Pharyngula

Governments become as corrupt as they can be, up to the point at which the people running the government fear the exercise of citizen power.

This traditionally is the point at which the population violently rebels, but in sophisticated democratic states it is supposed to be the point at which the people exercise its political power.

Unfortunately, the people in charge don't fear the people. They've found strategies that will keep the country's citizens ignorant, afraid, and willing to tolerate all kinds of corruption. And frankly, given the defenders of the status quo, revolution doesn't look too likely.

Posted by: Caledonian | June 1, 2006 8:17 PM

I tried to read the piece, but couldn't--I'll just have to come back to it later.

Nothing says "illegible" like black type on a dark gray background.

Posted by: RavenT | June 1, 2006 9:14 PM

Do I believe that George W. Bush stole the last election and that the Republican party is run by criminals and traitors? You betcha. With his record of sloppy analysis, though, I just wish someone more trustworthy than Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. had authored that report.

If you admit that RFK Jr. is untrustworthy on subjects you do know about (such as vaccination), why trust him on subjects you don't know about? Is it just because you *want* to believe what he says or because you have other more trustworthy sources which confirm it? I don't like Dubya & friends either, but I'm confused by your statement.

Posted by: Jonathan Badger | June 1, 2006 9:23 PM

It's not hard to understand. The evidence is persuasive, but the spokesman is not. If Gregg Easterbrook, to pick a random representative idiot, were to come out singing the praises of evolutionary biology tomorrow, it wouldn't cause me to change my opinion of the science.

That's not analogous at all. One could easily find evidence for evolution completely independent from Easterbrook. That's what I'm not seeing in the purported election fraud -- basically you have to take RFK Jr.'s word that the entire statistical community besides the lone whistleblower hyping his forthcoming book has ignored the statistical problem which implies election fraud.

Posted by: Jonathan Badger | June 1, 2006 9:49 PM

Should identification of logical fallacies be a qualification for high school graduation?

Posted by: nop | June 1, 2006 10:31 PM

It wouldn't help. People must possess not only the intelligence required to identify logical fallacies, and the necessary knowledge, but the desire to do so even when that requires dismissing statements that support their own cherished beliefs.

A devoted fanatic will always see five lights, no matter how many are actually there, unless he happens to be fanatical about honesty -- and how many people actually are?

Posted by: Caledonian | June 1, 2006 10:48 PM

For better or worse in this case the reporting and a whole lot more research and reporting has been done by others.
See for example: http://www.bradblog.com/
and postings and linkings therein.

Absolutely nothing there appears to be "research", at least in the sense of peer reviewed publications. Look, I hate Bush too -- I'm not questioning RFK Jr's article because I think Dubya would be too saintly to rig an election -- it's just that I find it odd that if the discrepancy between the exit polls and election results really is so statistically significant, why does only one extremely obscure journal paper say so?

Thousands of blog entries cheering that paper on doesn't say much other than the fact that the paper presents a scenario which satisfies many people's suspicions -- they in no way confirm it.

Posted by: Jonathan Badger | June 2, 2006 12:13 AM

Like many Americans, I spent the evening of the 2004 election watching the returns on television and wondering how the exit polls, which predicted an overwhelming victory for John Kerry, had gotten it so wrong.

The victory predicted was not overwhelming at all. The margin predicted was about 2%, which is a statistical tie.

Posted by: Alon Levy | June 2, 2006 1:41 AM

if you are really interested, as opposed to just being in denial mode, check out all the posts, thread, links in: http://www.bradblog.com/ If that is too much work, start with http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/6/1/16497/40871

I'm not in "denial mode"; I'm just not in uncritical acceptance mode. Besides references to the Freeman study, these blogs just repeat anecdotes. The typical anecdotes about Diebold machines eating Democratic votes and Democrats unfairly denied the vote for "invalid addresses" aren't very convincing for the obvious reason that the other side also has their anecdotes about illegal aliens and felons being allowed to vote (presumably for the Democrats; I wonder if they would object to Ken Lay voting next time). Typically, people believe in the anecdotes of the side they support and dismiss the others as vile propaganda.

