Fingerprints of Election Theft 2006 – Removing Exit Poll Bias from the Equation

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Tue Jan-15-08 08:05 PM
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Fingerprints of Election Theft 2006 – Removing Exit Poll Bias from the Equation

Though election fraud has undoubtedly played a part in every national election since the founding of our country, it has probably never posed as much threat to our democracy in the past as it does today. I say that because of the enormous potential for massive election fraud posed by the computerization of our elections (using secret software code) and because of the evidence indicating that it was used in 2000 and 2004 to install and maintain in office the most disastrous Presidential administration in our nation’s history, and in 2002 and 2006 to help Republicans win seats in Congress.

Independent investigations by qualified security experts have shown electronic computerized voting to be wide open to systematic insider manipulation (See here, here and here). This fact has been acknowledged in the mainstream American press, and even in government reports. Yet those who suggest that purposeful manipulation and election theft may have occurred in at least some recent elections are ignored or ridiculed by our corporate news media.

In this post I’ll discuss a recent report by the Election Defense Alliance of an analysis of the 2006 mid-term U.S. House of Representative elections, which I co-authored with Jonathon Simon, Bruce O’Dell, and Josh Mitteldorf. This analysis goes beyond previous analyses of suspected election fraud in 2002, 2004, and 2006, by taking a hard look at the possibility of exit poll bias (sometimes referred to as “sampling bias”) and finding very strong evidence against that possibility. To put that analysis in context I first need to briefly summarize the pre-existing evidence of election fraud mediated by electronic voting machines in 2004 and 2006. But keep in mind that this is merely a brief summary. There is much more evidence for election fraud in recent elections than what I discuss in this post – such as what I’ve discussed here and here and here.

A BRIEF SUMMARY OF EVIDENCE FOR ELECTRONIC ELECTION FRAUD IN 2004 AND 2006Exit poll discrepancy in the 2004 Presidential election

The best known case of strongly suspected election theft was the 2004 presidential election, where exit polls showed a nation-wide victory margin of 2.6% for the Kerry/Edwards ticket, and yet the “official” vote count showed a nation-wide victory margin of 2.8% for George Bush – a discrepancy between the official vote count and the exit polls of 5.4%, which was the largest exit poll discrepancy (pollsters refer to this as a “red shift”) in a U.S. presidential election ever demonstrated. An even larger red shift was demonstrated in 2004 in Ohio, which gave the electoral victory to the Bush/Cheney ticket. The national exit poll discrepancy was so large that it had a statistical likelihood of occurring by chance of approximately one in a million.

Our corporate news media responded to this mostly by ignoring it. When they did respond they claimed simply that the red shift was explained by exit poll bias. In other words, the argument was that Bush voters must have been under-represented in the exit polls. Perhaps Bush voters just didn’t care to participate in the exit polls as much as the Kerry/Edwards voters.

Shortly after the U.S. presidential election, a similar episode occurred with the Ukrainian presidential election, which showed the Russian favored candidate winning the official vote count but the U.S. favored candidate winning the exit polls. A big deal was made out of this by the U.S. press and the Bush administration, and consequently the election results were overturned, and the Bush administration’s candidate, Victor Yushchenko, was installed as President. Yet with all its hand wringing over the exit poll discrepancy in the Ukraine, the U.S. corporate news media refused to consider the possibility that the U.S. presidential election was similarly stolen.

Exit poll discrepancy in the 2006 Congressional elections

Something very similar occurred in the 2006 Congressional elections. The official nation-wide result for House races on Election Day 2006 showed a Democratic margin over their Republican opponents of 7.6%. Comparing that to a nationwide exit poll democratic margin of 11.5%, the difference between the official count and the results predicted by the exit polls was nearly 4%, just a little bit less than the red shift of 5.4% in the 2004 Presidential election.

The 4% red shift in the 2006 mid-terms – if that represents election fraud – was not nearly enough for Republicans to maintain control of either the House or the Senate. But in 2004, it would have been enough to throw the 2004 Presidential election to George Bush – in the nation-wide popular vote, as well as in Ohio, where Bush “won” his electoral vote victory. As described by Jonathon Simon in “Landslide Denied”, the 2006 exit poll discrepancy was far beyond the margin of statistical error. And, it is also important to note that the calculated red shift when comparing official 2006 House results with exit polls is almost identical to the calculated red shift when comparing official House results with pre-election polls.

If the red shift demonstrated in the 2006 mid-terms was due to election fraud, that fraud was obviously not enough to prevent the Democrats from taking control of both the Senate and the House. But it certainly was enough to deny the Democrats a large number of additional House seats that would have constituted a landslide of much greater proportions than what the official election results indicated. Yet this was met with even more silence from our corporate news media than was the case in 2004. Presumably this was just another case of exit poll bias, where Democrats were more likely than Republicans to participate in exit polls.

Now let’s take a look at the recent Election Defense Alliance study:

FINGERPRINTS OF ELECTION THEFT: WERE COMPETITIVE CONTESTS TARGETED?

