Archives for August 2009

Since the Secretary of State’s office started releasing final numbers this week, it has become clear that R-71 is headed for the ballot. Short of some scandalous revelation—you know, like finding out that the numbers being released are not the final numbers—the measure should make the ballot using standard statistical inference.

(I kid the SoS with that “scandalous revelation” quip. In fact, they have done a remarkable job turning last week’s data disaster around. The data are now provided in excruciating detail and they have carefully described the meanings behind the numbers, both on the official release page and on their blog. David Ammons has been kept busy answering questions in both blog posts and the comment threads. And now Elections Director Nick Handy has a nifty R-71 FAQ.)

Back to the projections. One point that has repeatedly come up in the comment threads is that the signatures sampled so far may not reflect a random sample of all signatures. Thus, the statistical inference may be wrong.

The point is valid because the statistical methods do assume that the sampled signatures approximate a random sample. One can imagine scenarios where the error rate uncovered would change systematically with time. For example, if petition sheets were checked in chronological order of collection, the duplication rate might increase if early signers forgot they already signed, or if the pace and sloppiness of collection increased toward the end.

For R-71, we don’t know that the petition sheets are being examined in anything approaching a chronological order. The SoS FAQ states:

Signature petitions are randomly bound in volumes of 15 petition sheets per volume.

Rather than speculate on the systematic error, let’s examine some real data. The SoS office releases data that give the numbers of signatures checked and errors for each bound volume in the approximate chronological order of signature verification. As of yesterday, there were 209 completed volumes covering 35% of the total petition.

After the fold, I give a brief section on analytical details, and then show graphs of the trends over time in error rates and projected numbers of valid signatures. But first, I give an update on today’s data release.
[Read more…]

Lost in the furor is a basic economic question: what are we going to make? From The Oregonian, about a Port of Vancouver ceremony for an expansion project:

In a ceremony full of speeches, however, a top longshore official nearly stole the show by asserting that free trade agreements may have benefited cargo shipping, but not American workers.

Brad Clark, president of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union Local 4, aimed his words at Congress in general and, in particular, Democratic U.S. Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell and U.S. Rep. Brian Baird — all of whom attended the ceremony on a rocky patch of Terminal 5.

“When I started on the docks over 20 years ago,” Clark said from his prepared remarks, “our terminals were full of American-made cargo ready for export. With the signing of various free trade agreements, this is no longer the case.”

—snip—

He concluded: “As we look around this beautiful new terminal, many of you visualize the profits that will be made with the increase in import vessel calls.

“But my vision, my dream, is that before I retire, this space will be used to export cargo — cargo that is manufactured by the American worker.

“If that dream happens, you benefit, I benefit, my union benefits and most importantly, this nation benefits.”

Sometimes you forget we used to send stuff the other way, and people around the world liked our stuff. Americans are pretty hard workers, clever and will do a great job if you don’t crap all over them just to satisfy CNBC.

Susan Hutchison is a Republican.

There will be town halls in WA-03 after all.

Although, while I still don’t have details, those who think they will be able to show up and just scream might find that is not exactly the case.

Back home in Washington State, Darcy Burner is a loser. Twice over. But you wouldn’t know it from the reception she’s getting here in Pittsburgh at Netroots Nation, where she was definitely the most popular person in the hotel bar last night, and where they just announced that she would be the closing keynote speaker at Netroots Nation.

Saturday night’s closing keynote will be headlined by Darcy Burner, director of the American Progressive Caucus Policy Foundation. After three days of strategizing around progressive change, Burner will close out the convention with a message on how we make that a reality after everyone has left Pittsburgh. She believes activists must strike a balance between applying sophisticated pressure on their elected leaders and amplifying their efforts to create space for progressive policy.

Opening keynote: President Bill Clinton. Closing keynote: Darcy Burner. That should provide a little perspective.

Darcy may have lost her race last November, but in her new job as director of the American Progressive Caucus Policy Foundation, she’s playing a much bigger role in the health care debate than the winner, Dave Reichert.

Data for August 12th are now posted. The total signatures examined in completed binders is 48,299, or 35.1% of the total signatures turned in. There have been 5,121 invalid signatures found, for an cumulative rejection rate of 10.60%.

