Judging from the proliferation of articles on the Internet and elsewhere - some of them scholarly, some not - over whether there was something funny in the counting of ballots Nov. 2, an investigation needs to be launched if only to assure Americans that our election process isn't crooked.

The latest paper to cast doubt on the ballot count has been written by Dr. Steven F. Freeman, a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania, who explored the strange discrepancy that occurred this year between exit polls and the actual count in the so-called battleground states.

Freeman gives a lengthy explanation on how exit polling, which is normally uncannily reliable, works. He points out that in the key states on Nov. 2, those polls predicted John Kerry would win the election. (One pollster, John Zogby, predicted Kerry would win by an electoral landslide based on the exit results.)

Freeman uses the big three states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida to make his point. Exit polls showed Kerry winning by nearly nine points in Pennsylvania and four-plus points in Ohio and in a dead heat in Florida. All three of those states broke substantially the other way. George W. Bush wound up taking Ohio by 2.5 percentage points, Florida by five-plus, and Pennsylvania went to Kerry, but by just two points.

The odds for the exit polling to miss that much in all three of those states are 250 million to one, he claims.

(The exit polls in Wisconsin, incidentally, predicted Kerry the winner 49.2 to 48.8. The actual vote was 49.8 Kerry, 49.4 Bush.)

"Given that neither the pollsters nor their media clients have provided solid explanations to the public, suspicion of fraud or, among the less accusatory, 'mistabulation,' is running rampant and unchecked," Freeman writes. "That so many people suspect misplay undermines not only the legitimacy of the president, but faith in the foundations of democracy.

"Systematic fraud or mistabulation is a premature conclusion," the professor adds. "But, the election's unexplained exit poll discrepancies make it an unavoidable hypothesis, one that is the responsibility of the media, academia, polling agencies and the public to investigate."

In addition to that investigation, what also becomes a must is a voting system that leaves a verifiable paper trail that would serve as a double-check whenever there are questions.

Better yet is an electronic voting system that also leaves the voter with a "receipt," similar to the receipt people get at their ATM.

There is nothing more important in our democracy than having the integrity of our voting system be above reproach. Right now, that's not the case.

© 2004 Capital Times

###