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Who won?
doom writes "I think they call them "exit polls" because people
bolt for the exits when you mention them, but I'm still
fascinated by the subject myself, and this book is one of the
reasons why. In Was the 2004 Presidential Election
Stolen?, the central focus is, of course, on the infamous
exit-poll discrepancies of the 2004 US Presidential election;
but the authors also put it into context: they discuss the
2000 election, the irregularities in Ohio in 2004, the electronic
voting machines issues, and the media's strange reluctance to
report on any of these problems. Further, in the chapter "How
did America really vote?", they compare the indications of the
raw exit-poll data to other available polling data. Throughout,
Freeman and Bleifuss do an excellent job of presenting arguments
based on statistical analysis in a clear, concise way." Read the rest of doom's review
Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen?
author
Steve Freeman & Joel Bleifuss
pages
265
publisher
Seven Stories Press
rating
9
reviewer
doom
ISBN
1583226877
summary
Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count
The heart of the book in my opinion, is Chapter 5, "The inauguration eve exit-poll report": The Edison and Mitofsky firms that conducted the NEP exit polls later released a report trying to explain how they could have gotten it so far wrong. Freeman and Bleifuss, of course, take issue with the presumption that the discrepancies must be "errors", and argue in a different direction. This section makes an exciting read (in a nerdy sort of way) it's an impressive piece of statistical judo: Freeman and Bleifuss take on Edison/Mitofsky with their own data, and totally shred their conclusions. The authors show: That the exit-poll discrepancies had a statistically significant correlation with the use of electronic voting machines, with races in battleground states, and in almost all cases favored the Republicans. The "Reluctant Bush Respondant" theory looks extremely unlikely: response rates actually look slightly better in Bush strongholds than in Kerry strongholds; and while media skepticism remains strong among conservatives, it has been on the rise among Democrats, and yet the data shows no shift in relative avoidance of pollsters. They also deal with the various other excuses that were floated shortly after the election: The discrepancies can't be shrugged off with an "exit polls are not reliable" — theory shows that they should be better than any other survey data, and history shows that they always have been pretty reliable. There was no upswing of support for Bush throughout election day — that impression was entirely an artifact of the media "correcting" the exit-poll figures to match the official results. One of the book's authors, Steven Freeman, was one of the first to examine the exit-poll discrepancies, and as a professor at University of Pennsylvania with a background in survey design, he was well equipped to begin delving into the peculiarities he had noticed.
Overall, this is an excellent book for people interested in evaluating the data; with lots of graphs that make it easy to do informal estimates of the strength of their conclusions (just eye-balling the scatter, the correlations they point to look real, albeit a little loose, as you might expect). There's also an appendix with a very clear exposition of the the concept of statistical significance, and how it applies to this polling data. There are of course, limits to what one can conclude just from the exit-poll discrepancies: "We reiterate that this does not prove the official vote count was fraudulent. What it does say is that the discrepancy between the official count and the exit polls can't be just a statistical fluke, but commands some kind of systematic explanation: Either the exit poll was deeply flawed or else the vote count was corrupted. "
This is a remarkably restrained book: unlike many authors addressing this controversial subject, Freeman and Bleifuss have resisted the temptation to rant or speculate or even to editorialize very much. Freeman claims that he is not a political person (and adds "I despise the Democrats"); possibly this has helped him to maintain his neutrality and focus on the facts of the case.
Personally, I found this book to be something of a revelation: in the confusion immediately after the 2004 election, I had the impression that the people who wanted to believe that it was legitimate at least had some wiggle room. There was some disagreement about the meaning of the exit polls: there was that study at Berkeley that found significant problems, but then the MIT study chimed in saying there wasn't, so who do you believe? The thing is, the MIT guys later admitted that they got it wrong: they used the "corrected" data, not the originally reported exit poll results. The media never covered that development, and I missed it myself...
On the subject of electronic voting machines, They include a chapter discussing electronic voting in general which covers ground that is by now familiar with most readers here: the strange case of Wally O'Dell and Diebold; and also the lesser known problems with ES&S. Have you heard this one? "In 1992, Hagel, then an investment banker and president of the holding company McCarthy & Co., became chairman of American Information Systems, which was to become ES&S in 1999. [...] In the 1996 elections, Hagel launched his political career with two stunning upsets. He won a primary victory in Nebraska [...] despite the fact that he was not well known. Then, in the general election, Hagel was elected to the Senate in what Business Week described as 'an unexpected 1996 landslide victory over Ben Nelson, Nebraska's popular Democratic governor.'"
My experience is that a lot of people need to hear this point: "The voting machine company Datamark, which became American Information Systems and is now known as ES&S, was founded in 1980 by two brothers, Bob and Todd Urosevich. Today, Todd is a vice president at ES&S and Bob is CEO of Diebold Election Systems."
