2004 Election Disinformation

Mark Crispin Miller Live Online Tonight Taking Your Questions

davidswanson — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 08:08:30 -0400

Tonight from 8 - 9 p.m. ET I'll be interviewing Mark Crispin Miller and he'll be taking your questions at http://www.thepeoplespeakradio.net

Mark Crispin Miller is professor of media studies at New York University and the author of the book: Fooled Again, How the Right Stole the 2004 Elections. He is known for his writing on American media and for his activism on behalf of democratic media reform. His books include Boxed In: The Culture of TV, Seeing Through Movies, and Mad Scientists, a study of war propaganda.

Miller writes in his book, Fooled Again, that the 2000 U.S. Presidential election and 2004 U.S. Presidential election were “stolen”. Miller presents extensive documentation, backed by 56 pages of notes, supporting his contention that the outcome of both elections was altered and controlled by a small minority. He states that the American voting populace can no longer assume that their votes will be accurately assessed, and that the installation of electronic voting machines in state after state is a fundamental flaw in the U.S. electoral system. He appeared in the 2004 documentary Orwell Rolls in His Grave, which focuses on the hidden mechanics of the media, its role as it should be and what it actually is, and how it shapes (to the point of almost controlling) U.S. politics.

Mark’s new book is: Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008.

It's Statistically Impossible That Bush Beat Kerry

davidswanson — Thu, 10 May 2007 15:18:31 -0400

The Use of Statistics in Elections
By Andrew First

On the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November, every four years, Americans elect a new president. More often than not, the outcome of the election is unknown beforehand. Polls are taken in the weeks and months prior to an election, but those are merely a snapshot in time, reflecting the electorate’s opinion at that particular moment. The candidate that an undecided voter supports can change many times before the election, and some people are completely undecided until they step into the voting booth. In addition, slim margins can not be predicted beforehand due to sampling variability. While samples give a good idea of what voters are thinking, there is a margin of error in each poll that must be taken into account while analyzing the poll results.

After millions of dollars are spent on advertising, and candidates are on the campaign trail for many months, people are anxious to see the results of the elections. To get an accurate reflection of the way the populace cast their votes, one need not count every single vote right away. By taking exit polls, news organizations are able to predict the outcome of elections with remarkable accuracy. These results are available much faster than the official vote counts that are used to certify elections. These polls also tell us how different demographic groups voted for each specific candidate.

A presidential election is unique among elections in the world in how the winner is determined. Every state is allotted a specific number of electoral votes, corresponding to the number of Senators a state has plus the number of Congressmen the state sends to the U.S. House of Representatives. With the exception of Maine and Nebraska, these votes are awarded on a winner take all basis. When one casts a vote for the presidential race, it is actually a vote for a slate of electors chosen by the candidate, who will then cast the electoral vote for the candidate. In Maine and Nebraska, the winners of each congressional district receive one vote, while the winner of the state at-large is awarded two votes. In both of these states, however, the vote has never been split between two candidates. It is interesting to note that the electors are not bound by law to cast their vote for the candidate who they represent. In 1988, one elector from West Virginia cast his presidential vote for Lloyd Bentsen, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, while the rest of the West Virginia electors cast theirs for Michael Dukakis. In 2004 a Minnesota elector cast his vote for John Edwards.

After these votes are tabulated, a candidate must have more than half of the total electoral votes cast in order to be named president-elect. A lot of the individual state results are known months ahead of time. California for example, was known far ahead of time that it would go Democratic in the 2004 election. By the same token Texas was known to be voting to reelect George Bush. Neither of these states disappointed, with Kerry receiving 54% of the vote in California, but only 38% in Texas.

Other states are too close to call. In polls taken before the election, if the numbers are within the margin of error, there is no way to predict who will win each state. These are known as battleground states. In the last few election cycles, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania have been the battleground states that represented the most electoral votes, so they in turn were the biggest prizes in the electoral race. The general consensus before November 2, 2004, was that whoever won two of the aforementioned states would also win the White House.

