Godless Mom in the Bible Belt

There are basically two things that can be done if you intend to manipulate election results. First, you can to suppress the vote in areas that are likely to vote for your opponent. Second, you can manipulate the numbers once the vote is cast.

Totally Crunchy left a comment here Monday describing her experience regarding her status as a registered voter being questioned despite the fact that she had her voter registration card in hand at the time of the election. Unfortunately, Totally Crunchy's voting experience wasn't any more unique than my own. There are many examples of people experiencing the very same thing last November. Names were purged from rolls, inadequate numbers of machines were provided for precincts with large voting populations. Letters were sent out on official looking stationary to areas with a large number of low income or minority populations (largely Democratic) telling voters that due to larger than expected turnout, they would be voting on Wednesday instead of Tuesday. Groups proclaiming to be non-partisan would run voter registration drives and then destroy the papers of those who tried to register as Democrats. People (frequently minorities) were often challenged and intimidated at their polling places and were forced to wait in line for hours in order to cast their votes while their counterparts in the more wealthy areas of town were greeted with little or no challenges and short lines. (1)

Now, I'm not claiming that the GOP was the only one playing dirty in this election, I'm just claiming that they're better at it. The majority of voter suppression took place in low income and minority areas which have large numbers of registered Democrats.

You remember that amazing display of civil disobedience in Ukraine last year?(2) The citizens of that country knew their election had been stolen and they staged a massive yet peaceful protest that didn't end until the appropriate legal and political measures had been taken to restore the integrity of their government. One of the big waving red flags in that case was the huge discrepancy between the exit polls and the final reported results. Exit polls are traditionally a very reliable and accurate method of predicting the outcome of an election. Sure they are subject to certain inaccuracies due to sampling error and such, this is why they have that built in "margin of error", but overall exit polls give a pretty clear picture of the intentions of the voting public. These polls are even used by our own government when monitoring the outcome of elections in new Democracies to determine whether or not those elections are all above board.

During our last election the exit polls had Kerry winning. Many people went to bed that night fully expecting to wake up to Kerry as president. However, for some reason the exit polls did not agree with the final tally and that Wednesday morning offered a very different picture. Let's assume for a moment that something was wrong with the methods being employed by the exit pollsters. Why then did every "mistake" benefit Bush? (3) The group who conducted the polls released a report about their results. (4) Their reason for the difference in numbers is that apparently Kerry supporters are more likely to talk to exit pollsters than Bush supporters (yet they are unable to give any reason as to why that may be.) (5) Now, I don't know about you guys but I don't recall ever running into a Bush supporter who was shy about voicing their opinion. This explanation for the discrepancy in numbers just doesn't hold water for me. I could almost swallow their excuse if it weren't for the fact that in many states the points gained by Bush went far outside the margin of error.

You can read a detailed study of the exit poll discrepancies here or here. To be fair you can find a rebuttal to the reports here.

A chart showing the accuracy of the exit polls in states with paper trails can be seen here.

A chart showing the accuracy of the exit polls in states without paper trails can be seen here. (Both charts taken from Cyberpols archives.)

A lot of suspicion has been cast on the Op-Scan machines used in Florida. This page has charts showing the expected vote vs. The actual vote in counties where the Op-Scan machines were used and charts showing the expected vs. Actual votes in counties where the touch screen machines were used (Scroll down a bit.) You can see that the touch screen machines returned totals very much in line with what was expected, the Op-Scan machines on the other hand consistently recorded more votes for Bush than what had been estimated. Why would the expected votes be so accurate in touch screen precincts and so far off in Op-Scan precincts? Hmmm. Remember, Kerry led Bush by two points in the exit polls in Florida but lost the state by 5 points. That is a VERY wild swing.

Tomorrow I'll write about the absence of this information in the main stream media and the legal and political maneuverings following the election.