The Holt Bill (HR 550): Dangerously Undermining Audits of Elections

[kster]

The Holt Bill (HR 550): Dangerously Undermining Audits of Elections
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by Paul R. Lehto

http://www.opednews.com

The Holt Bill (HR 550): Dangerously Undermining Audits of Elections
And Other Critiques

By Paul R. Lehto, Attorney at law

The following is why I think the Holt Bill (HR 550) does much more
harm than good. Regardless of whether or not you are a "paper ballot"
person, I think my arguments below apply with equal force. Election
systems act like kaleidoscopes, and amendments turn the kaleidoscope
and force patterns to rearrange. These turns can be very damaging and
unexpected.

Please Understand: I'm not trying to rain on anybody's lobbying
parade and I support election protection completely: But in any case,
I always recommend that we lobby for our VALUES not for specific bill
language subjected to future word-smithing and changes anyway, and may
or may not deliver the result intended....

My attack (if you will) on the Holt bill is on the notion that the
bill accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish, and also whether
"gold standard" is a fair description. The fact that more and more
people are getting involved in the movement and asking for most or all
of the right things does not at all tell us whether a particular bill
actually delivers those promises.

The Holt bill has vetted its 2% audit requirement with "computer
scientists" which is great, but it also needs to be vetted from
statisticians for sure and perhaps even consumer fraud attorneys, and
I think it fails in that regard. (My co-author Dr. Jeffrey Hoffman
concurs as to the 2% opinions below, but isn't involved with the
rest)

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_paul_r___060410_the_holt_bill__28hr_55.htm

Posted by sfexpat2000
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=422803&mesg_id=422804

[Cos]

1. I don't buy it

I think this line of argument boils down to "if it's not good enough, then it's damaging" and I really don't buy that line of argument. Holt's bill does nothing bad.

Critics point out many ways in which it will fail to really fix things, and I agree with many of their criticisms. But it provides several important improvements, such as going from no audits to some audits; from no paper ballots to some form of paper ballots (even VVPAT, with all its flaws, allows officials, courts, or activists, to order a meaningful recount, and remember, the Holt bill doesn't require DREs with VVPAT, it merely disallows DREs without VVPAT); from closed source code to required public source code. I want all of these things.

I also want other things, such as banning DREs (except as optional ballot-marking machines for the disabled); full hand counts or a requirement that every set of ballots be counted separately by two different devices from different makers; a requirement that any person be allowed to observe at the polling station and the counting process without needing credentials; quick posting of precinct results on the door and on the Internet before transmitting anything to central tabulation; raw ballot data provided online in a timely manner... I could go on.

The Holt bill doesn't do much of what I want. But what it does do, I do want. The things it does are improvements. We'll need to keep working. Holt knows, I think, that we can't get everything we want through Congress now, but he feels that his bill pushes the envelope and strikes a right balance between what we want and what we can get. I think we need to support it.

I don't buy the "placebo" argument. I think it's nihilistic. I file it with "things need to get worse before they can get better". It's the view that if you take a small step forward, you deflate the movement's energy or the public's appetite for taking more and bigger steps. Things don't work that way. Victory begets victory. Steps forward are opportunities to build organization and coalition. They make the next steps smaller than they'd need to be now, which makes them easier. And they take nothing away from the energy of an informed, active grassroots movement that wants to do more.

In what way does Holt's bill "undermine" audits of elections? That's harmful hyperbole.

[Boredtodeath]

2. You have it exactly right

These people want a "perfect bill," which only shows their political naivete.

What's that quote......
"The art of politics consists in knowing precisely when it is necessary to hit an opponent slightly below the belt.”
--Konrad Adenauer

[Peace Patriot]

3. "These people"?

"THESE PEOPLE"?????!!!!!!!

:wow:

:mad:

:grr:

:nuke:

:think:

:argh:

Throw Diebold, ES&S and all election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW!

[Febble]

4. I have to agree

that "victory begets victory". And one of the mechanisms is problem definition.

People resisted the idea of a minimum wage here because it was going to be set too low (apart from those who resisted it because they didn't want to have to pay it). Now that it is enshrined in UK law, the problem is defined in terms of what value it should have, not whether there should be a value.

One of the things, it seems to me, the Holt bill does is to define the nature of the problem - the auditability of the vote count. AFAIK until now, this hasn't even been defined, in your national consciousness, as a problem. Once that genie is out of the bottle, it will be hard to stuff it back in. The problem becomes not whether, but how, votes should be audited.

Just my two pence. From half a century of discovering that if they give an inch you can take a yard (it works both ways).

[Peace Patriot]

11. Ah, Febble! If Boredtodeath is here, can Febble be far behind?

"One of the things, it seems to me, the Holt bill does is to define the nature of the problem...". --Febble

One of the things, it seems to ME, the Holt bill does is to enthrone electronic voting. It also further entrenches the Bush-appointed federal Elections Assistance Commission, and legitimizes the "Help America Vote Act" (HAVA)--a bill designed by the two biggest crooks in Congress, Tom Delay and Bob Ney, as a $4 billion boondoggle for Bush's buds at Diebold and ES&S, with no transparency requirements whatsoever.

I'm all for incremental transparency, if that's all the fascists will permit, and I do not oppose the better features of the Holt bill, but I think that all this "help" the Bushites and their lapdog Congress have been desiring to provide to American voters--the "help" of the "HELP America Vote Act," and all this "assistance" from Bush appointees on the "Elections ASSISTANCE Commission"--should be treated with the utmost skepticism, considering what the effect of such "help" and such "assistance" has been thus far. As for Democrats who are now moved to "fix" the "problems" that Tom Delay's and Bob Ney's plan to thoroughly corrupt our election system and throw the 2004 election to Bush, have caused, you have to wonder about the TOTAL SILENCE of the Democratic Party leadership as this fraudulent, non-transparent, hackable, Bushite-controlled voting system was put into place. They, too, deserve skepticism.

Paul Lehto has brought some healthy skepticism to the discussion. KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN is what he is saying. There could not be better advice, when dealing with THIS Congress, and a Democratic Party leadership that, a) let Bushite corporations gain control of our elections with "trade secret" programming and no audit trail in the first place, and b) half of whom voted for Bush's war.

What SHOULD BE happening is REPEAL of the "Hack America's Vote Act," and a housecleaning with a BIG BROOM to sweep out all the corrupted election officials who have spent billions of dollars on this crap-ass, Bushite voting machinery, as the result of lavish lobbying, bribes, future promised employment in electronic voting corporations, and the odor of heady, secret power over elections and lording it over voters to whom they say, "...but you're not a professional" when we object to unseeable vote counting--and a return to paper ballots, hand-counted at the precinct level, until we are certain that we have a real clean house--all the dust and filth and rats' nests swept right out the door. Eat the cost. Start over.

Elections are much too important to leave in the hands of rightwing Bushite corporations even WITH a paper ballot.

