Let's Examine the MA Evidence

Rather than emulate the mainstream press and political opinion pundits in writing off Martha Coakley's defeat as the consequence of a poorly-run campaign, let's make an effort to examine the evidence from Tuesday's special Senate election in Massachusetts.

There's more than enough evidence in the surface debris to suggest that the methods for counting and reporting the votes have more to do with the reputed outcome, than all the post-facto speculations about voter motivation rolled up together.

Blaming the losing candidate for an inept campaign is always convenient, but in this case that's really not sufficient to explain the 15% reversal from pre-election tracking polls.

If you have any press reports, first-hand observations, or other accounts of election irregularities from Tuesday's special election for Senate (such as ballots pre-marked for Brown, etc.) please send in those items to [email protected] [1] with "Senate MA" in the subject line.

Also, if you kept records of pre-election tracking polls, or made screen captures of any early election results, please
send those as well.

While the political press and blogs are picking apart weaknesses in the Coakley campaign -- all of which may be true -- on the EDA site we're directing attention to fundamental questions the political press and blogs habitually overlook, about how the votes were counted and reported.

Massachusetts is crawling with reasons to doubt the veracity of the reported election results. Here are some of them:

First, a report by Bev Harris [2] examining the MA voting results by jurisdiction, according to the vote-counting methodology employed, machine or hand-count.

Keep in mind that all of MA's votes are managed by a single contractor, LHS Associates, and all the machines (whether
labeled ES&S or Diebold/Premiere) are now owned and operated by a single E-voting vendor, ES&S.

http://electiondefensealliance.org/MA-Senate-Coakley-Brown-Results [2]

Second, Bev Harris demonstrates how early, unofficial newsmedia "election calls" [3] are used to condition perception of electoral outcome reality, resulting in reactions such as premature candidate concessions. (As Bradblog described it, Coakley set a new world record).

http://electiondefensealliance.org/eda-blogs/bev_harris/210110/newsmedia-false-calls [3]

Third, a review of the fishy Obama-Clinton results in the 2008 MA presidential primary [4], analyzed by Jonathan Simon and Bruce O'Dell.

Massachusetts holds the national record for most extreme divergence (15.5% ) between exit polls and reputed official results.

http://electiondefensealliance.org/Primaries_2008_Managed_Manipulation [4]

Excerpt:

2/5/2008: Super Tuesday

Super Tuesday was essentially a standoff, each candidate doing what was necessary to remain viable. There were, however, several exit poll-vote count disparities far beyond the expected margin of error, each involving a shift toward Clinton.

In Massachusetts, another LHS state like New Hampshire, the shift was a whopping 15.5%, turning a projected narrow Obama victory into a 15% Clinton rout.

In Arizona, site of some of the most dubious counting antics over the past several election cycles, the pro-Clinton shift was 11%, again reversing the outcome.

And in New Jersey, where machines are currently under high scrutiny supported by a court order, the shift was 8.6%.

Each of these shifts was well beyond the margin of error of the respective polls. Each resulted in shifts in delegate count to Obama’s detriment, as well as the loss of two victories that would have put a very different complexion on the outcome of Super Tuesday as a whole. The overall effect was, again, to maintain Clinton’s viability.
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Unfortunately, in this Brown-Coakley special Senate election, there were no exit polls at all.