As Raw Story originally reported on Wednesday, the Exit Polling on the day of the Election showed Kerry ahead by robust margins in many states. By the time the day had ended Kerry's margin had been eclipsed by Bush's. But, notably, that only happened in states that do not have fully voter-verifiable paper trails (e.g. E-Voting machines that don't offer printed/verifiable paper receipts for the voter to confirm that their vote was recorded correctly).

Here are a couple of rudimentary graphics now to show the difference.

In the 10 states polled where there were voter-verifiable paper trails, the Final Results barely differed from the Exit Polls (which, until this year, have been widely regarded as highly accurate since they are taken as folks actually leave the polling place). The average change from Exit Poll to Final Results in these states was a tiny .8% gain for Bush. (Exit Numbers displayed in BLUE, Final Numbers in RED):

And now look at the data from states where there are no paper trails. Note the huge difference in Final Results that changed radically from the Exit Polling results. The average gain for Bush --- in these states only --- was 6.25% over the Exit Polling numbers!

What could possibly account for the huge differences there between the Exit Polls and the Final Results? And only in the Non-Paper Ballot States?

The numbers shown in these graphs seem to be taken from the "4pm Exit Polls" as shown on this chart. That chart is not particular user-friendly, but with a bit of close study, it makes sense.

Those "4pm Exit Poll" numbers however, match up with the "Final 6pm Exit Polls" as reported by Raw Story on the day of. So I'm not sure if the person who compiled the chart and the above graphics was in a different time-zone to account for the 4pm/6pm discrepancy. It doesn't really matter to be frank, as long as the numbers were correctly reported. Which they seem to have been.

It's my understanding that a major news organization is investigating this part of the story now. So we'll see what can be learned in the days ahead.

UPDATE: 11/9/04 Raw Story asked a former MIT "Associate Professor of Mathmatics" to look at these results, and his conclusion was that the probabilities of the Exit Polls all closing for Bush the way they did was approximately "1 in 50,000 or .002 percent". Nonetheless, that same Professor has looked closely at the available Exit Polling data and has "ruled out any significance of a variance between electronic balloting and paper ballot states" in the matter. That story is here.

I have spoken to Raw Story editor, John Byrne about this, and he stands by the report though he adds that to get any conclusive information on the matter we'd have to now take a look at the Exit Polling data on a county-by-county level. At this time, that information has not been released to the public, though apparently it is for sale somewhere. Not sure at this time how much it would cost to purchase for further analysis (and not sure why, at this point, it isn't simply made available to the public given all the troubling reports about this election!)

{NOTE: This page has been reformatted and updated in our new blogging software. Please visit the updated page here.}

ATTN: Mathematicians and Statisticians - Please see this item posted at eRiposte concerning how some of the reported voting numbers just don't seem to be adding up to the reported Final Results. I'd love if some of you could double-check those figures and let us know in comments if you find that their math holds up.

In the previous article, I outlined a report from July 2003 that described how to steal an election in America in 2004. Virtually everything in that list was "done" in time for the 2004 election.

The items concerning the corporate privatization of the vast majority of our "public" balloting and counting systems by companies who are very closely tied to the Republican party are described in this new article yesterday by Thom Hartmann in the Baltimore Chronicle & Sentinel. Read the whole thing if you can. Here's just a few of the troubling highlights:

The more I read this report/warning from July 2003 titled "Bigger Than Watergate!" - the more I feel like I did after 9/11. I'd heard all the warnings about bin Laden and Terrorism, etc., but I didn't take it all very seriously until after it was already too late.

The mindset is true for what I'd been hearing from BlackBoxVoting.org and others for years about the concerns about Electronic Voting machines. I was interested, but never took their dire warnings with much more than a grain of salt.

I was wrong.

Looking again at the story from July 2003, you'll find a chilling description of precisely what seems more and more to have happened in last Tuesday's election. For example, look at this passage explaining how one might steal an election in modern day America:

This is a precise description of what has happened in our country leading up to Tuesday's vote as foretold more than a year ago!