It's impossible to see how you can come away from this situation without seeing that we badly need reform of the electoral system: even if you don't believe the 2004 election was "stolen", how do you know the next one isn't going to be? A paper trail that can actually be recounted would be a nice start, eh? But only a start. As the author's point out: "We devoted a chapter to the ills of electronic voting, but a critical lesson of the 2004 election is that not only DREs, but all kinds of voting machine systems are suspect. Edison/Mitofsky data showed that while hand counted ballots accurately reflected exit-poll survey results, counts from all the major categories of voting machines did not."
In one short passage, the authors list a few "grounds for hope", but following up on these points is not encouraging: The Diebold-injunction law suit in California brought by VoterAction has since been denied and one attempt at a paper trail amendment, HR 550 has stalled out.
If you're looking for an answer to the question posed by the book's title, the authors conclude: "So how did America really vote? Every independent measure points to a Kerry victory of about 5 percentage points in the popular vote nationwide, a swing of 8 to 10 million votes from the official count."
Of the many and various potentially depressing books out there about the state of the United States, I recommend this one highly: it addresses a critical set of issues that everything else depends on.
You can purchase Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
The heart of the book in my opinion, is Chapter 5, "The inauguration eve exit-poll report": The Edison and Mitofsky firms that conducted the NEP exit polls later released a report trying to explain how they could have gotten it so far wrong. Freeman and Bleifuss, of course, take issue with the presumption that the discrepancies must be "errors", and argue in a different direction. This section makes an exciting read (in a nerdy sort of way) it's an impressive piece of statistical judo: Freeman and Bleifuss take on Edison/Mitofsky with their own data, and totally shred their conclusions. The authors show: That the exit-poll discrepancies had a statistically significant correlation with the use of electronic voting machines, with races in battleground states, and in almost all cases favored the Republicans. The "Reluctant Bush Respondant" theory looks extremely unlikely: response rates actually look slightly better in Bush strongholds than in Kerry strongholds; and while media skepticism remains strong among conservatives, it has been on the rise among Democrats, and yet the data shows no shift in relative avoidance of pollsters. They also deal with the various other excuses that were floated shortly after the election: The discrepancies can't be shrugged off with an "exit polls are not reliable" — theory shows that they should be better than any other survey data, and history shows that they always have been pretty reliable. There was no upswing of support for Bush throughout election day — that impression was entirely an artifact of the media "correcting" the exit-poll figures to match the official results. One of the book's authors, Steven Freeman, was one of the first to examine the exit-poll discrepancies, and as a professor at University of Pennsylvania with a background in survey design, he was well equipped to begin delving into the peculiarities he had noticed.
Overall, this is an excellent book for people interested in evaluating the data; with lots of graphs that make it easy to do informal estimates of the strength of their conclusions (just eye-balling the scatter, the correlations they point to look real, albeit a little loose, as you might expect). There's also an appendix with a very clear exposition of the the concept of statistical significance, and how it applies to this polling data. There are of course, limits to what one can conclude just from the exit-poll discrepancies: "We reiterate that this does not prove the official vote count was fraudulent. What it does say is that the discrepancy between the official count and the exit polls can't be just a statistical fluke, but commands some kind of systematic explanation: Either the exit poll was deeply flawed or else the vote count was corrupted. "
This is a remarkably restrained book: unlike many authors addressing this controversial subject, Freeman and Bleifuss have resisted the temptation to rant or speculate or even to editorialize very much. Freeman claims that he is not a political person (and adds "I despise the Democrats"); possibly this has helped him to maintain his neutrality and focus on the facts of the case.
Personally, I found this book to be something of a revelation: in the confusion immediately after the 2004 election, I had the impression that the people who wanted to believe that it was legitimate at least had some wiggle room. There was some disagreement about the meaning of the exit polls: there was that study at Berkeley that found significant problems, but then the MIT study chimed in saying there wasn't, so who do you believe? The thing is, the MIT guys later admitted that they got it wrong: they used the "corrected" data, not the originally reported exit poll results. The media never covered that development, and I missed it myself...
On the subject of electronic voting machines, They include a chapter discussing electronic voting in general which covers ground that is by now familiar with most readers here: the strange case of Wally O'Dell and Diebold; and also the lesser known problems with ES&S. Have you heard this one? "In 1992, Hagel, then an investment banker and president of the holding company McCarthy & Co., became chairman of American Information Systems, which was to become ES&S in 1999. [...] In the 1996 elections, Hagel launched his political career with two stunning upsets. He won a primary victory in Nebraska [...] despite the fact that he was not well known. Then, in the general election, Hagel was elected to the Senate in what Business Week described as 'an unexpected 1996 landslide victory over Ben Nelson, Nebraska's popular Democratic governor.'"
My experience is that a lot of people need to hear this point: "The voting machine company Datamark, which became American Information Systems and is now known as ES&S, was founded in 1980 by two brothers, Bob and Todd Urosevich. Today, Todd is a vice president at ES&S and Bob is CEO of Diebold Election Systems."