The invalid signatures include 4,491 that were not found in the voting rolls, 242 duplicates, and 388 that did not match the signature on file. There are also 21 signatures at various states of processing for a missing signature card. (For some reason the SoS office still counts these as invalid signatures; I ignoring them.) The 242 duplicate signatures suggest an overall rate of duplication of about 1.74%.

Using this V₂ estimator, the number of valid signatures is expected to be 121,817 providing a buffer of 1,240 signatures over the 120,577 needed to qualify for the ballot. The overall rejection rate (which includes the projected total number of duplicate signatures) is about 11.53%.

To assess sampling uncertainty, I simulated petition samples, drawing numbers for each invalid signature type from a distribution that properly reflects the underlying statistical uncertainty. After 100,000 such simulations, 121,820 signatures were valid on average, and 95% of the simulations yielded 121,184 to 122,449 valid signatures. For 99.989% of the simulations the measure had enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. This number is an unbiased estimate of the probability that the measure will make it to the ballot.

The low uncertainty in qualifying for the ballot is easily seen as a picture. Here is the resulting distribution of signatures relative to the number required to qualify. Red bars (to the left of the vertical dashed line) means the measure is stopped. Green (on the right) means it qualified.

The data released by the SoS office, so far, suggests that the measure is likely to qualify with an excess of about 1,240 signatures. This projection does not account for potential errors other than sampling error.

Last week, Seattle and King County law enforcement officials tried something new, not arresting drug dealers:

More than a dozen black binders, each with at least two inches of criminal evidence, were atop tables on the stage. Names were in bold and underlined on the front.

In the first three rows of the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center, the suspected drug dealers named in those binders filled the red seats next to family and friends in what felt like an intervention.

“If this was an ordinary day, I would be your prosecutor,” King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg told the men and women Thursday. Some could get 20 months in prison or even more, he said.

But Satterberg wanted them to walk away.

He announced an opportunity police and prosecutors in Seattle had never given in a community meeting: Stop dealing drugs and you won’t get prosecuted.

Interim Seattle Police Chief John Diaz, had written a letter last week to the dealers. He promised that if they showed at the Central District meeting they would not be arrested and repeated that promise again Thursday.

The idea is taken from a successful program in High Point, NC, where using interventions like this – rather than prison – to deal with drug dealing, worked to reduce crime in the community. The idea is an effective one because it targets one aspect of the drug war that tends to have some nasty downstream repercussions. In low-income communities where a lot of drug dealing occurs, young people who don’t see a lot of opportunities for themselves often choose to become drug dealers for either money or status. But as soon as they end up behind bars for that choice, it becomes significantly harder for them to put that choice behind them. Instead of reforming people in that situation, jail often does the opposite, and cements their lifelong participation in criminal activity.

This program works to break that cycle. By working to keep young people from making the choice to participate in drug markets, the demand for those drugs can be met elsewhere. In High Point, a medium sized town that sits inbetween the larger towns of Winston-Salem and Greensboro, any unmet demand likely just shifted to those larger communities. As a result, residents in High Point have seen former open air drug markets become safer places.

But will it happen here? At Saturday’s event in Shoreline, Diaz said that it wouldn’t be a city-wide effort, and as Philip Dawdy points out, this approach isn’t likely to work in the high-volume drug markets like Belltown anyway, where the dealers aren’t part of the community. In fact, this approach will likely make those groups (arguably the most dangerous) even wealthier.

Also, one of the dealers who was offered the deal had already been re-arrested by the weekend. He was a 39-year-old with a history of drug addiction problems. And he wasn’t arrested for dealing, but for using a crack pipe. This makes me wonder whether or not much thought was put into trying to separate people with actual drug problems from the people who enter the drug trade to make money. Treating both groups the same way doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.

That’s not to say that this effort is pointless. It’s far better than sending as many young people to jail as possible, but what happened in High Point simply can’t be achieved here (or in any other large city) on a large scale. As has been pointed out ad nauseam for years, the only way to eliminate black market drug dealing is to treat addicts in a health care setting and to provide safe and legal outlets for recreational drugs that large numbers of adults use responsibly. Until that day, programs like these that divert some people from our prisons might improve a neighborhood (and that’s definitely a good thing), but will ultimately fail to do anything about the overall amount of illegal drug dealing in the city. To some extent, I have sympathy towards the officials who end up in this no-win situation, but that sympathy tends to wane when I hear so few of them willing to challenge the faulty underpinnings of the status quo.

