<< >I assume you are referring to the Voting Technology Project? I haven't seen
>a paper from the project you list available on their website. Do you have a
>link to it? Why do you hold the work of Steven Graves, Jehoshua, Charles
>Stewart or Jonathan Katz in higher regard than Steven Freeman? >>
OK, the ad hominem against Vest and Baltimore isn't an appropriate argument. The appropriate argument is one that I've been trying to make ever since I read the report, but I've had such a need to get up, take a deep breath, and refrain from punching a hole in the wall every time I've sat down to the task that it's been hard to do.
My problem with the report isn't with the statistics or the analytical tools chosen or interpretation of the data or anything mundane like that. It's with the very rhetorical and political construction of the report, which I can't help but feel reveals either bad faith or an ideologically-constructed need for reassurance so deep that basic arguments somehow need not conform to any standards of intellectual honesty.
I was referring to "VOTING MACHINES AND THE UNDERESTIMATE OF THE BUSH VOTE", at
http://www.vote.caltech.edu/Reports/VotingMachines3.pdf
which Michael P linked some days ago.
So here goes:
"The initial alarms that were struck on Election Day and immediately thereafter were based on hasty analyses using exit polls that were not designed to predict the outcome of the election."
To which the only proper reply is, Bullshit. That's exactly what exit polls are supposed to do--that's why they have them. However, once this proposition is somehow accepted at face value, **nothing that follows can be expected to buttress the claims of vote fraud.** The point which is to be proven has just been assumed out the window.
"Overall, the final exit polls, as reported by cnn.com, estimated that President Bush had Election Day support from 49.8% of the electorate, compared ..."
Classic GIGO. These are the "final" figures that mysteriously appeared long after the polls closed, and which have never been adequately explained. I and others linked this some days back, sorry, I don't have the URL offhand but it's archived.
"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."
This shamelessly conflates two separate arguments, that of questionable exit polls and problems with electronic voting (which is never properly defined, BTW).
All of this from the first page.
There's more, but excuse me, I have to pace the room again...
---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- From: John Thornton <jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 20:39:25 -0600
>I assume you are referring to the Voting Technology Project? I haven't seen
>a paper from the project you list available on their website. Do you have a
>link to it? Why do you hold the work of Steven Graves, Jehoshua, Charles
>Stewart or Jonathan Katz in higher regard than Steven Freeman?
>
>John Thornton
>Three days off line and I feel like I've been gone two weeks!
>
>
>>This can be debunked rather easily. I will summarize the basic argument as
>>follows:
>>
>>"This is just another internet conspiracy theory. A Cal Tech-MIT project
>>under the direction of highly credible people like Charles Vest and David
>>Baltimore has determined that all of these conspiracy theories can be
>>restated in such a way so that an elegant if irrelevant analysis of data
>>applied to its straw-man question will show that you're a stupid stupid
>>person whom we laugh at! Hah hah! So shut up, you Steven Freeman you!"
>>
>>I hope this clears things up.
>>
>>
>>---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
>>From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>>Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 14:59:29 -0800
>>
>> >Steven Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania concludes:
>> >
>> >"My purpose in this paper has not been to allege election theft, let
>> >alone explain it. Rather, I have tried to demonstrate that exit poll
>> >data is fundamentally sound, that the deviations between exit poll
>> >predictions and vote tallies in the three critical battleground
>> >states could not have occurred strictly by chance or random error,
>> >and that no solid explanations have yet been provided to explain the
>> >discrepancy. In short, I have tried to justify the discrepancy as a
>> >legitimate issue that warrants public attention."
>> >
>> >
>> <http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/11/The_unexplained_exit_poll_discrepancy_v00k.pdf>
>>
>
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