COMPUTER FRAUD ARTICLE 28

Footprints of Electoral Fraud:

The November 2 Exit Poll Scam

by Michael Keefer

Republican electoral fraud in the 2004 presidential

election was widely anticipated by informed

observers--whose warnings about the opportunities for

fraud offered by "black box" voting machines supplied

and serviced by corporations closely aligned with

Republican interests (and used to tally nearly a third

of the votes cast on November 2) have been amply borne

out by the results.1

One of the clear indicators of massive electoral fraud

was the wide divergence, both nationally and in swing

states, between exit poll results and the reported

vote tallies. The major villains, it would seem, were

the suppliers of touch-screen voting machines. There

appears to be evidence, however, that the corporations

responsible for assembling vote-counting and exit poll

information may also have been complicit in the fraud.

Until recently, the major American corporate infomedia

networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox, and AP) relied on a

consortium known as the Voter News Service for

vote-counting and exit poll information. But following

the scandals and consequent embarrassments of the 2000

and 2002 elections, this consortium was disbanded. It

was replaced in 2004 by a partnership of Edison Media

Research and Mitofsky International known as the

National Election Pool.

The National Election Pool’s own data—as transmitted

by CNN on the evening of November 2 and the early

morning of November 3—suggest very strongly that the

results of the exit polls were themselves fiddled late

on November 2 in order to make their numbers conform

with the tabulated vote tallies.

It is important to remember how large the discrepancy

was between the early vote tallies and the early exit

poll figures. By the time polls were closing in the

eastern states, the vote-count figures published by

CNN showed Bush leading Kerry by a massive 11 percent

margin. At 8:50 p.m. EST, Bush was credited with

6,590,476 votes, and Kerry with 5,239,414. This margin

gradually shrank. By 9:00 p.m., Bush purportedly had

8,284,599 votes, and Kerry 6,703,874; by 9:06 p.m.,

Bush had 9,257,135, and Kerry had 7,652,510, giving

the incumbent a 9 percent lead, with 54 percent of the

vote to Kerry’s 45 percent.

At the same time, embarrassingly enough, the national

exit poll figures reported by CNN showed Kerry as

holding a narrow but potentially decisive lead over

Bush. At 9:06 p.m. EST, the exit polls indicated that

women’s votes (54 percent of the total) were going 54

percent to Kerry, 45 percent to Bush, and 1 percent to

Nader; men’s votes (46 percent of the total) were

breaking 51 percent to Bush, 47 percent to Kerry, and

1 percent to Nader. Kerry, in other words, was leading

Bush by nearly 3 percent.

The early exit polls appear to have caused some

concern to the good people at the National Election

Pool: a gap of 12 or 14 percent between tallied

results and exit polls can hardly inspire confidence

in the legitimacy of an election.

One can surmise that instructions of two sorts were

issued. The election-massagers working for Diebold,

ES&S (Election Systems & Software) and the other

suppliers of black-box voting machines may have been

told to go easy on their manipulations of back-door

‘Democrat-Delete’ software: mere victory was what the

Bush campaign wanted, not an implausible landslide.

And the number crunchers at the National Election Pool

may have been asked to fix up those awkward exit

polls.

Fix them they did. When the national exit polls were

last updated, at 1:36 a.m. EST on November 3, men’s

votes (still 46 percent of the total) had gone 54

percent to Bush, 45 percent to Kerry, and 1 percent to

Nader; women’s votes (54 percent of the total) had

gone 47 percent to Bush, 52 percent to Kerry, and 1

percent to Nader.

But how do we know the fix was in? Because the exit

poll data also included the total number of

respondents. At 9:00 p.m. EST, this number was well

over 13,000; by 1:36 a.m. EST on November 3 it had

risen by less than 3 percent, to a final total of 13,

531 respondents—but with a corresponding swing of 5

percent from Kerry to Bush in voters’ reports of their

choices. Given the increase in respondents, a swing of

this size is a mathematical impossibility.

