7/30/2019 Ohio Exit Polls Not a Smoking Gun for Fraud, Study Says (May 2005)

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DATE: Fr iday , May 13 , 200 5

EMBARGO UNTI L : Sa tu rday , May 14 a t 2 :00 p .m. ( EST)

CONTACT: R ich Gare l la , ( 212 ) 4 73- 692 9Fr i t z Scheu r en ( 202 ) 320 - 3 446

Ohio Ex i t Po l ls No t a Smo k in g Gun fo r F raud, S tudy Says

A just released analysis confirms pollster Warren Mitofskys assertion that the exit polls that

put John Kerry ahead of George Bush in Ohio on Election Day 2004 do not necessarily indicatethat there was fraud in the Ohio election.

Exit polls estimated that Senator John Kerry was leading for Ohios electoral votes, but not by

a large enough margin to be called the winner. Had he won Ohio, he would have won thePresidency. However, the official result was a victory for President George W. Bush. The

discrepancy between the polls and the results gave rise to widespread accusations ofsystematic election fraud.

The new study, commissioned by the Election Science Institute (ESI), was presented onSaturday at the annual conference of the American Association for Public Opinion Research in

Miami. It looked at the results of the exit polls, which were conducted by Edison MediaResearch and Mitofsky International, and compared them to official results from 2004 and2000.

The research team, led by Dr. Fritz Scheuren, used more detailed information from the exitpolls than previous studies. The team was able to use this precinct-level information whilepreserving ballot secrecy at a local level.

The more detailed information allowed us to see that voting patterns were consistent with

past results and consistent with exit poll results across precincts. It looks more like Bushvoters were refusing to participate and less like systematic fraud, Dr. Scheuren said.

Dr. Scheuren is the current President of the American Statistical Association, and VicePresident for Statistics at NORC, a research institute based at the University of Chicago.

Steven Hertzberg, project director at the Election Science Institute, spoke to the broaderimplications.

We need to develop better tools to monitor our elections. The fact that there is debate over

this at all shows that we need elections to be more transparent, more accountable, moreauditable, he said. To increase public confidence in the system ESI has begun working withelection officials in Ohio to help publish more timely election data so the public may verify forthemselves that the voting and the counting is done accurately.

The Election Science Institute (ESI) is a non-profit, non-partisan scientific organization basedin San Francisco and founded in 2002 under the name Votewatch. ESI monitors public

elections in the U.S. to identify voting anomalies which impact election results, and works with

election officials to help them improve voting and election systems. ESI conducted its own exitpolls in New Mexico for the purpose of assessing voters experiences.

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The paper is being presented at AAPOR 2005s Saturday lunch plenary. The conference is at

the Fontainebleau Hilton Resort, 4441 Collins Ave, Miami. See http://www.aapor.org.

For more information on the Election Science Institute, see http://www.electionscience.org.