Politics

Judge chosen to oversee Daily Kos polling dispute

Chris Moody Chris Moody is a reporter for The Daily Caller.
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A California judge has been assigned to oversee the contract dispute between blog editor Markos “Kos” Moulitsas, founder of the liberal Daily Kos blog, and a polling firm that he claims supplied fraudulent data, court documents show.

Maria-Elena James, magistrate for the Northern District of California US District Court, will oversee the case, unless one of the parties disapproves.

Moulitsas’ attorneys filed an official complaint last week claiming that surveys solicited from Maryland-based polling firm Research 2000 had been fraudulently carried out. The lawsuit claimed that many of the surveys turned out to be “phony” and “falsified.” The allegedly deceitful surveys were cited by major news outlets and may have misconstrued national opinion data.

As The Daily Caller reported last week, the polling numbers for races across the country paint a very different picture without the data from Research 2000.

Research 2000 President Del Ali vehemently denied the allegations against his firm, calling them “lies and fabrications.”

“Every charge against my company and myself are pure lies, plain and simple and the motives as to why Kos is doing it will be revealed in the legal process and not before that,” said Ali in a letter published by the Washington Post.

An online search for Research 2000 reveals that the company’s website has been temporarily removed and now redirects to the “Opinion poll” entry on Wikipedia.

Daily Kos’ attorney Adam Bonin said the legal process would not be over quickly.

“There are a lot of steps and we’ll see where this goes,” he said.

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