It's impossible to see how you can come away from this situation without seeing that we badly need reform of the electoral system: even if you don't believe the 2004 election was "stolen", how do you know the next one isn't going to be? A paper trail that can actually be recounted would be a nice start, eh? But only a start. As the author's point out: "We devoted a chapter to the ills of electronic voting, but a critical lesson of the 2004 election is that not only DREs, but all kinds of voting machine systems are suspect. Edison/Mitofsky data showed that while hand counted ballots accurately reflected exit-poll survey results, counts from all the major categories of voting machines did not."
In one short passage, the authors list a few "grounds for hope", but following up on these points is not encouraging: The Diebold-injunction law suit in California brought by VoterAction has since been denied and one attempt at a paper trail amendment, HR 550 has stalled out.
If you're looking for an answer to the question posed by the book's title, the authors conclude: "So how did America really vote? Every independent measure points to a Kerry victory of about 5 percentage points in the popular vote nationwide, a swing of 8 to 10 million votes from the official count."
Of the many and various potentially depressing books out there about the state of the United States, I recommend this one highly: it addresses a critical set of issues that everything else depends on.
You can purchase Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
'Freeman claims that he is not a political person (and adds "I despise the Democrats")'
So hating one of the major political parties involved in that election makes him neutral?
It was all part of the evil Karl Rove trifecta of evil. First we stole the election, then we steered hurricane Katrina right into New Orleans (with the patented Karl Rove Neocon Magic Weather Machine), and to complete the hat trick we blew up the levies to flood the black parts of town. It was a great success, just like the time we went back in time with Microsoft Word 1972 edition to make a fool out of Dan Rather.
This just about sums up my sentiments for voting for either of the two major political parties.
He won the second time because they felt he was protecting them from danger and wanted to give him a chance to win the war.
Some people voted for him for that reason, agreed. The issue is whether enough people actually voted for him, for whatever reason, to have fairly elected him for this second term. A thoughtful and complete analysis of whether that happened is most welcome, I think. The fact that you're tired of thinking about it ("get over it") isn't really relevant, and I suspect that your own evident bias is a strong influence on your willingness to hear about it.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Granted, something needs explaining and voting machines are vulnerable. But what are the chances that a conspiracy of this magnitude has remained secret? Not to say that an election can't be rigged, but wouldn't there be so many people with direct involvement that it would be impossible to keep everyone silent? Until someone steps forward and says "I did X & Y at the direction of Mr Z," I'm going to lump it along side of "The CIA killed Kennedy." Possible, but lacking solid evidence.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
People are too eager to believe that the election was rigged, but they're simply outraged at the possibility that the exit polls could have been botched or rigged themselves.
I'm not saying they cheated in '04, but the '06 results don't disprove it. They can only cheat so much without getting caught. With the huge backlash in '06, it would have been much more difficult to pull off.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Seems to me it is a solution without a problem. Couldn't you avoid vote-counting concerns entirely by casting paper ballots, then allowing anyone with an interest in the counting process to witness the tally. Count the votes publicly, perhaps in a gymnasium or library, with a camera to record the counting process as well as to transmit a feed to an internet site. I believe they do something similar in Canada now. I would gladly exchange the additional time necessary to conduct the count manually with witnesses for a repeat of the Florida fiasco during the Presidential election in 2000.
Anyone who lives in or near Chicago know that poll workers and authorities have ways to adjust the totals. Nationally, I wouldn't be surprised if local polling place authorities tip it one way or another by 1-3% every two years. (Remember the Kennedy election supposedly tipped by an unlikely surge of Chicago Democrats?) However, I'd just rack it up to real democracy in action.
In 2004 I'm perfectly willing to believe (and accept) that the average pollworker (usually someone who likes stable government, whatever theit political leaning) was more willing to give W the benefit of the doubt and helped him win a squeaker. In 2006 it was hard to find people (even fans of stable government) who wouldn't have liked the current president to hit the road, so I'm not surprised the mystery surge of 2004 disappeared in 2006; even W's former fans were sick of his s*** by then.
The problem is, you can only cheat just so much without making it terribly obvious. If your candidates win all the elections all the time, everybody knows you are cheating. However, if you use cheating just to give your team an edge, you can get away with it. If the elections are close, you can flip them; if not, you would attract a lot of attention if the outcome was wildly different than all of the polls.
I heard some story somewhere that there was the same level of 'discrepancies' in the vote in 2006; but that it wasn't enough to turn elections. The author claimed that there *was* cheating, but that the turnout was so great that the cheating didn't flip the election.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
The simple truth is that, while it may be statistically unlikely, the final voting tally gives us the truth: Bush won. They may be 95% confident that he didn't, but that doesn't mean that the final 5% can't happen. It did.
Obviously he won. The question is whether or not the votes that gave him the win were genuine.
I don't know of very many people who say that GWB "engineered" anything, much less large scale election fraud. You do realize that the people in this administration number more than 1, right? You do realize that the people who would stand to gain from this kind of fraud aren't limited to people named George.
Actually, Gore won the popular vote in 2000. In addition, in case you missed it, Clinton had had 66%+ approval rating when he left office. Most political analysts now say that Gore's reluctance to embrace Clinton, coupled with how incredibly boring the man is, cost him the election. (Or, rather, made it as close as it was.) Oh, and not to mention the fact that it was the Supreme Court that handed Bush the win in 2000, stopping a recount that we now know would have resulted in a Gore win.
