On election nights, I have always thought that the exit polling data that the networks use to "project" a winner long before the polls close is just the wrong thing to do. Im my opinion, such data prematurely affects the outcome of an election. I remember election nights when a presidential election was "decided" long before the polls closed on the west coast thereby causing large numbers of west coast voters to forgo casting their votes and say "screw it, I just heard on the radio that it's over anyway."
Well, you ain't seen nothing yet. Take a look at this. (link via email from District 7 Commissioner candidate Jim Capo)
If you clicked on the link, what you saw are some very skewed voting "results" from Guilford County, NC. The the tallies entered certainly reveal a bias by someone within our Board of Elections office. A casual reader could easily assume that the "results" are valid early voting numbers.
Each precinct shows that eight voters have cast ballots at each polling place. In the presidential race, someone obviously assigned the vote to their liking. Kerry - 2 votes, Bush - 3 votes, Badnarick - 2 votes. The total results indicate that Bush is winning by a wide margin. Other state and local races also indicate biased results as well. In every case, the "results" are heavily skewed to favor Republican candidates, or, in the case of amendments and local referenda, against the measures.
You cannot deny that once an uninformed reader of the data has seen the "results" as they currently stand, that person will have been influenced by what he saw.
If his candidate is artificially behind, he just vowed to either say, "to hell with it", or, "I've got to get off my ass and get to work". If his candidate is artificially ahead, he will see to it that everyone possible knows about it, - including... no wait... especially the media.
Board of Elections Director George Gilbert needs to pull the plug on this... NOW.
Also, Gilbert needs to explain to us again how foolproof our paperless electronic voting system is. If someone is able to fabricate the "results" that are currently posted, how can we have any confidence that the system won't be manipulated in a similar fashion on November 2nd? I don't like this... not one little bit.
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Update: Cone weighs in and has saved a copy of the "results" so we can all see it once it is pulled from the BOE site. Here's Capo's take too.
9:12:39 AM 
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