Were the Early Exit Polls a GOP Fraud?

[Bill Bored]

As most of you probably know, Dick Morris has decided that the early pre-red-shift exit polls that showed Kerry winning by a comfortable margin were the result of a vast left-wing conspiracy led by the pollsters themselves and, of all things, the mainstream corporate media, to suppress GOP voter turnout in the western states. See:

Now, I don't know about you, but any time I see my candidate's chances for victory going down the crapper, I try to get as many people to vote for him or her as I possibly can without getting arrested or getting my face broken in the process. Not exactly voter suppression.

So here's another spin on Morris's conspiracy theory, which at least I as a relative newbie here haven't heard yet:

Suppose the leakage of the early exit polls was a GOP maneuver?

Let's look at this from Karl Rove's point of view:

No one seriously thought that G. W. Bush would win a second term by a large margin, so there were only two possibilities before the election: a Bush loss or a narrow Bush victory.

Let's say Bush lost. The early exit polls would have been correct -- maybe not perfect -- but probably within their margin of error. So a leaked bogus poll, arranged somehow by the Bush campaign, would have faded into history like yesterday's weather forecast. A week after the election, few would remember it at all, much less question its authenticity, or that of the actual election.

But say Bush actually won. Now we have an exit poll that smacks of election fraud! But so far (and the night is still young), who has benefited from this anomaly?

Well, the Greens and Libertarian parties have garnered a lot of attention and respect for their recount efforts in Ohio, and deservedly so. That's good if you believe in a pluralistic democracy. It would be even better if we had some form of proportional representation in which even the losing parties can gain some representatives in the legislature. Unfortunately for the Glibs, as some have called them (no offense intended), in our republic we do not.

But unless the election is overturned or some massive fraud is uncovered, the clear beneficiary of a bogus early exit poll favoring John Kerry is the Republican party itself and here's why: We now have a situation where we Democrats are between a rock and a hard place and I hope we know it. If our leaders too vigorously pursue the charges of fraud, they would be seen as sore losers and relentlessly attacked by the right-wing media. But if they stand by and do nothing, they alienate their constituency, particularly the grassroots and progressives among us who, unlike our corporate donors looking for favors, actually do care which party is in power.

Disaffected progressive Democrats may flock to the Greens, and those who have gotten so fed up with everything having to do with the government may become Libertarians.

We cannot afford to lose these people who actually may have won us this election, or will have a pretty good chance (assuming the absence of future election fraud) of winning us the next one, given the results of four more years of the worst president in our history.

My point is that if the early exit polls were wrong, as Morris suggests, and it turns out there is no out and out election fraud, the bogus polls are more likely to be a Rovian move to cause an implosion of our party than anything else. And who puts the finishing touch on the scam by directing our attention and that of the mainstream media away from the possibility that the GOP has manipulated the exit polls by immediately suggesting that we did so? Dick Morris.

Fortunately though, we have Ohio, which by any reasonable measure was a national disgrace. Even if there is no actual fraud uncovered, the tactics of voter suppression, misdirection and disinformation employed there warrant a full investigation. Our party can avoid the implosion by vigorously supporting these efforts in solidarity with the Glibs and more importantly, with ourselves.

So what do the rest of you think?

[ClintCooper2003]

1. One thing is for certain. The exit polls on CNN.com were NOT part of a...

GOP conspiracy and they showed Kerry winning.

[Yupster]

2. In the internet age

the exit polls are going to be leaked -- probably by ten different people in the first 15 minutes.

[stirringstill]

3. Complex

One thing is clear and that is the way NEP and before it VNS and its fore-runners operate is very secretive. Why? The whole drama of election night has been largely controlled since 1964 by a select few through a process hidden from the people/voters. Choosing elected officials is the core of a Democracy and as a nation many consider one vital function of this powerful consortium is to provide that critical perception that "the people have spoken" by elected X as President. Confidence and pride and faith in the system is projected. The shape and character of this consortium has changed over time and it is not clear to me why, but exit polling has never been characterized at least in America as a way of verifying the validity of the vote count. Why? Because the vote count is assumed to be correct, since this is America, the world's greatest Democracy. The exit polls were meant it seems to provide data about the the opinions of voters on certain issues and the like. In a more naive and less wired time, the raw and supposedly incorrect exit polls would most likely have been buried and then forgotten within a few news cycles. Well, no more.

