A report was released by the Election Defense Alliance yesterday that everyone should read. Here's the press release:
Major Miscount of Vote in 2006 Election:
Reported Results Skewed Toward Republicans by 4 percent, 3 million votes
Election Defense Alliance Calls for Investigation
BOSTON, MA - November 16, 2006
CONTACT: Jonathan Simon 617.538.6012
Election Defense Alliance, a national election integrity organization, issued an urgent call for further investigation into the 2006 election results and a moratorium on deployment of all electronic election equipment, after analysis of national exit polling data indicated a major undercount of Democratic votes and an overcount of Republican votes in U.S. House and Senate races across the country. "These findings raise urgent questions about the electoral machinery and vote counting systems used in the United States," according to Sally Castleman, National Chair of EDA. This is a national indictment of the vote counting process in the United States!
As in 2004, the exit polling data and the reported election results don't add up. "But this time there is an objective yardstick in the methodology which establishes the validity of the Exit Poll and challenges the accuracy of the election returns," said Jonathan Simon, co-founder of Election Defense Alliance. The Exit Poll findings are detailed in a paper published today on the EDA website.
The 2006 Edison-Mitofsky Exit Poll was commissioned by a consortium of major news organizations. Its conclusions were based on the responses of a very large sample, of more than 10,000 voters nationwide*, and posted at 7:07 p.m. Election Night, on the CNN website. That Exit Poll showed Democratic House candidates had out-polled Republicans by 55.0 percent to 43.5 percent - an 11.5 percent margin - in the total vote for the U.S. House, sometimes referred to as the "generic" vote.
By contrast, the election results showed Democratic House candidates won 52.7 percent of the vote to 45.1 percent for Republican candidates, producing a 7.6 percent margin in the total vote for the U.S. House -- 3.9 percent less than the Edison-Mitofsky poll. This discrepancy, far beyond the poll's +/- 1 percent margin of error, has less than a one in 10,000 likelihood of occurring by chance.
The full report is here: Landslide Denied: Exit Polls vs. Vote Count 2006
I don't know enough about statistics or this organization to know just how credible this is, and perhaps some of you will be able to shed light on it. If it's credible, what can (or should) people do?