Exit Polls

I always pretty much assumed, as most people did, I think, that these things were pretty accurate. Why shouldn't we think that, they always seem to be pretty good at projecting things. That is until the 2000 election, when I guess everyone just lost faith in them and dismissed them as inaccurate after the Florida mess. But for me, the 2000 election really just made it clear to me that it's the actual vote couting itself that is inaccurate. I'm still convinced that the first projections were correct and Gore won Florida in 2000. I said it at the time, and the more I have seen since about the voting problems has convinced me even more.

Which brings me to this election. We hear so much now about how badly wrong the exit polls were, which no one really seems to question much. Without the 2000 election, I think people would be much more confident in the polling and would be asking a lot more questions about the voting/counting instead. But since we all conveniently lost confidence in the exit polls in 2000, no one is suprised that they were wrong again. And horribly wrong. But it just makes me wonder how we can dismiss this so easily. We put a lot of confidence in these things over the years, they always worked before, why not now? Where are the people who conducted the polls standing up for their methods and standing behind their results? I'm not suggesting that John Kerry actually won the election, but I do have a lot more confidence now in a scientific poll than I do of the vote counting process after seeing wat a fiasco it is in 2000. I wonder why I don't hear more about this on the news? Am I the only one that thinks when there are two methods of finding the same result, that the "official" one must somehow automatically default to being the correct one, is somewhat silly? Especially after seeing what a mess it can be to count all those votes. I haven't seen anyone point to any evidence that shows why the exit polls would suddenly be wrong, but I have seen evidence that makes me believe that there could be lot of problems with the official vote counts.