What happens when a historically accurate election news poll gets it wrong, by wide, wide, wide margins?

Some would dismiss it as an aberration. Some would say the pollster’s methodology must have changed for the worse. But what if the methodology hadn’t changed? Why would a poll that’s always been precise and was noted for its accuracy suddenly get results like these?

Issue 2 would have made absentee voting easier in the state. It had lots of high-profile support, and the Dispatch poll predicted a cakewalk for it: 59 percent yes, 33 percent no, 9 percent undecided. The actual result: 36 percent yes, a whopping 63 percent no.

Then there was issue 3, which would have lowered the campaign-contribution limits that a lame-duck state legislature had raised a year ago. Prediction: 61 percent yes, 25 percent no, 14 percent undecided. Actual result: 33 percent yes, 66 percent no.

The results of issue 4, to control gerrymandering by establishing an independent board to draw congressional districts, were only slightly less dramatic. Prediction: 31 percent yes, 45 percent no, 25 percent undecided. Result: 30 percent yes, 69 percent no. And for issue 5, to establish an independent board instead of the secretary of state�€™s office to oversee elections, a 41 percent predicted yes vote shrank to 29 percent, while the no vote ballooned from 43 to 70 percent.

Was the ballot wording so convoluted that voters got confused? Were the state’s voters deliberately lying to the pollsters pre-election?

Or were the ballot tabulation machines rigged to produce results on key election questions?

Columnist Bob Koehler raises the question about Ohio again.

Here�€™s the telling thing. The Dispatch, member in good standing of the mainstream media, has no interest in raising doubts about the integrity of the U.S. electoral system, and so hasn�€™t looked in that direction for an explanation of what voting-rights activist Bob Fitrakis called a polling error of �€œLandon beats FDR�€� proportions.

Instead, the paper blames the notorious volatility of statewide referendum issues. Rowland hypothesized �€œa huge shift in the electorate in the last few days before the election, when the ads started peppering airwaves.�€� Maybe, though Fitrakis maintains that the big pre-election ad blitz was conducted by the losing side.

Why, I wonder, in a state that made a national spectacle of itself with widespread irregularities and voter disenfranchisement a year ago, would there be so little interest in investigating whether the �€œvoting chaos�€� reported by the Toledo Blade or the �€œnight of surprises�€� reported by the Dayton Daily News could have produced tainted results?

�€œOne problem discovered Tuesday: Some machines began registering votes for the wrong item when voters touched the screen correctly,�€� wrote Jim Bebbington in the Daily News. �€œThose machines had lost their calibration during shipping or installation and had to be recalibrated.�€�

Here’s the thing. Perhaps this is a conspiracy theory. If so, debunk it. Prove the vote was accurate. If this verification is impossible, it’s a dysfunctional system, a rogue bot jamming the wheels of the truth as democracy skids.

But Brad’s right, that this is the first time a MSM columnist has discussed the story. One year AFTER the election.

Which proves the Fourth Estate, compared to all the estates, has dwindled from an estate to a tarpaper shack, cutting avowed advocates too much slack. Like the owner of the Diebold voting machines.

A stolen election? The answer’s out there. But it’s not a very convincing democracy till that answer’s known.