By now the explanation for the Gallup poll's massive pro-Bush slant is clear -- they overpoll republicans. Why? The Gallup boss is a big GOP donor.
Harmless, you say? -- Maybe not, if Dems get discouraged and don't vote. Jess suggests a more sinister purpose: camouflaging the e-theft of the election. Managing public opinion as to the legitimacy of the winner was big in 2000 -- remember the Thanksgiving stuffing, the late overseas ballots Lieberman allowed to be counted which put Bush ahead of Gore and so created a fact-basis for that annoying Sore Loserman bumpersticker. So what happens if this time Kerry is known to be ahead 5 points nationally, but -- mirabile dictu -- Bush pulls off a big one (due to Diebold & ESS, natch)? Well, who knows. Certainly it will be a lot easier to get away with it if a Bush "victory" already seemed inevitable.
Even worse, it puts big pressure on Kerry to win nationwide by a big margin. If the election is close, pro-Kerry, no doubt the rethugs will challenge all the way down. Watch out for a "dems stealing the election" trope under these circumstances -- made much stickier if antecedent nationwide polls show a Bush "victory" to be inevitable. -- Benj
Update: don't forget:
Nevada, another state that will make near-universal use of touch-screen voting in November, purchased machines manufactured by Sequoia that produce a paper record - a move that received high marks earlier this month from the Free Congress Foundation, a conservative group in Washington. "Without an actual paper ballot, we are then left with only the computer's word for the election results," the group said in a news release accompanying its informal "Election Preparedness Scorecard" three weeks ago.
The group gave grades of F to several states - including Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware and Tennessee - based on their degree of reliance on paperless electronic voting. Florida, whose results will almost certainly receive intense scrutiny, received an F-plus, while Georgia was given an F-minus. New Mexico, a swing state that will rely heavily on touch-screen voting on Nov. 2, received a D-minus.
[...]
As for security concerns, Mr. Miller said that vendors submit their source code - the underlying instructions for the machines' software - for independent inspection, to uncover any hidden programming and to ensure that the machines calculate properly.
Critics, however, point out that the labs inspecting the software are typically paid by the vendors themselves, and that they somehow failed to uncover the flaws discovered by Mr. Wertheimer, Professor Rubin, and election officials in Ohio, Maryland and elsewhere.
While it is too late in the game to make it possible to produce a paper record for each vote on every machine already deployed, Mr. Miller said that vendors would be willing to include that feature in the future if the market demanded it. Most of the major vendors have models that can supply a printed record, but in most cases, Mr. Miller said, election officials have not required it.
The market???
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