markusd posted a Diary earlier today that led to an extensive discussion of the
Scoop article entitled: "Complete US Exit Poll Data Confirms Net Suspicions":
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/17/105424/71#172
The Scoop link is:
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2004/11/17/171943/29/10#10
As it happens, a potential test the `red shift' hypothesis emerged today because of the mandated recount of WA State ballots given historical contest for State Governor.
Ballots will need to be checked, one by one, and the cost of recording the exact vote for Pres/VP from each ballot is hardly an argument against doing so, because the ballots will need to be checked to determine each voter's choice for Governor.
One would expect no resistance from Republicans to check each ballot for the Pres/VP vote because Senator Kerry won anyway.
Senator Kerry could hardly object because he won, anyway.
In fact, if anyone objects it can only be interpreted as an obstruction of verifying each vote - why would anyone who cares about Democracy object to verifying each vote.
One can imagine what a unique opportunity this is for the ACLU, Common Cause, the Carter Center and other nonpartisan organizations to step forward and contribute time and funds to ensure this most essential aspect of our franchise is proven to be accurate. One can imagine many Kossacks contacting those organizations and requesting they help count the vote in WA State.
One can imagine that those who manufactured any electronic/digital device used at any stage in the election process in WA State being fully supportive of a hand count and exhaustive scrutiny of the software, firmware, security, access logs and network I/O used in the tabulating of the counts.
One would expect that many if not all members of the dKos community would write letters, be supportive of a fund to ensure that as accurate a count is done and one would expect that Edison-Mitofsky polling company and the major media corporations who are their clients would be very interested in checking the `red shift.'
In fact, one could almost imagine that Edison-Mitofsky and their media clients would be willing to fund a similar comparative analysis in several other `red shift' states - maybe they just need to be asked the way Kossacks know how to ask!
For all those, like me, who thrive on data; let's push as hard as we can to collect the data in WA State.
"It's about America" [the one on life support and in need of immediate, informed, heroic, comprehensive treatment]