The procedure for electing a president leads to some interesting campaign strategies. Because Kerry had no reason to believe he could win in Texas, and Bush had no reason to believe he could lose in Texas, the both Kerry and Bush stayed out of these states almost completely, as winning a state with 70% of the vote has the same net effect on the electoral college as winning the state by one vote. Instead both candidates focused their time and money on campaigning in the battleground states such as Pennsylvania and Florida. Analyzing and predicting the election also shifts back to a statewide basis. The exit polls conducted on Election Day in 2004 can help show who voted for whom and why.

In 2004, Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International conducted exit polls that the six major news organizations used. In these, 250 precincts were randomly chosen throughout the country. The pollsters then asked voters leaving the polling place a series of questions. The important question was “Whom did you vote for?” They then asked questions such as the voters political affiliation, religious affiliation, income level, and if they were for or against the war in Iraq. The interval between respondents was determined by the population of the precinct, with the goal of interviewing approximately 100 voters per precinct.

The data collected by exit pollsters has raised some questions, because according to the polls John Kerry should have won the popular vote by well over two percent, however, the official results indicated that George Bush won by the same margin. In eleven key battleground states, Kerry was predicted to win nine of them based on the exit poll data. Bush ended up winning six of these (Freeman, 2004). Even in the states that Kerry won, the margin of victory was much smaller than what one may have predicted. In Pennsylvania, Kerry was predicted to win by a margin of 8.7%, while the official vote count was only 2.2%. In Ohio, exit polls indicated a 4.2% Kerry victory, while Bush ended up carrying the decisive state by 2.5%.

There was also a question about the timing of the release of exit poll numbers. The poll results cited above were released by CNN on election night. These numbers were the actual counts taken in the poll. If one were to look up these exit poll results today, the numbers would be different. The numbers are adjusted based on the assumption that the official results are correct (Freeman, 2005).

By breaking it down to individual precincts, the results are even more disturbing. In January 2006, a team of statisticians looked at the forty nine precincts polled in Ohio, and compared the uncalibrated results with the official vote count. Twenty of those forty nine had a discrepancy in favor of Bush that was outside of the margin of error, including “precinct 27”, in which official results showed Bush to carry the precinct with 62% of the vote, while exit poll data, received from 100 respondants, suggested that Kerry would win with 67%, a difference of 29% (Kennedy, 2006). To illustrate the improbability of these numbers, one would set up a null hypothesis that K=.38. The alternative hypothesis is K>.38. The sample size in precinct 27 was 100, and the sample K was .67. as n gets large, the distribution of sample K will asymptotically approach a normal distribution, and we can standardize this distribution thusly:

Z=(.67-.38)/sqrt(.38x.62/100)=5.97. Plugging this into a standard normal calculator, a p-value of 1.15x10-9 is obtained. Assuming a valid sampling technique, if Bush actually received 62% of the votes, these exit poll results would be obtained one time out of almost a billion samples.

Kerry supporters look at this data as evidence of fraud in the election. The chances of achieving the exit poll results if the official results are entirely accurate are very slim. That coupled with the fact that all of the software used to count votes is proprietary, and there is no actual paper record of whom each voter selected, makes it appear that something is amiss. Bush supporters point to alleged flaws in the polling methodology or random error to explain the discrepancy. There is also the possibility that Bush voters would be more reluctant to talk to pollsters. This, however, is merely a hypothesis. If this were indeed true, one would expect that to be the case nationally. John Zogby, a renowned pollster went so far as to call this hypothesis “preposterous”. The data collected actually suggested that Kerry supporters were more reluctant to complete the survey than Bush supporters. In areas where Bush won a substantial amount of the vote, 56% of the voters targeted completed the survey. In Kerry strongholds, only 53% of the voters answered the pollsters’ questions (Kennedy, 2006). Based on this, it would appear that the votes in the 2004 election were not counted correctly.

