"At this stage the election is pointing to a relatively easy electoral victory by Senator Barack Obama so perhaps there will be no problems. If Senator John McCain were to score a surprise upset there would be great doubts as to the legitimacy of the result. If the National Exit Poll was inconsistent with the vote count it would raise a primae facie case that the vote count is inaccurate," said Kevin Zeese, executive director of TrueVote.US. The election integrity organization is a non-partisan group, in fact Zeese served as Ralph Nader's spokesperson and press secretary in 2004. "On the other hand, if the unadjusted exit poll showed a McCain victory the public would be more likely to respect the result and accept its integrity. The unadjusted exit poll would be a valuable tool in reviewing the vote count."
A recent CNN poll found that 42% of U.S. voters do not trust their vote will be counted accurately. Thousands of voters have written media outlets urging them to preserve the unadjusted exit poll. The letters came in response to a email sent by TrueVote.US to election integrity activists. See http://truevote.us/nucleus/index.php?itemid=600.
TrueVote.US noted that in questionable elections overseas exit polls have been the basis of democracy movements that reversed the election result. For example the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine began when the official count differed markedly from exit poll results which gave Yushchenko up to an 11% lead, while official results gave the election win to Yanukovych by 3%.
"TrueVote.US hopes for a vote count that can be trusted by Americans, but if there are questions the National Exit Poll will provide a unique tool that could confirm the vote count or raise doubts about it," said Zeese. Zeese emphasized that errors could be due to software bugs or malicious software, "whether intentional or not errors in vote counts should be corrected," said Zeese.
The alert sent by True Vote to election integrity advocates:URGE MEDIA TO ARCHIVE ALL NATIONAL EXIT POLL RESULTS
November 02, 2008
Please take action to urge the media to report the unadjusted exit polls for the 2008 election.
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