[NOTE: so as not to disrupt the ongoing debate in the comment thread I am updating this posting to reflect my rebuttal. Comments are now open again on Sound Politics.]
Last week I posted an analysis based on several studies from the CalTech/MIT Voter Technology Project: Heads or tails… why we’ll never know who really won the governor’s race.”
In a critique of my analysis, posted today on neoconservative blog Sound Politics (“Horsing around with statistics“), Stefan Sharkansky seems to pursue two distinct theses: a) that Dino Rossi will be the “statistical winner” regardless of any likely outcome of the third count, and b) that I am stupid… or at the very least, an unreliable (if “occasionally entertaining”) source of information and analysis.
While I appreciate the compliment part of his closing, backhanded compliment, I hope Stefan understands if I stray from the dispassioned tone of my original analysis to engage him on a more equal rhetorical footing. For if you deconstruct his critique you will find that it is built on three of the main pillars of pop-neocon discourse: Dismissiveness, Misrepresentation, and Confusion.
Dismissiveness
And now thanks to David, we have even more uninformed debate.
He discusses a couple of research papers, which he apparently read, but didn’t understand very well;
First, I’d just like to point out that the very existence of Stefan’s critique disproves his first statement. My research was in response to contradictory numbers irresponsibly being bandied about as to the relative accuracy of vote counting technology in general, and hand recounts in particular. And due to my initiative, we now have two competing analyses referencing the highly respected CalTech/MIT studies. (And we don’t need a spreadsheet to count ’em.)
I made a point of encouraging people to read the studies for themselves, and apparently Stefan followed my lead. So I’d think Stefan would congratulate me for contributing to an informed debate… unless by “informed” he prefers “informed by rumor and innuendo.”
Misrepresentation
David then announces the following conclusions, none of which are correct in the context of the Washington gubernatorial vote:
Stefan then goes on to list my four “erroneous claims” (I’ll discuss them separately in a moment), before definitively stating:
Again, all of David’s statements 1 – 4 are incorrect.
Stefan lists his interpretation of my “conclusions”, out of context, and in his words. But notice how clever he is in reinforcing my wrongness. At the top of the list he states that my so-called conclusions are incorrect “in the context of”, but at the bottom, he drops the caveat: “Again, all of David’s statements 1 – 4 are incorrect.”
(I’d say this also falls under the category of “Dismissiveness” but why pick nits?)
I may not have a background in statistics, but I sure as hell know language, and while Stefan might object to my quibbling over his sentence structure, he is well aware of how his readers will interpret that line: these are “David’s statements” and they are “incorrect.”
So let’s be clear about what I wrote. I attempted to answer several questions regarding the general accuracy of voting technologies, using the best research available, and in doing so, I presented the conclusions of the CalTech/MIT studies. I also attempted to define the terminology as best I could.
In an 1172 word essay, I didn’t mention the current WA election until word 976, and the only conclusion that I presented as my own was that a 42 vote margin out of 2.8 million cast was statistically meaningless given the margin of error.
So, let’s take a look at all my statements of error.
1. The “Residual voting” rate (includes both blank and improperly marked ballots), which he calls “the primary statistical measure of the performance and accuracy of voting technologies” is 1 – 2%.
“He calls”… sheesh! In the words of CalTech/MIT:
A number of important studies of the performance and accuracy of voting technologies have sought to measure the error rate of vote tabulations. The main metric that emerges from these evaluations uses “residual votes” — the discrepancy between total ballots cast and votes cast for a particular office, such as president or governor. The incidence of residual votes should be unrelated to the type of technology used, and the difference in residual votes across technologies measures the extent to which errors in the casting or tabulation of votes are attributable to specific technology. Similar jurisdictions using different technologies ought to have the same residual vote rate, on average. By this metric, hand-counted paper ballots and optically scanned ballots have shown the better overall performance than punch cards, lever machines, and electronic voting machines.
Stefan further denigrates my analysis by dismissing residual votes as a meaningful statistic at all, “Furthermore, all indications are that the vast majority of blank ballots were really intended to be left blank.” Um… that’s not what the studies say:
Roughly one third of the residual vote, then, is pure tabulation error. The remainder is either unrecoverable ballots (i.e., people who accidentally voted twice) or blank ballots.
So yes, Stefan, residual voting rates are indeed “the primary statistical measure of the performance and accuracy of voting technologies.” That’s not my conclusion, that is CalTech/MIT’s. Furthermore, roughly one third of these residual votes represent tabulation error. And as to their relative performance:
Punch cards and electronic machines register residual voting rates for president of approximately 3 percent of all ballots cast. Paper ballots, lever machines, and optically scanned ballots produce residual voting rates of approximately 2 percent of all ballots cast, a statistically significant difference of fully one percent.
So tell me… exactly what is it that I didn’t understand about the studies on this particular point?
Let’s see… where else did I go wrong? Oh yeah…
2. The error rate of machine counting (“tabulation error rate”) is 0.56% for optical scanning machines.
I wrote “the study found the tabulation invalidation rate was .83 percent for paper and .56 percent for optical scanning”… and that is exactly what the study found. Vindication!
3. He infers from (2) that
A .5 percent invalidation rate in a gubernatorial election with over 2.8 million votes cast amounts to 14,000 erroneous votes!
I just double-checked my math, and 2.8 million times .5 percent still equals 14,000. Maybe the discrepancy is that you are using Excel, and Microsoft is known for buggy software?
Okay, maybe “erroneous” was the wrong word. But here’s the statement from which I inferred the 14,000 figure:
In a US House election with 250,000 votes, the invalidation rate of .005 for scanners amounts to 1250 votes. The tabulation errors may swing toward any of the contestants in a recount. Assuming a uniform distribution of tabulation errors, any race decided by less than .5 percent of the vote will have a non-trivial probability of being reversed in a recount.
And unlike Stefan, I didn’t place this inference out of context. It appeared right below the block-quote above. And by the way, I can’t find a reliable citation, but Paul Berendt keeps talking about the 15,000 votes that changed between the count and recount… a remarkably close match to what the historical data would predict, thank you very much.
I just want to take a moment here to clarify something about tabulation error rates, because there seemed to be some confusion in earlier comments. This metric has nothing to do with the accuracy of recounts. It is merely a measure of the accuracy of the original, “preliminary” count.
Oh, and my last so-called “conclusion”…
4. Finally, he claims that “Republicans scoff at Gregoire calling this election a tie, but statistically speaking, it is.”
Well that one is my conclusion, and I stand by it.
And this really gets to the gist of Stefan’s entire rebuttal… the fact that he stubbornly insists that a 42 vote margin out of 2.8 million is not only a statistically meaningful victory, but a mandate for sweeping change in Olympia.
Which brings us to…
Confusion
My primary objective was to try to make a complex issue less confusing, and Stefan’s objective seems to be the opposite.
I explained that hand-counted paper ballots are as accurate as optically scanned ballots, and significantly more accurate than punch card ballots and electronic voting machines. I tried to explain how a machine that certifies as accurate to one in one million could possibly lose one vote in one hundred (one third the 3% residual rate for punch card ballots) due to “pure tabulation error.” What I failed to do was find data on the relative accuracy of hand counting optical and punch card ballots.
In the process I came to the conclusion that the margin of victory in this gubernatorial election was too far within the margin of error of any of the voting systems used, to discern the will of the people to any statistically meaningful degree of certainty.
