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Carol Boyle: the discrepancy between exit polls and the actual results
Submitted by Howard2 on Saturday, November 6, 2004 - 10:23
Dear Disappointed Dems, Last night and this morning all I've been hearing is wonderment about the discrepancy between exit polls (which predicted a Kerry win) and the actual results (which ... well, you know). Now if I were a scientist and I did a field study and got certain results, and then I checked my computer results and found consistent differences, I would check my computer programming. Who is checking the actual programming in the voting machines? Who validated and certified the programs? I think the machines should be taken (Freedom of Information) and the software programs should be checked again, especially where the exit polls and the results differed. It would be very easy for a program to cheat when tallying the votes being cast. It could be done a million ways. A simple programming algorithm something like the following would do it: A. Set up a Bush counter, a Kerry counter, and an X counter B. If the voter votes for Bush, add 1 to the Bush counter If the voter votes for Kerry, do the following routine: If X counter is less than 99, add 1 to the X counter and go back to B for the next voter If X counter equals 99, add 1 to Bush counter Put the 99 in the Kerry counter and reset the X counter to 0 Go back to instruction B and continue for the next voter C. After the last vote is cast, Print out the tally from the Bush counter Print out the tally from the Kerry counter In the example, one percent of the Kerry vote is redirected to Bush. The magic number doesn't have to be 99; it could be 50 or 75 or whatever. The total of the Bush counter and the Kerry counter will still equal the number of actual voters so it's hard to see that the counts have been distorted. Who has checked or is checking the programming? Carol Boyle
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