Letters to the Editor
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omooex:
In a world without polling, perhaps plebiscites would take over as the way of judging public opinion, or perhaps people would simply vote for the candidate they believed in, and then the most popular would win. In a sense it doesn't matter if polls are accurate; they are not a replacement for political activism as a way of making the voice of people heard. Lastly, I can't imagine that things could be worse than they've been for the past decade or so.
-- omooex
I continue to disagree with your assessment that polls aren't usually accurate or that they are usually based on bullshit framed questions. Also I think you underestimate people. I think people "vote for the candidate they believe in" regardless of polls. Sure, polls are a contributing factor into the ferreting out process that people use, but all in all, it's just one factor of many.
You can find plenty of crap pollsters, no doubt, but you can also find legitimate pollsters who have had their polling data turn out to be very accurate very much of the time in regards to the real-live outcome of what they had done their polling about.
Unless you think polling can be outlawed or that a constitutional amendment could be put in place to make polling unconstitutional, then polling is here to stay. Obviously neither one of those two things are going to happen.
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@ ondelette
But the news people just might be expected to do news at least for a minute out of every hour, no? The campaign the politicos run is tailored to look good on TV, the TV people decide what that means. If they wanted substance, everybody would polish their substance until it shone like gold.
Actually it's the audience that's the final arbiter. Matthews get viewers based on verbal volume and manufactured controversy. It's appealing to people looking for drama, which for the most part is anyone interested in politics. You know the saying "politics is show business for ugly people?" The "substance" that gets polished is soundbites thrown out in the hope that they are picked up for discussion. In a sense, soundbites are a lure for free advertising via the editorializing on political talk shows.
As pointed out repeatedly, the most direct candidates with the most consistent ideas are shunted to the side in favor of those with the more "interesting" dramatic aspects. It's what builds ratings. My own guess about Hew Hampshire is that the polls were right, in that they reflected New Hampshire resident views, but unpolled Out of State voters changed the vote results. It's why ID cards are needed. Time will tell.
I also have to wonder how much of this is a product of competing with the blogosphere. No matter what one thinks of Glenn's politics, it's the dramatic presentation that draws attention. That's what Matthews has to compete against and try to leverage the immediacy of TV. These days that unscripted aspect is all that TV news has going for it. If I want facts, I go to Google, not CNN. I don't have to wait for the story cycle and I can get as in depth as I like from a variety of sources. That is truly hard to beat, but, and it's a big "but," only we the political junkies are going to do that. Time, cycncism, and the grind of living, steer those wanting not to work for their info, to entertainment tinged with the aura of real life.
As for Lancet... it's the political aspects that are the point. It's a liberal project funded and facilitated by Democrat activists to push emotional buttons with original data kept under wraps. The math is not my bag, but I also find it interesting that the start point is one of the world's lowest death rates, less than a generation after a bloody ten year war with Iran. In the end, most people use it only to make emotional points in comments while "serious" people use surveys in the middle or lower range of estimates. That says a lot.
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Electoral Watchdog Group on NH Vote
The facile hackability of the Diebold machines used in New Hampshire has been well doucumented. See, for example, the HBO documentary, Hacking Democracy.
Black Box Voting is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, 501c(3) organization funded by citizen donations that was featured in the HBO documentary cited above.
1-9-08: New England voting machine firm has executive criminal record
They program every single voting machine in New Hampshire, Connecticut, almost all of Massachusetts, Vermont, and Maine. But did state officials in five New England states ever do a criminal background check on this company's executives? Do the laws of these five states even ALLOW them to hire convicted criminals for services paid for by the state? What about over 500 local towns and municipalities?
Black Box Voting has sent out 10 freedom of information requests, called "right to know requests" in New Hampshire, and public records requests elsewhere.
[Voting machine executive]Hajjar's conviction was in 1987, but we have asked also for complaints filed on a threat allegedly made in recent years to a New Hampshire woman, and any other reports for Hajjar or LHS owner John Silvestro.
Until recently, LHS employees were listed on the company Web site. Now the pages identifying who programs New England voting machines have been taken down.
We want to know exactly what the secretaries of state/commonwealth know about LHS Associates.
Did they know of Hajjar's criminal background? If so, why's he toting voting machine cards around in the trunk of his car in case they are "needed" in live elections, and if not, why not?
Link to Kenneth Hajjar criminal record:
http://www.bbvdocs.org/LHS/hajjar.png
VOTING MACHINES - SKILLFULLY MANIPULATED - LEAVE NO EVIDENCE
The famous "Hursti Hack" of the memory card in the voting system version used in New Hampshire preloaded the card with minus and plus votes, passed the "zero test" at the beginning of the day, and after 6 no and 2 yes votes were fed through it, pronounced [on the machine's paper printout] election totals of 7 yes and 1 no. Yes, these are the cards Hajjar totes in trunk.
Good news for the citizens of Connecticut. According to Brad Friedman, Hajjar was booted out of the state after he posted "You're full of shit" on BradBlog, a liberal political site that does kick-ass voting machine stories.
Whether Hajjar works in Connecticut or not, he works at LHS, and it is inside the Methuen, Massachusetts-based factory that the memory cards are programmed for Connecticut and the rest of New England.
Blackbox Voting(blackboxvoting.org)
KR