A new batch of signature data for Referendum 71 has been released. The number of signatures examined is 58,493 which is 42.5% of the total signatures submitted. To date, 6,348 invalid signatures have been found, giving a raw rejection rate (uncorrected for duplicates) of 10.85%.
The invalid signatures include 5,502 that were not found in the voting rolls, 345 duplicates, and 501 that did not match the signature on file. There are also 30 “pending” signatures at various states of processing for a missing or illegible signature cards. I don’t count these among the invalid signatures.
With 345 duplicate signatures found so far, we can anticipate a final duplication rate of about 1.69%.
The V2 estimator projects the number of valid signatures to be 121,648 giving an excess of 1,071 signatures over the 120,577 needed for the referendum to qualify for the ballot. The projected (duplicate-corrected) rejection rate is 11.65%.
A Monte Carlo analysis consisting of 10,000 simulated samples give a 95% confidence interval for valid signatures of from 121,175 to 122,415, well above the magic number. Here is the distribution of valid signatures:
There are a few “losses” in red on the left, but the overwhelming majority of outcomes in green have the referendum qualifying. In fact, the referendum failed to make the ballot in only 11 of the 10,000 simulations.
With the results to date, it is pretty clear that, come fall, we will be voting to accept or reject the “Everything but Marriage” law.
OK, it’s going to be on the ballot, that’s all right because this is a democracy and voting is how we decide things in this country. At any rate, I prefer this method to the system used by some folks of Legislating By Screaming The Loudest And Drowning Out Everyone Else.
But I want to make clear that saying I’m for democracy is not an endorsement of bigots or a bigotry-motivated referendum. I’m not gay (as should be obvious to anyone who’s read this blog for more than a week) but I’m going to vote “YES” — make that “HELL YES!” — for R-71 to reaffirm the principles I believe in, namely, that everyone has equal rights under the law and we are not going to discriminate against gays in this state. If the haters who signed these petitions don’t want to live in a state where gays have the same legal rights as they do, they’re welcome to move somewhere else! I can live with their not being my neighbors.
Darryl,
Thanks for your analysis on this. One of my favorite things about politics over the last few years is the emergency of empirical analysis like this in the mainstream. I hope people are paying attention.
I was looking at the increased rejection rates vs. yesterday (today was about 13%, still well under what’s needed from here on out, but a definite jump) and thinking that the proportion of “No Registration Found” rejections might for some reason be increasing over time. Is there actually a significant trend going on there? I know that the SoS folks say that the binders are randomly assembled, but today did have several binders with rejection rates higher than ever seen before. Some information can always be lost between the trenches and David Ammons; that’s nobody’s fault but practicality’s.
I don’t have the statistics knowledge to ask a specific question, but do you have any commentary to make on any trends in the No Registration Found category?
Thanks.
is it hypocritical that so many wingnuts that are worried about health care reform ‘taking away their rights’ have no qualms about taking away the rights of others?
if there was a god, most of these people would be digging through dumps in bangladesh for scraps instead of sitting in front of their HDtv, sucking down the HFCS & pizza hut while metaphorically lapping glen beck’s balls (although wishing it was literally)
Benjamin Johnstone-Anderson,
“I was looking at the increased rejection rates vs. yesterday (today was about 13%, still well under what’s needed from here on out, but a definite jump) and thinking that the proportion of “No Registration Found” rejections might for some reason be increasing over time. Is there actually a significant trend going on there? […]
…[D]o you have any commentary to make on any trends in the No Registration Found category?”
I haven’t looked at the binder data since what was released two days ago, so I cannot really say about what happened today. I’ll try to repeat the trend analysis sometime over the weekend.
I should point out that yesterday, I found an overall rejection rate of 11.54%. Today it is 11.65%. The difference is well within the span of the confidence interval, so I don’t see anything suspicious off-hand.
I wonder if Daryll knows who Karl Popper was?
Putting the Right in Short, Brown Pants
I see this as an opportunity. The goniffs who sponsored this are fools. There is no way they will win the referendum ..
Ideally, this will force the brown shorts (my term for childish imitators of the Sturmabteilung (SA)) out to play and show their idiocy off.
It would be very cool for the elite of the State to unite … left and right .. on this one. Interesting challenge for Mr. McKenna, for the Mormons, for the Black Churches, for the Catholic Church, and for Jewish organizations.
A coalition of majoritarian religious groups, t FOR civil rights irrespective of the “marriage” issue would be VERY powerful.
The group with the hardest challenge will be the dwindling moderate Republicans. If McKenna is smart he will come out early against R71, if not he will lose a lot of independents who will not vote for a brown shorts candidate.
Socky, you have to vote “APPROVE” for this, it’s a referendum. Voting “APPROVE” will make the bill go into effect. Not voting “APPROVE” will prevent the bill from becoming law.
Neither does Darryl, but he goes through the cherade so he can blow through bandwidth with bloated self-importance and self indulgence.
The only part of Popper that Darryl and Goldy picked up was the ‘false’ part of falsifiable. They’ve wasted our time with false assertions, false premises, and false analysis of R-71. That’s why they’re trying to salvage a little more wasted blather (yours, Benjamin) as their false conclusions crash and as 71 rises to the ballot.
If Darryl had two brain cells to rub together (a Doper Dr. Dean phrase) he’d call Dr. Berlinski at Discovery Institute to deconstruct and tear down the brainless Darryl/Goldy algorithm and to reconstruct it as something that might have analytical utility and predictive power.
HNMT @ 8
Bet you can’t wait for November to self-affirm your homophobia and pitiable self-loathing (that you compulsively project upon your ideological adversaries).
See ya at the polls.
“Karl”,
Uh? I’ve read your post twice, and for someone with such an “analytical” focus, you have managed to not mention a single substantive criticism of his methodology.
What, my good man, would *you* calculate, and by what standard do you determine its analytical superiority? Or are you simply pointing out that models are flawed unless we can definitively prove we’ve considered all possible non-random factors? If so, with all respect, I don’t need a lesson on that. If you want to prove that no model can predict the result in a way that justifies discussing the numbers now, do so. If you want to prove that Darryl’s model is not reliable enough to justify the import he’s giving it, do that. But, otherwise, it’s all blather.
All the best!