October 31, 2006 at 23:10:17

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Do Your Own Election Verification Exit Poll!

By Stephanie Singer (about the author)     Page 1 of 4 page(s)

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For OpEdNews: Stephanie Frank Singer - Writer

In response to the requests we've received, Election Integrity and the Vote
Count Protection Project have published do-it-yourself exit polling
instructions that citizens can use to verify whether votes are counted as
cast.

Until US institutions demonstrate a commitment to democracy at home in the
US, this is one of the most useful tools that citizens can use to fight for
our most fundamental right, the right which is, in the words of Chief
Justice John Roberts, "preservative of all other rights."

Please distribute these instructions far and wide.

Instructions for Conducting an Election Verification Exit Poll

By Kenneth F. Warren, Ph.D., President, The Warren Poll and
Steve Freeman, Ph.D., Director, Election Integrity

Posted: October 29, 2006


Disclaimer: These instructions will help with the planning of an election verification exit poll (EVEP). However, any exit poll will be challenging to conduct in practice. Competent polling of any kind requires knowledge, practical experience, adequate resources, and common sense. A few pages of instructions cannot possibly answer all of the questions that might arise in the implementation of an exit poll, nor can they guarantee a successful poll. Therefore, we can neither take responsibility, nor guarantee the validity of results for any poll that we do not directly supervise.

Why we make these instructions publicly available: There is no substitute for professional experience in polling. The Vote Count Protection Project conducts rigorous, professional election verification exit polling, but at present we have limited funds with which we can poll but a few districts. We therefore publish these instructions in response to the requests we've received from so many of you who are fighting for democratic rights, in recognition that we have little choice but to take matters into our own hands. In jurisdictions throughout the US, election processes provide little reason for confidence. Bev Harris has aptly characterized US voting processes as "black box voting"[1]: citizen presses a button, something happens within the million or so lines of proprietary code inside the machine, and perhaps the vote is recorded as it was cast. Or not. We have no way of knowing. That's because the counts produced are inadequately verified, and the machines are inadequately audited and inspected. In many cases the systems produce counts which are inherently unverifiable. And all of it is beyond the public purview. Even when confronted with evidence of miscount, election officials have denied public access to voting machines, claiming that contractual obligations prohibit outside examination of their machines.[2]

Unfortunately, the single national exit poll conducted by a consortium of six major national media outlets (AP, CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, and FOX) is little better. Just as your votes and the processes by which they are tabulated are the fiercely guarded private property of voting machine companies, so the exit poll questionnaires and the processes by which they are tabulated and "corrected" are the consortia's fiercely guarded private property. This was made clear by the pollsters' response to the nationwide seven percentage point discrepancy between the exit polls and the official count in the 2004 presidential election; the pollsters refused to release precinct-level data, even to qualified independent researchers.[3] Indeed, we only know of that discrepancy – one which represents nine million votes nationwide – because a technical glitch prevented the pollsters from promptly uploading "corrected" results, that is, results adjusted to conform to the official count.[4]

For 2006 and future elections, the exit pollsters have stated that they will not release "early" exit poll data, by which they mean data not yet adjusted so as to conform with the official count, even to their media clients.[5] Of course, once data are "corrected," they are no longer true exit poll results; rather, they accord an unwarranted legitimacy upon the official numbers.

Until US institutions demonstrate a commitment to democracy at home in the US, we can only do what we can to give Americans a tool with which to fight for our most fundamental right, the right which is, in the words of Chief Justice John Roberts, "preservative of all other rights."

What is an Election Verification Exit Poll? An EVEP differs sharply from a media exit poll in purpose, design, and methodological rigor. The purpose of a media exit poll is to strategically poll many precincts to get a representative sample for an entire district (e.g., a state) so election outcomes can be predicted. Demographic data are obtained in media exit polls so pollsters can tell how Blacks voted, women voted, rural residents voted, etc. Most of the polling is done before 2:00 pm so the exit poll results can be tabulated and presented by the news outlets immediately after the polls close. The purpose of the EVEP is not to predict election results, but rather to audit or verify the accuracy of vote counts in selected precincts. Thus, the objective is to concentrate on targeted precincts and to poll comprehensively in these precincts so election results (in these precincts only) can be verified. In media exit polls many fewer voters in a particular precinct are sampled than in an EVEP. Consequently, an EVEP should be considerably more accurate for the targeted precincts than a media exit poll would be. If EVEP results differ significantly from the actual results in the targeted precincts, it is a strong indicator that the vote count may not be correct.

How to Conduct an Election Verification Exit Poll. Here are the steps that will enable you to conduct a meaningful EVEP.

1. Set your objectives. The first step in planning for an EVEP is to determine what you want to test. What precincts would satisfy your research objectives? Are you testing for accuracy in precincts that have a reputation for "funny business" or vote fraud? Or are you testing for accuracy in precincts that are using different kinds of voting machines, in order to compare machine performance? You may simply want some confidence that votes in your home precinct are being counted as cast.

2. Obtain Basic Information. This includes: a map of the district; a current listing of all the polling places within the district, including the addresses of the polling places, the precincts at each polling place, and the number of registered voters in each precinct; a history of voting at these precincts going back to at least six years; and the laws governing what exit pollsters are allowed to do at the polling places (e.g., that exit pollsters must not poll any closer than 50 feet from a polling place). Begin your search for information with the State Secretary of State office which will give you contact numbers to the county election boards within the state; you can get specific election data from the county election boards.

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