Re: Stupid Americans! -- Stupid... Stupid... STUPID!!! _____________ ydexdo

Gnarlodious.com wrote:

> Hey! That hurts!
> Don't you know this "election" is a fraud just like the last one? The
> fundamentalist corporatist fascists that own the voting machine companies
> have appointed George to be their Head Lackey.
> I fear Americans really ARE blithering idiots and it will take several
> more election cycles for them to figure out how democracy was stolen from
> them.

Here in Germany, people say "don't worry about election fraud, the exit
polls are accurate enough to detect anything, except a 'too close to
call'". I've never seen an election where the exit poll didn't forecast the
result correctly, even our very close to call last election (3 seats, i.e.
0.5% difference between red-green and black-yellow). The exit polls were
correct, the predictions from partly counted votes were off by up to 2%,
some hours later. In the early morning, it was clear that the exit polls
were right.

Ok, I've now seen two elections where the exit polls did predict something
different: The 2000 Florida ballot (exit poll: Gore wins), and the 2004
USA-wide ballot (exit poll: Kerry wins). It took 10 months to conclude
(inofficially, though) that Florida really had more Gore votes than Bush
votes (though very close; too many  voters thought they had voted
for Gore, but pushed the wrong button and such), but this time, they made
sure that noone will be able to recount. They left no paper trail behind.

As European, I'm not really sure if I want Kerry instead of Bush. Here in
Europe, we have only one plutocrat, that's Berlusconi in Italy. In America,
there's only the choice between several plutocrats, and both parties even
run with a plutocrat as vice president candidate. All non-billionares are
excluded from the election process in early stages by making sure that
these early stages are so expensive noone without a billionare in his
family can get through. Plutocracy is definitely a form of Aristocracy, and
the founding fathers are rotating in their graves.

--
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://www.jwdt.com/~paysan/

Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> wrote in message news:<em6462-h3j.ln1@miriam.mikron.de>.
.
> I've never seen an election where the exit poll didn't forecast the
> result correctly, even our very close to call last election (3 seats, i.e.
> 0.5% difference between red-green and black-yellow). The exit polls were
> correct, the predictions from partly counted votes were off by up to 2%,
> some hours later. In the early morning, it was clear that the exit polls
> were right.

I don't know about German exit polls, but in this year's US election
the pollsters explicitly warned before the election that their results
would have a large margin of error and were designed to be descriptive
rather than predictive. Perhaps the US pollsters were using different
types of questions and a different methodology? Or perhaps the US
polling firm should hire some German pollsters next time?

> Ok, I've now seen two elections where the exit polls did predict something
> different: The 2000 Florida ballot (exit poll: Gore wins), and the 2004
> USA-wide ballot (exit poll: Kerry wins). It took 10 months to conclude
> (inofficially, though) that Florida really had more Gore votes than Bush
> votes (though very close; too many  voters thought they had voted
> for Gore, but pushed the wrong button and such)

Do you have a source for that assertion? US newspapers performed a
review for all Florida counties. Using Gore's vote criteria statewide,
Bush actually picked up votes:
<http://archives.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOL...ida.recount.01/>

> but this time, they made
> sure that noone will be able to recount. They left no paper trail behind.

Which "they" are you talking about? Are you aware that the most
problems in Florida's 2000 election process were found in counties
that were overwhelmingly Democrat? Or that the so-called "confusing"
butterfly ballots had in fact been previewed and approved by both the
county's Democratic party officials and the public at large?

Pollster John Zogby, a Kerry supporter who also forecast a narrow
Kerry victory, has remarked "the exit polls were terrible."
<http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ht...xitpolls04.html>

Jack Corrigan, a Kerry advisor in charge of their lawyer/recount
brigade has dismissed the Internet conspiracy claims: "There were a
few problems here and there in the election. But unlike 2000, there
is no doubt that they actually got more votes than we did, and they
got them in the states that mattered."
<http://www.boston.com/news/nation/a...
_is_dismissed/>

The simple fact is that Kerry's team knew they were below Gore's
support level among women as well as Hispanic and Jewish voters.
They were counting on two things to win: an increase in young voters
which didn't happen (on a percentage basis) and that the small
percentage of undecided voters would break heavily for Kerry
(they narrowly went for Bush).

> As European, I'm not really sure if I want Kerry instead of Bush. Here in
> Europe, we have only one plutocrat, that's Berlusconi in Italy. In America
,
> there's only the choice between several plutocrats, and both parties even
> run with a plutocrat as vice president candidate. All non-billionares are
> excluded from the election process in early stages by making sure that
> these early stages are so expensive noone without a billionare in his
> family can get through. Plutocracy is definitely a form of Aristocracy, an
d
> the founding fathers are rotating in their graves.

Actually, given both the influence of the rural ("red") states
in deciding the election and the fact that Germans aren't allowed
to decide who leads Italy or the US, I rather suspect they'd be
pleased. (Hessians weren't beloved in the US 200 years ago.)

Tyler

Tyler Sperry wrote:
> I don't know about German exit polls, but in this year's US election
> the pollsters explicitly warned before the election that their results
> would have a large margin of error and were designed to be descriptive
> rather than predictive. Perhaps the US pollsters were using different
> types of questions and a different methodology? Or perhaps the US
> polling firm should hire some German pollsters next time?