UPDATE: For anyone heading to Netroots Nation this weekend, there will be a panel about the High Point drug diversion program.

It’s no Grand Central, but Philadelphia’s refurbished 30th Street Station, is pretty damn grand in itself, a relic from the heyday of rail travel in America, and a damn sight less seedy and more inviting than it was in the days of my youth. It also seemed to be more crowded too, with a bustling lunchtime rush filling the new food court. (Well, new to me.)

The station is also more conveniently located than I remembered, as I discovered when I walked across the river to score myself a Philadelphia style soft pretzel from one of the many street cart vendors, only to find myself standing outside a Trader Joes. After stocking up on a few snacks and beverages for the long ride to Pittsburgh, I walked back to the station and had myself a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee.

At this point I’m more than halfway through the seven and half hour ride, having just traversed the famous horseshoe curve, and one of the biggest surprises of the trip is how well my Internet access has held up via the AT&T 3G network on my iPhone… and hence my ability to surf and post. Sure, there have been plenty of areas of no service, especially here in what us East Coasters call “mountains,” but anybody expecting to get work done with a similar hookup won’t be too disappointed. And unlike the train cars on the Amtrak Cascades line, there are power outlets at every seat.

As for the rest of the trip, it’s been pretty much what I expected: smooth, quiet ride, plenty of leg room, and the ability to take a walk down the aisle whenever the mood strikes me. Another surprise, though I guess it shouldn’t have been, is the number of freight trains we’ve passed on this trip, many of them laden with coal. Amtrak’s Pennsylvanian may make only a single round trip between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia a day, but for those of us looking forward to a passenger rail revival, it should be encouraging to realize that freight rail never died.

And oh yeah… so far, the train is exactly on time.

Traveling on my own rail adventure today, I was amused by the headline in this morning’s Seattle Times, “Link’s ticket system confounds riders“, which included the following teaser on the front page of their website:

Sound Transit’s unfamiliar payment system is forcing thousands of riders to make an extra effort to pay, yet deliberate fare dodging appears to be low.

Oh no! Faced with an unfamiliar payment system on a brand new light rail line, riders are making an extra effort to pay! Meanwhile, there appears to be little deliberate fare dodging!

Um… and the problem is?

I’m off on my rail adventure from Atlantic City, NJ to Pittsburgh, PA as I head out to Netroots Nation, and I’ve already come across a couple of glitches that might frustrate the casual traveller. Apparently, NJ Transit’s website doesn’t see fit to advertise directions to its Atlantic City Station, or even a street address. Meanwhile, Atlantic City doesn’t exactly provide adequate road signage.

Oh, if you want to get to the new outlet mall, that’s clearly marked. But the entrance to the rail terminal tucked into a corner of the new convention center across the street… not so much.

The other glitch, NJ Transit’s website warned me of in advance, so it is more a temporary inconvenience than a surprise.  See, it turns out, when you build rail infrastructure, you occasionally have to spend some time and money maintaining it.  And that’s exactly what they’re doing to the tracks between Hammonton, NJ and Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station.

The result? An earlier start than I would’ve liked to make sure I arrive in time for my connection, and the fact that I’m writing this post from a (gasp) shuttle bus on the Atlantic City Expressway.

More later…

UPDATE:

The shuttle bus between Hammonton and Philadelphia was uneventful. Crowded, cramped, and briefly stuck in traffic, but uneventful. The train/bus got us in about 20 minutes later than the train alone was scheduled. Not too bad… but it was a bus.

Oh, and FYI, the fare between Atlantic City and Philadelphia was $8.00. Not a bad deal.

As a kid, I used to think it weird that 30th Street Station was actually outside of Center City Philadelphia… you know, all the way across the Schuylkill River. But since I moved away over two decades ago, Center City seems to have grown larger, and walking distances shorter.

With the events of this past week, it seems appropriate to link to this old post from five years ago that got my old blog Reload noticed by The Stranger. In the beginning of the post, I wrote:

I remember in high school, my good friend and I used to talk about going to a place like Kansas one day, setting up a fake church, and swindling small town folks out of their money. One of us has grown out of that idea, while the other one is voting for President Bush, for much the same reasons as starting up that church.