Less than three weeks after the United States election, on November 22, 2004, there was a runoff election in Ukraine for president. Viktor Yanukovych, the prime minister, was running against Viktor Yushchenko, a former prime minister himself, having served from 1999 until 2001. According to an exit poll conducted by Ukraine’s Social Monitoring Center, Yushchenko enjoyed a lead of 49.5% to 45.9%. Other exit polls, some of which were commissioned by the Bush administration indicated a larger lead for Yushchenko, some by 11%. When all of the results were officially counted, however, Yanukovych emerged with a victory of just less than 3%.

This discrepancy between official results and exit poll results caused world leaders to claim that the election results were invalid, including the Bush administration that only days earlier declared the methodology of exit polling to be flawed when it was Bush’s reelection that was the subject of debate. John Tefft, the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, testified before the House Committee on International Relations on December 19, 2004, and stated that exit polls are one of the best ways to expose large scale fraud in elections. On election night, the city council of Kiev refused to accept the official results, and urged the Ukrainian parliament to do likewise. After a lawsuit filed by Yushchenko supporters reached the Ukrainian supreme court, the election held on November 22 was declared invalid, and another election was scheduled for December 26, which Yushchenko went on to win by a margin of 8%. An appeal by Yanukovych was rejected on January 20, 2005, and three days later, Yushchenko was inaugurated as Ukraine’s third president.

In 1990, Carlos Salinas de Gortari was elected to the Mexican presidency. After his election there were widespread allegations of fraud regarding the election. Between 1990 and 1994 Mexico instituted several reforms to their electoral process. Despite the reforms, a 1993 poll by Market Opinion Research Institute showed that 47% of Mexicans expected corruption in the upcoming national election, while only 28% expected them to be clean (Carter Center, 1994). With such widespread doubt on the validity of elections, there must be a way to instill confidence in the Mexican electorate as to the accuracy and fairness about its elections.

In 1994, on the eve of the election, The Chamber of Radio an TV, a Mexican media company, hired Warren Mitofsky to conduct exit polls on the presidential election. These exit polls were accurate to within a tenth of a percent, as to what the official results were. This accuracy has made Mexicans more confident in their electoral process, and in 2000, Vicente Fox won the presidency. This marked the first time in the history of the Institution Revolutionary Party that their candidate did not win. Fox’s victory was also the first time in Mexico’s history that a president followed a precedent that Americans take for granted. Outgoing president Ernesto Zedillo peacefully ceded power to a president-elect from an opposition party.

For over two hundred years, the United States of America has been seen throughout the world as the ideal example of what Democracy should be. In the last several decades, more and more countries have abandoned their old systems of aristocratic rule, and have adopted democratically elected governments. In the case of Ukraine, for over seventy years, they were under the control of the Soviet Union, and for the citizens there, memories of a totalitarian rule are all too fresh. For these fledgling Democracies, the people who fought to bring that Democracy there appreciate it and have a firmer grasp on what the alternative to that is. As Americans, it is easy to forget the hardships endured, and we take it for granted that our elections will be free of any corruption. In Ukraine, they went to great lengths to ensure that the man inaugurated was the one that the people chose. The statistical methods used in the 2004 presidential election could easily be applied to the United States. In Mexico, because there was widespread belief that the elections were fixed, statistics were used to mitigate citizens’ fears that the election reforms would not eliminate corruption. In both of these cases, statistics provided a check on the elections, and in turn instilled more confidence that the popularly chosen man ascended to the presidency, which is critical in a Democracy. In the United States, however, we have chosen to ignore these issues which would be huge red flags in any other country, thinking that it could not happen here. We Americans need to take a long hard look at our electoral process and make changes to ensure that all votes are counted correctly.

References:

Green, J., “Do Polls Still Work?”, Atlantic Monthly, 298, 4, 33, 2006.

Konner, J, “The Case for Caution”, Public Opinion Quarterly, 67, 1, 5-18, 2003.

“The Third Time Around”, Current Digest of the Post Soviet Press, 56, 52, 1, 2005.

Lipper, T, “Votes of Confidence”, Newsweek, 140, 20, 10, 2002.

Scheufele, D, “Recent Articles in the Field of Public Opinion Research”, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 14, 1, 115-118, 2002.

