This piece, now revised, makes two decisive points which are not elsewhere in the literature:1)that the U.S. State Department uses initial exit polling as a test for the fairness of elections in 14 cases abroad. Initial exit polling is an easy check for fraud. 2) that in the US and in the US alone, the Edison Group doctors what then become so-called exit “polls” to fit the “results” of electronic machines which leave no paper trail. But that practice inverts what exit polling is designed to do: warn us when the machine-recorded “results” are mistaken or fraudulent. That practice licenses theft rather than being a test to reveal it....In sections 5-8, I cite, in detail, US AID and Edison polling documents to underline these points.
How big an effect does this Edison group
malpractice about exit polling have on the Democratic primaries? In 2016, exit polling reveals the “results”
in New York, Massachusetts and Illinois to be false. Sanders, not Clinton, won the latter 2, and
was at the least, very close in New York. He was also close in Ohio. And even Clinton’s margins in Alabama and Georgia, while still a
landslide, are off by roughly 10-14 points. Even in the South, a substantial number of delegates would shift
to Sanders...
See also the companion essay on Joseph Lenski's contradictory statements about exit polling. Lenski is Executive Vice President of and sole spokesperson for Edison Research - the monopolist of exit polling in American primary and Presidential elections.
See also the companion essay on Joseph Lenski's contradictory statements about exit polling. Lenski is Executive Vice President of and sole spokesperson for Edison Research - the monopolist of exit polling in American primary and Presidential elections.
***
1. Exit Polling is a check against stolen elections, except
in the United States
On Tuesday, April 19th, as Wolf Blitzer unusually kept repeating on
CNN in the early evening, the exit polls in New York showed that the Clinton/Sanders
race was within 4 points, 52-48…
***
Sanders had came out of nowhere; he started at 3% to
Hillary’s 70%. He had just won 8 of the
last 9 contests. If former Senator Clinton were to lose New York or only
barely beat Sanders, it would have been humiliating for her. It would also have been
devastating for the universal stereotype in the corporate media that she is an
“inevitable” nominee. She is not. She would have been – she plainly
already is - a weak candidate for the
Democratic Party to nominate.
***
In addition, Hillary has not done well in the debates.
According to figures from “unscientific” polls, the results are 80%-20%
or better in favor of Bernie. This polling
is ignored on CNN panels “discussing” the debate. Clinton and Deborah Wasserman-Schultz
of the Democratic National Committee, scheduled the fewest possible debates for
Saturday night or other odd times…
But
the results of these “unscientific polls” are, of course, consistent with
Sanders” coming from 60 points down in pre-election polling to beat Clinton in
many states and drawing even in recent national polls. They are consistent
with the fact that when many Democrats and independents, knowing the
world-famous Hillary Clinton, get to see Bernie Sanders, they prefer him.
***
For Bernie is a man of integrity who has spoken up for
ordinary people with a bold program since being elected to Congress (for some 30
years). He has named inequality – the oligarchy of billionaires. As a startling innovation in the
democratic process, Sanders takes no money from corporations. His average contribution is $27. Yet
Sanders outraises Clinton, with her special events for wealthy corporate donors
each month.
***
Sanders fiercely opposes Citizens’ United, and stands up
for Eric Garner and other innocents killed by the police (Clinton is good on
this issue, too). He is for a minimum
wage of $15; here, Clinton tries to imitate him, but still clings to $12 over
several years. Sanders is against
climate change and fracking (Hillary was Secretary of State/Fracker all over
the world). Sanders is courageously for
the dignity of Palestinians, a first in a New York or American Presidential primary
debate. He is against
regime-change. In contrast, in 2009, Hillary
shielded a military coup which destroyed democracy in Honduras. She did this even against the advice even of
her aide Ann-Marie Slaughter and the American ambassador.
***
Sanders
demands free public college – a dramatic reduction of student-debt - and
advances many other parts of a Franklin Delano Roosevelt program. In
contrast, Bill Clinton was the great imprisoner of young blacks and Hillary
once spoke of them as “superpredators.” Bernie is, in many ways, a breath of
fresh air.
