EXIT POLLS AND VOTE COUNTS By Robert Gover

Google the title of this article and you’ll soon be lost in a fog of blogs from all across the USA and countries beyond, gnarling over the results of the 2004 election. Were the exit polls wrong, or were computerized voting machines rigged to produce a win for George W. Bush and other Republican candidates? If the exit polls were right, the vote count was wrong. If the exit polls were wrong, the vote count was right. Round-the-clock TV news shows have been strangely quiet about this question. I think it’s fair to say that if the exit polls had shown Bush ahead but the machine count had installed Kerry as President, the TV news nets would be rat-a-tat chattering in Bill-and-Monica mode. Exit polling is done the same way it’s always been done. As people exit polling places, they are asked who they voted for and why. Pre-election polls have an error range of 3 to 5 percent but exit polls have proven accurate over the years to within half a percentage point. Voting methods have been radically changed.About one-third of voters in 2004 used computerized, paperless voting machines to cast ballots. In the USA, each local precinct is charged with deciding which kind of voting method to use, so methods range from paper ballots to punch cards to high-tech computerized machines which create no paper record. Bar charts published on the internet showed the results of exit polling conducted by the Associated Press compared to the results of machine votes. Looking at just two key states, the exit polls from Florida showed Kerry winning by about 10 points, and the polls in Ohio had Kerry winning by about 11 points. Voting machine results reversed this. Bush won the paperless machine tally in Florida by 52 to 48, and he won in Ohio’s paperless machine precincts by 54 to 43. This reversal of results was echoed across the country in many other paperless polling sites. The Kerry camp was poised to mount legal actions if there was any evidence of cheating. It was reported that they’d set aside $50 million for this. However, the count appeared wrong in only precincts where paperless machines were used. Without paper records, no recount was possible. Therefore, Kerry conceded the election. The media then reported that the number 1 issue Republicans voted for was “moral values.” What did they mean by moral values? They want government off their backs but not out of their wombs. Killing uncounted enemies far and near is...well, it can’t be helped, but abortions must be outlawed to protect the precious lives of unwanted fetuses. What astrological pattern might have foretold this odd state of American public opinion, if indeed it is public opinion and not public relations manipulations? If the big corporations with PR power promoted this “off our backs but inside our wombs” mind twist, what could they possibly gain from it? Or were the big corporate people just cooperating with the Christian fundamentalist jihadis in order to enlist their numbers at the polls? In the USA’s natal chart, Mercury at 24 Cancer is opposite Pluto at 27 Capricorn. On November 2, transiting Saturn was conjunct the US Mercury opposite US Pluto, and the Moon’s Nodes were square this configuration. Mercury symbolizes the Press, and opposed to Pluto suggests the American Press must deal with plutocratic dominance from behind the scenes. About five key people sit atop the five major media corporations and they are all right-wing conservative Republicans. The media is often accused of being “liberal,” and indeed most of the journalists in the trenches are Democrats or Progressives. from six years of journalism experience that you either go along to get along or find yourself on the street looking for a new job. That unwritten rule is tacitly understood all across the USA. Transiting Saturn conjunct the US Mercury and opposite the US Pluto on November 2 suggests that most reporters were inhibited – or inhibited themselves – from exploring this amazing discrepancy between exit polls and vote counts. It was even rumored that in some newsrooms, the exit poll numbers were “revised” to better reflect the vote count. Decades ago I remember being invited to a get-together with journalists from the old Soviet Union. American reporters charged the Soviets were censored; they laughed and retorted that American reporters censored themselves. Like other wage earners, journalists have mortgages to meet, kids to get through college, cars to maintain, and so on. American journalists have learned to be “team players.” There is no honor associated with being a blacklisted journalist unable to find a job. But no such restraints are put on people who bang out articles for internet sites, and so as the mainstream media maintains its silence on this discrepancy, the web is agog with blogs examining the phenomenon from a spectrum of perspectives. It’s understandable that many large corporations would cheer a second term for George W. Bush, for his administration has bestowed an unprecedented abundance of welfare upon the likes of Halliburton et al. The US media cheers the notion that America’s companies are bringing clean water, sewage facilities, highways and schools along with “freedom and democracy” to downtrodden Iraqis. The power of corporate PR is such that most Americans go along with this mind twist in order to keep making their mortgage payments...although in Sunday get-togethers among friends there is much black humor exchanged. On Wall Street, some cheer, others lament, but all place their bets according to what can be expected from a second Bush term. The cheering is mainly done by those focused on the short-run. The laments are from those who are aware that the government’s record budget deficit and debt cannot last for ever, nor can the record trade deficit. The dollar is trending down, causing cheers among the short-rangers and fears among the long-rangers. Corporate profits in the short term are expected to fatten as more American jobs are outsourced and cheap labor is imported, environmental protections are relaxed, worker benefits reduced, nuclear waste