HorsesAss.Org

Even as the state Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments (1:30PM, C-SPAN2) on whether the gubernatorial re-recount should include a recanvassing of ballots previously rejected, the case may have already become moot.

As reported today in The Seattle Times, the rejected ballots included that of King County Council Chair Larry Phillips, whose absentee ballot was tossed because his signature wasn’t on file with county elections officials. Philips voted absentee because he was campaigning for John Kerry in Ohio; had he voted at the polls as is his custom, his vote would have counted.

Ooops… there goes the GOP argument that voters who had their ballots rejected were either stupid or didn’t follow directions.

King County Elections Director Dean Logan said he didn’t know how many ballots might have been rejected for the same reason. Election workers will spend the day looking for other ballots that were rejected for the same reason, and present them to the canvassing board.

As I noted last week, Republican Secretary of State Sam Reed has already stated that canvassing boards have some discretion to re-examine ballots:

Reed said county canvassing boards could re-examine some rejected ballots “if there is a problem brought to their attention,” But, he said, “they really don’t have the authority to on their own decide that not only are we going to do a recount, but we’re also going to systematically go back” and recanvass. That could change if a systematic error was discovered, he said, adding he thought that was unlikely.

If Phillips was registered to vote, but had no signature on file, how could it be anything but a bureaucratic error? So I guess the question is, what exactly does Reed mean by “systematic”? If a number of other ballots were rejected for similar reasons, isn’t that systematic? And if there are systematic errors in one part of the system, doesn’t that call into question the entire process?

GOPolitburo Chair Chris Vance would like you to believe that raising these issues leads us down the road towards disaster:

“The Democrats are asking for far more than counting a few ballots that were missed the first time. They want them to look at every ballot that was rejected the first time. It would destroy our election process.”

But explain to me how double-checking the legitimacy of a ballot before discarding it would “destroy our election process”?

It is time for King County Democrats to pressure the Democratically-controlled canvassing board to agree to re-examine all the rejected ballots, before the Supremes hand down their decision. Thousands of ballots have been tossed out by low-level election workers, and these voters deserve that have their ballots reviewed by the canvassing board before they are summarily disenfranchised.

———-

UPDATE:
Watching the oral arguments before the Supremes, the SOS attorney pointed out the following statute, 29A.60.221:

Whenever the canvassing board finds that there is an apparent discrepancy or an inconsistency in the returns of a primary or election, the board may recanvass the ballots or voting devices in any precincts of the county. The canvassing board shall conduct any necessary recanvass activity on or before the last day to certify the primary or election and correct any error and document the correction of any error that it finds.

So my point remains, if the GOP doesn’t want the rest of the state to recanvass, that’s fine by me. But I think enough errors have been uncovered in King County to warrant that the rejected ballots be brought before the canvassing board… for the first time.

I’ve been awfully quiet about Tim Eyman recently, and for a number of reasons, not the least of which being my reluctance to be pigeonholed an “Eyman critic” at a time when Tim is gradually transitioning to the role of a marginal political figure.

But I have also been loathe to publicly discuss Timmy’s proposed performance audits initiative in any detail, for fear he might cull something constructive from my criticism. I’ve never subscribed to the theory that Tim is some sort of a political genius… but he ain’t dumb. And he certainly doesn’t need my help in perfecting the initiative’s policy or rhetoric prior to its January filing date.

That said (or not said), I agree 100 percent with the sentiment expressed in an editorial today in The Seattle P-I: “Beware of magic bullets.” Surprise… Tim is pitching a very simple fix to a very complex public policy issue, cloaked as usual in his familiar anti-government spiel.

I support the concept of performance audits — in theory — perhaps even to a greater extent than currently conducted by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee (JLARC). In fact, I would like to see JLARC extend the audits from state agencies to tax exemptions.

But once the public learns of the true costs of Eyman’s overreaching initiative, and how little in savings we can reasonably expect to see in return… well… I don’t suppose it will make much of a difference one way or the other, as I sincerely doubt that Tim can raise the kind of money or grassroots fervor necessary to get this dog onto the ballot.