A good statistical study of results and exit polls would allow the fairness (or unfairness) of an election to be determined without resorting to anecdotes. If Freeman's results can't be explained in a better way, it really would be a smoking gun of fraud in the hands of the Bush administration. That's why I'm surprised that the statistical world has not rushed forward to either confirm or deny these results.

However, I would still be more comfortable with paper ballots for the next election -- not because I'm convinced that Diebold machines are biased, but because even the suspicion that they could be is too much.

Posted by: Jonathan Badger | June 2, 2006 5:16 AM

Badger,

the RFK article doesn't have anything to do with Diebold. I just did a global search for the word and got no hits.
It is fairly detailed about the number of people who were refused from voting. Dismissing this as "anecdotes" belies an unserious approach to the question.

This sentence shows that you didn't read the article:

"A good statistical study of results and exit polls would allow the fairness (or unfairness) of an election to be determined without resorting to anecdotes."

From the article:

In its official postmortem report issued two months after the election, Edison/Mitofsky was unable to identify any flaw in its methodology -- so the pollsters, in essence, invented one for the electorate. According to Mitofsky, Bush partisans were simply disinclined to talk to exit pollsters on November 2nd(34) -- displaying a heretofore unknown and undocumented aversion that skewed the polls in Kerry's favor by a margin of 6.5 percent nationwide.(35)

Industry peers didn't buy it. John Zogby, one of the nation's leading pollsters, told me that Mitofsky's ''reluctant responder'' hypothesis is ''preposterous.''(36) Even Mitofsky, in his official report, underscored the hollowness of his theory: ''It is difficult to pinpoint precisely the reasons that, in general, Kerry voters were more likely to participate in the exit polls than Bush voters.''(37)

Now, thanks to careful examination of Mitofsky's own data by Freeman and a team of eight researchers, we can say conclusively that the theory is dead wrong. In fact it was Democrats, not Republicans, who were more disinclined to answer pollsters' questions on Election Day. In Bush strongholds, Freeman and the other researchers found that fifty-six percent of voters completed the exit survey -- compared to only fifty-three percent in Kerry strongholds.(38) ''The data presented to support the claim not only fails to substantiate it,'' observes Freeman, ''but actually contradicts it.''

It's OK if you're not interested in the topic. But you shouldn't pretend to have an interesting opinion if you can't be bothered to read the article.

Posted by: RickD | June 2, 2006 6:38 AM

PZ,

your trackback ping thingee is saying isn't working with Haloscan. Anyway, I have some thoughts on this too.

Posted by: Mike the Mad Biologist | June 2, 2006 7:12 AM

Kennedy is just a name fronting the work of others.

You got that right! That was exactly Kennedy's M.O. during the whole thimerosal-autism fiasco. Lujene Clark, a mercury mom and co-founder of NoMercury and A-CHAMP (Advocates for Children's Health Affected by Mercury Poisoning), basically fed him her group's propaganda. Kennedy swallowed it all hook, line, and sinker. I wouldn't put it past him to do the same thing here.

After his selective quoting of data, distortions, and--yes--downright dishonesty when it came to the alleged link between thimerosal in vaccines and autism, I no longer consider RFK Jr. being worthy of being given the benefit of the doubt, nor do I consider him the least bit objective. He seems to be doing the same thing here as he did in the infamous thimerosal/autism article last June; i.e., selectively quoting data from people with an ax to grind (the Freeman paper), and then listing a bunch of anecdotes.

No doubt those inclined to believe Kennedy's article will say I'm doubting because of my dislike of Kennedy. Not exactly. I'm doubting because my knowledge about the whole thimerosal/autism controversy has shown me that Kennedy is a dishonest partisan hack about an issue that I happen to know a lot about. I have no way of knowing whether he's up to his old tricks with this article about the 2004 election, but there are red flags that suggest to me that he might be.

