Who won? 555
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.
What? (Score:5, Insightful)
So hating one of the major political parties involved in that election makes him neutral?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
"We're All Neutral" (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:typical Doc Ruby (Score:5, Informative)
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 [psqonline.org].
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 [wikipedia.org]) 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 [democracynow.org] at the left.
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).
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
Nazi's Invoked: 5:14 PM
This topic was Godwinned in 59 minutes. Not bad, but it would be nice if we could make it to an hour.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What? (Score:4, Interesting)
Bias is not wrong by any means, but understanding that bias and choosing why that bias applies to you us a beginning to understand how to factor it out of your judgments.
Now on to election stuff... Our country has a well defined system of voting presidents and thats via the electoral votes. Those votes are made by the electoral members we choose to send, and these numbers are based upon congress and senate votes (congress is population based, and senate is 2 per state). Because of thos, we can technically have one president declared the winner by mass majority, but our system prevents democracy by limiting damage by the majority.
And when it comes down to the election itself, Im a Libertarian and want the government to stop nannying me around and to get their hands out of my wallet. That aside, voting with these terminals are horrendously insecure. This insecurity affects all candidates, as election skew undermines the will of the people. So what if the "Republicans are in bed with Diebold" or whatnot. Im sure Democrats are also.
Id rather have the most liberal democrat voted as president (Im thinking Chavez'ian socialist) than have a illegally voted in Libertarian.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, the republicanism of our nation has been marginalized, as the electoral college in particular requires a sizeable representative mass of House members. This doesn't mean one or two or three per state, or what have you, as it is now. It means we need to have probably close to a thousand House members, all repres
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The population of South Dakota is 776,000. (2205) South Dakota Quick Facts From The U.S. Census [census.gov]
Re: (Score:2)
So hating one of the major political parties involved in that election makes him neutral?
He's probably a Green. They despise the Democrats without being political people. Or at least, without being **elected** people.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Despite what you might think, few things are black and white. The enemy of your enemy doesn't have to be your friend. Freeman can despise the democrats and fear the republicans without being a fan of either.
Regards,
--
*Art
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
If what you're suggesting is true, it may even suggest the following: Let's pretend you have an enemy. Let's call them... "Bommunists..." to make up a totally original word. And to combat them, you give some crazy people in another country weapons and funding to fight them for you. Let's call this country... "Bafghanistan." You're suggesting that these people may not be real allies and hurt you in the end?
Ho
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey, it works for Bill O'Reilly!
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Remarkably diminished from what? Their usual sterling abilities in that regard? Oh yeah, that's people, all right. Remarkably able to confront their own irrationalities and biases. Yessir, every single one of us, paragons of introspection in every area except politics.
Re:Buying into a particular political philosophy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
and I would say you need to give nore thought to the meaning of the word "neutral." hatred is still blinding no matter how widely it is spread.
What happened in 2006? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's hard to cheat in a landslide (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I heard some story somewhere that there was the same level of 'discrepancies' in the vote in 2006;
yes libs, we stole the election (Score:4, Funny)
If the Republicans own the elections... (Score:2, Troll)
The Democrats lost in 2004 because they had a crappy candidate, and let the republicans control the debate. Get over it already.
Re: (Score:2)
Or maybe the vote was 6% against them instead of the 5% they got by cheating.
Listen: we all know they cheated their balls off. It's not even difficult to find the evidence. The Republicans cheated, we all know it, put it behind you and just make sure it doesn't happen again, okay?
TWW
Ob. Simpsons (Score:3, Funny)
This just about sums up my sentiments for voting for either of the two major political parties.
Speaking of statistics (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Speaking of statistics (Score:4, Insightful)
A single person in the right place could have compromised all electronic voting machines from a given company. Just something to think about.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Okay, okay, in all fairness, you need about five. The two brothers that are CEOs at Diebold and ES&S, Karl Rove, and two unwitting programmers that quite possibly make a requested change from their CEO without being told what it is really for.
Re:Speaking of statistics (Score:4, Informative)
Here you go:
Clint Curtis [wikipedia.org] testified before congress that
"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.
West Palm Beach was named as an intended target, but used punched card ballots in the 2000 elections. Indeed, West Palm Beach was famous for the "hanging chad" recounts of that election."
Here's [alternet.org] a video of his testimony.
Are we blind? (Score:2, Insightful)
I still haven't been sold on electronic voting (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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 witne
Poll workers often adjust the results (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Just so you know (Score:2)
This is what you get with DRE (Score:2)
Lets get over it already (Score:2, Insightful)
Lets just say, yes there was questionable events of the last 2
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A strong impetus for election reform, to minimize the likelihood of future fraud?
Too soon. (Score:2)
For a real, insightful, bias-free look at the 2000/2004 election controversy, wait for one of our great-grandchildren to write it. Until then, either accept or reject the various biased accounts, parsing them accordingly as your owm bias permits.