Besides all this, Holt's bill is NOT likely going to make it through this ILLEGITIMATE, DIEBOLD-ES&S-ELECTED, BUSHITE Congress without amendments that will make it worthless, or worse than worthless--that FURTHER entrench the non-transparency and corruption. The entrenchment of an inadequate audit is bad enough. Will these co-sponsors hold fast against the inevitable efforts to weaken the paper ballot, and other positive provisions? What kind of record do the Democrats in this Congress have against the Bushite "pod people", as to resisting bullying tactics, and fascist laws? Will we end up with a bill that has been watered down to worthless--or that contains, say, a centralized, electronic, Homeland Security voter registration database--but that is still touted as "election reform"? And will a weakened or treacherous "election reform" bill then by USED by corrupt secretaries of state, county election officials, and legislators, and by Diebold and ES&S personnel, to resist further reform, and to try to kill the election reform movement?

It is quite reasonable and wise to be skeptical--and it is very stupid not to be skeptical--of "election reform" brought to us far too late in the day by a very corrupt Congress. The one thing that we leftists often fail to do is to "follow the money." This bill is meant to JUSTIFY all the money spent, and to spend MORE money on election systems created by rightwing Bushite corporations. POSSIBLY the ban on secret software will drive them from the "market"--IF that provision stays in, and IF the bill applies to the central tabulators and not just to the "voting machines" (as it now states--something else that Lehto has brought to our attention). (Some feel that the central tabulators are the main problem. The bill has a loophole that may permit secret code in the central tabulators.) But there are no guarantees--and there is much reason to be distrustful.

I'm not saying I don't support HR 550. I'm saying that I DON'T TRUST Congress OR the Democratic leadership on this critical issue. They have worked in the past in quite devious ways to bring us a war that the majority of people in this country did not want, and to inflict us with a NON-TRANSPARENT, war-friendly, fraudulent election system. This weak audit provision may be further deviousness. It may be just what Diebold and ES&S asked for. Sure, we'll go with a paper ballot if we must--just don't ever count more than 2% of them, and we'll continue to guarantee big war budgets, tax cuts for the rich, and no serious investigations.

They've given us no reason to trust them. And we think that they're going to restore election transparency, and give us back our right to vote, NOW?

If HR 550 can be passed, in tact--a big if--we'll have to double our efforts at the state/local level to get better audits, and we will more than likely have to sue to get "no secret code" applied to the central tabulators. The bill does not solve the problem. It only gives us a slightly better chance to spot fraudulent results and to challenge them. A slightly better chance! And, with all this election theft machinery now in place, it will be years before we can restore full transparency, if the system remains electronic. Years of lawsuits and state/local struggles on interpretation and compliance--with Diebold, ES&S and Bushites and warmongers, and some Democrats, fighting us every step of the way.

HR 550 is far from being a panacea, and Lehto is right to warn us about half-measures being "sold" as complete solutions. And we DO need to question how this mess came about in the first place. Why are our Democratic leaders so late in stating the need for transparency--and what does this mean as to their view of democracy, their support for big military budgets and illegal war, their haplessness in the face of multiple tax cuts for the rich and other fascist policies, and corruption within our own party?

We here at DU, and many others, have fought hard for a REAL paper ballot. We should be proud that this bill contains one. We have fought hard to get secret code banned. And we should be proud to have a bill in Congress with so many co-sponsors that even addresses the problem (albeit with a potential loophole). These are great accomplishments. Further, currently the bill says that its provisions would go into effect for the 2006 elections. I can't imagine that being feasible--should a miracle occur and the bill get passed, in tact, in this session--without many jurisdictions having to revert to paper ballots. That would certainly give us a chance at a representative Congress.

Let's keep our eyes open--always! Nothing short of 100% transparency will do. I think we have a rather big mountain to climb to get there.

[Febble]

17. I dunno.....

I'm not aware of any particular correlation between my posts and those of BoredToDeath*. Perhaps we are both just interested in Election Reform.

So I'm not quite sure what point you are making here, although I do share your view that in this case, incremental change is probably worth having. I also agree those who oppose the bill that it leaves much still to be done.

And I also agree with you absolutely that 100% transparency is required, as long as it allows 100% secrecy of the ballot. These are a difficult pair of requirements to resolve even with HCPB, but it needs to be done.

I also agree that DREs are a terrible way to vote, because, IMO, it wraps the ballot, the act of casting the ballot, and the count into a single operation. Of course that is also the reason why, in principle, they are potentially so "accurate" - there should be no slippage between the cup and the lip - between the casting of the ballot and the count - but by the same token, there is no independent check on the count. So one good thing about the bill, from my reading, is that it insists that a physical entity that can be regarded as a ballot can have some legal status, and be used as a check on the actual counting operation. So I find that a large step in the right direction.

Where I tend to disagree with you is in your diagnosis. I do understand that you are quite convinced that DREs were deliberately introduced in order to steal the election, and that the large exit poll discrepancy is evidence that the strategy was successful. Because I do not consider that in fact there is any evidence that the exit poll discrepancy was correlated with anything that might imply that it was due to fraud (advantage to Bush, for example), and indeed, that there is evidence that it was not, then a large supporting plank for the case that DREs were deliberately designed to steal the election is missing, in my view of things. So, much as Bill Bored would hate to hear this, I think the arguments for and against the Holt Bill do tend to hang on the degree to which people believe that the election was stolen on the scale indicated by the exit poll discrepancy. If it was not, and I don't believe it was, the Holt bill makes some sense. The problem it tackles is unreliable and unverifiable machines, and insists that they are subject to a fairly scrupulous random audit. However, if I am wrong, and you are right, and the election was indeed massively stolen by electronic theft, then I can see the case that the Holt bill is simply a placebo - indeed a palliative (placebos actually work rather well....) that can only lull the citizenry into the delusion that they are not going to be robbed.

So there you have it - if DREs are merely vulnerable to corruption, and unreliable, the Holt bill is an excellent start. If they were deliberately designed and successfully used to steal millions of votes in 2004, then it may be worse than useless. Or, perhaps minimally better than useless, take your pick.

But they certainly need fixing.

*Perhaps you meant OnTheOtherHand? I would agree that our posts are probably significantly correlated, but not, in fact, co-ordinated. There's a latent common variable, not a direct line of causality.

[OnTheOtherHand]

21. naw, couldn't be me

You were here (on this thread) before me. Also, you are more enthusiastic about HCPB than I am -- not really a disagreement, just a difference in experience and emphasis.

I reluctantly agree with your analysis, more or less -- reluctantly because I have often emphasized that disagreements about what happened in the past don't have to lead to disagreements about the future. And they don't have to. But people who are certain that the 2004 election was stolen on DREs, or on central tabs, or however they think it was stolen are not likely to see HR 550 as making much headway. (You made other excellent points -- I won't try to repeat them all.) Literalistic (or selectively literalistic) analysis of the exit polls is one way to come to that conclusion.