BTW, I posted a comment last night that was held up for moderation, and I don't see it yet.

Posted by: Orac | June 2, 2006 7:26 AM

I'm not quite sure what "The article is not in a peer-reviewed journal" is supposed to convey. You're above the logic of the article? You only care about peer-reviewed journal papers?

You expect peer-reviewed journals to be the appropriate venue for discussing a problem as messy as the 2004 election? The claims made in the Rolling Stone article seem fairly strong, and they are supported. So your argument is simply a broad ad hominem "if it's in Rolling Stone, I won't take it seriously" argument, eh?

Well, as long as we recognize that you're just making an ad hominem argument, Badger. That type of argument is usually frowned upon in respectable debate circles, but if it's all you've got, I can see why it's the only arrow you're willing to shoot.

Posted by: RickD | June 2, 2006 8:03 AM

This kind of non-partisan agency is clearly needed in the US as well.

Heh. Even Poland has got one: http://www.pkw.gov.pl/index.jsp?place=Menu2&news_cat_id=30&layout=1

Posted by: Roman Werpachowski | June 2, 2006 8:33 AM

Even if it were, questioning someone's credibility is NOT ad hominem.

Correct--if the questioning of that someone's credibility is reasonably based on his past history, arguments, and behavior. And RFK Jr. has a strong history of distortions, bad reasoning, and outright dishonesty when it comes to the alleged link between thimerosal and autism. As far as I'm concerned, his credibility is close to nil.

Posted by: Orac | June 2, 2006 8:55 AM

"As a Canadian, it shocks me to read about how the electoral process seems to be handled in the United States. For example, when I read about "Democratic voters" not being allowed to vote, my first thought is, how would anyone know who this person is voting for?"

There are plenty of reasons to be suspicious of the way our Government handles both elections and citizens' privacy, but in this case it's not necessary to imagine any invasion of individual privacy: If you selectively disadvantage a population (e.g., working-class African-Americans in South Florida) that is known, based on previous voting records and current polling, to heavily favor the Democratic Party, you can confidently say that "Democratic voters" have been denied their rights on net, without needing any illegitimate insight into specific voters' preferences.

Similarly, when you observe that a visually confusing ballot (i.e., Florida's infamous "butterfly ballot" from 2000 [1]) in precincts heavily skewed toward elderly Jewish retirees produces extraordinarily good results for Pat Buchanan, a minor candidate who was probably least favored by Jews among all the choices on the ballot, it's reasonable to theorize that [a] many of those votes were not actually intended for Buchanan (who said as much himself) and [b] the ballots incorrectly cast for Buchanan were mostly intended for Gore (based on both the geometry of the ballot and the polling data for that demographic). Again, no need to tap anyone's phone or read anyone's e-mail to say with some reasonable confidence that "Democratic voters" were disenfranchised.

In neither case is the conclusion ultimately provable, but it is both reasonable and likely.

"In Canada, the whole electoral process, from voter registration, and the drawing of electoral districts, to the handling and counting of the ballots, is handled by a non-partisan agency, Elections Canada (www.elections.ca) Granted, being a government agency, it theoretically could be manipulated by the politicians, but Elections Canada is widely respected as having maintained its independence."

I'm no expert in comparative politics, but I think this is reflective of how differently Canada and the U.S. implement federalism. While we have a Federal Elections Commission (FEC) that has some oversight and rulemaking functions, our elections -- even those for federal offices -- are essentially run entirely by the individual states. What role do the provincial governments have in administering Canada's federal elections? Any?

U.S. advocates for "states' rights" (i.e., a relatively weak federal government) often assert that state governments are more democratic than the federal government, because they are smaller and "closer to the people." My observation is that, for those very same reasons, state governments are in fact far more vulnerable than the federal government to the corrupting influences of individuals and small interest groups... making them actually less democratic, not more, in practice. Everybody talks about government "inertia" in a pejorative sense, but if you take the metaphor somewhat more literally and think of inertia (as a property of mass) limiting the impact of potentially corrupting outside forces, well, inertia has its benefits, doesn't it?

