It seemed like our United New World Trading Order of Internationally
Banking Trilateral Masters were playing the cards close to their chest
this election.
Democracy was now showing the seams of the media's 1998 premature
release of the names of our (as yet) unelected masters. Had no-one
told the media whores at ABC that coming in the mouths of your
'consumer base' is considered bad taste?
One of the more prophylactic measures instituted by the pimps on the
hill was to stop revealing the results of the elections to the press
the week before they were counted, but this wasn't enough.
Somewhere in America, perhaps in your town, perhaps in your very
school, a little girl had stopped believing in democracy!
The public faith in the democratic process, which had always been
strong, was now in danger of collapse. If election results were so
easily 'predicted', where was the incentive to vote? And if the public
didn't vote, they'd turn their energies to lobbying for special
interests, leaving the pimps as redundant as betamax.
Panic (and dare I say anarchy) reigned in the dimly lit back rooms of
Washington D.C. Somebody, anybody had to _do_ something, and do it
now!
But, as always, the pimps had a solution. They asked the media to pull
one more trick for them.
There would be an election, with two candidates so closely matched
that the public would be unable to decide between them. They would
have the same policies, make the same promises, and wear the same
suits.
The election would be so close, that a handful of voters would decide
the next President Of The United States. The media would tease the
public again and again with the final result, before snatching it back
in a tantric, fiery renewal of the democratic spirit.
And thus, The American Way was saved...
--------Forwarded Message--------
Date:Thu, 05 Nov 1998 08:56:34 -0500
To:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
From:Declan McCullagh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject:FC: ABCNews.com on election eve: blunder, or forecast?
Reply-To:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu, 05 Nov 1998 08:43:55 -0500
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Adam Powell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: blunder, or forecast?
X-UIDL: 0b7ed82fc0730006bef8cc6d9525f8ff
Once again the Net had it first, this time by accident...
http://www.freedomforum.org/technology/1998/11/4abc.asp
ABC News election-eve Net 'mistake'
accurately predicted most close races
By Adam Clayton Powell III
World Center
11.4.98
It did not happen, but just imagine if it had:
The night before Fox television aired the World Series,
the Fox Web site posts
a complete set of inning-by-inning box scores for the
upcoming
Yankees-Padres games. After leaving the results online for
a while, Fox pulls
them down and says it was all a big mistake.
Then the Yanks and the Padres play the Series, and nearly
90% of the innings
show the same scoring as in the "mistake" posting.
Sports fans, reporters and bookies would all cry foul, right?
Now consider what happened this week:
On Monday night, ABC News accidentally posted complete state-by-state
election results on its Web site, hours before any votes
were cast yesterday.
ABC withdrew the numbers by mid-evening Monday, saying they were all
a
mistake and a test of their systems.
"It wasn't our finest hour," Michelle Bergman, manager of
communications for
ABCNews.com, told the Associated Press yesterday.
And, indeed, in the days before each national election,
the major national news
organizations hold "rehearsals" for reporting election night, using
"dummy"
numbers.
Or maybe ...
With almost all election districts reporting, those "phony" ABC News
test
numbers on Monday accurately matched the outcomes of the
Senate and
governor races in 61 of the 70 contests ^× 87%. It would be
difficult to find a
political analyst, pundit or bookie who even came close.
While every major analyst on Sunday was predicting the Republicans
would
pick up anywhere from one to four Senate seats this week,
ABC's test
numbers on Monday had it right on the money: a 55-45 GOP-Democrat
split,
for no net change.
Even more remarkable, in some of the most closely watched
contests, ABC News
election eve "test" numbers matched the final vote count
almost precisely ^×
within one percentage point.
In the Florida governor's race, Jeb Bush beat Buddy MacKay
by 55% to 45% ^×
the exact final result rehearsed by ABC News on Monday. In Texas,
Jeb's
brother George won by 69% to Mauro's 30% ^× the very result
used in the ABC
rehearsal on Monday.
ABC News rehearsal numbers also matched the exact final
results, to within
one percentage point, of the governors' races in Alabama,
Colorado, Wisconsin
and Wyoming.
All told, ABC's "error" had the correct candidates winning
the governors
mansions in 32 of 36 elections yesterday. The only gubernatorial
contests
where ABC had the wrong candidate winning were in Hawaii,
Iowa, New Mexico
and Minnesota, where few predicted Reform Party candidate
Jesse Ventura
would be the new governor.
In the Senate elections, ABC's test numbers matched the
winners in 29 of 34
contests, including all of the major races. ABC on Monday
had posted "WIN"
indicators next to Boxer, Schumer, Fitzgerald, Murray and
Hollings, all of whom
won close races in California, New York, Illinois, Washington and
South
Carolina, respectively.
ABC also had the correct result in Wisconsin. The final vote totals
this
afternoon showed Russ Feingold narrowly won reelection by
38,410 votes. On
Monday, ABC's rehearsal numbers showed Feingold winning
reelection by a
margin of 39,000 votes.
But ABC is not claiming these numbers were the result of
any new forecasting
models or special analysis.
"It was completely random," Bergman told free! this
afternoon.
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