Florida 2000 and Washington 2004

Once again an atypical county was used to draw conclusions regarding the entire state. It has already been shown that Miami-Dade was a statistical outlier for ballot spoilage and had racial demographics that were unrepresentative of the rest of the state (which can and does impact intentional abstentions). It is also far from clear that ballot roll-off (how the presence of candidates for other offices on a ballot impacts the residual vote rate of an election) is an indicator of intentional abstention. Thernstrom and Redenbaugh simply assume that it does and extrapolate Miami-Dade figures to the entire state. Intentional abstention estimates for all of Florida or for the entire nation would have been far more relevant. The latter typically run around 0.5 percent of all ballots cast for presidential contests (Ansolabehere & Stewart, 2005). Given unusually high voter turnout rates (due to unprecedented grassroots efforts), Florida's intentional abstention rate was likely to have been lower than average if anything, so even this figure is likely to have been high. Even if we grant them a one percent intentional abstention rate, we're still left with left with over 120,000 spoiled ballots that were not intentional--more than 505 times the size of Bush's certified victory margin, and 630 times the size of his actual margin per dictum of the Florida and U.S. Supreme Courts. Thernstrom and Redenbaugh may consider this to be insignificant, but with the victory margin as small as it was it's unlikely that they or anyone quoting them would have felt the same if they had been on the receiving end.

Apart from machine related errors, unintentional undervotes and overvotes are due entirely to voter error alone and give no indication whatsoever of the voter's intended choice.

With at least some spoiled ballots representing intentional abstentions, Thernstrom and Redenbaugh go on to claim that,

"The rest were due to voter error. Or machine error, which is random, and thus cannot 'disenfranchise' any population group."

(Thernstrom & Redenbaugh, 2001)

Citing Lichtman (2001) they point out that some 180,000 ballots, 2.9 percent of the total, did not "indicate a valid choice for a presidential candidate". Of these, 60 percent were overvotes which they described as "[indicating] more than one choice for president." Another 35 percent were undervotes which were described as "[lacking] any clear indication of which presidential candidate the voter preferred." From this they conclude that,

"The chief problem in Florida was voters who cast a ballot for more than one candidate for same office, and the second most common problem was voters who registered no choice at all. Ballots were 'rejected,' in short, because it was impossible to determine which candidate – if any – voters meant to choose for president."

(Thernstrom & Redenbaugh, 2001)

To demonstrate this Thernstrom and Redenbaugh must show that virtually all counted votes were "clean"--that is, without "disturbances" such as chads, dimples, erasures and the like, and that all ballots with "unclean" disturbances like these were solely the result of voter carelessness and in every case left no discernable evidence of voter intent. They must also show that polling place factors did not in any way contribute to voter confusion.

This is a tall order, and they did not rise to meet it. The figures they gave for undervote/overvote totals and percentages are close to the mark. But their attempts to pass all of these ballots as unreadable are outright nonsense. Many ballots will be unreadable of course—perhaps even a majority. But as we saw earlier there are thousands of exceptions. Undervotes fell into many categories ranging from those that gave no indication of a choice to those with chads, dimples, and other disturbances rendering them unreadable to a machine, but with clear signs of the voter's intended choice. Likewise, overvotes range from ballots with multiple clean marks for more than one candidate, to those with erasure marks, cross-outs of one choice accompanied by selection of another candidate, and in some cases even the word "mistake" clearly written on the face of the ballot with an arrow pointing to one marked candidate and an unambiguous selection for another one. Thernstrom and Redenbaugh insist that it's "impossible" to determine which candidate these voters intended. We have to wonder what part of the word mistake, accompanied by a big black arrow and a clear selection of another candidate, is so difficult to decipher.

We also have to wonder how sincere their denials are. Thernstrom and Redenbaugh had to have known that many spoiled ballots had disturbances that gave clear indications of a preferred candidate. On page 12 they tell us that,

"Some of the undervotes under discussion here must been recorded by people who could not settle on a choice for president but who turned up to register their preferences in other contests. We know from the Miami Herald's inspection of the 61,111 undervoted ballots in the state that almost half – 46.2 percent – had no markings at all for president."

(Thernstrom & Redenbaugh, 2001)

Essentially this is an acknowledgement that 53.8 percent did have such marks. It's not reasonable to conclude that none of these indicate an attempt by the voter to make a selection and that no evidence whatsoever of the intended selection remained. If they were aware of this they did not indicate it (a PDF search of the document reveals no instances of the words "chad", "dimple", "erase", or "erasure"). The whole issue was simply dismissed out of hand.

