Charnin: M Crispin Miller & Jonathan Simon respond to NYT Nate Silver re WI, plus Lehto & Mitteldorf

[tiptoe]

Richard Charnin (TruthIsAll): http://groups.google.com/group/ElectionIntegrity/browse_thread/thread/c1d2d67dc39aeb3f?hl=en

View/Download/email/tweet a TrueVoteCalcSheet (1-page PDF w active links)

Jonathan Simon [Your Blindness is Killing us] and Mark Crispin Miller ["nothing nefarious"] have just posted regarding Nate Silver's NY Times blog piece. Nate sees nothing nefarious in the Wisconsin election. As usual, Nate parrots the party line: no fraud.
This is a summary of my posts in which I attempt to engage Nate in discussion — to no avail.

• An Open Letter to Nate Silver
  Go here for the full text and detailed tables:
  http://richardcharnin.com/OpenLettertoNateSilver.htm
  
  
• This was a comment I posted on Nate's NY Times blog which was
  summarily deleted:
  http://richardcharnin.com/SilverTimesTruth.htm
  
  
• I challenge his knowledge here:
  http://richardcharnin.com/TwentySilver.htm
  
  
• I expose his naivete on exit polls here:
  http://richardcharnin.com/SilverExitPolls.htm
  
  
• I expose his bogus ranking system here:
  http://richardcharnin.com/SilverRankings.htm
  
  
• I debunk Nate and Markos (Daily Kos) here:
  http://richardcharnin.com/Research2000Volatility.htm

...

(Paul Lehto and Josh Mittledorf responses follow at source link)

[FiveGoodMen]

1. Hmmm. I don't know how many posts I read that said, "If it's okay with Nate, it's okay with me"

[vaberella]

4. I'm mainly a DU person---on DU, quite a few. n/t

[joentokyo]

2. Their minds are made up, so Simon and Miller should not subject them to facts.

[tiptoe]

3. 1988-2008 True Vote Model -- state & national

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?hl=en&key=tpsLLEzC1Ccb7FsEN-EgZhQ&hl=en#gid=0

[vaberella]

5. Really good thread. Definitely worthwhile in the GDP section. n/t

[avaistheone1]

6. k&r

[democracy1st]

7. kick

[emcguffie]

8. Thank you, Richard Charnin.

I was one of those folks sitting up late on election night 2004 who saw them change the exit polls. That moment was life-changing for me. I'll never trust an election again, until they change the way we do it.

For one thing, why can't we organize just a couple of real exit polls? Just a few, maybe using college students, just to provide a check on what otherwise seems to be a completely owned process?

[Wilms]

9. An exit poll is as questionable as a computer generated election result.

Shouldn't that be self-evident? Those who cite exit polls as providing proof that Bush lost, go on to cite exit polls as proof Gore and Kerry won!

Exit polls provide no "check". They have NO force of law. They merely produce fodder for more endless debate. They're a distraction.

Hand counting enough ballots using a robust auditing method is what's needed.

Charnin won't tell you that. His schtick is exit polls.

[emcguffie]

11. Sorry, I believe exit polls are okay until they change the results.

I saw them do that early the next morning in 2004, and yes, I'm a true believer that they change the exit polls.

I may be terribly naive, but a long time ago we believed we used exit polls for two things -- to get an idea of which way an election was going, and to verify, to a degree, the outcome. If an exit poll is conducted properly and isn't changed, it usually works pretty well. Yes, I believe that. I believe that more than I believe what comes out of those computers full of proprietary code.

But I would never argue against paper ballots hand counted. That's the best we could have, isn't it? Too bad we don't have it. And even if we did, I wouldn't mind having some way to check.

It seems to me exit polls should not be controlled by the media.

Maybe in the days before the media were all corporately owned they could have been counted on.

[Wilms]

14. I "believe" they were correct prior to fudging, too.

But I don't know. That's the point.

And I hardly needed to consider the exit polls given the documented shenanigans in FL 2000 and Ohio 2oo4.

And you need not "believe" the exit polls are changed. If I'm not mistaken, the polling org admitted as much. And that's before considering the computers used with exit polling, the protocols, and the chain of custody issues.

As far as believing they "verify, to a degree, the outcome" doesn't cut it. Results are verified, or they aren't. Degrees are the +/- points that are the tip-off that there are concerns where the margin is tight. That's why (in the absence of levers...anyway) we need paper, and adequate audit protocols and recount law. We lack both...significantly.

[emcguffie]

15. I am honestly not sure I understand what you are saying.

Exit polls, if they are done right, can give an idea if something is off. It seems to me we still need that, if we could get it. As it stands now, there isn't anything else, is there? I mean to just us regular voters, not to people involved in the elections business. What tips us off, if it isn't something like a poll that we, for some reason, believe to be accurate, or an exit poll that was done honestly and not changed?

Of course, now that we know that such an exit poll doesn't exist, then they don't help. But it seems to me if we could have a good exit poll that wasn't "corrected," that would be a help.

I agree with what you say we should have, but I don't think in the absence of those things we should just say, well, we need those things and nothing else will do.

