The rigged vote: A look back

As Brad reminds us, the Online Review of Books and Current Affairs offers its list of ten stories ignored by the mainstream news media. Topping the list is the rigged election of 2004:

1. The Rigged Presidential Election of 2004: Brought to you by Diebold and the Republican Party, the rigged presidential election of 2004 was the crowning achievement of George W. Bush. Naturally, the MNM have continued to repeat the lie that Bush won the election "fair and square," even though there are thousands of pages of documentation on how the election was stolen.

Not to brag, but the OR was one of the first-- if not the first online publication-- to question the validity of the 2004 election. Our story received tens of thousands of page views, was picked up by dozens of online publications, and it sparked enormous controversy and discussion throughout the blogosphere.

Forgive me if I indulge in a bit of Peter Pan-esque cock-a-doodle-doo-ing. I wrote a longish piece on vote fraud the day after the election (the first version appearing before Kerry conceded), a piece which preceded nearly all others. Fools go where angels fear to tread. That post doesn't seem so bad when re-read from our current vantage point:

Remember when networks used to trumpet the accuracy of exit polling? Last night, on-air talking heads (especially on CNN) loudly derided these same exit polls as untrustworthy. Perhaps polling methodology has become sloppy. Perhaps respondents have learned to enjoy fibbing to pollsters.

Or perhaps something in our current vote-tabulation system is fishier than an all-you-can-eat sushi bar.

And:

Question 1: Even if we grant the potential inaccuracy of exit polls, how likely is it that in all three cases the inaccuracy would show a "false positive" working toward the Democratic advantage? Why doesn't the disparity ever work in the other direction?

Question 2: Why did problems afflict exit polling in three swing states that have widespread computerized voting with no paper trails?

Yes, there were mistakes and false trails in those early pieces. Errors of that sort are inevitable, and I hope I have corrected them, or have allowed readers to correct them, as the controversy continued. Even so, years later, we still have good reason to ask why exit poll discrepancies always work to the Republican advantage.

Believe it or not, the official explanation for that discrepancy comes down to a variant of "Perhaps respondents have learned to enjoy fibbing to pollsters."

The original Online Review piece by J.F. Miglio is here. It (ahem!) came out after mine, and it indulged in some typical Democratic bash-our-own-team rhetoric. You know the drill: When Republicans lose, they blame the opposition; when Dems lose, they blame themselves. Even so, this point still stands:

Why did Kerry and the Democrats stand around with their dicks in their hands when these Republican-owned companies were selling their paperless, easily hacked, computerized voting machines to state governments across the country?

We shouldn't have been so damn trusting. We shouldn't have allowed ourselves to think: "Oh, they really wouldn't do that, now, would they?"