It's significant that Thernstrom and Redenbaugh refer to 61,111 Florida 2000 spoiled ballots as undervoted. It follows that the remainder—over 110,000—were overvoted. Thernstrom and Redenbaugh made much of the fact that many spoiled ballots were likely to have been intentional abstentions. Realistically, this will only apply to undervotes—ballots where no preferred choice is indicated. Here, they are admitting that the majority were overvoted indicating that some attempt was made to select a candidate which was then followed by other attempts. This almost always indicates confusion or an attempt to correct an unintended error. Lichtman found a significant racial bias in these that could not be accounted for by other variables (Lichtman, 2001). This presents considerable problems for any attempt to dismiss all, or even most racially biased ballot spoilage as intentional. Thernstrom and Redenbaugh seem aware of this and made a valiant attempt at bolstering the argument. On pages 11 and 12 they tell us that,

"Some of these overvotes and undervotes, it should be noted, may have been the result of deliberate choices on the part of voters. In fact, Chair Mary Frances Berry remarked at the hearing in Miami that she herself has sometimes 'over-voted deliberately.'

Chair Berry cannot be the only voter in the United States to make such a choice. According to the exhaustive investigation of the ballots conducted by the Miami Herald, 10 percent of all the overvotes in the state showed votes for both Bush and Gore. Some of these voters, it is reasonable to assume, were attempting to convey the message that either candidate would be equally acceptable. Some voters in Citrus County put giant X's through the names of all presidential candidates, perhaps to indicate “none of the above."

(Thernstrom & Redenbaugh, 2001)

In the absence of anything showing context (yet again no citation was provided) it's almost impossible to gage Chair Berry's remark or even whether she was properly quoted. Either way, every word of this is pure speculation based on a weak premise. As noted earlier, the large majority of those who do not wish to vote for a presidential candidate will do precisely that—not vote for one. The claim that ballots showing votes for Bush and Gore, or X's through all candidates is somehow an attempt at not voting for a candidate is unconvincing and without reliable estimates for how many overvotes even fit this category, it's useless.

On the other hand, there is considerable evidence that overvotes were overwhelmingly due to ballot confusion and other usability problems. Exit polls and post-election testimony by voters support this. We've already seen numerous independent statistical analyses using mature analysis methods. All show large, statistically significant biases in ballots that can be explained only by ballot confusion (Brady, 2000; Orzag and Orzag, 2000; 2000b; 2000c; Ruben, 2000; Jackson, 2000; Hansen, 2000; 2000b; 2000c; 2000d; Herron and Sekhon, 2001). Independent studies have also demonstrated ballot usability problems, particularly with butterfly ballots (Resnick, 2000; Fox, 2000; Keating, 2002; Wand et al., 2001).

Even if we grant Thernstrom and Redenbaugh this premise, the point is still moot. Four months after the Thernstrom and Redenbaugh issued their dissent, the NORC released their examination of Florida's year 2000 spoiled ballots. They found that 24,653 spoiled ballots could have been used under the most lenient of Florida county standards for determining voter intent. Even under the most stringent standards, thousands could have been used. The NORC determined that 3,690 overvotes were clearly usable, and these favored Gore by a 60/40 margin. Had Katherine Harris and the Bush Campaign not succeeded in their efforts to get these votes suppressed, Gore would have won the election even if the issue of confusing ballots in Palm Beach County was not considered (NORC, 2001; Nickens, 2001; Keating, 2002). In fairness to Thernstrom and Redenbaugh, the NORC analysis was not available to them when their dissention was written and it's unlikely that they had the NORC's level of access to actual spoiled ballots. But even so, the presence of disturbances on thousands of ballots was well known, and it was unreasonable of them to assume with no further investigation, that virtually none of these ballots gave any indications of voter intent.

As for the blanket assumption that all mismarked ballots were the result of voter error, this might have been believable had it been rare. But that was not the case. Usability studies have demonstrated that under very reasonable conditions ballot design was unnecessarily confusing in Palm Beach County (Resnick, 2000; Fox, 2000). Numerous other independent investigations using independent statistical methods have shown that this contributed directly to unintended ballot spoilage at statistically significant levels far higher than can be accounted for by voter error alone (Brady, 2000; Orzag and Orzag, 2000; 2000b; 2000c; Ruben, 2000; Jackson, 2000; Hansen, 2000; 2000c; 2000d). All conclude that poor ballot design robbed Gore of at least 300 votes relative to Bush in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties alone, independent of lost votes due to undervoting and overvoting. The probable figures run from 2000 to 3000. Most of these studies also incorporated non-Palm Beach control variables. Votes for Buchanan for instance (whose name was proximately placed with Gore's on the ballot) received far more votes than could be accounted for by census and electoral data from any of Florida's 67 counties or previous elections. Unless Thernstrom and Redenbaugh can explain how nearly all incompetence among Florida's voters just happens to reside in these two counties alone, the claim that Gore lost due to "voter error" is unconvincing.

Machine related errors were negligible, and could not have been racially biased.

Thernstrom and Redenbaugh do acknowledge that at least some ballot spoilage was unintentional and not related to voter error—namely that due to machine count errors. But they argue that such errors were at best negligible, and because they were random, no racially biased disenfranchisement could have resulted from them even in principle. On page 13 we're told that,

"Still, there are overvotes and undervotes that undoubtedly did not reflect the will of the voters. What accounts for them? The opening paragraph of the introduction to the majority report suggests that the issue is whether 'votes that were cast were properly tabulated.' What does this mean? Are we to believe African Americans cast their ballots correctly on election day, but that many of their ballots were incorrectly tabulated by the machines, or the people who conducted manual recounts in some counties? There is no evidence whatsoever to support that implication.

Some of the 180,000 rejected ballots may have the result of machine error, of course – but very few. Machine error, according to experts who have studied it, is rare, involving at most 1 in 250,000 votes cast. And machine error is obviously random, and thus cannot 'disenfranchise' any population group. No one has yet shown that a VotoMatic machine can be programmed to distinguish black voters from others and to record votes by African Americans in such a way as to facilitate their rejection."

(Thernstrom & Redenbaugh, 2001)

From these words it's clear that they have little or no understanding of technology based residual votes. The 1 in 250,000 to one million error rates they refer to are typical of those for raw count errors in optical scan systems as determined by controlled laboratory tests. We saw earlier that these are not the same as the residual vote rate due to machine use, which includes errors related to setup and use "in the field", ergonomics of voter use (which is not the same as "voter error"), maintenance, or any of a number of other factors. Any engineer could have told them that there is a big difference between laboratory tests of a prototype and mass production followed by widespread implementation! They cite the Caltech/MIT Project's report "Residual Votes Attributable to Technology" (Caltech/MIT, 2001) and do make reference to its statement that machine errors are driven mainly by "how people relate to the technologies" (which comes close to acknowledging the difference between test results and use), but they seem to think that this is synonymous with voter error. Had they read the paper more carefully they would have found that this is not the case. Not only was an in-depth examination of the difference presented, data on actual machine driven residual vote rates by technology type as compared to a lever machine baseline. These figures are considerably higher than the ones they quoted.

Furthermore, Lichtman's analysis, which they reviewed at length, gives technology driven residual vote rates of 4 and 0.8 percent of all ballots cast using optically scanned ballots recorded at the county and precinct levels respectively (Lichtman, 2001). Similar results have been obtained in other studies of optical scanning methods in presidential elections (Caltech/MIT, 2001; Brady, 2000; Brady et al., 2001; Ansolabehere & Stewart, 2005). The USCCR report gives county level spoiled ballot rates ranging from 3.7 to 12.4 percent for the former, and 0.2 to 3.9 percent for the latter (USCCR, 2001). From these figures it can be seen that using in counties using the same optical scan methods, the difference between central and precinct tabulation of ballots by itself may account for spoilage of more than 3 percent of all ballots cast. Counties that relied on the former account for over 15,000 of Florida's spoiled ballots even before we consider spoilage rates in counties that used punch card methods (USCCR, 2001). According to Thernstrom and Redenbaugh, the fact that some optical scan counties use different procedures for counting the very same mark-sense forms must somehow be the voters’ fault. This stretches the limits of reason to the breaking point.

What of the claim that machine counts are not racially biased? It is true that ballots do not indicate race and counting machine errors are random. If so, how could they skew vote tallies by race? By socio-economic, political factors, and other systemic factors that affect how these technologies are selected and implemented. We've already seen how the reliability of different voting technologies varies widely by both design and method of implementation (Stuart, 2004; Caltech/MIT, 2001). Central vs. precinct level counting of ballots alone has a large impact on discrepancies between black and white residual vote trends (Fessenden 2001; Mintz & Keating, 2000; Keating and Mintz 2001; USCCR 2001). Both were used in the Florida 2000 election, and poor and minority voters were disproportionately represented in Florida counties that used inferior central vote tabulation methods. In general, minorities nationwide are disproportionately represented in counties that use inferior voting methods, and simply making better technologies available to these counties may all but eliminate residual vote black/white discrepancies (Tomz & Van Houweling, 2003). To be certain there are many reasons for this, not the least of which will be county budgets. Under state guidelines, counties decide which technologies they use, how they will be implemented, and what training and oversight will be provided. These decisions are often driven by cost leaving poorer counties (also disproportionately minority) with fewer options. No doubt many other factors are involved. The question of why minorities more concentrated in districts using inferior voting technologies is complex and beyond the scope of this paper. But it's enough to establish that they are, and that this is largely (if not completely) unrelated to voter choice. Thernstrom and Redenbaugh avoid this discussion by reverting to the nefarious plot myth.

4)   Democrats and Disenfranchised Voters Were to Blame for All Problems.

According to Thernstrom and Redenbaugh,