More on this subject after the New Year.

I’d like to add a little levity back into this forum by taking a moment to turn away from the tedious subject of re-recounts, to touch once again upon my eternal torment.. No, I’m not talking about reading the comments on (un)Sound Politics… I’m talking about the widespread belief that upon Christ’s imminent return, I shall be cast wailing and screaming into the pits of Hell.

When I last wrote on this subject a couple weeks back (“Have you heard the good news? I’m going to Hell!“), I generated some thoughtful and not-so-thoughtful criticism, ranging from those who accused me of demonizing Christians, to those who bluntly stated that the “truth hurts,” I am going to Hell.

But the critique to which I gave the most consideration was that I had misinterpreted Revelations. The truth is, I’ve only read the New Testament once, and that was twenty years ago for an Ethno-History class in college. And so I read with great fascination Tim Appelo’s cover story in the current Seattle Weekly: “Is Bush the Antichrist?”

Appelo delves into the history of the Antichrist and modern apocalyptic theology that I was only peripherally aware of. But while Appelo makes it clear that these themes are not part of main stream Christian theology — and Rev. Rich Lang of Seattle’s Trinity United Methodist Church goes so far as to make accusations of “heresy” — it is hard for me to dismiss these “heretics”, knowing that they control the White House.

“The progressive church should bring back–and this sounds so crazy–the word ‘heresy.’ The end times theology and this other thing called Dominionism or Christian Reconstruction–those are heresies.” Lang says not to believe Christian Coalition leader–turned–Whore of Enron–turned Bush/Cheney campaign lieutenant Ralph Reed when he claims the Christian right has no plans to upend the Constitution and impose its religion on civic life. “He’s a liar,” says Lang. “Dominionism is the notion that God has given the dominion, the governance of the world, to the church. And so Christians literally are born to rule, by force if necessary, to bring the Kingdom of God on Earth. I believe that the theology that drives the Bush administration affirms this.” When Falwell preached, “We must take back what is rightfully ours,” his ambitions did not stop at U.S. borders. This is a Church of a Law Unto Itself.

Years ago, after an especially harrowing driving experience in Boston, that involved my (now ex-)wife angrily driving the wrong way up a freeway exit, she turned to me and said, “I put the fear of God into you didn’t I?” To which I shakily replied: “It’s not God I’m afraid of.”

That is also my reaction to those Evangelicals so enraptured with The Rapture, so eager to leave people like me behind to our imminent and eternal damnation. I do not, cannot, will not accept Christ as my savior. If these people so fervently believe that I will be punished for this sin in the next world, how can I expect them to respect my rights as an American in this world?

Dismiss them as wacky cultists, whose time will pass, if you wish. Just remember that 2000 years ago, that’s what my Jewish ancestors probably said about the early Christians.

While the numerologists over at Sound Politics are busy job counseling prospective Gregoire nominees, I thought I’d take a look at a single number: 271. That’s the total number of additional or subtracted votes counties have reported thus far. (In fact, the total number is likely quite a bit higher, as subtracted votes at the precinct level would have canceled out additional votes in other precincts.)

With only about 14% of the counties reporting, this projects to about 2000 changed votes statewide.

And so to all those who argued that Rossi won the first two counts, thus there was no need for a third, I ask you: are you really comfortable saying that Rossi won by 42 votes… give or take a couple a thousand?

The Rossi campaign and their cheerleaders on the neocon blogs have made much ado about a 1996 memo from the Secretary of State’s office that supposedly shows Christine Gregoire’s “hypocrisy” on the issue of whether recounts should include re-examining the signatures on rejected provisional ballots. This is the issue at the heart of the Dems’ lawsuit, and if this memo truly proved Gregoire had changed her stance, it would certainly hurt her in the court of public opinion, if not a court of law.

But the memo doesn’t prove anything of the sort. Let’s take a look at the paragraph in question:

We are advised by the Attorney General that state law makes no provision for the challenge of ballots or voters (as provided in RCW 29.10.125) during the recount. The recount procedure provided for by statute is a mechanical function of re-tallying the ballots cast and accepted as valid by the precinct election officers or the canvassing board with respect to the inclusion or exclusion of a particular ballot during the canvass is not open to question during the recount.