And this is the only assertion that Stefan seems interested in refuting, though in doing so he saw fit to trash my entire analysis… that I don’t understand math, that I’m contributing to creating an “uninformed debate”, that my “conclusions” are wrong, and that I didn’t understand the studies that I “apparently” read.
First he dismisses me as unqualified to engage in the debate. Then he misrepresents my statements by taking them out of context. And finally, he relies on the the ultimate weapon of mass confusion: statistics.
Now I know that seems like a funny charge to be leveled by somebody whose entire argument is based on statistics. But there’s a big difference: I didn’t try to calculate any of this crap myself… after all, I read phrases like “regression analysis” and I think it has something to do with how my psychiatrist father could always make me feel like I was still thirteen.
Instead, I relied on the conclusions of carefully weighted statistical analyses of detailed historical data from CalTech/MIT, two of the most prestigious technical universities in the world.
Whereas Stefan wants us to rely on… Stefan Sharkansky and his cranky old copy of Microsoft Excel.
I could really give a shit about all his t-distributions and null hypotheses and probability whojamacallits, because even if I could do the math (and I can’t), and even if I trusted him to present honest calculations (and I most certainly don’t)… I’m an experienced enough computer programmer to understand one basic axiom: garbage in, garbage out.
The CalTech/MIT studies are based on years of historical data, whereas Stefan uses a single data point: incomplete results from WA’s 2004 gubernatorial election… results that we have no idea are even close to accurate… after all, that’s the whole damned point of the recount, isn’t it?
No, instead Stefan wants you to believe in the miraculous proposition that King County’s vote tabulations were somehow five to ten times more accurate than national historical averages… a particularly amusing notion coming from a man who has spent much of the past few weeks angrily promoting unsupported conspiracy theories about how KC Dems are stealing the election!
But Stefan’s most incredibly preposterous “calculation” is that even if Gregoire were to win the third count by 250 votes, “statistics would still favor Rossi,” a conclusion he comes to by plotting the results of all three counts.
Don’t you get it Stefan? THE FIRST COUNT WAS WRONG! That’s why we do recounts in close races. According to CalTech/MIT:
Tabulations may change from the initial count to the recount for a variety of reasons: ballots may be mishandled; machines may have difficulty reading markings; people and machines may make tabulation errors. Because recounts are used to certify the vote, greater effort is taken to arrive at the most accurate accounting of the ballots cast. The initial count of ballots, then is treated as a preliminary count, and the recount as the official.
Consistently read their blog and you’d think Stefan and his neocon cohorts apparently believe the sole purpose of our state’s recount provision is to specifically disadvantage Republicans.
But according to CalTech/MIT, the results of a recount are more accurate than the original, and thus it seems likely that the results of the second recount will be more accurate than the results of the first.
I am tempted to continue trashing Stefan’s reasoning in the manner in which he trashed mine, but instead I choose to end this on a note of conciliation. In between calling me stupid, and attempting to snow readers with bullshit numbers and technical jargon, Stefan made one, tempered statement I can agree with entirely:
I do agree with David that our current voting system is prone to inaccuracies, and that we’re not going to emerge from the hand recount with confidence that we measured the will of the voters with ball-bearing precision. I hope after this whole mess we can actually work together for meaningful election reform.
Personally, I intend to try to do something about this mess, and I hope we can all put are partisan differences aside in an attempt to restore faith in our electoral system.
Goldy, I’m glad you are filtering your SPAM successfully, SPAM is very uncool. I built the SPAM filtering systems for several companies, so I know how much of a pain and cost it can be.
Re: Your statistics
I had posted for a while regarding the innacuracy of Goldy’s analysis of hand counting in the comments for the “Heads or tails post…”
I finally gave up when I realized that it’s useless to try and reason with a stubborn donkey. While like Stefan, I also agree that Goldy is right that we are very close to the point where the margin of error in this election makes it difficult to determine a winner statistically, I also (and you should too) fully understand that the worst thing we can do when trying to ascertain a very close result in a statistical situation, is to introduce more sources of error.
A hand recount will introduce more sources of error. There is no question about this. Goldy is convinced that this is not true because of the papers he read from CalTech and MIT, but the reality is that accepting provisional ballots alone that were not subject to a greater authentication scrutiny in a post election, highly charged, highly partisan counting environment, is a HUGE source of error. When you factor in the time pressure, the continuing of the high stakes environment that is this race, and the insistence by Democratic lawyers that even more provisional ballots be included in the second recount, you create an environment that is ripe for even more error.
In short, as I said before, if we are truly interested in arriving at the most accurate result, we won’t find it in this second hand recount. There are too many new sources for error and bias that come with everyone’s obvious recognition of the fact that this is a close race. Even with observers, the count cannot be conducted in such as way as to make it statistically more accurate than the previous counts. This is just the facts of math. I don’t make the rules.
The reason why Goldy’s hypothesis is so dangerous, is that for the less critical reader, it leaves the same impression that the Deomcrats of this state and Gregoire want you to believe, which is that a third recount is somehow a great way to get to the most accurate answer to the question of who won the election and that it is the right thing for this state. This is simply not true.
A legal win for Gregoire will be a disaster in that it will forever leave open the question of who actually won the election in a race that is this statistically close. That’s why it is so irresponsible for Gregoire to have gone down this road. It’s a “careful what you wish for” scenario.
For those who are interested in truly understanding the statistics and “Sound” reasoning behind why a third hand recount will be less accurate, swing over to soundpolitics.com.
If you just want to be filled with irrational Democrat/leftist ideas that allow you to continue your denial (you know the same ideas that were based on the statistically flawed polls that convinced you all that Kerry was winning until the results actually came in for Bush) then keep sniffing what is falling out of this HorsesAss.org.
Regards.
I think his statistical mumbo-jumbo is a joke. I remember during the original count, he was the guy who had all the data to show that Rossi would win by about 3,400 votes. The 42-vote margin that finally results makes all his statistical data just silly.
I know that his argument is always “…but somebody found votes that they didn’t previously know about…” Exactly. That’s the whole point of doing recounts. To find votes that were missed plus to correct any counting errors.
Any statistician will tell you that at this stage everything is a total toss-up with no basis to reach any conclusion whatsoever on who actually received the most votes in the election. To use statistics in the current scenario is just plain stupid, in my opinion.
Nelson, though I didn’t put it in those words, that’s pretty much the point of my original post, that this election is too close to accurately determine the winner. I wasn’t, as Jeff B implies, saying that the hand recount would be more accurate (though I’m not conceding that it will be less accurate), but that the first two counts are no more “legitimate” than the third.
The difference is, the law says it’s the third count that, um… counts.
I am both a Republican and a Dino voter, but I have to concede that you have so far had the better of the argument on this issue.
Of course it was absurd for Ms. Gregoire to justify the “inconvenience” of a hand recount by the public interest in confirming the “real” winner; there never was a “real” winner we are able to discover.
But the Republican charges that Democrats are now engaged in “stealing” the election serve no useful purpose. They amount to nothing more than the observation that pro-Democrat officials and judges in heavily pro-Democrat counties will exercise their discretion in ways that Republicans would be loathe to do. Imagine that. In a gubernatorial race affecting jobs, careers, appointments, and political influence, Democrats will take a different view of admissible ballots than Republicans. And how, exactly, could it be otherwise? What world are we living in, gentlemen?
