GOP Wants to End Exit Polls

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Tue, 16 Nov 2004 21:49:25 -0800 (PST)

GOP Wants to End Exit Polls

 

http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/04/11/ana04027.html

 

 

GOP Wants to End Exit Polls

 

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

 

As a BuzzFlash Reader said: " Gee, let's make it REALLY easy to

cheat... "

 

RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie wants to eliminate exit polls because he

says

they're not accurate, implying that the final vote was unquestionably

correct.

 

GOP Wants News Organizations to Abandon Exit Polls (subscription

req'd)

By Doug Halonen, TVWeek.com

 

After early exit polls in Tuesday's election inaccurately suggested

that Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry would trounce

President Bush, Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie is

recommending that major news organizations pull the plug on the

prognostications.

 

In remarks Thursday at the National Press Club, Mr. Gillespie said

he is among those who were stunned by exit poll reports, which leaked

widely on the Internet. " I would encourage the media to abandon exit

surveys on Election Day and do what we do in the political profession

-- look at the precincts and the turnout, see who's turning out to

vote, " Mr. Gillespie said. " Don't build a model that you try to, you

know, build your own thoughts into of what you expect it to be. "

 

Mr. Gillespie conceded that the exit polls weren't reported

directly by major news organizations themselves. " But with the

Internet

today, we're kidding ourselves, aren't we, to think that everybody in

America doesn't know what the exit data is showing? " he said.

 

He also said he was personally affected by the early reports,

discouraged by what he was seeing. " But I've been through this

before, "

he said. " In 2000 the exit data was wrong on Election Day. In

2002, the

exit returns were wrong on Election Day. And in 2004, the exit data

were wrong on Election Day -- all three times, by the way, in a way

that skewed against Republicans and had a dispiriting effect on

Republican voters across the country. "

 

Gillespie's implication that the final tally was correct, but the exit

polls were wrong implies that our voting process is flawless and the

people building our voting machines are nonpartisan and only

interested

in seeing a fair election.

 

Anyone with the slightest knowledge of the seriousness of the

widespread problems we have with our voting systems or the highly

compromised partisans running our voting machine companies knows a

truly fair election is not possible.

 

Why would the GOP want to eliminate exit polls? Because it's the last

semi-independent check of an election's accuracy and the only way to

quickly determine if the votes cast for a candidate match those

counted

by the machines.

 

Sheldon Drobny: " There's a huge difference between polling what

WILL happen and polling something that has already happened. The

reliability of polling something that has already happened is highly

reliable vs. predictive polls, like Gallup or Zogby, which is very

risky. The reliability can be, not plus or minus 4 percent as we see

with predictive polls, but rather a much more reliable plus or minus

one half or one tenth of one percent with exit polls, because

those are

based on asking people who already voted. I would even say that if the

exit polling were done in the key precincts of Florida and Ohio, which

it was, then these results should be practically " bullet proof.' "

 

If the GOP eliminates exit polls before true verifiable voting is in

place, there will be nothing left to warn us when our vote is stolen.

 

Lastly, note that Gillespie only refers to the 2000, 2002, and 2004

elections -- all the major elections since George W. Bush dropped onto

the national political scene -- as " being skewed against Republicans. "

There is a very good reason the exit polls showed more people

voted for

Democrats -- they did.

 

As Greg Palast said, " ...the exit polls are accurate. "

 

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS