Published on Friday, April 1, 2005 by the Akron Beacon Journal / Ohio
Analysis Points to Election 'Corruption'
Group Says Chance of Exit Polls Being So Wrong in '04 Vote is One-in-959,000
by Stephen Dyer
There's a one-in-959,000 chance that exit polls could have been so
wrong in predicting the outcome of the 2004 presidential election,
according to a statistical analysis released Thursday.
Exit polls in the November election showed Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.,
winning by 3 percent, but President George W. Bush won the vote count
by 2.5 percent.
The explanation for the discrepancy that was offered by the exit
polling firm -- that Kerry voters were more likely to participate in
the exit polling -- is an ``implausible theory,'' according to the
report issued Thursday by US Count Votes, a group that claims it's
made up of about two dozen statisticians.
http://www.electionarchive.org
Twelve -- including a Case Western Reserve University mathematics
instructor -- signed the report.
Instead, the data support the idea that ``corruption of the vote
count occurred more freely in districts that were overwhelmingly Bush
strongholds.''
The report dismisses chance and inaccurate exit polling as the
reasons for their discrepancy with the results.
They found that the one hypothesis that can't be ruled out is
inaccurate election results.
``The hypothesis that the voters' intent was not accurately recorded
or counted... needs further investigation,'' it said.
The conclusion drew a yawn from Ohio election officials, who repeated
that the discrepancy issue was settled when the polling firms Edison
Media Research and Mitofsky International disavowed its polls because
Kerry voters were more likely to answer exit polls -- the theory
Thursday's report deemed ``implausible.''
Ohio has been at the center of a voter disenfranchisement debate
since the election.
``What are you going to do except laugh at it?'' said Carlo LoParo,
spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, who's
responsible for administering Ohio's elections and is a Republican
candidate for governor. ``We're not particularly interested in (the
report's findings). We wish them luck, but hope they find something
more interesting to do.''
The statistical analysis, though, shows that the discrepancy between
polls and results was especially high in precincts that voted for
Bush -- as high as a 10 percent difference.
The report says if the official explanation -- that Bush voters were
more shy about filling out exit polls in precincts with more Kerry
voters -- is true, then the precincts with large Bush votes should be
more accurate, not less accurate as the data indicate.
The report also called into question new voting machine technologies.
``All voting equipment technologies except paper ballots were
associated with large unexplained exit poll discrepancies all
favoring the same party, (which) certainly warrants further
inquiry,'' the report concludes.
However, LoParo remained unimpressed.
``These (Bush) voters have been much maligned by outside political
forces who didn't like the way they voted,'' he said. ``The weather's
turning nice. There are more interesting things to do than beat a
dead horse.''
© 2005 Beacon Journal and wire service sources
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