Spoilage has a very Democratic look in New Mexico. Hispanic voters in the Enchanted State, who voted more than two to one for Kerry, are five times as likely to have their vote spoil as a white voter. Counting these uncounted votes would easily overtake the Bush 'plurality.'


Already, the election-bending effects of spoilage are popping up in the election stats, exactly where we'd expect them: in heavily Hispanic areas controlled by Republican elections officials. Chaves County, in the "Little Texas" area of New Mexico, has a 44 percent Hispanic population, plus African Americans and Native Americans, yet George Bush "won" there 68 percent to 31 percent.


I spoke with Chaves' Republican county clerk before the election, and he told me that this huge spoilage rate among Hispanics simply indicated that such people simply can't make up their minds on the choice of candidate for president. Oddly, these brown people drive across the desert to register their indecision in a voting booth.


Now, let's add in the effect on the New Mexico tally of provisional ballots.


"They were handing them out like candy," Albuquerque journalist Renee Blake reported of provisional ballots. About 20,000 were given out. Who got them?


Santiago Juarez who ran the "Faithful Citizenship" program for the Catholic Archdiocese in New Mexico, told me that "his" voters, poor Hispanics, whom he identified as solid Kerry supporters, were handed the iffy provisional ballots. Hispanics were given provbisional ballots, rather than the countable kind "almost religiously," he said, at polling stations when there was the least question about a voter's identification. Some voters, Santiago said, were simply turned away.


Your Kerry Victory Party


So we can call Ohio and New Mexico for John Kerry—if we count all the votes.


But that won't happen. Despite the Democratic Party's pledge, the leadership this time gave in to racial disenfranchisement once again. Why? No doubt, the Democrats know darn well that counting all the spoiled and provisional ballots will require the cooperation of Ohio's Secretary of State, Blackwell. He will ultimately decide which spoiled and provisional ballots get tallied. Blackwell, hankering to step into Kate Harris' political pumps, is unlikely to permit anything close to a full count. Also, Democratic leadership knows darn well the media would punish the party for demanding a full count.


What now? Kerry won, so hold your victory party. But make sure the shades are down: it may be become illegal to demand a full vote count under PATRIOT Act III.


I used to write a column for the Guardian papers in London. Several friends have asked me if I will again leave the country. In light of the failure—a second time—to count all the votes, that won't be necessary. My country has left me.



Greg Palast, contributing editor to Harper's magazine, investigated the manipulation of the vote for BBC Television's Newsnight. The documentary, "Bush Family Fortunes," based on his New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, is now available on DVD. View a clip at http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm

[FORD]

Diebold electro-fraud.

[Big Train]

Tell this guy to put down his shovel.....he is digging himself into a pit of nonsense.

While he is quick to point out the myraid ways an election could POSSIBLY be tampered with, he assumes the exit polls are just flawless, even though they lean the MOST on humans to get them correct and have the most variables for tampering and error.

[aesop]

Spider... You seem to be implying that minorities, be they in my home state or Florida, are not capable of correctly punching the correct hole for whom they intended to vote for. Are you trying to imply that minorities receive different cards, or that the instructions are not in plain English, or that the poll workers won't help them of they ask? If not, one can only assume that your insinuating (like all good liberals do) that minorities are dumb-asses. Further, that if it weren't for liberal intervention, minorities would be incapable of even the most basic things in life.

I also think it's hilarious that you kooks are saying the paper punch cards cost Kerry's OH votes, whereas FORD'S been crying for days that it's because of the electronic ballots than Kerry got spanked.

THE REALITY IS (AND HOW MANY TIMES CAN WE SAY IT?) THAT THE ELECTION WAS A REFUTATION OF LIBERALISM. NOTHING MORE, NOTHING LESS, AND NOTHING ILLEGAL.

[ODShowtime]

intriguing... but probably inconsequential. too many numbers for most people to care...

[EmpyreLounge44]

probably true but it doesnt mean anything...exit polling is such a stupid practice. it just means that was the vote from people they talked to...they dont talk to everyone. not a big deal. i voted kerry but bush won handidly

[Lou]

I just want to let you all know something:

[TongueNGroove]

Originally posted by aesop
Spider... You seem to be implying that minorities, be they in my home state or Florida, are not capable of correctly punching the correct hole for whom they intended to vote for. Are you trying to imply that minorities receive different cards, or that the instructions are not in plain English, or that the poll workers won't help them of they ask? If not, one can only assume that your insinuating (like all good liberals do) that minorities are dumb-asses. Further, that if it weren't for liberal intervention, minorities would be incapable of even the most basic things in life.

I also think it's hilarious that you kooks are saying the paper punch cards cost Kerry's OH votes, whereas FORD'S been crying for days that it's because of the electronic ballots than Kerry got spanked.

THE REALITY IS (AND HOW MANY TIMES CAN WE SAY IT?) THAT THE ELECTION WAS A REFUTATION OF LIBERALISM. NOTHING MORE, NOTHING LESS, AND NOTHING ILLEGAL.

Perfectly said. It is very funny how liberals think that the people who were supposed to vote for them are so stupid that they can't even press the right button to vote. Of course that pretty much sounds like most of the liberals I know.

[Nickdfresh]

E-vote goes smoothly, but experts skeptical
No paper trail means software glitches, tampering may go unnoticed
Thursday, November 4, 2004 Posted: 10:43 AM EST (1543 GMT)




MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- After only scattered problems in electronic voting's biggest day ever in the United States, with roughly 40 million people casting digital ballots, voting equipment company executives crowed.

To them, the relatively smooth election was a vindication of paperless touch-screen systems.

For more than a year, computer scientists and voting rights advocates had vigorously assailed the nation's 175,000 touch-screen machines as insecure and unreliable, prone to software bugs, hackers and hardware failures.

Some naysayers had even predicted worst-case scenarios in which the ATM-like computers deleted or altered votes, machines overheated and crashed under record turnout.

That's not to say that electronic voting was trouble-free.

On Tuesday, poll workers in New Orleans had numerous problems operating the equipment. On Election Day during early voting, several dozen voters in six states reported difficulty selecting candidates, apparently due to miscalibration.

Tuesday's vote was not marred, however, by the problems that plagued primaries earlier this year -- power outages, missing memory cartridges, machines that displayed the wrong ballots and suspicious delays in reporting results.

"It was a very positive day for the American voting system generally and for electronic voting machines particularly," said Harris Miller, president of the industry trade group Information Technology Association of America, which represents voting equipment companies. "The machines performed beautifully ... Instead of theories about catastrophes, the simple reality is that the machines produce accurate results and the voters love them."

Computer scientists reserved judgment.

Many acknowledged that the hardware performed well. But software errors may have changed results, they said. The vast majority of touch screens in the United States do not produce paper records. And that means, critics say, that the machines could alter or delete ballots without anyone noticing.

"What has most concerned scientists are problems that are not observable, so the fact that no major problems were observed says nothing about the system," said David Jefferson, a computer scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. "The fact that we had a relatively smooth election yesterday does not change at all the vulnerability these systems have to fraud or bugs."

Avi Rubin, one of the nation's leading critics of e-voting, said he was relieved and encouraged that the machines didn't fail en masse on Election Day.

But Rubin, who worked in Maryland as a poll judge Tuesday, still supports major changes in election technology -- including requirements that the machines produce paper records, and that independent researchers be permitted to examine their software for problems.

"I've been saying all along that my biggest fear is that someone would program a machine to give a wrong answer," said Rubin, a Johns Hopkins computer scientist. "If that were to happen, the machine would still work fine -- we just wouldn't know it."

Statisticians at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and California Institute of Technology are asking county election officials throughout the nation for raw election data and hope to perform "forensic tests" that could take at least a month. The fledgling U.S. Election Assistance Commission is also compiling data and plans to issue a report later this month.

Research will include comparisons of the number of voters and the number of ballots cast in random precincts, an attempt to determine whether votes were mysteriously lost.

According to an MIT/CalTech study, 8.2 percent of touch-screen votes in senatorial elections between 1998 and 2000 were lost -- more than any other system except lever machines, which lost 9.5 percent of votes.

Other critics said comfortable, sometimes predictable margins of victory in states with electronic voting -- Bush in Georgia and Florida, Kerry in California and Maryland -- will minimize scrutiny of touch-screen results.

A razor-thin outcome could have prompted a recount, but it would have likely been challenged in court because votes cast on touch screens -- everywhere but in Nevada -- cannot be manually recounted owing to the lack of a paper trail.

Ohio, where votes were still being counted Wednesday, does not rely heavily on electronic systems.

"We've resolved in our heads to provide scrutiny only when the election is close, and that's a bad way of approaching it," said Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, chairwoman of the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition. "We need to apply scrutiny every time so we know we have a healthy process." More than half of Florida voters cast electronic ballots.

David Bear, spokesman for Diebold Inc., which has about 45,000 machines installed nationwide, said more counties will switch to touch screens -- particularly for early voting.

Because they can toggle between ballots in dozens of precincts, election officials can consolidate polling places for early voting, reducing lines on Election Day.

The machines also toggle between languages and can be equipped with headphones for blind voters.

Bear dismissed the notion that comfortable margins obscured problems.

"There was no dodging of a bullet," Bear said. "The fact of the matter is, electronic voting is a better way of voting because touch screens are more accurate and they meet people's special needs."



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