Calling the legally authorized use of discretion “stealing” serves no intellectual purpose; it merely helps to discredit our admittedly imperfect procedures for resolving an otherwise unresolvable contest.
In other words Tom, demos are parasitic ?
I’m amused by Stefan Sharkansky’s argument that “The “Tabulation Error Rate” . . . in the governor’s race was nowhere near 0.56%.” He calculates it was no greater than 0.0046%, and concludes that the Caltech/MIT VTP studies aren’t relevant to us.
But he’s fundamentally misrepresenting the tabulation error rate, by claiming it’s “the difference between the outcomes of the first count and the recount.” So in his mind (or in his post, anyway) the error rate of a machine count is determined by comparing it to . . . a second machine count. That’s intellectually dishonest, because the studies are clear that the error rate is determined by comparing the machine results to a meticulous manual recount in which every ballot is visually inspected. We don’t know the machines’ actual tabulation error rate in this election yet, because the manual recount hasn’t been done yet. Until then, the VTP studies are the best empirical evidence we can rely on to predict that error rate.
Stefan writes, “Dino Rossi’s TWO victories are exactly that. Victories.”
Victory implies finality. There can only be one victory in the Governor’s race. Two counts putting Dino ahead are not “victories” in any final sense. Compare it to baseball: being ahead after the 7th inning and the 8th inning does not mean your team has been victorious twice already. Nothing is settled until the bottom of the 9th.
It’s critical that everyone understand that Goldy is simply wrong here. While the three counts maybe statistically similar, the difference is that in the latter two counts, we are all biased by knowing the outcome of the earlier counts.
How can one not acknowledge this simple fact? Afterall, why would Gregoire want a third recount if she was willing to accept the results of the two previous counts?
Goldy is correct in that the third recount is the one that, uh, counts. But, the point that those who are more open about this are trying to make, is that the very nature of continuing to count over and over again in an environment where there can be sources of error and bias and where the race is as close as it is, will gaurantee a less than accurate outcome. Thus, if Gregoire’s true goals were as laudable as she claims, she would concede rather than introduce the possibility of innacuracy.
It’s a discussion of precision vs. accuracy. If you get groupings of similar results, you have precision, if you get results that are on target, you have accuracy. If you have less precision, i.e. more scattered data points with statistically insignificant differences, then you may have a data point that is not in the group. This may result in less accuracy, because, we do not know where the real target lies.
We will never know exactly how many cards there are in the deck, and that is why as we continue to count the deck with different results over and over, we may get results that are over or under what we expect. And what we are left with is that we are less, NOT more confident of the results.
I know this is a hard pill for the Democrats to swallow because a) our law stupidly provides for a hand recount, which does not really tell us anything, b) you’d all like to see Gregoire win and c) you don’t want to accept the fact that we’d be better off reducing our sources of error by throwing out ballots that are less than deterministic, throwing out the bias introduced by trying to discern intent, etc. Everyone simply nods in agreement that a third count would be better than not because that’s the party line.
In short, the system is setup for failure in close elections and the Democrats are making sure to stress test it in the worst way.
One of the problems I’m having with this whole discussion is the issue of “accuracy.” I think it’s a strawman to even refer to that as a concept. We are not counting something that we actually know what the answer is, so we can never conclude what is actually a so-called “accurate count.”
On a philosophical basis, we can certainly conclude that there has never been a major election that has had an “accurate count” because the only way to ascertain that would be to interview each and every voter after the election, make certain they didn’t lie to you, and then check that result with the posted results. If the results are the same, then, by definition, you had an “accurate count.” I am absolutely certain that in any election in which there were more than a couple of thousand votes tallied, no count is ever accurate.
We determine winners and losers based solely on the probability that the recorded votes are “accurate enough” to give us a winner beyond any reasonable likelihood of probability. In Ohio, for example, they just discovered that Kerry actually got at least 17,000 more votes than originally thought, off of a total voter base of about 5.6 million votes — just about twice the Washington state totals.
If we want to extrapolate, that means there’s an assumed error in Wash. of about 8,500 votes. I would be the first one to say that making that leap is pure foolishness. All anyone can do is put people to work, make the best efforts you can to include and report every legally cast vote, and then expect the public to live with the results for the next 4 years. Will that final count be “accurate?”
How in the world will anyone actually know? The answer — which you posted — is that the law will define this third count as the one that matters; “accuracy” is an academic exercise that doesn’t belong in the discussion because it is indeterminant.
Tom, thanks for interjecting a little reality into this discussion. In drawing attention to the CalTech/MIT studies I was hoping to diffuse the rhetoric, but Stefan and his cohorts seem unwilling to slow the spin for even a moment.
David… it’s probably my fault for not explaining it more clearly… I assumed more people would read the studies, rather than just rely on blowhards like me and Stefan. But the “tabulation error rate” has nothing at all to do with the accuracy of recounts. It is a measure of the accuracy of the original “preliminary” count.
Either Stefan missed this, or deliberately glossed it over.
Jeff is right if you democrats will look past your precious party and actually use some common sence.
Nelson, you are right. That’s why we all need to ask the question, is it prudent to order and hand recount, when all it might do is inflame tempers and further divide us over a result that can not be known for certain?
And, this is why Gregoire, who claims to be an advocate for voters rights and for doing the right thing for the state, is instead only throwing water on a grease fire.
Stefan says, “All indications are that the hand recount will be far less accurate than the earlier counts, with opportunities for introducing new kinds of human errors.”
Really? I’ve seen a bunch of partisan speculation condemning the idea of a hand recount of the ballots, and plenty of comments trying to paint it as fraudulent and error-prone, but nothing in the way of empirical evidence supporting that view.
I’ve posted this information before, but it’s worth reposting because some people haven’t seen it and others haven’t paid attention to it. The Using Recounts study points out (the obvious) that in hand recounts “greater effort is taken to arrive at the most accurate accounting of votes cast.” Stephen Ansolabehere, one of the study’s authors, reports in the New Scientist that “When votes are recounted, the error rate falls, often to as low as a few hundredths of a per cent.” That’s backed up by the 40 years of real-world experience of Bob Swartz, founder of punch-card company Cardamation, who told a New York Press reporter that “We read the cards through the machine twice, and if there are differences we look at the cards. If our goal is to get 100 percent accuracy, there’s no question that’s the way to achieve it.”
If the manual recount is conducted with clear, uniform standards, under a high level of public scrutiny, it should be a couple orders of magnitude more accurate than the initial machine counts. Regardless of the paranoid speculation from some Dino supporters.
The facts won’t stop Republicans from fearmongering on manual recounts, but they should remember that in 1997 then-Governor George W. Bush signed a law in Texas stating that “a manual recount shall be conducted in preference to an electronic recount”. Tex. Elec. Code Section 212.005(d).
[P.S.: Before someone brings up the so-called “one-in-a-million” error rate of optical scan machines, remember that’s for perfectly prepared ballots (with perfect marks) in lab conditions; it has nothing to do with the error rate for reading real ballots (with imperfect marks) in real-world conditions.]
One problem I have with meticulous manual recount, is the plain and simple fact that state as well as local employees are the ones doing the counting. These are the same people that brought you the Tacoma computer system boondoggle. The same people that have you paying amongst the highest gasoline tax in the nation, but cannot seem to lay any new asphalt with the money (our streets should be paved with gold). The same people that ran Boeing out of the state. The same people that are taxing us into oblivion and STILL cannot balance a budget without ANOTHER tax increase. This is the caliber of people that are running a “meticulous manual recount”.
