Election Fraud in the United States: 2004 to Present -- Part II: Evidence for Election Fraud in Exit Poll Discrepancies from Official Results | Dale Tavris

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Dale Tavris -- World News Trust

June 20, 2018

Election Fraud in the United States: 2004 to Present

Part II. Evidence for Election Fraud in Exit Poll Discrepancies from Official Results

In Part I of this series I discussed the very substantial vulnerability of U.S. elections to the fraudulent manipulation of votes counted by our electronic machines. In this article, I will begin to discuss the strong evidence that this vulnerability has been used repeatedly in U.S. elections since at least 2004 to manipulate the vote count and steal elections.

I begin with data showing that exit polls have repeatedly deviated by large amounts from official vote counts, and that this deviation is always or almost always in the same direction: Whenever the deviation is large, the more conservative candidate receives a larger share of the vote than what would be predicted by exit polls. When this happens, the deviation of the exit poll from the official vote count is known as a “red shift” -- suggesting that official votes may have been shifted from the less conservative candidate (usually the Democrat) to the more conservative candidate (usually the Republican). A “blue shift” would be a finding in the opposite direction. Statistically significant blue shifts very rarely occur in the United States. 

As many have pointed out, the presence of exit poll deviation from official vote counts does not alone prove that election fraud has occurred -- although it may be highly suggestive of that. But when it happens on a massive basis in every election cycle, always pointing in the same direction, in the context of an electronic vote counting system that is highly vulnerable to fraudulent manipulation, and accompanied by a good deal of other evidence of electronic manipulation of the official vote count, as well as substantial evidence of other types of election fraud pointing in the same direction (for example, massive voter suppression), then all of the evidence taken together becomes overwhelmingly suggestive of election fraud. As I hope to make clear in this series, that is the situation that currently exists. 

Yet our national corporate news media continues to ignore this situation, or worse, actively and aggressively disparages the reliability of exit polls, typically using invalid or misleading arguments (as I will discuss later). Beyond that, they generally demand a level of proof that is totally inappropriate for the situation. A statement by the well known professional pollster Mark Blumenthal (commonly known as the ‘mystery pollster’) reveals the type of thinking that facilitates or justifies denial of the dangers to our election system even among highly educated people: 

The question has always been whether the exit polls provide affirmative evidence that fraud did in fact occur. This involves a very basic concept of statistical inquiry: We assume no effect until one can be proven, or more technically, we assume a "null hypothesis" until we can prove some alternative. The same principle exists in law as the presumption of innocence. We do not assume a crime has been committed and work backwards to try to disprove it. We presume innocence until enough evidence has been established to prove guilt.

This line of reasoning is inappropriate on several accounts. First, the question posed by most people who are seriously concerned about large deviations of exit polls from official election results is not whether exit polls provide proof that fraud occurred. It is whether or not the deviations represent a danger sign that tells us that we need to seriously question and thoroughly investigate the possibility of election fraud. Second is Blumenthal’s statement of the concept of statistical inquiry. It is true that a general principle of science is that we should not assume a finding to be valid until it is proven. Though that is a general principle of statistics as used in science, statistics is not simply an abstract discipline. It needs to be applied to the realities of life. Proof of election fraud should not be required before action is taken to thoroughly investigate it. In fact, perhaps the opposite philosophy should apply to national elections to our highest offices: that they should not be accepted as valid until serious doubts about their validity have been thoroughly addressed. Similarly, Blumenthal’s analogy to the presumption of innocence in criminal law is not applicable here. I agree that we should not send people to jail or execute them until their guilt is proven. But neither should we award a person the presidency of the United States until we have reasonably good evidence that the election results are correct. 

With all that in mind, let’s now consider a brief history of red shifts associated with U.S. elections since 2004:

2004 Presidential election

As best I can tell, the intense concern with red shifts among a substantial minority of U.S. citizens began on Election Night, 2004, when Jonathan Simon and Steven Freeman captured TV screenshots of the national Presidential exit polls (performed by Mitofsky International and Edison Media Research, under contract to six major news media organizations) for every U.S. state before they disappeared forever. These screenshots introduced the American people to the concept of electronic election theft and “red shift,” as the national exit poll predicted a 2.6 percent popular vote margin for John Kerry, while the official vote count showed a 2.8 percent vote margin for George W. Bush, representing a red shift of 5.4 percent. Statistical analysis showed that the likelihood against a red shift of that magnitude occurring due to random chance was at least about 450,000 to 1.

The good majority of states in that election also showed a red shift, including Ohio, which was enough to give the Presidency to Bush. State exit polls compared to official results showed red shifts beyond a statistical margin of error at a probability level of less than 0.05 in 13 states (meaning that the probability of such an extreme result occurring by random chance was less than one in 20 for each of those states). There were no blue shifts beyond the statistical margin of error at this level. 

More important, the swing states demonstrated red shifts disproportionately to the rest of the country.  