Except that the book we're commenting on here offers evidence that this was not what happened, and in fact it was fraud that won Bush his second term. If you would like to dispute the data, then sobeit, but making pronouncements like that doesn't make them true.
Who, exactly, are you talking to? The authors of this book never claimed to be Democrats. Furthermore, if what they're saying is true, the very foundations of our Democracy are at risk. One would think people would be a little more concerned over it.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Historically, exit polls have been amazingly accurate. Only in the last two elections have there been a wide disparity between the exit polling numbers and the official vote count. Secondly, in the last election data, why is there a wide disparity between exit polling data and the official vote count primarily in areas that used touch-screen voting with no paper trail, but yet be dead-on in areas with paper ballots?
Am I the only one sick of all these election analysis books and articles? Whats done is done already. Even if a smoking gun was exposed saying that blatant fraud was discovered in one or both elections, what would it accomplish? As much as I'd love to press reset and go back to 2000, that ain't gonna happen. We can't suddenly say all policy created in the last 7 years is invalid, that would cause as much of a mess as the last 7 years created.
Lets just say, yes there was questionable events of the last 2 elections. These are the issues in question, now that we know what to look for lets make sure it doesn't happen again. I still think there is lots of work that needs to be done, and even if we go to an all computerized system, there should be a possibly 2 form receipt form that prints out. First so the voter has in their sweaty little palms who they voted for so there is no doubt. Second, a paper record in the event of a recount is required there is a paper copy that the voter submitted as an endorsed copy of their vote, (not signed endorsed, anonymity is still protected, just turning it in is the final step of the process), and thirdly, some people just aren't comfortable with computerized voting, this way if there is any question before they walk out of the poll, they know who they voted for, and maybe even have a "receipt" for themselves just to be sure.
We don't do that to avoid the potential for two things: Mob Rule, in which people decide not to bother to go make their voice heard when it appears [to them] that it would be unheard anyway, or they jump on the bandwagon to go join the winning team, and to avoid premature calling of the vote leading to same. Interestingly, this last actually occurred during the 2000 election as one of Bush's relatives felt free to prematurely call the vote, which is credited with stopping a lot of democrats from bothering to vote.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Ronald Reagan famously said, "Trust, but verify" about the Soviet Union's disarmament. That applies here, too.
US elections should not be open to question. We should be able to audit to confirm elections, and vigorously pursue anyone who attempts to illegally influence elections.
Let's fix the system so that we can TRUST the process. That begins by being able to audit the results.
In California, we had the option to fill out a largish sheet of paper, filled on both sides with the elections and propositions. This single piece of paper contained the same information as the Electronic Voting machines. We filled in bubbles, could check our work, and then submitted them into a Diebold scanning machine.
I cringed when I saw the maker, but realized that my paper ballot was there for counting at the precinct, district or randomly selected audit. Anyone who tried to cheat, would have to change or steal my ballot.
Electronic screen voting should be reserved for special needs people, and should PRINT out the same ballot that the rest of us fill in.
That would be less expensive, faster, less prone to abuse, and absolutely verifiable.
What's wrong with that?
If they don't participate, how do you know they're republican?
Absenty votes are always mentioned seperatly spicifically because they can't be measured in exit polls.
Exit polls are the most accurate kind of polls.
The information is fresh, the process is well known.
There wasn't a 'statistical aboration' there were hugh descrepencies.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
One thing to keep in mind is that correlation != causation. The use of electronic voting machines is highly suspect, but it's not a smoking gun. It could be as simple as the voting machines were problematic for the democratic population segment. Another possibility is that the areas deploying the machines did so because they were more Republican leaning to begin with. (Remember, electronic voting was a push from Bush after the 2000 "hanging chad" scandals.)
So more evidence is still needed to determine if the election was actually stolen. Certainly, this does add credence to the possibility.
Oh, and in case anyone is wondering where I stand on this:
1. I am republican. Truth be told, I've become disgusted with both parties. Yet I'm too conservative to go libratarian.
2. I think the government should mandate that Diebold is no longer allowed to sell voting machines to the government as they are "unsuitable" to tally votes according to legal requirements.
3. If the vote was stolen, it should be exposed. As should all the dirty laundry of politicians. Sadly, too much will remain hidden.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
what shall we replace it with? the exit polls?
The point of the electoral college is similar to the point of the senate. They are both there to ensure the STATES have a voice in government. This is the United STATES of America, but people have come to believe it is the Federal Republic of America. If you believe that you personally were disenfranchised by the last 2 elections because you didn't vote for Bush (I didn't vote for Bush the last 3 times, btw) then maybe it is not so much a sign that the elecoral college is at fault, it is that the central government has grown way too powerful and has swept the individual states into irrelevancy. The best government is at the local level, where you are better aware of your governing needs than some beltway insider 1000 miles away. Next best is state government, only 100 miles away.
