Exit polls only started being wrong by

[rainy]

Such wide margins when we started using paperless voting machines. There's a reason.

[Bonhomme Richard]

1. +1....n/t

[Old Union Guy]

2. They started being wrong when certain people started systematically lying to pollsters.

Sorry.

I do not share your touching faith in the accuracy of exit polls.

[Bjorn Against]

5. Do you have evidence of a systematic campaign to lie to pollsters?

I have not heard of such a campaign, but if you claim that it is "systematic" that would imply a very large scale campaign. Surely there must at the very least be a web site to organize such a campaign on a mass scale, do you have a link? When did this campaign begin? Considering that exit polls used to match up very accurately with the election results I would assume this campaign must have started fairly recently, who organized it?

[Old and In the Way]

10. Of course it would make sense.

If you were asked who you voted for in an exit poll, wouldn't you lie and say the opposite of who you really voted for? Because you'd want to help boost the opposition. /sarcasm

No, rainy is correct. exit polling has always been a tightly correlated predictor of actual results...until the advent of computerized voting machines. Oh well, democracy was always inconvenient. Republicans own the voting machines and they've got the money to make sure they get the politicians they want in Congress.

[hrmjustin]

30. It happenes in the uk too. People sometimes will lie to exit pollsters.

They were not made to forecast election results but to give reasons why they votes how they did.

[applegrove]

12. On average, conservatives respond less to exit polls. So it bumps up democrats. And if said polls

are released during the election itself, as they were when kerry ran in 2004, it galvanizes republicans to get out and vote and makes democrats lackadaisical. Faulty exit polls have followed Rove. Not machines.

[Cal33]

35. Yeah! And after 2 centuries of voting, the big difference began to show up EXACTLY when

electronic voting machines started to come into use. What a coincidence!! You do
believe in coincidences of this nature, don't you?

[Bjorn Against]

3. It is not just paperless voting machines...

Wisconsin uses paper ballots, but a paper trail only means something if the vote counts are audited. There are usually not any audits of the vote count, they just take the totals the machine gives them and don't bother to double check the machine's accuracy.

[crazylikafox]

34. +1

[tridim]

4. How dare you question the integrity of the glorious American voting system.

It's just so unamerican. Probably satanic too.

[Denninmi]

6. I know we have 2 camps here at D.U.

Those who feel that there is systemic and organized vote fraud by R's to steal elections, and those who think our losses are due to other factors.

I don't think there is concrete evidence of vote fraud, but there is certainly a great deal of circumstantial evidence that gives the appearance of impropriety.

And yes, I agree, in particular, something is very wrong with the discrepancy between exit polling data and election results. Election after election now, Gore v. Bush, Kerry V. Bush, this one, we keep seeing exit polling data that indicates the D is at least within striking distance, and then the vote count goes the other way.

[HooptieWagon]

7. Sorry... a 57% turnout was not going to win for the Dems.

No matter how the ballots are counted. And 38% of union members voting for Walker means the Dems message didnt even resonate with our own, let alone swing voters.

[rainy]

8. So conveniently as soon as we get

Un tracible machines, Milwaukee does use the machines in many places, people all of a sudden start lying? That makes no since. How is it that other countries don't have this problem?

[Drunken Irishman]

9. Not true...

Exit polls have been wrong in the past. They were wrong in early Republican primaries in '92, over-inflating Buchanan's support against H.W. Bush. Bush consistently over performed the exit polls because they found Buchanan supporters were more willing to actually take the exit survey.

In '76, based on a mix of raw vote and exit poll data, ABC called Illinois for Carter, even though he would eventually lose the state. So, it has happened. I think people get caught up in this idea that exit polls are an exact science. They're not. They're only as effective as the people who answer and there has been a growing, and deliberate, attempt to lie in exit polling data to confuse the media. Why they like doing this, I can't say, but that has led to far more problems with exit polling data than supposed fraud.

Moreover, from 1972-2000, we had all of one really competitive election - 1976. Every other election was a blowout in the electoral college. 1972 was a blowout for Nixon, 1980 was a blowout for Reagan, 1984 was a blowout for Reagan, 1988 was a blowout for Bush and 1992 & 1996 a blowout for Clinton. The exit polling data therefore would be far less likely to be wrong considering the national trend. It's why, in '08, exit polling pointed to wins for Obama in Ohio, Florida, Virginia and Indiana, even if, at the time, the raw vote favored McCain early.

[ladjf]

11. Yes, speaking as a professional computer programmer, I agree with you. Hacking the vote machines is

child's play as well as covering it up. nt

[GarroHorus]

14. If hacking the vote machines is 'child's play'...

why haven't you hacked the vote machines for Dem wins?