There is only one explanation other than election fraud that can possibly explain the huge red shifts found in both the 2004 U.S. Presidential election and the 2006 U.S. House elections. That potential explanation is exit poll bias, as described above. After the Election Defense Alliance published “Landslide Denied” and once again was completely ignored by the U.S. corporate news media, they decided to attempt to put the issue of exit poll bias to rest by further analyzing the results of the 2006 exit polls, this time with primary emphasis on attempting to rule out the possibility of exit poll bias.

Designing an analysis to rule out exit poll bias

The concept was pretty simple. If exit poll bias explains why Democrats have much better results with exit polls than they do with official election results, that means that Republican voters are less likely to participate in exit polls than are Democrats.

So, to eliminate exit poll bias, the following study design was chosen: First, several counties were chosen where pre-election polls demonstrated at least one “major contest” to be “competitive” (meaning within 10 percentage points) and at least one major contest to be “non-competitive” (meaning a difference of 10 percentage points or greater). A “major contest” was considered to be the elections for U.S. House, U.S. Senate, and Governor. So, counties where at least one of those races was “competitive” and at least one was “non-competitive” were chosen for this analysis.

If the previously demonstrated red shift was due to election fraud, it makes sense that election fraud would have been more likely to occur in “competitive” races. Why commit a federal crime for an election that isn’t even competitive? So, this study was designed to compare competitive races versus non-competitive races in the same counties. If the red shifts are greater in competitive than in non-competitive races, that would be additional and sound evidence of election fraud.

So, why would this study design eliminate exit poll bias? That’s very simple: If the study demonstrates larger red shifts in competitive than in non-competitive races, that could not possibly be explained by exit poll bias. Why not? Because the exact same voters are statistically evaluated for each of the comparisons between the competitive and the non-competitive races. Nobody can explain those results away by theorizing that Democrats are more likely to participate in the exit polls than Republicans because the exact same voters are analyzed for each comparison. In other words, even if it was true that Democrats are more likely to participate in the exit polls than Republicans, that still wouldn’t explain why competitive races demonstrate a larger red shift than non-competitive races.

Study results

As we expected, the results showed much larger red shifts in the competitive races than in the non-competitive races. In the competitive races the average red shift was 3.6%, whereas in the non-competitive races the average shift was 1.7%, but it was actually in the other direction (we call that a “blue shift”). Thus, the difference in red shift between competitive and non-competitive races was 5.3%.

The results were analyzed statistically using three different statistical tests: linear regression; Student paired t-test; and, Student non-paired t-test. In each case the differences between the competitive and the non-competitive races were highly statistically significant – virtually ruling out the possibility that the results could have occurred by chance.

The analysis was actually somewhat more complicated than what I’ve described here, as I’ve simplified the issues a little bit to make this post easier to read. If you’re interested in more details you can read them here.

Here is a chart that lists the results by County:

Election Defense Alliance discussion of the meaning of the results

Here are excerpts from the report that discuss the meaning of these results:

We have already discussed the evidence for an aggregate mistabulation of votes in 2006 of a magnitude sufficient to alter the outcome of dozens of federal and statewide elections. The aggregate evidence is based on the quasi-official exit polls conducted by Edison Research and Mitofsky International (‘Edison/Mitofsky’) for the media consortium known as the National Election Pool (‘NEP’).

Yet whenever a direct comparison between poll results and official vote counts is made and a discrepancy is noted, it is, inexplicably, always the polls (in other words, “exit poll bias”) that the media chorus hastens to discount and dismiss. Demonstrating the lax standards of computer security and the inadequate procedural safeguards universally applied to our electronic voting systems seems to make no impression. The present study was undertaken because we anticipated – correctly, as it turned out – that direct poll-vote comparisons, if they appeared to indicate outcome-determinative mistabulation, would likely face hasty dismissal, predictably on the grounds of sample bias (in other words, exit poll bias). We therefore sought a methodology that would serve to eliminate any effect of sampling bias from the equation.

Conclusions of the Election Defense Alliance

And here are excerpts from the conclusions:

The result shines a powerful triple beam into the dark corner of secret electronic vote-counting in American elections. First, it detects a clear pattern indicating a wholesale shift in tallied votes. This is consistent with our study of aggregate vote shifting presented in Landslide Denied. Second, it identifies the overall direction of the shift: in favor of Republican candidates, once again corroborating our aggregate findings in Landslide Denied. Third, it confirms the common-sense notion that any group with the will and ability to secretly manipulate vote tabulation would likely focus their efforts on changing the outcomes of close contests, where the power of electronic vote-shifting would be maximized through selective targeting, while at the same time minimizing the size of the aggregate shift – and the corresponding risk of discovery.

We restate here the concluding sentences of Landslide Denied, as these latest findings only serve to increase the urgency of our warning:

‘The vulnerability is manifest; the stakes are enormous; the incentive is obvious; the evidence is strong and persistent. Any system so clearly at risk of interference and gross manipulation cannot and must not be trusted to tally the votes in any future elections.’