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THE EXIT POLL SCANDAL OF 2004 Randy M. Mott 1 @All rights reserved. To many voters, watching the coverage of the 2004 election on television or over the Internet, the early mood of the evening would abruptly change as actual results begin to be posted. Many of us saw leaked exit polls that portrayed a nationwide Kerry lead of 3 percent and surprisingly strong initial estimates from virtually all of the background states. When the Bush campaign commented on the results, they expressed their view about their inaccuracy and inconsistency with the Bush campaign’s internal polling and tracking. The early actual vote counts began to dispel the exit polling leaks, but some networks hung on to the exit polling data to delay announcing state projections later in the night. How could scientifically conducted exit polls, presumably sharpened in their methodology since the 2000 debacle [miscalling Florida for Gore] and the 2002 implosion [crash of the computer] be consistently wrong i

“Sen. John Kerry's campaign refused to concede early Wednesday, arguing that more than 250,000 provisional and absentee ballots remained to be counted in the key battleground state of Ohio.” CNN, November 3, 2004. I have some thoughts on the Ohio voting that suggest a bit of desperation in the Kerry campaign for holding on to this issue and thereby tying up the election’s finality. 1. The appellate court reversed the Clinton-appointed judge that held that a provisional ballot could be counted even if the voter went to the wrong precinct. To be counted, any provisional ballot in Ohio would have to be cast in the correct precinct that matched the voter’s registration. Ohio Revised Code, Title XXXV, § 3503.06 requires that voters be registered at least thirty days before the election. Ohio law requires U.S. citizenship and no felony convictions as well as residence from the time of registration to the time of voting within the same precinct. 2. The logical presumption is that i