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Warning: Political Stuff Ahead
First, let me start by saying that I am NOT one of these people who sees conspiracies in every anomaly. And before you dismiss me as a "yellow dog Democrat," I have never been affiliated with any political party. I evaluate each candidate at each election, regardless of his/her party affiliations. As a result, I have voted for Repulican, Democratic, and independent candidates, in accordance with my assessment of each one.
But I keep finding things that just don't add up for this election.
And this just makes my skin crawl.
I make no secret of the fact that I don't like Bush, and never have. I was less than thrilled with the reported outcome of this election. However, part of the implied contract of living in a democracy is that you accept and abide by the majority rule, even when you're not in the majority, and I was willing to "lick my wounds" and go on, and hope for (and work towards) more palatable results the next time around.
But the more I think about it, the less comfortable I am with the information that's been surfacing.
The exit polls predicted a landslide Democratic victory. Yay, Democrats.
The actually tallied votes resulted in a slim-but-significant victory for the Republicans. Yay, Republicans.
Since then, pollsters and statisticians have been scrambling like mad to explain how the polls could have been off by such a huge margin. There have been a vast array of theories, none of them very satisfying.
Based on what I've seen/heard, I can see five possibilities to explain the discrepancy between the polls (Kerry winning by a landslide) and the results (Bush winning by a narrow but definite margin).
I think one of the biggest warning flags for me is that in areas where the optical scanning machines were NOT used, the results were pretty much exactly as predicted. The only districts that showed significant deviation from the norm were those districts where the machines were in use, and where there is no paper-trail to double-check the results. So far, I have not heard a single theory to explain how that could be the case and still have everything be legitimate. Why would so many voters go against both the predictions and the exit polls only in those districts?
What scares me spitless is that this could very well destroy public confidence in the electoral process as a whole. One thing that we've always been able to count on in this country is the knowledge that if we don't like someone in office, we can always vote them out the next time around -- 6 years at most. If people start getting the idea that they no longer have that safety valve, I *really* don't like the thought of what might happen as a result.
I sincerely hope that these allegations will be investigated and correctly proven groundless, and proven to the satisfaction of the general populace. If they are not groundless, then IMO there is not a circle of Hell into which the perpetrator(s) can be cast that would match the depths of their crime.
Sorry for the rant, I'll get off my soapbox now.
First, let me start by saying that I am NOT one of these people who sees conspiracies in every anomaly. And before you dismiss me as a "yellow dog Democrat," I have never been affiliated with any political party. I evaluate each candidate at each election, regardless of his/her party affiliations. As a result, I have voted for Repulican, Democratic, and independent candidates, in accordance with my assessment of each one.
But I keep finding things that just don't add up for this election.
And this just makes my skin crawl.
I make no secret of the fact that I don't like Bush, and never have. I was less than thrilled with the reported outcome of this election. However, part of the implied contract of living in a democracy is that you accept and abide by the majority rule, even when you're not in the majority, and I was willing to "lick my wounds" and go on, and hope for (and work towards) more palatable results the next time around.
But the more I think about it, the less comfortable I am with the information that's been surfacing.
The exit polls predicted a landslide Democratic victory. Yay, Democrats.
The actually tallied votes resulted in a slim-but-significant victory for the Republicans. Yay, Republicans.
Since then, pollsters and statisticians have been scrambling like mad to explain how the polls could have been off by such a huge margin. There have been a vast array of theories, none of them very satisfying.
Based on what I've seen/heard, I can see five possibilities to explain the discrepancy between the polls (Kerry winning by a landslide) and the results (Bush winning by a narrow but definite margin).
- There was a vast conspiracy among voters across the polled districts to deliberately mislead the pollsters. Probability of this happening without it becoming public knowledge a long time ago: Microscopic.
- The polls themselves were conducted -- either deliberately or through incompetence among the pollsters -- in such a way as that the results gained were invalid. Definitely possible, although again it would either require someone deliberately composing the surveys in such a way as to render false results without being noticed, or coordination among the majority of the pollsters, again with no one letting it slip. Probability: Very low, either way.
- The vote-recording machines at the various polling places were tampered with. While this is a non-zero probability, the sheer number of machines that would have to be hacked renders it unfeasible from a practical standpoint. Probability: Microscopic.
- The laws of statistics have somehow been suspended, bent, or broken in this instance. I'm actually taking a Stats class this semester, and one of the things that we have shown repeatedly is that the higher the number of samples you take, and the greater the size of each sample, the closer you come to the true parameter of the overall population. IF the polls were conducted properly (sufficient # of samples, and sufficient size per sample) then it should be statistically impossible for the results to have been off by such a huge margin. Probability: approaches 0.
- The tallying process was somehow hacked further "up the line" -- i.e. at a more central tallying-point than at the individual polling places. That seems to be the position put forth here. It took ~90 seconds, and that was with the person taking the time to explain what they were doing as they went along. Unfortunately, this one has the highest probability, although not one that I am qualified to compute.
I think one of the biggest warning flags for me is that in areas where the optical scanning machines were NOT used, the results were pretty much exactly as predicted. The only districts that showed significant deviation from the norm were those districts where the machines were in use, and where there is no paper-trail to double-check the results. So far, I have not heard a single theory to explain how that could be the case and still have everything be legitimate. Why would so many voters go against both the predictions and the exit polls only in those districts?
What scares me spitless is that this could very well destroy public confidence in the electoral process as a whole. One thing that we've always been able to count on in this country is the knowledge that if we don't like someone in office, we can always vote them out the next time around -- 6 years at most. If people start getting the idea that they no longer have that safety valve, I *really* don't like the thought of what might happen as a result.
I sincerely hope that these allegations will be investigated and correctly proven groundless, and proven to the satisfaction of the general populace. If they are not groundless, then IMO there is not a circle of Hell into which the perpetrator(s) can be cast that would match the depths of their crime.
Sorry for the rant, I'll get off my soapbox now.
