As I have noted before, if the vote count in November is at all close, McCain will win. The reason is simple – the Republicans have the ability to flip enough of the vote using electronic voting machines to tip the election in his favor. In 2004, it appears that they flipped as many as four million votes, creating an eight million vote swing to Bush. (Democrats don’t think to do this sort of thing as they have usually led in the polls and haven’t needed to. But in years past, they have done election fraud too.)
The gold standard for elections, exit polls, have now been (predictably) dismissed as an accurate gauge of how voters really voted. Even though the United Nations uses them and the Carter Center relies on them, even though the Bush Administration used them in disparaging the outcome of Ukraine’s 2004 presidential elections, in the U.S. they are thought not to be accurate. At least after 1998. Up until that time exit polls were quite reliable (except in 1988, 1992, 2000, 2004, primaries in New Hampshire in 1992 and Arizona in 1996 – all vote counts oddly involving a candidate named “George Bush”. It’s a family tradition.)
Pollsters said that the discrepancies that showed Kerry the winner in 2004 and the Democrats even bigger winners in 2006 than they were were due to “Reluctant Republican Respondents.” In theory, though never borne out by research, Republican voters in Kerry districts were hesitant to open up to pollsters about their true vote due to intimidation by Democrats around them. It’s a little bizarre and ridiculous, but when there has to be something to explain something, that something can often be something invented on the spot.
Well, in 2008 the excuse for failure of exit polls is pre-programmed. It’s the Bradley Effect (not connected to the Brad Blog, where I learned of it.) This theory says that white voters are reluctant to admit that they won’t vote for a black candidate, and hence lie to pollsters. It is even said to affect voter responses to exit pollsters.
Given that our votes are counted in secret and that few people seem to think such a system, common in third world countries like Zambia, is at all odd, we should just get used to it. We’re going to hear a lot about the Bradley Effect as John McCain saunters into the White House to occupy the office that George W. Bush never won either.
Piece of Mindful 
Many of the polls are back to electronically counted, pencil or black pen marked paper. And many places will have machines that will check your ballot for under or over votes before you turn it in.
You might be able to read about it if you google “electronic voting machine graveyard” or something similar.
It was a “hanging chad” of paper, not some electronic conspiracy, that broke Florida in 2000. That doesn’t seem to argue for your conspiracy, either.
LikeLike
Stop and consider one thing before you call me the usual names: Our votes are counted in secret by corporations using proprietary software. The corporations have links to the Republican Party. To believe in our system is an act of faith. I don’t act on faith. Trust, but verify?
I know the details of Florida in 2000. That was the Trojan Horse that gave us HAVA.
LikeLike
By the way, this piece is one of the worst I have ever written, though some may disagree. Even I have trouble following it.
LikeLike
I don’t think I called you any names. Your conspiracy is behind the times, though, because many places have returned to paper.
The paper ballots are counted by a machine, yes, with check totals, and then they are recounted by three county officers. I’ve done it. I watched the same thing happen in Palm Beach County Florida in 2000 as happens here with every election. I even saw on the local news, there in Florida, and to my surprise, Marc Racicot, who was clueless about local govt his two terms in office here, complain about local elected officials as a hired gun for Bush.
Those electronic voting machines are getting junked, and by the thousands.
LikeLike