***
Bernie’s
emergence from nowhere to plausible nominee is the greatest story of this
election season. It is a shocking
anomaly for a 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.’. And
after the New York “results,” the media reports on Sanders now only to try to
end his candidacy…
***
In contrast, the corporate media has made Trump the leading
candidate among Republicans, receiving a vast amount of free publicity. Yet it
did its level best - every single commentator and columnist from the New
York Times to MSNBC to CNN- to bury Sanders’ candidacy, 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 was 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. That crowd was overwhelming black and latin
people. According to the corporate
media, Bernie supposedly doesn’t appeal to non-white voters. But listen to Rosario Dawson at that rally here, here and here. Sanders had 28, 000 and another 20,000 lined
up along the street at Washington Square Park.
Obama had had an amazing, thought to be unsurpassable 24,000 there in
2008… Bernie had 25,000 in Brooklyn.
Hillary Clinton had a big turnout of 1,200.
***
On April 19th, Wolf Blitzer
repeated the initial exit polls because they indicate the rough margins (within
2 and ½ points) of the actual vote. In
this respect, as we will see, they are reliable. Further,
they are routinely used by the State Department to test the fairness of
elections abroad.
***
But Hillary
desperately needed a “big win” in New York to stem the tide. And 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 a fierce primary with so much at stake, New York reported the
second lowest primary turnout – 19.7% of eligible voters – in this election
cycle.
See here and here.
***
That was because
thousands of people had their registrations lost or removed without
notice. They were turned away or cast
uncounted affidavit ballots. Polls opened at 12 instead of the customary 6AM,
old election machines worked slowly or malfunctioned, long lines kept people
waiting until many gave up…Count affidavit voters, however, and the percentage
would go up...
***
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 and a second one has since been fired. That is, however, but the tip of the iceberg
of even a pre-voting story. Note
that this story does not yet reveal the additional fraud of a marked
discrepancy between initial exit polls of actual voters and electoral “results”…
***
But glaring pre-voting irregularities can go together with false reports on the
recorded “election.” To review these
briefly, first, arbitrary disenfranchisement begins with an Elections Secretary
in Brooklyn (King’s County) who stripped 126,000 people from the voter rolls. She did this probably in exchange for a big
payoff on an apartment in 2014 (see the Wall Street Journal Story here and her firing after
the election here). The payoff came
from a New York politician and “superdelegate” for Clinton.
***
Note:
that Hillary knows anything about these specific abuses is doubtful. Many of these things can have been done at
the initiative of a corrupt Democratic Party 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, a
reasonable inference to the best explanation - Gilbert Harman’s widely accepted
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
party registrations without informing people. Lots of Sanders voters
suffered from this in Arizona as well as New York. No Clinton supporter reports
being eliminated…If this were random error, that is a statistical impossibility.
***
Francesca Rheannon is an election judge in East Hampton. She reported that as many as 25% of those who came to vote in her district were barred from voting through loss of
registration. These were mostly Sanders supporters. In contrast, but 2
Republicans were. That suppression,
Rheannon says, is way atypical even in New York. She also suggests
that 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.”
***
***
Third, the attempt at hobbling Sanders’ candidacy before
any votes were cast also included a normal barring of independents by the
Democratic Party in New York. Officials
even barred anyone who has not
registered as of 6 months ago (October). And in New York, Republicans –
ever hostile to voting rights… - join in. So, once again, a mere 19.8%
of eligible voters voted in the New York primaries, second only to Louisiana…..
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 affects exit
polling. That is an initial – an important word, as we will
see - polling of those who actually voted.
***
On CNN, Wolf Blitzer was able to call 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 ordinarily the case. But
strangely, the Democratic race was not called until 30% of the vote had been
“counted,” because as Blitzer kept reiterating as if surprised, the initial exit polls showed Clinton
52-Sanders 48.
4.
The US State Department and the United Nations use exit polls to
guarantee the fairness of elections in other countries
As State Department/USAID guides to fair
elections say, exit polling is a basic tool. The US has routinely challenged
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.
***
But in the US itself and only in the United States, deviations
between initial exit polls and so-called recorded “votes” have become a glaring
problem. In comparative perspective, these dubious results became the
elephant in the room for establishment enablers. For exit polling is the test for fair elections. Further, the
significance of these deviations is not just about this particular race. Instead, voting on Diebold/ES&S machines
raises the deepest questions about the right of each citizen to vote and,
startlingly, about the extent to which America is, in fact, a democracy.