I do agree voting machines need a papertrail, though I am vehemently opposed to the idea of giving the voter a receipt--anything that a voter can carry out to indicate how he voted will inevitably lead to coercive voting. If the local political machine can make sure you voted "correctly," (or else!) that is no better than non-audited electronic boxes manufactured by supporters of that political machine.
More music, fewer hits
It'll only be a comma, if we're lucky.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
"Bush won because many voters, myself included, thought Bush was responsible for cleaning up his own mess, and that Kerry had absolutely no ability to do so."
While you may feel Bush was responsible for cleaning up his messes, do you feel like he actually took responsibility? If so, how do you feel that's panning out?
So you either feel Bush is meeting the expectations you had for him, or he's not. If he is, and you actually think Kerry would have done worse, then I guess that's your perogative. If he isn't meeting your expectations, I guess the real reason Bush won is because both are assholes but Bush fooled you into thinking he's not as much of one.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
"Bush won because many voters, myself included, thought Bush was responsible for cleaning up his own mess..."
Let me get this straight: You let a monkey run about throwing crap at everyone. Then, you have the opportunity to put the monkey back in his cage, but instead you let him back out so that he can clean up all the crap he threw? How's that logic working so far?
Bush and his administration are fear-mongers, pushing their plans for, funnily enough, world domination and personal profit by making your average American think we need to do things their way to survive the terrorists.
To boot, the Iraq war civilian casualties lie somewhere between 150,000 and over half a million, depending on who you ask. That's a lot of innocent people killed for a cause the world wasn't behind.
Here's a hint: you want to save the world? Cut global economics. Stop screwing other countries over with your mega-corporations underselling the locals, forcing them to give up their lives and culture to be part of your conglomerate or die. Enterpreneurs are the heart of American economics: the ability to thrive and grow and the freedom to do it is why America is a superpower economically. But it's about time we start managing the floodgates of our enthusiasm and start working WITH other countries instead of just trampling them and using what's left to sell our goods.
Oh wait no, I mean LInux! Oh wait no I mean Firefly, oh wait no, what competition was this again?
Monstar L
that the way the exit polling was conducted was flawed, and can be easily misread. This is based on comparing 2006 results to 2004 results...
2 /483
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/12/23/9122
Ok, I shouldn't say kos... as it was DemFromCT, but it did get promoted to the front page.
The nice thing about Bush winning reelection in 2004, is we can all now be assured that he deserves the Worst President Ever label.
It's just too bad it's going to take 30 years to fix the mess he's created.
See here's the problem: if exit polls reveal a higher number of Kerry votes than the actual precinct results, that means that either (a) the exit polls were systematically faulty (in some other way), (b) the elections were systematically faulty (although not necessarily rigged), or (c) some Republicans were lying. However, since we know that Republicans don't lie, that leaves us with (a) or (b), which is exactly what was claimed in the review.
Now, sure, you might point out that some people on /. are claiming to have said they voted for Kerry to exit pollsters when in fact they voted for Bush, but obviously they are lying and therefore are not Republicans.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
While generally in "free" countries, letting other know how you vote is not much of an issue, its an important safeguard when a country goes down that slippery road to being a non-free country.
The basic problem, is that with a public vote, especally when dealing with non-mainstream parties, voters can be intimidated, harrassed or or otherwise stigmatised. This may make them choose to vote for (a/the) mainstreem party, or otherwise cause their vote to come with hidden costs (thus the election is no longer fair).
To give a short and semi-plausable example, suppose the police department where to lookup in the voter records for all the people who voted for the marijuana party, and decided to monitor them more closely on the assumption that most of the people who vote for that party are stoners and thus lawbreakers. An employer looking up those same records, might suddenly start asking you to take a "random" drug test, with consiquences if you refuse.
Or cast your mind back 50 years: are you now or have you ever been a member of the communist party.
In communist russia, there was an optional anonymous vote. Anyone voting for the communist party would publically declare their vote, but if you where not voting for them you would be far more likely to use the secret ballot, so choosing a secret ballot would it itself make you suspect.
The current secret ballot system has taken a long time to get to its current form, but its fairly robust and comes with the safeguards to help protect a free society.
The USA and UK have recently been stripping away our civil liberties, but look back in history and ask why we demanded (and fought wars for) these civil liberties in the first place, we may be told that we don't need them in our modern world, but the question is not "why" we need them but "when" we would need them.
Simple; if anyone can find out how you actually voted, it's easy to use that information against you. If your boss is a fervent Republican, and you vote Democrat, it's just barely possible that you might be passed over for that promotion or raise, or perhaps caught up in the next "Workforce Reduction". As things stand, you can refrain from talking politics around your boss and nod politely when he makes some political comment you vehemently disagree with. There are laws against discrimination, but don't try to tell me that people don't get around them.
Also, it makes the purchase and sale of votes possible. "I'll pay you $100 to vote Democratic. Just bring your receipt that proves your Dem vote, and you get the cash."
-Mike
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!
