Was the Prop 8 vote rigged?

I'm hearing whispers that people think the vote on Prop 8 was rigged. Something does seem a little fishy here.

Until recently, exit polls were scrupulously accurate. So accurate that the network newsrooms know who's going to be elected President, for instance, before they even go on the air with their election coverage. All the drama and suspense are for show. They don't want to call an election, and rightly so, before all the polls have closed across the country. But they know who will win. They just keep it to themselves.

Then in 2004, these exit polls became suspect. The polls showed John Kerry clearly winning Ohio, and with it, the Presidency. But when the votes started coming in, GW won Ohio. Something seemed a little fishy here. It couldn't possibly be that the president of the company that provided Ohio the machines had stated publicly that he would do whatever it took to see GW elected, could it? Or that the Ohio Secretary of State, the man entrusted with ensuring fair and accurate elections, was GW's campaign manager in Ohio? No conflict of interest there.

Now, fast forward to 2008. The exit polls were showing Prop 8 going down to defeat 48%-52%, which coincidentally is the reverse of how the actual vote totals came in. Something seem a little fishy here? We've all heard the stories of the hackable voting machines, and the ones which register the opposite of what one actually voted. And those good old right-wing Christian nutjobs still run those companies that sell electronic voting machines.

Early in the evening, the "official" exit poll, called the National Exit Poll, showed Prop 8 losing by the aforementioned 48%-52%. But, at the end of the evening, the poll suddenly switched, showing Prop 8 winning by about the same margin. They interviewed an additional 72 voters, of whom 133 stated that they had voted "yes" on Prop 8. The only way that could have happened is if the pollsters threw out some of the earlier respondents. That does happen in research, when there appear to be irregularities in the answers, but not a lot.

I've worked with market research for years. I know all about weighting and extrapolating and all the other bullshit they'll throw out. But I also know that polling is very scientific shit. And I know that once a trend is established, it's very hard to reverse. To overcome that kind of deficit, the "yes" vote would have required every single additional respondent, and then some, to say they voted yes. Apparently they did.

The discrepancy between the exit poll and the final vote total, along with the fact that the poll and the final results were reversed, coupled with the earlier Field Poll which indicated a 4 point defeat for Prop 8, and the fact that LA ALWAYS votes with SF, but not this time, certainly has me scratching my head.

All the protests going on are fine. But I think we should be raising our collective, fabulous voices and demand an investigation into the results. The oddities require a second glance, at the very least.