argued about and the deteriorating infrastructure left for a future administration to deal with. Consumers are encouraged to hock the equity in their homes for instant gratification at Walmart, and the managements of most companies appear confident that they can go on downsizing workers to increase profits for ever and ever, seemingly oblivious to the fact that workers become the consumers needed to generate big profits. So the question is not if the Bush-driven US economy will collapse, but when. I count myself among those who believe we are about 4 years into a secular bear market. Up moves will occur along the way, but the overall direction of financials and general well-being is slowly but surely down. Will the overall economy slide through another four years of Bush? Or will a tsunami arise before Bush moves out of the White House in January 2009? To calculate the economic weather ahead, I track the outermost slower moving planets primarily: Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Mars and Lunation events often trigger what the slower moving planets indicate. What they indicate for the USA (and thus, now, for much of the world economy) is indicated by how they aspect the USA’s natal Mars-Neptune square. In the USA’s nativity, Mars in Gemini square Neptune in Virgo has been a sensitive indicator of stock market crashes and panics. Since the mid-1800s, every crash big enough to cause panic has occurred when this Mars-Neptune square has been hit by hard angles from the transiting planets, especially by Saturn and Uranus, more subtlely by Neptune and Pluto. Saturn turned retrograde November 19 and will turn direct again at 20 Cancer on March 23, 2005. Uranus in early and mid-Pisces will be shining a beneficent trine to the US natal Uranus till well into 2006. It won’t be till late in 2008 that Saturn and Uranus will come within orb of an opposition and simultaneously conjunct and opposite the US Neptune, square the US Mars. I think it’s most likely that this is when the US credit-card economy will first be hit with a financial panic, with more hits to follow. Another cycle to take into consideration as we look ahead to George Bush’s second term is the Moon’s North Node’s 18.6 year cycle. Real estate prices rise and fall pretty much in sync with the Moon’s North Node, which moves backwards around the Zodiac. When it is in Cancer, RE prices are up; nine years later when it moves through Capricorn, RE prices are down. Right now the North Node is moving out of Taurus into Aries; RE prices are holding steady but there is talk of an RE bubble ready to burst. I pity whoever moves into the White House in January 2009. Financials will probably have crashed by late 2008 as Saturn and Uranus tighten their opposition and money may be rushing from stocks into real estate. Wherever RE prices are by late 2008 (I expect them to be popped or hissing loudly) they will be dropping simultaneous with Saturn-Uranus holding its opposition affliction to Uncle Sam’s Mars-Neptune square. Whoever moves into the White House in 2009 can blame the economic mess he/she inherits on the Bush Administration, whose supply-side supporters will have taken the money and run. Those who bail out of stocks before the crash in late 2008 will probably have some choice buys in real estate. I am omitting speculations on what will have become of Bush’s gift to Iraq of “freedom and democracy” by the end of his second term, and the Israeli-Arab Jehovah-Allah “fist-fight in heaven.” Nor can we yet know if Bush’s god will tell him to do unto Iran what he has done unto Iraq. It’s enough for now to contemplate the upcoming Saturn-Uranus affliction to the US Mars-Neptune square. The above biwheel shows when Saturn and Uranus will make their first exact opposition, around the time of the 2008 presidential elections. Given the history of Saturn and Uranus afflictions to the Mars-Neptune square, this is highly likely to have the financial markets in turmoil and chaos, and social upheavals a problem too. The last time Saturn was found opposite Uranus was during the upheavals of the 1960s; the time before that was following World War I and panic of 1920. Before that, Saturn opposite Uranus coincided with the great depression of the 1870s. The upcoming opposition will be exacerbated by Pluto in Sagittarius. And before the 2008-2012 presidential term is done, Uranus and Pluto will have formed a square which in turn will form a grand cross to the USA’s Sun-Saturn square, indicating another rough time economically and socially.Since there is no outcry in the mass media about the discrepancy between exit polls and paperless machine vote counts, it’s quite possible that a lot more then one-third of American voters will be using paperless machines in 2008, and that exit polls will be banned. A minority of Americans will be up in arms about this but they will be denigrated as “conspiracy theorists.” In any case, the public’s attention will probably be focused on a crashed financial market and other related problems, such as a shrinking dollar, setting off a domino effect throughout the whole economy. Bush and co. will have plundered the US Treasury, given their present beliefs and policies. Assuming Bush’s privatized social security scheme is passed by a Republican Congress, there are likely to be screaming-mad losers of pension funds and coyly grinning Wall Street insiders. So whoever moves into the White House in January 2009 may feel like Captain Ahab steering into the teeth of a hurricane. None of this future is set in concrete of course. The stars tell us only when tough choices will have to be made, not what choices we will make. Having chosen in 2004 to ignore the discrepancy between exit polls and paperless machine vote counts, we turned our ship of state toward the tsunami of 2008. ________________________________________________________________________ 1. "Footprints of Electoral Fraud: The November 2 Exit Poll Scam" by Michael Keefer, www.globalresearch.ca  2. "The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy" by Steven F. Freeman, PhD, University of stfreema@sas.edu