The table below, taken from Steven Freeman’s book, “Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen,” shows that red shifts of some magnitude occurred in 10 of the 11 swing states. Of those, red shifts of magnitudes beyond the above noted statistical margin of error occurred in five states -- New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Florida. Of the remaining 39 states, red shifts beyond the margin of error were seen in only eight states. Red shifts in states that predicted a Kerry win that was large enough to swing the state election from Kerry to Bush (if we assume that the exit polls were accurate) were seen in four states (Ohio, Iowa, New Mexico, and Nevada), although the red shift in those states was statistically significant beyond the margin of error only in Ohio, which also was the only state whose electoral votes would have made Kerry the winner without changes in any other state:

2008 and 2012 Presidential elections

Red shifts were exhibited in both the 2008 and 2012 Presidential elections, but they were not large enough to overcome substantial Obama leads. If the 2004 Presidential election, as many believe, was electronically manipulated to give George W. Bush the Presidency, then why was the red shift in the 2008 Presidential Election insufficient to affect the overall results? Nobody knows the answer to that question, and we can only speculate. Maybe it had to do with the fact that those in a potential position to steal an election in 2008 recognized that this particular election was being watched very closely for signs of election theft. Maybe they attempted to steal it, but the Obama lead was too large to do that. Maybe they did not consider Obama as much of a threat to them as John Kerry. Nobody knows.

Congressional and gubernatorial midterm elections, 2006-2014

In every mid-term election since 2006, large red shifts were exhibited, resulting in far more Republicans elected to Congress than what was predicted by the exit polls. Taking 2014 as an example: 19 of 21 Senate seats were red-shifted, the average red shift for the Senate being 4.1 percent. In two states (Georgia and West Virginia) the red shift was enough to make a difference in who won, suggesting a net margin Republican gain of four seats. In the House, the average red shift was 3.7 percent, which was estimated to result in the reversal of 89 House seats, which means that the Democrats would have had a 277-157 majority if the official count would have been in line with the exit polls. Instead, the Republicans ended up with a winning margin of 247 to 188 seats. Republicans held onto 220 of 222 seats, despite Congressional approval polls which varied from single digits to a maximum of 20 percent. In exit-polled gubernatorial races, 20 0f 21 were red-shifted, with an average red shift of 5.0 percent. Three or four of those were red-shifted enough to determine the winner.

Democratic primaries of 2016

Although red shifts usually apply to elections featuring a Democrat vs. a Republican, the same principle can apply to any election that features a progressive/liberal candidate vs. a much more conservative one. Such was the case in the 2016 Democratic primaries. The race quickly narrowed down to Hillary Clinton vs. Bernie Sanders. Sanders was the most liberal Presidential candidate to pose a serious challenge to the U.S. power structure since George McGovern won the Democratic nomination in 1972, 44 years ago. Clinton had the full and aggressive backing of the Democratic Party.

There were 27 state primaries for which exit polls were taken. The table below shows the red shifts for the 10 states where the discrepancy between the exit poll and the official results was beyond the margin of error at the 0.05 level, not counting two states (Wisconsin and Connecticut) that apparently demonstrated such red shifts but were still being investigated at the time the table was printed. Again, there were no blue shifts of this magnitude.

Unlike general elections, where the magnitude of victory in states with large margins for one candidate is not important because electoral votes are apportioned wholly to one candidate or the other, in primaries the magnitude of victory in all states is important because delegates are apportioned roughly according to the percentage of the vote for each candidate. In the case of the 2016 Democratic primaries, if the official vote count had followed what was predicted by the exit polls, Clinton and Sanders would have entered the Democratic Convention with roughly equal numbers of delegates (Added to that, if not for the massive suppression of Sanders voters during the primaries (which does not show up in exit polls because potential voters who don’t get to vote don’t get exit polled), Sanders would have been ahead, possibly by landslide proportions. More about that later. 

Of possible significance is the fact that whereas Sanders won only 10 of 36 state Democratic primaries, he won 12 of 14 caucus states. After losing the first two by narrow margins he won the next 12 by margins varying between 11 percent and 68 percent. That begs the question of why he performed so much better in the caucus states than in the primaries. Jonathon Simon suggests a reason in his book, “Code Red: Computerized Elections and the War on American Democracy: 

Pledged convention delegates were chosen in caucus meetings where the principle method of counting votes was observable and where state totals could be reconciled via a traditional tabulation tree to the counts at each individual caucus.

2016 Presidential election

In one sense, the magnitude and consistency of red shifts in the 2016 general Presidential election was far less impressive than the red shifts seen in the 2004 Presidential election or the 2016 Democratic primaries. Exit polls predicted a Clinton margin of 3.2 percent nationally, while she won the popular vote by a little less, 2.1 percent. So the red shift for the national popular vote was only 1.1 percent. However, much larger red shifts occurred in four of the five largest swing states, and a fifth swing state (Michigan) demonstrated a smaller red shift that could have made the difference, as follows:

Thus, very small victories in a handful of large swing states enabled Trump to win the Electoral College. Of the swing states, the red shifts were statistically significant only in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. But those three states accounted for 45 electoral votes. If Clinton would have carried additionally only those three states she would have won the Electoral College by nine Electoral votes. Florida and Michigan accounted for another 45 Electoral votes, and if Clinton would have carried additionally those two states she would have won the Electoral College by 99 votes. 

