This paper from the CalTech/MIT Voting Technology Project says “no”. Here is a summary of the findings
- A series of claims have been made in recent days alleging that discrepancies between exit poll results and the presidential vote in certain states provides evidence of malfeasance in those states. These claims seem to be concentrated on states using electronic voting systems.
- Exit polls predicted a significantly greater vote for Kerry nationwide than the official returns confirmed, but there is not any apparent systematic bias when we take this same analysis to the state level.
- Analysis of deviations between the exit polls and the official returns show no particular patterns for states using electronic voting; nor does this analysis reveal any patterns for states using other forms of voting systems.
- We conclude that there is no evidence, based on exit polls, that electronic voting machines were used to steal the 2004 election for President Bush.
I know it wont do much to the rapid mouth breathers at the DemocraticUnderground.com in terms of the elections fairness, but hopefully this will help nitwits like Keith Olbermann from going into full mouth breather mode…on second thought I doubt it.
This part pretty much illustrates the completely insane outlook one must have to hold to the view that the election was stolen.
Which is more likely — that an exit polling system that has been consistently wrong and troubled turned out to be wrong and troubled again, or that a vast conspiracy carried out by scores and scores of county and state election officials was successfully carried off to distort millions of American votes? I think the Kerry campaign concluded that the former is what happened. But we’ll keep our eyes open for hard evidence of abuse, and we won’t be afraid to investigate if we see something significant.
If you really think the election was stolen you don’t need an aluminum foil deflector beanie…you need a lead lined bunker preferably with padded walls, ceiling and floor so you don’t hurt yourself.
