Democrats, mostly. That's the conclusion I draw from latest Ohio election results.
President Bush's victory over Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., in Ohio was closer than the unofficial election night totals showed, according to county-by-county results made available Friday, but the change won't trigger an automatic recount.
Bush's margin of victory in the state that put him over the top on Nov. 2 will be about 119,000 votes, in contrast to the election night count of 136,000, the figures showed.
The margin shrank primarily because of provisional ballots and overseas ballots that were not counted on Election Day.
(There was also a machine error that gave Bush an extra 2,893 votes in one precinct.)
Why do I think that the imbalance in provisional votes shows that Democrats are more likely to have trouble voting? Because provisional votes are often cast by voters who have made some mistake, gone to the wrong precinct (in some states), registered under a different name than they usually use, or something similar. We would expect more of those mistakes from less educated voters, and the Democrats have most of those voters. (As well, of course, as most of the professors, and other highly educated voters.)
Since Democrats are more likely to have trouble voting than Republicans, easing election rules to allow vote counters to try to figure out the intent of voters tends to give Democratic candidates a few more votes than they would get otherwise. Which is why we so often see fights between the two parties over whether intent should count. We saw just those arguments made in 2000 Florida fight between Bush and Gore and we are seeing them again in this year's fight between Washington's gubernatorial candidates, Dino Rossi and Christine Gregoire.
My own view is that we should make voting rules as clear as we can, and then enforce them strictly. I thought that Sandra Day O'Connor had it right in 2000 when she suggested that the directions for voting be the standard. If you follow them, your vote counts; if you don't, it may not. Of course Justice O'Connor is a Republican. (If the current laws allow vote counters to try to divine a voter's intent, then vote counters should follow those laws — and the laws should be changed.)
The small partisan advantage for Republicans in the strict enforcement of voting rules makes me admire this sensible Thomas Shapley column even more. Shapley argues that voters have an obligation to follow the procedures, and vote counters have an obligation to follow the rules, not try to divine intent. The Seattle PI does not often argue for measures that would give an advantage to the Republican party, so it is a pleasure to see one of their editorial writers put principal above partisanship.
(For many decades, Democrats were proud of the support they received from the less educated and the poor. Now many Democrats seem uneasy about that support; certainly John Kerry did in this last election. In contrast, Republican reformers — and there are more of them than some think — are excited about proposals, such as charter schools, that they think might help the poor, especially the urban poor.
Republicans have another advantage. They sometimes win down ballot races, even when they lost the top races, because, in my experience, Republican voters are a little more likely to vote in all the races
Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.)
Posted by Jim Miller at December 04, 2004 03:36 PM | Email ThisOf course democrats are horrified at the prospect of anything that would discourage even the dumbest voter's vote from counting, but rationally they should not be afraid of establishing clear rules and following them.
Frankly, it's unbelievable that laws were ever enacted to allow the determination of intent.
The standard as Jim notes, should be that if the ballot is correctly filled out, it is valid, if not, throw it out. And we desperately need some form of voter authentication. Jim does not mention that the preponderance of Democratic ballots in the provisionals could also easily be the result of fraud resulting from "Get Out The Vote," initiatives etc. Democrats were worried country wide about the close election for the Presidency and did everything they could to encourage all kind of questionable voters to vote, precisely to set up the conditions for litigation if the race were close. There is of course no proof that there was fraud, although I bet that we would find a statistically significant number of ballots that were indeed fraudulent if we attempted to find and reconcile the names of all those who voted provisionally.
As Shapley and so many others have noted, it is not hard to vote, and there is more than enough time and assistance for the process. Anyone that really wanted their vote to count, took the time to follow the simple procedures and were tallied. All of the chatter about provisionals, every vote counts, etc. is all vote welfare that dillutes the intent of those who took the time to vote correctly.
If we simply based this election on those uniform and rational standards, this race would be no contest in favor of Rossi.
It's only through the most liberal interpretation of every illegitimate ballot, every unsigned ballot, every residual ballot, etc. that Gregoire even has a chance.
If she does win due to these overly liberal standards, the win will be tainted by the vote welfare that made it possible.
