Exit Poll Madness - Analyst Steve Freeman & Company Offer False Choice

by Lynn Landes  3/3/05

(This article got interesting if not nice emails from Dave Dodge and Kathy Dopp, but others didn't agree with them.)

Beware of exit polls and the analysts who study them.  These folks would have us believe that exit polls tell the gospel truth.  They even quote the duplicitous toe-sucking Dick Morris to make their case.  "Exit polls are almost never wrong," Morris writes.  The man is a known creep. 

Exit polls are completely non-transparent and unverifiable.  They're as bad as voting by machine, absentee, or early.  There's no meaningful oversight to either enterprise.   Worse yet, a belief in exit polls is a trap that's had tragic consequences for elections around the world.  
 

There's growing evidence that exit polls sponsored by the Bush Administration and the International Republican Institute were used to support rigged elections in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine.  Scott Ritter, the former U.N. weapons inspector, recently said that his information is that the Iraq election was fixed.  Even the situation in the Ukraine is cause for concern as the Western governments used their own poll to discredit the first election and support the second one.  It seems that the West's favorite candidate, winner Viktor Yushchenko, promised to privatize lots of government industries and services.  

Although the elections in these countries were conducted using paper ballots and (mostly) hand counts, the counting took place behind closed doors and the results took weeks to announce.  What did our corporate news media report to the world on the Election Night for these countries?  Not the actual vote tallies, but instead the corporate news media jubilantly announced exit polls results.  Most people didn't seem to notice the difference.  And that's thanks to people like University of Pennsylvania professor Steve F. Freeman. 

"Exit polls are highly accurate," claims Freeman in a recent report.  Where did he get that information?  In America, the networks completely control the exit poll operation on election night through their National Election Pool (NEP).  It's a top secret operation.  They allow no observers and provide no proof that their data is real.  They completely stonewall reporters inquiries.  This is what the Collier brothers, late-authors of the book, Votescam: The Stealing of America discovered, and so did I.  Worse yet, back in the 1970's in Miami, the Colliers caught the networks simply making up the exit poll numbers.  My theory is that the networks do extensive pre-election polling to get a good lay-of-the-land, and then on Election Night perform a squeeze play on candidates. (see http://www.ecotalk.org/NEP.htm).  And although the networks' polling organization has changed its name over the decades from News Election Service to Voter News Service to National Election Pool, it's pretty much the same cast of characters.  Warren Mitofsky started exit polling in the 1960's and he's still in charge today.  

So, why does Freeman have such faith in these polls?  Even John Zogby said that the non-transparency of the work done by Warren Mitofsky and Edison Media Research was highly unethical.  And Mitofsky himself has issued nonsensical statements about the 2004 election results.  Does Freeman want to believe the polls because it helps prove a point he's trying to make - that voting results were rigged?  There's other data that he could use in that regard.  Or, is there something more at play here?  We've had more than one instance of the guys in white hats (i.e., Dr. Roy Saltman and the folks at MIT) doing good work initially and then going over to the dark side.  It's almost like a bait and switch kind of thing.

I called Professor Freeman to inquire.  I was polite and businesslike, but the conversation lasted less than a minute.  "Don't talk to me.  Don't contact me.  Don't speak to me again,"  he said.  I was a bit stunned.  I had obviously hit a nerve.  Apparently, the professor is not accustomed to having his research methods questioned.  It's an interesting attitude for a scientist.  Or, is it his corporate background that kicked in? (See http://www.appliedresearch.us/sf/)   Anyway, he hit a nerve with me as well.  I gave him a day to get back to me with an explanation for why he has so much faith in the networks' exit polls.  He didn't bother.