(Edited for more enticing subject line)
I posted this today, and it didn't exactly catch fire, but I think it is important...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1104765In that post, I pointed out how CNN is now presenting an AVERAGE of the top five polls, which happen to be, I am fairly sure, the same top five polling orgs who just recently banded together to provide us with "exit polling" on November 2. I think this is very, very serious. If we cannot trust them to deliver real polling information, and they are so obviously neck deep up BushCo's pooper, how can we expect anything they report on November 2 to be accurate?
IOW, is this the perfect set-up to report the bad news to us..."Yes, Bush won in all of the BBV precincts with no paper trail, but guess what...OUR EXIT POLLING BACKS IT UP!" Don't think so? Read the links below. The media giants have much to gain with a BushCo win. DON'T PUT ANYTHING PAST THEM!
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Dissident Voices - It Doesn't Add UpIt doesn't add up. Why is Voter News Service (VNS) really going out of business? That's only one of many questions that dog VNS, a private consortium of the major news organizations that allegedly projected election night winners using exit polls. VNS is owned by ABC News, The Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and NBC News. But VNS has always conducted its operations in a highly secretive manner.
I want to know why VNS sent surveys to counties asking them for information about the kinds of voting machines the counties used? Why should VNS care? What do voting machines have to do with exit poll projections? The voting machine industry is completely dominated by Republicans. Many people believe that the major news networks are also dominated by Republican ownership. Is there a connection between VNS closing its doors, the increased use of computerized voting machines, and the growing disparity between pre-election polling predictions and election results - a disparity that appears to heavily favor Republican candidates? Are we witnessing election fraud on a massive scale and is VNS involved?
One reason VNS is shutting down could NOT be, as VNS spokespeople continue to claim, that they screwed up the 2000 election exit polling in Florida. Any comprehensive review of the Florida vote count proves that VNS's projection was correct...Gore would have won Florida handily had it not been for uncounted "over-votes", the notorious butterfly ballot, and the illegal removal of 91,000 names of mostly black and Democratic registered voters from the rolls by a Texas firm hired by Jeb Bush's Secretary of State.
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles/Landes_VNS-Suspicion.htm=====
Voter News Service: What Went Wrong?<snip>
"Everyone could smell this coming months in advance," says Joseph Lenski, co-founder of Edison Media Research, a Somerville, N.J., firm that provided supplemental polling data for CNN. "VNS had been trying to rewrite and retool the system for years. This was just the most recent attempt and it failed miserably."
<snip>
"It was a joke," one political analyst at a major television network told Baseline. "It became obvious to everyone that this wasn't going to work. There wasn't enough testing. There was not enough collaboration between the networks and the IT people. And, worse, there was nothing we could do about it. You can't postpone an election."
Network executives quickly concluded they would not use the bulk of the data they were able to collect, particularly the exit-polling information. Projecting winners and losers in various races would take several hours longer than in the past.
http://www.baselinemag.com/print_article/0,3668,a=35729,00.asp=======
From NetworkAmerica.org, beneath picture of old paper-stuffed VNS ballot box
( This addendum, in red, was added on November 11, 2000. This page has been on our website since mid 1996, shortly after we took the video and snapped the pictures you see. Thanks to the efforts of all of our associates across the nation in getting this word out -- as of election day, 2000 -- we have forced all five Big TV Networks to "go to confession" on their own national TV networks -- admitting the truth of the significance of these pictures and what we posted in 1996. The TV Networks have admitted they all get their exit polls from Voter News Service in numerous articles and TV spots aired around election day, November 2000. These pictures and this article explain why, on election night 2000, ALL the networks called Florida for Gore, then all reversed the call; then a few hours later ALL called Florida for W. Bush, then all TOGETHER reversed the call; and so on. This page and these pictures explain why. Now let's all go forward and completely destroy the credibility of the five Big TV Networks, - on the way to restoring verifiable, honest elections and control over our nation's future.) End of addendum added November 11, 2000.)
http://www.networkamerica.org/vns_box_comment.htm