The military ballots received late probably helped Bush, but they were a small portion of the extra ballots. The military absentee ballots were part of the 20,000 absentee votes counted since election day. To be technical the absentee ballots received on the saturnday before election, Monday and Election day(Not counting overseas which had ten days to come in) were not counted until 10 days after the election. This is because the absentee list(The list of people who voted absentee) is prepared on Friday before election day for shipment to the election site. No one who votes absentee or an absentee application out can vote on the machines on election day. They have to prepare this list early. To double check for errors that may occur the late absentee votes are not counted until they cross referenced against those who vote on election day. Boring post. These votes probably went to Bush as he won the absentee votes.
Now the 120,000 provisional votes probably went to Kerry by a 20,000 vote margin. Half of the provisonals were cast by people who registered in the last week or two of time to register. The poll lists were not updated in time so a provisional had to cast. +100,000 plus tried to change addresses and register in the last week or two in OHio. These careless last minute voters went for Kerry as the republicans tended to register early. The other 60,000 provisionals were cast by people who requested absentee ballots, but for some reason did not get them back and had to vote a provisional ballot.
So yes Kerry voters were more likely to register late and be sloppy in getting their absentee ballots back. Only by a 70,000 to 50,000 vote margin. So there lazy republicans too.
Posted by: Ralph on December 4, 2004 06:02 PMAlso: has any question been raised with King County, whether the ballots of felons and other ineligibles have been properly purged from the vote count?
Also: as in Florida 2000, the wild disorganization of a Democratically-controlled county election organization now opens the door for the hordes of Democratically-controlled legal beagles to tie the process up in litigation. Hell of a fine way to give citizens of a democracy confidence in their elections.
Posted by: Hank Bradley on December 4, 2004 07:32 PMthat's a 20 point swing from the overall election results
Posted by: Malph on December 5, 2004 02:21 AMYes republicans voters are more what I call "crawl thru Broken glass votes" So strategically reform hurts your candidates, but that is like living close to your work and voting to keep the roads traffic congested because it makes you look good. Sometimes you have to vote for what is the correct thing to do.
Posted by: Ray on December 5, 2004 09:27 AMAnd how can you deny that there needs to be authentication in the voting process? At bare minimum we need to verify that all votes really have live "voices" behind them, and voices that are not felons, mentally incapacitated, non-citizen, etc.
And imagine this scenario: A young college student, who is quite impressionable, who attends a political rally, who in the span of one night of listening to one speaker's ideas, then decides based on that limted input that they should vote for a particular candidate. Is this hypothetical student really exercising his or her own voice and intent when they vote, or are they merely regurgitating the opinion of someone persuasive who told them what to do?
Posted by: Jeff B on December 5, 2004 12:34 PMWhile I do not agree that voting needs to be made much easier, I would be willing to accept some of the changes (two day voting or weekend voting, stronger outreach, etc.) you propose in return for:
- Firm and unambiguous identification of voters (proof of citizenship) for both poll voting and absentee voting (once per year prove identification and revalidate signature)
- end of provisional ballots
- end of motor voter (replaced with census-like outreach)
And I would draw a bright line between determining voter intent and technology problems. Circling a candidates name in an optical scan ballot is not a technical problem and inferring intent from such an action is error-prone in the extreme (and thus subject to mischief).
Posted by: iconoclast on December 5, 2004 01:59 PM"A young college student, who is quite impressionable" I see you point, but can easily say my father a middle aged white man who watches Fox news, would be less informed (70% of Fox viewers believe 911 was Iraq) and more impressionalbe.
The way you persuade voters - good, bad, disengenous are boards of play. (although I really do wish we could bring back the Fairness in media act)
I just think voting should elevated to a higher plane in the county. Double the budget. Treat it like we do the Census or the collection of Income tax. Get serious. We have a long history of making voting hard at time. Republicans used to be opposed to Absentee ballots and everthing else.
Also I agree that a legitmate vote is diluted when false votes are made. Where to draw the line is something we as a society deal with all the time - criminal court cases, "Beyond resonable doubt" vs "Perponderance of Evidence". Voting is no differnt, frankly I think as a collective we spend hardly any time and thought on voting. We should have tons of court cases, working thru the defintions and such
Problem is the competition element, drives out such discussion on the actual process. I will give you this if Dino was having a recount I would have little voice on my shoulder saying lets stop. That is good. It is human nature - and too a degree because both parties are suspect to that, the process get hurt.
