1.
Exit Polling is a check against stolen elections, except in the
United States
Last Tuesday, the exit
polls in New York repeated, as Wolf Blitzer unusually kept reiterating on CNN in
the early evening, that the Sanders/Clinton race was within 4 points, 52-48…
***
Sanders, who has came
out of nowhere (started at 3% to Hillary’s 70%), had just won 8 of the last 9
contests. If Clinton were to lose New
York – the state where she had been Senator for 8 years - or only barely beaten Sanders, it would have been humiliating, desperate for
her. It would also have been devastating
for the official, no deviation-permitted stereotype in the corporate media that she is an
“inevitable” nominee. She is not. She would
have been – she plainly already is - a very weak candidate for the Democratic
Party to nominate.
***
In addition, Hillary
has not done well in the debates.
According to figures, not reported widely in the media from “unscientific”
polls are 80%-20% or better in favor of Bernie, a pretty constant result. Clinton and Deborah Wasserman-Schultz of the
Democratic National Committee), had scheduled the fewest possible debates for
Saturday night or other odd times (initially 6; this has gone up to 9 because
of pressure from Sanders supporters and others). But these results, of course, are consistent
with his coming from 60 points down in polls to beating her in many states, and
drawing even or ahead in the recent national polls. They are consistent with the fact that when
many ordinary Democrats and independents get to see and find out about Bernie
Sanders, they prefer him.
***
Bernie is a
man of integrity who has spoken up for ordinary people with a bold program
since being elected to Congress (for some 40 years). He has named inequality – the oligarchy of
billionaires – and , as a startling
innovation in the democratic process, takes no money from corporations – his
average contribution is $27. Yet he
outraises Clinton with her wealthy corporate donors each month.
***
Sanders fiercely
opposes Citizens’ United, stands up for Eric Garner and other innocents killed
by the police (Clinton is good on this issue, too), for the minimum wage of $15
(here, Clinton now tries to imitate him, but still keeps to $12 over several years),
against climate change, against fracking (Hillary was Secretary of State/Fracker
all over the world), for the dignity of Palestinians (again, a first in a New
York or American Presidential primary debate), against regime-change (Hillary
destroyed democracy in Honduras against the advice even of her aide Ann-Marie
Slaughter and the American ambassador), demands free public college – a
dramatic reduction of student-debt, and advances
many other parts of a Franklin Delano Roosevelt program. As Bill Clinton who was the great imprisoner
of young blacks and Hillary once spoke of them as “superpredators” (she does
not now, though she can’t bring herself to apologize for this), Bernie is, in
many ways, a breath of fresh air.
***
Further, Bernie’s emergence from nowhere to
plausible nominee is the greatest story of this election season and a shocking
anomaly for a muzzled commercial media reporting ritualistically only in small
type below blaring reports about Trump that “Sanders wins but…Clinton has an [supposedly]
insurmountable lead among unelected ‘superdelegates’” (these include lobbyists).
And with New York and Pennsylvania’s
results, they report on Sanders today only to end his candidacy…
***
In contrast, the corporate media made Trump
the leading candidate among Republicans, receiving a vast amount of free
publicity (including some hostile) while doing its level best (every single
commentator and columnist from the Times
to MSNBC) to bury Sanders’ candidacy,
through not mentioning his name if possible.
***
And yet Sanders still comes on. Bernie is far closer to Hillary Clinton in terms
of elected delegates than Cruz is to Trump.
***
In addition, Sanders had a string of huge
rallies in all the boroughs of New York, including 25,000 in the South Bronx
(overwhelming black and latin people, whom Bernie supposedly doesn’t appeal to,
according to the corporate media – listen to Rosario Dawson at that rally here, here and here – 28, 000 and another 20,000
lined up along the street at Washington Square Park here (Obama had had an
amazing, imagined to be unsurpassable 24,000 there in 2008…), 25,000 in
Brooklyn, and so forth.
Hillary Clinton had a big
turnout of 1,200.
Hillary desperately needed a “big
win” in New York to stem the tide. So it
was for the Clinton machine (Democratic National Committee/corporate media) all
operatives go, all tricks enabled…
2. How in so heated a primary, could the Big Apple have had the second
lowest primary turnout, 19.7%, higher only than Louisiana?
In one of the fiercest primaries with so much at stake, New York reported the second lowest primary
turnout – 19.7% of eligible voters – in this election cycle. Only Louisiana was worse. See here and here.
***
But that was because thousands
of people had their registrations lost or removed without notice, were turned away or cast uncounted
affidavit ballots, polls often opened at 12 instead of 6AM…Count affidavit voters and the percentage would go up...
