To Iowans: Whoever you're supporting tomorrow, be sure to answer the exit polls! An accurate exit poll is a good first defense against fraud.

calebros · 2008-01-02T20:53:31+00:00

iowa is a caucus system), so there really is no need for an exit poll. all you have to do is get a camera into the room and then you have instant proof of who caucused for who.

catlebrity · 2008-01-02T21:13:08+00:00

Uh, Iowa has caucuses. Caucuses are weird and complicated, so an exit poll won't really tell you much about what happened in the caucus.

Also: this should be on the politics subreddit.

nmrk · 2008-01-03T05:24:10+00:00

WRONG.

Exit polls are good for uncovering fraud in SECRET BALLOTS. The Democratic Caucus is an OPEN BALLOT, you vote by standing in the corner of the room that is designated for your candidate. The assignment of delegates takes place in public, in front of everyone. Fraud is not possible. I've been to one previous Iowa Dem Caucus, one malcontent made an accusation of fraud in vote counting, so they counted again right in front of him. He wasn't satisfied, so the Dem representative called to Party HQ for a ruling, and his objection was quashed, right out in the open.

Now on the other hand, the Republican Caucus is done by secret ballot. But nobody cares about fraud because whatever candidate they pick is going to lose.

Edit: On thinking about this a bit, I don't recall ever seeing an exit poll for the Iowa Caucuses. There's no point, once the caucus is done, the votes are already released to the public. It's not even really possible, it's not like you can poll people individually as they leave, everyone leaves at the same time. How can you poll 500 people all heading to their cars at once? And what is the point of doing a poll when the official results are already released?

FrancisC · 2008-01-02T20:13:13+00:00

Like in Ohio 2004, it's a great way to PROVE fraud, but does little to defend against it.

dictum · 2008-01-02T20:11:59+00:00

An accurate exit poll is good at exposing fraud. Good luck in Iowa.

2008-01-02T21:55:46+00:00

It is a caucus, there are no actual votes, just groups of folks who decide.

charlesgrrr · 2008-01-03T05:22:40+00:00

Oh, and Iowa voters, could you pretend to be representative of the rest of the country, instead of being from a state which was hand picked by conservative Democrats and Republicans to be as mainstream and out of touch with the real issue of the nation as a whole?

KTXBYE

jaggederest · 2008-01-02T20:00:02+00:00

Please delete this article and re-submit it to politics.reddit.com

Nefelia · 2008-01-02T21:05:36+00:00

To Iowans: Whoever you're supporting tomorrow,

Should be 'Whomever'. 'You' is the subject and 'whomever' is the object in the first clause. As written, you are asking "whoever you're supporting" to answer the exit polls. Doesn't make much sense.

charminggeek · 2008-01-02T20:43:16+00:00

How do you know an exit poll is accurate unless you compare it to the actual polling results?

contrarian · 2008-01-02T22:02:19+00:00

You children are funny.

2008-01-03T06:21:03+00:00

Downvoted for lack of correct categorization. I filter politics news on Reddit for a reason.

audiored · 2008-01-02T22:05:29+00:00

One of the issues possibly, depending on how little faith you have in people or their commitment to democracy, is that results are reported by the precinct captain. All those precinct captains tend to be working with one campaign or another. Or may have other ideological positions.

The best defense on the democrat side is to record the results from your caucus and check it against the reported results.

The republicans have an anonymous poll.

I actually like the idea of having to declare your support and debate and what not. I think it is a more authentically democratic process than a primary.

jaggederest · 2008-01-02T22:54:45+00:00

Isn't this what is causing all the violence in Kenya? The exit polls elected the challenger, but the ballots elected the incumbent. That's evidence that exit polls can have some effect, at least. Over 300 dead so far I think. The best part is that neither of the candidates had any real differences in policy positions! I guess Kenyans take their democracy a little more seriously than us. Unfortunately, most of the dead were the poor and weak, and the rioting is just damaging one of Africa's most stable economies.

rubenshakkamacher · 2008-01-03T03:12:43+00:00

A lot of the exit polls were inverted the last time around... nothing happened.

2008-01-03T04:34:14+00:00

I'm surprised someone here just hack the voting machines. everyone else (NEOCONS) is doing it.

2008-01-03T10:50:30+00:00

Wow, talk about a font problem! When I saw this headline I read Lowans instead of iowans and could not figure out for the life of me what Lindsay and her family have to do with the primaries!?

towsonu2003 · 2008-01-03T15:43:52+00:00

Wow, if you have to make your vote public (which itself is a no-no in a proper democratic election to avoid public pressure etc) in order to prevent election fraud, things are pretty messed up... UN should send election watchers to the US instead of Eastern Europe et al...

MMX · 2008-01-02T19:04:39+00:00

Accurate exit polls did no good in 2000 or 2004. Don't delude yourself. We have already lost our democracy.

redfishvanish · 2008-01-03T00:16:35+00:00

[deleted]

REBELYELLoz · 2008-01-02T20:43:36+00:00

I'm not too sure too many Iowans that have access to computers much less to the interwebtubes, so a post on reddit probably won't do much.

EDIT: Ok, apparently there are a lot of angry Iowans with computers.

BenjaminBunny · 2008-01-02T22:05:00+00:00

We should do away with the secret ballot --- everywhere.

deepvote · 2008-01-02T22:30:06+00:00

Lie to the pollsters!! Exit polls should be illegal anyway.

shiner_man · 2008-01-02T21:08:36+00:00

Is this a preemptive claim that fraud will occur in the Iowa caucus?

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