Dead in the water
Exit polls are used to determine which candidate in an election is the winner. It is basically exactly what it sounds like, a polling of people as they exit the polls asking who they voted for. When done correctly, as it usually is, it is a very accurate way to predict the results of an election and is in fact used when the results are in question to determine whether any voter fraud was involved. When the results of an election don't match the exit polls it is the exit polls which are used to determine the result. That is until 2004 when polling clearly showed Kerry winning, when news stations announced his victory, confident in a polling system which is used internationally as the standard for determining the accuracy of election results.
Suddenly the results were saying something different, results which came in large part from electronic voting machines with no paper trail, provided by Diebold, whose CEO is a major republican contributor and who was caught sending a memo before the 2004 election stating that he was looking forward to delivering the votes of Ohio to the president. You may remember the election came down to Ohio, which was initially called for Kerry, then when the results came in Bush was declared the winner. The exit polls showed Kerry in the lead but the Diebold ballots showed that Bush had won. Ballots which had no paper trail and which were sent to a proven biased company who then releases the results without anyone but them being able to verify the authenticity.
It is common practice for media outlets to release the raw data from polling so people can independently verify their results. That is except for the first election where the exit polls did not reflect the voting, an occurence which one would think would lead people to want to verify the polling more than usual. It has also been decided that they won't release the raw data for the next election either. So to sum up, the most accurate and widely used international system to verify an elections authenticity and accuracy is being discarded in favor of a voting machine which for the first time in history does not produce any kind of paper trail and is interpreted by a company with a clear political agenda. Does this seem scary to anyone else?