Stolen or Lost?

By Steven F. Freeman, AlterNet. Posted January 20, 2005.

Editor's Note: This is in response to Russ Baker's "Election 2004: Stolen or Lost," originally posted on TomPaine.com.

Russ Baker's critique of my work analyzing the exit poll discrepancy ("Election 2004: Stolen or Lost") – and, by implication, of the courageous stand taken by John Conyers and a small number of his Congressional colleagues – is flawed from the first line. No one has said, "Exit poll results were more accurate than actual ballots." The question is whether the official count is an accurate reflection of ballots cast. In a system where campaign managers serve as election supervisors, where voting machines provide no assurance that votes are counted as cast, and where counts and "recounts" are conducted in secret, we must rely, unfortunately, on indirect evidence, such as exit polls, to ascertain the veracity of this official count as a measure of actual ballots cast.

Baker's critique begins with a sloppy attempt to shoot the messenger, questioning my credentials. For the record, since obtaining my Ph.D. in organization studies from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1998, I have served for three years as an accredited member of the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania – originally at Wharton and now in the School of Arts and Sciences; and the remainder of that time at equivalently demanding institutions in Latin America, including an international MBA program established by Harvard University.

Baker discards my findings because I am "not an expert in polling," but I teach research methods and survey design (a domain that includes polling) at the University of Pennsylvania.

A study of election integrity also requires an understanding of election practices and voting systems, and, most importantly, an ability and willingness to investigate a complex subject in which the data and the accompanying official pronouncements are themselves suspect. I hold degrees in both political science and systems science, and have received four national awards for best research paper of the year – on four different topics in three different fields. The position I hold this year as visiting scholar in the University of Pennsylvania's School of Arts and Sciences, provided on the basis of these research accomplishments, affords me freedom to conduct interdisciplinary research of broad significance and obliges me to teach research methodology and help develop applied research capabilities at the University's Center for Organizational Dynamics and the school.

Baker dismisses my work based on an unnamed source (why does he not name his source here?) who told him "that it is 'all wrong.'" But the single shortcoming identified – that my analysis is based on "'screen shots' of raw numbers provided by CNN" – betrays a complete ignorance of my analysis, of basic survey research, and of the issues at hand. I did not use "raw numbers," but rather the exit poll projections provided by the National Election Pool (NEP) to its media clients so that they could prepare their coverage and write their articles. I used these data, which were publicly available on election night, to document the obvious fact of an unexplained discrepancy between the exit poll projections and the official count – a discrepancy still unexplained more than two months later. I collected screen shots because the National Election Pool (NEP) "corrected" its numbers later on election night to conform to the official count, leaving no public record of the original projections.

Baker dismisses the validity of exit polls, but prominent survey researchers (e.g., Asner 1999, Cantril 1991:142), political scientists (e.g., Edwards & Wayne 1999:84), and journalists (e.g., Jurkowitz 2000) concur that they are highly reliable. As far back as 1987, political columnist David Broder wrote that exit polls "are the most useful analytic tool developed in my working life" (1987:253). Edwards & Wayne (1999:84) caution only that, "... the problem with exit polls lies in their accuracy (rather than inaccuracy). They give the press access to predict the outcome before the elections have been concluded."

Steve Freeman's research on the 2004 election will be published in a book – co-written with Joel Bleifuss – by Seven Stories Press this spring.

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