Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] [POLITICS] Was the 2004 Election Stolen?

["Vern Green" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

> Again, Vern, "got it wrong" means what?  What is the "it" in that
> statement?  If you mean that their prediction of the outcome was
> incorrect, of course that is true, but I read what you sent from their
> paper and it was hardly a definitive explanation.  In fact, I couldn't
> quite understand the point of it (e.g., what did the bit about Hispanic
> voters have to do with the outcome in Ohio?).  Maybe I should read the
> whole thing one of these days to see if I can figure it out.  I am not
> confident that you have the expertise to understand it.  I also don't
> trust your opinion because you seem unable to see evidence that
> contradicts your long-held view on this issue.
You should read it, it was way too long to post so I took some of the
excerpts from it where they explained how they made errors.

Look, as always Mike, you seem to lose site of where the discussion
began. This discussion began because the Kennedy's article claimed
that exit polling information is clear indicator of election fraud.
This might be true, but my argument was in this election that was not
the case. I then got the riot act read to me about how exit polling
works and how accurate it is and that the 2004 election was no
different than any other election including those that happen
overseas.

The point of posting the report is to attempt to show you that exit
polling is not the sacred horse it is claimed to be. That the company
that performed the exit polling on election admitted where they made
mistakes and how the apparent Kerry landslide turned around to a Bush
win.

I don't see how you can dismiss the companies OWN analysis as to how
they got it wrong. But in typical Mike fashion you pull it off
somehow.
> > So how about a little more information to debunk Kennedy's article. At
> > Salon.com there is an article by Farhad Majoo. Not exactly the bastion
> > of conservatism over there at Salon, but his article is pretty
> > interesting.
> >
> > http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/06/03/kennedy/
>
> Did you see any of the user comments?  They hate him.
So? What does that statement have anything to do with whether his
article is right or wrong? I am not particularly fond of Kennedy
either, does that make him entirely wrong in his analysis? I have to
admit he has some points, the problem with the article is his valid
points are diluted by those points where he got it wrong.
> > A couple of key things in the article that debunk Kennedy,
> >
> > "Scrubbing the voting rolls of people who hadn't voted in prior
> > elections isn't an arbitrary move. It's the law. Here's the relevant
> > section of the Ohio code, 3503.19, which states that a person who "fails
> > to vote in any election during the period of two federal elections"
> > shall have his registration "canceled." To be sure, people who intended
> > to vote and weren't aware of this rule could have been cut from the
> > rolls, and you might say that's unfair. But that's an argument for a
> > better election law, and not proof that the purges were part of a
> > Republican election-theft plot."
>
> That's an important point.  There are a lot of laws that work against
> people who relocate or are poor or, well, are Democrats.  Every law
> restricting voters righs or opportunity to vote are promoted by
> Republicans to reduce the number of Democrat voters.  I have never seen
> any legislation or proposed legislation that works in the opposite
> direction.  So there is a bias against Democrats (really against younger
> and poorer voters) in our voting system.
So has Farhad says, we should work at changing those laws correct? The
point here you so conveniently glossed over is that Kennedy claimed
that there was some kind of wrong doing with purging those records,
when the truth is that Blackwell would have actually been in violation
of the law had he NOT purged those records? Why didn't Kennedy report
that in his story? Because it would not have helped him make his point
that Blackwell was out to steal the election.


> I don't get his logic.  Those data are highly relevant to the question of
> whether fraud occurred.  They contradict the idea that Bush voters are
> less likely than Kerry voters to participate in the poll.  This is an
> extremely important issue -- key to understanding what happened.  How
> Majoo comes to dismiss it is beyond me.  What is he thinking?

Since apparently you did not read the whole article, and this is a
touchy subject for you, I will post the entire part of the article for
you:

'To begin with, Freeman and his team did not "find" the
survey-completion rates that Kennedy cites. Mitofsky released that
data in a public report. This data was not discovered "now" -- Freeman
and others have been touting it ever since Mitofsky put it out in
January 2005. You can see the data on page 37 of Mitofsky's report.
There, Mitofsky indeed shows that in precincts where Bush got 80
percent or more of the vote, an average of 56 percent of people who
were approached volunteered to take part in the poll, while in
precincts where Kerry got 80 percent or more of the vote, a lower
average of 53 percent of people were willing to be surveyed. But these
numbers don't reveal how Bush voters or Kerry voters behaved, they
only show how all voters, taken together in average, responded in
certain precincts. They are irrelevant to the question of whether
fraud occurred."

The point is here to counter the claim that Freeman somehow did some
research and came up with the completion rates, the truth is that
Mitofsky actually published the rates that Freeman is citing. the
article continues:

"As Mark Lindeman, a political scientist at Bard College, explained to
me, the numbers Kennedy cites fit the theory that Kerry voters were
more likely to respond to pollsters than Bush voters. For instance, in
the Bush strongholds -- where the average completion rate was 56
percent -- it's possible that only 53 percent of those who voted for
Bush were willing to be polled, while people who voted for Kerry
participated at a higher 59 percent rate. Meanwhile, in the Kerry
strongholds, where Mitofsky found a 53 percent average completion
rate, it's possible that Bush voters participated 50 percent of the
time, while Kerry voters were willing to be interviewed 56 percent of
the time. In this scenario, the averages work out to the same ones
Kennedy cited: a 56 percent average response rate in Bush strongholds,
and a 53 percent average response rate in Kerry strongholds. But in
both Bush strongholds and Kerry strongholds, Kerry voters would have
been responding at a higher rate, skewing the poll toward Kerry."

What's more, these numbers are not set in stone. That's because, as
Mitofsky has pointed out, it's not possible to measure the actual
completion rate by Kerry voters and by Bush voters. (When someone
refuses to talk to a pollster, it's not possible to say whether he was
a Bush voter or Kerry voter.) Mitofsky says that a hypothetical
completion rate of 50 percent for Bush voters and 56 percent for Kerry
voters would have led to the error we saw in the poll. In other words,
Kerry voters were very slightly more likely to talk to pollsters than
were Bush voters.

Ultimately, nothing in Kennedy's article, and nothing that the
research he cites, refutes Mitofsky's theory that there was a true
difference in the willingness of Kerry voters to participate in the
poll compared to that of Bush voters. Mitofsky noted a broad array of
methodological errors that could have contributed to this difference
in participation rate by Kerry and Bush voters. Such a difference
would not have been a surprise; Democrats have historically been
overrepresented in exit polls. There is no reason to think that the
error in 2004 was anything substantively different."

Make you own determination. As to what he was thinking.
> Well, he only had a few hours to come up with his spew, so I guess I can't
> expect him to make any sense.  His article will be widely noted because it
> was one of the first ones, not because it was any good.  He knows this and
> is working to promote himself.
Yeah, as usual just reject it out of hand. And you have the nerve to
call me close-minded.
> Instead of saying that Kennedy is "throwing things out there" I would say
> that he is reviewing the literature and findings on electoral fraud in the
> 2004 presidential election.  There's nothing wrong with that.  People
> should know about it.

He should also make a point to get it right. People should know the
truth about it, and omitting little things like it being against the
law not to purge those names. Why did Kennedy not include that if he
was really just trying to inform people?

Kennedy has a motive, a motive you apparently agree with considering
your stated emotional investment in this topic. There is no doubt that
Kennedy has a vested interest in seeing this pinned on the Republican
party as a whole, after all, bringing down the republican party is
what it is all about yes?



--
Thanks
F Vernon Green

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