[gkhouston]

15. You imagine it can't be done?

This week undergraduate and graduate students in an advanced computer security course at Rice University in Houston are learning hands-on just how easy it is to wreak havoc on computer software used in today’s voting machines.

http://www.rice.edu/nationalmedia/news2008-10-09-hackavote.shtml

[GarroHorus]

16. That's no different than the asshole who tried to register as a dead guy while filming it.

Because there is a slight chance of somehting happening does not mean it is a widespread means to fraud.

You present the same bullshit line the Republicans present when they scream "VOTER FRAUD!"

It's nonsense when Republicans do it and it's nonsense when Democrats do it.

[gkhouston]

17. False equivalence, but thanks for playing. n/t

[GarroHorus]

18. I knew you'd play that card.

It's not a false equivalence when the two are equivalent. It's only a false equivalence when the two are not equivalent.

Screaming about dead and undocumented alien voter fraud is equivalent to screaming about black box voting. There's no evidence to support either and both are batshit crazy.

It's like the idiocy of truthers and birthers. Truthers are overwhelmingly left leaning and birthers are overwhelmingly right leaning. Both are batshit crazy.

[hrmjustin]

31. I undertsand how you feel, but walker won and we need to accept that...

...he won because the people voted for him as sickening as it is. We need to fix our mistakes and fight the next battle.

[ladjf]

19. A. I'm not a crook and B. No one has asked me. nt

[GarroHorus]

20. C. You just showed that it is not 'child's play'. n/t

[ladjf]

21. My credentials are over 30 years computer programming and data analysis. What are yours?

[GarroHorus]

22. Over 30 years of managing IT in all towers.

Here's a clue for you, James O'Keefe thought it was "child's play" to steal a dead person's identity, register to vote and vote with that identity. He captured it all on camera, too.

He faces arrest if he enters New Hampshire.

Just because something can be done does not mean it is "child's play" when that something is illegal.

It may be "child's play" to hack into a company's customer database and steal credit card numbers. People go to prison for it, so it is anything but "child's play".

[ladjf]

23. If you had read my post, my first statement was that I was not a

crook.

My point was that technologically, it is not difficult to alter the results on a simple device such as a vote counter. If you have 30 years of experience in IT , you would certainly know that.

I have no idea why you chose to characterize my opinions as being
"bat shit crazy". Any computer can be hacked.

[GarroHorus]

24. Your first statement was the statement that proved it is not 'child's play'

Technologically, it was not difficult for James O'Keefe to impersonate a dead guy to vote. In reality, he did not get away with it. The fact that it is easy to get caught attempting that is why this sort of voter fraud is not widespread.

Hacking a close election would not be 'child's play', but it is far more doable than attempting to hack an election that is not even close. There are simply too many moving parts to accomplish such a thing on such a widespread scale. This is why what Kathy Nickolaus did in a close supreme court election made a difference but there would be no attempt at all to alter an statewide election with even a 1% difference between the two candidates.

Trying to push an agenda that would say Tuesday's election stands any reasonable chance of having been hacked is batshit loony.

[TBF]

26. "Batshit Loony" is joining a new website,

aggressively racking up hundreds of posts in a week, attacking long-term members and thinking no one notices.

FYI, the past two days on the Internet (not just this site) there have been 2 orchestrated campaigns going on in my view - (1) to claim the election wasn't fraudulent and (2) claiming that democrats don't like/need unions. Think about who that benefits and we have our answer as to who is batshit loony.

And it's not the long-term members of DU.

[cyberswede]

27. +1000

[ladjf]

32. Thank you. I presumed your point to be the case. However, when I

was on the DU2 they would kick you out permanently if you accused someone of being a "shill" for the Republicans. But, it's OK to tell someone that they are "batshit crazy" if you wished to go on the personal attack.

I appreciate your candor.

[gkhouston]

13. I'd say it goes back to a time when election equipment could be accessed via the 'net. n/t

[polichick]

25. Don't ya love how the U.S. uses exit polling for other "less democratic" countries...

...but here it's not reliable?

U.S. "leaders" = GIANT HYPOCRITES

[CreekDog]

28. A lot of us vote by mail

and there does seem to be a slight difference.

[hrmjustin]

29. Exit polls are not always accurate. Look at the internal numbers.

Internals are what the exit polls are for. They were never designed to be used as projection tools.

[GoCubsGo]

33. I cringe when I see or hear "The exit polls were wrong."

Good to see that some of us understand that it's not the exit polls that are the problem.