Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Vote update (Update to the update)

(Blogger is acting up tonight, so no cartoons or photos of long lines.)

Oh my god...THEY KILLED KENNY! Ted Strickland, YOU WONDERFUL BASTARD!

Even so, I think the most disturbing note of the evening was sounded by the GOP, which warned readers not to pay attention to the exit polls. Why? Because -- they say -- the polls skew Democrat. And how do we know they skew Dem? Because they did not reflect the the "actual" vote in 2004!

Never mind the fact that exits are phenomenally accurate in Europe. Never mind that they showed no Democratic bias in the pre-computerized voting era.

As I write, in Virigina the exit polls have Webb ahead of Allen, 52-47 -- a five point difference. Yet Allen is ahead of Webb by half a percentage point with 85% of the precincts reporting.

It may be that a decision was made -- to keep the real vote fraud relegated to one key state. If Virginia stays red, and if Joe turns, the Republicans have the Senate.

UPDATE: I didn't mean to imply that there isn't vote fraud elsewhere. Here's a brief list (from Voters Unite) of states in which D-to-R vote flips have been noted:
AK: Jacksonville - ES&S iVotronic
AR: county not given - ES&S iVotronic
FL: Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, Sarasota - ES&S iVotronic, Sequoia Edge
IL: Cook (Chicago) - Sequoia Edge
KY: Calloway - Hart InterCivic eSlate
SC: Charleston - ES&S iVotronic
TX: Jefferson, Collin, El Paso, Williamson, - ES&S iVotronic, Diebold TSx

ALL reported incidents favor Republican candidates at the expense of Democrats.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree, Joe. It comes down to control of the Senate, by any means necessary.
For this reason, we could see key republican "victories" in Virginia, Missouri, and Tennessee. To hell with exit polls...unless overwhelming democratic voter turnout makes these "wins" impossible. I can't bring myself to give up hope yet.

Kim in PA

Anonymous said...

Wow, the exit polls are wrong again. BTW, overwhelming Dem turnout will not help if the machines are using an algorithm to adjust the vote totals.

Anonymous said...

I was monitoring http://sbe.virginiainteractive.org/index.htm and from around 90% of precincts to 91% of precincts counted, Allen's lead went from under 3000 to over 25000. That single sudden leap looks like it will be enough to get him over the line. Given 1% of the votes cast will be not much more than 20,000 votes .... wellllll ... curious.

Joseph Cannon said...

More curious than you know. The remaining counties in VA were blue, according to CNN.

Anonymous said...

some folk on dkos pointed out around the same time a very heavily republican district (virginia beach? something like that) was only at 33.3% coutned, so could have been there. who knows. still very odd.

IBOFB said...

DCC reports 13 pickups now. Looks like the house will be taken.

Anonymous said...

Yes, unrealist. Algorithms could be designed to commit any percentage of votes to either party. However, the goal is to win without the "appearance" of cheating. A 5% or less win margin makes this look like child's play as we learned in 2000 and 2004. But an overwhelming win makes cheating much harder to try without risking a massive investigation of the cheaters - or complete anarchy.

for example...voter turnout here in PA was well above even the most optimistic predictions. The result?

Bob Casey - 60%
Rick Santorum - 40%
No recount needed. No charade of a recount even possible. Slam dunk.

Still waiting on Virginia, Missouri and Tennessee, though.
Kim in PA

Anonymous said...

Yah, I sent that GOP comment warning not to pay attention to the "skewed" exit polls to one of the guys at my company. That guy happens to be the guy replacing Mitofsky himself. I only have the best things to say about him, I'm feeling easy about the exits. And if something happens...I hope I get to find out what. I'm glad they are posting them even if they differ from the "actuals" so far.

In 2004 I was told there was a major disconnect between the exits and the "actual" votes in several states. My guy was helping to make the calls (our company doesn't want to do them although we have many of the best in the business who are called upon to help). They were told to go with the "actuals" because they couldn't find the problem with the exits. The natural assumption was that the exits were wrong - how could the actuals be wrong. They quit early evening. I always assumed it was those very actuals that ended up flipping late in the evening. They would have no way of knowing for sure. But his request the next day was to send him "anything and everything on the subject no matter what" about on-the-ground experiences, research, etc., which we did and which he's never left off of since then. So I know he was never convinced it was the exits. This time, he'll know.

Miss P.

Anonymous said...

I think I said that a little wrong. There was a disconnect in some certain states - but I don't know if those same states went even more disconnected later on and other one's flipped later - but either way, problems were so obvious they had to go one way or the other.

I may have the guts to ask specifics this time. Hoping I won't need to.

Miss P.

Anonymous said...

Joseph,
I would not mention what I am going to say on any other blog than yours and I am not sure what I heard.
I live in TX in Tom Delay's old neigborhood and pretty close to Sugar Land Airport (you won't find it on any regularley schedualed commercial flights, because it is a private airport for private planes).
It was 11:16 pm (I know because I looked at the clock) and I heard this noise which sounded like a major storm just let it rip, but it was a plane. A big plane. Bigger than the planes that usually land and take off out of Sugar Land Airport. It sounded like a jet or a military plane. I have never heard that kind of noise ever (I have lived here for a long time).
Make of it what you want, put it on the back burner, but something very unusual just happened in Sugar land.