SES: Stolen Election Syndrome

Like a dog returns to its vomit, so a political party to its theories of conspiracy.

In case you have not been paying attention (not that you should, since being attentive to this sort of thing is like looking for authenticity at a World Wrestling Federation contest), but there is a lot of noise about the 2004 election in Ohio. It seems that, once again, that great dope, George W. Bush, managed to elude the power of exit polls, using a series of stealth tactics, and landed a Ohio victory for himself and his cabal. Though I have not read his whole Rolling Stone article, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s piece is something approaching Holy Writ on the matter (after all, it is written by a Kennedy). But I did read all of Joel Bleifuss' article here, and I must say that the preoccupation with -- and even the idolization of -- exit polls is puzzling. You see, the argument is that something appears to have gone awry in the election process in Ohio, since the final votes from that day did not correspond with what exit polls were showing. In response to that apparent discrepancy, I wrote the following at the site "In These Times", where Bleifuss' article appeared:

The essay [by Mr. Bleifuss] posted here is interesting, but it seems to be based on one very dubious assumption: that exit polls are trustworthy. While I admit that I have not read Mr. Bleifuss’ book, I can only gather from this article that such an assumption has been made without analysis.

Why trust ANY exit poll? The electorate is well-informed about how such polls are used; much of the electorate remains angry that such polls may or may not have influenced voter turnout in previous elections. We all know the criticism that exit polls lead pundits and prognosticators to call a state or district for a particular candidate before the final tallies are in, and, perhaps, before polls are closed. Hence, knowing that voters are mindful of this sort of problem with exit polling, why would we assume that any voter participating in an exit poll is telling the truth?

My own experience is two-fold. I have lied on the exit polls I’ve taken (I am not proud of this, now that I think about it), and I know many others who have lied on the exit polls they’ve taken as well. Plus, I am amazed by the vast numbers of people who refuse to even acknowledge an exit poll worker when exiting the voting station. What, alas, is the percentage of voters who vote in the actual election who take exit polls, and what percentage of them are NOT telling the truth? I don’t know, and I am not going to get the answer from reading this essay.

Moreover, how do I know that REAL voters even filled out the exit polls in question? If I can’t trust the polls INSIDE the voting station, why should I trust polls taken OUTSIDE? Surely we can all imagine an overzealous exit-pollster working to skew the projection data by filling out a few extra exit polls, can’t we?

The bottom line is that potential problems with a voting machine doth not a conspiracy make, nor does a disparity between inside and outside polls. This essay does not appear to analyze the most basic assumption of the authors’ whole thesis—the trustworthiness of exit polls—and as such should be read warily. And I am afraid that if we were to launch an investigative study of exit polls, we would discover that such tools are rife with problems, potential and actual.

Peace,

BG

Peace indeed.

(More to follow.)
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: Election fraud, Voting, Ohio Election Fraud, Bush Stole Ohio, Exit Polls, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Rolling Stone, Joel Bleifuss