What would Donald Trump do if the Exit Polls showed him winning key states before Election Results announced that he had actually lost them instead? It’s an excellent question (that virtually answers itself), raised by my guest on today’s BradCast. [Audio link to show is posted below.]
Yes, once again, according to several analyses, the disparities between Exit Polling and Election Results, as reported by unverified computer tabulators, suggest that one or the other of those two sets of data may be wrong. The first Exit Polls released by the media consortium on Election Night suggested that Hillary Clinton won in key battleground states, such as Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan and North Carolina, that she ended up reportedly losing.
Figuring out what did or didn’t happen, of course, remains very important. Had just about 50,000 votes across the three states of WI, PA and MI alone been recorded for Hillary Clinton instead of Donald Trump, she would be the President-Elect today.
Dr. Jonathon Simon, author of CODE RED: Computerized Election Theft and The New American Century
“There are huge disparities, way outside the margin of error, pretty much all in the same direction and, yeah, outcome reversing,” he tells me. “So the question becomes, what do you believe? I’d be the first to say we’re not going to prove anything with exit polls. But what we really have is two sets of really lousy evidence. We have exit polls — you could ask, ‘Why would you believe them?’ — and you have the vote counts. And you could also ask, ‘Why would you believe them?’ They’re concealed, they’re computerized, they’re outsourced, they’re privatized — whoever is programming them has the basic control over how those votes are counted or how fictitious it could be. They’re also subject to outsider hacking, as well as insider rigging.”
“Let me put it this way,” Simon continues, “the question that I would want to put to anybody keeping score at home would be, ‘What would Trump do?’ If these same numbers came out, only they were reversed — in a parallel universe, he won the popular vote, and Hillary Clinton won the Presidency and the electoral college, and there were all these states in which the exit polls favored Trump and somehow the vote counts favored Clinton — you can bet your bottom dollar, based on what he said going into the election, based on the attitude he had about not conceding, about making sure if he felt there was any suspicion that he would challenge, that they would be challenging these results.”
But what of the response from Edison Research, the sole provider of Exit Polling data for the national media, that the methodology used for Exit Polling in U.S. elections, unlike polls designed for use in other countries, should not be used as an indication that the reported vote counts are fraudulent or otherwise in error? And why do these apparent “red shifts” in vote counts, as Simon describes the difference in the two data sets, tend to happen mostly to Democratic candidates (or, in the case of the Democratic Primary, to the more progressive candidate, Bernie Sanders) rather than to Republicans?
Simon, a longtime election integrity advocate, and I discuss all of those questions and much more, including the real problem with this type of analysis between Exits and Results: the data that create both are still kept secret from public scrutiny, leaving everyone guessing — and serving to further undermine U.S. democracy as a result.
“The system is set up to be concealed, and the government and the media are working pretty hard to make sure it stays concealed,” Simon explains. “And you’ve got a bunch of people with democracy in their hearts who are working just as hard, if not harder, to try to un-conceal it. It’s an uphill battle, but that’s what we’re doing right now.”
Also today, speaking of undermining U.S. democracy, more on the problem of fake news versus real news in a ‘post-truth’ world, and how fake, pro-Trump/anti-Clinton news stories received more exposure on social media in the run-up to the Presidential Election than news from actual news outlets did. But, as we also report, even the real, theoretically legitimate new sites continue to undermine democracy with fake news, even today…
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[audio:http://bradblog.com/audio/BradCast_BradFriedman_JonathanSimonExitPollDisparity_FakeVsRealNews_111716.mp3]
(Snail mail support to “Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028” always welcome too!)
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Dear Brad,
Great show. I’m going to post it on my facebook page and try to point people to your and Jonathan Simon’s comprehensive election integrity primer.
An editing note–I think Jonathan misspoke at one point. It’s right near 43:27. He’s talking about how if there was an overseas election with our kind of exit poll discrepancies that the U.S would be raising a big stink. His misspeaking, if I’m not mistaken, was in saying,”..if the candidate that the U.S was not backing lost…” and I think he meant the opposite of that. Sorry to nitpick, but I feel like our side has to strive to be a zillion percent clear cuz it’s such an uphill slog.
I was very happy to hear that so many more people are involved now.
The magical, surgically-precise Red-Shift strikes again!
The biggest variations were in the swing-states, too.
Personally, I’m torn between
OMG and WTF on this.
I listened last night and I had to listen to you and Jonathan Simon again this morning. Just tremendous. What a service to our country. I don’t know who’s more under-appreciated than you guys and what you’re trying to do. I’m so tremendously grateful that you are out there plugging away at it. I’m out here miles and miles away, taking care of Mom, and doing my little bit to try to help. A hundred monkeys.
Hey Brad,
I’m a little slow. So you’re saying that the exit pollsters themselves are among the many who have no understanding of the problems/reasons to doubt the machines?
I’m not sure one could overstate the importance or power of denial/ignorance in our country.
I have a Change.org petition attempting to draw national attention to this problem. The link is here. https://www.change.org/p/barack-obama-stop-election-manipulation?recruiter=638103296&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink
David Lasagna asked @4:
Correct. They are absolutely convinced that the reported results are the “gold standard” and everything else should conform to them. They are first to say that THEIR own work was wrong and/or in error when polls (both pre-election and exit) do not match what is reported by the completely unverified machines.