Posted by: Bill Dauphin | June 2, 2006 10:06 AM

Grrrr, I forgot to include my footnote:

[1] For those of you who think complaints about the butterfly ballot are pointless whining, I offer the following (admittedly anecdotal) evidence: My sister -- an intelligent, highly educated professional woman in the prime of her life -- voted in Florida in 2000, and even she thought the ballot was confusing. She was quite sure that anyone with even slightly failing vision, shaky hands, or even the first hint of dementia was at high risk of casting an incorrect ballot. And these ballots were used in counties/precincts with relatively high percentages of older voters. You do the math....

Posted by: Bill Dauphin | June 2, 2006 10:13 AM

Bill Dauphin wrote:
Grrrr, I forgot to include my footnote:

[1] For those of you who think complaints about the butterfly ballot are pointless whining, I offer the following (admittedly anecdotal) evidence: My sister -- an intelligent, highly educated professional woman in the prime of her life -- voted in Florida in 2000, and even she thought the ballot was confusing. She was quite sure that anyone with even slightly failing vision, shaky hands, or even the first hint of dementia was at high risk of casting an incorrect ballot. And these ballots were used in counties/precincts with relatively high percentages of older voters. You do the math....

If you'd be so kind, please share with us the particular counties/precincts which used butterfly ballots in the 2000 election, and the party affiliation of the election board?

Hint for the quiz: the party affiliation was not Republican.

James 2:24

Posted by: fusilier | June 2, 2006 11:22 AM

Most, if not all ballots in the United States are designed by the local boards, for the obvious reason that local elections usually share the ballot with higher level ones.

BTW, there are possible problems with all the voting machines available. As one example in a recent local Michigan election, the ink-pen ballots (where you connect the arrow to make a selection on a sheet of paper) was printed on paper of too thin a stock. The vote-reader incorrectly registered votes from the opposite side of the paper. Luckily the municipality tested the voting machines before the election and corrected ballots were able to be printed in time. But is it obvious to everyone that a voting machine may have a problem with the thickness of the paper stock the ballots are printed on? After all, thinner paper stock is a lot cheaper.

Further, since municipalities have to purchase their own voting equipment, the poorer municipalities often purchase their voting equipment used from other, wealthier municipalities. Which means there is a plethora of types of voting machines used in the U.S., some places are still using machines from the 1950's.

-Flex

Posted by: Flex | June 2, 2006 12:09 PM

Bill Dauphin asked:
"While we have a Federal Elections Commission (FEC) that has some oversight and rulemaking functions, our elections -- even those for federal offices -- are essentially run entirely by the individual states. What role do the provincial governments have in administering Canada's federal elections? Any?"

Provinces don't have any role in federal elections -- Elections Canada (EC) doesn't just set the rules, they actually run the show. The selective disadvantage of certain populations doesn't happen, because it's all done by EC, rather than by the politicians.

For example, when it comes to voter registration, EC maintains a permanent list, which gets information from various sources, such as driver's licenses, and tax filing. Prior to an election, EC sends out a confirmation to all registered voters. EC also sets up a Returning Office in every electoral district across the country, and runs ads informing people that if they didn't receive a confirmation (or the information is incorrect,) then they need to go to the Returning Office in their district.

Returning Officers, poll clerks, and everyone else involved with the electoral process are all hired by EC.

Posted by: mark | June 2, 2006 12:37 PM

Fusilier:

"If you'd be so kind, please share with us the particular counties/precincts which used butterfly ballots in the 2000 election, "

To my knowledge, they were used in Palm Beach County, where I used to live (but from which I escaped before November 2000; I cast my ballot on an old-fashioned mechanical voting machine in Connecticut) and in whatever county/precinct includes Ft. Myers, where my sister lives. I don't know where else they might have been used; IIRC (but I may not), they were not used statewide.

