Could the polls be wrong?

Sen. John McCain and his allies say that they are. The country, they say, could be headed to a 2008 version of the famous 1948 upset election, with McCain in the role of Harry S. Truman and Sen. Barack Obama as Thomas E. Dewey, lulled into overconfidence by inaccurate polls.

"We believe it is a very close race, and something that is frankly very winnable," Sarah Simmons, director of strategy for the McCain campaign, said yesterday. [...]

Some in the McCain camp also argue that the polls showing the largest leads for Obama mistakenly assume that turnout among young voters and African Americans will be disproportionately high. The campaign is banking on a good turnout among GOP partisans, whom McCain officials say they are working hard to attract to the polls. [...]

McCain pollsters do anticipate that turnout could be even higher this year than the robust turnout four years ago, but they also expect that Democratic gains among African American voters and younger voters will be offset by higher turnout among more Republican-leaning voters. They also assert the race is tightening in battleground states, with independent voters increasingly receptive to McCain.

Does anyone else here smell a rat? Early voting in many parts of the country has been extensive, especially in Florida where Governor Crist has extended to 12 hours (from 8) the time that early voting places will remain open because of the turnout. Obama's rallies have attracted huge numbers of people, so large that they are unprecedented in American history, while McCain's rallies haven't even matched the turnout of those for Bush or Kerry in 2004.

Yet, somehow the polls, once again, are completely off base. Why? Well don't be surprised that the argument being advanced to question their validity is the same one that was employed in 2004 to explain the discrepancies in the exit polling: i.e., large numbers of Republicans and independents who support McCain are scared don't like to talk to pollsters:

"I have been wondering for weeks" whether the polls are accurately gauging the state of the race, said Steven Schier, a political scientist at Carleton College in Minnesota. Borrowing from lingo popularized by former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Schier asked what are the "unknown unknowns" about polling this year: For instance, is the sizable cohort of people who don't respond to pollsters more Republican-leaning this year, perhaps because they don't want to admit to a pollster that they are not supporting the "voguish" Obama?

If so, that could mean the polls are routinely understating McCain's support. "I have no evidence that this is happening," Schier said, but he added: "I'm still thinking there's a 25 percent chance that this is a squeaker race and McCain pulls it out."

Does anyone buy this baloney? I've never met a Republican yet who was afraid to tell me that he or she was voting for McCain, usually loudly and with lots of reasons why Obama is A) a terrorist, B) a Muslim, C) a Communist, D) unqualified and E) the Antichrist (or the candidate of Satan. Yet, somehow they're too frightened to tell an anonymous voice on the phone who they support? I didn't buy this as an explanation for why the exit polls were so off the mark in 2004, and I sure as hell don't buy it today.

Yet, the fact that the McCain camp is pushing this meme disturbs me. We are already seeing the same problems with electronic voting machines that we've seen in every election in which they've been used: breakdowns and "glitches" that invariably record votes for Democrats as votes for Republicans. We know about the GOP's massive efforts to purge millions of registered voters from the voting rolls in Colorado, Georgia, Ohio, Florida, etc. We've seen the same disinformation/dirty tricks campaign which lies about student eligibility to vote in the states in which they attend college, about law enforcement waiting at polling places to arrest people for various offenses, and fraudulent "flyers" distributed claiming that Democrats should vote on November 5th, the day after the election. And based on what we've already seen, I can safely predict long lines to vote or challenges to voters in predominantly Democratic precincts (for various reasons), just like 2004.

In short, I think the media is being given the Republican narrative should McCain and his GOP fraudsters manage to suppress enough Democratic and other voters who support Obama to pull out a narrow electoral victory. Polls mean nothing if your vote doesn't get counted, and in too many states, the Republicans control who gets to vote, which unaccountable and flawed electronic machines record those votes, how many voting machines are allocated to Democratic polling places and even how the votes get counted.

I'm not saying this merely to cast doubt or to discourage people from voting, but to alert people to the real possibility that McCain, Bush and the GOP will make, and are making, every effort to steal this election, despite their miserable showings in the polls. To pretend otherwise is to hide our heads in the sand. I'd love to be proven wrong, but the history of every election since 2000 indicates the GOP will stop at nothing to make sure not enough votes for Democrats are cast or counted. We need to be prepared for every contingency. If you can vote early, do so. If you can vote on a paper ballot in your state, demand one. If forced to vote on a touch screen voting machine, make certain your vote is properly registered for the candidates you chose before leaving your polling station and record, if possible any glitches you encounter. No election is ever "in the bag" when you are running against ruthless, desperate people such as those who run the voter suppression efforts for the Republican party.

And Senator Obama, if the evidence shows that this election has been stolen from you, don't abandon your supporters like John Kerry did. Fight in the courts for your victory if the evidence exists that McCain and the Republicans have cheated and defrauded the American people who voted (or tried to vote) for you. Don't let us down. As you often say on the stump, the times are too dire and the issues facing our nation too important. Don't let another GOP Bush clone like John McCain reign over us as another Unitary Executive President for the benefit of the few and at the expense of the many.

Don't let fake Republican "mobs" intimidate you. Don't let a lazy news media, all too ready to accept Republican explanations for an unexpected and unforeseen McCain "victory" discourage you. Fight for our democracy and your election. Don't stand down when we need you to stand up. The American people are depending upon you to do the right thing.

God knows, we need a politician who will.