And Bush was a strong candidate? Don't make me laugh! If someone like Bush is considered a credible candidate for the freakin' presidency, then all hope is lost.
... and then they built the supercollider.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Oh, and not to mention the fact that it was the Supreme Court that handed Bush the win in 2000, stopping a recount that we now know would have resulted in a Gore win.
You mean the recount of heavily Democratic counties ordered by the Democratic Florida Supreme Court that used different criteria per county, thus violating the Florida state constitution and election laws? The truth is the Supreme Court stopped the Florida Supreme Court from trying to find a way to steal the election for Gore. And all of the analysis I've seen shows that Bush would have won after most recount methods - something like 5 out of 7 different voting criteria. Get over it.
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
Historically, exit polls have been amazingly accurate. Only in the last two elections have there been a wide disparity between the exit polling numbers and the official vote count.
Historically, elections haven't been as close as the last to elections. It is far easier to correctly predict an election using polling data when the difference in vote totals exceeds the margin of error. Most of the readers of this site weren't born the last time we had an election as close as 2000 and 2004.
Secondly, in the last election data, why is there a wide disparity between exit polling data and the official vote count primarily in areas that used touch-screen voting with no paper trail, but yet be dead-on in areas with paper ballots?
Probably because people clam up and act like morons when presented with a new electronic device for the first time. Massive conspiracy that nobody leaked, coincidental series of smaller conspiracies that also weren't leaked, or people being stupid when presented with a computer... Which seems more likely to you?
I'll continue where you left of : ... hundred thousands of innocent Iraqi deaths and also responsible for the destruction of the US democracy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwmNmAcmr8s gives an example about how his party is trying to undermine the Judicial Branch.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Here Here... Other than the last two elections, where is the evidense for the original poster's claim that "They are often wildly innacurate". A person conducting the poll has no basis to make a statement like this no matter how much cooperation they think they are or are not getting during the polling. The only measure of accuracy is 'did the real results match the results predicted by the polls?' Where are the examples of the results being "wildly inaccurate" in other elections?
Keep passing the open windows...
A simple, safe, completely OSS voting system can be made with only say tens or hundreds of hours of work. The key is to make it completely secure by only requiring trust in the ballot box, which is not electronic -- everything else is directly observable by the poll workers, observers, or voter. This lets you leverage any technology out there.
Voting machine:
1. Setup linux distro with apache, tomcat, whatever
2. Install ballot web app
3. Setup CUPS printer
4. Setup firefox for kiosk mode, home page is voting app
Ballots print like this, one measure per line:
PRESIDENT: AL GORE
SENATE: JAMES WEBB
STEM-CELL: YES
During the election, voters take their printout and drop it into the ballot box. After the election these are counted individually at each polling place using a counting machine.
Counting machine:
1. Setup linux distro
2. Install ballot counter program
3. Run ballots through OCR software
4. Update counters (in realtime as scanned)
For the counting program, all it needs to do is keep a count of unique lines on the ballots as returned by the OCR. It should include a simple display showing the most frequent lines and their count (sorted by count) along with the last vote scanned. This way it doesn't need to know anything about the election in order to count it.
For the voting machine you can add fancy CSS styles, javascript to prevent accidental undervoting, screen readers, on-screen keyboard, etc. To polish the system you will want to have some specific printer hardware so the votes print on something smaller than a sheet per vote.
Very well. I have gone to Wikipedia, and gotten my facts straight:
"Ellis also admitted sharing exit poll data with his cousins by phone. After the magazine interview was published, Fox News Vice President John Moody admitted that Ellis had broken rules by sharing the data and was considering disciplinary action."
"Ellis provided CBSNews.com with a copy of a letter he says he sent to the editor of the New Yorker. In the letter, Ellis says that he "did not share with [Governor Bush] any of the information that was appearing on our screens" during two afternoon phone calls. The letter says that later in the evening "as actual vote results" came in, Ellis spoke frequently with the Bushes about "what was happening" in several states."
So he said he did not provide information to bush, but that he did provide information to "his cousins" (of which Bush is one himself.) Still the statements are not necessarily contradictory, and it is hard to imagine what Bush himself would have done with the data. Certainly it could have been used on his behalf.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
we have to first ask about the 2000 election.
bush never won legally. in Volusia County, FL one precinct tallied -16000 votes for Gore. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volusia_error
that's right, negative votes. which logically and legally is impossible. but technically possible.
since they say bush won by 500 votes, this proves that bush never won the presidency legally.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I think he is also forgetting about the absentee Ballots as well that were "Thrown Out" Regardless of who they went to I find that a bit distressing, that people serving our Country in other countries had their ballots trashed. Historically by the way these are almost mainly Republican votes. Florida is supposed to except absentee ballots postmarked by day of Election up to 10 days after the election. Yet the ballots received after the election date were not counted? I say why. Regardless of the entire process "Every Vote Should Count".
"And NOBODY ratted them out?"