All told, there were red shifts beyond the margin of error at the 0.05 level in 12 states (Missouri, New Jersey, Utah, Maine, Ohio, South Carolina, North Carolina, Iowa, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Indiana). There was also one blue shift, in New York, which went for Clinton by a comfortable margin in both the exit poll and the official results. 

Never in the history of the United States of America has there been such a large discrepancy between the popular vote and the Electoral College in elections decided by the Electoral College. We have had three elections in our history where the presidency was not fully decided by the Electoral College: 1820 (decided by the U.S. House of Representatives); 1876 (decided by a special judicial commission that overturned the Electoral votes in four states, to give Rutherford B. Hayes a one-vote electoral margin); and 2000 (decided by a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court by halting a recount in progress in Florida, where Florida’s electoral votes would decide the winner). Not counting those three elections, prior to 2016 there was only one instance in U.S. history where the popular vote winner and the Electoral College winner did not coincide. That was 1888, when Grover Cleveland won the popular vote by 0.8 percent but lost the election in the Electoral College. 

From the table above, it can be seen that the reason for this surprising result was that Trump won some very narrow victories in large swing states, all of which were red-shifted, some by substantial margins. Other important swing states also exhibited large red shifts, including Ohio (7.9 percent), Iowa (5.5 percent), and New Hampshire (4.9 percent). Yet the average red shift for the entire country was only 1.1 percent -- meaning that the safe states on average exhibited virtually no red shift at all. It is difficult to think of a plausible reason for the vast discrepancy in red-shifting between safe states and swing states, other than the possibility that electronic vote shifting was perpetrated in swing states but virtually ignored in safe states, where it wouldn’t have made a difference.

Significance of large and widely consistent red shifts in national U.S. elections since 2004

Thus, we see a very consistent pattern of large red shifts in national U.S. elections since 2004. The trillion-dollar question is, which is a more accurate indicator of voter intent: The exit polls or the official election results? If exit polls are a more accurate indicator, that means that we have seen massive election fraud since 2004, which is the primary reason that we elected Republican Presidents in 2004 and 2012 and now have a Republican House of Representatives and Senate. The question should be of great concern to all of us.

The power structure of the United States, including our national corporate news media, essentially takes the radical position that the question isn’t even worth considering. They go well beyond simply saying that the exit polls don’t prove election fraud. They say instead that the official results prove that the exit polls are wrong -- even though the issue has never been evaluated with a meaningful hand recount of the vote. Their attitude is that the integrity of our elections is unquestionable, and therefore that there is no need to investigate the issue. It has been extremely difficult to obtain recounts of any parts of these elections, and when great efforts are successful in obtaining recounts of any small portion of an election, they are done with such sloppiness or evidence of outright fraud that they have proven to be of no value (This will be discussed in Part VI of this series).

In Part I of this series I explained how extremely vulnerable to fraud our elections are. That consideration alone should be of significant value in assessing whether exit polls or official results are likely to be a more accurate indicator of voter intent. Another important question, if we believe that official results are more accurate, is why our exit polls have been so consistently in error in the same direction -- i.e. almost always over-estimating the true vote count of the more liberal/progressive candidate.

In Part III of this series I will consider the accuracy of election polls, and therefore their potential value in monitoring our elections. In Parts IV, V, and VI, I will discuss additional evidence, beyond exit polls, of election fraud. Again, I am not advocating that election results be automatically overturned to match the exit polls. Nor is anyone else as far as I know. We are simply advocating that significant discrepancies be thoroughly investigated -- ideally by vote recounts -- before election results are officially accepted for national U.S. offices. This is never done for U.S. elections unless the margin of victory is extremely thin.

Part I: Vulnerability of Electronic Vote Counting in U.S. Elections

Part II: Evidence for Election Fraud in Exit Poll Discrepancies from Official Results

Part III: The Validity of Exit Polls for Monitoring Elections

PART IV: Untimely Deaths Associated with the 2004 Presidential Election

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Dale Tavris, M.D.Dale Tavris has worked as a public health physician/epidemiologist for 40 years, with state departments of public health, the U.S. Air Force, the Medical College of Wisconsin, and the Food and Drug Administration. In that capacity, he has authored 39 publications in peer-reviewed medical or public health journals.

Since 2004 he has been actively involved in the national election reform movement, serving in a volunteer capacity with the Election Defense Alliance for a few years as their data coordinator.

He has written dozens of online articles about election fraud. In 2007 he co-authored a journal article on election fraud: “Fingerprints of Election Theft: Were Competitive Contests Targeted.”

He has written and published three books, including two of a political nature: “The Unfulfilled Promise of the American Dream: The Widening Gap between the Reality of the United States and its Highest Ideals,” 2011; and “Democracy Undone: Unequal Representation, the Threat to our Election System, and the Impending Demise of American Democracy,” 2012.