DISQUS

Todd A. Heywood · 1 year ago

Good piece Ed Although I would point out that Mark Grebner said last week in an interview with Michigan Messenger that he thinks Ohio is the potential rough spot for Obama, specifically because of the southern conservatives. In addition, he said he felt Michigan was likely a safe Democratic state.

Minehaha Forman · 1 year ago

Very Interesting Is that why Obama can't get enough of the glove state? He keeps comin' back for more. You work it, Obama.

Michael Heath · 1 year ago

Polls yes, but process as well Given what happened in Florida in 2000, where the outcome was inside the margin of error, I thought we would see much more scrutiny in preparation and during election day in 2004.  Ohio especially was a state where the media warned in advance the polls were tight and the Sec. of State was committed to seeing Bush win, given his dual role as Bush's OH Campaign Director along with being head of the integrity of that state's election results.  Couple those two factors with two other phenomena, the GOP's 2004 success at leveraging  the get out the vote against gay marriage, especially in rural Ohio and the difference between the election results reported relevant to exit polls which showed Kerry doing better, and I believe if the polls are tight this year, the story the media reports on needs to always be broadened to other factors.  A story on polls alone does not serve the public interest if the race is tight given shennigans that occurred in the last two presidential elections.

Americans need to admit:

1)  We have no viable contingency plan to derive a fair outcome when the vote counts fall within the margin of error for a given state's process where the people decide.  We need a run-off process that could be conducted using the same ballot in case the initial count is within the margin of error.


2)  I have never considered myself a conspiracy nut, yet myself and many people I associate with have increasingly questioned the validity of the actual vote count, that includes Republicans, not just Democrats.  Bush certainly won in 2000 and 2004, but there is no solid evidence he was fairly elected.  Can we handle another travesty like 2000 and 2004 and still get people to vote in subsequent elections?


3) We have people like Katherine Harris and Ken Blackwell serving two roles that are clearly in conflict with each other.  This is insane.

If the Media wants to serve the public in this election cycle, we need to move well beyond polling data and pound the drum in the tight polling states on their ability to:

1)  Delegate authority to people that are not serving a dual role where like Blackwell and Harris did in OH and FL respectively or use their judicial system to closely monitor the process while the process is being exercised.  The Media needs to pound the drum in states where conflict of interest is on evidence display like it was in Ohio in 2004.


2)  Guarantee that their states' election will fairly distribute voting equipment and conduct a fair election, unlike what happened in Ohio.  I'd love to see exit polling not just in how people voted, but all try and gauge the number of people that turned away at the polls and who they were planning to vote for if they got the opportunity.


3)  Understand the margin of error of their process and establish contingency plans in case results within that margin of error unlike what happened in Florida in 2000. It would be great to see media reports now with best practices reported on how to distill results in a run-off if the two leading candidates are very close considering all candidates votes (e.g., voters select a primary and then a secondary choice, I'm sure there are alternative options).