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More Vote Fraud accusations
Desperate to be outraged about something, the Wall Street Journal reports on claims of vote fraud in South Dakota.
The problem the Journal faces is that the evidence of widespread fraud doesn’t exist. There is evidence of small-scale fraud with 4 native-americans being paid to vote. This should be prosecuted.
What is amusing is the use of a post-doc at the Harvard-MIT data center for authority. Most of the folks who get that job are bright, but certainly not authorities on vote fraud. One should focus on the argument made, and I do below, but if one is truly interested in a statistical analysis one should ask a scholar with a background in such issues, like, oh, I don’t know…Gary King at Harvard. This is especially true since ecological inference was developed by King and would be especially well suited to the problem.
But Michael New, a post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard-MIT Data Center, has inspected the South Dakota Secretary of State’s Web site to discover other striking facts: While Democrat Tim Johnson ran statewide about 12 percentage points behind what Mr. Daschle got in his 1998 Senate victory, in Shannon County Mr. Johnson ran about 12 percentage points ahead. He got 92% of the vote compared with Mr. Daschle’s 80%. Nowhere else in the state did Mr. Johnson improve his vote share relative to Mr. Daschle.Senate voter turnout was up 27% statewide for this year’s close contest compared with 1998, but in Shannon County turnout increased by 89%. Again, no other county in the state showed comparable turnout increases. Shannon County is largely Indian country, home to the Oglala Sioux nation, and is heavily Democratic. But Mr. Thune managed to receive only nine more votes there than did Mr. Daschle’s opponent in 1998, notwithstanding the much larger turnout.
Why didn’t New compare registration rates to the final results? Because he wouldn’t like the results. In Shannon County, South Dakota, 7.2% percent of registered voters are Republican. 7.8% of the voters in Shannon County voted for Thune. There is a higher proportion of other registered voters in Shannon which I assume are independents, but given Native American voters often vote almost 90% Democratic unless John McCain is on the ballot, the overall results aren’t that surprising. Indeed, it appears that for a county with 94.2% Native Americans, the numbers are to be expected.
mr. new points out that this is just a 4% increase in gop votes over 1998. in the other three south dakota counties where indians constitute more than two-thirds of the population, mr. thune gained between 23% and 43% more votes than the gop candidate in 1998. the oglala sioux would seem to give new meaning to the phrase “bloc voting.”
But this doesn’t give us the relevant information. Who voted in those places? Were Native Americans turning out? Or were other people in the county? Given there are 505 registered Republicans in Shannon County is it that absurd that half turned out? Not only that, but the turnout virtually mirrors the 1998 Senate race and the 2000 Presidential race. He is assuming the marginals should stay the same if turnout increases. But targeting specific types of turnout certainly alters the marginals.
In fact, the story is more obvious. Democrats put a lot into turning out Shannon County for a reason. They had a lot of potential votes there. Republicans probably didn’t bother because they have not broken 252 votes in the county for statewide offices. The Republican vote has been constant while Democratic vote has been increasing. Given the Democrats were doing voter registration and GOTV in Shannon, unless the Democrats were complete idiots and targeted Republicans, this is as expected.
As a clue to those unfamiliar with how to evaluate stats, if there is a new variable one should expect a change in the behavior. Given there was a massive voter registration drive and significant GOTV efforts by Democrats only in this county, one should expect a very different effect on the relative proportion of the vote.
As Mr. New concedes, "this could all be a coincidence." But "this trifecta of late results, high turnout and unusually strong support for the Democratic nominee should, if nothing else, arouse suspicion." >But Mr. New has a problem, no one in their right mind would call it a coincidence, they would call it a voter drive. Treating a significant effort to turnout voters sympathetic to the Democratic Party as a coincidence is malpractice for one who is trained in statistics.
New wants to look at this issue from the electorate being a constant proportion. In other words, if turnout increases there should be proportional increases in both parties votes. This is not necessarily the case, especially in a county like Shannon. In 1998, 2000, and 2002, about 250 votes were cast for Republican Senator or President in each year. This is almost exactly 50% of the registered Republicans in Shannon County, South Dakota. Given Thune would have been stupid to spend turnout dollars on so few votes, he didn’t. One might argue a voter drive amongst Native Americans should have at least stayed constant in the proportion of Republican votes amongst Native Americans. Such an assumption is unwarranted. Voter drives usually target voters less likely to vote and almost by definition, less likely to be informed on voting. They would look to peers for cues as to how to vote because of their low level of political sophistication and in a one-party reservation, that is likely to result in near unanimity amongst picked up voters. There is a way for Republicans to get around this. Work for Native American voters?like John McCain does.
The calculus is entirely different for Democrats than for Republicans. If one assumes the 917 independent registered voters are heavily Native Americans (a reasonable assumption in a county that is 94.2% Native American) that means total, likely Democratic voters are around 92.6% of registered voters in the county at around 6473 voters. In a state where an election is going to be close those votes are something to concentrate upon and the Democrats did. Shannon County did deliver the election to Tim Johnson, but that isn?t something dark and devious behind it. It was working your base and getting people to the polls. There were 2856 votes for Johnson in Shannon County this year meaning a turnout of around 44% of likely Democrats and I find that low number depressing.