The onlyl place where reality varies from the scenario above is in the last step, "removing the risk of exit-polling showing up your shenanigans". It was, in fact, that apparent slip-up --- the reporting of exit-polling, and the way that final results ended up varying wildly from normally very precise exit-polling, but only in swing states where they have E-Voting that doesn't supply voter-verified paper trails --- that gave us all our first clue that something was amiss here. In all other states, the exit-polls were exceedingly accurate. And where the "errors" described occured, the final results always ended up swing in Bush's favor. Why wouldn't at least some of those errors show declines in Bush's support in some states?

Since the results of the Exit Polls tipped us off, we've been able to track down more and more evidence that begins to add up to an election stinking to high heaven. The BRAD BLOG will continue to stay on this story until the matter is appropriately resolved one way or the other.

Please check back frequently as this story unfolds, as it's important that action is taken quickly on this matter. Please see BlackBoxVoting.org for more information on how you can help, and make everyone you know aware of these problems ASAP in the meantime! It's important that this story begin to emerge to the American public as quickly as possible!

More soon...

This is the way dividers such as Sean Hannity, O'Reilly, Scarborough, Wall Street Journal etc. have been telling you that America looks today in hopes of continuing their hateful wedge of the American people for political gain:

This, however --- according to reality-based data --- is what America really looks like today:

Don't let the dividers and haters tell you otherwise!

And please see this previously posted map of what America really looks like as well.

Folks are beginning to pay attention, guys!

Wired Magazine is now reporting that three Members of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee are now calling for an investigation of the troubling incidents that we've been reporting concerning irregularities in Tuesday's vote counting!:

Click for complete story...

Keep up the noise, guys! They're starting to listen! I've had other unconfirmed reports about both Dems and the Kerry campaign beginning to take notice of all of this as well!

UPDATE: House Judiciary Committee Letter to GAO, as mentioned above, available here in PDF format. (Hat tip "Shari H-D" for the link!)

In a different North Carolina incident to the one we've already report where some 4500 votes were lost for good from a single NC E-Voting machine, The Sun-Journal is now reporting additional North Carolina E-vote errors:

This machine in question, by the way, was also an ES&S machine.

The story also notes that "a national Republican political consultant who had watched the returns and had some concern that other precincts were involved in the problem entered the office." --- Hello? Are there "national Democratic political consultants" out there who are watching this stuff as well?!

Miami Herald now reporting that 70,000 votes were "discovered" last night in Broward County, FL for a gambling initiative that reversed the previously announced outcome. [emphasis mine, and mostly notable to those who have been following along with previously reported items]:

Hello? Connect. The. Dots.

(For more on the Optical Scan oddities in Florida, and info on who ES&S is, see this previous item.)

I'm happy to report that folks are starting to catch on to all of this. Hunter over at DailyKos gives a very sober and detailed analysis of where things are at this point in regards to both counting votes and the serious potential fraud being looked at, much of it that we've reported over the last two days here in various items.

Lots of good and new information in that piece is offered as well. Including this little "anomaly" discovered in the released Franklin County, OH voting results in PDF format:

AP has now picked up that story, and some of the others I'd been telling you about over the last couple of days. But perhaps even more notably, Drudge(!) is also now pointing to that article!...So I guess it's now officially "news"!...DEVELOPING HARD...

Connecting the dots... Investigative reporter, Bev Harris, has been reporting on the various concerns related to electronic voting for some time via her site BlackBoxVoting.org She released a book within the last year on the topic, and likely has compiled more evidence on the matter than anyone else in the world.

After studying the audit logs from one Washington state county's voting machines (audit logs obtained through a "Freedom of Information Act" petition) they discovered 3 hours of deleted data on the logs from the primary election there just six weeks ago.

Today they posted this:

Visit the site for more details on how you can help...

