if this will be taped for later viewing if not? They are debating the last "election" issues tonight.
Mark your calendars, Next Friday 10/14 Freeman v Mitofsky
Edited on Sat Oct-08-05 10:36 PM by texpatriot2004
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=54651PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 6 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Two experts face-off in lively lectures and discussion about the utility of exit polls when compared to official counts, the potential for election fraud and the role of statistics in adjudicating critical issues of public importance. The University of Pennsylvania's departments of Center for Organizational Dynamics and Political Science and the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Statistical Association (ASAP) will host the debate.
Like most politically savvy Americans, Steve Freeman Ph.D., was glued to the television on election night, 2004. As he poured over exit polling data on CNN's website, he was fairly confident John Kerry was in the lead by a projected 5 million votes. But after all the votes were tallied, especially in the battleground states such as Ohio, the final tally swung well beyond the exit poll's margin of error to favor the President.
But unlike most Americans, Freeman holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Studies, and is a Visiting Scholar at Penn's Center for Organizational Dynamics where he teaches research methods, including polling. His natural curiosity and academic diligence led him to research the issue in as much detail as possible, and the results appear in his forthcoming book on the matter titled, Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? to be published next month by Seven Stories Press. His thesis is that the official explanation for the difference between exit poll and official results ("Within Precinct Error" or WPE) -- that across the country Kerry voters participated at a higher rate -- is unsupported by the data. Instead, the WPE is statistically significantly correlated with election administration variables such as Republican gubernatorial control, state electoral importance and voting technology. These relationships are inconsistent with theses of polling bias, but consistent with theses of electoral fraud.
In direct counterpoint, Warren J. Mitofsky, a fellow of the American Statistical Association, and President of Mitofsky International, which conducted the exit polling for the 2004 election on behalf of the National Election Pool, believes Freeman's view regarding election fraud is not statistically accurate. Mitofsky contends that such "conspiracy theorists" after the election mistakenly claimed the exit polls validated their claim. He believes there was no evidence in the exit polls to substantiate these claims. Instead, he contends that on election day the misinformation about the exit polls was spread by inexperienced people trying to make sense of complex statistical data. Mitofsky is currently writing a book on exit polling.