User:Kizzle/secret/vote suppression/thoughts

Racial Disparity in reported problems

 * The second largest community in Wayne County--Livonia, which has about 100,000 people is is about 96% white--reported only three, and they appear to all have been at the same polling site.


 * For instance, in Detroit, this crap happens every single time. Every time.  It's appalling, absolutely appalling, but it has NOTHING to do with Republican.  Detroit is in charge of it's own elections.  In fact, the Secretary of State has put them on notice that they better clean up their act, but that's just window dressing, and the Repub SoS won't do anything if she wants to be partisan, because in a lot of Democratic areas it's Democrats who are messing things up.  Why should the GOP have to mess up elections when in too many places Democrats already do a fine job of it for them?


 * For those who think they have "conclusive" evidence that Ohio was deliberately messed up, it's incumbent on you to compare the evidence to past elections in Ohio, and to contemporaneous elections in other states, including those where Democrats are in charge. Please reconcile claims that 96,000 undervotes for President this year is evidence of vote tampering when that figure is the lowest number of undervotes for President in terms of raw vote and percentage of ballots without a presidential vote since at least 1988, and possibly going back even further.  (In 2000, for instance, there were about 212,000 undervotes for President in Ohio.) Compare the Cuyahoga situation with similar situations in states and jurisdictions run by Democrats and in states that were contested and won by Kerry (like Wayne Co in Michigan) and in Dem states that weren't contested (like Cook Co in IL or any of the counties in NY or CA).  And see if the results in Ohio diverge from those elsewhere.

1)poor voter education resulting in voters casting bad ballots 1a) inexperienced voters casting bad ballots 2)partisan election officials looking more carefully at ballots in these precincts. while #2 may count for voter suppression, it doesn't reach the level of fraud. The truest thing you said is that all the things people have documented in Ohio happens in EVERY election; people just looked more closely for it this year.
 * The problem with these "statistical" proofs is that they don't follow statistical principles, including the identification of intervening variables that offer alternative explanations. Other than fraud, what could account for increased ballot spoilage in minority precincts?  Here are just a couple off the top of my head:

That's a good thing, since surely our election process needs MUCH improvement.

I'm still not buying fraud. There's no smoking gun. And, more to the point, very few conspiracies (and election fraud would have to be a conspiracy) stay hidden, especially in these days of high power communications. The biggest conspiracy we have truly experienced was 9/11... and we knew within hours who committed it (of course we actually knew BEFOREHAND who committed it).

If it was fraud, WHO DUN IT?

1a) inexperienced voters casting bad ballots - Why does it always seem to happen predominantly in black, Democratic-leaning areas? There are PLENTY of poorly educated white people yet, if they live in a Republican area, it doesn't seem to happen. Sorry, I'm just not buying that thousands of black people spoil ballots while equally poorly educated white people do not. -2)partisan election officials looking more carefully at ballots in these precincts. while #2 may count for voter suppression, it doesn't reach the level of fraud. - And why not? Officials apply the law differently to different groups to achieve a particular political aim. It's not just that they "look closer" at certain groups of ballots, its that they actively exclude them. And the other problem is that one county may say a ballot is acceptable, another will say its not. The second part is just a lack of standards but, to me, willfully excluding some ballots while not excluding others is a fraudulent act. -The truest thing you said is that all the things people have documented in Ohio happens in EVERY election; people just looked more closely for it this year. - But there seems to be an unparalleled level reached in this election. It was the aggregate and severity of these incidents that make Ohio a cast that should be singled out. -I'm still not buying fraud. There's no smoking gun. And, more to the point, very few conspiracies (and election fraud would have to be a conspiracy) stay hidden, especially in these days of high power communications. - I strongly disagree. The media will not cooperate. You have partisan officials having access to the votes. Codes are erased and ballots can be altered. There is no smoking gun that Pinochet personally ordered torture either - but a hell of a lot of evidence, including testimony by thousands that strongly suggest he was. And the high power communications do more to distort that elucidate real facts - somehow, it's "tin hat" until Peter Jennings et. al. accept it.  And we still know 1/50th of the facts there, including Bush's ties to the bin Laden family, why the Bush administration did nothing about the many clues it had. 9/11 is more of an argument on how information is SUPRESSED, not revealed -If it was fraud, WHO DUN IT?-
 * -1)poor voter education resulting in voters casting bad ballots

Well let's start with the GOP. As virtually every anomaly in Ohio worked in Bush's favor. Can someone show me 1 vote Kerry got because of some glitch or error. Or how about Blackwell, who knows full well he can be awarded the governorship for his efforts. More often than not, there is no smoking gun. Look at Abu Ghraib - most are sure the Bush admin condoned torture, but nothing will likely point directly at the key players.


 * ...this comment, because I have "done the math," and there were fewer undervotes in Ohio in both raw numbers and as a percentage of votes cast this election than any election going back at least to 1988. In 2000 there were about 212,000 undervotes for President, and each time Clinton won the state (with far lower turnout) there were well over 100,000 undervotes for President.  Arithmetic may be fine, but comparisons are more important.

Furthermore, as pointed out upthread, it's an error to assume that every one of those 96,000 undervotes--not 93,000--was an "error" or "mistake" or "spoiled." Some people just don't cast a vote for President.

Now, is the dispersal of those undervotes cause for concern, and possible evidence of problems with the voting process? Absolutely. However, mostly because it's consistent with historical trends, and in that context runs counter to a result that would suggest it was deliberate, it doesn't present as very strong proof of vote tampering.