[thecrow]

5. Welcome to DU Cos!

[robinlynne]

6. I agree with Feble.

Just this week there was a conversation about the Holt bill, and someone said "The perfect eliminates the good". She pointed out the ONLY bill we have a chance of passing before November is the Holt bill. So we can have the Holt bill or no bill thiscoming election. Which would you honestly prefer?

[Febble]

8. Voltaire:

"Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien"

[Cos]

7. Thanks!

Do I know you? Or are you just welcoming random strangers? :)

[OnTheOtherHand]

9. what you said

I tried to write a post like that, but yours is better.

I can imagine believing that a bill that does too little is worse than useless -- but it seems to me that what the Holt bill does is actually quite useful ("important improvements," as you said).

And I don't get the OP's shift from "dangerouly undermining" and "much more harm than good" to "the notion that the bill accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish" (whatever exactly that is) and "whether 'gold standard' is a fair description." I usually have a healthy taste for pointless semantic debates, but include me out of that one.

I do agree with Lehto that it's important to have clarity on the values we want legislation to accomplish, and not just rally around a bill for the sake of having something to support.

[Land Shark]

10. there are huge differences between democracy and other political issues

First, democracy is PROCEDURAL. Half procedure is no procedure at all. (example, half of the procedural due process notice like half of an address and time of where your hearing is, constitutes no procedure at all) It's totally different with a substantive question. Like Half of the increase in funding for altnernative fuels that one wished for is not the same kind of complete denial.

Second, there CAN BE NO COMPROMISED PROCEDURE in elections. That's an illegitimate election. Ballots left out for two days unsecured. Without any more evidence that's an illegitimate election. Waters v Gnemi (Mississippi Supreme Court, 2005)

third, if incremental or compromised procedures are even possible, don't call your incremental continuation-of-illegitimacy approach the "gold standard"; that's just way too far over the top.

Fourth: WITH DEMOCRACY, we are playing with those who have come before us (some of whom DIED for it) as well as for those who are too young or who are as yet unborn. By what right or process did we determine ON THEIR BEHALF that an admittedly flawed bill was happily the way to go???

Fifth, if an incremental approach is possible or desirable, it should tell us where lily pad #2 and lily pad #3 is so that we can calculate what the steps are and if they are achievable.

Finally, part of lily pad #2, post-Holt, involves statistical critiques and beefing up audits, something many activist don't even try to understand. How will we get the support of Joe Q. Public on this??

Considering the seriousness of control of the world's sole superpower and the future democracy, and considering that people are purporting to make changes to democracy which as a prject many have worked their lives for and died for, I would submit that it is not all that wise to dismiss the critique of the incremental approach too easily. At least, if it were me, as I cast a vote or a letter in its support, I'd add to every sentence something to the effect of "AND THE REST OF THE LOAF TOMORROW, BUSTER"

[Cos]

12. How does this apply?

I wouldn't call HR550 a "gold standard", and I don't mind if people criticize that language. That's a far sight different from calling it "dangerous" or actively working to oppose it.

By strict enough standards to actually satisfy me, most of our elections run on compromised procedure, and have for as long as I know. Other than some municipal elections where ballots are hand counted in the presence of observers, almost every election in the US as been "illegitimate" for our entire lifetimes.

The Holt bill doesn't create incomplete procedure out of thin air. It modifies existing procedures in a few places, and in every place it does so, as far as I can tell, it makes them better than they are now.

In the overall scheme of things, yes, elections post-HR550 could still be severely compromised... as they already are now. But HR550 will improve the situation somewhat. And it's the only game in town this year - if it doesn't pass, everything will stay as is on the federal level. Sure, we can try for something better next year, but we can do that anyway. HR550 doesn't prevent it. On the contrary, passing something now would make it easier for us to pass something else in the next few years.

Would you oppose a bill improving some aspect of due process rights, because it fails to specify the entire process from scratch? I scratch my head at this point of view. It seems so nihilistic to me.

[Land Shark]

13. Your reply is at this link in part; I'm abandoning this link but will

respond at the link below if any body cares to

<http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x422967>

[Peace Patriot]

14. The appropriate way to respond to the complete non-transparency that

the fascists have now achieved in our election system is to throw out the fascist election system, lock, stock and barrel. That the Democrats in Congress are NOT proposing this tells us quite a lot about their view of democracy, about the probable reasons that they did not insist on transparency before (corruption vis a vis electronics corporations, among other things), and it echoes the other compromises that the Democratic leaders have been bludgeoned into--or have been eager to agree to--on every other issue, from unfair taxation to illegal war.

Why start in the--ahem--MIDDLE, with a bill by which 98% of the votes will never be seen or counted? Given the lack of transparency in the last two general elections, why not START with a 100% recount, at least the first time around?

Given the lack of transparency, lavish lobbying, "revolving door" employment, failed machine tests, proofs of hackability, breakdowns of voting systems, continued anomalous and untrustworthy results, and the partisanship of the major vendors, why not START by proposing a repeal of HAVA as the dirty, rotten, thieving piece of crap legislation that it is, with a recommendation of paper ballots for the next several elections, while we straighten out the goddamned disaster that the Bushites and collusive election officials have made of our elections?

Nope, the Democrats START OFF with a compromise in favor of electronic voting, and the rightwing Bushite corporations can now either sic a couple of high-end, James Baker-type law firms upon us poor voters, to take a "trade secret" case to the Bush-appointed Supreme Court, or start buying up all the open source code and start monopolizing that, too, or play games with the source code disclosure--requiring constant vigilance and more lawsuits by citizens--or just keep on doing what they're doing because a 2% audit won't likely catch them anyway, so what do they care?

PRIVATIZATION is the problem. Banning privatization should have been the starting point. But that would never occur to our corporatist Democrats.

When Febble says (above) that HR 550 "defines the problem," she is wrong. The problem is much more than non-transparency. The problem is WHY such non-transparency was ever tolerated in the first place. And when you've grappled with THAT problem, you begin to understand why semi-transparency in a highly corrupt vendor scene is proposed NOW. It's because too many Democrats, as well as Republicans, are so tied to corporate interests that nothing better could be hammered out. It is a compromise that, in fact, promotes electronic voting, and merely tries to fix SOME of the problems in a highly corrupt, non-transparent system. And it wouldn't surprise me at all to see the ban on secret code knocked out, for it to be acceptable to the Bushite criminals in Congress. THEN what are the co-sponsors going to do? Is it solid? Will they go to the mat for it? Or is it already a soft provision?

What we must NOT do is to trust. The people who have seized our government, and those who have colluded with them, CANNOT be trusted, ever again, on any matter.

We can lobby. We can go for the best bill POSSIBLE. We can try to get a paper ballot this year. I am not against that. In fact, I fully support it. I KNOW--and have known for a long time--that we have been trapped into a battle for incremental improvements, in a matter concerning which ANY non-transparency invalidates the system and its results. But I don't know that it is at all clear that the passage of THIS bill will open the door to full transparency down the line. I think it much more likely that it will be "SOLD" as full transparency, when it is not--and may be used to PREVENT full transparency.