"...and the party affiliation of the election board?

Hint for the quiz: the party affiliation was not Republican."

Not relevant to my point. While I believe the butterfly ballots were seriously flawed in a way that probably favored Bush over Gore, I don't actually believe (and didn't mean to be saying) they were an example of deliberate vote rigging (though other things that happened in FL in 2000 and 2004 may have been). The point I was trying to make, in response to Mark's question about how we knew "Democratic voters" were being disenfranchised, was that it's possible to draw reasonable conclusions about which side might have benefitted from a problem without violating individual voters' privacy rights.

BTW, thanks, Mark, for the explanation. As I suspected, y'all seem to have a different approach to federalism than we do. Yours seems, at least in this instance, eminently more sensible. IMHO, of course.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin | June 2, 2006 1:26 PM

A little American Government 101 for you moonbats.

The Presidential Election is not a national election, it's a series of state elections. Each state decides independently how it's going to elect its representatives to the electoral college. Here in Nebraska, for example, we do it differently from most of the others. If you want to 'reform' a presidential election, your options are to 'reform' your own state's system, and hope others will follow, or to pass a constitutional amendment to abolish the electoral college. I can confidently predict the latter will never happen; why would Nebraska, or any other small state, with a disproportionate current influence on the election, vote to voluntarily dilute its own power?

The remaining option is to reform your own state. Oddly enough, though, I haven't seen any major efforts in the blue states to make the electoral process above-board, other than the patently unconstitutional attempt in Californa to end run around the electoral college. Could it be that the Democrats want to 'clean-up' Republican states, but aren't terribly interested in cleaning up their own? Remember those ballots in King County, WA, that magically appeared days after the election, throwing the contest to Gregoire when Rossi seemed to be leading?

Posted by: Gerard Harbison | June 2, 2006 3:15 PM

If you think states such as Nebraska view themselves as weilding "disproportionate power" in elections that are essentially determined by voters in only three states, you haven't thought this through very well.

You think only the swing votes count in an election? LOL!

And you haven't read the Constitution, either. The Constitution stipulates that the states shall elect the president by casting electoral votes; it doesn't specify how those votes shall be apportioned, or by what means. In fact it makes it absolutely clear that it's the legislatures of each state who determine how the electors should vote.

Article 1 section 10 Clause 3

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

There's no constitutional requirement that all of a state's electoral votes go to the candidate who wins a plurality of the popular vote in that state. Maine and Nebraska used to do it differently, as I recall, with nary a peep of a constitutional objection. It's up to the states

Yes, I said that. I live in Nebraska.

Posted by: Gerard Harbison | June 2, 2006 3:53 PM

You think only the swing votes count in an election? LOL!

In a two-party system? Yeah, I do. The only relevant votes in such a system are the votes that represent the difference between the individual candidate's totals. That should be obvious - it doesn't matter if you win 1000 to 1001, or 10 to 11, or 1,000,000 to 1,000,001 - in each case the only relevant vote was the one that put you over the edge.

But what I think isn't really relevant to what I said, if you'll go back and read. The simple truth is, states like Nebraska aren't going to find an argument that they're about to lose "disproportionate power" very compelling, when they largely don't see that they have very much electoral power in the first place. And that's proven by the campaigns - candidate presence in states like Nebraska or New Mexico are perfunctory "whistle-stops", while the majority of the campaining occurs in New York, California, Ohio, or Florida.

How often do you see the two major candidates stumping up in Alaska, for instance?

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

Maybe you're familiar with some detail of the proposal that I'm not, but I don't see how CA has to enter into a compact to do what it's proposing to do. There's no agreement between states; it's just a change by the state legislature in how they choose to apportion electoral votes. They could flip a coin or study sheep entrails for as much input as the Constitution has on the subject.