Posted by: Ray on December 5, 2004 02:09 PMThat's why throwing out improper votes is a good solution. It's cheap and easy. Just like the huge fine for driving in the HOV lane as a single occupant vehicle is an incentive to keep people from doing so, knowing that your vote will be thrown out for sure if there is anything wrong with it, would be an incentive for those who really want to vote to do so properly.
If you want to let rehabilitated felons vote, fine. But the prisoners should not as you agree. What I meant by the mentally incapacitated, is that others should not be using them as a "live" body to cast a vote. Not that this occurs in a widespread way, but the point is that authentication is badly needed. There should be no doubt in anyone's mind that some fraud did indeed occur in this election. Since it is a 42 vote difference, we owe it to accuracy to make sure that fraud is very hard to perpetrate. It's hard to pass bad checks in this state, how come it's not hard to pass bad ballots?
Agreed, all methods of influencing voters are fine, but if we make it just slightly harder to vote, it really does encourage those who want to take the time to participate instead of just those who are incited emotionally at the spur of the moment. This is could be a bigger blow to Democrats if you believe that more provisionals were cast by Democrats, but the reason why the Democratic vote will continue to decline is that many traditionally Democratic minority groups are beginning to realize that identifying themselves as victims is not really getting them ahead. So, relying on "Get out the vote" rallies with emotion to incite spur of the moment voters is not a long term sustainable strategy for the Dems as the electorate becomes more educated and has more sources (Internet) and access to the marketplace of ideas.
And no need at all for tons of court cases. Simply throw out the bad ballots and you save so much cost. It's simply not worth the money to enfranchise the very tiny percentage of votes that are improperly cast. Huge amounts of litigation to decide something that should be very deterministic such as a vote, would be a big waste of our collective capital.
And as for your last paragraph, that's why we really need election reform. It should not have to come down to fighting over whether we need a recount. If that is what is happening because for example, only the third count matters, then the process is clearly broken. An election should be a very bland and very deterministic excercise, not an emotion and litigation laden mess. Vote, Count, Annouce Results. It should not be hard.
Posted by: Jeff B. on December 5, 2004 03:10 PMSpending more money only works when it is spending money on a valid plan.
I do not believe that giving people election day off , for example, would lead to people voting better. South Carolina does this and I have not heard that the state has less fradulent votes, etc.
Instead, before an election, instead of all the money spent on urging people to vote (even if they don't understand the issues, don't know who is on the ballot, etc) I think that the same money should be used encouraging people to read their election pamphlets (we already spend all that money sending them to every household, after all) and become informed before voting. (including READING THE BALLOT to figure out how to fill it out. And yes, not following instructions should get the vote thrown out. It's simply not that difficult.)
If we are willing to spend more money on elections, we should look into verifying voter rolls. Making sure everyone on them is a valid resident of Washington state. (and the precinct they are voting in)
Esp. absentee ballots, where the possibility for fraud (the person voting being other than the person whose name on the absentee ballot is, the person voting being a resident of a different state, etc) is greater
I have local friends who are VERY against over-the-Internet voting because, if they had had that growing up, their father would have stood over them and forced them to vote his way. Being able to go to the poll place allowed them to vote their own conscience and not his.
Of course, I'm weird.
I think recounts (beyond the first) should be where their is evidence of fraud or where a recount changes the result of the election. Not just because an election is "close."
Oh, btw, there are two counties (I believe) that vote electronically. What they are doing for this "hand recount" is printing off all the votes on pieces of paper and counting those pieces of paper. It seems to me that the amount of difference between that count and the electronic number will give an ideal of how much human error is entered into the process of simply counting (without human judgement of who a particular vote for is)
Because one thing about electronic voting is that there are NO undeterminate votes. (or if there is the computer's program was badly done). People are forced to vote no more than once in a race, and they are not able to vote in any way other than the ordained method -- or the computer does not register at all. If you try to use a pen on the screen -- all you'll do is mark up the monitor, etc.