There is one guy, Clint Curtis, who testified before congress that he was hired to create an election-flipping program:
"At the behest of Rep. Tom Feeney, in September 2000, he was asked to write a program for a touchscreen voting machine that would make it possible to change the results of an election undetectably. This technology, Curtis explained , could also be used in any electronic tabulation machine or scanner. Curtis assumed initially that this effort was aimed at detecting Democratic fraud, but later learned that it was intended to benefit the Republican Party."
Here's a partial transcript of his testimony (video in link):
"Because in October of 2000, I wrote a prototype for Congressman Tom Feeney [R-FL]... It would flip the vote, 51-49. Whoever you wanted it to go to and whichever race you wanted to win."
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
How would you know? There has never been a true democracy in this world. The government of Athens was not a true democracy; you had to be a racially privileged male landowner (redundant; you had to be racially privileged and most especially you had to be male to be a landowner to begin with) in order to have a vote.
In our society, we have a representative democracy. The popular vote would have elected Gore in the last two elections, but in neither case did he become our president. The proper term for this kind of government is a "republic". Is it a kind of democracy? Sure... in about the same way that chocolate chip ice cream is a kind of vanilla ice cream.
But on top of that we have disenfranchisement. We disallow voting by felons. This sounds like a good idea to begin with but what this really accomplishes is that we don't have to solve problems in our society because the people whose lives are derailed by those problems are ineligible to vote. And then we also have illegal disenfranchisement, such as two cases in the last Florida election. One, a list of voters who were allegedly felons was compiled. As the story goes, it was supposed to be checked for validity, but the organization paid to do the recount was explicitly told that they could be paid if they did not check the list. They did not. They were paid. The list contained a large number of non-felons, whose votes were discarded regardless. The other issue centered around the use of a scantron-type voting form. The reader for the forms does validation itself and it can be configured through the use of a switch on the unit to either reject mismarked forms, or silently accept them. Guess what? The switch was set to silently accept in several lower-income, predominantly-black neighborhoods, and it was set to reject in higher-income neighborhoods expected to vote mostly republican.
If you really believe that we live in a democracy here, you need to go back and look at the real situation. Here's another example; military absentee ballots are almost never counted. In a lot of situations you can expect the military to vote mostly republican - but that's not true when you've got literally thousands of soldiers standing around in the desert pissed off at you.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No, Bush won because he wasn't as depressing. He was the fun college roomate that said "it'll work out, now watch me hit this bong." Kerry on the otherhand came in as the old stuffy college dean saying, "there is a serious problem, and we're all going to need to buckle down and work." Kerry lost because everyone was over their initial 9/11 high, and were starting to see the ugly truths in the light. No one wanted to face it so they voted for Bush again.
Personally though, leaving the mess for Bush to clean up? This guy and his administration got us into a huge mess, with no plan, no funding, nothing other than the "We're Right" mentality. And though Kerry was a Giant Douche, I still voted for him. Better than that turd sandwich in a cowboy hat...
Shift happens. Fire it up.
There has been endless debate about this, but a good primer can be found here: http://www.mysterypollster.com/main/2004/11/exit_p olls_what.html
Exit polls within the US have had a shady history at best. The meme that it's only been the last two Presidential elections where discrepancies have appeared is a myth created by conspiracy nuts or people just looking to sell a few more papers. About the only thing at all consistent is the level of inaccuracy. For example Clinton's overestimation in 1992 exit polls was almost exactly the same as Kerry's in '04 but Clinton won so no one really cared that the raw polling data was off by almost 3%. There have also been significant problems with 1990, 1994 and 1998 numbers with regards to Senate and Gubernatorial races but once again, no one really cared at the time so those numbers, which were off 58% of the time (in both directions), were basically thrown down the memory hole.
Historically US exit polling results are all over the map and have only been getting worse. It also doesn't help that poor training leads to improper sampling or that laws in certain areas restrict pollers access to voters.
Outside of the US exit polls are much more accurate but that can be easily explained by differences in polling techniques and voter mentality.
A good source for a little less bias polling info is Pollster.com as opposed to a book co-written by an editor of an progressive magazine run by an admitted socialist.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
Republicans are often called harsh names for positions they hold dear. Among these are racist, xenophobe, fascist, fundie, hate monger, etc. This is irrisponsible, and never happened in the media 20 years ago, but it happens today.
And, of course, the fact that over the last 30 years the Republicans have completely rejected their historical platform in favor of fascism and hate mongering couldn't have anything to do with that, now could it?
Sorry, but instituting a fascist police state and promoting hate based legislation reaps its own rewards.
Anybody who votes Republican should be ashamed of themselves and would be if they had any sense of decency at all.
If what you hold dear is explicitly rejected by the constitution, then you don't get it. Too fucking bad. Move to a country that shares your values, like Saudi Arabia or something.
Oh, no, you're right, it's the evil media always attacking the poor innocent Republicans.
Idiot.
