Absence Of Evidence Isn’t Evidence Of Absence
Let me start by saying that I’ve been very hesitant to dive into all this voter fraud stuff for a few reasons :
These sorts of allegations are gonna come off as sour grapes. Because we’re on the losing side, there’s a pretty high bar for us to reach when it comes to proving electoral malfeasance. If there are reasonable explanations for whatever inconsistencies exist, you don’t want to be accused of crying wolf. A lot of people are being paranoid conspiracy theorists about this whole thing. Even with fishy evidence in hand, it’s a huge leap to imply that a few thousand soiled votes in Bumblefuck County is proof that Karl Rove hacked the Windows server that’s counting the votes. One-off sob stories always set off my bullshit alarm. I’ve heard a few “smoking gun” tales now about so-and-so seeing whatever the hell happen and my immediate thought is that these sorts of stories will always pop up. In Florida 2000, the problem wasn’t that voters at one polling location reported being intimidated by the cops, but that this was being reported in multiple locations. If a pattern emerges, then it’s time to worry.
Vis-a-vis that last point, if you believe something strongly enough, you’ll always be able to find evidence to back it up. For a good example of what I’m talking about, take a look at what some people claim the bible says about gay marriage or abortion.
Instead of jumping around the issue, however, let me just address the question at hand directly : Was the election “stolen”? I’m not comfortable jumping to that conclusion, but the preponderance of the evidence that’s piling up certainly leans in that direction. For me, the most compelling evidence is the unexplained discrepancy between the exit polls and the final results, especially as pointed out in this table from a paper by Steven Freeman :
The issue isn’t just that the polls were off, but that the final results consistently favored one candidate over another. The likelihood of this happening is, to paraphrase Bob Harris, the same as flipping a coin eleven times and always getting heads. As far as the non-swing states, the polls were much more consistent.
Caveats aside, the data appear to be good. In general, we have every reason to believe that exit polls are accurate survey instruments. Exit polls are surveys taken of representative respondents from the overall voting population. Although exit polls have not been academically studied, both the logic behind them and experience suggest that we can use these surveys to predict overall results with very high degrees of certainty. It’s easy to get a statistically valid representative sample; and there is no problem with figuring out who is going to actually vote — or how they will vote.
. . .
Predictions in this year’s contests were quite accurate. In the Utah presidential election, for example, they predicted Bush 70.8%, Kerry 26.5%. The actual was Bush 71.1%, Kerry 26.4%.
This level of accuracy shouldn’t be that surprising. Unlike pre-election polling, which can be tarnished by likely voter models, breaking news, and the respondents inability to make up his/her mind, exit polls have near-perfect samples. Because the polls consists of someone standing outside a polling place with a clipboard asking the simplest of questions (Who did you vote for? How are you registered? Are you a male or female?), exit polls are able to get accurate data and a large number or respondents.
But take a look again at the chart above. In every swing state, the difference between the exit polls and the results skewed in the President’s direction. Does this mean the election was “stolen”? No, but it does mean there are some serious questions that need to be addressed before the legitimacy of the election can be ensured.
On the exit polling side, the pollsters should make public their raw data so that third parties can try to find an explanation for the difference between the predicted and “actual” outcomes. If this can be written off as a statistical fluke of some sort, then it should be examined not only to put aside questioning of the current results, but also help ensure that future exit polling will be more accurate. On the electoral side, questions such as these that arise when comparing predicted and “actual” results need to be addressable :
The results are shocking. Overall, Bush received 2% fewer votes in counties with electronic touch-screen voting than expected. In counties with optical scanning, he received 16% more. This 16% would not be strange if it were spread across counties more or less evenly. It is not. In 11 different counties, the ?actual’ Bush vote was at least twice higher than the expected vote. 13 counties had Bush vote tallies 50–100% higher than expected. In one county where 88% of voters are registered Democrats, Bush got nearly two thirds of the vote–three times more than predicted by my model.It’s not that the burden of proof for explaining exit poll accuracy lies on the shoulders of the election officials, but that the system in place needs to be able to address questions of legitimacy. This not only means an audit trail for touch-screen machines, but answers to simple questions such as “How do you know the vote tabulators weren’t hacked?”
So, as much as people on both sides of the aisle may want to whine about the conspiracy theorists who are jumping to the conclusion that the election was stolen, the pile of questions that’s growing ever larger at some point turns the question around. In the face of mounting uncertainty, how can we be sure that there wasn’t some tampering with either the exit polls or election results themselves?
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i like to stay away from this issue because i dont want to come off as a hypocrite. ive been bitching about the electoral collage for years now and, regardless of ohio shenannigans, its pretty obvious bush took the popular vote.
do i think they “stole” ohio, though? well, did they have the means and desire? sure. did they do it? dunno. thank heavens david cobb and the green party are the only party with balls enough to do the democrats dirty work here and find out.
so, what if its discovered ohio was all a lie? then were faced with a presidency of a man that won the election and not only didnt have the balls to fight for his rightful place, but a man who literally fell over himself to give it away. hey, better than bush, i guess…
Comment by josh — November 15, 2004 @ 12:14 pm
Regardless of the outcome of the Ohio recount, I think it was a good move politically for Kerry to concede. If he hadn’t, conventional wisdom would have settled on a picture of Kerry as a sore loser who’s grasping at straws and trying to deny Bush his mandate. Leaving the country holding its breath for a few weeks after the Republicans made some clear gains and Bush is the presumptive winner would be a disaster. Kerry would be Gore-d into submission by an army of lawyers and a public ready to put the election behind them.