It’s worth noting that his father was an executive at Blue Cross. If there’s anything that better illustrates the dynamic at work in these town halls, where misinformed morons are shouting down the politicians trying to fix our very broken health care system, I haven’t seen it yet.

One of the Portland television stations had a segment today on a town hall held by Rep. David W, D-Or. They showed a youngish man and his male friends holding a sign depicting President Obama with a toothbrush mustache, and the man claimed health care reform will be like the Tiergarten 4 program the Nazis carried out in Germany.

Like this idiot could come up with that himself.

The man seemed sincere, which begs the question, who is feeding these stupid, gullible fucks this outrageous and false bullshit? It’s also worth asking why the media is intent on showing stupid, gullible fucks without explaining that they are stupid, ignorant gullible fucks.

Hey, lookie, stupid gullible fucks managed to ask stupid questions, it’s a story! Well, it is a story in one way, and the story is that there are a very small number of people who are very, very stupid gullible fucks. There’s just no other way to put it.

This afternoon, the Secretary of State’s office released R-71 data in a brand new format. Apparently, the data now reflect the actual numbers of duplicates, rejected signatures, and accepted signatures.

There are some noticable differences over the previous data releases. As David Ammons explains it:

The error rate is lower than the daily and cumulative numbers that had been previously reported, because the earlier numbers included many signatures that still were being reviewed by master checkers. A prime example is that hundreds of signatures were not initially found on voter rolls by the checker, but a later check by the veteran master checkers did make a match.

He also points out:

State Elections Director Nick Handy said it remains “too close to call” whether R-71 will make the ballot, and cautioned against making assumptions based on the current error rate.

Handy is incorrect in one respect. Given a proper statistical estimate of the duplicate error rate in the total sample, and a proper projection of the other invalid signatures, we can estimate a total number of valid signatures and offer some statistical certainty about the number. (Of course, this assumes we are given the correct numbers in the first place….)

The statistical certainty only accounts for the fact that we have only a sample of the total petition evaluated so far. It cannot account for non-sampling error, biases, correlations among batches of pages, etc. Of course such error may be ignorable. I’ll get back to that issue in a later post.

The total number of signatures that have been completed is 33,214, which is just under a quarter of the total petition. There have been 3,450 invalid signatures found, for an uncorrected rejection rate of 10.39%. This rate doesn’t mean much because it doesn’t include the rate of duplicate signatures in the total petition.

The invalid signatures include 3,117 that were not found in the voting rolls, 130 duplicates, and 203 that did not match the signature on file. There are also 12 pending signatures in which a better signature card is needed. (Oddly enough, the data table includes the 12 pending signatures in the rejected totals; I suspect this is an error, albiet a minor one).

The 130 duplicated signatures from a sample of 33,314 suggests a duplication rate on the entire petition of about 1.62%.

Using the V₂ V estimator, the number of valid signatures is expected to be 121,103, thus squeaking by with 526 signature over the 120,577 needed to qualify for the ballot. (The sampling error is many times smaller than the 526 margin.) The expected total rejection rate is 12.05%.

The bottom line: Unless new errors are found in the processing or counting, or some large, systematic increase in the error rate is seen for the remaining 76% of the signatures, we should expect to see R-71 on the ballot this fall.

Update: I just noticed I used the V estimator, not the V₂ estimator. The V estimator is slightly biased toward too few valid signatures, so the qualitative results are the same.

Join us tonight for a refreshing drink over some stimulating political conversation at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. The festivities take place at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at 8:00 pm.

Hey…bring your resume along. I hear a Guvmint recruiter will show up, and take applications to serve on a special new Obama panel….

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSv7Va8enjc[/youtube]

Not in Seattle? The Drinking Liberally web site has dates and times for 335 other chapters of Drinking Liberally for you to get lost at.

I just came in from the beach to find my inbox filled with emails from Mayor Nickels and Mike McGinn.  According to McGinn, Nickels is a liar who makes false promises, while Nickels accuses McGinn of lying about Nickels being a liar. And this just in, according to McGinn, Nickels is lying about McGinn lying about Nickels being a liar.

Or something like that. Rather than actually reading the emails, I decided to have a beer and help my daughter play Bananagrams. (We kicked her older cousins’ collective ass.) So there.