“That’s why we all need to ask the question, is it prudent to order and hand recount, when all it might do is inflame tempers and further divide us over a result that can not be known for certain?”
Of course she should. It’s not only prudent and logical, it’s her right under the law. Democrats should have inflamed tempers if she doesn’t do what she has the right to do under the law. Since you agree with me that nobody knows how the election actually came out, why should one assume that just because two knowingly inaccurate counts came out with no statistically significant difference that we should stop there if the law says we can do it all over again. We should simply follow the rule of law.
I have said previously that the only right thing to have done here is to have BOTH the Rossi and the Gregoire campaigns jointly fund this final legal recount and make an agreement between them to abide by — and fully endorse — the results that came out. This is always done in binding arbitration between two legally opposing parties. An impartial arbiter looks at the issues, make a determination, and both parties accept the decision and live with it.
Each of the county election boards would be, in fact, the arbiter, and collectively they would reach a decision. Both sides should agree in advance to live with it. And both sides should split the cost to guarantee the fact that they’ll live with the decision.
Rossi has won nothing. Gregoire has won nothing. We will never know who actually got more votes. We will only know that this final count — final by legal fiat — will say one of them got more votes than the other, and that individual will be the governor for the next 4 years.
So very tired of the abusive political name calling, rank insinuations and accusations. Some of these R anal retentives need to go back to their every day compulsions and distain for the imperfect world around them. And get some help for their grim perspectives about nothing more than a close election.
Elections which are partisian all follow the same framework, little small, dogcatcher or congress, we have staged thousands of them. Winners, even in tortured situations, take office and govern and loosers take a vacation.
Rossi would be in this same challenging mode had the situation been reversed. The law is clear about the process.
Not idiot voters, not idiot laws, just a very unusal very close election.
And let it never be said again, that those idiot voters and their votes are not important. Yes important, and how. Wonder how the protest voter feels now? And those who wrote in Mickey, Mom or Jesus. Or didn’t bother at all. They missed out.
Jeff is right on. By insisting on the hand count and proclaiming that there are irregularities that must be investigated, the dems lose credibility with most. It’s just more campaigning, and the public wants the campaign over! This type of behavior leads us towards lawauits, disputes worse than Florida 2000, and the public knows this. Not to mention delaying the transition. It is a slap in the face of the public.
Hey, zip, I’m part of the public, and I certainly don’t feel like my face is being slapped. I’m more than happy to wait until all the votes are counted, carefully, with human eyes. If you’re in too much of a hurry to wait for that, well, chill. (BTW, since the election is ongoing, can you tell me whose transition is being delayed? : )
Righto zip. I think it is fair to say that the handful of us that are reading this blog and soundpolitics have beaten this horse far beyond death and have then disected the body into utter minutia.
But, it is interesting to note that at the 50,000 foot level where the vast majority of the three millions votes cast lie, the only polls that have been conducted show that what the voters wanted, was for the election to end.
Now you can blab on about how Repubs would have done the same thing, and that all Repubs should go back to the imperfect world, etc. but the truth is that the gut reaction of the general public is that this election should be over and Christine should have conceded.
Of course by law the third recount is allowed, but it does not say in the law that a candidate “must” order a hand recount. Discretion is a foreign concept to Gregoire.
Rossi’s transition…
Jeff, as we discussed the other day, the machine counts have given us two numbers that seem quite precise (within a few hundred votes of each other), though we’re only talking about two data points. But we have no way of judging their accuracy yet. We won’t until the hand recount is done. It’s as if two arrows have landed close to each other on the target, but we don’t know how close they are to the bullseye. And the bullseye is where the third arrow lands.
No zip – just the polar opposite.
A system of elections laws works. Very well. The process is followed. We don’t govern by the most recent flim flam poll. When we get through we will have a giant basin of election data to digest- an unbelievalbe model for close elections…..it will be cited in history.
There is no crises, fear nothing. Media and partisan folks are stirring things for their own reasons. The Law is the total basis for our political system, contracts and every facet of our lives. Fear not the upfront and open exercise of the law. Fear temper, violence, guns and knives to solve problems, not democraticly enacted laws.
This is an interesting abnormality, the 200 year flood, the closest election in the history of the USA. Won’t happen again in your lifetime, anywhere. Extend your attention span and enjoy the ride. Interesting stuff. Like a comet.
Rossi supporters want the election ovr. History now, the recount will take place. Old news.
No David. We don’t know where the target is. Therefore, we only know that the third arrow will land. If we knew exactly how many votes there were to count, then this would be an easy process. Get your analogies straight.
But we have no way of judging their accuracy yet. We won’t until the hand recount is done.>>>>>>>>
We still wont have a way of judging accuracy, because a less accurate counting system will come up with a new set of numbers that wont correlate with either count.
Jeff, that made no sense. Call the place where the arrows land what you like; two have landed close to each other, fairly precisely, but the third one counts — whether or not it lands in the same place as the first two.
Then David I take that as an admission that you dont care about accuracy, you just gave yourself up.
A hand recount is more accurate, despite much complaining from Dino supporters that it isn’t. I’m waiting for my post backing up that point — with links to citations, not just bald assertions — to finally show up; it’s been delayed about an hour (probably because of the spam attack).
No, Chuck, you misunderstand. I do care about accuracy, and I am well aware that the manual recount will give us the most accurate count. So while the machine counts are “precise” in that they gave similar results, we don’t know yet if they are truly “accurate” counts of all the votes.
And, sadly, that third arrow may land in an inaccurate place as well, although there is NO WAY POSSIBLE for any of us to know that.
An accurate manual count is an impossibility.
Be careful of 200 year floods- they don’t always wait 200 years…
November, 1978- election result is a 49-49 tie in the state house…
November, 1998- election result is a 49-49 tie in the state house- my GAWD, twice in twenty years! Then came November, 2000…
Just twelve years ago the gubernatorial election went to the absentees, with Mike Lowry defeating Ken Eikenberry. Having seen the tracking polls in the weeks prior to the election, it was real obvious that the pull-out from Washington State by Bush the Elder, and the lack of a vigorous campaign turnout effort thereafter, had a lot to do with the GOP losses in Washington. If the same effort had been made on behalf of Eikenberry, et.al., that was made on behalf of Rossi, et.al., it is very likely that the 1992 outcomes would have been different. The lack of Republican electoral success in Washington has more to do with weak Republican candidates in statewide races than it does with Washington being such a Democrat state. Close elections may become more of a norm now that Republicans have been reminded that, yes, they can win here…
And having said all that- yes, the third count is what counts. Let’s hope it is NOT a count with a load of disputes. For all of the talk of evil conspiracies, I have yet to hear of anything other than unanimous decisions at county canvassing boards- I have particularly NOT heard that Republican Norm Maleng’s representative to the King County Canvassing Board has questioned any of the decisions. If Norm is satisfied, it is time for more beer, and less hyperbole… (and thank Gawd his name wasn’t Cliff…)
This is why computers design cars and engines in this day and age, because they do it better with more accuracy, robots build and weld cars with greater accuracy AND efficiently. Whenever you can remove the human element you improve efficiency and accuracy. Even the mail, when there is a screw up it is usually the human factor that botched it.
