"Voting glitches haunt statistician"

"Voting glitches haunt statistician" is the title of an article by Rob Zaleski published in The (Madison) Capital Times. If you still are concerned about the discrepancy between the exit polls and the outcome of November's election, I do recommend this article.

There were, [statistician Brian] Joiner says, too many things that occurred on Nov. 2 that "still don't smell right." He can't just pretend everything is rosy, he says, when he reads that Steven Freeman, a respected University of Pennsylvania professor, says the odds of the exit polls in the critical states of Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania all being so far off were about 662,000 to 1.

And since no one in the mainstream media has yet to provide a plausible explanation for such discrepancies - "investigative reporting essentially is just dead in this country," he groans - Joiner and many of his colleagues are going to continue to speak out and demand that government leaders provide some answers.

So that, at the very least, we don't find ourselves in the same situation in 2008.

But if the irregularities are as suspicious and troubling as he claims, why aren't John Kerry and other top Democrats making similar demands?"

Boy, I wish I knew," says Joiner, who was a volunteer observer for the Ohio recount in early December. Because you can sure as heck bet that Republicans would be screaming and demanding an investigation if Kerry had won under similar circumstances, he says.

I think there's actually hope to win the country back if the voting is honest and fair. I just don't think it is. Before we work for anything else, therefore, we need to work for nation-wide, voter-verified paper ballots. Otherwise there is nothing honest people can do to stop the elections from being rigged.