If one assumes the polls were wrong, then it seems to have favored Bush overall since it could help boost Bush's chances of people going to the polls in the afternoon and evening. Interestingly, in 2002 Rove leaked incorrect poll numbers showing Jeb polling poorly to help mobilize his base. The same could have occured on Nov. 2, since the leaking of these numbers resulted in Rush and others screaming go vote Bush cause that Frenchy Kerry is winning. But, it seems unlikely to me that Rove would have done this to the exit polls. Mitofsky or at least his computers would have to be compromised. A similar effect would likely have occured if Rove had simply had some poor Bush poll numbers leaked the day before the election and then had a talking point sent to every body such as Rush to say all day long Kerry will win if you don't go vote Bush.

I doubt shadier pro-Kerry elements would have used such a tactic since release of the numbers could suppress Kerry votes and using them to challenge an election that could not be challenged by other means would be impossible with exit polls numbers alone. I just do not see any way they ultimately benefit Kerry. Exit poll numbers should not help Kerry if the actual votes are not there to support those numbers. The other possibility is that the Mitofsky had flawed methodology such as poor precinct selection.

My guess is that the exit polls were fairly accurate and that the vote was manipulated.

[izzie]

4. For what it is worth, my take.

I asked another women to stop and take the poll. No one was doing it. Be interested how many people took it. It is also the first time I did it when voting.So who did do it?

[KeireG]

5. Absoultely not.

Of the exit polls released at that time, the data of numerous states fell within the normal margin of error. That means the exit polling was right, except for in those swing states. So that batch of data was wholly accurate.

[TruthIsAll]

6. More spin. Stretching. Strawman. Fiction.

Was 86 off 88 touchscreen incidents where votes for Kerry came up Bush also part of the plan?

There is no end to the excuses you can come up with.
You are spinning like a top.
Nice try.

Now get real.

[New Earth]

8. w00t

[Bill Bored]

10. I think one of those incidents was a mechanical lever machine in NY County

That's Manhattan for those who aren't aware. No touch screens there.

And of all the millions of votes cast on these contraptions, why were there only 88 reported incidents? Suppose one in 1,000 was reported. That's still only 88,000. More than that needed to hack the vote. And I still say whoever wrote the code to do this would be smart enough to make it invisible on the screen. And in FL, the so-called Dixiecrat effect of Dems voting for Bush was only evident in the OpScan counties -- not the touch screen ones.

Lots of questions, not enough answers I'm afraid.

[TruthIsAll]

13. It's an indicator of something nefarious. 86 of 88. That's Big.

No need to extrapolate or guess at how many similar incidents there were which were not reported.

The machines were likely hacked for Bush in different ways - at the voting booth and later when the votes were tabulated.

This sample was just an indication.
86 of 88. Don't try to spin it. You can't.

"And I still say whoever wrote the code to do this would be smart enough to make it invisible on the screen".
BULL. No one coder is so smart as to write perfect code which will never fail on every machine. There is no such animal.

I see a pattern here.

[Bill Bored]

15. Here's the pattern

TIA,

Let's say for example, static electricity, which is quite common in the dry Autumn election season, can change the vote, and the programmers have to decide which way it will be changed. So they chose Bush. I.e., the code defaults to Bush, or the incumbent, or the first name on the screen, or the Republican, or whatever. Maybe if there were a Dem incumbent, it would default to him. We don't know because we don't have one, at least not as president unless you want to count Al Gore of course! I don't know if the order of the candidates is the same on every touch screen, but it could just be that Bush's position on the "ballot" is such that he's the default. Or it could have been planned that way.

The same thing could happen if you inadvertently touch more than one choice at a time. You have a logical AND condition which, if allowed, would be an overvote. If you set this up as an EXCLUSIVE OR, you get an undervote. But it could also be set up to default to one candidate every time: Bush.

Something like this could be done without any hacking whatsoever. It could just be sloppy coding, or it could be deliberately built into the code. We should try to find out if Bush was in the same position on every screen.