Just scrolling down and saw Nelson’s extraploation from Ohio- Nelson!- the difference was between the election night margin, and the margin when the count was done- that is like waking up on November 17th with Rossi’s 261 vote margin and asking what had happened since midnight Election Night… COME ON!!!!!
Chuck, exactly. David does not understand that although three arrows may lie close together, ultimately, the decision of accuracy is based on an arbitrary statistical line. We do not know where the bullseye is, and so there is no way to decide the race accurately.
A Rossi win in this count will at least put all three arrows on the same side of the line, leaving less uncertainty that indeed Rossi won in the minds of those observing and amazingly close election.
David is simply excited about the fact that when we shoot the third arrow, we declare a winner based solely on the third arrow, and thus if it happen to land Gregoire, no matter how close it is to the Rossi arrows, we continue with his party’s objectives.
Maybe a more fair way to handle this would be best two out of three?
Yup, Jeff I agree. With all due respect to the MIT study, it doesnt take into account the very possible corruption and just general fvckups that happen in a manual recount. The same people are recountng that had voted ballots stored with blank ones beside them…this sounds accurate to me….The study also fails to take into account the average government worker, who is by no means a bastion of efficiency.
To Jim King — If you really read my comment, then you would have seen me say that you actually can’t extrapolate between Ohio and Washington. My whole point is that ALL election results are merely approximations of what an actual vote was. When we have a decent difference in that approximation, we can conclude, pretty comfortably, who the actual winner was. But when there is no statistical difference between the two, nobody knows who actually got more votes. We simply use a court’s decision, or legal precedent, and make an educated guess who the actual winner was.
Rossi won nothing. The fact that he was presumed to be a handful of votes ahead of Gregoire at that stage of the counting has no relevance at all, since the law says you can simply count it again, in a different way, and whoever comes out ahead in the other manner of counting is, by law, the winner. The law’s requirement that the third count be done in a completely different fashion GUARANTEES that the vote totals for the candidates will CERTAINLY be different.
And the law says that we accept the last version of the counting.
Accuracy, at this point, is of absolutely no relevance, for the simple reason that nobody can define what an accurate vote count actually is in an election with millions of votes cast — and the LAW defines the fact that the final method of counting is the version that counts!
Jim King – You moved the premise of my post to another topic. This one signualr election we area all discussing is historic. Period.
The net aggrate count of legisatives races in any state or parliment that end up with no simple majority of legislators but both parties with the same number of people seated is not at all the same topic.
This election is the 200 year flood.
No beware or what if- just a big time razor close election. Not another like it in US history.
Least we get totally mired in propaganda, fools polls, rival rants and trivia and parscing every word of every post. Lets hjoy the moment of history we are emeshed and sucked into.
More like a two week votex than Vance’s atomic device. And all after drinking too much coffee on too little sleep and too little sex.
Some of this will dawn in the next two weeks. Or not. But I sure like it.
Peter- I sure don’t like it. I still maintain that Gregoire is looking for the type of “win” that risks causing the state to re-neact Florida 2000 or possibly worse. This is not in the State’s best interest, although of course it is an accordance with the law. Filing endless lawsuits and dragging this out for 6 months is also lawful but would be an extreme example of what I object to. What we’re hearing from her is campaign stuff not leadership stuff and the campaign is over.
Comments are back on over at my place.
The statement “this election is too close to accurately determine the winner” misses a lot of the point of what I wrote.
“Accurately” is not a Yes/No variable, it is a continuum like temperature. The right question to ask is not “is it hot outside today?” but “how hot is today?” similarly, it doesn’t make much sense to ask “is the vote count accurate?” You want to ask “How accurate is the vote count?”
The math phobes among you can dismiss statistical reasoning as mumbo-jumbo. But what I explained is that the two vote counts we already conducted tell us we can be 80% certain that they correctly declared Dino Rossi the winner. If that’s not good enough, bear in mind that there is only a 20% chance that Gregoire could be the winner. It seems to me that the the 80% candidate has more legitimacy than the 20% candidate.
Peter A- I didn’;t move your topic- you brought in 200 year floods- I pointed out that a 200 year flood can happen this year- and then happen next year. No need to have 200 years in between. And styatostically, that will happen. To illustrate that, I used the frequent occurance in recent years, in this state, in elections, of a tied state house- which statiostically would be as rare as 200 year floods. I then pointed out that, except for (Republican) human (campaign strategy) error, we might very well have had such a very close gubernatorial election in this state twelve years ago…
We may, given the divisions of this state, have such a very close one just four years from now…
All “200 year flood” events happening in close proximity in time to each other…
And Nelso- I read your whole post- I saw you said we couldn’t extrapolate, but I also saw you said “they just discovered that…”- the media just discovered that the difference was closer because no one was paying attention- the margin didn’t shrink overnight, anymore than Rossi suddenly moved ahead by 261, from the election night totals, overnight.
And Nelson- “The law’s requirement that the third count be done in a completely different fashion GUARANTEES that the vote totals for the candidates will CERTAINLY be different.” Problem witn that statement is that the law does NOT require that the third count be done in a completely different fashion. Gregoire could have requested either a machine or a manual recount, per the law. A third recount COULD have been done in the same manner- but what’s the point of doing it that way?
But put the onus for the difference on Gregoire, not the law…
Stephan – I’m glad your comments are back on – however, I tried to comment and was rejected – why would that be?
I tend to believe the hand recount will be more accurate than critics believe. Sure, the stakes are high and the pressure will be there, but at the same time there will be increased scrutiny of any ballot that are less than clearly marked. I say this based on the assumption that Washington will have observers from each side watching the people who count the ballots.
Second, unlike election night there is not the pressure to get everything done overnight in order to feed the news media some results.
A hand recount also has the advantage of countering the bias introduced in how ballots are arranged for efficient machine counting. Several years ago I worked with punch card ballots (not in Washington) and it was clear that ballots do not get counted because they stick together, chads hang, and machines get jammed with chads. When we punched the test ballots we were very careful to not have any hanging chads. Indeed, one year we created one deck and then had it duplicated at a local university on their IBM card machine (solid IBM cards with the holes punched by machine). On reflection the test decks of ballots did not reflect real world conditions how ballots are cast, but they were very accurate for purposes of seeing the machines read the votes.
If they had 2 or 10 more hand recounts each one would show a different result and a difference winner – because you’re bringing human error into it. Different humans and different times. Hand recounts do not give us a “clear” winner any more than the 2 counts already done.
Carol… exactly! That was my whole point. While typically, recounts tend to be more accurate than the original count, the margin of victory is so far within the margin of error, that none of these counts is any more “legitimate” than the other.
What seems to be lost in everyone’s comments about the first two machine counts is that the number didn’t just change from 261 to 42 in favor of Rossi. If I read correctly, there were almost 15,000 votes that were added and/or changed during the second machine count. The _margin_ shrunk, but the overall number went up and each candidate gained/lost different amounts in different counties. You could even “throw out” the 400 provisional/affidavit ballots and there’s still more than 14,500 votes moving around in a second machine recount. I don’t think that’s a stunning endorsement for the infallability of machines.
Stefan – There’s a 0.0000000000000000001% chance of oxygen spontaneously becoming gold tomorrow, so I don’t break a sweat about it. But if someone told me I had a 20% chance of winning a contest, I certainly wouldn’t call the contest off. The hand count is a legitimate, documented, legal way to determine the governer’s race, so that’s pretty much all there is to it. You may not like it, but it’s the law of the land.