And I think that we should APPLAUD people like Paul Lehto--a lawyer and a true patriot who is devoted to true election reform--when they cry the alarm. Why don't his critics here propose amending the bill NOW to fix the serious audit problem that he has pointed out--and let the Bushites be responsible for a lousy audit provision, instead of supposed election reform proponents being responsible for it?

Why not propose a change of language that leaves no leeway for secret code in the central tabulators (make the ban apply to "voting systems" rather than just "voting machines"--the secret code loophole)?

Why not propose repealing the provisions of HAVA that have forced these "lemon" electronic systems on the states? And let Bushites try to defend these extremely hackable and unreliable systems?

Why not propose banning partisan corporations from any part in our election system? And let Bushites EXPOSE themselves defending Diebold and ES&S?

Why criticize Paul Lehto for being as smart as he is, and KNOWING that the corporatists and the war profiteers will fuck us over again, and figuring out HOW they will likely do it-- --instead of calling him a "purist"--the sort of language that is always trotted out when someone takes a stand on PRINCIPLE? You CAN'T BE a "purist" when it comes to transparent elections. If they are not transparent, they are NOT valid. Period. That is not being a "purist." That is being a bottom-liner. The BOTTOM LINE for elections is 100% transparency. THEN we can talk about the multi-millions of dollars required to buy yourself a seat in Congress. And the skewing of public debate--the near elimination of public debate--by the war profiteering corporate news monopolies. Transparent elections are the BOTTOM line of democracy. Without them, you DON'T HAVE a democracy. It is not a thing you can compromise about, and still call it democracy.

But if you DO compromise about it--as a strategy in the midst of a fascist coup--you need to do it with open eyes, ACKNOWLEDGING that it is a compromise, and never giving up the principle of truly open and fair elections. And we mustn't go around dissing people who can't stomach it. We need to THANK THEM for helping to keep our eyes open. We need to honor the dissidents, not the criminals. We need to honor the real election reform activists, not the politicians who have sold away our right to vote. We need to vigorously and squarely face how much trouble this country is really in, how little we can rely on anyone in power, and we need to be absolutely unrelenting in our pursuit of fully transparent elections.

Thank you, Paul! And to your critics here, I repeat: Why don't you thank him for pointing out this serious flaw, and then contact Holt's office and recommend an amendment to correct it, instead of criticizing the whistleblower?

[Land Shark]

16. You turned on a light there Peace Patriot with these sentences:

You CAN'T BE a "purist" when it comes to transparent elections. If they are not transparent, they are NOT valid.

Or, the stage is wide open and "transparent" except the performer puts one little itsy bitsy curtain in front of the "magic" act where the lady is.

No such thing as partial transparency when so much is at stake and there's so much motive to cheat.

[Febble]

18. Well, let me here and now

applaud Paul Lehto, as I have done in the past.

And when I say that the bill "defines the problem" (which I did not mean in any absolute way, and perhaps could have phrased better) I simply mean that it potentially establishes, legally, that a particular problem - the auditability of votes cast on DRES is a problem. I can't imagine that you disagree with that.

There may well be other problems that require definition. As I have said, upthread, I do not agree with you that the evidence suggests that DREs were part of a grand conspiracy to steal elections. I may be wrong, although it is not a position I have reached by not examining a great deal of evidence. And if I am wrong, and you are right, then, sure, that is another problem that needs a heck of a lot of defining. And not the only one.

But please, can we try not to get polarized about this? I read Paul's posts with great interest, and despite the fact that I sometimes find myself in disagreement, find that he makes points that are well worth considering, and, given my own area of interest/expertise, worth exploring statistically. I am fairly horrified by the treatment he has received at the hands of some DU posters over the last few days, although I understand there is a backstory that may explain it.

So to make my own position as clear as I can:

I agree that transparency is vital.
I think audits are essential.
I think recounts are essential if there is ANY doubt as to the outcome
I think both recounts and audits need to be random.
I think custody of the ballots is essential between vote and count and recount and audit.
I think there needs to BE a ballot in the first place, precisely so it can be taken in custody.
I tend to the view that the Holt bill is a net positive step.

[Land Shark]

19. To clarify: It's fair to say that I've nothing to do with any "backstory"

I was merely quoted with approval by one of the main protagonists in the 'backstory'

Thanks for the kind words. I don't hope really to force everyone's agreement to my view, but I would have the goal of being considered a relevant voice to consider in this forum. consistent with the free speech views of Mieklejohn, I see free speech not so much as the right to step upon a soapbox at Speaker's corner in London as it is more the right (or duty, if it comes down to it) to allow various points of view to be heard, so that the public is informed and therefore democratic deliberation can not be accused of being a garbage-in/garbage-out process. In that vein, I hope that I can articulate views that are worthy of being considered, I know that even if I fail to communicate it well enough that the point of view I'm expressing is something that should be considered, even if ultimately rejected.b This is particularly so with regard to HR 550 because of the new text in my signature line, the gist of which is:

When choosing a route up the mountain, the first steps are not necessarily progress, if the wrong route is chosen, the first steps are tragedy.

[Peace Patriot]

20. All you have to do is know WHO pushed HAVA through the Anthrax

Congress--Tom Delay (now indicted for corruption), Bob Ney (will be indicted), Christopher Dodd (will probably get away scot free)--and look at its provisions, or lack thereof, such as no paper trail whatsoever (particularly desired by Delay), no ban on "trade secret" code, no ban on lavish lobbying or revolving door employment, no ban on partisan vendors, no ban on secret industry testing of the machines, weak, poorly funded regulation by Bush appointees, and $4 billion appropriated for the thirsty, nay slavering, Bush/Cheney campaign chairs and rightwing billionaire funded profiteers at Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia.

"I do not agree with you that the evidence suggests that DREs were part of a grand conspiracy to steal elections." --Febble

Come on, Febble, what country are you living in? Oh, I forgot. (I really did). Scotland!

If you had to live under the rule of the Bush junta, you might have a somewhat different perception of the evildoers in the Anthrax Congress.

[Febble]

22. It's because I detest your

"junta" that I got involved in the first place. That's why I consumed an entire bottle of wine (meant for celebrating with) in the small hours of 3rd November 2004.

OK, let me rephrase the sentence you quote:

I do not believe that, if DREs were part of a grand conspiracy to steal elections, they were used to steal votes on a major scale in 2004".

It is possible that they may be used to do so in future, and the GAO report suggests that it is feasible. However, if so, I think 2004 was no more than a dress rehearsal, and they were largely firing blanks. And the evidence I cite is simply that there is NO correlation between the exit poll discrepancies at precinct level and Bush's change in vote share. This may sound like a geeky point, but it is quite a powerful one. If Bush's apparent popular majority came from rigged DREs it is very hard to model ANY scenario by which it would have been completely hidden in that correlation.

On the other hand, voter suppression would have been entirely hidden, as would votes lost simply through mangling by crap machines. Or rationing of DREs Or inequitable allocation of provisional ballots.