***
In 2016, one corporation, the Edison Group, has a monopoly on exit
polling for the 6 major media outlets. Further,
only in the United States, Edison
adjusts exit polling to “fit” the machine results. In contrast, abroad, a large discrepancy between exit polls and actual votes would immediately
be seen, by the State Department and the United Nations, as an alarm for
possible fraud. And in elections abroad,
the Edison group does but one exit
poll, as voters leave…
***
But
inside the United States, without offering any public justification, Edison inverts
so-called exit polling to legitimize whatever appears on machines. That is an
adjustment to possible theft. Yet Edison and media consortium of CBS, BBC,
ABC, CNN, Fox and the AP commentators assert, falsely, that these are still
exit “polls.”
***
Outside of rural communities,
Americans no longer cast paper ballots.
Instead, voting is often “recorded” on machines which are made by companies,
owned by Republicans, and with private proprietary codes. In 2004, Walden
O’Dell, the owner of Diebold Election Systems, publically swore to George W. Bush
that he would win in Ohio…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 the security of the code they use. Yet
no questioning or debate about this ever occurs in the corporate media.
***
In
addition, these machines prove easy for computer experts to hack. This was shown by Holi Hursti and checked by
Berkeley computer experts for Diebold machines in 2004. It was
resonantly named “the Hursti Hack,” except by corporate media which remain
silent…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 of American
Presidential and other elections, according to exit polling, most notably,
in the 2004 “election” of W. There were
wide swings of 6-8 points from the
initial exit polls in Florida, Pennsylvania and crucially, in Ohio, which were wildly
improbable, statistically speaking, as well as widespread protest from below.
***
Now, there have been some “improvements.” Some “optical
scan” machines have a tape where the voter can at least see how her vote was
cast and if not hacked, leaves a tape
which could be randomly checked or recounted.
For instance, this has been true in Colorado after protest from below in
2006.
***
To avoid opprobrium after
O’Dell announced for Bush, Diebold
renamed itself Premier Election Systems.
Then ES&S took it over. Still, in 2013, Diebold was fined $50
million for “a worldwide pattern of criminal conduct, “ according to the Cleveland
Plain Dealer. See here and here. It seems bribing officials to buy American machines, was also part of that
corporation’s modus operandi. And then, why not throwing elections…? One might think this would have been a nationwide
story. Really, as Mel Brooks might say, you
can't make this stuff up...
***
Yet no effort has come from the Democratic Party itself
to obtain public ownership of the machines or shine a spotlight on proprietary
codes. The Democrats have not sought to
have the codes reviewed by an independent committee of experts. Changes have come slowly, with protest from
below, often by computer experts (Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey did
raise objections). In 2007, California
stopped using “touch screen” machines (ones which leave no paper trail). See here http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18672642and
here http://www.alternet.org/story/59077/the_fallout_from_california's_ban_on_electronic_voting_machines Yet there are constant attempts, both from
corporations who want the contracts and from foolish or corrupt politicians, to
adopt machines.
***
In contrast, the democracies of
Europe, led by Germany, shun them… 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 at
stake and ultimately, thrown because of it. But the leadership squelched
this effort.
***
Now ATMs give each of us
banking slips with exact information about what is in our account. This is comparatively secure – for individual
consumers. Seemingly, it strikingly
contrasts with voting machines.
But even ATMS allow errors. Banks, however, pay most of the costs. That is why they charge transaction costs of
$3-4 per withdrawal and more for exchanges abroad. If consumers had to pay for errors, no one
would use the machines… And “phishing” attempts are precisely directed at
fraud here.
As David
Jefferson, a computer expert with Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and Verified
Voting, puts it:
“Why do security
experts say that ecommerce transactions are not safe when millions of people do
them every day, mostly without problems? The question needs to be refined:
“Safe for whom?” and “What degree of safety is required”? E-Commerce
transactions may be relatively safe for consumers, but they certainly are not
safe for financial institutions or merchants. Banks, credit card
companies, and online merchants lose billions of dollars a year in online
transaction fraud despite huge investments in fraud prevention and
recovery. People have the illusion that ecommerce transactions are safe because
merchants and banks don’t hold consumers financially responsible for fraudulent
transactions that they are the innocent victims of. Instead the businesses
absorb and redistribute the losses silently, passing them on in the invisible
forms of higher prices, fees, and interest rates. Businesses know that if consumers had to accept those losses personally
most online commerce would collapse. Instead, they routinely hide the
losses, keeping the magnitude secret so the public is generally unaware. It’s a
good business strategy.”
