Was the 2004 Election Stolen? by Steve Freeman and Joel Bleifuss [View All]

[sarahlee]

Freeman's specialty is polling. He wisely begins with November 2, 2004, reminding us of the afternoon and early-evening exit polls that showed Kerry winning. The sudden and dramatic reversal late that night, all-too-reminiscent of November 2000, made many of us suspect dirty tricks. It's clear that the discrepancy between the polls and the election results should have sounded a warning, the way it did in Ukraine just weeks before. It was easy for Freeman to convince me that the NEP consortium that created the exit polls produced a state-of-the-art sample that was the fruit of years of experience and expertise. Indeed, some of the polling procedures seem more trustworthy than the gerry-rigged American voting system that differs from one district to the next.

It would be wrong to put our faith in polling. Freeman provides photo evidence that NEP tampered with poll results after the “official” election results in order to make it seem that Bush's election was predicted. The proprietary NEP data belongs to the corporation that produces it: citizens don't have access to it unless NEP makes a mistake, as they did when raw scores were televised on Nov. 2. (The authors make it very clear that proprietary secrets have no place in our voting process, which needs to depend on checks, balances, audits, and recounts to keep it honest.) Luckily, enough raw data was revealed to allow statisticians like Freeman to examine the discrepancies closely.

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