> Then I read that, wherever there is an audit trail,
> the exit polls match up, but wherever there isn't
> one, they don't?
Is this true? Where is the source for this? It would indeed be worthwhile for someone to do a study of the precincts where Bush outperformed expectations (both in terms of comparisons with 2000 and with exit polls) and cross-reference that with places where there are Diebold machines, etc. I assume SOMEONE is already working on this, but . . .
The provisional ballot stuff doesn't seem likely to mean the margin of difference in this election, but the deeply, profoundly alarming thing is that if the machines are problematic, we have no way of knowing for sure, and certainly no way of proving it.
What has some of us scratching our heads is the difference between the PA exit polls/results and those in the other two of the "big three" (Florida AND Ohio). It certainly couldn't have been the weather; while the weather in PA was better than Ohio, the rain does not appear to have depressed Ohio turnout. But if the polls more closely matched the results in PA, why not the other two? And what does ALL of this mean for pollsters, by the way -- since the polls were trending our way in all of these states as well? (I will note that at the Senate level, the polls were also trending our way but turned out to be wrong -- or so we think -- as in the case of Oklahama where the lunatic Coburn won.)
At the end of the day, there are probably enough fucked-up white people out there that one is tempted to jettison suspicions about what went on and accept that Bush might actually have won this time. It would be the simplest explanation. But I don't think we can know with complete certainty, nor will we ever, which is an indication of the profound backwardness of this country's electoral system and of the political culture in general. The guarantor of banana republics is itself a banana republic.
- - - - - John Lacny http://www.johnlacny.com
Tell no lies, claim no easy victories.