Sampling of entire state refutes selective error-data

There is a corrosive perception that the voting system in parts of the United States systematically prevents people from voting and that this particularly discriminates against blacks. Litigation over punch-card voting machines tried unsuccessfully to derail the 2003 election in California to recall the governor, and now the American Civil Liberties Union has brought a similar lawsuit in Ohio.

The ACLU is not alone: As many as 18 percent of blacks nationally and 20 percent of 18- to 24-yearolds claim they don’t believe their votes are counted accurately. Thus, this is a hard issue to ignore.

Since the 2000 Florida presidential election, the question has been how elections officials can prevent nonvoted, or so-called spoiled, ballots. These occur when voters either mark too many candidates (overvoting) in a race or do not vote for any candidate (undervoting).

Much of the debate centers on whether these nonvotes are intentional or the result of problems using punch-card machines.

Over the past three presidential elections in Ohio, punch cards have produced higher rates of nonvoted ballots than other voting machines do. Votomatic punch cards used in 69 of Ohio’s 88 counties averaged a 2.4 percent nonvoted ballot rate. By comparison, electronic machines had a 1.1 percent rate, levers 1.5 percent and optical scans 2 percent.

The focus on the presidential race is understandable, given the experience in Florida, but it is also quite misleading. In races for Congress and state legislature, Votomatic machines actually do much better than electronic and lever machines and perform similarly to optical scans.

This result is natural, because voters simply don’t know or care as much about other races as they do who wins the presidency. Interestingly, the drop-off in voting for other races is much less for punch cards than for other types of voting machines. For example, compared with the 1.3 percent difference between voting systems in presidential races, the nonvoted ballot rate for Ohio Senate races for Votomatic machines is almost 10 percent, while the rates for electronic and lever machines is 18 percent.

Even after accounting for factors that could affect nonvoted ballot rates, such as income and education and the number of candidates in a race, switching from Votomatic punch cards to electronic or lever machines would result in about 200 more nonvoted ballots in the average Ohio ward of 1,696 voters.

This pattern has held true for decades. Even an expert hired by the ACLU, professor Herb Asher at Ohio State University, also found that punch-card machines overall had much lower rates of nonvoted ballots than other machines during the 1978 election. Once this was clear, the ACLU did not call him to testify during the trial in July.

Why punch cards do so well down the ballot is simple. The more effort or time it takes to vote, the fewer races voters vote in. For example, recent research points to problems with the electronic machines regarding "the willingness of voters to navigate through multiple ballot screens before casting a vote (and) delays caused by the use of the review feature when coupled with extended ballots." Whatever their faults, punch cards are relatively quick and simple to use.

Most important for the ACLU’s case, my research found that Votomatic machines were the only ones that consistently had lower nonvoted ballot rates for blacks than for whites. The Datavote punch-card machines that were used by only one county in 2000 and optical scans used by 11 counties were the worst for blacks, with electronic and lever machines varying, depending upon which race one examined.

Yet, even then, the race of voters only explains a small 0.4 percent to 3 percent of the variation in nonvoted ballot rates, itself an already small number.

With all the debate over voting machines, one would think that they must be too complicated for many people to figure out. But neither education nor income is related to nonvoted ballot rates. For education, the nonvoted ballot rate is high for those with less than a ninth-grade education, low for those with some high school, high for highschool graduates, low for college graduates and generally higher again for those with post-graduate degrees. Instead of deep conspiracy theories, some voters were probably more conflicted over whom to vote for and decided not to support anyone in some races.

My data, as well as Asher’s, examine the entire state, not just a few counties, as all the experts the ACLU used did. Nor has the ACLU ever explained exactly why it thinks that blacks have a more difficult time using punch cards.

The ACLU’s lawsuit seems designed to maximize confusion, not just in Ohio but across the nation. If it wins, then any close election at least could be challenged in the press.

But whatever short-term political gains, the unfounded claims of selective disenfranchisement risk poisoning the political debate for years to come.

John R. Lott Jr., a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, served as a statistical expert for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and USA Today in their evaluations of the 2000 election in Florida.

"As many as 18 percent of blacks nationally and 20 percent of 18- to 24-yearolds claim they don’t believe their votes are counted accurately."

I don't believe my vote is counted accurately either, at least the times I have had to vote in RAT infested counties where RAT voter fraud is rampant. Funny how those are the same areas that are densely populated by whining black RATs and NAACP/ACLU operatives.

Instead of deep conspiracy theories, some voters were probably more conflicted over whom to vote for and decided not to support anyone in some races.

I have done that many times on down ticket races. Sometimes because I don't know anything about either candidate and sometimes because I know about them and refuse to vote for either. I have often thought that there should be a NONE OF THE ABOVE lever in those cases.

No real info on how much of this is mechanical problems in the voting process and how much is voter problems. The mechanical test should be pretty easy. Punch a list of holes in the voting machine and make sure that the reader reads those and only those holes as having been punched. Were there any holes not counted? Any non-punched holes counted? Any ambigously punched holes? If any of these errors occur above an acceptable level (which I would put at well under 0.1%), then the process needs to be fixed.

Now that you know the mechanical error in the process any other misvotes are the voters fault. Some of this can be fixed by making it clear that the stylus must be punched all the way through (although my voting machines already make that clear if you actually read them). Also inform the voter that he can't change your vote after already punching one choice - if you screwed up you must get a new ballot.

After the 2000 problems in dem controlled counties in Florida, I've started looking at my ballot to make sure that all the chads are in to begin with and I check to make sure the ones I punched are really punched afterwards. I played around with the ballot to see how much pressure I had to apply to make an obvious mark on the ballot without punching all the way through. It is very difficult to do on purpose and I doubt it is possible to do accidentally.

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