Sudman, S, “Do Exit Polls Influence Voting Behavior?”, Public Opinion Quarterly, 50, 3, 331-339, 1986.

Freeman, S, The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy, 2004

Kennedy, R, “Was the 2004 Election Stolen?”, Rolling Stone, 2006

The Carter Center, “Elections in Mexico: Third Report”, 1994

Test Post

crunchywelch — Thu, 11 Nov 2004 12:46:26 -0500

11/11: DC Protest Against Massive Voter Fraud and Mistaken Mandate - Noon 11/11 LaFayette Park

11/11: Karl Rove is afraid of this growing movement - the proof is a quietly orchestrated set of attacks on "conspiracy theorists" from NPR, ABC News, etc.

11/9: Statement from Cam Kerry

11/9: A Petition to Congress requesting an investigation into the Presidential Election of 2004

11/7: Bev Harris' Freedom of Information requests at http://www.blackboxvoting.org have unearthed two Ciber certification reports indicating that security and tamperability was NOT TESTED and that several state elections directors, a secretary of state, and computer consultant Dr. Britain Williams signed off on the report anyway, certifying it.

11/6: DemocraticUnderground launches a nationwide investigation of election fraud.

11/5: Ralph Nader is challenging electronic voting results in New Hampshire. DemocraticUnderground is celebrating.

11/5: House Dems John Conyers, Jerry Nadler, and Robert Wexler sent a letter to the General Accounting Office requesting an investigation into irregularities with voting machines used in Tuesday's elections.

11/5: Andrew Veal, 25, traveled from Georgia to Ground Zero and committed suicide, apparently despondent over the election.

11/5: The November 2 Exit Poll Scam by Michael Keefer

11/3: Thousands of San Francisco activists protested Bush and the Iraq War.

Question #1: How did Bush get 9 million more votes than in 2000?

Primary Research:

Voting Fraud in the 2004 Presidential Election

Compiled Articles:

Discussion threads:

11/8 LiveJournal

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. In cursus felis non diam. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Vivamus eu mi. Nullam orci nunc, iaculis vel, posuere ac, tempor vitae, quam. In sem. Donec lacus felis, bibendum luctus, bibendum sit amet, elementum eget, ante. Nulla condimentum mauris eget arcu. Sed nunc ipsum, pharetra eget, euismod sed, nonummy et, eros. Ut lacinia massa sed massa. Suspendisse sagittis ornare nisl. Nulla consectetuer turpis vel magna. Suspendisse venenatis sollicitudin lorem.

Quisque luctus scelerisque lorem. Pellentesque facilisis tincidunt sapien. Fusce non tellus tincidunt metus suscipit malesuada. Maecenas elit felis, dignissim at, blandit ac, malesuada nec, ipsum. Praesent mollis sem et est. Proin adipiscing vehicula libero. Nulla facilisi. Praesent eros nulla, sollicitudin et, ultricies et, ultricies id, pede. Etiam felis augue, commodo ut, posuere in, bibendum et, elit. Mauris aliquam, orci vel laoreet placerat, diam lorem vestibulum nibh, quis scelerisque felis massa nec dui. Sed dapibus ipsum in nibh posuere pulvinar. Curabitur velit. Etiam metus. Mauris consectetuer, nunc a blandit vestibulum, nibh sapien blandit leo, non luctus dui tortor eu magna. Maecenas in pede id nunc ullamcorper aliquam. Morbi condimentum urna eget sapien ultrices varius. Nunc ligula odio, faucibus pellentesque, volutpat eu, adipiscing scelerisque, metus. Pellentesque purus mi, molestie non, placerat eu, suscipit a, tortor. Sed tincidunt. Fusce id massa.

Duis fermentum magna nec erat. Sed ac wisi. Phasellus eleifend. Sed in est ultricies wisi mattis ullamcorper. In elit. Cras dapibus laoreet purus. Aenean consectetuer turpis ut arcu. Nullam dolor. Vestibulum id mi. Ut sit amet lorem vitae augue auctor ultrices. Suspendisse ipsum tellus, interdum quis, aliquam ut, dignissim id, tortor. Fusce massa enim, gravida sed, luctus a, laoreet sed, ante. Phasellus varius sodales nulla. Nam eget justo nec enim rhoncus sollicitudin. Sed malesuada massa vitae dui.