Interesting book but... (Score:2, Informative)
Paper trails are worse than useless (Score:2)
You know whether or not an ATM screws up your account but you have no way of knowing if it added up everybody's account correctly.
Somewhere out there on the intarweb tube is a story about how the Cleveland Plain Dealer had conducted pre-election polling for years and been impressively close to how the elections turned out each time and then along came the 2004 elections and they were wildly off in certain precincts, all of whom went for
Yes, but remember (Score:2)
Because, just because you need ID to buy a booze or cigs doesn't mean it's reasonable to require ID to vote.
Replacing the electoral college (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So your solution is to have the citizens of L.A., New York and Florida decide who becomes President? That only urban issues are considered, not rural? That's part of why the E.C. is there.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Another glaring problem with the system is that most states work on the "all or nothing" principal - i
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you consider that fair?
To have a simple majority decide would mean that a few densely populated states--California, Texas, Florida and New York--would determine the presidency. Do you find that fair? The E.C. means that a candidate has to appeal to a broad spectrum. Without the E.C., the race for the presidency has to address CA, TX, FL and NY issues only. Electioneering becomes the order of the day, by which I mean hordes of Get Out The Vote vans shuttling warm bodies to the polls in L.A., Dallas, NY
Nintendo! (Score:3, Funny)
dKos and other left sites generally believe... (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Open source voting system (Score:5, Informative)
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.
of course it was stolen (Score:3, Interesting)
bush never won legally. in Volusia County, FL one precinct tallied -16000 votes for Gore. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volusia_error [wikipedia.org]
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Media's Strange Reluctance to Report... (Score:3, Insightful)
If this sounds like a "conspiracy theory" someone please explain "the media's strange reluctance to report on any of these problems"
Don't freak out, little troll (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Tehe...while I agree with what you wrote, the real issue should be: Why is there any doubt at all about the election outcome? Shouldn't there be an election process that leaves no doubt whatsoever? just a thought...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
marketing works (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
My father is good friends with the soldier who was rescued by Kerry, and who spoke at the convention for him. Sure, his perspective is colored by Kerry having saved his life - but he can say with certainty that Kerry did save his life, which the Swi
Re:freaking me out (Score:5, Informative)
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 [pollingreport.com] 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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"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 unprov
Re: (Score:2)
You're absolutely correct. He's George W. Bush. Responsible for the deaths of ~3,000 US Soldiers in Iraq, domestic "spying", ~750 signing statements which in effect alter the original intent of the law, etc, etc, etc.
I really hope GWB's presidency goes down in history as nothing more than an annoying footnote.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
That's not really the point (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:freaking me out (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
About "Dubya" (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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 countri
That was covered (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Logical fallacy (Score:3, Insightful)
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 claim
Re: (Score:2)
These people are very good statisticians. They know exactly how many people are 'dicks' like you, and I'm sure if they were pushed they could probably pick you out in a crowd.
Re:Bush Won (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
Obviously he won. The question is whether or not the votes that gave him the win were genuine.
Re: (Score:2)
It has been 2 years now, and Bush has not cleaned up his own mess, therefor everybody who thought he could was wrong.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
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 h
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
Second, you sir/madam are an ass.
You voted to re-elect that murderous criminal?
How do you sleep at night? Do you have nightmares about the tens of thousands of dead women and children?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Logical Fallacy (Score:2)
Go ahead just invalidate some of the most important policies and procedures that are supposed to make this government/society work by reducing the issue to a simple matter of personal opinion.
Nevermind the rule of law. Nevermind procedures that are the outcome of the rule of law. "I say it, therefore it is!"
The casual attitude the parent and moderators take is the rule of Despots not a Democracy.
Re: (Score:2)
These kinds of generalizations are clearly ridiculous when you consider that a 2% shift in the votes of ONE state (Ohio) would have completely changed the outcome of
Re:Not this crap again (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just too bad it's going to take 30 years to fix the mess he's created.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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
RTFR (Score:3, Informative)
From the review:
Re:Exit Polls are Inaccurate (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Similar comparisons abound in FL-13, 2006 - the undervote on manual count ballots was something like 2.5%, while on electronic voting machines, used only in the "loser"'s strongholds, the undervote was over 17%.
Something stinks. And the conservative types who want to cry sour grapes are either fools or enemies of democracy; if you can steal an election without detection, sooner or later, it will h
Re:Exit Polls are Inaccurate (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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Re:Exit Polls are Inaccurate (Score:4, Informative)
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 [pollster.com] as opposed to a book co-written by an editor of an progressive magazine run by an admitted socialist.
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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 [exit-poll.net]. Flip to page 32. Starting there - polling data is compared with actual returns from every state from 1988
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There is one guy, Clint Curtis [wikipedia.org], 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 d
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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.
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They are often wildly innacurate because many folks choose not to participate - mostly people who are Republican
If they didn't participate, how did you know they were Republican?
Re:Secure tallying (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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 wit
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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
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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 fa
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