Don't confuse the telephone call polls with exit polls. Exit polls means
that you ask people who just have voted. This takes most of the errors
out, except for the postal voters (who can't be exit polled). Our main
source of exit poll errors are these postal voters, since they voted
two ws before, and they are not a very representative sample of the
population. Absentee vote is up to 10%, and that could dillute the exit
poll accuracy by 1% or so.

> Do you have a source for that assertion? US newspapers performed a
> review for all Florida counties. Using Gore's vote criteria statewide,
> Bush actually picked up votes:
> <http://archives.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOL...ida.recount.01/>

IIRC, that's true. The recounter however also used the supreme court
criteria, i.e. recount everywhere. It's that part of the supreme court
decision that makes sense: If you recount somewhere, you have to
recount in the whole state. You can't just drop votes here, because you
are not interested, and recount there, because you are. Funny enough,
the supreme's court rule would have put Gore ahead, whereas his own
selfish and selective recount attempt would have put Bush ahead. I
don't have an URL ready, since any search for that is poisoned by too
many pages ;-).

The law is quite clear: voter's intent counts. And games about
recounting yes/no here/there are silly. In Germany, a recount is
mandatory, and noone can stop it. It's the right of every citizen to
have his (or her) vote counted. The recount on our last election, where
both big parties were only 6000 votes apart first did change that
margin to ~8000.
 
>
> Which "they" are you talking about?

The voting machines which do not leave a paper trail behind. However,
apparently the scanner voting machines from Diebolds (which allow
manual recount) produced more dubious results than the touch screen
machines.

> Are you aware that the most
> problems in Florida's 2000 election process were found in counties
> that were overwhelmingly Democrat? Or that the so-called "confusing"
> butterfly ballots had in fact been previewed and approved by both the
> county's Democratic party officials and the public at large?

Hm, the lady in question is no member of the Democratic party anymore,
and AFAIK wasn't in 2000, too (she left the democrats before). She
managed to produce a confusing ballot this year, too.

> Pollster John Zogby, a Kerry supporter who also forecast a narrow
> Kerry victory, has remarked "the exit polls were terrible."
>
<http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ht...xitpolls04.html>

Well, even if the exit polls are inaccurate, there's no explanation why
they did bend all to the same direction. If you have 10 swing states,
where 9 were exit-poll-predicted for Kerry, and an exit poll accuracy
of 3% in each one, the likelyhood that most of these states go to Bush
(as they did) is still very small.

I think this observation is a post fact one, i.e the pollster assumes
that the official votes are accurate, and therefore the exit polls were
terrible. But to have 6 or 7 out of 10 swing states predicted wrong,
the exit polls have to be far worse than terrible. They need a
systematic error.

> Actually, given both the influence of the rural ("red") states
> in deciding the election and the fact that Germans aren't allowed
> to decide who leads Italy or the US, I rather suspect they'd be
> pleased. (Hessians weren't beloved in the US 200 years ago.)

Well, most of the German emigrants in the USA live in the "red" states,
and we have quite some in Bush's team, especially hardliners like
Rumsfeld. I still agree to the US voices that say that you didn't know
what Kerry wanted, because Kerry had an ABB strategy (anyone but Bush),
and tried to embrace everyone and nobody. Actually, Bush used the same
strategy last term, and Gore tried, too, so they met as faceless
lookalikes. Politicians try to do that all the time; we had a good
laugh when our last two candidates even wore the same tie. The only
point were they differed (Irak war no or maybe) was the point that made
the winner. The "maybe" candidate lost.

--
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://www.jwdt.com/~paysan/

Gnarlodious.com wrote:
> GOP Wants to End Exit Polls
> BuzzFlash,_IL_- 7 hours ago
> RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie wants to eliminate exit polls because he
> says they're not accurate, implying that the final vote was
> unquestionably correct. ...
> <http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/04/11/ana04027.html>
>
> Can you imagine the blowback if some other "Democracy" banned exit
> polling?

Hey, he even goes further. He bans own thinking. And since the exit
polls are now wrong every election, and always wrong in the same
direction (pro democrats), though the media which does the exit polling
is known to be pro republicans (or at least most of them), the wrong
must be somewhere else.

I suggest that you should stop politicians (of both sides) messing
around with your democracy, and take an independent approach. Stop
gerrymandering (democrat invention), let ordinary people do the
counting (here in Germany, it's partly volunteers, partly party
members, partly public servants - IMHO, the volunteers are the ones who
make sure that things go well. And when things go wrong even though,
like in Dachau* some years ago, we still can find the disposed ballot
sheets in the trash can. The conservatives, guilty for vote fraud, won
the recall, though. Our people don't learn, too).

*) Dachau is north of Munich, and only known for the first KZ that was
build there.

--
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://www.jwdt.com/~paysan/

"Bernd Paysan" <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> wrote in message
news:d18d62-psg.ln1@vimes.paysan.nom...
> direction (pro democrats), though the media which does the exit polling
> is known to be pro republicans (or at least most of them),

Which media is that?  Talk radio?  Fox news?  The rest are all pro-democrat.