Study of Exit Poll/Final Result disparity based on Exit Pollsters Own Data, Explanations, Allow One-in-959,000 Chance of Being Correct!
OH Secretary of State, Bush-Cheney Co-Chair Blackwell's Office Still Obnoxious, Unpatriotic.
By Brad Friedman on 4/2/2005, 2:53pm PT  

On Thursday, USCountVotes.org, a Utah non-profit organization of statisticians and researchers, released a new scientific statistical analysis of the "2004 Presidential Exit Poll Discrepancies" [PDF]. Here is the executive summary of the report [PDF].

This study is a real one. A scientific one. Produced by a real group of non-partisan investigators, statisticians, university professors and mathmeticians --- unlike at least one phony GOP disinformation front group comprised of paid Bush/Cheney/RNC staff that we know of.

The USCountVotes.org report is in response to the one released by the Exit Pollsters, Edison/Mitofsky themselves who had tried, in their report, to explain away their own data as somehow being flawed. As explained in the USCountVote report's executive summary:

Our conclusion is that the data appear to be more consistent with the hypothesis of bias in the official count, rather than bias in the exit poll sampling. No data in the report supports the [Edison/Mitofsky] hypothesis that Kerry voters were more likely than Bush voters to cooperate with pollsters and, in fact, there is some indication that the opposite may have been the case.

In describing the report, USCountVotes.org says that:

It has only recently been officially confirmed (by the exit pollsters themselves) that on election night the final set of exit polls showed John Kerry defeating George Bush by 3% of the popular vote and a clear majority of 316 electoral votes. Our statisticians analyzed Edison/Mitofsky's own explanation of their exit poll discrepancies, and found serious flaws in their argument. Exit polls have been used for years to detect corruption of official vote tallies - most recently in Ukraine.

Here is just one graph from the report, of particular note to BRAD BLOG readers Velvet Revolution supporters and true advocates of Election Reform and Voting Rights (unlike other phony advocates of voting rights that we know of.)

Stephen Dyer of the Akron Beacon Journal has done a fine job of summing up some of the report's key points. As we've been too busy to do a thorough job of it ourselves (and likely will continue to be for the next several days at least), we associate ourselves with Dyer's summary. As well, we share the contemptable reactions to the report which he received from the office of the man responsible for ensuring fair elections in Ohio, Sec. of State (and Co-Chair of the Bush/Cheney Re-Election Comm.) J. Kenneth Blackwell via his spokesman, Carlo LoParo --- both of whom seem to continue to display an utter contempt for their country, its founding principles and its constitution...

There's a one-in-959,000 chance that exit polls could have been so wrong in predicting the outcome of the 2004 presidential election, according to a statistical analysis released Thursday.

Exit polls in the November election showed Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., winning by 3 percent, but President George W. Bush won the vote count by 2.5 percent.

The explanation for the (ed: historically unprecedented!) discrepancy that was offered by the exit polling firm --- that Kerry voters were more likely to participate in the exit polling --- is an "implausible theory," according to the report issued Thursday by US Count Votes, a group that claims it's made up of about two dozen statisticians.

Twelve --- including a Case Western Reserve University mathematics instructor --- signed the report.

Instead, the data support the idea that "corruption of the vote count occurred more freely in districts that were overwhelmingly Bush strongholds."
...
The conclusion drew a yawn from Ohio election officials, who repeated that the discrepancy issue was settled when the polling firms Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International disavowed its polls because Kerry voters were more likely to answer exit polls --- the theory Thursday's report deemed "implausible."
...
"What are you going to do except laugh at it?" said Carlo LoParo, spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, who's responsible for administering Ohio's elections and is a Republican candidate for governor. "We're not particularly interested in (the report's findings). We wish them luck, but hope they find something more interesting to do.''

The statistical analysis, though, shows that the discrepancy between polls and results was especially high in precincts that voted for Bush --- as high as a 10 percent difference.

The report says of the official explanation --- that Bush voters were more shy about filling out exit polls in precincts with more Kerry voters --- if true, then the precincts with large Bush votes should be more accurate, not less accurate as the data indicate.
...
The report also called into question new voting machine technologies.

"All voting equipment technologies except paper ballots were associated with large unexplained exit poll discrepancies all favoring the same party, (which) certainly warrants further inquiry," the report concludes.

However, LoParo remained unimpressed.

"These (Bush) voters have been much maligned by outside political forces who didn't like the way they voted," he said. "The weather's turning nice. There are more interesting things to do than beat a dead horse."

We take no particular joy in making such statements, but from LoParo's response we can only conclude that he is an utterly and truly horrible human being who seems to despise his country and its founding, bedrock principles.

As we've come to expect from this bunch, they did not answer to the actual conclusion posited by the scientific report, nor did they refute any of the actual details of the careful analysis and evidence presented. The report was created after several months of detailed analytical study of an enormous amount of data. Instead, as has been their m.o. since Election Day, Blackwell/LoParo simply attempt to discredit/malign the American citizens who produced it as "outside political forces" with absolutely no evidence to back up their claims.

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