Rolling Stone gets a lesson in how to vote
Posted by Moonage on 02 Jun 2006 | Tagged as: Conspiracy Theories
Oh boy, yet another aging conspiracy theory gets new legs:
Like many Americans, I spent the evening of the 2004 election watching the returns on television and wondering how the exit polls, which predicted an overwhelming victory for John Kerry, had gotten it so wrong. By midnight, the official tallies showed a decisive lead for George Bush — and the next day, lacking enough legal evidence to contest the results, Kerry conceded.
Of course, it’s got it’s supporters:
You can bet your Blackwell the 2004 election was stolen by the Republican Party right from under the nose of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, who, election scholars who studied massive irregularities in the election say, would have won the election if not for massive fraud committed by the GOP in Florida, Ohio, New Mexico and elsewhere, according to a report in Rolling Stone magazine.
This is the way these things always go, someone says something, then a bunch of people cite them as fact. And of course, they have to ignore the big picture in order to make it all work. I’m just going to skim the top of the issues I have with this "expose".
First of all, the exits polls did NOT predict an overwhelming victory for Kerry. SOME exit polls predicted an overwhelming victory for Kerry. SOME exit polls predicted an overwhelming victory for Bush ( AOL even had one showing Bush winning every single state in the union. ). MOST exit polls predicted it would be close in SOME states. Want an unbiased explanation of what happened MATHEMATICALLY? Look HERE. They come to a rather simple conclusion that I have believed for a LONG time: "The most likely answer is that the numbers were not coming from random samples of the voting population". Well, DUH! Ya think CBS, ABC, CNN, Slate, et al are Bush fans? Yeah, right. Ya think Dan Rather was going to allow a poll showing Bush winning on HIS news? Yeah, right. If you don’t follow that link up there to the University of Minnesota, a BLUE state, don’t go any farther, it doesn’t get any clearer than what they did there. The basic premise that Kerry SHOULD have won and did not, being flawed, undermines the entire argument of The Rolling Stone’s argument. By relying ONLY on those exit polls that showed Kerry winning, they expose their bias from the get-go.
Rolling Stone’s primary premise is that the Republicans stole the election primarily by re-aligning districts thereby making it difficult for people to vote in their precincts. This is total garbage that only illustrates how totally out of touch Rolling Stone is with reality and the fact this is nothing but a Bush hit piece. It is not up to any party to decide HOW people vote. Period. It is up to each COUNTY. If a COUNTY is 80% Democrat, you can bet your bottom dollar the voting machines and locations will be decided by DEMOCRATS. It’s a very simple thing to know. Call your local county clerk and ask. Rolling Stone chooses to ignore it entirely. Because, if they did, their entire story would have no legs at all. And, it doesn’t.
The bottom line is the same as the bottom line has always been. All politics is local. It’s not who SAYS they’re going to vote for you, it’s who VOTES. The Republicans better organized themselves on the local level and made sure their people voted. The Kerry campaign on the other hand, ( read the headlines of the day, it’s not hard ), was disorganized and suffering from a lot of infighting by election eve. In addition, Kerry stuck to one theme only, how patriotic he was, that didn’t hold enough water to get his people excited on a local level. As such, when presented with ANY inconvenience at all, they just didn’t bother to vote.
My personal bottom line is that polls are meaningless. Always have been, always will be until they use modern technology to take samples large enough to get a true picture. With today’s technology, exit polls should be obsolete. So why cite them at all? It is WAY too easy to manipulate polls. For example, if you want to show the Democrat winning, sample Democrat precincts only ( gee, Rolling Stone, is that not what the University of Minnesota report insinuates as well? ) Until these exit pollsters start revealing their locations and voter registrations along with their responses, there’s no need to cite them to me. They’ll all be biased in one manner or another and there’s no way you’ll know for sure what the bias is.
And, the final bottom line, any time an election is perceived as being remotely close, someone will claim it’s stolen.
And a suggestion to Rolling Stone et al, if a conspiracy theory is forgotten, there IS a reason.
UPDATE JUNE 14, 2006: Jonathon Adler at Volokh cites some excellent sources regarding Robert Kennedy’s conspiracy theory. I looked at it from the perspective of the actual voting procedures, Adler cites articles regarding the manipulation of exit polls.
2 Comments »
on 02 Jun 2006 at 12:17 pm 1.Michael Hampton said …
The UMN web page you linked to was written three days after the election and not touched since. It also doesn’t explain how he came to the conclusion that the exit polls weren’t random sampling.
And even IF you’re right about the exit polls, you conveniently ignore the voter intimidation, harassment, and other attempts at disenfranchisement.
This conspiracy theory, if indeed it is a theory, was never forgotten. Why call it a conspiracy theory when much of it rests at the foot of one man? This needed criminal investigation long ago, and now more than ever. You misuse the term in order to marginalize anyone who wants to see people brought to justice for their crimes.
on 02 Jun 2006 at 1:28 pm 2.Moonage
said …
That’s because he’s using the scientific method and you’re not. You’re looking at the polls to prove the final result was wrong. He’s using the final result to prove why the polls were wrong. If there’s that much discrepency, you can assume either way. However, being as a myriad of investigations and some lawsuits did not change the result of the election, it IS the final result. Therefore, the polls must have been flawed. The reason? They are almost always not random enough.
The harassment stuff was charged and never proven. Doubt me? Go here then:
http://news.findlaw.com/legalnews/lit/election2004/cases.html
The reason they were never proven, and I watched testimonies on this, is because, as I said, all politics is local and the local Republicans knew the laws and what they were doing, the Democrats obviously not. Now, it is PERFECTLY LEGAL and HIGHLY ENCOURAGED for poll-workers to verify the person voting is who they say they are. There are laws that are very specific in how this is done. If someone feels that verifiying their identification is harassment, that’s there fault and not the fault of the person doing the verifying. And, by law, it’s not harassment. The Democrats attempted their efforts at disenfranchisement by suing to have certain votes thrown out after the fact. So, it definitely was NOT the one way street this theory is painting it.
“This conspiracy theory, if indeed it is a theory, was never forgotten. Why call it a conspiracy theory when much of it rests at the foot of one man? This needed criminal investigation long ago, and now more than ever. You misuse the term in order to marginalize anyone who wants to see people brought to justice for their crimes.”
I call it a conspiracy theory because that’s exactly what it is. You want an investigation? There have been HUNDREDS. I am not marginalizing the issue, I am marginalizing those people who don’t bother to keep up with an issue, and then toss around accusations blindly. What ONE MAN could do this? Huh? There is no man on this planet that can keep me, as a citizen, from voting. Period. I have been voting for 25 years and have never missed an election. I work under the assumption of individual responsibility and empowerment. You’re working under the assumption individuals are not responsible for their own actions. If they screw up their registration, it’s not the fault of the person verifying it’s accuracy. If a voting machine is in a different location ( which mine was ), it’s the responsibility of the individual to find it, not the precinct worker. If a poll misses badly, it’s not the fault of the final result.
So, as I said, in order for this conspiracy to hold any legs at all, you have to ignore a TON of everyday common things. No one person can control an election. Period. Your local county clerk has more contol over who becomes the next president of the United States than any national politician. Period. That’s by design of the US Constitution and no matter how hard people may try, it’s real dang hard to get around.
And, you have to understand as well, being inept makes the other guy look real dang smart. Kerry’s inept campaign lost that election. You can’t sit here and tell me, watching what Bush’s ratings have done and the myriad staffing problems he’s encountered over the last year or so that he had the ability to affect the several thousand polling places scattered across the US when he can’t even control his own staff.
Like I said, for this thing to have any legs, you have to ignore reality.