***
And though the city, run by the
Democratic Party, illegally and immorally stripped 126,000 voters in Brooklyn –
Diane Haslett-Rudiano, the head election official, was fired two days
afterwards – that is but the tip of the iceberg of even a pre-voting story (a story which would not reveal additional fraud
according to initial exit polls)…
***
First,
unusual, arbitrary disenfranchisement begins with a Elections Secretary in
Brooklyn (King’s County) who stripped 126,000 people from the voter rolls probably
in exchange for a big payoff on an apartment in 2014 (see the Wall Street Journal Story here and
her firing here) The payoff came from a New York politician
and “superdelegate” for Clinton. Note: that
Hillary knows anything about specific abuses is doubtful ; many of these things
can have been done at the initiative of corrupt Democratic apparatus without central
prompting. No conspiracy is needed to
see that votes have been stripped and flipped for Clinton. But if there are too many such instances, as
with the stereotypical media coverage, no Sanders people invited, a reasonable
inference to the best explanation - Gilbert Harman’s characterization of
induction - with now quite a lot of evidence, is to some major coordinated push….
***
Second, pre-voting exclusions include switching
of or losing of party registration without informing people. Lots of Sanders voters suffered from this in
Arizona as well as New York; no Clintonista was eliminated…But that is a
statistical impossibility if this were random error.
***
Francesca Rheannon, an election judge in East
Hampton reported that as many as 25% of those who came to vote in her district
- mostly Sanders supporters - were barred from voting through loss of
registration (in contrast, but 2 Republicans were). And that suppression, she
says, is way atypical even in New
York (a similar thing happened last night in Pennsylvania…). She also suggests that, as if someone used age
broadly, or more likely, had access to Democratic National Committee lists of
supporters, those who were thrown off were overwhelmingly likely Sanders voters…
***
MY EXPERIENCE AS A POLL WORKER THE EPIC FAIL OF A
PRIMARY
I just got off my 17 hour shift as an election
official in East Hampton, NY. I am from this area and went canvassing for
Bernie for 4 days here. While canvassing, I found overwhelming support for
Bernie in my middle class area -- nearly every house where I actually talked to
voters (about 40% of the houses), almost all were for Bernie.
But
today at the polls, many of those had disappeared from the voter roll book. In
my own ED district, which is the district I was working in, out of 166
Democratic voters, 39 were forced to file affidavit ballots. (ONLY 2 Republican
voters had to file affidavits.) That's close to 20%. Let that sink in for a
moment.
Many
of these voters were long term registered Democrats -- some were in couples
where one person was on the rolls and the other was not. Most had not moved
since the last election and had voted in the most recent elections.
Hillary
won by 11 votes in my ED -- not counting affidavits. THE AFFIDAVITS MUST NOT
ONLY BE COUNTED, THEY MUST BE ALLOWED.
It
was impossible for me, an election official, to get a straight story on whether
the affidavits would be counted. The "coordinator" -- the top person
at the site -- let slip that they count the affidavits
"proportionately". If she is correct, that means, I assume, they take
a sample of the ballots to count. Not all. If that sample is based on the
proportion of official ballots cast, then I imagine it would just reproduce the
first results WITHOUT the affidavits.
But
it's worse than that. If the voter has been purged from the Board of Elections
rolls -- like 125,000 Brooklyn voters were -- then it seems the affidavits
(because no one could tell me for certain WHAT would happen to the affidavits
-- are not counted. If you can't prove you are a registered Democrat, then you
won't be counted, it seems. (If you received a voter card, you have some proof.
But not everyone did or they may not be able to retrieve it.)
The
ruling that came down from the emergency voter protection suit was no remedy.
It allowed for getting a court order to vote. The nearest judge is more than an
hour from here. And I was strongly discouraged from even informing voters that
a court order was an option (I had to fight to be able to tell people of their
right to a court order.)
Finally
-- this was NOT business as usual. This was my second election. The last one I worked at, exactly ONE voter
needed an affidavit ballot in my ED. Every poll worker there, at all the ED
tables (there were 4) was shocked at the number of voters who were not on the
rolls. Many have been working for years -- and had never seen anything remotely
like this.
The
whole purging and affidavit process needs to be investigated on an emergency
basis BEFORE the election results are decided. Bernie's folks need to be on top
of this. They need to fight for an honest election. They owe it to us who have
worked so hard for them.”
***
Listen also to an
interview with Rheannon and one other poll worker, here.
***
Third, this attempt at hobbling
Sanders’ candidacy before any votes were cast included the ordinary barring of
independents by the Democratic Party in New York as well as anyone who has not registered as of
6 months ago (October). They did so,
despite vast complaint, including a legal case the last two days before the
election, among the many whose registrations had been lost or had the party
affiliation changed. But independents
overwhelmingly favor Sanders which is why he polls better against Republicans
and would be a far stronger candidate in the general election.
***
Yet even aside from the public good of supporting
democracy (except during civil rights protest, the American parties have never
been honorable about this), Democrats
mostly benefit from people voting in their primary and then in the general
election…
***
And Republicans – ever hostile to
voting rights… - join in in New York. So a mere 19.8% of eligible voters voted in
the New York primaries, once again second only to Louisiana…..
***
How bad is the corruption
in New York? In 2008 primary, there were
two districts in Harlem that were recorded “officially” as casting 0 votes for
Barack Obama. See here and here. They were no doubt “swept” by Hillary Clinton,
as the New York Times and MSNBC would hasten to report…
3.
Still, among those who were allowed to vote, exit polling provides a
unique antidote to corruption
But none of this range of abuses cited
above – all giving an advantage to Clinton as every error in Ohio in 2004
pointed to Bush (see the John Conyers report on the Ohio election for the House
of Representatives) – affects exit polling.
That is an initial – an
important word, as we will see - polling of those who actually voted.
***
That Sanders was only 4 points behind – 48-52
- in an exit poll of a voting population
that already excluded independents and all these “lost registrations” of
experienced Democrats/Sanders supporters, underlines just how weak Clinton - and her Democratic
apparatus/corporate media supporters – are.
It highlights how extraordinary their
maneuvers to make her appear viable are…Public distrust of Clinton, in polls, or
the gap between favorable and unfavorable ratings is already high and, with the doubts about primaries in
Arizona, Illinois, Massachusetts, and now New York growing. See here.
***
On CNN, Wolf Blitzer
called the New York race for Donald Trump immediately and no exit polls were
announced (these were consistent with the actual vote, that is, perhaps within
a couple of points as is usually the case).
But the Democratic race was not
called until 30% of the vote had been “counted,” because as Blitzer kept
reiterating as if surprised, and as was also announced on MSNBC – the initial exit
polls showed Clinton 52-Sanders 48.
***
But even the so-called “actual,” reported vote streaming below on the screen was
bizarre. All evening, the ostensible
“recorded vote” came in at 60-39.7 for Clinton.
At the very end, it slipped to a margin of “victory” of 15 points, still
a huge “11.8%” different from the exit polls. That is far greater than the wildly
statistically improbable 2004 exit poll/”recorded” vote differential – mostly
7% in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania.
***
If you have watched election results in
other primaries this year, you would expect voting figures to vary at least
some, depending on the areas of the state reporting. CNN and MSNBC expected
this, not calling the election until a third of the “results” came in. Rarely do votes come in, percentage wise, in
what is basically a flat line…
***
In addition, with
his map of what votes have come in and where, John King gave a picture of how
Bernie won most counties in the State, and was pretty close in Buffalo. The rural counties use paper ballots and are
mostly hand counted. It must have been
painful for him not to say something sarcastic (even though he rarely says
anything “interesting” as a public persona – like all the others, except Rachel
Maddow and on panels, a rare man of insight and integrity, Van Jones). For
there was little variance in the rate at which Clinton was winning until the
very end.
***
After 30%, came in, CNN and MSNBC “called” the “election”…
4. The US State
Department and the United Nations use
exit polls to guarantee the fairness of
elections in other countries
But as several
State Department/USAID guides to fair elections say, exit polling is a basic
tool. The US has challenged many elections in former Soviet territories and in
tyrannies disfavored by the American government, based on the deviation between
exit polling and so-called “recorded votes.”
Recall: Hillary Clinton was
Secretary of State.
***
In the US
itself and only in the United States, however, deviations between initial exit polls and
so-called recorded votes have become an enormous, one might say glaring
problem. In comparative perspective,
these dubious results became the elephant in the room for the establishment
(Democratic and Republican)/media enablers. Exit polling is the test for fair
elections. Its significance is not just about this particular race; this practice raises the deepest questions about the right of each citizen to vote and, startlingly, unexpectedly, about whether America is a democracy.
***
Therefore, the Edison group which does all the actual polling and
press commentators, keep their mouths firmly shut about its significance.
***
For in America, voting
is often “recorded” on machines which leave no paper trail, are made by
companies, owned by Republicans (Diebold publically swore to Bush that he would
win in Ohio in 2004), and with private proprietary codes. No election official, no candidate, no newspaper,
and most importantly, no independent or
bipartisan board of experts is allowed to see what happens or evaluate how
it works. No debate about this ever
occurs in the corporate media. These
machines prove easy enough for computer experts to hack quickly, as was already
shown by Holi Hursti (- the famous “Hursti Hack” except in the commercial media
- and checked by Berkeley computer experts) for Diebold machines in 2004…See here, here and here.
***
To ask a question
about this is to explode a stick of dynamite...
***
For there have
been major suspicious results according to exit polling, for instance, in the 2004 “election” of W.
with wide swings (6-8 points from the initial exit polls in Florida,
Pennsylvania and crucially, in Ohio, wildly improbable, statistically speaking),
and widespread protest from below.
***
Now,
there have been some “improvements.” Some
machines have a tape where the voter can at least see how her vote was cast
(this is ostensibly true in Colorado after protest from below in 2006).
