Friday morning I wrote about why numbers matter, castigating my friends in the legacy media for failing to do their math. It was perhaps a nitpicky complaint in focusing on the R-71 signature count, but it was part of a larger pattern of failing to accurately and truthfully represent numbers in the press.
Early news reports claimed that R-71 would likely qualify for the ballot, despite the fact that the numbers, if you bothered to add, subtract, multiply and divide them, clearly said otherwise. As the sample expanded and the full effect of the duplication rate started to be reflected in the daily totals, comment threads started to fill with conspiracy theories about how the Secretary of State’s Office was jiggering the numbers to keep R-71 off the ballot. In my mind, shallow reporting led to misguided expectations that would ultimately further undermine public faith in the integrity of our electoral process.
But of course, all that was written before I learned that the numbers we were getting from the Secretary of State’s Office were total bullshit… a preliminary, half-cocked accounting that didn’t reflect that actual invalidation rate at all. On Friday afternoon I received a call from Darryl telling me that all the numbers had changed and all of our well reasoned conclusions could be tossed out the window. Oh, our equations were still valid, but with the SOS moving over 400 signatures from the bad to the good pile, they now produced dramatically different results.
And to complicate matters, after suddenly adjusting the totals a week into the validation process, the SOS failed to provide the all important breakout of duplicate signatures in the final result, leaving us unable to rerun our equations with the supposedly more accurate data. I mean… WTF?
From what I know (and at this point, I obviously don’t know much for certain), it still looks like R-71 will likely fail to qualify for the ballot, but that’s actually beside the point. We had just spent a week congratulating the SOS for their timely and helpful daily updates, and the speed at which they responded to public and media inquiries. And now we learn that the data they fed us was crap, which I guess would’ve been okay, if they had only warned us. So much for defending the integrity of the office.
Bullshit in, bullshit out, and all that.
I just thought the public deserved (and was getting) a little better.
As long as we’re being nitpicky — technically, Goldy, “data” is plural so your headline should read “Why Data Matter” or in the singular form it would read “Why Datum Matters.”
Personally, it appears to me there’s a conspiracy in the SoS office to keep you from projecting the outcome.*
* Ha ha! Just kidding! I’m trying out this wingnut joke for laughs.
All the more reason why people should be using the next week wisely by preparing for the ballot. Better safe than sorry. Go to http://www.WAFST.org to sign up.
To preserve the domestic partnership law, vote APPROVED on the November ballot.
Referendum 71 voters will be asked to approve or reject the domestic partnership law.
DONATE TO WASHINGTON FAMILIES STANDING TOGETHER !
PRINT AND DISTRIBUTE HANDOUTS AND PLACARDS !
The SoS should do a better job of trying to verify supposedly mismatched signatures. Very few signatures are forged in reality, whether they be on petitions or mail-in ballots.
When a person mails in a ballot, and the signature does not match, they are contacted by elections officials to verify and correct the apparently mismatched signature. However, there is no similar process in place for apparently mismatched signatures on initiative and referendum petitions.
Personally, I don’t want R-71 to qualify for the ballot. But that result would be wrong, if it were based on a few hundred actual voter signatures being thrown out because of handwriting changing over the years, apparently not matching, and the voter was never contacted to verify their signature.
Could timely, daily, updates be part of the problem? Maybe the SOS should be more focused on doing things right and less focused on constantly providing updates for people?
The SOS is a Republican, so what do you expect?
David Ammons, the SOS’s Public Information Officer, deserves a call about this, Goldy. IMHO, Dave is among the most trustworthy PIO’s with many years as a revered reporter/commentator and ‘dean’ of the Olympia press corps.
Call Dave.
@3 Lurleen
Why do Republicans hate families SO much? They hate black families, gay families, Latino families. Why is the only valid family a white heterosexual family? Gay’s can’t get married, hell even have domestic partner benefits according to these wingnut anti-reality crazies, because everyone will turn magically gay and Jehovah will come back after 2,000 years of absentee rule and turn Denver into salt. Oh GROW UP!
Granted it’s rare, but is it gay marriage when a hermaphrodite marries anyone? Granted modern medicine in the last couple decades has let doctors (humans) make a ‘choice’ of which sex the hermaphrodite will be and apply drugs and surgery to push one direction or the other. But outside of human intervention, keeping with gods plan (and how hermaphrodites existed for the last million years, or 6000, ahem) then how does that work? Think of a hermaphrodite at the time of Jesus. Someone who god gave a penis and a vagina. Could they get married? I assume they were just stoned to death as demons or something enlightened like that. But in modern times, do they just have to sign a form and ‘say’ they’re a man or woman just to make nice official documentation and ease everyone’s mind?
Oh I see, if we let hermaphrodites get married, it would cheapen marriage and everyone would try to become hermaphrodites cause it’s so cool and no one would have babies anymore and our species would die. It’s SO obvious now that I think about it!
[Deleted — see HA Comment Policy]
[Deleted — see HA Comment Policy]
They have not yet posted an update for the signature checking results for Monday, August 10, 2009:
http://wei.secstate.wa.gov/oso.....Stats.aspx