Since a concession speech isn’t legally binding, Kerry can pull away from the spotlight and let his army of lawyers keep track of the local developments in relative secrecy. If things change on the ground (which is unlikely), he can always re-emerge.
It’s odd that Cobb is the one calling for a recount, but it’s probably for the best since the Republicans are far less likely to sic James Baker on some schlub from the Green party. I’m thankful that Cobb’s being more agressive about this stuff, expecially since his actions won’t be met with nearly as much scrutiny as if they were from the Dems.
Comment by greg — November 15, 2004 @ 12:37 pm
So… what about the machines that registered thousands more votes for Bush, than there were voters? it’s estimated that there were over 90,000 more votes cast for Bush in Ohio than there were voters. These votes were cast by electronic machines that were most likely tampered with.
4,258 votes cast for Bush as a polling place where only 638 people voted in OHIO. A Florida mchine that counted backwards. North Carolina a machine eliminated votes. Homeland Security locked down a building blocking anyone from observing vote counting in Warren County Ohio. and on and on and on… the list of suspicious happenings gets bigger and bigger…
Comment by tom — November 15, 2004 @ 4:34 pm
I don’t think the suspicion that this election was stolen will die down for many years, probably not until the nation fixates on a new national anxiety.
We deserve a confidence in our democratic process. Right now, I think a large part of our voting population feels disenfranchised and powerless. For the vast majority of Americans, who do not command the type of wealth which will attract any politician’s attention, voting is our only imput on government policy. Steal our vote and you steal our voice, you steal our freedom of expression and representative govenment itself.
We deserve a system with checks and balances, a system in which the vote can be verified and a system which can be audited in an open and transparent manner.
I set my doubts aside about the Bush administration, even in the uneasy buildup to the Iraq war. I accepted, with some difficulty, that Iraq represented an immanent threat. After they dropped the ball in Afganistan and left a large portion of our armed forces in a quagmire in Iraq, I found that they had cooked the intelligence books on Iraq and that, despite the brutality of that regime, Iraq was not an immanent threat. I believe that the election was stolen. I think this may be true of more than just the presidential race and may extend to some of the senatorial and congressional seats. I don’t think it has to have been a conspiracy, just the wealthy and evangelical working toward their own best interest which they believe are also the best interest of the country.
Comment by kamachanda — November 15, 2004 @ 6:25 pm
Carter suggested that the UN monitor US voting, which of course was laughed at, but it points out something that both sides of the aisle have to come to terms with. Whether it’s voting, air quality, land mine proliferation, human rights, the actions of the military, or a host of other issues, the US consistently acts as if it is above the laws it expects the rest of the world to abide by. The hypocrisy can only grow over the next 4 years.
Comment by FreedomByChoice — November 17, 2004 @ 6:15 am
“Kerry can pull away from the spotlight and let his army of lawyers keep track of the local developments in relative secrecy.”
More like complete secrecy. David Cobb said this week that there has been no interest from Kerry’s lawyers or anyone from the democratic party in taking up this fight. Instead it’s the green party candidate and the libertarian party candidate who have taken charge of footing the bill for the recount.
Comment by mona — November 17, 2004 @ 11:10 am
not to mention that Cobb had to raise $150,000 to start the recall. while Kerry sits on $50-million left over from his campaign.
Hey Kerry and DNC- can i have all my contribution money back? I didn’t give you $250 this year so you could sit on you ass and let Democracy die.
Fuck the democrats… i’m sick of their bullshit. I completely agree with ross ( http://www.thisspaceforrent.org/archives/000355.html ). that’s what i was trying to say in the comments section somewhere else here. With Reid as majority leader, and idiots like Feinstein and Boxer talking about the Dems being “too left” and need to move “more to the center” well- they might as well just switch parties. They’ve completely lost touch with what the Democrats should be. Fuck ‘em.
on a side note:
i just read an interview with Kerry in The Believer. It was pathetic… i expected it to be an insiteful, down-to-earth discussion. Instead he answered every damn question with his talking points. I expect that kinda crap in a CNN interview- but in a small magazine with a niche-audience, i’d expect him to open up and be more natural and honest.
Comment by tom — November 17, 2004 @ 12:09 pm
Bush took the popular vote. 3 million more votes, or ‘votes’, if you prefer, in a nation of nearly 300 million.
Last time i checked that wasn’t a mandate.
what ever happened to walking softly?
Comment by mdhatter — November 18, 2004 @ 6:18 pm
Yeah,
I’d say 15 million left over is reasonable if you may need to fight that legal battle.
Comment by mdhatter — November 18, 2004 @ 6:20 pm
Tom,
I live in Massachusetts. I vote for Kerry, and you can damn well be sure that if he wants to stay, we’ll keep voting for him. We keep sending Ted back, right? also, would you like some cheese to go with that whine?
Comment by mdhatter — November 18, 2004 @ 6:27 pm
no thanks, i’m vegan.
Comment by tom — November 19, 2004 @ 1:44 am