That is true even when dozens of different pollsters (pre-election pollsters in this case, since the Exit Poll business is generally a monopoly) all use their own completely independent methodologies, all come up with pretty much the same predictions, and then the election results end up reporting the complete opposite.
They immediately believe their work is wrong and it NEVER occurs to them that election results, secretly tallied and never verified, could be wrong instead.
At least that’s according to the ones I spoken with over the years (as well as those who have been interviewed by others.)
Thanks, Brad. Completely stunning. I’ll say it again–All too often our principle motivating forces seem to be ignorance, fear, and denial.
Wow. Thanks for the petition Clint Curtis!
That video is one of a kind for the election integrity movement.
Dear Brad,
So I’m linking your work and Soares’s work and Jonathan Simon’s work and your recent excellent Bradcast conversation with him on facebook. And I’m repeatedly posting stuff about how completely crazy the way we do elections is. That there is no way to know if the vote is right. Anywhere. And that we really need to know. A California friend from dance camp looks into the California situation and informs me that–
1.California requires a 1% random sampling to check against the machine count.
2.A copy of the programming code is held in escrow and available for examination should there be discrepancies between the sampling and the reported count.
3.Because California ballots with that day’s specific ballot layout come out the day of the election and the code is locked down before that, the machine doesn’t know what line any candidate’s name is gonna be on and only knows to count lines(I’m paraphrasing).
4.Because of all of the above, California elections would be really hard to rig.
I didn’t know any of that and don’t want to be talking out my ass when I’m urging friends, relatives, acquaintances, and strangers of the need to look at and fix our electile dysfunction.
So I wanted to ask you as my principle mentor and source on these matters if what my friend outlined is true.
Sorry. Know you’re busy. And fighting a cold.
(I’m a bit obsessed with this all again.)
David Lasagna asked @9:
I’ll hit them one at a time. For the record, your friend sounds like someone who has taken what election officials in the state of CA generally say when they wish to poo-poo any concerns — without actually looking at any concerns. So allow me to respond one at a time…And feel free to share with your friend…
Yes, that’s generally the law. Though, as you know, that 1% can be easily gamed (here’s where two election officials were convicted of gaming a 3% “random” hand-count of the Presidential election in OH when a recount was demanded by the Greens and Libertarians after the 2004 election. That was in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), the largest Democratic county in the state. If you click through the links, you’ll see that the Judge was convinced the conspiracy went higher to include then Cuyahoga County Clerk Michael Vu. He was eventually pushed out of the state, due to that and other malfeasance. He is now the Registrar of Voters in San Diego County, CA.)
Aside from being easy to game, the CA 1% post-election audits are also easy to ignore. They are routinely found to NOT match reported results, but they are accepted as is anyway, since there is a requirement for the sampling, but no requirement for a REMEDY if the audit doesn’t match the original count. Former Sec. of State Debra Bowen (D) tried to do something about that. Current Sec. of State Alex Padilla (D) allowed it to expire and has done nothing about it.
True that it’s held in escrow in CA. And, theoretically, it’s available for examination, but only to certain approved people. (Top election officials generally). But the source code is not as much of a concern in CA, where the source has already been examined (and found to be easily penetrated in seconds times, for every certified system that we use.) The larger concern would be the programmable data cards and insider access to the tabulators, since insiders could switch results in seconds time, with almost zero probability of being discovered, since there are virtually no oversight checks and balances that the knowing insider official couldn’t work around. Eg, in some counties, like Fresno, they select “random” precincts for the 1% audit weeks in advance…somewhat defeating the purpose of that “randomness”.
Also, certain ballots are left out of the random sample entirely now (as per the direction of SoS Padilla), such as late absentees and provisionals.
The layout does NOT “come out the day of the election”. It comes out beforehand. Moreover, in places like L.A. County (largest number of ballots in the state), no ballots are tallied at the precinct. They are ALL tallied at the county’s central HQ.
Nonetheless, for counties that use precinct-based scanners, yes, the scanners don’t know what line is what, until they are told as much by the memory cards that are placed into them (often days before the election, before the machines are often sent home for “sleepovers” with poll workers for days in advance, when anything can be done to them.)
Guess it depends on your definition of “hard”.
Feel free to share the above any way you like. As noted, it sounds like the items that election officials tell folks all the time when they either wish to instill confidence (misplaced or otherwise) in voters and/or when they don’t know what they hell they are talking about.
You’re correct. So, going back to bed now. 🙁
I know the feeling. 🙁
Thanks for giving a damn, amigo.
Thanks so much, Brad!!!
As per usual, clear and clarifying. Have passed it on.
love,
Dave
I wish I had the power to convince every American to listen to this interview with Dr. Jonathon Simon and watch, “Murder Spies and Voting Lies”.
Most likely isn’t going to happen. 🙁
Just watched “Murder” again after a few years. Good as ever. Seeing the old green blog clips took me back. 🙂
Anybody who would turn down a cool million and make his life harder, like Clint Curtis did, will always be the good guy.