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Was California's Proposition 8 Election Rigged?
Related article: The complete report, Citizen Exit Polls in Los Angeles County: An In-Depth Analysis, by R. H. Phillips
INTRODUCTION
Was California's Proposition 8 Election Rigged?
By Sally Castleman and Jonathan Simon
This report presents evidence that in the November 2008 election the tabulation of the vote for California’s Proposition 8, the ballot initiative repealing marriage equality, was probably corrupted. It is beyond the scope of this study to know if any corruption was due to honest error or intentional fraud. Further investigation is warranted.
Much media attention has been focused on California over the past several years regarding gay marriage, abortion, and other hot-button social issues. In November 2008, two such issues appeared on the California ballot: Proposition 8 outlawed marriage equality (a “yes” vote opposed same-sex marriage); Proposition 4 mandated a waiting period and parental notification before non-emancipated minors were allowed an abortion (similar measures had been defeated twice before).
Election Defense Alliance, a national nonprofit group dedicated to restoring integrity and public accountability to the electoral processes, worked with several other election integrity groups to conduct public election verification exit polls (“EVEP”) in eight states in November. The polls were meant to validate or detect problems with the official vote counts. Ten sites, representing 19 precincts, were located in Los Angeles County, California. This paper presents the analysis of the L.A. County polling results as they pertain to Proposition 8.
EDA Study Shows 2008 CA Prop 8 Results Appear to Have Been Corrupted
Click Here to download the Introduction as a pdf
The following study of suspect Proposition 8 election results in Los Angeles County, CA, is drawn from data gathered in EDA's Election Verification Exit Poll (EVEP) analysis of the 2008 Presidential election, which reports similarly questionable election results in several states.
Although this exit poll analysis cannot provide conclusive proof of election fraud (because such proof would require access to memory cards and computer code accorded proprietary exemption from public examination) it does provide the strongest indirect proof available that election results have almost certainly been altered by manipulation of the computerized voting systems.
Deviations between exit polls and official results far outside margins of error, cannot be explained away by demographics or polling factors. The facts established in these reports cannot responsibly be dismissed or evaded.
Election Defense Alliance calls on legislators, secretaries of state, attorneys general, the voting public, and especially candidates in upcoming elections, to read these reports and seriously confront their implications.
An EDA Investigative Report
'Exhaustive analysis of exit polls conducted in Los Angeles County has led to the conclusion that the vote count for Proposition 8 (the ban on same-sex marriage) appears to have been corrupted.
There were not enough Republican voters to account for the disparity between the exit poll and official results
even if every Republican non-responder voted for Proposition 8.
The Edison-Mitofsky exit poll showed a similar disparity statewide,
indicating that altered vote counts may not be limited to Los Angeles County.'
For the Introduction and Executive Summary:
http://electiondefensealliance.org/files/intro&exsum.pdf
CITIZEN EXIT POLLS IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY: AN IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS
Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D.
Download the PDF
Appendices added
Related report: Introduction and Executive Summary
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Abstract
Exhaustive analysis of exit polls conducted in Los Angeles County has led to the inescapable conclusion that the vote count for Proposition 8 (the ban on same-sex marriage) was corrupted. The data were drawn from questionnaires filled out by 6326 voters at ten polling places scattered across Los Angeles County, and were properly adjusted to match the gender, age, race, and party affiliation of the electorate.
For Proposition 4 (which would have required parental notification and a waiting period for minors seeking abortions), the official results differ from the adjusted exit poll data by only 0.64%. But for Proposition 8, the disparity between the official results and the adjusted exit poll data is 5.74%, enough to affect the margin by 11.48%. Because Los Angeles County comprised 24.23% of the statewide electorate, an error of that magnitude would have affected the statewide margin by 2.78%, accounting for most of the official 4.48% statewide margin of victory. There were not enough Republican voters to account for the disparity between the exit poll and the official results even if every Republican non-responder voted for Proposition 8. The Edison-Mitofsky exit poll showed a similar disparity statewide, indicating that altered vote counts may not be limited to Los Angeles County.
