On Sun, 4 Jun 2006, Doug Henwood wrote:
> By the way, the AAPORites are extremely dedicated to believing the
> official story on Ohio - which is weird, since you'd think that they might
> want to defend the accuracy of exit polls. But clearly the desire to avoid
> a constitutional crisis and the desire to preserve the legitimacy of The
> System trumps their professional pride.
Apropos, here's the latest from the mathematicians who took their case to AAPOR. They still can't get them to release Mitovsky's raw data, never mind to get the states to release data that would allow votes to be checked for fraud.
Just out of curiosity -- I assume they must have posted this short hand-out link of their boiled down arguments to the AAPOR list. Anybody bite?
Michael
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Date: Mon, 22 May 2006 11:20:33 -0600 From: Kathy Dopp <kathy.dopp at gmail.com> Reply-To: kathy at electionarchive.org To: election at uscountvotes.org Subject: [election] AAPOR & Compendium of Attempts to Dismiss "Vote Fraud"
Rebuttal to All Arguments that Dismissed Vote Fraud:
This short paper refutes all of the arguments that have incorrectly been used to dismiss the evidence of vote fraud/miscounts in the November 2004 election. Every argument that Mitofsky, Election Science Institute, Liddle, Lindeman, and even the Democratic National Committee have made is refuted in a page or less in this short handout.
http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/IncorrectElectionDataAnalysis-06.pdf
AAPOR conference in Montreal:
Ron Baiman and Steve Freeman did a terrific job at the AAPOR conference. Both were incredibly convincing speakers and answered a lot of questions, which all seemed to be directed at them rather than at Liddle and Lindeman.
<snip>
In speaking to AAPOR members I found that there was a great deal of bias towards believing everything that Mitofsky told them. Mitofsky is very well respected within AAPOR due to his past work and leadership.
I was surprised to learn that even after listening to Ron and Steve, David, one of the people in charge at the conference, was convinced that Mitofsky had already released all the exit poll data that did not risk voter anonymity!! Luckily I had an opportunity to have a nice long talk with him and he "said" that he would ask Mitofsky to ask NEP to release more data - specifically the data regarding pollster conditions which Liddle claims they analyzed and which proves their case, but which they have thus far kept secret.
The passion, informativeness, and speaking ability of both Ron and Steve was impressive. We may publicly post Ron Baiman's PPT presentation when I have time to fix it up.
<snip>
I don't know if we were successful or not in making the AAPOR leadership aware of the truth of the matter, but I know we convinced a few people. It was frustrating at times, but the majority of people were very nice, very polite, and listened, and a few people thanked me and wished us well, and seemed quite surprised and edified by what I was telling them one on one.
I met Mark Blumenthal, the Mystery Pollster and he arrogantly informed me that he had a different opinion than mine and he was uninterested in anything I had to say and he refused to politely listen to even one sentence from me. Mark Blumenthal seems to be entirely closed-minded to anything that alter his own opinion, but perhaps he is only deficient and afraid of mathematics so is apt to fall prey to any sophistry. He is an opposite to me in the sense that it is like a religion to me to always be open to change my position to match newly developing facts.
Please see if you can get people to read this concise paper which solidly rebuts all the arguments made to date which claim to show lack of evidence of vote fraud.
http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/IncorrectElectionDataAnalysis-06.pdf
I find it harder every day to see why anyone imagines that the U.S. has accurate vote counts when we conduct virtually no random independent audits of vote counts to check their accuracy on election day and when every county in America releases its vote count data in a way that covers up the evidence of tampering! (See http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/election_officials/Audits_Monitoring.pdf)
The creation of the National Election Data Archive is vital if we are to restore "one person, one vote" in America.
In the only two states where detailed vote count data were obtained following the November 2004 election (Washington and New Mexico), steps have been taken to eliminate the use of unauditable electronic voting and require voter verifiable paper ballots as a result of the obvious evidence of vote tampering that the detailed vote count data provide.
Please help us obtain funding or donate to help us pay the programming fees to complete the national election data archive in time for the November 2006 elections. We urgently need funds now in order to finish implementing the system. We also need volunteers from every state to help obtain the detailed vote count data via open records requests, and we need a volunteer now to write the open records request letter specific to every state's open records laws.
Donate: http://electionarchive.org/fairelection/donate.html
Sign up to obtain the data for your county or state: http://electionarchive.org/fairelection/statesubscribe.html
Help us complete open records requests letters for each state (yours): http://electionarchive.net/public/ucv_select_info.php
While I wish all the luck in the world to those who are attempting to get public exit polls (which we would incorporate into our election data archive) and election reform legislation passed in time for November, it remains true that the national election data archive is a tool which there is no question that we have the opportunity to build and use to ensure that correctly elected candidates are sworn into office. To make it happen in time for November, 2006, we need funding now. Just $4,000/month would do it!
Best Regards and Thanks again to all our donors who made it possible for us to attend the Montreal AAPOR conference and to Steve Freeman and Ron Baiman for volunteering for America and for doing such a great job.
---- Kathy Dopp http://electionarchive.org National Election Data Archive Dedicated to Accurately Counting Elections Subscribe to announcements by emailing election-subscribe at uscountvotes.org Please donate or volunteer.