***
Further, ES&S,
a firm with an anesthetized name (if you name a corporation, the Election
Machine Company, people might want to know something…) has taken over Diebold. In 2013, Diebold was fined $50 million for “a
worldwide pattern of criminal conduct, “ according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. It
seems bribing officials to buy (and then why not, throwing elections with?)
these very American machines, is part of that corporation’s modus operandi. One might think this would have been a
nationwide story…you really, as Mel Brooks might say, can't make this stuff up...
***
And yet no
effort has come from the Democratic Party to question this or obtain public
ownership and knowledge of the machines or shine a spotlight on proprietary
codes – have them reviewed by an independent committee of experts - or get any
assurance whatever that such machines – the
democracies of Europe, led by Germany, shun them… - in fact, cannot be
rigged. I raised this issue in Colorado
local, county and state conventions in 2004 as a central issue the Democratic
Party should fight on, as did many others.
It was not to be just to be another, idle point in the
platform. After all, that election was
both at stake and ultimately, thrown because of it. But the leadership disregarded/squelched this
effort.
***
Now ATMs give each of us banking slips with
exact information about what is in the account. This is secure and accurate. How to do this is not “rocket science.” And yet electronic voting machines often eat
our votes – once again, no paper ballots, in many cases, no review
of the machine tapes, let alone independent or nonpartisan audit -– and
sometimes, as in New York last Tuesday and in Massachusetts and Illinois and Ohio (I could find no exit polls released yet on Pennsylvania…) - produce “results”
remarkably at variance with initial exit polling, an infallible sign of error
or tyranny, as judged by the US State Department, anywhere else in the world…
***
So the phrase “actual
ballots” or “counted votes” does not – except for the check provided by the
initial exit polls – anything real (except in rural Massachusetts where they counted ballots). That
is why the UN and the State Department/AID, often use initial exit polls to
assess the broad fairness of an election.
***
In contrast, German elections, which have actual paper ballots, count them slowly (it usually takes a day), but announce
the results just after the election through exit polling - except when the contest
is within the margin of error, about 2 and one-half points of the polls - are, at the least, plainly
more honest than what exists in the United States. To name this contrast is, for an American, embarrassing.
***
No wonder, a Harvard study
of fair elections just this month found that democratic practices in the United
States are weaker than in any
of the European democracies and much lower even than Brazil and Argentina…
“According
to the the Election Information Project’s Year in Elections Report
2015 here, U.S.
elections scored lower than Argentina, South Africa, Tunisia, and Rwanda — and
strikingly lower than even Brazil. Specifically compared to Western
democracies, U.S. elections scored the lowest, slightly worse than the U.K.,
while Denmark and Finland topped the list.”
***
Now elections are the most public function
in a democracy. Imagine selling
elections to a private company, with “proprietary” programs no one can check,
and often leaving no independently verifiable record. Is this remotely consistent with government
that honors “the public trust” as that term is used in the constitution of the
United States…?
5. The State Department routinely uses exit polls routinely to
verify results in elections abroad
Here is what Eric Bjornlund and Glenn Cowan
say about the role of exit polls in checking the fairness of elections abroad in
Vote Count Verification: a User’s Guide for Funders, Implementers, and
Stakeholders, prepared by Democracy International for US AID, which is part of the State
Department, in 2011. All the material
cited is at pp. 52-54.
“Exit Polls
In recent years, domestic and international
organizations have increasingly turned to exit polls to verify the officially reported results in the transitional
elections of emerging democracies. Outside
observers have credited exit polls with playing a key role, for example, in
exposing fraud in Serbia and Mexico in 2000, Georgia in 2003, and the Dominican Republic and Ukraine in 2004.3U.S.-
funded organizations have sponsored exit
polls as part of democracy assistance programs in Macedonia (2002), Afghanistan
(2004), Ukraine (2004), Azerbaijan (2005), the West Bank and Gaza Strip (2005),
Lebanon (2005), Kazakhstan (2005), Kenya (2005, 2007), and Bangladesh (2009),
among other places."
***
Note
how extensive their use as a check on or test for fraudulent elections by the United States government in 14 cases was…Can Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose
experience and quickness of mind for taking in detail has recently been underlined by President
Obama and Senator Elizabeth Warren, have
missed their crucial importance, as an American/nonpartisan tool or be clueless
about what the discrepancy between initial exit polls and final results on
voting machines shows?
***
Bjornland and Cowan continue:
“Exit polls have long been employed in
developed countries to quickly predict the outcome of elections. If conducted
in countries with a history of democratic elections and in which citizens have
reasonable confidence in their own safety and security, then well-designed exit
polls can serve as an effective method for projecting election results."
***
That describes Europe. But it is not a
description of the United States. For
how come all the corporate media refuse to honor initial exit polling and
tolerate – without comment or question in their reporting, and even on their so-called
discussion panels - the dummying up of “exit” pseudo-“polls” to fit final tabulations
on machines?