But here's the problem: as long as the voter is given the opportunity to correct these errors, and this can be done in a reasonable period of time, I doubt that a court of law will rule that it's fraud. (I'm not a lawyer however.)

Stuff like this should come out in the certification process for these machines, such as it is. But Bev and probably others have shown that this may not be particularly rigorous, haven't they?

[idealista]

17. I'm having trouble with this "calibration" excuse

for why all these touch screens switch from Kerry to Bush. I mean, when I use my computer, or any other computer, and I click on something, I don't just get some other thing somewhere else on the screen! And I NEVER have to "calibrate" my computer! I mean, I never go to buy something on the internet and end up with a shopping cart of miscellaneous junk I didnt' want!

When I read "calibrate" I think of some old mechanical devise where the knob has gotten slowly shifted out of position. Pretty low tech.

Maybe "calibrate" has a computer meaning specific to these types of machines, but still I have trouble picturing it - "Oh, the computer screen has slipped down a notch, (what - like double vision?) we have to ratchet it back in place!"

[Bill Bored]

21. I believe a touch screen can be "calibrated"

I'm not claiming any great expertise, but if it's based on the principle of body capacitance, that's an analog parameter and must be calibrated in order to be converted into something digital. I can see how a static charge could mess this up too because capacitors store charge. Clicking a mouse is not the same -- that's already digital -- it's either ON or OFF. The question is why the glitches would favor one candidate over another but I can see how, if he's in the same screen position on most or all the machines, that this could happen.

My whole point in this thread is to suggest that fraud or not, the Repukes will use this issue to divide our party which at the moment is the best hope anyone really has of defeating them. We need to be mindful of this as we continue to chase fraud.

[tinfoil_beret]

18. Error! Does not compute!

If the machine does not allow overvotes but does allow undervotes, the default on a conflict must be "NO CANDIDATE!"

Arbitrarily selecting a candidate for the voter is NOT the answer.

Defaulting to any candidate probably violates the 14th Amendment.

[Bill Bored]

22. Right, no candidate, which is an undervote

and we've also seen the glitch where there's no vote for pres. on a straight party ticket. Could this be because someone inadvertantly selected 2 candidates for pres. at the top?

[KittyWampus]

7. Exit Polls Only Deviated In States With Electronic Voting Equipment

[Bill Bored]

9. Note that I'm not dismissing the idea of actual election fraud!

TIA,

I'm just rebutting Morris's argument that said WE hacked the exit polls.

There would be no way this could benefit Kerry and PLENTY of ways it would benefit the Repukes by motivating them to get out the vote, and by suggesting the possibility of fraud, causing blame and division within the Democratic party and defections to third parties who have been more quick to protest and demand recounts.

In the unlikely event that there was no systematic fraud (even though it's easier to hack a couple of Mitofsky's servers than the number of central tabulators required to swing the vote), I think this is something we should consider.

It's a replay of Dan Rather's National Guard documents story. By casting doubt about the authenticity of those papers, they get the public to doubt the veracity of the story itself. By casting doubt about the exit polls and/or the vote, they get us to question our own party's commitment to fair and honest elections.

There is also the possibility that both election fraud AND exit poll tampering occurred. They are not mutually exclusive, are they?

[RaulVB]

11. Morris got the right idea...

But had the wrong hackers in mind.

BTW, Morris is a repulsive individual.

[Red State Blues]

12. Florida Panhandle and California

"Now, I don't know about you, but any time I see my candidate's chances for victory going down the crapper, I try to get as many people to vote for him or her as I possibly can without getting arrested or getting my face broken in the process. Not exactly voter suppression."

This is the same song and dance they've sung before and no one ever calls them on it. Either this is yet another example of blatant lying or you may be on to one of the biggest single differences between Dems and R.s. I've never understood the supposed urge to "vote for the winner", that they float from time to time as well. Is it possible that they are just such blind followers that they actually believe this or actually think this way?

[Bill Bored]

14. Well we Dems do tend to care more about the underdog

But I think no matter where your candidate is in the polls, you still want him to win, or at least make a respectable showing regardless of your party. I don't buy their argument at all.

[alittlelark]

16. uh, yeah................

[troubleinwinter]

19. BillBored, I am bored.

[lthuedk]

20. Nonsense. The early exit polls were as reliable as always. Go away.