So anyway, I recommend everyone read the article whose link Joel posted. It's a pretty good, highly informative article. The only issue I take with it is when it gets into exit polling. It suggests that people who point to exit polling as a clear sign that Ohio was screwed up are wrong, because most people thing exit polls are accurate to within tenths of a percent.
Luckily, I'm not most people. Traditionally, exit polls are accurate to within 3 or 4 points. In theory, this means that the nation could have definitely gone either way (as it clearly did) in the popular vote, because the exit polls suggested that Kerry would only win by 3 points, which puts the US in the too close to call range. However, Kerry was supposed to win Ohio by 6 points. This means he should have won by somewhere between 10 points and 2 points, but he should have definitely won.
The obvious reason this guy thinks it's wrong to point to exit polling as a sign of inaccuracy is because he's looking at the national vote. In the article, the author argues that becoming president by winning Ohio would have been immoral for Kerry to do, just as it was immoral for Bush to become president by winning Florida in 2000.
Kerry clearly should have won Ohio according to exit polls, even taking into account statistical error in polling. But he should only have clearly won the US according to exit polls, if statistical error did not exist. Only people who think exit polls are accurate to within tenths of a percentage would think Kerry should have won the US.
In this way, I guess, the author exposes his own partisan opinion. Specifically, that he does not approve of the electoral college.
Anyway, the rest of the article reads very well and even adds some fun points that I didn't know. For example, our favorite nefarious character, Mr. Blackwell, attempted to make it a rule that any voter registration that was not on 80 weight paper would not be counted. Also, people couldn't mail in their registrations.
He eventually rescinded that first one, because his own office handed out registration forms that were thinner than 80 weight and because such a huge stink was raised about it. The other was debatably illegal, and I'm suddenly blanking on how that was resolved.
However, the story doesn't end there. Blackwell remains a major player in Ohio and the midterms are just around the corner. Plus, in ohio the midterms are a time of electing the governor, a position Mr. Blackwell is running for.
Consider the following paragraphs from an editorial in today's NY Times. (free registration required)
Florida's Legislature, like Ohio's, is controlled by Republicans. Throughout American history both parties have shown a willingness to try to use election law to get results they might otherwise not win at the polls. But right now it is clearly the Republicans who believe they have an interest in keeping the voter base small. Mr. Blackwell and other politicians who insist on making it harder to vote never say, of course, that they are worried that get-out-the-vote drives will bring too many poor and minority voters into the system. They say that they want to reduce fraud. However, there is virtually no evidence that registration drives are leading to fraud at the polls.
But there is one clear way that Ohio's election system is corrupt. Decisions about who can vote are being made by a candidate for governor. Mr. Blackwell should hand over responsibility for elections to a decision maker whose only loyalty is to the voters and the law.
You know, this Blackwell fellow may be very good at skirting the edges of illegal, but I can't say that that is a particularly noble trait in a guy running for governor.
In other news, someone besides me was chastised for being boring on this blog! yahoo!
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