A lot of people become very atatched to the philosophy they've built. They get sentimental about it, then they start to forget to update it regularly, then they forget why it needs to be updated regularly, then they forget that their map isn't actually reality, then they start making their experiences fit their map instead of the other way around. And there's your other side.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
There isn't much time left before the President goes so things will happen quickly from now. Ask the question again at the end of the year when Iran is being attacked for WMD and there is a draft - perhaps the Republicans will remove him themselves?
How interesting that the book discusses "the media's strange reluctance to report on any of these problems" This is what bothers me most -- because a true democracy is automatically kept in check by the free press. However, I am convinced that that big media is afraid of *someone* and thus not reporting on the likely stolen election.
If this sounds like a "conspiracy theory" someone please explain "the media's strange reluctance to report on any of these problems"
That is not even close to a true statement. I know you really want to believe it because it is good ammo that the election must have been stolen "this time" but it is simply not true. Go to one of the referenced studies. Flip to page 32. Starting there - polling data is compared with actual returns from every state from 1988-2004. The negative numbers are when the polls overestimated Democratic turnout. There are a lot of negative numbers. Skip down to page 34 (second table). In every election the democratic position has been overstated. It just so happens that in 2004 it was overstated by the largest margin (6.5% error). However, the error in 2000 was only 1.5%. Interstingly, the next largest bias in the polling after 2004 was in 1992 at 5% (so you will obviously say it runs in the family...) which doesn't make the 6.5% value such a stretch. If you skip down another page they show the correlation between voter "paying attention to the election" and poll bias. Interestingly, the more interest the voting public has in the election, the greater the turnuout and the bias against the republicans in the polls.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
The Swift Boat ads cost Kerry the election. Allegations don't have to be true, or even credible, or even make sense. The media just spends more time talking about "the controversy" rather than using critical analysis on the claims themselves, and this perpetuates the story rather than revealing it as a silly smear campaign. When the story isn't "are these claims true or false," but instead, "People are talking about the Swift Boat ads!" then the notoriety of the story, rather than the veracity of story, becomes the point, and our penchant for bread and circuses hamstrings our ability to intelligently discuss anything. The news media has stopped being news and started being just entertainment that is based on the news.
Oh, and not to mention the fact that it was the Supreme Court that handed Bush the win in 2000, stopping a recount that we now know would have resulted in a Gore win.
Most of that sounded about right, but "we now know"? In the first place, there wasn't just one recount, there were individual recounts in numerous precincts and counties, and in the second place none of the recounting changed the outcome for the entire month of November (sparkly graph).
Subsequent to the Supreme Court ruling, there were numerous independent recounts by news organizations and other interested parties. I think it was in 2002 that I saw a summary of 17 such efforts, most of which used different rules and methods for counting the votes. 15 placed Bush as the winner, and one of the two that favored Gore had done so by discarding absentee votes (including overseas military) as Gore had sought to do in the actual recounts. I don't recall the methods of the other being as questionable, just outweighed by the results of perhaps a dozen other methods.
So maybe you can see how I'm at a loss to understand how "we now know" that the recounts would have given Gore a win. Was there another final, ultimate, and authoritative recount that I maybe missed, or perhaps just yet another method of counting the votes that resulted in putting Gore ahead?
Wow this is pretty funny. In your comment:
"Conservatives" don't hold any defensible positions, so they are entirely unable to do anything of the sort as demonstrated by the fact that hate mongering was their entire campaign strategy for the last several elections.
In your signature:
Be a patriot: Murder a Republican.
And yet you're completely unable to point out anything either funny or inconsistent about it.
There is a large difference between an unprovoked assault and self defense.
Apparently you never learned that.
Because Fox spreads misinformation, therefore Fox fans tend to be misinformed. People who are happy to be misinformed tend to be idiots. That's why.
This isn't just a general impression. Studies have shown that the more you watch Fox, the more likely you are to be misinformed on key political issues. See this PDF document.
it IS fair that Fox News is out there to balance the overwhelming liberal bias in the overall media.Well, it depends where you put the centre ground. If you classify all sane people as being on the "liberal" left, and all the genocidal maniacs as being on the "conservative" right, then perhaps most non-Fox media is "liberal". But I don't think that's a fair place to put the dividing line.
I'd say that all networks with a systemic bias in favour of the establishment (see the Propaganda Model) must be classified as right-wing or at least centrist. This puts Fox at the extreme right, with other networks in the centre-right and centre, and alternative news sources such as Democracy Now at the left.
Further, I'm a Christian and I cannot vote for people that support the killing of innocent babies (abortion). Correction: you're against killing American babies, even when they are not babies but primitive unborn fetuses. You have no problem voting for people who kill large numbers of babies, teens, men, women and elderly, just as long as they are towel-heads. I also hold a Master's Degree (MBA), so if you think that conservatives are uneducated, think again!You can find examples of people who have passed through the education system, and yet still believe in gods, angels, fairies, aliens, homoeopathy, astrology, moon-landing conspiracies, feng shui, tarot cards, Iraqi WMDs, virgin birth, Fox impartiality, and cigarettes making you look cool. However, this doesn't stop the fact that such beliefs have a strong scientific correlation with having shit for brains (specific example given above).