Where peace is not a pie ...Rick's Cafe Americain

One thing that I have been thinking about since the election coverage on Nov. 2 was the difference between the exit polls and vote counts. Exit polling has proven itself to be quite accurate over the years, and it disturbs me that not one news organization has questioned the reliability of the vote count given the exit polls. Especially when you consider all the writing before the election about concern over the electronic voting which does not provide a means of verifying its results. I’m not the only one who heard theories about this being the perfect way for a party to “steal” the election. Where was all that concern after the election?

Because there is no way to verify the vote count against ballots electronically cast, there is only one way to judge if the count was accurate: exit polls. Yet not even an eyebrow was raised when the count and polls did not match. Rather than ask the question, the discrepancy was ignored and exit polls were dismissed as notoriously unreliable. This is untrue, and struck me more as a way for the media to regain the public’s trust. I was watching CNN primarily, and they kept repeating that they would not rely on those unreliable exit polls, so as to avoid another Florida projection disaster. Instead, they would wait to call races based upon a combination of voting returns, exit polls (huh?), statistical analysis, and their own expertise.

Blitzer and company kept repeating that they would not rely on exit polls again, continually reassuring the public that the media could be trusted because this time they would not rely on exit polls. It became clear to me that what CNN (and others) were doing was turning exit polls into a scapegoat for their “wrong” Florida projection, so they could regain their credibility. It’s easier to get folks to trust you if you provide a concrete reason why you were wrong, then assure them that factor has been removed from the equation. Rather than admit that they made a mistake in 2000, and gaining the trust back the long, hard way of simply being right in the future. Having turned exit polls into the scapegoat, the media is forced to ignore and leave uninvestigated potential stories on inaccurate vote counts or fraud based upon the fact that the stories find their genesis in information from exit polls.

I have seen exit polls being referred to as unreliable in many sources since the election, and I just don’t buy it. Exit polling has used consistently in the past to call elections. This includes 2000, regardless of what folks say about Florida (remember, exit polls had Gore ahead and since the election any credible news account agrees that Gore would have won if a recount was conducted). Because the exit poll was more accurate than the vote count, should not tarnish exit polls as unreliable. That the media will not face the unpopular reality that Gore would have won Florida if a recount was conducted is not reason to disregard what exit polls tell us.

The news coverage itself reveals the inconsistency in its position. Although they repeat that exit polls are unreliable, the polls form the basis of countless interest pieces and are still used as a factor in the analysis for projecting election results. Both the news organizations and the political parties rely on exit polling to determine what issues were important to voters, as well as the demographic split of the voters.

This is not to say I am convinced that the vote count is not accurate. I am troubled that no questions have been raised in light of the exit polling.

This article provides additional support for the idea of conducting a hand recount. I don’t want a long public drama. It is better to just assume that we have four more years under the Bush regime until we know differently, but I wouldn’t mind seeing the results of a computer audit or a hand recount.

Just because I want to, you know, save the Union from collapse.