The memo doesn’t say when they were advised, or by which Attorney General, nor in what context. The Gregoire campaign claims that this advice was given by the office of her Republican predecessor, Ken Eikenberry. This makes sense when you consider the memo in question concerned routine guidelines for conducting an election; it was not in response to any existing debate over recounts, so it would have been unlikely that Republican Secretary of State Ralph Munro, in 1996 an old hand at the job, would have suddenly sought a new opinion directly from the AG — indeed, no evidence has been provided claiming such an opinion was solicited.

In fact, the last time this issue arose was in 1990, during the very close race in the 24th Legislative District that was eventually decided by five votes. Ken Eikenberry and Ralph Munro were both in their respective offices at that time, and it seems plausible that the advice expressed in the 1996 memo stems from that earlier disputed election.

Neocon apologists like Stefan on (un)Sound Politics would place the burden of disproof on Gregoire, with absurd double-negatives like “I haven’t yet seen specific information that the AG office in 1996 had no knowledge of the opinion upon which Munro was relying.” And I haven’t seen evidence that Stefan is not the reincarnation of Joe McCarthy… but that doesn’t mean he is. (Then again, it doesn’t mean he isn’t.)

But regardless of who gave the advice and when, a close reading of the memo calls into question whether it specifically contradicts the Democratic lawsuit at all. The paragraph’s two sentences should be understood as two independent clauses. The first sentence clearly reflects the advice of an “AG”, but it would be presumptuous to infer that the second sentence is anything but a conclusion by the SOS. The AG’s advice is thus limited to the issue of whether RCW 29.10.125 makes a “provision for the challenge of ballots and voters” during a recount.

A literal reading of current state law suggests the AG’s advice is on target, because the statute makes no provision one way or the other. The RCW says “recount” and it says “all ballots cast”, but it fails to define either term. Yes, there is no provision that defines how a party might challenge ballots during a recount; but neither is there a provision that absolutely prevents canvassing boards from re-examining ballots on their own accord… an opinion that current SOS Sam Reed seemed to share in the TNT yesterday.

Oh, and by the way… the advice in the memo was based on an interpretation of RCW 29.10.125. Problem is, there is no RCW 29.10.125 on the books anymore, so the accusation of hypocrisy becomes shakier still in light of the fact that the law itself has changed in the intervening years.

On a curious side note… guess who was the Assistant AG assigned to the SOS at the time of the 1990 dispute? None other than Tim Eyman’s attorney, Jim Johnson, newly elected to the state Supreme Court on the strength of a familiar, alliterative name, and a half million dollars of BIAW money.

I mention this because it raises the very important issue of process. AGs and SOSs don’t generally give this kind of advice or write these kind of memos on their own; their staff handles it. So even if there was communication between the two offices in 1996, it’s unlikely that it would have been called to Gregoire’s attention on an issue that appeared to be settled practice as recently as 1990. Remember, Assistant AGs (and SOS staff) stay on from one administration to the next, and an Eikenberry holdover would have no reason to expect the office to reconsider this issue without a recent controversy.

And just to be sure I’m not accused of hypocrisy myself, I’d like to present a quote from a screed I wrote last year in which I repeatedly attacked the Attorney General for selectively seeking an injunction against my “Horse’s Ass” initiative: “And of course, wherever I refer to the ‘Attorney General,’ I am usually referring to her office.” Even I didn’t have the temerity to believe that my joke initiative was on her radar. The injunction was the work of an underling, as is most of the work of the office.

So what we have here is a eight-year-old memo, probably written by an SOS staffer, which included routine advice which may or may not have been given in 1996, or in 1990, by an Assistant AG in either Gregoire’s or Eikenberry’s office, about a vague lack of provision in a narrow portion of a statute that’s not even on the books anymore. And we’re asked to accept this as damning evidence of Gregoire’s contemptible hypocrisy?

