Right Wing likes theories about exit polls and voting machines

[Cocoa]

I didn't believe it when the RW did this with Hugo Chavez, and I don't believe it now.

The voting reform I find credible is the kind that focuses on assuring ACCCESS, not endless irresponsible questioning of results and spreading of cynicism and undermining confidence.

Notice the two elements in this WSJ ed. page: exit polls and voting machines:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110005494

<snip>

In the early hours of Monday, the Electoral Council's president (who had imposed a gag order on all exit polls until a full audit of the vote had been completed) issued a statement declaring that the computer votes had been tallied and that the government had won the referendum with 58% of the vote. The announcement came in a vacuum, without an audit, with no verification whatsoever from the international observers, and over the indignant protest of two of the five council members, who publicly questioned the result's transparency.

The opposition, understandably shocked and demoralized, insisted on a hand-count of all computer voting receipts as the only way of settling the dramatic disparity between exit polls that showed 58% to 41% in favor of the recall and the announced result of 58% to 41% in favor of retaining Col. Chávez. Later that morning the most important observer, former President Jimmy Carter, declared that he was shown the computer tally by government supporters and that everything seemed in order. Mr. Carter then left Venezuela, and the opposition groups that had put their faith in him to facilitate a peaceful resolution to the crisis. Mr. Carter, who was vociferous and insistent about patience, transparency and hand-tallies during the Florida recount, left Venezuela to attend Mrs. Carter's birthday party.

Many in the opposition are baffled by the inverse relationship between the projected numbers and those reported by the Chávez regime. One possible clue to this remarkable phenomenon lies with the companies hired to supply the voting machines and the software. Smartmatic Corp., a Florida company that has never before supplied election machinery, is owned by two Venezuelans. The software came from Bizta Software, owned by the same two people. The Miami Herald recently revealed that the Chávez regime spent $200,000 last year to purchase 28% of Bizta and put a government official and longtime Chávez ally on the board. After the story broke, Bizta bought back the government-held shares and the official resigned from the board. But not until after the two companies were granted a significant part of the $91 million contract for the referendum. Executives at both Smartmatic and Bizta have denied any political allegiance to the Chávez regime and have issued public

[papau]

1. WSJ egg on face when paper trail verified machine totals - something Bush

and GOP election results never do.

So Bush fraud is OK since that was with machines made in US by companies controlled by GOP.

And Smartmatic Corp and Bizta Software, a proven honest company, will never sell into US election needs - at least as long as the WSJ has anything to do with it.

And it is cute that the con game exit polls are OK if they give a right wing result (a review of the exit poll methods used in Venezuela showed why they were off - unlike our exit polls where we must make ridiculous assumptions to get from the exit poll to the recorded vote)

[Boredtodeath]

2. Smartmatic bought Sequoia last year

So, yes, they are already IN the US market.

[Cocoa]

3. did they do a manual recount?

do you have a link for that?

[papau]

6. Ir is in the DU archives - a random selection of reporting areas were

reviewed -

and the review was rather easy as the system was to deposit a paper ballot/trail as each voter voted. the boxes with those paper ballots were opened - and counted - and they confirmed the machine count.

[Cocoa]

4. they like probabilities too

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005586

Mr. Hausmann told us that he and Mr. Rigoban also "found very clear trails of fraud in the statistical record" and a probability of less than 1% that the anomalies observed could be pure chance. To put it another way, they think the chance is 99% that there was electoral fraud.

[eridani]

5. Audit of the Results of the Presidential Recall Referendum in Venezuela

http://www.ciaonet.org/wps/car64/

The following questions are expected to be answered by this audit of the manual recount of voting receipts (comprobantes de votación) in the ballot boxes:

Does the electronic result transmitted by the voting machines (shown on the respective tally sheets) coincide with the manual recount of the receipts deposited in the respective ballot boxes, or not? Is there a discernable bias in the discrepancies found in favor of either the “Yes” votes or the “No” votes?

To that end, the audit compared the results obtained by a manual recount of the receipts for the YES and NO options with the results that had been generated by the voting machines and then transmitted to the National Electoral Council (CNE) totalization system. In all, 16 observers from The Carter Center and 20 observers from the Organization of American States observed as CNE auditors sorted and counted more than 135,000 voting receipts. International observers contributed 1,700 hours of work over three days and CNE auditors, Comando Maisanta witnesses, and another group of European observers also put in a myriad of hours to complete the task at hand. Both the Comando Maisanta and Coordinadora Democrática were invited to witness the audit, however, the latter declined participation.

Full text (PDF, 11 pages, 96.5 KB)