The same pattern is evident in the exit polls of two

key swing states, 
Ohio
 and 

Florida

.

At 7:32 p.m. EST, CNN was reporting the following exit

poll data for 

Ohio

. Women voters (53 percent of the

total) favoured Kerry over Bush by 53 percent to 47

percent; male voters (47 percent of the total)

preferred Kerry over Bush by 51 percent to 49 percent.

Kerry was thus leading Bush by a little more than 4

percent. But by 1:41 a.m. EST on November 3, when the

exit poll was last updated, a dramatic shift had

occurred: women voters had split 50-50 in their

preferences for Kerry and Bush, while men had swung to

supporting Bush over Kerry by 52 percent to 47

percent. The final exit polls showed Bush leading in

Ohio

 by 2.5 percent.

At 7:32 p.m., there were 1,963 respondents; at 1:41

a.m. on November 3, there was a final total of 2,020

respondents. These fifty-seven additional respondents

must all have voted very powerfully for Bush—for while

representing only a 2.8 percent increase in the number

of respondents, they managed to produce a swing from

Kerry to Bush of fully 6.5 percent.

In 

Florida

, the exit polls appear to have been

tampered with in a similar manner. At 8:40 p.m. EST,

CNN was reporting exit polls that showed Kerry and

Bush in a near dead heat. Women voters (54 percent of

the total) preferred Kerry over Bush by 52 percent to

48 percent, while men (46 percent of the total)

preferred Bush over Kerry by 52 percent to 47 percent,

with 1 percent of their votes going to Nader. But the

final update of the exit poll, made at 1:01 a.m. EST

on November 3, showed a different pattern: women

voters now narrowly preferred Bush over Kerry, by 50

percent to 49 percent, while the men preferred Bush by

53 percent to 46 percent, with 1 percent of the vote

still going to Nader. These figures gave Bush a 4

percent lead over Kerry.

The number of exit poll respondents in 

Florida

 had

risen only from 2,846 to 2,862. But once again, a

powerful numerical magic was at work. A mere sixteen

respondents—0.55 percent of the total number—produced

a four percent swing to Bush.

What we are witnessing, the evidence would suggest, is

a late-night contribution by the National Elections

Pool to the rewriting of history.

It is possible that at some future moment questions

about electoral fraud in the 2004 presidential

election might become insistent enough to be

embarrassing. The pundits, at that point, will be able

to point to the NEP’s final exit poll figures in the

decisive swing states of 
Florida
 and 

Ohio

—and to

marvel at how closely they reflect the NEP’s vote

tallies.

The Ohio Fifty-Seven (is there a Heinz-Kerry joke

embedded in the number?) and the Florida Sixteen will

have done their bit in ensuring the democratic

legitimacy of the one-party imperial state.

Michael Keefer, an Associate Professor of English at

the 

University
 of 
Guelph

, is a former president of the

Association of 

Canadian
 
College

 and University

Teachers of English. His writings include Lunar

Perspectives: Field Notes from the Culture Wars

(Anansi) and the edited collection War Against 

Iraq

:

Critical Resources (http://www.uoguelph.ca/~mkeefer ).

Note

1. Among the warnings, see Bev Harris, Black Box

Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century (Talion

Publishing/Black Box Voting; free internet version

available at www.BlackBoxVoting.org); Infernal Press,

"How George W. Bush Won the 2004 Presidential

Election" (Infernal Press, 25 June 2003); Steve Moore,

"E-Democracy: Stealing the Election in 2004" (Global

Outlook, No. 8, Summer 2004); and Greg Palast, "An

Election Spolied Rotten" (www.TomPaine.com, 1 November

2004). Early assessments of the election include Greg

Palast, "Kerry Won… Here are the Facts"

(www.TomPaine.com, 4 November 2004); and Wayne Madsen,

"Grand Theft Election" (www.globalresearch.ca, 5

November 2004).