Here’s another example: George Bush lost the popular vote in 2000, but won the electoral college. Do I think the electoral college is the right way to elect a president? No. But since it’s the law, I’m not one of those people who think he “stole” the election (I also don’t think the shenanigans that went on in Florida were conclusively biased in any one direction). I don’t think Bush 2000-2004 was an “illegitimate” presidency, despite his conclusively losing the popular vote.
Where on earth did you get 15,000? There were more changes in King county than all the other counties combined. A total of what 200 or 300 ?
Can you cite your source? I believe I read Paul Berendt say that. Is this information available anywhere else?
I know that the county by count net changes for and against each candidate come to a much smaller number, but the votes changed would also include those that cancel each other out. For example, a precinct that has one ballot add a vote for Rossi, and one ballot that takes one away, would report no net change for Rossi, but would still have two vote changes. I’m not sure if this is data that is even available.
“But put the onus for the difference on Gregoire, not the law…”
Sorry, but you are in error. Washington State law specifically says thatif a race is decided by less than 2,000 vote and 0.25% then a machine recount will be done. If the vote differential is less than 150 votes, then there will be a hand recount.
Without a doubt, the intent of the law is that the hand recount is the one to rely on, under the law, to settle very, very close elections. The reason that it’s a logical and rational legal premise is the point I made — when you do a hand recount you are GUARANTEED to get a different result and find and include ballots that went astray and were missed by the machine.
If a race is indeed that close, everyone in authority should definitely scour the whole state, from top to bottom, to find every single piece of paper that could actually be a ballot and get it counted. Fairness and democracy demands nothing less.
Nelson- you are referring to the law regarding the mandatory recount- the one we just completed. And you are not even getting that law right- refer to RCW 29A.64.021- (1)(b) reading “If the difference in the number of votes cast for the apparent winner and the closest apparently defeated opponent is less than one hundred fifty votes and also less than one-fourth of one percent of the total number of votes cast for both candidates, the votes shall be recounted manually or as provided in subsection (3) of this section.” Subsection (3) then reads- “(3) The apparent winner and closest apparently defeated opponent for an office for which a manual recount is required under subsection (1)(b) of this section may select an alternative method of conducting the recount. To select such an alternative, the two candidates shall agree to the alternative in a signed, written statement filed with the election official for the office. The recount shall be conducted using the alternative method if: It is suited to the balloting system that was used for casting the votes for the office; it involves the use of a vote tallying system that is approved for use in this state by the secretary of state; and the vote tallying system is readily available in each county required to conduct the recount. If more than one balloting system was used in casting votes for the office, an alternative to a manual recount may be selected for each system.”
Go onto the requested recount after the mandatory recount- the one upon which we are about to embark- See RCW 29A.64.030, the first paragraph of which reads- “An application for a recount shall state the office for which a recount is requested and whether the request is for all or only a portion of the votes cast in that jurisdiction of that office. The person filing an application for a manual recount shall, at the same time, deposit with the county canvassing board or secretary of state, in cash or by certified check, a sum equal to twenty-five cents for each ballot cast in the jurisdiction or portion of the jurisdiction for which the recount is requested as security for the payment of any costs of conducting the recount. If the application is for a machine recount, the deposit must be equal to fifteen cents for each ballot. These charges shall be determined by the county canvassing board or boards under RCW 29A.64.080.”
Either a manual OR A MACHINE recount could have been requested.
Jim K – the metaphor of the 200 year flood is not literal or even meant to imply 200 years. Just very unusual.
I only have had some study of data and stats but I am sure someone more wonkish than I will go back to the beginnings of recorded elections, and graph a model of incidence for this type of unusual occurance. Me thinkst it will be more like the 300 year flood metaphor.
Want to access the Supreme Curt documents. Any idea how?
Have two friends who went to the Dem training to be observers today. Said there was hudge turnout, Bob said 500 volenteers, very upbeat mood. Win or loose this round, I think the base line Dems are much happier now. American cultural values make us compete, and fight for our side and esp. in winner take all in partisian party politics Guess it is like NFL nuts or better yet the pro leaguehockey fans.
Buying a case of booze for the party, win or loose, some drinks will be in order.
Goldy’s right; that number (the sum of all vote count differences) doesn’t seem to be published. Working backward, we can spot where we’re missing info:
The statewide margin between the candidates changed from 261 votes to 42 votes after the recount, as Gregoire picked up 1,289 votes, Rossi garnered another 1,070, and Bennett got 69. (see http://vote.wa.gov/general/rec.....ounty.aspx ) That adds up to 2,428 votes. But a total of 2,666 votes at the county level were different from the first count; while most counties added votes, some subtracted votes from a given candidate. To get the total variation those changes have to be added as absolute values, instead of subtracting them to find the net difference. (i.e., take the bottom-row net change totals (green), and add twice the total of subtracted (red) numbers above to see how many votes actually changed hands.)
The problem (the missing info) is that the county numbers are, themselves, net change totals of all the precinct results within each county. The Secretary of State’s website doesn’t seem to show the precinct-by-precinct totals of votes added and subtracted; we can’t determine the total number of such changes. One precinct might have added a hundred votes each for Gregoire and Rossi, but another precinct might have subtracted 97 votes from each; the net change would be +3 for each candidate but the total number of changes would be 100 + 97 + 100 + 97 = 394 votes.
We who aren’t privy to the raw voting data have no idea what the total number of changes was between the first and second counts, except that it’s 2,666 or more.
Peter A- I understand the 200 year is not literal- the point I was trying to make is that the very unusual and usually rare CAN happen back-to-back. And although a 42 vote margin does NOT leave a lot of room in which to get closer, the idea that the NEXT competitive gubernatorial race in this state could also fall within “the margin of error” would not amaze me. Locke was lucky to have been essentially unchallenged…
Nelson- you have obviously not read the appropriate statutes.
RCW 29A.64.021 governs the mandatory recount- what we just went through. That is the law with the 2,000 vote and 150 vote triggers- AND EVEN IT does not mandate a hand recount if within 150 votes if the two candidates agree to a different approach.
RCW 29A.64.030 governs the requested recount, and it provides for either a request for a hand or machine recount request. The onus is on Gregoire, not the law…
Nothing appears to be posted on the courts website regarding the Democrats petition- http://www.courts.wa.gov/appellate_trial_courts/
I expect at some point material may start to appear. Some of the appelate lawyers may have a better feel for when and where documents are available.
From media reports, I understand the Chief Justice is requiring briefs to be in by 5pm Tuesday…
On Monday morning, I will wander over to the Temple of Justice and see what kind of information I can find to post exclusively on my poor deluded friend Goldy’s site…
By the way, Goldy, what kind of beer am I supposed to be buying you- and don’t say “Budweiser”- that is German for “Clydesdale piss”
Goldy- maybe the spamfilter got my last post, but you are up to having earned a half-rack.
We disagreed on some of what you concluded from your studies, but you are closer to intelligible than the Shark- and I HAVE had statistics courses. And the misuse of statistics is a big thing in Olympia. Just see the subcategory called “fiscal notes”…
And yes, 42 is a wonderful number, and is “statistically” meaningless. Yes, other than the need to have a winner, we’d all call this result a statistical tie and meaningless…
Except that one vote is all it takes to give the winner a mandate as Governor. But a narrow victory margin makes a wise Governor very judicious in how they use their mandate…
I have taken the unusual step of updating the content of this blog entry with my rebuttal to Stefan, rather than posting a new entry. I wanted to keep this thread connected to the topic at hand.