Nothing in the county affected Republican turnout and so it was constant. However, a variable was introduced into the Democratic turnout and this changed the proportion of votes between the parties. This isn’t rocket science, it is obvious.
Now, if widespread fraud occurred, present legal evidence. If not, stop whining because people exercised their right and celebrate democracy in action.
And the cheap shot about the Ashcroft election at the end of the election is stupid. Ashcroft lost by 40,000 votes. Vote fraud didn?t produce that difference.
Substantially edited from the first posting
The Schwartzkopf Evaluation
As if asked whether Gary MacDougal was a good party leader like Schwartzkopf was asked if Saddam Hussein was a good military leader, Steve Neal points out Gary McDougal is not a good tactician, not a good grass roots organizer and not a good fundraiser.
A great line:
Among the reasons that Illinois Republicans held the governorship for 26 years is that their party has been led by common-sense moderates. MacDougal, who has close ties to the right-wing eccentric Jack Roeser, has embraced the ideologues and true believers. If the party swings too far to the right, the Illinois GOP could be reduced to permanent minority status.
Neal further describes efforts to install Topinka as Party Leader.
What is stunning is that the ICFST party leader had to be circumvented by almost every major candidate.
Keillor’s smear
Spinsanity takes on Garrison Keillor’s comments about Norm. The strange thing about Keillor’s column was how out of place both comments were. Both columns rightly identified Coleman as a vacuous twit, but then went on to make strange statements that aren’t supported or, in the case of the crash comment, sane.
Bush to Fruitcakes: Bite me
Not one to often praise the President, because of his message of tolerance and open acceptance of Islam as a faith and most, importantly, Muslims as good Americans, I’m proud of the man and Colin Powell who have taken shots at the Christian Right in the last few days. Bush does here and Powell does here. And I’ll take the Guardian to task for saying Bush is doing it because the election allows him more freedom from the fruitcakes on the right. Bush seems to see this as an issue of right and wrong–and he is on the right side. Good for him.
Muslims came to America because it is a tolerant nation based on the dignity of the individual. It is a damn shame when the dimmer element of the United States population fail to grasp the best defense against Islamists is to provide an alternative that inspires hope.
Roving Polls
Steve Chapman writes a fine column illustrating the growing problems with political polls. Most interesting is this quote:
"Forty-five percent of the people think Bush’s proposals for reforming accounting go too far or are about right," he noted, "versus 39 percent who say they do not go far enough. Now that’s compared to 39 percent who said they go too far or are about right a month ago, and 43 who said they do not go far enough."Then Rove stopped, realizing he was making his boss look like a human windsock. "Not that we spend a lot of time on these," he assured his listener.
For all the gnashing of teeth over the increasing use of polls, I fail to see too much of a problem. Information is good and while it might scare off the bold move from time to time, does anyone think George Bush or Bill Clinton were bold to begin with? Polling has more of an effect in how to sell your programs in most cases than it does with what one believes.
Cross fire breaks out
That name should be fun for the next few years. The Sun-Times covers the Illinois House Republican leadership race and confirms McQueary’s report that Cross looks like a winner. Interestingly, the article points out the women in the caucus are backing Cross which if you were a Republican should be a big giant flag about what you need to reduce the gender gap.
Does Jack Roesser take it that way? Hell no:
"Despite Cross being in leadership under Lee Daniels and once being his roommate, he turned on him with a snarl," conservative activist Jack Roeser said. "He’s a rat."
Never make permanent enemies unless you want to be a permanent minority.
Naive Tapped
TAPPED is shocked that the new minority leader has some not so great ties to special interest money. How exactly does TAPPED think she got to be minority whip? Was anyone paying attention to the dual PAC set-up she had?
I like TAPPED a lot, but this is a bit silly to think she got to where she is because she was smart and liberal. Those are true, but it is also true she is a shrewd money raiser who distributes those funds strategically. The manner in which parties are currently organized almost guarantee that someone who is good at raising money does better. Notice Marci Kaptur didn’t get far.
Hootieing
Tapped picks up more on the Burk satire. Calpundit wisely brings back the point. Why would a club such as Augusta want to exclude women? Didn’t people stop doing this when they stopped having super secret treehouse clubs? (Tom Tomorrow doesn’t have his posts on this up right now, but pretend there is a link). Apparently not since a bunch of bloggers insist that proclaiming someone ‘gets it’ is an argument.
The strangest thing that no one seems to be picking up on is the sheer mendacity shown by Lopez in claiming Burk is trying to rid Augusta of men.
Almost as strange is the notion that Burk is trying to attack a right. One has a right to exclude people from a private organization in most cases. Burk was quite clear she supports that right in the discussion on Crossfire. She even conceded that some organizations should be gender exclusive and in this case she isn’t pursuing a law or legal action to force change, she is simply asking them to change and applying economic pressure. Her distinction between this case and others is that Augusta National is essentially a business and networking organization rolled into one and by shutting out women is shutting out half the population from those benefits of membership.
If one disagrees with this, start chatting with the religious right groups boycotting Disney for giving gay partners benefits.
The ideal resolution is Hootie allows women in, and they have the good sense to not join.