BTW, though I was born in Scotland, I live in England; until relatively recently I lived in Canada; my sister has lived in Colorado for the last 30 years. But more to the point, who governs the US matters to the whole world. Sadly.

[Peace Patriot]

26. "If Bush's apparent popular majority came from rigged DREs..."

Who said it was just the DREs? Are you forgetting the central tabulators, also run by the same Bushite corporations, also with "TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming code --code so secret that not even our secretaries of state are permitted to review it. Same with the optiscans (concerning which, at best, we got a 1% audit). It is simplistic to think that it was just the DREs--and it's a "straw man" tactic to say that anyone is arguing that it's the DREs alone. They are just the LEAST transparent of the voting machines. The central tabulators are probably the main problem--since they can disappear all kinds of votes--including absentee ballots, paper option ballots, mail-in ballots, provisional ballots--all ultimately get scanned and run through SECRET vote tabulation programs. And if you have inattentive, bribed or Bushite election officials, who look the other way at weird results, how will you know what was done, or what the real vote count was at the precinct level? The secrecy around what is done with our votes is now comparable to the secrecy around nuclear weapons facilities. Just try to get access to ballots, without a humongously difficult-to-get and expensive recount.

I think you are failing to see the CONTEXT, once again. The CONTEXT is a culture of secrecy in our election system that has been hugely fostered by private corporate secret vote tabulation that Tom Delay & Co. created with the $4 billion HAVA boondoggle. The last people on earth who can get access to, and see, what is going on are the voters. Diebold and ES&S PRIVATE personnel have MORE access to our voting system than any mere voter, voter advocate, or candidate. They MAKE the machines. They PROGRAM the machines. They SERVICE the machines. With HAVA, election officials in cahoots with PRIVATE, PARTISAN, BUSHITE corporate personnel drew the whole process of voting counting behind closed doors--and election officials find all sorts of ways to keep the public out of it. And so, how do you know what kind of shenanigans could have been going on behind closed doors to fiddle the 2004 election? Karl Rove had goosestep-like control over the Bushite cadres. Look what they did in Ohio--out in the open--the visible, egregious violations of the Voting Rights Act--with impunity! Can you imagine what they were doing behind the scenes, with SECRET programming code? They would have been stupid to make it obvious--a simple fiddle of the DRE's, or a simple fiddle in Republican precincts. The context was one of massive corruption--and multiple kinds of corruption--at every level, on every issue, not just election transparency. Corruption and secrecy, the two major modes of the Bush junta. You can't bring a simple statistical assumption to the problem--that it was the DREs--and "prove" that it WASN'T the DREs, and conclude that that election was honest and aboveboard, and that Bush won. In fact, you can't "prove" anything with 100% certainty, because the election itself was just about 100% NON-TRANSPARENT.

So, then, I think you have to ask: WHY was it non-transparent? Gee, what motive would Tom Delay have to want big Bush fundraisers at Diebold and ES&S to "count" all the votes with "trade secret" code and no paper trail?

An election is not a court of law. You do not have to "prove" guilt. If it's non-transparent, it IS guilty. And those in power are obliged to establish their innocence before the vote tabulation ever takes place. And that they did not do. They did just the opposite. And they are guilty until proved innocent. That is the essence of elections and democracy, as far as public officials go.

Edison-Mitofsky apologists, on the other hand--and Edison-Mitofsky itself, in their own defense--ASSUME the innocence of Diebold and ES&S and their secret formulae, the innocence of major rightwing Bushite donors who were "counting" all the votes, and the innocence of people who were stealing billions and billions of dollars from American taxpayers, and who had brought thousands of American youngsters back to this country in body bags from an illegal war, and who HID the body bags and wouldn't allow cameras--and who had slaughtered tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis, and had tortured many more, and who were, and still are, using threats and phony "terrorist alerts" and the outing of covert CIA counter-proliferation projects, to silence dissent--and who are, not incidentally, also the writers and passers of the so-called "Help America Vote Act."

They DID steal the 2004 election. They set it up that way, and they used every dirty capability that their dirty, power-hungry hands could grab, to do it. The used the filthily corrupt Ohio Republican Party, and Mr. Kenneth Blackwell. They used brother Jeb (for purging black voter registrations, among others things). They used corrupt Democrats like Gov. Richardson in New Mexico (to prevent a recount). They used what's-his-name who was shredding Democratic voter registrations in the western states, paid by the Republican National Committee. They used many corrupt, goosestepping, Bushite election officials around the country, and some corrupt Democratic ones. They used lavish lobbying--such as weeklong vacations at the Beverly Hilton--to corrupt and compromise them. They used the $4 billion HAVA boondoggle to corrupt Democrats with any interest in electronics contracts in government. They used threats, blackmail and intimidation to frighten or remove honest election officials (--and are still doing so; they got rid of CA Sec of State Kevin Shelley who had sued Diebold and decertified the worst of their election theft machines prior to the 2004 election; now they're after Ion Sancho in Florida, who dared to test Diebold optiscans and find them corruptible, with Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia CONSPIRING to deny him HAVA compliance) . They used the war profiteering corporate news monopolies to prevent the American people from knowing just how riggable the new election system was, and to blackhole the mountain of evidence of a corrupted election. They used the war profiteering corporate news monopoly contractor, Edison/Mitofsky, to further cover up the evidence. They used the DRE's. They used the Optiscans. They used the Central Tabulators. All with secret programming. They used EVERYTHING. They went ALL OUT to keep their criminal cabal in the White House, because so much money was at stake, and so much jail time.

So I think you have to bring some complex analytical tools to this event, the 2004 election. And, above all, you cannot ignore the context and set it aside. THAT is a very bad scientific assumption--that the 2004 election occurred on some sort of neutral democratic ground, wherein normal, neutral number crunching can be expected to give you a reliable result. It's like trying to diagnose and treat black lung disease without knowing that the patient works in a coal mine. The context of corruption was/is pervasive--from the corporate news monopolies who are profiting from the war, to those lying, murderous S.O.B.'s in the White House, whom the American people voted to oust.

And how clever, really, to only use the secret source code capability selectively, wherever it was needed, and with programmed randomness, to avoid easily detectable patterns--if that's what they in fact did. (--although I have yet to see a convincing refutation of the exit poll redshift in the battleground states and on the east coast).

And if they DIDN'T use their secret code capability and other non-transparent features, why did they set them up? These are no-brainer items as to transparency. THEY had all the power. Why didn't they set up a transparent election system, instead of a non-transparent one?

And I think the answer is as plain as can be: THEY had all the power. And they are lying, deceitful, thieving, murderous sacks of shit.

[Febble]

27. With respect, PP

this is assertion, not argument.