***
So each
of us has, to some extent, but an illusion about safety even in commerce. Yet for machines in elections with a secret
ballot, even more drastic possibilities of fraud arise. In banking exchanges, both a card user and the
bank have all the records – name, account number, where the transaction occurs,
amount, and the like. If contested,
these are checkable in a court of law.
In contrast, for secret ballots, a machine only records the vote with no
tie to a specific registrant. That is
why there is very likely no way currently – short of hand counting paper
ballots - to ensure fully that the machine tally of the vote is accurate. See here.
Thus,
only exit polls provide a serious check against fraud.
***
Further, “touch screen” electronic
machines often eat our votes, leaving no paper trail. And even for “optical screen” machines, there
are often no paper ballots and no review of the machine tapes, let alone independent
or nonpartisan audit.
Sometimes,
as in New York, Massachusetts and Illinois in 2016, these machines produce
“results” remarkably at variance with initial exit polling. Anywhere else in the world, the US State
Department judges such a discrepancy as a sign of massive error or tyranny …
***
So the phrase “actual ballots” or “counted votes” does not
indicate – except, once again, for the check provided by the initial exit polls
– anything real.
***
In contrast, German elections insist on
actual paper ballots and count them slowly (it usually takes a day). But they 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 exit polls. German elections are plainly
more honest than what exists in the
United States.
To name
this contrast is, for an American, embarrassing.
***
Now in America, there are also “optical
scan” machines which leave a countable paper record. These
are not as good as hand counted paper ballots.
They still have secret proprietary codes, and, on the face of it, can be hacked, but it is somewhat less likely. See, however, David Jefferson, computer
expert with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Verified Voting
Foundation’s disturbing, “If I Can Shop and Bank Online, Why Can’t I Vote Online?,” here and
Barbara Simon, chairperson of the Board of Verified Voting, advisor to the U.S.
Election Assistance Commission and past-president of the Association for
Computing Machinery. Simon wrote a striking allegory: “What if Volkswagen [with
its program to activate pollution control only when being tested] made Voting
Machines?,” See Note 1 below.
***
In addition, for poor communities, particularly those mainly of latinos, blacks and indigenous people, many machines are 10 years old (ask yourself whether you would use a computer that was 10 years old…). They are at best slow. And cities establish fewer voting places and a smaller number of machines per person than in upper-middle class suburbs. Hence, there are often long lines. These are a great inconvenience for those going to or returning home from work…
In addition, for poor communities, particularly those mainly of latinos, blacks and indigenous people, many machines are 10 years old (ask yourself whether you would use a computer that was 10 years old…). They are at best slow. And cities establish fewer voting places and a smaller number of machines per person than in upper-middle class suburbs. Hence, there are often long lines. These are a great inconvenience for those going to or returning home from work…
***
Such practices
amplify the main deterrent to voter turnout in America; unlike Europe, we vote
on a workday, Tuesday, not on the weekend…
***
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.
Democratic practices in America are also weaker than those of Brazil, Argentina,
and Rwanda…
“According
to 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.
But imagine a government selling elections to a private elections company,
with secret, “proprietary” programs no one can check and often leaving no
independently verifiable paper record. Imagine one whose chief executive
campaigns, like Walden O’Dell in 2004, for one of the competitors. Imagine a country where the appearance of
corruption is so great; yet the news media and the opposing party raise no
public outcry about these practices. Imagine a country which uses some
hand-counting in rural areas and “optical scan” machines which leave a paper
record, as in Colorado or California, but where many states use old, “touch
screen” machines which are easily falsified.
And all of this diverse malpractice is subject only to pressure from
movements of individuals, including some experts, from below…
Are such practices 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 to verify results in
elections abroad
Eric Bjornlund and Glenn Cowan wrote Vote Count
Verification: a User’s Guide for Funders, Implementers, and Stakeholders. That pamphlet was prepared by Democracy International
for US AID in 2011. US AID is part of
the State Department. All the material cited is at pp. 52-54. Here is what they say about exit polling as a
test of the fairness of elections.
