Scientific Study on Exit Polls Released Tomorrow

Officially, President Bush won November's election by 2.5%, yet exit polls showed Kerry winning by 3% [1] . According to a report to be released March 31^st by a group of university statisticians, the odds of a discrepancy this large between the national exit poll and election results happening by accident are close to 1 in a million.

In other words, by random chance alone, it could not have happened. But it did.

Two alternatives remain. Either something was wrong with the exit polling, or something was wrong with the vote count.

Exit polls have a long history of exceptional accuracy in past decades in the US, in the Ukraine, in Latin America, in Germany, and elsewhere. Yet in November 2004, the discrepancy was more than five times this (and similar to that of the invalid Ukraine election.[2] )

In a recent survey of US members of the world's oldest and largest computer society, The Association for Computing Machinery, 95% opposed software driven un-auditable voting machines [3] , of the type that now count at least 30% of U.S. votes. The vast majority of today's electronic vote-counting machines are not built with basic safeguards that would prevent and detect machine or human caused errors, be they innocent or deliberate.[4]

The consortium that conducted the presidential exit polls, Edison/Mitofsky, issued a report in January suggesting that the discrepancy between election results and exit polls occurred because Bush voters were more reticent than Kerry voters in response to pollsters.

The authors of this scientific study of the National Election Data Archive Project, consider that scenario highly unlikely, based on extensive analysis of the election data presented in their report “Final Study of the 2004 Presidential Election Poll Discrepancies”. They conclude, /“The required pattern of exit poll participation by Kerry and Bush voters to satisfy the exit poll data defies empirical experience and common sense under any assumed scenario.”/

An executive summary of the report by Josh Mitteldorf of Temple University has been released today and is available at: http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/Exit_Polls_summary.pdf. The full 25 page scientific report will be released tomorrow. This group's preliminary study on the exit poll discrepancies was not refuted by any PhD statistician in America, and we expect our final study to be similarly received in the academic community.

Amidst the data, many extremely unlikely anomalies exist, invariably in President Bush’s favor. For one, a state-by-state analysis of the discrepancy between exit polls and official election results shows highly improbable skewing of the election results biased towards the president.

We have had election fraud in this country before. November's wildly inaccurate presidential exit polls should warrant concern of the highest order by every American citizen.

The report acknowledges that the possibility of fraud in our vote counting system is the most serious issue any democracy can face. If there is any chance that vote counts have been electronically manipulated, it is imperative that the people of the United States know the truth.

The report concludes, “/We believe that the absence of any statistically-plausible explanation for the discrepancy between Edison/Mitofsky’s exit poll data and the official presidential vote tally is an unanswered question of vital national importance that needs thorough investigation./”

US Count Votes is seeking financial support for its "National Election Data Archive" project in order to collect detailed election data and, prior to November 2006, to develop statistical methods to audit elections results data and provide statistical evidence of vote tabulation errors immediately following any US election.

*Contributors and Supporters of the Report include:*

*Josh Mitteldorf*, PhD - Temple University Statistics Department

*Steven F. Freeman*, PhD - Center for Organizational Dynamics, University of Pennsylvania

*Brian Joiner*, PhD - Prof. of Statistics (ret) University of Wisconsin

*Frank Stenger*, PhD - Professor, School of Computing, University of Utah

*Richard G. Sheehan*, PhD -Professor, Department of Finance, University of Notre Dame

*Paul F. Velleman*, PhD - Associate Prof., Department of Statistical Sciences, Cornell University

*Victoria Lovegren*, PhD - Department of Mathematics, Case Western Reserve University

*Campbell** B. Read*, PhD - Prof. Emeritus, Department of Statistical Science, Southern Methodist University

*Jonathan Simon*, J.D., National Ballot Integrity Project

*Ron Paul Baiman, *PhD* *– Institute of Government and Public Affairs, University of Illinois at Chicago

Footnotes:

[1] "Evaluation of Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004" prepared by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for the National Election Pool (NEP) Jan. 19, 2005

[2] In the November 21 runoff, Ukraine's official vote count had Prime Minister Yanukovych the winner by 2.7%. Two exit polls showed him losing by 8% and 2%, respectively. Thus, the discrepancy was between 10.7% and 4.7%. In the US, the discrepancy was between 6.5% and 5.5%. See http://www.templetonthorp.com/ru/news808 and http://www.indybay.org/archives/archive_by_id.php?id=2669&category_id=44.

[3] http://uscountvotes.net/voting_machines/Best_Practices_US.pdf

[4] http://uscountvotes.net/voting_machines/Best_Practices_US.pdf

*About US Count Votes*

US Count Votes is a Utah non-profit corporation. It is the sponsor of the National Election Data Archive project and of research to scientifically analyze the accuracy of vote counting in the United States. Its goal is to provide nationwide, impartial statistical auditing services to help ensure the accuracy of future elections.

For further information: contact Bruce O’Dell, Vice President, US Count Votes

Email: bruce@uscountvotes.org

or visit www.electionarchive.org