First of all: I am not assuming that the theft was done solely on DREs. What that analysis illustrates is that unless the theft was completely uniform - i.e. that the theft was equal on all voting methods, in all states, then it really cannot account for the exit poll discrepancy. If, for example, it was done on tabulators, then that would show up, because the majority of vote-counts that went into that analysis were votes from precincts, on election night, not from county tabulations. So even if you argue that it was done on tabulators + DREs, then it should show up as a correlation.

Once again, I am NOT assuming anything. Whatever assumption were made regarding the projections from the exit poll data made on election night, does not affect that analysis.

You make a good case for motive. You make a good case for means. You even make a good case for opportunity. What you don't have a case for is that the deed was actually done.

PP, I have to ask you: if fraud were responsible for the exit poll discrepancy: how come there is NOT A SNIFF of a correlation between the size that discrepancy and benefit to Bush?

If tabulators were responsible for fraud that also produced red-shift, and if DREs were responsible for fraud that also produced redshift, would you not expect that in precincts in which there were no DREs and the vote count was not collected from the tabulator, tha there would be less redshift? And sure, there are precincts in which there was less red-shift, indeed many precincts where there was blue shift. BUT THERE IS NO CORRELATION between the magnitude of the redshift and increase in Bush's vote proportion. If fraud was responsible for redshift, somehow, miraculously, it did not manifest itself in any net benefit to Bush.

That is simply a statistical fact. You might be able to construct a fraud narrative that explains it. But, despite a great deal of effort, and fairly extensive modelling, I have not been able to do so.

And I AM NOT forgetting context. Certainly, I assume that the 2004 election occurred in a background that provided motivation to steal an election. That is why I looked for evidence of fraud in the exit polls. But instead, I found evidence that it makes it unlikely that fraud produced the discrepancy. I have, however, found evidence that many thousands of Kerry votes were lost in Ohio because of inequitable rationing of the DREs. And there is also excellent evidence of voter suppression.

But I am a scientist. I am not going to say that evidence is evidence when I do not believe it is. I think the facts are simply against the case that the exit poll discrepancy was due to fraud. So if the election was stolen, as you believe, it must have been stolen by exit-poll invisible means. Which is perfectly possible. And it's why I suggest that DREs are not the place to look.

Look instead for suppression of black votes.

[Febble]

28. A specific reponse:

So I think you have to bring some complex analytical tools to this event, the 2004 election. And, above all, you cannot ignore the context and set it aside. THAT is a very bad scientific assumption--that the 2004 election occurred on some sort of neutral democratic ground, wherein normal, neutral number crunching can be expected to give you a reliable result. It's like trying to diagnose and treat black lung disease without knowing that the patient works in a coal mine. The context of corruption was/is pervasive--from the corporate news monopolies who are profiting from the war, to those lying, murderous S.O.B.'s in the White House, whom the American people voted to oust.

Sure. And a good start is to look outside the exit poll evidence. I think there is plenty, and indeed, I found some myself in Franklin County, Ohio, though I'll leave it to you to decide how much that was due to incompetence and how much to conspiracy to defraud. But to repeat again: I do not ignore the context. The context is clearly vital.

And how clever, really, to only use the secret source code capability selectively, wherever it was needed, and with programmed randomness, to avoid easily detectable patterns--if that's what they in fact did. (--although I have yet to see a convincing refutation of the exit poll redshift in the battleground states and on the east coast).

Well this is where your argument, frankly, is circular. You assume that "they" must have used a particular kind of code in order to avoid detection - because I have not detected it. PP, I have tried very hard to figure out the kind of "code" or "programmed randomness" that would produce the complete non-pattern observed in that correlation. Randomness itself would show up. There are two things that wouldn't: completely uniform fraud, which, frankly, I think is impossible. Or fraud that was carefully targetted only to kick in where Bush was doing badly, and even then, the chances of getting it exactly right are extremely small, and would have to affect the majority of precincts - at precinct level, not tabulator level. This means pre-programming, not a hack - and while I have seen evidence that preprogramming is possible, I have seen no evidence that the kind of online adjustment required to stop Bush's vote dropping below a preset level, but prevent it artificially rising beyond a preset level - different for each precinct - is possible. If you can demonstrate that to me that this is feasible then I'm prepared to listen. But it seems to me that it would require a conspiracy on an inconceivable scale - and one that escaped the New Hampshire recount of optically scanned ballots, among other things.

And in saying all this, I am bending over backwards to consider how it might have been achieved. A randomised switch of a proportion of Kerry votes to Bush wouldn't do it. That would show up.

Now, you are right that precinct level discrepancy was greater in blue states (including the east coast). Interestingly, that has been the case in three of the past five elections, including 1992. There is also, as reported in the E-M report, a slight tendency for WPE to be greater in battleground states, although this effect is confounded by the WPE itself, which tends to be greater (for purely mathematical reasons) where support for the candidates is even. But the blue state effect certainly looks robust. I agree, it has not been "refuted" - on the contrary, it is easy to demonstrate from publicly available data.

But I do not see that this particularly supports the argument that the redshift was due to fraud - particularly in the absence of any evidence that redshift was correlated with advantage to Bush. If the redshift was NOT due to fraud, it must have been due to polling factors. There is no reason to suppose that these are not collinear with the political "color" of the state. And the argument that there were more votes to steal in blue states does not fit with the finding that redshift was not greater in blue precincts - and it's in the blue precincts that the blue votes hang out*.

Keep trying, PP - I really want to know. But simply asserting that they were so clever they fooled all scientific analysis smacks to me of the arguments that say that fossils were planted by Satan to tempt the righteous into the evils of Darwinism.

The statistical fact that those who believe the exit poll discrepancy was an index of fraud need to account for is the fact that redshift is not correlated with swing to Bush. It is a pretty powerful finding.


* on edit: as I suggested some months back, greater fraud in blue precincts might result in a zero correlation between precinct "color" and redshift, as observed. However, so would no fraud. So the evidence from that correlation is probably neutral.

[OnTheOtherHand]

30. a note on apologists

I can speak only for myself, of course.

As I understand it, you have accused the principals of Edison-Mitofsky of suppressing or obfuscating evidence that the 2004 election was stolen -- something that probably you and I both regard as close or tantamount to treason.

If I agreed, I would be ethically obligated to say so.

Because I don't agree, I am ethically obligated to say that. When people are accused of actions tantamount to treason, and we have reason to believe that they are innocent, we ought to say so. This is a lesson of the McCarthy era -- at least, that's how I was raised. YMMV.

In a similar vein, as pending business from other threads, I ought to state for the record that I do not agree with a pseudonymous DKos poster, as quoted by a pseudonymous DU poster, that Charles Stewart, Stephen Ansolabehere, Michael Alvarez, and Jonathan Katz are fairly characterized as "funded by right-wing thinktanks." I will, however, further state that my alma mater has historical ties to the slave trade, and that my graduate fellowship was in the name of a Republican senator.

[OnTheOtherHand]

23. cosponsors included McKinney, Sanders, Wellstone, Kennedy...