“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. U.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 the use of exit polls was as a test for fraudulent
elections by the US government in 14 cases abroad was…Can Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton not have learned what a discrepancy between initial exit
polls and final results 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, particularly Germany. But it is
not a description of the United States. For American corporate media
refuse to acknowledge the importance of initial exit polling. Instead, without comment or question in their
reporting and even on discussion panels, they tolerate dummied up
pseudo-“polls” to fit final tabulations on machines.
***
Now, voting studies have
been a center of political science since 1948 and a source of high paid
consultants. Polls today, however, particularly given the use by most
people under 40 of cell phones, are notoriously inaccurate. Note, even the Nate Silver group “predicted”
a Bernie Sanders victory in the Michigan primary as terminally unlikely…
In contrast, actual exit polling is done
by having pollers ask questions to those who just voted. Exit polling, asking pople who they voted for,
is nearly always accurate. It is the most accurate feature of both
opinion polling and political science.
***
Pseudo-exit “polls,” however, are done privately by
“election officials.” Without talking to any voters, they
arbitrarily change the comparatively accurate results of polls taken by random
methods with actual voters…Further, these pseudo-polls adjust real exit polls
to shadow machine “results.” For these “results” often have no paper trail and
are not checkable. Worse yet, they are quite
easily switchable. As judged in cases abroad by the State Department, the
Edison/American media procedure
validates at least error, and more likely, theft.
***
The Edison group has a
monopoly on polling for the 2016 primaries…In fact, it is paid money by the New
York Times and other media companies for its illicit shifting of so-called
exit polls in the direction of fraud by naming new iterations “exit polls.”
Can it be true that the New York Times does not know about the role of initial
exit polling in American foreign policy?
***
Does the Times no longer employ reporters on American
policy abroad who can tell them this news? [the International Herald Tribune is partly owned by the Times and uses some of the same
reporters and columnists.]
***
And is there no child, among all these editors, reporters,
panelists at CNN and MSNBC, to ask the obvious question about the “Emperor’s
New Clothes”? For the Edison company
inverts exit polling as a test, and intentionally, adulterates “polls”
using whatever numbers come up on the machines…
***
Yet Edison also conducts exit polls routinely abroad. There, they do
no successor “polls” based on final machine “reports.”
***
Consider the long p.1 of the Edison group report of
its monopoly of contracts for exit polling in 2016 American primaries. This is followed by an exact account of how
it used initial exit polls to predict the Iraq election of 2014. The Report also explains what its methodology
for talking with actual voters was. See here and Note two below.
There is no mention in Edison’s list of American primaries, of its
planned use of successive “exit” polls, doctored by machine,
"results." There is, of course, no whisper of such a procedure for
the Iraq case. None occurred.
6. Bizarrely that is, impossibly falsified New York
and Chicago "exit" polls
How bad are falsified American 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. [Yet] 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) [Wednesday morning], 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-
|
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/ (see Note 2 on Hatlem’s
breakdown of the figures below)
***
Similarly, according to
exit polls taken by the Edison Group, Clinton lost Illinois. But on votes
reported on machines in Chicago, she “won” Illinois narrowly. 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 the 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 the 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 its tally to square with the electoral result, even though the [initial]
hand-count tally was off by 70 votes [he reassigned to] 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.
Needless
to say, such work is unlikely to occur.”
7. The US AID Report ironically emphasizes recent American
"errors" to cast doubt on exit polling
Bjornland and Cowan 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 in the United States by the Edison Group is
the opposite of real exit polling: their
supposed non-reliability only for American elections, and the subsequent
unjustified doctoring of them by the Edison Group, wrongly renaming the latter
“exit polls”...Read the last clause over and you will see how
hilarious and revealing the Report is.
***
Bjornland and Cowan then explain what happens when exit polls are done
competently (I comment on the table below in the last section, 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 represented 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. “
Once again, the methods can be perfected to a high degree of accuracy,
compared to other kinds of polling. Exit polls are a check on fraud, as
in Iraq in 2014.
***
And yet Bjornland and Cowan then say, again bizarrely, that it is
American experience alone which makes exit polls "controversial."
Their Report was funded by US
AID. Thus, they cannot even hint at obvious
fraud in the United States. But this is
a stunning anomaly for the otherwise widespread and unproblematic use 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.”
