Sempiternal Pandemonium

On the topic of voter fraud, I keep on hearing exit polls, exit polls, exit polls, but I honestly don't see these poll numbers as being any clear indication that Kerry should have won states like Ohio on Florida. I see shifts of no more than 4% between the poll results and actual vote. And maybe that's something, but it's very small. Wouldn't that be within some form of margin of error? The linked article says that, in Ohio, the exit polls at 6pm showed Kerry up, 51% to 49%. But at the end of the night, Ohio went to Bush by what, half a percent?

I don't think these numbers add up,a nd I don't see why everybody is making such a huge deal out of them. Perhaps somebody could enlighten me as to why minute shifts of percentage points are something that needs to be focused on?

...Unrelated to exit polls, there's this table showing small Florida counties with lots of registered Democrats voting heavily Republican. This might be a story if one ignores two facts:

• Even though Clinton fared better in these counties in 1996, he still didn't break 50% in them
  
• Looking for fraudulent voters here wouldn't even put a dent in Kerry's Florida vote deficit to Bush.

I hate seeing these stories because it makes us look like we're grasping at straws. Really, folks, these are curiousities to file away and keep handy in case more of them start building up into one giant curiousity, but these stories standing on their own mean absolutely dick to the election results. There are bigger fish to fry, like Greg Palast's great article on punch card ballots being used in Ohio, which I'll be commenting on later.