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“Exit Polls Sow Doubt About the Vote Count”

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New York magazine reports: “Hillary Clinton’s campaign is being urged by a number of top computer scientists to call for a recount of vote totals in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, according to a source with knowledge of the request.

“The computer scientists believe they have found evidence that vote totals in the three states could have been manipulated or hacked and presented their findings to top Clinton aides on a call last Thursday.”

DAVID W. MOORE, dmoore62 [at] comcast.net
Moore is a senior fellow with the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. He is a former vice president of the Gallup Organization and managing editor of the Gallup Poll, where he worked from 1993 until 2006. His books include The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls.

Moore is now polling director at iMediaEthics, where he recently wrote the piece “Why the Exit Polls Sow Doubt About the Vote Count,” which states: “The sample sizes for the battleground states are all quite large, so the discrepancies (the ‘red shifts’) for North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are all statistically significant….

“Had Clinton won the three states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, as the exit polls (and pre-election polls) suggested, she would have won with 277 electoral votes. And much of the outrage at the polling industry (as well as at Clinton and her campaign) would have been obviated. …

“So, what does it mean that the exit polls — like the pre-election polls — predicted a Clinton victory, while the vote count came to the opposite conclusion? One meaning seems obvious: We cannot be confident that the declared winner of the Electoral Vote is the real winner.”

STEVE ROSENFELD, steven [at] alternet.org
Rosenfeld covers national political issues for AlterNet. He is the author of Count My Vote: A Citizen’s Guide to Voting. He just wrote the piece “Pressure Builds for Presidential Recounts in a Key 2016 Swing State.”

He said today: “There’s already more than enough evidence out there raising serious questions about the vote counts in the states that delivered the presidency to Donald Trump. These include discrepancies between the media’s unadjusted exit polls and the later reported winners; the pattern of Trump winning by the largest margins in counties using paperless machines in Wisconsin; some of these same counties report turnout at 85 percent or more; screenshots of county vote totals show the total votes tallied as several thousand more than ballots cast.

“These example are concrete instances where satisfying explanations have yet to be given. There are theories everywhere about who voted, who didn’t and why, and swift denunciations by pollsters like Nate Silver when academics and others question the unofficial vote counts. That’s unfortunate. When the presidency is at stake, the public has a right to know and understand what happened. The vote count should be verified to convey public confidence.”