But of course, such polls
will, by definition, be “controversial” to illicit victors when they challenge
erroneous results. That is what such polls are designed to do: shine a bright
spotlight, if need be, on theft.
But that exit polls reveal fraud in some
major American elections does not mean that exit polls are “problematic.”
Rather they indicate that something is wrong in those elections. Bjornlund and Cowan’s
weasel words underline the corruption which often surrounds American
elections. Recall the Harvard study
which ranks America not only below Europe but below Brazil, Argentina 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
straightforwardly about what exit polling is a without revealing the Edison
Group's bizarre practice of revision on behalf of mistake, fraud,
theft. Revising initial polls to fit machine “results” is a systematic,
bizarrely anti-democratic practice.
***
Why do the corporate media 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 according to State
Department policy, 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 the 2016 election, Bernie won Massachusetts, Illinois, and perhaps New York according to exit polls. Given very large deviations from the original number, sometimes 10-14%, and substantial deviations beyond the margin of error, Sanders won a sizable number of delegates even in Alabama and Georgia. Eliminating pre-voting fraud - changing voters’ party registration, losing registrations, changing times and locations of caucuses, cutting back voting places and the like - Bernie probably won New York (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 Doug Johnson Hatlem (Counterpunch):
Very large discrepancies in the direction of Clinton occur 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 strong signal of election theft - there
are unusual reports of fraudulent voting behavior by Democratic Party
election officials in big cities, all in the direction of Hillary Clinton. These reports are similar to the pre-voting
abuses in New York.
The Margin of Error statistics show how far the discrepancy
is outside of the greatest deviation for Clinton possible based 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 (say within two and a half
points). The margin of error shows how far the machine results are beyond even
the most favorable deviation, 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, 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 in favor of Clinton and outside the margin of error by 2.6%.
Sanders won Massachusetts.
In Illinois, the exit poll
showed Sanders winning 50.7% to 48.4%.
That would have been an
especially important victory for Bernie.
It would have derailed the media narrative. It would have allowed ordinary voters to make
clear their will. But 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 suspicious. Listen again to
the Chicago Board of Election meeting above. Very likely, Sanders won
Illinois.
In Georgia and Alabama, as
the exit polls revealed, Hillary Clinton did win large majorities. Still,
a further, massive transfer of votes occurred to her, 7.0% and 7.9% beyond the
Margin of Error. Consider how many
delegates removing this "error" would shift from Hillary to Bernie. Such shifts would yield more delegates for
Sanders than either a victory in Massachusetts or Illinois, for example.
Start recalculating delegates on the basis of discrepancies/margins of
error skewed 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 6.25%. Once again considering
all the pre-voting exclusions – even just counting the so-called affidavit
ballots - would have given Sanders the victory.
Richard Charnin draws an ever grimmer picture (note 4).
Disregard of exit polling rather than Koch brothers funding of
"Republicans" is a main reason for “Red shift” of the House and
Senate. It would be heartening for democracy in America if this were
wrong. But the failure to take exit
polling seriously by a corporate-muzzled media gives no argument why initial
exit polling is wrong...
Note
one -
Sep 25 2015
Barbara Simons
Volkswagen stock
plummeted today, because of accusations by the Environmental Protection Agency
that VW uses software that turns on its emission control device when the
software detects that one of its diesel cars is undergoing emission testing.
When not being tested, the software disables the device, thereby causing the
car to spew as much as 40 times the pollution limit of the Clean Air Act.
Like VW cars, modern
voting machines contain software that is tested before use in elections. It
would not be difficult to write voting machine software that would, like the VW
software, know when it is being tested, and thus behave correctly during
testing but not during an actual election. If such behavior were detected after
an election, the vendor stock would plummet, but so would voter confidence in
the outcome of the election. Furthermore,
in the case of some voting systems that cannot be legitimately recounted, such
as paperless voting machines or online votes, there would be no way to
determine after the election if the declared winners were the actual winners.
In order to
avoid a VW-type scenario for our elections, we need to have paper ballots and
post-election ballot audits that check the computers used in voting machines
and either verify that they behaved correctly or determine the correct winners
by counting the paper ballots.
