Was California’s Prop 8 election stolen?

by David Safier

Election integrity issues have quieted down, at least for now, in Arizona. Whatever the truth about the RTA vote controversy, the counting of the ballots has taken the wind out of the media sails of those who think the election was stolen. The RTA vote question, which got quite a bit of media buzz, is no longer a subject of public discussion.

On another front, Brad Friedman, a national champion of election integrity whose BradBlog has been on the story — and often ahead of the story — for years, wrote a post questioning the integrity of the vote count for California's Prop 8, which repealed the state's marriage equality law.

The evidence of a possible miscount, either due to "fraud or gross errors," comes from some exit polling data.

Some of you may have rolled your eyes when you read the term, "exit polling." But listen to the methodology used.

As voters exited the polling place, they were asked to fill out a simplified ballot echoing the votes they had just cast, and to place it into a locked box. Therefore, the ballots did not include any identifying information, and thus, those overseeing the poll — at either the polling place, or later when the EVEP ballots were counted by hand — would have no way to tie votes to voters.

So, if you consent to fill out the ballot when you leave the polling place and you know your information will be absolutely anonymous, chances are you'll record your votes accurately — much more accurately than if someone is looking you in the eye and asking you how you voted.

It looks like the poll was pretty accurate for most issues and races.

[The exit poll] functioned beautifully in general, by confirming the results of most of the issues and races on the ballot. On Proposition 4, for example, which concerned a similar hot-button issue — parental notification for abortion — polling results and official election results matched within 2%, well within the expected margin of error.

But for Prop 8, the exit poll results were an average of 7.75% different from the official vote count.

In some cases, the discrepancy was as high as 17.7%. That is, of course, far outside of the margin of expected error and certainly worthy of further investigation by officials.

If there's anything I've learned in following the Arizona Election Integrity battles closely, it's that election results can be rigged. When computers are involved, they can be rigged pretty damn easily, and these days, computers are always involved.

I've also learned that there are many, many impediments to checking the accuracy of vote counts, which means we rarely get to find out for sure if the concerns about vote count fraud are valid.

Thanks to the incredible efforts of the election integrity people in this area, Pima County has a much improved system, with lots of safeguards in place to minimize the risks of election fraud — not eliminate, but minimize. But we're the rare exception.

I have no idea whether or not the Prop 8 vote count was manipulated, but the exit poll results Friedman cited are enough to make me suspicious, and they should be enough to warrant another look at the results.