Once again we have an election where the exit polls don’t match the actual vote, where examples of voter suppression efforts abound in areas largely supporting one candidate (Obama), where not enough voting machines were available in areas largely supporting one candidate (Obama), where voters were even denied their right to vote on provisional ballots as required by federal law, etc. I could provide the details to support these claims, but Brad Blog has already done a far better job than I ever could. So if you are interested go visit his site for the detailed support for these strange and curious events reported at the Pennsylvania polls yesterday.
All I can say is this is all awfully reminiscent of my experiences in Cleveland, Ohio in 2004 as a volunteer for Election Protection. The same issues about broken machines, insufficient numbers of voting machines, voters mysteriously purged from voting rolls, long lines at polling places in one candidate’s strongholds, exit polls off significantly, etc. Now maybe as BooMan suggests, a lot of white people lied to the exit pollsters, but I don’t believe that. If the lying was to occur, I’d think it would be most likely to happen in the the numerous poll results produced prior to votes actually being cast, not after. And of course, all the votes were tallied on voting machines with no paper trail, and which have previously been shown to be easily hackable and/or incorrectly register votes cast for one candidate to another, or otherwise fail to register votes properly. But that’s just one old white guy’s opinion.
Was there evidence of voting irregularities in Pennsylvania? Yes, that much is clear. Was it enough to prevent an Obama victory? Maybe, maybe not. Was it enough to increase Clinton’s margin of victory to double digits, thus keeping her candidacy viable? I’ll let you make that call on your own.