It seems to me it's important to try to convince the American public that things are not all right. To me, that is just about the most important thing to be done. That, and fix the media, and I can't see how we're going to accomplish that. If the vast American public becomes convinced that something is seriously wrong, then we MIGHT succeed in getting paper ballots.

So that's what I'm thinking about -- how to convince the vast American public that something is seriously wrong.

At the same time, I still believe Richard Charnin is right. I do believe a chunk of votes is being stolen in almost all races -- in any races where the machines are the right kind and where they have the access to them that they need.

I'm sorry I'm not better informed about the whole subject, so that I could carry on a more informed discussion about this, but maybe I'll get more informed. Maybe I'll come in here one day ready to defend TIA's model.

At any rate, I remain convinced that this one of two crucial issues to the continued existence -- or, at this stage, perhaps the rebirth of -- the country I was born in and which I think we all loved and cherished. The other issue being, as I said above, the media. And to change those laws we need to win a significant number of elections.

[Wilms]

16. Hey, I'm not sufficiently informed about the whole exit poll debate.

And, actually, I'm OK with that.

I am, however, sufficiently informed that the voting system is a mess. Do you know what, in part, may have prevented a recount in OH2004? In addition to lacking a proper audit protocol, two election workers were JAILED for screwing with the process.

CLEVELAND (AP) - Two county election workers were sentenced Tuesday to 18 months in prison for rigging a recount of 2004 presidential election ballots so they could avoid a longer, detailed review.

Jacqueline Maiden, 60, a Cuyahoga County election coordinator who was the board's third-highest ranking employee, and ballot manager Kathleen Dreamer, 40, each were convicted of a felony count of negligent misconduct of an elections employee.

Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Peter Corrigan allowed the women to remain free on bail pending appeal, but indicated he thought there was a more widespread conspiracy among election officials.

"I can't help but feel there's more to this story," Corrigan said.

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4266

No exit poll required.

The media doing a lousy job doesn't mean exit polls will save the day. In fact, the media will screw with that too if they want. And they did. And they said it's what they always do. :shrug:

But with all the focus and fuss on exit polls, which can't confirm or deny a result, the election integrity movement got bogged down in that endless discussion. Here you and I are WASTING time discussing it. Taken to an extreme, we'll have TIA deciding who the next president is. I'm actually not OK with that.

All I can add is what I wrote in the previous post.

[OnTheOtherHand]

10. to be honest, pretty useless

TIA may believe that Kerry won New York by 31 points because the exit polls said so, but how will he get anyone else to believe it? Where does that go?

There's stuff out there on election verification exit polls. Some good people have contributed time to the approach, but I just don't see how it can work. I don't think there's any method that is guaranteed to work well, and if it did work well, how would you know, and if you knew, how would anyone else?

[emcguffie]

12. I believe it too.

And you're right, there's no way to prove it.

Every time they add one more of those machines, there's less chance of proving anything, either way.

There is evidence that can be gleaned from results and lots of details about those results using mathematics, though, isn't there?

I'm sorry I can't recall what I saw mathematically that supported what I happen to believe to be the truth. But I reserve the right to trust myself, and that includes my observations, including but not limited to factual observations, and my instincts. And I can form my opinion that way. I do not have to be able to prove my opinion is accurate. I can even voice my opinion without proving it is accurate.

Since we are in a fix where pretty much nothing can be proven about who is being elected these days, all anybody can say then is pretty much opinion, yes? At least until somebody counts paper ballots by hand. And that's not going to happen where I live, as there aren't any paper ballots.

I think TIA is right. He may not be, but I think he is. And all your insistence that he isn't certainly doesn't accomplish anything but chase people off who don't happen to agree with you.

We're all on the same side.

I happen to think he's pretty smart, and he's probably right, and his tool probably works. Just like back in 2004 I was quite sure I was right, and that opinion was based to some degree on math.

What about the returning dead voter? Does that mean nothing to you? That's not what he calls them. The returning voter that they have to create in order to make all the numbers add up?

Truth is, right now I'm too lazy to go back and figure it all out. One of these days my sick (I mean physically ill) brain will wake up a little bit and I"ll figure it out again, and then perhaps I can have an honest conversation with you about it.

TIA certainly could be right, and you could, just possibly, be wrong.

[OnTheOtherHand]

13. OK

I'm sorry that you live in a place without paper ballots -- and I'm very sorry that you're unwell.

The exit poll analysts didn't create dead voters in order to make anything add up. However, TIA made a big deal about how the weighted 2004 exit poll results showed more people having voted for Bush in 2000 than there actually could have been. So I pointed out to TIA that a lot of survey evidence -- including one study that interviewed the same people in 2000 and in 2004 -- shows that it is common for people to misremember, or at least misreport, having voted for the incumbent. (An extreme example: Bush-Dukakis was actually pretty close in the popular vote, but you wouldn't know it by looking at the General Social Survey five years later, where Bush "beat" Dukakis by 41 points.) If TIA had a sensible response, I would be happy to consider it. Frankly, I think I'm a heck of a lot less dogmatic than he is.