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What Were the Odds That Bush Would Win?

The statisticians and exit pollsters evidently got it wrong in the 2004 election

by Alan Waldman - November 25, 2004

Despite mainstream media attempts to kill or ridicule away the story, talk radio and the Internet are abuzz with theories about how John Kerry was elected president on Nov. 2 -- claiming Republican election officials made it difficult for millions of Democrats to vote while employees of four secretive, GOP-bankrolling corporations rigged electronic voting to steal the election for George W. Bush.

F lorida´s 2000 election problems -- votes spoiled by chads, overvotes, undervotes, exclusion of minority voters, etc. -- were never solved. They worsened and spread to many other states. The Bush administration´s ¨fix¨ of the 2000 debacle (the Help America Vote Act) made suspect elections considerably easier by foisting paperless electronic voting on states before the bugs had been worked out or meaningful safeguards could be installed. Expressed fears about a possibly stolen election aren´t only coming from defeated Democrats this time around. The Wall Street Journal -- hardly a Democrat´s paper -- recently wrote that ¨Verified Voting, a group formed by a Stanford University professor to assess electronic voting, has collected 31,000 reports of election fraud and other problems.¨

University of Pennsylvania researcher Steven Freeman, in his November 2004 paper, ¨The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy,¨ concludes: ¨The odds that the discrepancies between predicted [exit poll] results and actual vote counts in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania could have been due to chance or random error are 250 million to one.¨ So the unavoidable hypothesis is that they were caused by ¨systematic fraud or manipulation.¨ Exit polls, interviews with voters after they cast their votes at their polling places, have a margin of error of +/- 3 to 4 percent.

So how could the exit polls have been so wrong? Unlike Europe, where citizens count the ballots, in the U.S., employees of a highly secretive Republican-leaning company, ES&S, totally managed every aspect of the 2004 election. That included everything from voter registration, printing of ballots, the programming of the voting machines, tabulation of votes (often with armed guards keeping the media and members of the public who wished to witness the count at bay) and the first reporting of the results -- for 60 million voters in 47 states -- according to Christopher Bollyn, writing in American Free Press . Most other votes were counted by three other firms that are snugly in bed with the GOP -- Diebold, Sequoia and SAIC. ¨Any actual counting of votes by citizens is very rare in the U.S., except for a few counties in Montana and other states where paper ballots are still hand-counted,¨ Bollyn explains.

The tall hill of evidence below will demonstrate that the 2004 election fiasco had enough "irregularities" for the late-Tuesday shift from Kerry (seen winning by 3 percent and more in exit polls and many other data sources) to Bush to raise concerns.

Smelling a Rat

This election is not the first with results widely seen as surprising if not suspicious. In November 2002, Georgia Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes led by 11 percent and Democratic Sen. Max Cleland was in front by 5 percent just before the election -- the first ever conducted entirely on touch-screen electronic machines, and counted entirely by company employees, rather than public officials -- but mysterious election-day swings of 16 percent and 12 percent defeated both these popular incumbents. In Minnesota, Democrat Walter Mondale (replacing highly regarded Sen. Paul Wellstone, who died in a plane crash), lost in an amazing last-minute 11 percent vote swing recorded on electronic machines. Convenient glitches in Florida aided Jeb Bush and defeated Janet Reno in their primary elections. Then in 2003, what's known as "black box voting" helped Arnold Schwarzenegger -- who had deeply offended female, Latino and Jewish voters -- defeat a popular Latino Democrat who substantially led in polls a week before the election -- in strongly Democratic California.

Realizing that the 2004 election results are highly questionable, many have begun to demand action. Recently, six congressmen, including three on the House Judiciary Committee -- Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.), Robert Wexler (Fla.), John Conyers (Mich.), Rush Holt (N.J.), Bobby Scott (Va.) and Melvin Watt (N.C.) -- asked the U.S. comptroller general to investigate the efficacy of new electronic voting devices because of numerous reports of lost votes across the country.

