A few months ago, I interviewed the noted Bosnian writer Aleksander Hemon. He said he felt Americans were naive to think that there weren’t bad people out there. He said a quick examination of what happened in his native Sarajevo puts the lie to that element of American naivete.

I am not, by the way, arguing that chicanery existed and that the 2004 election was stolen (the 2000 election was clearly stolen by the Supreme Court, if nowhere else). But citing your article about beliefs tells me nothing I wasn’t already aware of.

In my long post above, I’m objecting mainly to Sam’s credulousness regarding Ohio ‘04, where countless irregularities were simply swept under the rug. Simply because the outcome was withing the realm of plausibility, that does not prove there was no electioneering. The evidence to the contrary, in fact, is mountainous, and needs to be dealt with.

Except that those ballots were not counted. You’re conflating two distinct issues. The same judge who ordered the re-examination of all of the rejected absentee ballots specifically upheld the rejection of those ballots that were not dated.

Take a look at a neuroscience op-ed I’ve written that relates to the topic of how beliefs form. Then stop and think about all the evidence. Ask yourself whether it fits better with your idea, or with the converse idea. Be as critical as you are in the direction you currently lean.

What we do know is that the kind of updated “likely voter” scenarios that worked in 2008, with increased turnout amongst younger people and African Americans did not work in 2004, and the results reflected that. But what if indeed they should have worked, and those people did go to the polls, and their votes didn’t count?

Insofar as the popular vote goes in 2004, I’d be curious to see if anyone actually conducted a state by state analysis, with emphasis on those with Republican Secretaries of State, to see if the pre-election polling actually reflected the final tallies, which would lead to the , what was it, 1.4 million lead that Bush eventually wound up with.

I am aware that as of now, this is a contrarian position, but I’m really not convinced.

A successful GOTV effort primarily directed at early voting could have a significant effect on final margin and still be consitent with pre-election polling.

To find cases where election day GOTV had an impact, we would need to look at individual states where the effort was greatest. Indiana and Pennsylvania might be examples. I suspect the difference made by election day GOTV efforts is within the MOE of the polls, so this effect would be difficult to measure. (<3%)

I think we can attribute this largely to the general innumeracy of the electorate. Many people can’t (or at least don’t) properly contextualize reports of a relative handful of spoiled or disqualified ballots, improper registrations, or what have you. The sensationalist claims of both parties and the media don’t help matters either. And finally, the intensive post-election coverage of those races that are exceedingly close fosters the impression that elections can often turn on a few fraudulent votes or a few disenfranchised voters.

One possibility is that because such efforts start in advance, the effects are already pre-captured in polls. A second is that GOTV efforts on both sides cancel one another. Finally, the net effect might be 1% or less, which could matter in a super-close races like in Indiana and North Carolina. I’ve heard secondhand that the last is the view of the Obama campaign. However, they have to say that, don’t they.

Paul – I agree completely that faith in the voting process is currently quite low considering that counting seems to be fairly accurate. In this year’s exit polls, only 49% this year were confident that their votes would be counted accurately.

Mike L – The counterpart to paranoia on the Democratic side is the view on the Republican side that the process can be gamed. Either case is a corruption of our faith in democratic processes. It would be great if voting were reformed to be more uniform with ultrahigh levels of fairness and reliability.