Other ways you can help: 1) Send the link to this story and/or this blog and/or as many of the previous items I've reported on (scroll down!) to as many folks as you can! 2) If you find something you think I should look at, feel free to post here in comments or email me with a link (please pardon if I can't respond immediately, I assure you I'm looking at it).

The Mainstream Media has largely taken their lead from the Bush Administration and the Rightwing media to follow the "Great Bush Mandate" storyline despite the numbers --- at best --- just not adding up, and even if accepted at face value, they represent the slimmest margin for a sitting President since Woodrow Wilson in 1916!

I understand full well that "conventional wisdom" is already beginning to harden that Bush "won" this race, and I'm sorry to continue to offer troubling information to those of you who would have liked a clean result this time around. If that's where my investigation leads, I will tell you that. But as of now, every street I turn down seems to display more and more that something is rotten in the state of Diebold/ES&S. Pay. Attention.

Though Ohio got all the Florida-like attention this year from the mainstream media (who can't seem to focus on more than one thing at time, and at that, for only mere seconds) back in Florida --- where nobody is looking, and yes the results were close though less so than in 2000 --- something also doesn't add up.

Kathy Dopp has been crunching hard election result numbers and a strange --- yet very clear pattern --- is emerging.

Using the very rough gauge of comparing Republican and Democrat registrations county by county to the actual final voting results, she finds that the percentage change of "Expected Votes" versus "Actual Results" are fairly consistent in counties that used E-Voting machines.

But in counties that used Optical Scan Voting the "Expected Votes" versus "Actual Results" are wildly discordant to say the least.

For example, look at just one sample from Baker County, FL...

Registered Voters
REP: 24.3% DEM: 69.3%

Actual Votes
REP: 7,738 DEM: 2,180

Change from Expected Results
REP: 220.4% DEM: -68.4%

That's a sample from just one county, but the majority of counties that used Opti-scan systems, particularly those systems made by "Election Systems and Software (ES&S)" show the same wildly discordant pattern.

Such a disparity between Actual Results and Expected Results (based on voter registration) could well be explained if the voter turnout was simply far and away in favor of Bush in Florida due to any number of factors. But why then do virtually none of the Electronic Voting counties in Florida show anything like those kind of disparities in the Expected versus Actual Results?

She's been updating her data throughout the day, adding info as it's made available by the state of Florida.

(Thanks reader Teri K. for the tip)

UPDATE: ES&S, together with Diebold Election Systems, are responsible for tallying some 80% of votes in the U.S. The CEO of Diebold Election Systems is also the founder of ES&S according to this interesting report from July 2003. It's also an interesting report because it seems to describe yesterday's results "to a T" in many ways...More on that soon...

If the mainstream media is reporting their data from Exit Polling as being accurate in regards to who voted on Election Day (for example: "Christian Conservative" voters showing up in increased numbers) why was the information from those same polls concerning who people were voting for so wildly different from the reported Final Results?

I'm sorry if there are some of you who would rather "move on". I'll err on the side of accurately counting "the will of the people in a Democracy". If, like so many of the wingnuts out there, you'd rather not examine such matters accurately (and I can hardly blame the wingnuts), you are welcome to read other blogs more likely to repeat to you what you wish to hear.

To that end, there are continuing questions about the results in Ohio, New Mexico, and yes - Florida. Since Democracy demands both vigilance and an accurate reflection of the will of the people, I will do my best to stay on top of these matters as so many of your Emails have requested of me. I hope to have more information for you about those states later today.

In the meantime, here's a report just released by AP concerning at least 4,500 votes that Election Officials admit were lost in North Carolina in just one county due to inaccurate information provided by the makers of the E-Voting machine in use there:

[UPDATE]: The link to the AP story is now dead. Here's another one with the same info.

That was just one county in North Carolina. Pay attention...

UPDATE: More problems with UniLect machines now reported! This time in Ohio where they used thousands of UniLect machines: