Footprints of Electoral Fraud: The November 2 Exit Poll Scam

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http://globalresearch.ca/articles/KEE411A.html

 

Footprints of Electoral Fraud:

The November 2 Exit Poll Scam

by Michael Keefer

 

www.globalresearch.ca 5 November 2004

 

The URL of this article is:

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/KEE411A.html

 

Republican electoral fraud in the 2004 presidential election was

widely anticipated by informed observers--whose warnings about the

opportunities for fraud offered by " black box " voting machines

supplied and serviced by corporations closely aligned with Republican

interests (and used to tally nearly a third of the votes cast on

November 2) have been amply borne out by the results.1

 

One of the clear indicators of massive electoral fraud was the

wide divergence, both nationally and in swing states, between exit

poll results and the reported vote tallies. The major villains, it

would seem, were the suppliers of touch-screen voting machines. There

appears to be evidence, however, that the corporations responsible for

assembling vote-counting and exit poll information may also have been

complicit in the fraud.

 

Until recently, the major American corporate infomedia networks

(ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox, and AP) relied on a consortium known as the

Voter News Service for vote-counting and exit poll information. But

following the scandals and consequent embarrassments of the 2000 and

2002 elections, this consortium was disbanded. It was replaced in 2004

by a partnership of Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International

known as the National Election Pool.

 

The National Election Pool's own data—as transmitted by CNN on the

evening of November 2 and the early morning of November 3—suggest very

strongly that the results of the exit polls were themselves fiddled

late on November 2 in order to make their numbers conform with the

tabulated vote tallies.

 

It is important to remember how large the discrepancy was between

the early vote tallies and the early exit poll figures. By the time

polls were closing in the eastern states, the vote-count figures

published by CNN showed Bush leading Kerry by a massive 11 percent

margin. At 8:50 p.m. EST, Bush was credited with 6,590,476 votes, and

Kerry with 5,239,414. This margin gradually shrank. By 9:00 p.m., Bush

purportedly had 8,284,599 votes, and Kerry 6,703,874; by 9:06 p.m.,

Bush had 9,257,135, and Kerry had 7,652,510, giving the incumbent a 9

percent lead, with 54 percent of the vote to Kerry's 45 percent.

 

At the same time, embarrassingly enough, the national exit poll

figures reported by CNN showed Kerry as holding a narrow but

potentially decisive lead over Bush. At 9:06 p.m. EST, the exit polls

indicated that women's votes (54 percent of the total) were going 54

percent to Kerry, 45 percent to Bush, and 1 percent to Nader; men's

votes (46 percent of the total) were breaking 51 percent to Bush, 47

percent to Kerry, and 1 percent to Nader. Kerry, in other words, was

leading Bush by nearly 3 percent.

 

The early exit polls appear to have caused some concern to the

good people at the National Election Pool: a gap of 12 or 14 percent

between tallied results and exit polls can hardly inspire confidence

in the legitimacy of an election.

 

One can surmise that instructions of two sorts were issued. The

election-massagers working for Diebold, ES & S (Election Systems &

Software) and the other suppliers of black-box voting machines may

have been told to go easy on their manipulations of back-door

`Democrat-Delete' software: mere victory was what the Bush campaign

wanted, not an implausible landslide. And the number crunchers at the

National Election Pool may have been asked to fix up those awkward

exit polls.

 

Fix them they did. When the national exit polls were last updated,

at 1:36 a.m. EST on November 3, men's votes (still 46 percent of the

total) had gone 54 percent to Bush, 45 percent to Kerry, and 1 percent

to Nader; women's votes (54 percent of the total) had gone 47 percent

to Bush, 52 percent to Kerry, and 1 percent to Nader.

 

But how do we know the fix was in? Because the exit poll data also

included the total number of respondents. At 9:00 p.m. EST, this

number was well over 13,000; by 1:36 a.m. EST on November 3 it had

risen by less than 3 percent, to a final total of 13, 531

respondents—but with a corresponding swing of 5 percent from Kerry to

Bush in voters' reports of their choices. Given the increase in

respondents, a swing of this size is a mathematical impossibility.