VW may be
able to weather a drop in stock prices and a massive recall, but there is no
way to conduct a recall of our Presidential and Congressional elections.
America cannot afford a VW-style election.
As section 9 shows,
exit polling underlines that in the Democratic primary “elections,” several
have already occurred…
***
Note
two: Douglas Hatlem’s report of successive exit “polls” in New York
“Here’s
the deal, though. The sample size grew in the last two renditions of the exit
polling by just 24 respondents, first from 1367 to 1383 when I took
several screen shots for my liveblog just after 11pm eastern and then to 1391
as of Wednesday morning. Over the same period, Clinton’s lead grew by
10% from 18% with Latinos to 28%. Her lead also grew by 10% among
those 45 and over and [her deficit] shrunk by 12% with those
under 45. In exit poll version (2), Sanders led with white people
(59% of the vote) by 9%, in exit poll (3) by just 2%, and now with exit poll
(4) it is tied.
This
would be possible and reasonable with a very large growth in sample size, but,
as you might imagine, is mathematically impossible without serious data
fiddling in this instance. Sanders lead with the same sampling grown by just
1.8% dropped by 12% overall, by nine percentage points with men, by 12% with
young voters, and by 9% with white voters. Meanwhile, Clinton’s lead with Latin
voters grew from 18% to 28% and with black voters by 2%.
Apparently,
the last 24 respondents to exit polls yesterday were all Latina or black female
Clinton voters over 44, and they were all allowed also to count more than
double while replacing more than one male Sanders voter under 45.
To
put this plainly: the numbers add up to 341 18-44 year-old voters for Sanders
out of 1367 total respondents as of 9pm exit polls, version (2), that said it
was a close race. By the next morning, the maximum number of Sanders voters
18-44 in the same data had dropped to just 313. Edison
Research removed twenty-eight young white male Sanders respondents and has
given no public explanation for the same. The initial overall exit poll, +4 or
+5 Clinton, was outside the margin of error for the final result, Clinton
+16 with 99.6% reporting.
I
have attempted to contact Edison Research for a response. Yesterday afternoon,
I was patched through to the voice mail of Joe Lenski, co-founder and Executive Vice-President of Edison. He has not responded and other calls and
emails have also gone unanswered. I will update this piece if anyone from
Edison responds.” http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/04/21/new-york-primary-why-is-exit-poll-data-adjusted-to-match-final-voting-results/
***
Note
three: Edison Reports 2015
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.”
***
Here
is a list of the primaries the Edison Group reports or will report in 2016, on
p. 1 just above the report of the Iraq exit poll. Again, there is no 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.”
***
Note
four – the
Nate Silver-Richard Charnin debate
In 2008, Nate Silver did a reasonable job predicting the actual
results in different states, combining and assessing the work of other
pollsters (he doesn't do polling, himself). He was then lionized in the
commercial press, and published a column in the New York Times. On November
4, 2008, on 538 blog, he published a flip, self-serving “Ten Reasons why you
should ignore exit polls.” Some
exaggerate some real difficulty with exit polling.
But his point 2 states, as if it were obvious
why this should be the case, that “ Exit polls have consistently overstated the
Democratic share of the vote.” Silver then
offers, without so much as a comment, the Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida
“results” in 2004 – all 6-8 points off”
to challenge exit polling. His point 3 bald-facedly states: “Exit polls were particularly bad in this year’s
primaries. They overstated Barack Obama’s performance by an average of
about 7 points.”
But were they?
Silver assumes that there is and can be no
electoral fraud in the United States. That is a curious assumption...
If right, Silver should campaign for the
State Department to correct its use of exit polls abroad…
But note also: if Silver were right,
there would be no test even in cases where stealing of elections is obvious…
A baseball statistician, it is quite
possible that Silver did not know about State Department policy and of course,
reading the Times would be no help…
In 2012, Richard Charnin offered 25 rejoinders. See here and here. He provides reason
to suspect that many Republican "victories" have come not mainly
because of special funding, but because of wide exit poll/machine deviations.
These are particularly stunning in the actual 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), the bipartisan - and corporate media - betrayal of American
"democracy" is shocking. See, for instance, here and here. Silver has not deigned
to reply…
Nate also does baseball statistics. It is as if many series
were the Chicago Black Sox of 1919 and he reports often crooked results with a
touching faith...
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