It seemed like our United New World Trading Order of Internationally Banking Trilateral Masters were playing the cards close to their chest this election. Democracy was now showing the seams of the media's 1998 premature release of the names of our (as yet) unelected masters. Had no-one told the media whores at ABC that coming in the mouths of your 'consumer base' is considered bad taste? One of the more prophylactic measures instituted by the pimps on the hill was to stop revealing the results of the elections to the press the week before they were counted, but this wasn't enough. Somewhere in America, perhaps in your town, perhaps in your very school, a little girl had stopped believing in democracy! The public faith in the democratic process, which had always been strong, was now in danger of collapse. If election results were so easily 'predicted', where was the incentive to vote? And if the public didn't vote, they'd turn their energies to lobbying for special interests, leaving the pimps as redundant as betamax. Panic (and dare I say anarchy) reigned in the dimly lit back rooms of Washington D.C. Somebody, anybody had to _do_ something, and do it now! But, as always, the pimps had a solution. They asked the media to pull one more trick for them. There would be an election, with two candidates so closely matched that the public would be unable to decide between them. They would have the same policies, make the same promises, and wear the same suits. The election would be so close, that a handful of voters would decide the next President Of The United States. The media would tease the public again and again with the final result, before snatching it back in a tantric, fiery renewal of the democratic spirit. And thus, The American Way was saved... --------Forwarded Message-------- Date:Thu, 05 Nov 1998 08:56:34 -0500 To:[EMAIL PROTECTED] From:Declan McCullagh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject:FC: ABCNews.com on election eve: blunder, or forecast? Reply-To:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 05 Nov 1998 08:43:55 -0500 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Adam Powell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: blunder, or forecast? X-UIDL: 0b7ed82fc0730006bef8cc6d9525f8ff Once again the Net had it first, this time by accident... http://www.freedomforum.org/technology/1998/11/4abc.asp ABC News election-eve Net 'mistake' accurately predicted most close races By Adam Clayton Powell III World Center 11.4.98 It did not happen, but just imagine if it had: The night before Fox television aired the World Series, the Fox Web site posts a complete set of inning-by-inning box scores for the upcoming Yankees-Padres games. After leaving the results online for a while, Fox pulls them down and says it was all a big mistake. Then the Yanks and the Padres play the Series, and nearly 90% of the innings show the same scoring as in the "mistake" posting. Sports fans, reporters and bookies would all cry foul, right? Now consider what happened this week: On Monday night, ABC News accidentally posted complete state-by-state election results on its Web site, hours before any votes were cast yesterday. ABC withdrew the numbers by mid-evening Monday, saying they were all a mistake and a test of their systems. "It wasn't our finest hour," Michelle Bergman, manager of communications for ABCNews.com, told the Associated Press yesterday. And, indeed, in the days before each national election, the major national news organizations hold "rehearsals" for reporting election night, using "dummy" numbers. Or maybe ... With almost all election districts reporting, those "phony" ABC News test numbers on Monday accurately matched the outcomes of the Senate and governor races in 61 of the 70 contests ^× 87%. It would be difficult to find a political analyst, pundit or bookie who even came close. While every major analyst on Sunday was predicting the Republicans would pick up anywhere from one to four Senate seats this week, ABC's test numbers on Monday had it right on the money: a 55-45 GOP-Democrat split, for no net change. Even more remarkable, in some of the most closely watched contests, ABC News election eve "test" numbers matched the final vote count almost precisely ^× within one percentage point. In the Florida governor's race, Jeb Bush beat Buddy MacKay by 55% to 45% ^× the exact final result rehearsed by ABC News on Monday. In Texas, Jeb's brother George won by 69% to Mauro's 30% ^× the very result used in the ABC rehearsal on Monday. ABC News rehearsal numbers also matched the exact final results, to within one percentage point, of the governors' races in Alabama, Colorado, Wisconsin and Wyoming. All told, ABC's "error" had the correct candidates winning the governors mansions in 32 of 36 elections yesterday. The only gubernatorial contests where ABC had the wrong candidate winning were in Hawaii, Iowa, New Mexico and Minnesota, where few predicted Reform Party candidate Jesse Ventura would be the new governor. In the Senate elections, ABC's test numbers matched the winners in 29 of 34 contests, including all of the major races. ABC on Monday had posted "WIN" indicators next to Boxer, Schumer, Fitzgerald, Murray and Hollings, all of whom won close races in California, New York, Illinois, Washington and South Carolina, respectively. ABC also had the correct result in Wisconsin. The final vote totals this afternoon showed Russ Feingold narrowly won reelection by 38,410 votes. On Monday, ABC's rehearsal numbers showed Feingold winning reelection by a margin of 39,000 votes. But ABC is not claiming these numbers were the result of any new forecasting models or special analysis. "It was completely random," Bergman told free! this afternoon. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- the moderated mailing list of politics and technology To subscribe: send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with this text: subscribe politech More information is at http://www.well.com/~declan/politech/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------