 * Not true for franklin county (none / 0)

This little "stat" about Ohio undervote sounds like it is exciting, but fails to mention the changes in voting technology used in counties.

It turns out, oddly enough, that different technologies have different undervote rates. Many counties used different technologies in this election. So your statewide undervote count isn't too exciting.

In Franklin County, the undervote for DRE was 1.1% in 2004 (no vote per total votes in precinct), however in 2000 this undervote was 0.55%. The are the exact same machines. The same everything, but somehow the number of people who decided to not vote for anyone for president was TWICE as high this election.

For absentee ballots the undervote + overvote was 2.1% in Franklin Co in 2004, and provisional ballots (same punchcards and counting machines as absentee) the under + overvote is 5.3%. This number does not include disqualified provisional ballots, but only those undervotes & overvotes as they do not record these seperately. We cannot compare these numbers to 2000 election because Franklin County did not post them. The official abstract says -26699 votes cast. Hmm. Odd.

Two questions:

Why would the same DRE machines, same conditions, same tabulators, same looking ballot face, etc.. this election have more undervotes? (You cannot overvote the machines used) ie. why did the rate of choosing NO presidential candidate double this election?

Why are the punchcard ballots for provisional twice as likely as absentee to have no candidate chosen?


 * I re-read it after posting and it could be misconstrued, so I thought I'd add an addendum: if someone can prove to me that there is a similar experience in a poor white precinct, then I can take the argument that poor people may have less education as an aggregate and therefore this may not be based on systemic racism.

Otherwise...I gotta conclude that this is still left over from our rather poor track record of disenfranchising African American voters in this country.


 * Also there is space below the guide to catch the chads. If machines are in short supply, excessive numbers of voters use each one on election day. The space fills up with earlier chads that begin to push back against the ballots. This makes it harder for the punch to tear them all the way clear.

Despite my snarky comment yesterday, I really am a map-geek and the way these are constructed are amazing.

In our 1998 gubernatorial election, there was a recount done in a district which has a large native Hawaiian population and has lower income levels. The recount turned up a machine error (optical scanner), which was corrected. But, prior to that, a comment was made by the attorney general (a Dem), that the low education level of the district might account for the discrepancies. She later apologized.

I'm just waiting for the blame the victims drumbeat to start up on this.

Was there any meaningful change which resulted from the civil rights investigations of Florida 2000?

Are we making suppression and fraud interchangable? In my mind they are two very different things. Both are dispicable but different.

My other question is about lines. I live in a HEAVILY left leaning city. We just elected the newest Kennedy by a wide margin. Every election I have ever voted in here has been a straight walk in the door and to the booth. This time I waited about 45 minutes. This wasn't because of anything other than a much larger than usual turnout. So what is attributable to nefarious activities compared to just huge turnout?

...what was creating the lines

Was it that there were intentionally less machines then there had been beforue?

Were the lines caused because more eligible voters had to fill out provisional ballots?

Were there delays because of countless vote challenges which slowed the line?

And if there was a huge turnout, we should all demand that the number of voting machines be increased in proportion to new registrations for a county - no more of thi 4 hours to vote but 15 minutes 20 minutes away.

I think if you look at my comment here, you'll see what I think is a decent argument against overinterpreting the Ohio data in a vacumn, and looking at it in terms of comparisons with other places and other elections that show that the screwy results are screwy but not uncommon, and unfortunately have been tolerated way too long. The problems exist, and there was certainly a lot of legally permitted suppression, and probably more than a little dirty work (although the nasty stuff was probably less common in Ohio this time than in past years because of the incredibly attention paid by the media, the campaigns, local civil rights groups, the parties, etc, as well as heightened awareness by the voters themselves). But the results--the spoiled ballots and the undervotes and the people leaving polling sites--and the causes--the faulty machinery, the poorly trained workers, the human errors, the insufficient equipment and overcrowded polling sites, the shoddy lists--are much more often attributable to crappy election administration, and more often than we like to admit, those poorly administered elections are the responsiblity of Democrats.

Frankly, the problem over the last four years is pervasive, and goes way beyond John Kerry. I think Kerry's people did an OK job preparing for intimidation and illegal suppression, but the problems are much deeper than one presidential campaign were capable of fixing, and would have remained even if the Repubs didn't do anything underhanded and Kerry won by 15 points.

I guess the question is who is responsible for getting adequate numbers of voting machines at each precinct? Who is responsible for putting up adequate signage at each precinct? Who is responsible for ensuring adequate numbers of volunteers are present at each precinct? If the answer is local election officials then I don't see how we can be charging Republicans with voter suppression and fraud in heavy Democratic districts because they did not have enough machines, signs and volunteers. Maybe it's just incompetence and lack of organization at the local level. Is that not a possibility?

Studies of exit polls, on the other hand, are problematic. I've seen very little commenting about the New Hampshire recount which seemed to indicate that, at least in that state, the exit polls were indeed seriously off, and the actual vote totals were for the most part accurate. That seems to indicate that either (1) the exit polls in some states were indeed flawed, or (2) there was a conspiracy between local government, national government, the media, the voting machinery companies, the exit poll companies, and a goodly many Democrats in order to fix both the election and subsequent recount. That level of conspiracy requires a standard of evidence that, at least at the moment, has not been met.