Something lost in all of the election coverage has been the fact that all of the exit polls were VERY wrong throughout the night -- 2-4%, which is quite significant given the eventual margins of victory in most key states. There are a couple of possibilities:
1) The mathematical models used to match exit polling results to final returns are broken. If so, then why has this election been so different from past elections?
2) There was a deliberate strategy executed to game exit pollsters to influence the election. That would be an interesting theory, but not very likely -- how would you communicate that strategy to the large number of people required to execute it without compromising the secrecy that would be needed?
3) There was some systematic failure in translating the intent of voters to the actual balloting. As seen in the 2000 recount, looking over those ballots revealed many which were physically flawed in some way and might have been miscounted by machine, but which evidenced intent. (aka "hanging chads") There were also stories from 2000 about voter intimidation and fraud.
So, all of this leads to a much larger question: How come no one ever audits our election results and processes? We seem to hold the contradictory views that allegedly "every vote matters," yet knowingly allow a flawed voting system without any oversight or consistency.
Where is the analysis of the new voting methods used in this election? In particular, electronic voting has known insecurities, and VERY few places provided a paper copy of the transaction to the voter. Yet, strangely, no one has even THOUGHT about whether the system was used successfully or whether all of those votes were valid. Doesn't that bother anyone?
There were also various locations which moved away from punchcard voting to other methods, and I haven't heard a word about whether the new systems were any more or less error-prone. There were also the new additions of provisional balloting and the highly controversial "challengers" in certain areas. Again, who is looking at these issues?
1) The mathematical models used to match exit polling results to final returns are broken. If so, then why has this election been so different from past elections?
2) There was a deliberate strategy executed to game exit pollsters to influence the election. That would be an interesting theory, but not very likely -- how would you communicate that strategy to the large number of people required to execute it without compromising the secrecy that would be needed?
3) There was some systematic failure in translating the intent of voters to the actual balloting. As seen in the 2000 recount, looking over those ballots revealed many which were physically flawed in some way and might have been miscounted by machine, but which evidenced intent. (aka "hanging chads") There were also stories from 2000 about voter intimidation and fraud.
So, all of this leads to a much larger question: How come no one ever audits our election results and processes? We seem to hold the contradictory views that allegedly "every vote matters," yet knowingly allow a flawed voting system without any oversight or consistency.
Where is the analysis of the new voting methods used in this election? In particular, electronic voting has known insecurities, and VERY few places provided a paper copy of the transaction to the voter. Yet, strangely, no one has even THOUGHT about whether the system was used successfully or whether all of those votes were valid. Doesn't that bother anyone?
There were also various locations which moved away from punchcard voting to other methods, and I haven't heard a word about whether the new systems were any more or less error-prone. There were also the new additions of provisional balloting and the highly controversial "challengers" in certain areas. Again, who is looking at these issues?
