The Democratic Primaries 2008: Managing Electoral Dynamics Via Covert Vote-Count Manipulation

At this first critical turning point in the Democratic contest an Obama victory would have, in the view of most analysts, effectively ended Clinton's campaign.  That victory-augured in pre-election polling, exit polls, and hand-counted ballots-vanished into the black box scanners provided by Diebold and programmed by LHS. Instead, Clinton was credited with a stunning comeback, given new life, and the nomination battle continued.

Super Tuesday was essentially a standoff, each candidate doing what was necessary to remain viable. There were, however, several exit poll-vote count disparities far beyond the expected margin of error, each involving a shift toward Clinton.

In Massachusetts, another LHS state like New Hampshire, the shift was a whopping 15.5%, turning a projected narrow Obama victory into a 15% Clinton rout. In Arizona, site of some of the most dubious counting antics over the past several election cycles, the pro-Clinton shift was 11%, again reversing the outcome. And in New Jersey, where machines are currently under high scrutiny supported by a court order, the shift was 8.6%. Each of these shifts was well beyond the margin of error of the respective polls.  Each resulted in shifts in delegate count to Obama's detriment, as well as the loss of two victories that would have put a very different complexion on the outcome of Super Tuesday as a whole. The overall effect was, again, to maintain Clinton's viability.

In the weeks following Super Tuesday, Obama racked up a succession of impressive wins-including every caucus state, where vote counting is often face-to-face, and subject to greater scrutiny.  As a result he pulled well ahead in the delegate count, and began to take on the mantle of inevitability.

Once more, pundits were calling the race all but over, and Texas and Ohio were often described as Clinton's last stand. She needed wins in both states, it was flatly stated, to continue in the race. Even Clinton's own campaign conceded as much. In the weeks before the election, Obama had closed an initial gap in both states and was running even or ahead in pre-election polling.

Ohio

In Ohio once again we are confronted with a discrepancy between exit polls and official tallies.The initial published exit poll, posted shortly after poll closing, showed a 3% Clinton margin (51.1% to 47.9%), while the final official vote count showed a 10% Clinton margin (54.3% to 44.0%). This disparity was well outside the exit poll's margin of error.  The official vote count was also a significant departure from a compendium of pre-election polls, which showed Obama gaining ground and approaching equality.[3] Viewed in isolation, Ohio could be explained as a "late Clinton surge" that caught the pre-election pollsters by surprise. Primaries are indeed fluid and volatile, as elections go, and there were reports of organized attempts to encourage Republican crossover voting for Clinton, though the Republican crossover vote may have been less robust than initially reported.  It can also plausibly be viewed as another in a succession of "cover stories" (for example, the massive but phantom after-dinner Evangelical turnout offered up by Rove as a factor in reversing the outcome in 2004) that could well provide a relatively benign explanation for more nefarious operations. But instead there was a parade of contests in important states in the 2008 nomination battle in which a substantial exit poll-vote count disparity worked in Clinton's favor-including New Hampshire,  Massachusetts, Illinois, New Jersey, Arkansas, Arizona, California, and now Ohio and, as we will see, Texas and Rhode Island.

In contrast, we have observed to date no battleground state primary with a significant[4] exit poll-vote count disparity in Obama's favor.Some have invoked the so-called "Bradley effect" to account for this string of disparities. According to this theory, some white voters who would not vote for a black candidate in the privacy of the voting booth are "shamed" into indicating to pollsters (i.e., in public) that they chose that candidate.  But research into the Bradley effect has established that it is, at best, an inconsistent and relatively rare phenomenon, very unlikely to account for such a pervasive pattern as identified above. It is only if one is unwilling to consider any possibility of computerized vote mistabulation that such superficially plausible theories as the Bradley effect take their place in the front of the line of explanations.

Rhode Island

The exit poll-vote count disparity in Rhode Island was 14.1%; the exit poll posted after poll closing had Clinton up 4.1% (51.6% to 47.5%) over Obama, yet the official vote count had Clinton up 18.2% (58.8% to 40.6%). This is far outside the exit poll's margin of error, and on a par with the similarly perplexing and bizarre 15.5% disparity favoring Clinton in Massachusetts on Super Tuesday. It is reasonable to ask, if exit polls are this far off, why bother exit polling? (Or perhaps just as reasonable to ask, if vote counts are this far off, why bother voting?) 

Texas

In Texas there was a relatively modest 4% discrepancy between the first posted exit polls and official tallies-in the usual direction and larger than the margin of error, and also in this case, withheld from the public until more than an hour after poll closing.  While most primary exit polls are posted a few minutes after the polls close, an hour's delay enables ample opportunity for adjustment of exit polls toward conformity with the incoming vote count, and so the posted exit polls may understate the magnitude of the discrepancy.  But the disparity in Texas between early voting results vs. Election Day in-precinct voting was of staggering proportions that seemed to defy explanation.The earliest returns posted on network websites showed a total of approximately 740,000 votes cast in the Democratic primary with 0% of precincts reporting. This was the early/absentee vote tally, which in some states is tabulated and available for release immediately upon poll closing. Obama's vote at that point was 436,034 to 303,276 for Clinton, or 59% to 41%, an 18% margin. But by the time the counting was done the next morning, Clinton had a 51% to 48% victory . . . a whopping 21% margin reversal.

What was even more stunning, however, was that Clinton had caught up to Obama before even a quarter of the election day vote had been tallied: with 23% of election day precincts reporting and almost exactly as many at-precinct votes as early votes counted, the overall count stood at Obama 711,759, Clinton 711,183 (49%-49%), a dead heat. To catch up so quickly and produce those numbers, Clinton had to win the at-precinct vote in that quarter of Texas precincts by 59% to 41%... an exact reversal of the early voting Obama landslide.

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