skippy the bush kangaroo
proud member of the reality-based community
20.11.04

exit poll my finger

we ran into an old friend while attending to business today, and exchanged some pleasantries, which led to our friend mentioning that he had been out of town for a couple of months, working on the election.

"good for you," we said. "keep your chin up. we only lost by three percentage points." we try to remind everyone, in real life as well as blogtopia (y!wctp!) that the only mandate in washington is how ken mehlman spends his evenings.

"no, no," said our friend. "i was working for the networks, nothing partisan."

"yeah, right," we said. "you're part of the problem, you son of a bitch!" we said, jokingly, though not as jokingly as polite conversation would have it.

"no, not like that. i was taking exit polls," our friend said.

at that, we went into an even bigger, good-humored, tirade. "you are the problem!" we said, joshing. "damn you!"

"don't blame us," he said. "we were right."

this piqued our interest. we talked further with our friend, who assured us that all the polling data pointed to a kerry victory. "we had kerry winning or tying in all battleground states except west virginia," he said.

our friend went on to point out that he worked for edison/mitofsky, whose polling data had never been wrong before. and, he said, the only counties in which the data they collected under-represented awol's [alleged] votes were the counties in which diebold voting machines were used.

"quite a coincidence, eh?" he said.

he said there was evidence that the exit polling data was correct, and that everyone at edison/mitofsky was convinced their results were right. he also went on to bemoan the lack of media attention to this story, and to also wonder why kerry gave up so easily.

we decided that, much like the family that won't admit their dad is a serial murderer, nobody in america wants to face the fact that there is wide-spread corruption at the highest levels.

we promised our friend to blog about our conversation (keeping him anonymous, of course). we also vowed with our friend to keep fighting the good fight.

so, though it is anecdotal evidence, it's proof enough for us that 2004 was the same as 2000, only not as messy; ie, rigged and stolen.