Black Box Voting -- the nonprofit group that spearheaded much of the pre-election testing (and subsequent criticism) of electronic machines after being able to hack into them in 90 seconds -- is filing the largest Freedom of Information inquiry in U.S. history. The organization´s Bev Harris claims, ¨Fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines. We base this on hard evidence, documents, inside information and other data indicative of manipulation of electronic voting systems.¨

Florida Democratic congressional candidate Jeff Fisher charged that he has, and will show the FBI evidence that Florida results were hacked. He claims to also have knowledge of who hacked it in 2004 and in the 2002 Democratic primary (so Jeb Bush would not have to run against popular Janet Reno). Fisher also believes that most Democratic candidates nationwide were harmed by GOP hacking and other dirty tactics -- particularly in swing states.

On Nov. 18, a New Hampshire recount requested by Ralph Nader began. If it finds the totals were altered, recount requests in Florida and Ohio are certain to follow. The Green and Libertarian parties have already requested an Ohio recount, claiming voting fraud, suppression and disenfranchisement. Recounts are also being sought in Nevada and Washington state.

Leading academics have also joined the fray, calling for widespread investigations. NYU professor Troy Duster called for a full-scale probe, because ¨the data suggest that even if Bush won, he didn´t win by the kind of margins that are out there. We have a crisis here of potential legitimacy, and the way to deal with it is to do the research.¨

Media Muzzled

A lthough the Internet is full of claims of election fraud -- and they have been reported in England, Canada and elsewhere -- the story is virtually nonexistent in the major U.S. media. Bev Harris says, ¨I have been told by sources that are fairly high up in the media -- particularly TV -- that there is now a lockdown on this story. It´s officially ´Let´s move on´ time.¨ On Nov. 6, Project Censored award-winning author Thom Hartman said, "So far, the only national 'mainstream' media outlet to come close to this story was Keith Olbermann, when he noted that it was curious that all the voting machine irregularities so far uncovered seemed to favor Bush. In the meantime, the Washington Post and other media are now going through single-bullet-theory-like contortions to explain how the exit polls had failed."

How to Steal

Votes Electronically

Votes collected by electronic machines (and by Op-Scan equipment that reads traditional paper ballots) are sent via modem to a central tabulating computer which counts the votes on Windows software. Therefore, anyone who knows how to operate an Excel spreadsheet and who is given access to the central tabulation machine can make wholesale changes to election totals without being found out.

On a recent CNBC program, Black Box's Harris showed guest host Howard Dean how to alter vote totals within 90 seconds by entering a two-digit code in a hidden program on Diebold's election software. "This is not a bug or accidental oversight," Harris says. "It is there on purpose."

More than 35 Ohio counties used electronic voting machines from Diebold, whose CEO, Warren O´Dell, declared in 2003 that he was ¨committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to¨ President Bush in 2004. Up to 50,000 Diebold touch-screen machines and 20,000 scanners of paper ballots were used in 38 states during the November 2004 election.

The four major companies control the U.S. vote count are all hard-wired into the Bush campaign and power structure. The Bush government gave them millions to roll out computerized voting machines. Diebold chief O´Dell is a top Bush fundraiser. Diebold´s election division is headed by Bob Urosevich, whose brother Todd is a top exec at ¨rival¨ ES&S. The brothers were originally staked by Howard Ahmanson, bagman for the extremist Christian Reconstruction Movement, which advocates the theocratic takeover of American government. Sequoia is owned by a partner member of the Carlyle Group, which has dictated foreign policy in both Bush administrations and which employed former President Bush for quite a while.

All Early Tuesday

Indicators Predicted a Kerry Landslide

Zogby International, which predicted the 2000 outcome more accurately than any national pollster, did pre-election polling which predicted a 100 electoral-vote triumph for Kerry. Zogby saw Kerry winning crucial Ohio by 4 percent. In the Iowa Electronic Markets, where ¨investors¨ put their money where their mouths are and wagered real moolah on election outcome ¨contracts,¨ Bush led consistently for months before the election -- often by as much as 60 percent to 39 percent. At 1 p.m. CST on Election Day, however, before vote-counting began anywhere, IEM had 51.9 percent of investors putting their money on a Bush win. Then something extraordinary happened: over the next six hours there was suddenly a massive shift to Kerry. At 3 p.m. CST, Kerry shot into the lead, with 60 percent of the hour´s investors banking on his victory. At 5 p.m. a mind-blowing 79.5 percent were betting on Kerry. And when the final sale was made at 7 p.m., 76.6 percent of the last hour´s traders had gone to Kerry, with only 20.1 percent plunking their bucks down on Bush. These people knew something.

As the first election returns came in, broadcasters were shocked to see that seemingly safe Bush states like Virginia, Kentucky and North Carolina were being judged by the National Election Pool as ¨too close to call.¨ Then, at 7:28 EST, networks broadcast that both states favored Kerry by 51 percent to 49 percent.

Exit Polls Showed Kerry Won -- Until Something Happened

In his research paper, Steven Freeman reports, ¨Exit polls showed Kerry had been elected. He was leading in nearly every battleground state, in many cases, by sizable margins. But later, in 10 of 11 battleground states, the tallied margins differed from the predicted margins -- and in every one the shift favored Bush.¨ In 10 states where there were verifiable paper trails -- or no electronic machines -- the final results hardly differed from the initial exit polls. Exit polls and final counts in Missouri, Louisiana, Maine and Utah, for instance, varied by 1 percent or less. In non-paper-trail states, however, there were significant differences. Florida saw a shift from Kerry up 1 percent in the exit polls to Bush up 5 percent at evening´s end. In Ohio, Kerry went from +3 percent to -3 percent. Other big discrepancies in key states were: Minnesota (from +10 percent to +4 percent), New Mexico (+4 to -1), Nevada (+1 to -3), Wisconsin (+7 to +0.4), Colorado (-2 to -5), North Carolina (-4 to -13), Iowa (+1 to -1), New Hampshire (+14 to +1) and Pennsylvania (+8 to +2). Exit polls also had Kerry winning the national popular vote by 3 percent.

In close Senate races, changes between the exit poll results and the final tallies cost Democrats anticipated seats in Kentucky (a 13 percent swing to the GOP), Alaska (9 percent), North Carolina (9 percent), Florida, Oklahoma, South Dakota and possibly Pennsylvania -- as well as enough House seats to retake control of the chamber.

Republican consultant and Fox News regular Dick Morris wrote after the election, ¨Exit polls are almost never wrong. They eliminate the two major potential fallacies in survey research by correctly separating actual voters from those who pretend they will cast ballots and by substituting actual observation from guesswork. According to ABC-TV´s exit polls, Kerry was slated to win Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and Iowa -- all of which Bush ultimately carried.¨

The Center for Research on Globalization's Michael Keefer (a professor at the University of Guelph in Ontario) states, "The National Election Pool's own data -- as transmitted by CNN on the evening of Nov. 2 and the morning of Nov. 3 -- suggest that the results of the exit polls were themselves fiddled late on Nov. 2, in order to make their numbers conform with the tabulated vote."

How do we know the fix was in? Consider this: At 9:06 p.m., exit polls showed Kerry leading by nearly 3 percent. When the national exit polls were last updated at 1:36 a.m. EST, there was a 5 percent swing to Bush. But, says Keefer, ¨the total number of respondents at 9 p.m. was well over 13,000 and at 1:36 a.m. it had risen less than 3 percent -- to 13,531 total respondents. Given the small increase in respondents, this 5 percent swing to Bush is mathematically impossible.

¨In Florida, the exit polls appear to have been tampered with in a similar manner,¨ Keefer adds. ¨At 8:40 p.m., exit polls showed a near dead heat, but the final exit poll update at 1:01 a.m. gave Bush a 4 percent lead.¨ Again, the number of respondents made this swing mathematically impossible, because there were only 16 more respondents in the final tally than in the earlier one.

Florida Fiasco

In Broward Country, voting machines counted up to 32,500 votes and then started counting backwards. The problem existed in the 2002 elections in Broward County but was never fixed. Throughout Florida, as in most toss-up states, poll monitors saw prospective voters leaving because of long lines. There were reports of sub-par facilities and faulty equipment in minority neighborhoods. According to the Nov. 3 edition of the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail , ¨Several dozen voters in six states -- particularly Democrats in Florida -- said the wrong candidate appeared on their touch-screen machine´s checkout screen¨ (i.e. they voted one way and the result which appeared was the opposite).

Republicans have argued that the Florida counties which had majority Democratic registration but voted overwhelmingly for Bush were all ¨Dixiecrat¨ bastions in Northern Florida that are traditionally very conservative -- and that all the reported votes were accurate. The facts do not bear this assumption out. Keith Olbermann demonstrated on MSNBC´s Countdown program that many of these crossover counties were voting Republican for the first time. He poked another hole in the Dixiecrat theory when he noted, ¨On the same Florida Democratic ballots where Bush scored big, people supported highly Democratic measures -- such as raising the state minimum wage $1 above the federal level. This indicates that only the presidential voting was rigged.¨ Moreover, the 18 switchover counties were not in the panhandle or near the Georgia border, but were scattered throughout the state. For instance, voters in Glades County (Everglades region) registered 64.8 percent Democrat but cast 38.3 percent more votes for Bush than for Kerry. Hardee County (between Bradenton and Sebring) registered 63.8 percent Democratic but officially gave Bush 135 percent more votes than Kerry.

What Happened

in Ohio Happened

in Lots of Places

Reports from Ohio indicate that the state´s chief elections official J. Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican, arranged for ample voting booths in GOP areas and a shortage in liberal college towns and minority precincts. Despite the huge increase in new voter registration (91 percent of which was Democratic), Blackwell provided fewer total voting machines than were used in 2000. Lawyer Ray Beckerman reported, ¨Hundreds of thousands of people were disenfranchised in Ohio. People waited in line for as long as 10 hours -- but only in Democratic precincts. All day long, touch-screen voting machines in Youngstown registered ¨George W. Bush¨ when voters pressed ¨John F. Kerry,¨ despite complaints to police throughout the day.

Voters Unite! (www.votersunite.org/electionproblems.asp) detailed 303 specific election problems, including 84 complaints of machine malfunctions in 22 states, 24 cases of registration fraud in 14 states, 20 abusive voter challenge situations in 10 states, U.S. voters in 18 states and Israel experiencing absentee ballot difficulties, 10 states with provisional ballot woes, 22 cases of malfeasance in 13 states, 10 charges of voter intimidation in seven states, seven states where votes were suppressed, seven states witnessing outbreaks of animosity at the polls, six states suffering from ballot printing errors and seven outrages in four states where votes were changed onscreen. In addition, the Voters Unite! site cites four states with early voting troubles, three states undergoing ballot programming errors, three states demonstrating ballot secrecy violations, bogus ballot fraud in New Mexico, cases of double-voting for Bush in Texas and 15 states victimized by a range of miscellaneous voting problems.

On Nov. 10, Olbermann reported that computerized balloting in North Carolina was so thoroughly messed up that all statewide voting may have to be recounted. A Craven County, N.C. district recorded 11,283 more votes than there were voters, overturning the results of a regional race.

And Now?

Kerry´s victory was predicted by previously extremely accurate Harris and Zogby pre-election polls, by the formerly infallible 50 percent rule -- an incumbent with less than 50 percent in the exit polls always loses (Bush had 47 percent, requiring him to capture an improbable 80 percent of the undecideds to win) and by the Incumbent Rule (undecideds break for the challenger -- as exit polls showed they did by a large margin this time). Nor is it credible that: the surge in new young voters (who were witnessed standing in lines for hours on campuses nationwide) miraculously didn´t appear in the final totals; that Kerry did worse than Gore against an opponent who´s lost support; and that exit polls were highly accurate wherever there was a paper trail, and grossly underestimated Bush´s appeal wherever there was no such guarantee of accurate recounts. Statisticians point out that Bush beat mathematical odds of 99 to 1 in winning the election. Election results are not final until the electoral college votes on Dec. 13. There is still time to investigate, to find the truth and, if the results match the probabilities, to swear in legitimately elected President John F. Kerry. Alan Waldman is a Los Angeles journalist and blogger.

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