Puh-leaaaase.

If Ralph Munro comes out tomorrow and states that he personally got this advice from Gregoire herself, then I’ll give this memo more credence. Otherwise it’s little more than gossip, hearsay and conjecture.

I don’t intend to obsessively dwell on the results of the hand recount as they slowly dribble in, unless there’s some kind of surprise to report. We all know that the prize is King County, and they’ll surely be the last to report. It’s kind of like watching the Seahawks on Monday Night Football.

Instead, I’ve added a scoreboard to the top of the page, which I will update at the end of each day, and whenever else I feel like it. I’ve provided a link to the results page on the Secretary of State’s web site, which will almost always be at least as current as mine.

As for the results thus far, it’s mostly been smaller, rural counties that have reported — less than 5% of the vote, and predominantly Rossi country. Too early to discern any trends.

I’ve been a little behind on my reading, so I only just noticed this tidbit in Ken Vogel’s very thorough article today in the Tacoma News Tribune. [Election mess heads to court]

Reed said county canvassing boards could re-examine some rejected ballots “if there is a problem brought to their attention,” But, he said, “they really don’t have the authority to on their own decide that not only are we going to do a recount, but we’re also going to systematically go back” and recanvass. That could change if a systematic error was discovered, he said, adding he thought that was unlikely.

What’s that? Secretary of State Sam Reed says King County can re-examine rejected ballots if a problem is brought to their attention? Well then, what the hell are we doing wasting our time in the courts? I’ll give you a systematic error… King has systematically disenfranchised hundreds of voters by anally holding to signature matching standards more stringent than any other county in the state! Hell, some counties didn’t even bother checking signatures!

We all know King County is the prize, and at least within the context of their lawsuit, the Democrats did the right thing in asking that the recanvass be statewide. But as far as I’m concerned, screw the courts. The party needs to play hardball with the Dems on the King County canvassing board, and get them to reexamine the rejected ballots. After all, Sam Reed has given his blessing.

In fact, this wouldn’t really be “recanvassing” at all. In most counties, the final decision to reject a ballot was made by the canvassing board — but not in King, where the decision to disenfranchise a voter was left to sub-canvass election workers. The canvass board has never even seen these ballots. I think it’s time they take a look.

The Washington State Supreme Court announced this morning that they will hear the state Dems request to issue uniform guidelines for the recount. Oral arguments will be heard before the full court, Monday Dec. 13, at 1:30PM.

Conservatives aren’t funny.

I know, that’s a bit of a generalization… but I’m comfortable with it. I mean really… apart from P.J. O’Rourke, name me one fall-down-funny conservative or neo-con?

Oh they’re awfully good at name-calling — clever or otherwise — but funny? Sarcasm without irony comes across as just plain angry.

Take for example the right’s latest attempt to poke fun at WA Democrats, Gregoire the Grinch, a lazy piece of neo-satire that proves once again that alliteration is no substitute for wit. What offends me most are not the lame, partisan insults, but the absolute failure to mine the rich vein of material Dr. Seuss provides to any self-respecting parodist. They couldn’t even bother to write their mere dozen lines in the style of Dr. Seuss.

Pathetic.

They just better hope that the very litigious Dr. Seuss Enterprises, LP doesn’t catch wind of their unauthorized use of a Grinch illustration, because they’ll sue for trademark violation in a two-size-too-small heartbeat. How do I know? Well, a few years back I wrote a (constitutionally protected) parody of the very same Seuss story, and my agent told me publishers backed away for fear of the inevitable, expensive lawsuit.

And so on this first day of Chanukah, as a lesson to the righties of the true meaning of “parody” — and with undying admiration for the late, great Dr. Seuss (if not the exploitive corporation that survives him) — I publicly present for the first time what is sure to become an enduring holiday classic: How the Kvetch Stole Chanukah.

As promised, I have posted the Republican response to the Democrat’s lawsuit. All the documents I have managed to obtain thus far are available for download in an easy to manage .ZIP file. Or you can separately retrieve PDFs of both the Secretary of State’s Response, and the Rossi Brief.