Posted by: Chet | June 2, 2006 4:47 PM

Bill Dauphin, the original post begins
Do I believe that George W. Bush stole the last election and that the Republican party is run by criminals and traitors? You betcha.

Your comment wrt the 2000 election is clearly consistant with that notion.

The point I was making is that the Democratic voters were "disenfranchised by the Democratic election board and commissioners.

It must be pointed out that any number of news organizations, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post reviewed the election processes and found no evidence of fraud. I doubt very strongly that anyone could accuse those two newspapers of being in the pay of Rush Limbaugh or Karl Rove.

Posted by: fusilier | June 2, 2006 5:02 PM

Oh, give it up already! Even your lord and savior John F-word Kerry doesn't believe the election was stolen. The evidence is NOT convincing. Exit polls are NOT worthy evidence. They will NOT hold up in a court of law. (Which is why no one has had the balls to actually bring these accusations up in a real court of law - just in a broom closet in the basement of the Capitol.) It's just the same old garbage you far-left idiots have been vomitting up since you lost in 2000... and 2002... and 2004... No doubt you will vomit it up again later this year and in 2008 when you lose. It's pathetic and annoying.

Seriously. To believe that Bush stole the election in 2004, you have to believe either that the Republicans predicted well in advance that the election would come down to Ohio (instead of Florida as everyone expected - take Michael Moore, for example) or that when the election did come down to Ohio, the Republicans orchestrated this vast conspiracy in a short few hours.

Sorry, but the "Bush stole the election!" whining insults the superior intelligence of non-moonbats. You are by all means welcome to continue to cry about it, but it will only mean you will suffer from continued disappointment.

Incidentally (or not), the only people who have been charged and convicted of election fraud in Ohio are Democrats. In fact, the vast majority of election-related crimes in 2004 were committed by Democrats. Crack for votes, fraudulent voter registrations, tire-slashings, vandalism, storming of Republican offices, etc. Go figure...

Posted by: Jason | June 2, 2006 6:09 PM

It's clearly an interstate compact, and it clearly infringes on Federal supremacy.

Yeah, see, that doesn't impress me much. Repeating your assertions and calling them "clear" doesn't actually substantiate them. Can you explain how this represents a compact? All that's necessary for CA to do is read a poll and then apportion electoral votes accordingly. There need be no state agreement or any other such thing.

The Electoral College was explicitly chose over majority popular vote in the Consittuional Convention.

Maybe, but that language isn't in the Constitution - you know, that living document. And it's difficult to see how CA could be prevented; with no explicit interstate compact, neither Congress nor the Supreme Court has the standing to tell California that they can't apportion their electors in that manner. The Constitution is explicit that it is up to the states in whatever manner they see fit.

It was not ever explicitly determined, at the Convention or at any other place, that states should use the "winner take all" system. It's just that CA's system has only become feasable in a world where telecommunications technology makes the nationwide results instantly avaliable. To assert that this is an "end-run around the Constitution" ignores the plain text of the document in favor of conspiracy theories about some back-room, shady-deal "compact."

Posted by: Chet | June 2, 2006 10:53 PM

Among the fallacies in Jason's rant is that"...John F-word Kerry doesn't believe the election was stolen."

Kerry is a slow learner these days, but the rest of us might find encouragement that he is capable of eventually picking up some clues, as evidenced by Mark Crispin Miller's Democracy Now! piece from 11/4/05, "Kerry Told Me He Now Thinks the Election Was Stolen". See http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/04/1532222 for the details.

It's late and I'm tired, or I'd post a long detailed rebuttal of every ignorant &/or dishonest claim here that the problems with American voting are not systematic and well-documented. Those inclined to research the question for themselves are invited to read the aforementioned Bradblog and also http://www.blackboxvoting.com, http://VoteTrustUSA.org, http://www.notablesoftware.com, and http://www.VerifiedVoting.org (for the record, those last two are the web sites of serious and respected academic specialists, Profs. Rebecca Mercuri and David Dill respectively). For detailed expose's on the criminal mismanage