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Election Investigations

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 is meant as a warning. It does not provide conclusive proof of election tampering, since such “proof” would be embedded with the memory cards and computer code which are regarded as proprietary secrets and strictly off-limits to examination.  But what is revealed here is strong enough to suggest that legislators, secretaries of state, attorneys general, and the public must pay close attention to what is reported in all future elections. Candidates entering upcoming elections should especially read and understand this report and take notice of the current state of our electoral system. This particular report pertains to California; however, Election Defense Alliance is also publishing a comparable report on the 2008 Presidential election, questioning the results in several states. The bottom line is: with electronic equipment counting our votes, we cannot know whether the official results are accurate. Multiple analyses of vote tabulations from the past several elections caution us that they are not.
 

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.
 

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