Also, Sound Politics is now accepting comments again, so please feel free to argue there as well.
Sound Politics is also now looking for ways to restrict voting to “intelligent” people- I’m just waiting for their advocacy of the return of literacy tests and the poll tax…
“The onus is on Gregoire, not the law…”
You keep repeating that mantra, but you are incorrect. There is no doubt from the precise citations you made that the hand recount is indeed the final default mechanism that the authors of the election law specified if there was an exceptionally close election.
The proof is that it is the (a) the most expensive choice anyone can make, and (b) deemed to be the last resort by the language of the law. The taxpayer will only be required to pay for this final, default option if all else fails to determine a winner (e.g.) the tiniest marging. Then, before the public has to pay for this most expensive and — inferentially — most determinant count, a losing candidate can opt to put up that high cost for that high value added counting system. But he or she is only REQUIRED to pay for a de-minimus demonstration group of precincts OF THEIR CHOICE. If there is then a sampling indication of sufficient error to overturn that <150 vote margin, then the taxpayer will indeed agree to pick up the rest of the tab to find out who really did win that election.
Gregoire and the State Democratic Party, in footing a big chunk of the bill that taxpayers would otherwise pay should never be slandered with the comments like “the onus is on them,” but rather should be applauded by all Washington State taxpayers for a statesmanlike effort that is saving the taxpayer a bunch of bucks.
Gregoire is the only one so far who has shown leadership and statesmanship and responsibility in behalf of the state’s taxpayers. She should be commended by all for her “we’ll pay the whole tab stance.”
Nelson- Go back and read the frelling law before laying out your ignorance. A vcandidate requesting a recount- no matter the margin- can choose a manual or a machine recount, depositing either 25 cents per ballot or 15 cents per ballot, depending upon which method chosen.
If the candidate chooses a less than full recount- by EITHER method- and that less than full recount changes the result, there is then a full recount done- BY THE SAME METHOD PREVIOUSLY CHOSEN BY THE CANDIDATE- either machine or manual.
I was NOT disparaging Gregoire- I was pointing out to you- yet again- that THE LAW does not require that Gregoire chose a manual recount. GREGOIRE chose a manual recount- she had the option.
Nor am I saying she made a bad choice- I am just- and I am repeating myself because you seem to have a hard time absorbing this- saying that GREGOIRE chose to have a manual recount, the LAW did NOT require that this recount be manual.
Has it sunk in yet, Nelson, or should you go right the relevent cites on the blackboard 100 times…
Jim King observes, wryly, that “Sound Politics is also now looking for ways to restrict voting to ‘intelligent’ people” . . .
That’s been Jeff B.’s (and I think Chuck’s) favorite idea here for the last few days — only let people with perfectly filled-in, undamaged ballots vote. They honestly believe that a voter’s choices shouldn’t be counted if his/her ballot isn’t up to their exacting standards. Their underlying motive, I figure (outside of a certain laziness and desire to let machines take care of things unquestioned, seeing how the machines have Rossi ahead) is the notion that voters who make mistakes in filling out and turning in their ballots are more likely to be Democrats.
Now, whether or not Jeff B. and Chuck feel that way, I’ve seen that notion accepted by some folks on the right wing. It’s a pernicious notion for at least three reasons:
The first point is obviously repulsive and elitist.
The second is just a way to play into negative stereotypes of urban poor and minorities who tend to be Democrats — it has the exact same value as Democratic sterotypes of Republican-tending undereducated rural poor (“white trash”), i.e., zero.
But the third point may be the most important. The wealth of a voting district can have a direct effect on the “residual vote” rate. It’s not intelligence or ability or party affiliation; wealthier voting districts are simply more able to afford real-time ballot readers located in each precinct. With a ballot reader at the voting place, when a voter makes a mistake, the ballot reader often spots it and the voter is given a new ballot. Without one, the defect isn’t caught and the vote gets rejected. The Congressional Research Service has stated that precinct-level counting equipment makes a statistically significant difference in ballot rejection rates (See Voting Technologies in the United States, p.11 n.28). That seems like a real voting reform to encourage.
Sorry, it is you who are missing my point. I keep saying, under the law in Washington, as drafted by some past Legislature, the hand recount is, by definition, the final default mechanism for resolving an election with a very narrow differential.
We know that because it is the most comprehensive and most expensive type of recount and therefore, BY DEFINITION, the most precise. Can someone choose another method? Sure. But who in their right mind would when the law clearly says which type of count is the most valuable and offer the highest likelihood of changing a result?
That is the point you continue to ignore — the specified value basis of the hand recount in the election law that makes it “the count of last resort!”
I would describe Sound Politics as NeoRepublican… neoconservative… phhhbbttt!
Nelson- great attempt at backing up, but that is NOT what you said- you got on my case for saying that the onus was on Gregoire for choosing a manual recount, then started blathering about how the law REQUIRES a manual recount- I quite correctly pointed ouit that you were full of bullshit on that point, while you went on again and again that THE LAW REQUIRES…
Are you yet willing to concede that THE LAW requires no such thing, that Gregoire CHOSE a hand recount, and had OTHER OPTIONS, whether or not those options make sense? Or are you just going to keep blathering in a poor imitation of the Shark…?
Typical that you would nit-pick about a minor technicality when the entire thrust of your comments have been refuted — in spades. My points were always that the law specified that the hand recount was the definitive — and most expensive and vallue-added — final step to determine the actual winner in a very close election. Remember, I started out by citing the MANDATORY hand recount under the law if a race is decided by <150 votes and is closer than 0.25%.
I then criticized you for saying the “onus was on Gregoire” for deciding to do that when the law mandated it. You came up with this cocockamamy argument that she could have (technically) chosen to do another machine count. I responded that it was a totally stupid idea that she was following the mandatory, definitive handcount rule specified in the law for <150 vote elections.
All you could come back with was a weak “…but she could have done another machine count…” Technically correct? Yes. Stupid idea, Definitely!
My criticsm of you putting the onus on Gregoire stands, in spades. She actually saved the taxpayers of Washington hundreds of thousands of dollars by her statesmanlike stance of paying for the whole shebang. Legally required? No!!!!
So why not put the “onus” on her for costing the State Democratic Party hundreds of thousands of dollars. You know, that wasn’t required by the law either, don’t you?
Again, your legal mumbo-jumbo dog doesn’t hunt here. The hand count is the definitive way to go — everyone (even the Rossi people) said that.
Okay, Nelson and Jim King, it doesn’t matter which one of you gets the last word here because you’re doing a lot of arguing over nothing. Next topic, please.
Nelson-
Get off your frellin’ high horse- if you are such a little person that you can’t admit you are wrong…
Here’s my original post, to which you took such umbrage
“And Nelson- “The law’s requirement that the third count be done in a completely different fashion GUARANTEES that the vote totals for the candidates will CERTAINLY be different.” Problem witn that statement is that the law does NOT require that the third count be done in a completely different fashion. Gregoire could have requested either a machine or a manual recount, per the law. A third recount COULD have been done in the same manner- but what’s the point of doing it that way?