The DRE issue is partly separable from the HAVA issue -- DREs could be crooked as all get-out regardless -- but let's not rewrite history. This was bipartisan legislation. (McKinney did vote against the legislation coming out of the House, and then voted for the final bill. Likewise Conyers. There were only 48 House votes against the final bill, and 37 of them were Republican. DU often-less-than-heroes Clinton and Schumer were the only nay votes in the Senate.)

[Peace Patriot]

24. Some further thoughts on Bushite corruption, HAVA and the exit polls:

HAVA was on Bob Ney's desk as the Abramoff bribes were also passing that way. They even considered adding one of the tribal favors as a rider on HAVA, but decided against it, because HAVA was too important to these criminals to endanger it with direct bribery. Filthy, rotten, greedy, no-good, thieving, murdering, fascist shit-heads, they were--who deliberately set about to corrupt and destroy our election system, and succeeded--because the Democrats were too scared, or too corrupt themselves, to raise a finger against them.

Meanwhile, Diebold's CEO was raising HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS for the Bush/Cheney campaign, and promising in writing to "deliver Ohio" to Bush/Cheney in 2004. And Howard Ahmanson (initial funder of ES&S) was contributing ONE MILLION DOLLARS to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon Foundation, which wants to burn witches and homosexuals at the stake. And together these two--Diebold and ES&S--would be "counting" 80% of the nation's votes in 2004, with "TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming code, no paper trail whatsoever in one third of the country, and antiquated, and completely inadequate audit/recount provisions everywhere else--all thanks to the biggest crooks ever to hold public office in the U.S.

Conspiracy? Na-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-aw! Nothing to see here. Move along.

Also, dear Febble, you never seem to understand that the exit poll discrepancy occurred in the midst of this massively corrupted and non-transparent election system. It was the ONLY verification tool we had, and IT showed a 3% Kerry win. That does not--and cannot--prove that Kerry won. But it strongly points to a suspicious result IN THE CONTEXT OF DELIBERATELY CREATED NON-TRANSPARENCY AND VAST CORRUPTION. You always leave the context out.

Say you killed someone who was assaulting you and trying to rape or kill you, and they brought you up on charges of murder. Wouldn't the circumstances be exculpatory? Of course they would be, if you could establish the circumstances, and didn't have a dishonest prosecutor who wanted you as a notch in his fascist belt (the circumstances that black and other poor people often find themselves in, in this country's dreadfully fascist "justice" system).

And the opposite is equally true: An apparently innocent action, say, a man giving $10,000 to his nephew, becomes very likely NOT innocent if the nephew then goes and murders his uncle's business rival--especially if uncle and nephew are known to be members of a crime family. Context MATTERS. And if you leave out the context of the vast corruption of this filthy, murderous Bush junta, and the vast corruption of its agents who passed HAVA, and Bush partisans as the major election system vendors, and the vast, corrupt war profiteering of the corporate news monopolies (who hired Edison-Mitofsky, the exit pollster)--if you put all this aside and ignore it--sure, you might think that a 3% Bush LOSS in the exit polls was an anomaly. IN context, however, it was NOT an anomaly; it was a RED FLAG, which Edison-Mitofsky apologists like yourself keep trying to isolate as a pristine set of data completely apart from the real world. And you simply cannot explain away the fact that Edison-Mitofsky CHANGED that data in impossible ways to make it FIT the results of Diebold's and ES&S's "trade secret" vote tabulation, in the CONTEXT of an "IRON CURTAIN" that the corporate news monopolies had placed over the news of this NEW non-transparency and Bush partisan control of our election system.

The same people who DIDN'T advise the American people that Bushites were 'tabulating' all the votes behind a veil of secrecy--the same people who failed in that journalistic responsibility--the same people, in fact, who had acted as the propagandists for Bush's illegal war, and had failed in that responsibility as well--the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, acting as a consortium, in concert with each other, were the same people who hired Edison-Mitofsky, who removed evidence of a Kerry win from the TV screens that night and replaced it with numbers that matched the "trade secret" formulae. And if that doesn't stink like a skunk, then I don't know what does.

[Febble]

25. Dear PP

I must disagree. I do NOT leave the context out. The context, as far as I was concerned, was that, given Florida 2000, and given the exit poll discrepancy back in 2004, I completely shared your suspicion. Discrepancy alone - yep, probably biased polls. Precedent for The Wrong Man Is President alone - well, maybe he pulled it off for real this time. Both together - highly suspicious. So I start poking around the web for spreadsheets...and there it all starts.

The point is that I approached this thing with my suspicions raised - indeed, had my suspicions not been raised, I would not have approached it.

BUT - and here is the thing - the actual ANALYSIS of the exit poll data does not support the hypothesis. In my opinion. I simply cannot see anyway in which the complete non-correlation of redshift with swing-to-Bush could accommodate DRE-accomplished fraud. Feel free to try. This has NOTHING to do with whether the exit poll projections were changed - as they always are - in line with the count. The data I refer to is the raw, unweighted response data.

PP, you can use all the adjectives you like, and your writing is both powerful and entertaining - but fancy adjectives do not make something true if it isn't. Some of it may be. But in the end, we need to look at the facts. And the facts are that the projections from the polls were made in way they have been for many, many elections, they were not cooked, post hoc, in a hasty attempt to disguise a Kerry win. The evidence is right there on the E-M website. And the facts also are that the raw exit poll discrepancy at precinct level is completely uncorrelated with advantage to Bush.

I am NOT an Edison-Mitofsky "apologist". It may suit your case to think so, but it isn't in fact the case. I am a concerned UK citizen who wanted to know why Bush seemed to have won the election. One of the things I wanted to know was what was going on in those polls. I found a heck of a lot out - and one result of my endeavours, was that the data was re-analysed. If the analysis I refer to had shown a positive correlation between red-shift and swing to Bush I would have been the first to cheer. But the fact is that it didn't. In fact, it more than didn't, it showed that the probability that swing and redshift shared a common cause (fraud) to anything more than an a tiny extent is extremely small.

You are welcome to debate the math. In some ways, I'd like only too well to be proven wrong. I'd be a heck of a lot more popular around here if I was.

Except that - and this is the upside - in the end, this finding is, as I've said elsewhere, GOOD NEWS. It doesn't make the Bush regime any less venial (I didn't start with any faith that the Rove team wouldn't have rigged the thing if they could have) but it does mean there is HOPE that the election system still works well enough for YOU GUYS TO WIN.

Especially if those DREs can be subjected to a proper random audit.

Peace.

Lizzie

[Peace Patriot]

29. What about the central tabulators, Febble?

The DREs (touchscreens) are only one part of an election system all parts of which are run by "trade secret," proprietary software--controlled by Bushite corporations. The Optiscan votes, the DRE votes and all votes are computerized and "tabulated" behind a veil of secrecy. If the votes are not tabulated and posted at the precinct level, before they are sent to the central tabulators, there is no way--without a very expensive and hard to get recount--to know if the vote tabulation is correct. In the case of one third of the country, no recount was even possible, because--at the express DEMAND of these Bushite corporations, and their shills in Congress--there was no paper trail whatsoever. In the rest of the country, the lousy audit procedures that are in place are completely inadequate to these speed-of-light, invisible transactions. Where there was a "significant" recount--of only 3%--in Ohio, there was serious official interference and irregularity, and illegality, in how it was done. So, a) ALL the votes were "processed" secretly, by Bushite corporations, and 2) the entire election was, in essence, not audited.