Posted by: Sarah Schreffler on December 6, 2004 07:09 AMIt's all well and good to blame the voter for their lack of education, but to a large extent it is a societal problem, in terms of school funding formulas being based on property taxes, abusive households, bad teachers, unsafe schools, etc. All things which students, as minors, really have little control over. I think we can at least agree on this.
Although I cannot "divine the intent" of the uneducated voting population it is clear that many undereducated voters realize on some level the extent to which they have been denied the right to a decent education.
Given the above comments let me know what you think of these questions...
(1) Wouldn't it be a great thing if the people who have been on the short end of the stick throughout their whole lives to register their opinions on Election Day (regardless of how well informed they are and who they vote for)?
(2) Wouldn't this force politicians to deal in an effective way with systemic problems that aren't political popular because there is no constituency making them viable?
Using a commonsence BI-partisan approach to counting machine rejected ballots could further the cause, over the long-term, of forcing society to deal with the problems of a poor educational system. Because, in a democracy how else are people to express their anger or frustation? I'd for one rather have them vote, and their votes counted. As we've seen throughout history, repressing any class or race/religion can spur violence.
Posted by: Dude on December 6, 2004 08:33 AMSpecifically, if the voter was in the wrong precinct, it seems, those provisional ballots were not counted under Ohio law. A better argument might be made based on what provisional ballots weren't counted.
More provisional ballots in democrat areas could mean that there were more (republican) challenges to voters in those areas. I won't argue which party has better educated voters or which are more prone to error. The conclusion may be the correct one, but I'm not sure the premise here really supports it.
Posted by: Steven on December 6, 2004 08:42 AMWhat will honest Washington citizens be able to do to prevent more of these graveyard votes (and other similar scams) in the hand recount? Are they totally prevented from getting anything close to an honest count in Demoncrat controlled King County or what?
Posted by: leaddog2 on December 6, 2004 10:43 AM
That's the reason clear White-Out was invented...
You initial assertion that only Democrats "don't know how to vote" is based on this:
Because provisional votes are often cast by voters who have made some mistake, gone to the wrong precinct (in some states), registered under a different name than they usually use, or something similar. We would expect more of those mistakes from less educated voters, and the Democrats have most of those voters.
In any other gathering, you couldn't get away with a conclusion without a foundation. In the blogosphere, however, it's ignored. From there forward, your piece presumes the reader accept this sleight of hand in order to believe the remainder.
Interestingly, you then state:
(As well, of course, as most of the professors, and other highly educated voters.)
So on one hand you say Democrats are less educated and on the other you say they're highly educated. Which is it?
I'm calling your bluff. I'd like to know how you came to the conclusion that Democratic voters are most likely to make mistakes leading to the necessity of a provisional ballot. Facts?
In general, I want to see election systems that are easy to use and not subject to finagling after the vote. I'll be putting up a speculative post on a technology combination that I think might meet both of those objectives on my own site soon. I'd be very interested to hear people's ideas on it.
I do think that there should be few legal handicaps to voting -- and that people who are not competent to vote should voluntarily abstain. If a voter is unwilling to learn the simple rules for voting and the basics about the candidates and issues, then I think it better for all of us that they not vote -- voluntarily, I repeat.
Posted by: Jim Miller on December 7, 2004 05:19 AM
If you want to look at some numbers, I would suggest the set of exit polls that the New York Times published after the election. (I am not sure if they are still free.)
Why would those with less education than high school be more likely to make mistakes in voting? Because some of them are illiterate or semi-literate and so they have trouble with all tasks that require reading and following written instructions. Since the Democrats draw more support than the Republicans from people who are illiterate or semi-literate, Democrats will make more mistakes in voting.
Once people have a high school education, they should be able to handle voting with few mistakes, so the Democrats would get few, if any, gains from their edge among those with post graduate degrees.
As it happens, I favor moving to voting systems that make it easier for the voters, even though that would help the Democrats, slightly. But I absolutely oppose attempts to go beyond state law in attempting to divine the "intent" of a botched ballot. There is just too much room for mischief.
Making it easier for people to vote is a good thing to do, but not a crucial thing, in my view. Restoring the frayed integrity of our elections is crucial, which is why I often write about it on my site.
Posted by: Jim Miller on December 7, 2004 05:45 AM