***
Actual
exit polling is done in a precise manner by having people asking questions to
those who vote. Voting studies have been
the center of political science since 1948, and a source of high paid consultants. Polls today, particularly given the use by
most people under 40 of cell phones, are notoriously inaccurate, for instance,
even the Nate Silver group about Michigan primary. But exit polling, done just after people
vote, is nearly always accurate. It is the jewel of both opinion polling and
political science.
***
Pseudo-exit
“polls” are done by “election officials,” arbitrarily changing the results of polls
taken by random methods with actual voters, by shifting “votes” from one
candidate to the other, without actually talking to any voters…These
are no exit polls at all. These pseudo-polls have no
justification, except adjusting real exit polls to shadow (often without a
paper trail and thus, switchable) “results.”
As judged in cases abroad by the United States AID, this procedure
validates at least error, and more likely, theft.
***
Edison group does all the polling for these
primaries. There is no competition…In
fact, it is paid money by the New York
Times to do/apologize for this
illicit shifting of so-called exit polls in the direction of fraud by calling
new iterations “exit” polls. Can it be true
also that the New York Times does not
know, ostrich-like about the role of exit polling in American foreign
policy?
***
Does the Times no longer employ reporters abroad – even in the International Herald Tribune which it
owns - who can tell them the news, allow them to break their silence on this issue?
***
And is there no one, among all these
editors, reporters, panelists at CNN and MSNBC to ask the question about the “Emperor’s
New Clothes”: that the Edison company inverts
exit polling as a test, and intentionally adulterates “polls” using whatever numbers come up on the machines – and then purport to provide – new “exit” polls?
***
Edison does exit polls routinely abroad. There, they do no successor “polls” based on “final
reports.” They use this bizarre practice only in the United States. And since there are no intellectual
justification for this – it is what it appears to, legitimizing error or fraud
on machines that leave no paper trail or on which results can be easily altered
- - they do not mention it.
***
Note the long p.1 of the Edison group report of its monopoly
of contracts for exit polling in 2016 American primaries followed by an exact account
of how it used initial, that is real exit polls to predict the Iraq election of 2014
and what its straight-forward methodology for talking with actual voters was. See here and appendix one below)
***
There is no mention in Edison’s list
of American primaries, of its use of successive “exit” polls, doctored by
“actual,” that is machine, "results," nor even a whisper of such a procedure for
the Iraq case.
6. Bizarrely that is, impossibly falsified
New York and Chicago "exit" polls
And
how bad are these falsified polls? Here
is statistician Richard Charnin’s summary of an analysis of the New York
primary based on an article of Doug Johnson Hatlem at Counterpunch:
"The UNADJUSTED exit poll [in New York] indicated
a close race. Hillary led by just 52-48%, an 11.8% discrepancy from
the recorded vote. There were 1391 respondents and a 2.6% exit
poll Margin of Error. Clinton led by a whopping 62-38% in the vote count
with 33% of precincts reporting.
At
9:03 pm, there were 1307 exit poll respondents, Clinton led the actual count by
680-622 (52.0-47.6%). With just 84 additional respondents (1391 total),
Clinton’s lead increased to 802-589 (57.7-42.3%). She had 122 additional
respondents and Sanders had 33 fewer.
How
can Clinton gain 122 of 84 respondents? How can Sanders’ total drop? They
can’t. It is mathematically impossible. Therefore the final vote has to be
impossible as well. The exit poll was forced to match the recorded vote with
impossible adjustments.
|
CNN
Exit poll- Gender
|
Clinton
|
Sanders
|
|
1307
respondents 9:03pm
|
680
|
622
|
|
Vote
share
|
52.0%
|
47.6%
|
|
Final
EP: 1391 respondents
|
802
|
589
|
|
Adjusted
Vote share
|
57.7%
|
42.3%
|
|
Change:
+84 respondents
|
+122
|
-33
|
|
|
|
|
This
excellent comprehensive analysis confirms that THE NY PRIMARY EXIT POLL USED
IMPOSSIBLE ADJUSTMENTS TO MATCH THE RECORDED VOTE http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/04/21/new-york-primary-why-is-exit-poll-data-adjusted-to-match-final-voting-results/
Clinton lost Illinois according to exit polls. She “won” Illinois narrowly, depending on reported votes (mostly on machines) in the Chicago vote. Citizens challenged these "results" (listen to a youtube of the hearing here):
“In one
example noted during video, 21 Bernie votes were erased and 49 Hillary votes
added to audit tally in order to match machine count. In this one precinct,
this change from the actual results accounted for nearly 20% of overall votes
cast. The actual tally was 56.7% in Bernie's favor. After count was manipulated
by machine he lost with 47.5% of vote. A whopping 18.4% swing.
