I used to naively wonder how societies allowed themselves to be controlled by undemocratic regimes. In our case, it appears that it is simply that no one wants to bother with the uncomfortable details. We have gotten to the point where we don’t believe anything so how can we really know? He says, she says. At least the TV is good.

Press release

The statisticians go on to note that precincts with hand-counted paper ballots showed no statistical discrepancy between the exit polls and the official results, but for other voting technologies, the overall discrepancy was far larger than the polls’ margin of error.

The study, “Response to Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004 Report”, was co-authored by a diverse group of academicians specializing in statistics and mathematics affiliated with University of Notre Dame, University of Pennsylvania, University of Utah, Cornell University, University of Wisconsin, Southern Methodist University, Case Western Reserve University and Temple University. Their study does not support claims made by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International that exit poll errors were to blame for the unprecedented 5.5% discrepancy between exit polls and official 2004 election results.