NPR and now others are now reporting that John Kerry has called Bush and conceded the race.
I think I might throw up.
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November 3, 2004
Kerry Concedes, Anthony Vomits
Comments
Previous Comments
Suppose there was ballot tampering with whatever voting method was used (machine, paper, etc.) that focused on "losing" the votes of groups that tended to vote Democratic (youth, minorities, etc.) in critical jurisdictions.
Wouldn't one of the symptoms of that type of manipulation be a mismatch between the "actual" election returns and the exit polls, as we have seen?
I find it hard to believe that exit polling has suddenly become so innacurate this year after years of (mostly) accurately representing the actual returns. Yes, the context has changed, but it has changed before, and the people that conduct exit polls are professional statisticians and I don't think all their systems would suddenly be so out of synch with reality. In 2000, they were finding piles of "lost" ballots in several places days after the election, but no one seems to even entertain that possibility now, as horrible as it may be to contemplate in terms of what it would mean and what it would take to fix it.
The mismatch between the returns and the polls exists, but all the explanations have focused on the polls being suddenly inaccurate with no consideration of all the scenarios people were most concerned about regarding manipulation of new and traditional voting systems.