After this hearing, the results were not changed. They
remained at the machine counted / “adjusted” hand-count original tally.
…[The
hearing] was an audit to check voting machine performance only. It was not an
official electoral recount and will not change the election outcome.
The
contention in question was that a CBOE [Chicago Board of Elections] employee carrying out the
recount of an early voting machine simply corrected their tally to square with
the electoral result, even though the hand-count tally was off by 70 votes in
favor of Clinton.
Other
electoral observers at the meeting testified they had seen similar behavior on the
part of other CBOE employees conducting the audit — for example, counting
ballots up to a predetermined number found by the machine, then ignoring
additional ballots beyond that number that showed the machine undercounted.
There’s
no way to know how egregious the errors in the machine count and their
purported audit were without further investigation and research.
7. The US AID Report emphasizes recent American "errors"
Bjornland and Cowan in the Democracy International/US AID continue:
“Exit polls have become more popular because they are typically less expensive and more straightforward to implement than PVTs [“parallel voting tabulations” from a small number of sites] and are generally more familiar to Ameri-
p. 53
Exit Polls and Public Opinion Research
cans.”
“More familiar to Americans”? The name is familiar, but the practice here by the Edison Group is the opposite of exit polling: their supposed non-importance or nonreliability in American elections and the doctoring of them by the Edison Group, accepted by the New York Times, the AP and the rest of the corporate media... Read the last clause over and you will see how hilarious and revealing the Report is.
***
Bjornland and Cowan then explain briefly what happens when exit polls are done competently, intelligently (I comment on the table below at the end but it is worth examining now)::
“Exit polls use multistage random
sampling. The exit pollster draws a random sample of polling places (precincts)
within the relevant jurisdiction. This sample should be selected so that the
odds of any polling station being chosen are proportional to the number of
voters in that precinct; in other words, the odds of any given voter being rep-
resented in the sample should be the same. During the balloting, interviewers
stand outside each sampled polling station and randomly select a specified number
of voters during the day as they exit from voting. The interviewers do so by
counting voters as they leave the polling place and selecting every voter at a
specified interval (such as every 10th voter). The interval is chosen so that
the required number of interviews will be spread as evenly as possible over the
course of the day. “
The methods can be perfected to a high degree
of accuracy, compared to every other kind of poll. They are a check on fraud, as in Iraq.
***
And yet Bjornland and Cowan then say, again bizarrely, that it is American
experience which makes exit polls "controversial." They are funded by, work for US AID; thus, they cannot even
hint at the obvious fraud, an anomaly for the otherwise widespread and unproblematic
usage of exit polls by American foreign policy – and the UN – to judge the fairness of elections.
“Even in the U.S., where they have a long
history, exit polls can prove problematic
and controversial.”
Of course, such polls will, by
definition, be “controversial” to illicit victors, when they challenge
erroneous results. That is what they are
designed to do. That exit polls reveal
fraud in some American elections does not mean that exit polls are
“problematic,” but that something is wrong in the elections. Bjornland and Cowan’s weasel words here reveal
corruption which surrounds American elections; recall the Harvard poll which
ranks America not only below Europe but below Brazil, Argentina , Tunisia and Rwanda…
***
Bjornland and Cowan’s Report continues:
“For one thing, concerns linger that the
release of exit-poll results before the real polls have closed may well influence
those yet to vote. [this was rare and is no longer done in the US, as any watcher of CNN or MSNBC will know – AG] More
important, especially for vote count verification, the reliability of exit
polls has been questioned, particularly in close contests. In Florida in 2000, for example, television networks relying on exit
polls first called the U.S. presidential race for Al Gore, then later for
George W. Bush, only to finally conclude that the results were too close to
call. In 2004 exit polls erroneously showed John Kerry leading nationally and
in several key states. As one
p. 54
Exit Polls and Public Opinion Research
account put it, “On the afternoon of Election
Day 2004, the world was abuzz with the news: exit polls indicated that John
Kerry would decisively win the election and become President."
8. The American corporate inversion of reported
results and exit polls: taking the thief’s word against the poll…
Why is this use of machine and
deviation of “results” from exit polls not a subject of debate or even mention
in the corporate media? Probably because
one cannot talk about what exit polling is and how it is used without revealing the Edison Group's bizarre practice of revision on
behalf of mistake, fraud, theft. It is a
systemic, again bizarrely anti-democratic practice.
***
Why do the corporate media, including the
New York Times, have the cheek to judge initial exit polling by the very likely distorted
and non-counted “result” rather than, as in every other country and on the word of the State Department (including under then Secretary of State Clinton), the reverse?
***
9. By exit polls, Sanders won Massachusetts, Ohio, Illinois and probably New York, and was much closer even in the South where Clinton prevailed, but by smaller amounts
In this election, Bernie won Massachusetts, Ohio, Illinois, and probably New York on exit polls. Given very large deviations from the original number, sometimes 10-14%, and substantial deviations beyond the margin of error, he won a sizable number of delegates even in Alabama and Georgia. Eliminating special pre-voting fraud - changing voter's party registration, losing registrations, changing times and locations of caucuses, eliminating voting machines and the like - Bernie probably won (he certainly won if independents were allowed to vote). In any case, reports of "Clinton"'s lead in delegates have no merit...
Look at this table from Tim Robbins' tweet and Doug Johnson Hatlem (Counterpunch):
These are often very large discrepancies in the direction of Clinton in 17 cases. In 2 cases, Wisconsin and Oklahoma, discrepancies favor Sanders (1.9% in Wisconsin, 6.1% in Oklahoma). In addition to the statistical unlikelihood of this contrast - a blatant signal of election theft - there are unusual reports of fraudulent voting behavior by the Democratic Party in big cities by election officials, all in the direction of Hillary Clinton.
The Margin of Error statistics show how far the discrepancy is outside of the greatest discrepancy for Clinton possible on the exit polling itself (since the exit polls show a result based on a series of samples, they test for a range of reasonable results). The margin of error shows how far these results are beyond even the most favorable result, in each case, for Clinton. If patterns of deviation from the initial result are strongly in one direction and accompanied by unusual, fraudulent voting practices (eliminating the ballots of Democratic voters through registering them in other parties or with no dates), even results at the edge of a reasonable distribution become suspect.
Those which go beyond the margin of error are fascinating. In Massachusetts, exit polls saw Sanders win 52.3 to Clinton's 45.7. The recorded vote shifted in the direction of Clinton 50.11%-48.69%, an 8 point discrepancy for Clinton and even outside the margin of error by 2.6%. Sanders won Masschusetts.
In Ohio (no independents allowed), the exit poll showed Sanders winning 51.4% to 47.6%. The reported Clinton victory, 56.5% to 42.7% was a massive 5.7% margin of error. Sanders won Ohio (and look what that would have done to the reported Clinton "inevitability.")
In Illinois, the exit poll showed Sanders winning 50.7% to 48.4%, what would have been an enormous moral victory (again, destroying the media narrative, and allowing ordinary voters to make clear their will). The Edison doctored results were a victory for Clinton 50.48 to 48.7 for Sanders. This 4.15% shift is within the margin of error, but extraordinarily suspicious (listen again to the Chicago Board of Election meeting above). Very likely, Sanders won Illinois.
In Georgia and Alabama, Clinton won large majorities on the exit polls. But a massive shift of votes still occurred to her, 7.0% and 7.9% beyond the Margin of Error. Consider how many delegates this "error" would have shifted to Bernie from Hillary (more than in either Massachusetts or Illinois, for example). Start recalculating delegates on the basis of discrepancies/margins of error in Clinton's direction, and her "lead" disappears.
In New York, Clinton won the exit poll 52 to 47.6, but the discrepancy in the reported "vote" was 57.95 to 42. The Margin of Error here was an enormous 6.25%. Once again, considering all the exclusions - just counting the so-called affidavit ballots which are being left in the dark - would have given Sanders the victory.
Richard Charnin has drawn an ever grimmer picture. Disregard of exit polling and not Koch brothers funding of "Republicans" is the main reason for the shifting of the House and Senate (and of course, this has now been used by Hillary Clinton). It would heartening if this were wrong. But the failure to take exit polling seriously in a corporate-muzzled media gives no argument why such polling is wrong...
Appendix one Edison Reports
Here is the straightforward and detailed account (no successive exit
polls) of what initial exit polling did in Iraq in 2014.
May 1, 2014
Estimates based upon preliminary results from an exit poll for
the Iraqi Parliamentary election conducted on April 30th by Edison Research and
EIN show that the State of Law Party led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will
be the largest party in the next Iraqi Parliament and likely to receive at
least 70 seats. The exit poll was conducted in 17 of the 18 governorates
with data from 61,667 voters interviewed at 324 sample polling locations.
These estimates are for 273 of the 328 seats in the Iraqi
Parliament. The remaining 55 additional seats have not yet been allocated
based upon the survey including the 15 parliamentary seats from Anbar Province
where security issues made it impossible to conduct any exit polling.
Once the seats from Anbar are allocated the number of seats for the
predominantly Sunni parties will increase.
Exit poll interviews were not conducted with voters who are part
of the Iraqi security forces who voted earlier in the week, Iraqi citizens who
voted abroad and internally displaced Iraqis who could not vote at their home
polling locations. These voters are estimated to comprise approximately
ten percent of the total expected vote.
In addition to the 15 undetermined parliamentary seats in Anbar
there are an additional 40 seats that remain undetermined due to the margin of
error related to sampling. These additional undetermined seats will be
allocated to the party list based on the modified Sainte-Laguë seat allocation
method.