But put the onus for the difference on Gregoire, not the law…”
Thus, little Nellie, we come to my original point: the law DID NOT, despite your assertion in post #36, require a hand count, and the law- despite your assertion, is not the reason we do not have two comparable votes for comparisons of accuracy.
And now you are putting words in the Rossi’s people’s mouths, too.
Nellie, you don’t know shit.
And David- arguing over nothing is ninety percent of what all the stuff since Election Day has been about… :)
My interjection – Rossi fans are surprised at this junction, even the nicer one. Took gut for the Dems to gamble a million, simply engage the election laws as they are writtern
Rossi said that it was up to her. Perhaps he regrets that remark now. Too bad.
Despit all he interesting semi-erudite and very college text musings about election tallies, the way to count a horse’s teeth is to pry its mouth open and count them
HUMOR, at least for me. Times for today in a story about how this works and the accuracy of recount wuotes Floidians extensively. Folks at my house had o drink whickey at 20.00 we were laughing untill our thoats were raw.
Goldy and folks here turned to MIT and CalTech. Better sources, methinks.
Send a note to the Times and ask if they woul have endorsed Catherine Harris for congress, since she did such a fine job in the election swamp of 2000 in Floridy’
Going to get press credentials so I can roam the counting sites on I-5. Sell a story to Agence Ukraine.
David,
I have no bias one way or the other when it comes to throwing out improper votes. I’d throw them all out. The Republican one’s too.
There’s nothing pernicious in wanting to eliminate sources of error to aid in getting an accurate count.
Electronic voting machines, for example, do not allow overvotes, so we are already employing these techniques. We could use the same techniques to disallow provisionals without signatures at the time of submission, increase authentication, etc.
There will be lots of discussion after the election as to how to make the process more accurate. It’s pretty obvious that we don’t have the accuracy needed for a race this close.
Rather than try and assign intent, which may indeed end up with an incorrect result, the simple thing to do is just throw out the screwed up ballots. The vast majority of ballots are filled out correctly, the percentage of proper ballots is way over 90%. It’s only in a close race that a small percentage of improper ballots even matter, so why let the race hinge on a bunch of suspect ballots?
There are dumb people voting on both sides. It’s racist to assume that Democrats are any dumber than Republicans. I never said anything about which party dumb voters belong to, I only said that dumb voters make the whole process of counting very difficult and innacurate and that’s why I believe we should just throw the dumb voter ballots out.
Jeff B- I assume this post about problem voters is well intended.
I would have never taken you for an old time Stalinist. Wherein the power of the omni state simply obliterates the citizen individual in the interest of some state reasoning of ease and bureaucratic convenience.
All democracies rest on assumption real power of the citizen base as individuals. Once the state can take away your vote, it can take the only real power you have, what is left?
Your value to the political process which governs you is first of all the vote.
It seems that you like politics, and I am sure you are a patriot. But your rush to smooth a difficult moment because of this contentious recount and in the process suggest taking votes out of the voter pool is a bad track. All voters are terribly important, each vote is terribly important because it is really how the system works across the country.
Refresh you insight into how many times and how many things Americans as citizens control because they vote. First all, yes ALL, levels of govt.- federal, state, city, county, school district, small town, money for schools. And even more. There is real power in the vote, it is even important at some very low levels we don’t think about. The weed district, PUD board, small town mayor. Monorail bonds.
I think you do not give human resources/potential credit enough to work over the problem ballots. It is no big deal. You need to be on a counting board. Most mistakes are very easy to resolve. This election and the media and the size of the vote in King County have exaggerated the question of problem ballots. And, most folk don’t know Washington State has had provisional ballots for 25 years, not a new shake.
Suggest you read the case law in this state on voting, You will be impressed how courts have protected this right, with eloquent and substantial rulings. And all the changes in the last 100 years have been to enfranchise more voters not to take away voting rights.
A lot of what you, and others, are saying sounds like the opponents of women voting-the anti suffragette movement. Women would be problem voters, weren’t informed, didn’t have political skills, not intelligent enough, noblesse oblige- men will make fine decisions on their behalf. And on down a much larger list. All that sounds silly now, but……
We can all champion better voter eduction, more access to all polls, help at the point of voting, state wide standards in all counties, perhaps better and clearer standards for problem ballots with more outside folk watching and video taping each of them, many possible tweaks to get the whole system functioning better with more immediate accuracy.
No reforms can be based on the rhetoric of “idiots who should not vote,” ethnic groups that should not vote, economic status determining who should not vote, young or old who should not vote.
This is one time I think we can wave the flag quite properly. Many tens of thousands of lives across our 200 hundred year democratic history have been spent to protect the right to vote, to accord/secure that right and to make sure it really happens. Serious indeed.
The process of “divining” voter intent is not so very difficult, and the canvassing boards here are pretty willing to toss a ballot out if the voter intent is not crystal clear. Unlike too many Republican posters, I have no problem with this “divination”, nor with looking closer at ballots that were rejected in the first count- not the first recount, the first count.
Part of the reason for the first recount is to “clean up” the count- let’s face it, if the election is NOT close, who cares how many people used the write-in line to vote for Rossi or Gregoire- but once we are in recount territory, our state laws correctly say- check all those ballots we didn’t look at closely, that may need to be checked visually for a valid vote.
And that is the point in the process that disputes should be raised, and settled. While I am willing to grant plenty of leeway to the voter- “substantial compliance”- the parties and the campaigns need to step forward at the first indication of a problem- or shut up.
That is my concern about the Democrats’ lawsuit- these issues should have been raised in the first recount. I thought the GOP had dumb arguments in their lawsuit, but I believe they filed it at the appropriate time. I believe the Democrats, in waiting until this round to file the case before the State Supremes, leave themselves open to the charge of trying to game the system.
That gets even worse if we end up with a bare quorum of the High Court hearing and deciding the case…
Jeff B. asks, “why let the race hinge on a bunch of suspect ballots?”
Well, see, there’s your problem. Ballots that machines don’t process correctly aren’t “suspect.” I’m still amazed every time you argue that people should be disenfranchised for the sake of convenient machine readability. Democracy isn’t the most convenient or efficient voting system, but it’s the most fair and representative. As Winston Churchill once said, “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those
others that have been tried.”
The basic point of the CalTech/MIT study is confirmed in the 2004 Washington state election results: Punchcards have a significantly higher rate of undervotes than do optical scan ballots.
Here are the results, using data from the Secretary of State’s web site:
Counties using optical scan ballots:
Total ballots cast: 1,847,911
Ballots with no presidential vote: 13,297
Undervote rate: 0.7%
Counties using electronic voting:
Total ballots cast: 375,808
Ballots with no presidential vote: 2,862
Undervote rate: 0.8%
The same pattern holds true as far as ballots with no votes for governor, though the undervote rate is quite a bit higher in the governor’s race: 2.4% for optical scan versus 3.8% for punchcards.
This suggests we should see the most change, as a result of the manual rrecount, in the punchcard counties: Asotin, Benton, Clallam, Clark, Franklin, Island, Lewis, Lincoln, Mason, Okanogan, Pacific, Stevens, Thurston, Whatcom.
These counties, as a group, went for Rossi 55% to 45%.
Counties using punchcards:
Total ballots cast: 659,780
Ballots with no presidential vote: 8,256
Undervote rate: 1.3%
Glenn… thanks for breaking down those numbers!
Does the data break out the ballots that were mail-in?