 

The same pattern is evident in the exit polls of two key swing

states, Ohio and Florida.

 

At 7:32 p.m. EST, CNN was reporting the following exit poll data

for Ohio. Women voters (53 percent of the total) favoured Kerry over

Bush by 53 percent to 47 percent; male voters (47 percent of the

total) preferred Kerry over Bush by 51 percent to 49 percent. Kerry

was thus leading Bush by a little more than 4 percent. But by 1:41

a.m. EST on November 3, when the exit poll was last updated, a

dramatic shift had occurred: women voters had split 50-50 in their

preferences for Kerry and Bush, while men had swung to supporting Bush

over Kerry by 52 percent to 47 percent. The final exit polls showed

Bush leading in Ohio by 2.5 percent.

 

At 7:32 p.m., there were 1,963 respondents; at 1:41 a.m. on

November 3, there was a final total of 2,020 respondents. These

fifty-seven additional respondents must all have voted very powerfully

for Bush—for while representing only a 2.8 percent increase in the

number of respondents, they managed to produce a swing from Kerry to

Bush of fully 6.5 percent.

 

In Florida, the exit polls appear to have been tampered with in a

similar manner. At 8:40 p.m. EST, CNN was reporting exit polls that

showed Kerry and Bush in a near dead heat. Women voters (54 percent of

the total) preferred Kerry over Bush by 52 percent to 48 percent,

while men (46 percent of the total) preferred Bush over Kerry by 52

percent to 47 percent, with 1 percent of their votes going to Nader.

But the final update of the exit poll, made at 1:01 a.m. EST on

November 3, showed a different pattern: women voters now narrowly

preferred Bush over Kerry, by 50 percent to 49 percent, while the men

preferred Bush by 53 percent to 46 percent, with 1 percent of the vote

still going to Nader. These figures gave Bush a 4 percent lead over Kerry.

 

The number of exit poll respondents in Florida had risen only from

2,846 to 2,862. But once again, a powerful numerical magic was at

work. A mere sixteen respondents—0.55 percent of the total

number—produced a four percent swing to Bush.

 

What we are witnessing, the evidence would suggest, is a

late-night contribution by the National Elections Pool to the

rewriting of history.

 

It is possible that at some future moment questions about

electoral fraud in the 2004 presidential election might become

insistent enough to be embarrassing. The pundits, at that point, will

be able to point to the NEP's final exit poll figures in the decisive

swing states of Florida and Ohio—and to marvel at how closely they

reflect the NEP's vote tallies.

 

The Ohio Fifty-Seven (is there a Heinz-Kerry joke embedded in the

number?) and the Florida Sixteen will have done their bit in ensuring

the democratic legitimacy of the one-party imperial state.

 

 

 

Michael Keefer, an Associate Professor of English at the

University of Guelph, is a former president of the Association of

Canadian College and University Teachers of English. His writings

include Lunar Perspectives: Field Notes from the Culture Wars (Anansi)

and the edited collection War Against Iraq: Critical Resources

(http://www.uoguelph.ca/~mkeefer ).

 

Note

 

1. Among the warnings, see Bev Harris, Black Box Voting: Ballot

Tampering in the 21st Century (Talion Publishing/Black Box Voting;

free internet version available at www.BlackBoxVoting.org); Infernal

Press, " How George W. Bush Won the 2004 Presidential Election "

(Infernal Press, 25 June 2003); Steve Moore, " E-Democracy: Stealing

the Election in 2004 " (Global Outlook, No. 8, Summer 2004); and Greg

Palast, " An Election Spolied Rotten " (www.TomPaine.com, 1 November

2004). Early assessments of the election include Greg Palast, " Kerry

Won… Here are the Facts " (www.TomPaine.com, 4 November 2004); and

Wayne Madsen, " Grand Theft Election " (www.globalresearch.ca, 5

November 2004).

 

 

 

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