You keep dwelling on the DREs and not looking at the entire system--of which the central tabulators are actually the most suspicious part. With central tabulator control, you can perform all sorts of tiny, insignificant-looking, randomized, percentage tweaks all over the country, or all over a region, or all over a state, adding up, potentially to millions of votes. One hacker, a couple of minutes, leaving no trace--that's all it takes. There was no system of auditing or recounting in place that could have caught them. All invisible. All at the speed of light. All in a voting system that was drenched in corruption and secrecy--designed by Bushites, run by Bushite corporations.

The central tabulator "results" were fed directly into an AP computer, thence to the other corporate news monopolies. (Think about the insecurity of THAT--AP, one of the biggest boosters of Bushnews.) These results differed from the exit polls, which had been showing a Kerry win all day long until late in the day. Then we had a mysterious breakdown in the reporting system. And, suddenly, Bush was winning. And when this "adjustment" that Edison/Mitofsky did --which you say was routine--is looked at closely, what becomes apparent is that the "adjustment" formula makes no sense. It is in fact not possible. It is far too weighted toward Bush voters. (For instance, it presumes a 100% turnout of Bush 2000 voters, with no reduction for Bush voters who have died in the meantime.)

You have been trying to give the impression that exit poll "adjustments" are a routine matter. But it is NOT routine in other countries. In the Ukraine, for instance--and in fact in other democratic countries--the official results and the exit polls are kept separate, specifically so that the exit polls can act as a verification tool and a check on fraud. And that is exactly what happened in the Ukraine. The exit polls differed from the official results; citizens could see the two differing results, side by side, and knew that something was very wrong.

The practice of "adjusting" the exit polls to "fit" the official results might be defensible--if it were honestly done, without unusual tweaks--and IF....IF!...the election system is known to be transparent and trustworthy.

How can ANYBODY--who is not a Bushite, or is not a Bushite shill, or is not afraid of the Bushites--have looked at THIS election system and called it "transparent"? Bushite campaign chairs and major donors CREATING the voting machines, programming them, and keeping that programming a big secret, even from our secretaries of state, and then servicing the machines in their frequent breakdowns (all at great expense)? Bushites "counting" the votes behind a veil of secrecy, with virtually no audit/recount controls?

I mean, come on. I believe that Edison-Mitofsky had a professional obligation to cry foul--and, at the very least, to keep their exit polls pristine, as a verification tool and a check against fraud. Why didn't they?

How CAN they justify "adjusting" their exit polls to fit the results of an egregiously NON-TRANSPARENT voting system? That is unprofessional behavior.

It's a no-brainer, Febble. They were in the pay of corporate news monopolies who are war profiteers and who clearly have had a vital interest in Bush's illegal war and all of his cabal's other fascist policies, including massive de-regulation of, and massive tax breaks for, big corporations. Bushite appointees run the FCC, and have positively promoted big news monopolies--to our utter ruin as a democracy.

The whole thing just stinks to high heaven. The election system that the Bushites put in place. The "adjustment" of the exit polls to CONFIRM non-transparent vote tabulation, rather to help verify it and check it for fraud. And all the money involved, on all sides.

What happened on the night of Nov. 2, 2004, is that the bludgeon power of Bush and his heinous cabal, and complicity of the war profiteering corporate news monopolies and their clever contractor, Edison-Mitofsky, and the silence of the corrupt or frightened Democratic leadership, all combined to nearly killed the spirit of the American people. And I don't know if we will ever recover.

[Febble]

31. PP, I've actually answered these questions

The analysis I keep referring to was an analysis in which the majority of poll responses was compared with the precinct count not the tabulator count. I am talking about raw exit poll responses, and mostly, raw precinct counts. I am not talking about the projections made from the exit polls, after weighting of various kinds.

I'm not even saying tabulator fraud isn't possible - I'm simply saying that there is no evidence for it in the correlation between raw redshift (calculated from raw exit poll responses, and mostly precinct vote counts) and swing to Bush.

The question of how E-M can "justify" using the vote count to make their projections is a whole 'nother topic, and I won't go into it here, because it is completely irrelevant to the analysis I am referring to which has absolutely nothing to do with the way the projections are made.

You are simply not addressing my point - you just keep insisting that the Bushies are so wicked they must-have-done-it. It's not a "no-brainer" - in your last post to me, you pointed out how complex any analysis would have to be. I agree. I think there were many many ways in which Kerry voters were prevented from casting a vote that was counted in 2004.

But that does not affect the analysis I am citing, which tells me that the exit poll discrepancy, using raw data, and largely precinct - not tabulator - counts, was not correlated with swing to Bush. And you have not told me how that finding is compatible with tabulator tweaks or whatever. It just doesn't add up. If the exit poll discrepancy was caused by fraud, the discrepancy should be correlated with swing to Bush. And it simply isn't. And from that, I am driven to conclude that the election is very unlikely to have been stolen by vote-switching fraud methods.

[OnTheOtherHand]

32. confusion about other countries

It's true that some exit polls in some countries, including Ukraine, are intended as checks upon fraud -- although of course that says nothing about how accurate they are. (The only academic review of the 2004 Ukraine run-off exit poll I've seen actually indicates that it is inconclusive. Damn scientists!)

But if you've tried to piece together press reports from European parliamentary elections, surely you have discovered what Febble has told us many times about Britain: the broadcast media offer preliminary projections, and then frequently update them. AFAICT no one is sitting around reminiscing about the pristine original exit polls.

The main difference in the U.S. -- well, if I had to choose one -- is that the exit pollsters ask dozens of questions on the survey. When people complain about the exit polls being adjusted, they are actually talking about the crosstabs (like "percent of Hispanics who voted for Bush"), which in most other countries don't even exist to be adjusted.

No time to address confusion about this country. I've done it before. You apparently don't listen anyway.

[OnTheOtherHand]

33. BTW, the 2000 exit poll implies 100+% turnout of Clinton '96 voters

Weighted or unweighted, over 45 1/2% of the respondents said they had voted for Clinton in 1996. There were 105.4 million presidential votes counted, so that gives us some 48 million Clinton voters. But Clinton only got 47.4 million votes in 1996, and probably under 46 million of those voters survived to 2000.

I look at the other nine exit polls (seven elections) archived with ICPSR, and I see that the previous winner's vote margin among current voters is larger than the original vote margin in every single one of them (even Nixon in 1976), by an average of 11 points.

I've offered my explanation. What is yours?

[FogerRox]

15. ERD needs 25 more votes

recommend the ERD NOW . . here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=nominate&forum=203&thread=422803