Bush Stole the Election…Caltech Says No
This paper from the CalTech/MIT Voting Technology Project says “no”. Here is a summary of the findings
- A series of claims have been made in recent days alleging that discrepancies between exit poll results and the presidential vote in certain states provides evidence of malfeasance in those states. These claims seem to be concentrated on states using electronic voting systems.
- Exit polls predicted a significantly greater vote for Kerry nationwide than the official returns confirmed, but there is not any apparent systematic bias when we take this same analysis to the state level.
- Analysis of deviations between the exit polls and the official returns show no particular patterns for states using electronic voting; nor does this analysis reveal any patterns for states using other forms of voting systems.
- We conclude that there is no evidence, based on exit polls, that electronic voting machines were used to steal the 2004 election for President Bush.
I know it wont do much to the rapid mouth breathers at the DemocraticUnderground.com in terms of the elections fairness, but hopefully this will help nitwits like Keith Olbermann from going into full mouth breather mode…on second thought I doubt it.
This part pretty much illustrates the completely insane outlook one must have to hold to the view that the election was stolen.
Which is more likely — that an exit polling system that has been consistently wrong and troubled turned out to be wrong and troubled again, or that a vast conspiracy carried out by scores and scores of county and state election officials was successfully carried off to distort millions of American votes? I think the Kerry campaign concluded that the former is what happened. But we’ll keep our eyes open for hard evidence of abuse, and we won’t be afraid to investigate if we see something significant.
If you really think the election was stolen you don’t need an aluminum foil deflector beanie…you need a lead lined bunker preferably with padded walls, ceiling and floor so you don’t hurt yourself.
The sad thing is that this idiotic commotion is distracting the press from a valid point — electronic voting systems are buggy, hackable, and not exactly accurate. All of us in the IT industry have been shaking our heads in frustration at the piss-poor job the states, election boards, and Diebold have done.
Trading expedience in vote counting for accuracy is just downright stupid. We need to look elsewhere for solutions (e.g. a national voter database) to this problem.
None of the Democrats I know are claiming this election was stolen. They think Bush’s reelection is tragic for our country, but I don’t hear anyone saying he cannot claim a legit win.
The one silver lining I draw from the election is that we did not have another train wreck like 2000. BTW I hold Gore to be more to blame for the 2000 fiasco then Bush. His too-hasty concession and attempts to cherry-pick a recount were terrible mistakes..
Anjin-san,
Have you tried DemocraticUnderground.com?
Steve,
No doubt some people feel that way. My comment was none of the Democrats I know.
One positive of the election is that the rise of blogs, phonecams, & email networks makes it almost impossible for either party to attempt a lot of the fraud, vote supression, etc. (as praticed by both parties). Information just flows too freely now. Its very difficult to operate in the darkness in the information age.