Proin tincidunt mollis lorem. Pellentesque faucibus lectus ac lacus. Phasellus vestibulum, ipsum in lobortis tempor, diam justo euismod justo, in faucibus libero justo eu orci. Fusce ipsum ante, interdum id, laoreet ac, lobortis vel, mauris. Donec tellus. Donec posuere. Mauris et mi vitae arcu tristique mattis. In hendrerit, diam pulvinar iaculis posuere, pede dolor sagittis massa, quis blandit diam nunc a magna. Donec condimentum posuere augue. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Phasellus auctor. Fusce eu eros nec arcu varius dignissim. Donec felis lectus, auctor eu, venenatis ut, malesuada id, mi. Aliquam commodo. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Quisque condimentum viverra nulla. Nulla sapien.

Aliquam sollicitudin sollicitudin ante. Integer orci. Duis eget nulla. Mauris malesuada urna ac libero. Etiam tempor, lectus sit amet pulvinar pretium, nulla eros vulputate sem, id sodales eros risus sed sapien. Aenean varius, dui quis cursus sagittis, eros ligula tempor wisi, et mattis augue risus ac neque. Nunc ac purus a mauris blandit auctor. Quisque posuere ullamcorper leo. Vestibulum faucibus. Phasellus odio ante, varius at, aliquet sit amet, facilisis nec, est. Nunc vestibulum dui nec wisi. Sed vulputate, odio vel pretium faucibus, urna nibh rhoncus est, non aliquam libero lorem non enim. Nullam urna. Donec turpis tortor, tempus ac, egestas in, aliquet sed, turpis. Aliquam imperdiet dictum nibh. Ut nisl. Praesent convallis. Etiam a erat tincidunt enim pharetra luctus. Mauris hendrerit hendrerit tellus. Nulla facilisis ante vel turpis.

Beware GOP lies about Democratic vote fraud

Bob Fertik — Sun, 31 Oct 2004 14:10:53 -0500

When Kerry klobbers Bush on Tuesday, Republicans are not going to admit reality - any more than they admit reality in Iraq.

Instead, Republicans will do what they always do - attack Democrats.

And their main point of attack will be high-decibel charges that Democrats committed massive vote fraud.

Of course, there is massive vote fraud taking place - by Republicans. For details, visit:

Still, you can expect the media to give infinitely greater weight to Democratic fraud.

Yes, there is Democratic fraud, mainly because of paid registrars who cut corners to get off work early. But based on the examples below, it will not affect a single vote. Read that again. While Republicans are engaging in fraud to prevent tens of thousands of Democrats from voting, Democratic fraud will not stop one legitimate Republican vote from being cast or counted, and will not cause one illegitimate Democratic vote to be cast or counted.

Jack Hitt of This American Life asked Republicans to send him the "worst" examples of voter fraud they had, and here's what he got:

He sent me a copy. It's all newspaper clips, many of them unverified charges. There are a few that check out. There really was, for example, this white guy working for an outfit affiliated with the NAACP, who registered voters under names like Mary Poppins and Jeffrey Dahmer, and it's true, he was paid in crack cocaine. Very bad... and a great story. And then there was the Colorado guy who registered himself 35 times. Also true. Also very bad. But the reason you're going to be hearing about these two examples over and over in the offical Republican talking points in the next few days is that that's the best they've got in their hundreds of pages.

Strange enough, reading the very stories they sent often undercut their main argument. For example, that Colorado guy? Here's a line from the article the GOP sent me: "Just because you register someone 35 times, doesn't mean they vote 35 times." Or, here's another one: "Election officials of both parties say that bad registrations do not necessarily translate into election day fraud. New identification laws, as well as signature checks, make ballot box stuffing extremely difficult." Let me repeat: these are quotes from the official Republican vote fraud press packet.