For good measure, I have also thrown in a copy of the 1996 memo the Rossi campaign has been touting, in which the SOS says that they were advised by the Attorney General’s office (that would have been Gregoire at the time), that the “decision of the canvassing board with respect to the inclusion or exclusion of a particular ballot during the canvass is not open to question during the recount.” It’s an effective PR maneuver, but even an official AGO wouldn’t have any legal standing.

[UPDATE: The AP reports that Democratic Spokeswoman Kristen Brost claims the memo is not what it seems: “Brost said that memo referred to legal advice from previous state attorneys general, not from Gregoire.”]

My impression of the SOS brief is that Sam Reed has hired very good lawyers. Their brief is well argued, and at least as compelling as the Dems. They argue that this is a “recount”, not a “re-canvass”, and that’s the way recounts have always been conducted. (Except, of course, for the first recount.) But then, I’m not an attorney, so what the hell do I know.

However, Rossi’s brief reads like it was written by PR hacks, not lawyers. By it’s whiny, condescending tone, it is clearly intended more for the court of public opinion than the Supremes.

Whatever.

There, I’ve given you both sides of the dispute, a gesture of fairness I suppose the neo-cons will inevitably view as a sign of weakness. I just hope you all appreciate the irony that it is the “outrageous” HorsesAss.Org that is truly promoting informed debate, rather than the obversely named Sound Politics.

As most of you know, at the same time the Democrats requested a hand recount last Friday, they also filed suit asking the state Supreme Court to order uniform, statewide standards for conducting the recount.

There’s been a lot of whining from the Rossi camp about Democrats trying to “game the system”, accusing them of “going nuclear” by dragging the election into the courts. But there’s been very little discussion about the details of what the Dems are actually asking for.

So in the interest of promoting a more informed debate (or as racist, hate-mongering Stefen calls it, “uninformed debate”), I have obtained copies of the court documents and posted them online. You can download a ZIP file containing all 34 documents, or simply retrieve a PDF of the brief.

But I believe the following excerpt does a pretty good job of explaining what the Dems hope to get from the court:

The following uniform standards are needed to ensure the orderly, accurate, and lawful conduct of the hand recount: (1) standards to ensure that all ballots rejected in previous counts are fully canvassed so that the hand recount produces as complete and accurate a tabulation as possible; (2) standards for evaluating previously-rejected signatures according to the more liberal standards applied in most counties; and (3) standards that allow party representatives to meaningfully witness the hand recount, by observing all actual ballots being counted.

I doubt number three is going to create much controversy, but numbers one and two are sure to raise objections from Republicans, because in a sense, technically, the Dems really are trying to the game the system. That is, they want the recount to be executed according to rules they think will favor Gregoire.

But in a sense, Republicans have already gamed the system by having Sam Reed issue guidelines that they believe will favor Rossi.

None of this should be particularly shocking — with the stakes so high, why on earth would either party cease the sort of legal and political gamesmanship that defines everyday partisan politics? And as far as I’m concerned, better to go to court now and clearly define the rules, than contest the election after the fact.

As to the Dems arguments, well, I’m not an attorney (again, sorry mom), but if they hired me to do PR, I believe I could make a convincing case in the court of public opinion. Apparently, King County used rather strict standards in evaluating signatures on provisional ballots, whereas other counties were more “liberal”… and some didn’t look at the signatures at all. Furthermore, the law doesn’t define a recount as “the same ballots counted in the original count simply retabulated” as Secretary of State Sam Reed does. The law says “all ballots cast.”

But legal issues aside, the question I ask is: “If King rejected ballots that would have counted in other counties, and this is enough to swing the election to Rossi, have we honored the will of the voters to the best of our ability?” I say “no.” But then, I’m openly biased, so take my opinion with a lump of salt.

Anyway, I haven’t finished reading through all the supporting documents — and I certainly haven’t seen any briefs from the other side — so my impression of both the strength and the reasonableness of the Democratic complaint could change. All I ask is, if you’re going to dismiss me as an ignorant, lazy, partisan hack (or a brutal, African dictator) who doesn’t understand the law… the least you can do is first read the brief for yourself before posting your comments.