The estimate of seats for each party in the Iraqi Parliament
based upon the exit poll are as follows:
|
State of Law led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (Party List
#277)
|
70
|
|
Al-Ahrar consisting of followers of Muqtada al-Sadr (Party
List #214)
|
36
|
|
Al-Muwatin led by Ammar al-Hakkim (Party List #273)
|
36
|
|
Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) (Party List #213)
|
18
|
|
Matahidoun led by parliament speaker Osama al-Nujaifi (Party
List #259)
|
17
|
|
Al-Watiniya led by former Prime Minister Ayad Alawi (Party
List #239)
|
16
|
|
National Reform Alliance (Jaafari) (Party List #205)
|
14
|
|
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) (Party List #266)
|
14
|
|
Gorran (Movement for Change) (Party List #234)
|
13
|
|
Al-Arabiya led by Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq (Party
List #255)
|
10
|
|
Al-Fadiylah (Party List #219)
|
8
|
|
Civic Democratic Alliance (Party List #232)
|
5
|
|
Iraq coalition (Party List #262)
|
4
|
|
Diala Hawyatna (Party List #246)
|
4
|
|
Seats allocated to minorities
|
8
|
|
Undetermined seats from Anbar
|
15
|
|
Other Undetermined seats
|
40
|
|
Total seats in Parliament
|
328
|
Methodology
Edison Research and EIN (The Iraqi Election Information Network)
conducted this exit poll on April 30, 2014.
The exit poll was conducted at 324 polling locations among
61,667 voters in all provinces of Iraq with the exception of Anbar. Exit
polling in Anbar was disrupted due to security issues that made it impossible
to conduct any exit polling. Exit poll interviews were not conducted with
voters who are part of the Iraqi security forces who voted earlier in the week,
Iraqi citizens who voted abroad, and internally displaced Iraqis who could not
vote at their home polling locations. These voters are estimated to comprise
approximately ten percent of the total expected vote.
The polling locations are a probability sample within each Iraqi
province. Within each polling location an interviewer approached every nth
voter as he or she exited the polling location. The exact number of interviews
conducted at each location depends on voter turnout and their cooperation.
Iraq parliamentary seats are allocated based on
the Iraqi modified Sainte-Laguë method. Seat estimates from the exit poll are
calculated for each party and are based on this approach. All samples are
approximations. A measure of the approximation is called the sampling error.
Sampling error is affected by the design of the sample and the number of people
interviewed. Due to sampling error the overall parliamentary seat estimates,
using this approach, differ by no more than +/- 2 (based on a 95% interval) for
most parties. This means that 95 percent of the intervals created this way will
contain the value that would be obtained if all voters were interviewed using
the same procedures. Other non-sampling factors are likely to increase the
total error.
And here is a list of the primaries Edison reports or will report in
2016, on p. 1 just above the report of the Iraq exit poll and results, again
without a whisper about successive or, in reality, doctored polling…
***
In 2016, Edison Research will once again serve as the
exclusive provider of exit polling data for the 2016 General
Election. In addition, Edison will be providing exit polling data for the
following primaries and caucuses:
February 1, 2016: Iowa Caucuses
February 9, 2016: New Hampshire Primary
February 20, 2016: South Carolina Republican Primary, Nevada
Democratic Caucuses
February 23, 2016: Nevada Republican Caucuses
February 27, 2016: South Carolina Democratic Primary
March 1, 2016: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts,
Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont & Virginia Primaries
March 8, 2016: Michigan & Mississippi Primaries
March 15, 2016: Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina
& Ohio Primaries
April 5, 2016: Wisconsin Primary
April 19, 2016: New York Primary
April 26, 2016: Connecticut, Maryland and Pennsylvania
Primaries
May 3, 2016: Indiana Primary
May 10, 2016: Nebraska and West Virginia Primaries
This list is subject to change. For information
on subscribing to the 2016 Exit Polls, contact
subscriber sales here.
Appendix 2 – the Nate Silver-Richard Charnin debate
In 2008, Nate Silver did a reasonable job with the actual results, combining the work of other pollsters (he doesn't do polling, himself). He published 10 reasons for faith in polling; his main point is that there is no electoral fraud in the United States. That is an interesting assumption...
In 2012, Richard Charnin offered 25 rejoinders, focusing on exit polls. See here and here. He provides reason to suspect that many Republican "victories" have come not mainly because of special funding but because of exit poll/machine deviations. These are particularly stunning in the Obama elections, for instance, exit polling in 2008, recorded Obama with a 60% to 40% victory over McCain. If right (and I should add if right in one-tenth of the cases Charnin discusses, and I have just given you an argument for why he is probably right in most), the bipartisan - and corporate media - betrayal of American "democracy" becomes shocking. See, for instance, here and here.
Nate also does baseball statistics. It is as if every series were the Chicago Black Sox of 1919 and he reports often crooked results with a touching faith...
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