Election fraud suspected in Ohio referendum vote

The outcry over the Matt Bevin campaign stealing the Kentucky election has expanded to Ohio.

This month, there was a referendum in Ohio called Issue 3 - which would have legalized marijuana but would have also subjected it to a rigid monopoly that would have limited production to only a few sites. Many folks who support legalization didn't support this measure, because it would have protected monopolies.

So when the referendum was defeated by 2 to 1 on Election Day, I thought it had just plain old lost. You can argue that it was so poorly written that it deserved to lose. On the other hand, I know voting wasn't completely on the level, considering America's recent history of rigged elections - and the fact that Republican "poll watchers" had threatened voters in Cincinnati neighborhoods. But 2 to 1 seems like it would have been a wide enough margin that it would have lost regardless.

But not so!

Benedictine University's Ron Baiman says the results of that referendum "are not only impossible but unfathomable." Polls actually did show the measure passing. Baiman - who teaches statistics - says that the odds for it to lose by 2 to 1 are "one in a trillion." That's million with a T. Even if every undecided voter went on to vote against the measure, it still shouldn't have lost by 2 to 1.

If the result of a referendum with no party labels can be off by that much compared to pre-election polls, you can only guess how badly partisan elections are rigged, considering party labels are programmed into the machines. It's much worse than it appears, because pollsters weight their polls to account for past rigged elections.

(Source: http://www.alternet.org/drugs/expert-says-ohios-vote-against-pot-legalization-was-statistically-impossible)