While we’re on the subject of statistical sophistry, the Bush administration provides another stunning example of the “garbage in, garbage out” axiom, by once again abusing math in the service of undermining the Endangered Species Act. As reported today in the New York times (“New Risks for Salmon“), the administration proposed rolling back restrictions on millions of acres in the Pacific Northwest that had been designated critical salmon habitat just four years ago. To justify this policy reversal, the administration continues its established habit of distorting science:

Earlier this year, for instance, the administration proposed to count millions of hatchery-raised fish as wild fish – a bit of mathematical casuistry that would instantly make wild populations seem healthier than they are, undercut the need to keep wild salmon on the endangered species list and give the green light to federal agencies to drop protections against logging, homebuilding and other forms of commercial development.

Sure, why face the real problems surrounding our region’s steadily declining wild salmon populations when you can fix the math on paper by redefining the word “wild”?

Of course this is the kind of reality distortion — hatchery salmon are “wild”, recounts are not more accurate than counts — that we’ve come to expect from neo-con politicians, pundits, and pop-pundit wannabes (like Stefan), relentless in their determination to create the illusion that the real world jibes with their ideologically-pure, free-market fantasies.

And on a more disturbing, local note, just a word of warning to all you self-described “Dinocrats” out there, smug in your declaration of partisan independence. Governor-suspect Rossi ran on a platform consisting almost entirely of deregulation, and if you think he’s going to balance the radical anti-environmental agenda being imposed from DC, you’ve got another thing coming.

But then, in another four years we can save wild salmon again, this time by extending the definition of “wild” to include particularly randy farm-raised fish.

I thought I had put this baby to bed, but Stefan has updated his intentionally muddled rebuttal on Sound Politics, and, well… I wasn’t raised in a family that easily tolerates letting somebody else get in the last word.

Amongst other things, Stefan writes:

Statistics is the science of drawing inferences from the kind of messy data about real-world phenomena that David can only call “garbage”. Let’s have a real discussion of the statistical issues here.

The problem is, you can “statistically” prove anything you damn well please if you make the appropriate assumptions, and Stefan’s analysis is based on a faulty one:

If we make the reasonable approximating assumption that the percentage of votes given to Rossi in a count is a normal random variable, we can use statistics to calculate the odds that Rossi truly won more than 50%.

But the CalTech/MIT studies clearly state that variation in results from one count to then next is not simply random: recounts are more accurate.

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.

I am loathe to continue disputing Stefan’s “statistics” because that is exactly what he wants — it is nothing more than a well-worn rhetorical device intended to distract readers from our only substantive point of disagreement: are recounts legitimate? CalTech/MIT clearly says “yes,” but the reason Stefan won’t concede on this issue is that if Gregoire ultimately wins — in a very legal, if statistically insignificant way — Stefan and his sour band of neocons will continue to argue that her governorship is illegitimate.

His Tourettes-like spouting of Excel functions aside (not to mention his cowardly, dismissive, dishonest, and OCD-like focus on the definition of “statistical tie”), I think it is fair to say that Stefan and I agree that we will not come out of this election with confidence that we have accurately measured the will of the people. (And let’s not start a bullshit debate over “accuracy” versus “precision.”)

His notion that Rossi will be the statistical winner, whatever the outcome of the hand recount, is based on rhetorical convenience, not statistics.

I’ve enjoyed my pissing match with Stephan at (un)Sound Politics over the accuracy of voting technologies, and whether we can ever really know who won the governor’s race in a statistically meaningful way. And I’m enjoying it even more now that the Seattle Times has weighed in (“Top vote-getter? We may never truly know“) just a day after our dueling rebuttals. (His… mine.)

“It’s closer than the technology and our capacity as humans to decipher,” said Jeffery Mondak, a political-science professor at Florida State University. “You folks would do as well to flip a coin as to try to determine who actually won.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Oh wait… I did!

Read ’em and weep, Stefan.

[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.