🚀 go-pugleaf

You do know that Dr. John Lott (or is that Mary Roth) has been discredited.
You're in serious disinformation territory now.  None of this is valid.

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Free software  - Baxter Codeworks  www.baxcode.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------


"Mark Cook" <mcook@prodigy.net> wrote in message
news:PNDPb.60073$OJ5.35516@newssvr31.news.prodigy.com...
>
> Of course that is a different subject, yet, that is exactly what happened.
> IF you had a Democrat Election Supervisor, you were 3 times more likely to
> have your vote thrown out than you were if you had a Republican Election
> Supervisor. The dissent of the USCCR asked the same question. How could
the
> Republicans be blamed for the spoiled ballots when the bulk of these
ballots
> were in DEMOCRAT CONTROLLED Counties??? Were Democrats really out to get
> Gore???
>
> Here is a passage from the dissent:
>
> But which officials were responsible for the conduct of elections in
Florida
> �s constitutionally decentralized system of government? Power and
> responsibility were lodged almost entirely in the hands of county
officials,
> the most important of them the 67 county supervisors of elections. If
anyone
> was intent on suppressing the black vote or to �disenfranchise� anyone
else,
> it would have required the cooperation of these local officials.
> Thus, it seems natural to inquire about the political affiliations of
> Florida�s supervisors of elections. If the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
> seeks to show that the presidential election was stolen by Republicans,
led
> by the governor and the secretary of state, it would be logical to expect
> that they had the greatest success in those counties in which the
electoral
> machinery was in the hands of fellow Republicans. Conversely, it is very
> difficult to see any political motive that would lead Democratic local
> officials to try to keep the most faithful members of their party from the
> polls and to somehow spoil the ballots of those who did make it into the
> voting booth.
>
> The report never asks this question, though it seems an interesting
> hypothesis to explore. The data with which to explore it are readily
> available. When we examined the connection between rates of ballot
spoilage
> across counties and the political affiliation of the supervisor of
> elections, we found precisely the opposite of what might be expected.
There
> was indeed a relationship between having a Republican running the county�s
> election and the ballot spoilage rate. But it was a negative correlation
> of -.0467.
>
> Having a Democratic supervisor of elections was also correlated with the
> spoilage rate�by + 0.424. Dr. Lott has found that the ballot spoilage rate
> in counties with Democratic supervisors were three times as high as in
those
> with Republican supervisors (see Lott�s Table 3). Should we conclude that
> Republican local officials were far more interested than Democrats in
making
> sure that every vote counted?
>
> Of the 25 Florida counties with the highest rate of vote spoilage, in how
> many was the election supervised by a Republican? The answer is zero. All
> but one of the 25 had Democratic chief election officers, and the one
> exception was in the hands of an official with no party affiliation.
>
> Dr. Lott provides a fuller examination of the possible impact of having a
> Democratic supervisor of elections in his Table 3, and adds another
related
> variable�whether or not the supervisor was African American. Having
> Democratic officials in charge increases the ballot spoilage rate
> substantially, and the effect is stronger still when that official is
> African American. (All African American supervisors of elections are
> Democrats.) Lott estimates that a 1 percent increase in the black share of
> voters in counties with Democratic election officials increases the number
> of spoiled ballots by a striking 135 percent.
>
> We do not cite this as evidence that Democratic officials, for some
bizarre
> reason, sought to disenfranchise blacks, and that black Democratic
officials
> were even more eager to do so. That is manifestly absurd. It is worth
noting
> for two reasons. First, it nicely illustrates the limitations of
ecological
> correlations. Would anyone want to draw the conclusion from this
correlation
> that the solution was to elect more Republican supervisors of elections?
>
> Second, it has important bearing on the question of who is to blame for
the
> large numbers of spoiled ballots in minority areas. The majority report
> argues that much of the problem was due to voting technology�the use of
> punch card machines or optical scanning methods that did not provide
> feedback to the voter produced a higher rate of ballot spoilage. But who
> decided that the voters of Gadsden County (the state�s only black-majority
> county and the one with the highest rate of spoiled ballots) would use an
> optical scanning system in which votes were centrally recorded? Who
decided
> that Palm Beach and Miami-Dade county voters would use punch card
machines?
> Certainly it was not Jeb Bush or Katherine Harris. Nor was it Lawton
Chiles.
> It was Democratic local officials in those heavily Democratic counties who
> made those choices.
>
> It is worth noting that after these findings were mentioned at the June
27,
> 2001 hearing of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, the
Chair
> of the Commission on Civil Rights professed to feeling no surprise. The
> Commission�s Report, she maintained, had noted that local as well as state
> officials had responsibility for the conduct of the election. The report,
> though, devotes far more attention to Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of
> State Katherine Harris than to county supervisors of elections who have
> primary responsibility for election day procedures. Furthermore, there is
no
> hint in the report that the local officials in those counties that
accounted
> for a large majority of the spoiled ballots were Democrats who had no
> conceivable interest in suppressing the black vote. It is true that the
> party affiliation of Governor Bush and Secretary of State Harris are not
> mentioned either. But that hardly matters because everyone knows what
party
> they belong to, while few are aware of the fact that Florida�s electoral
> machinery is largely in the hands of county officials who are Democrats.
>
> It is easy, of course, to say with hindsight that Florida should have had
a
> uniform system of voting and a common technology for all elections. The
> Commission recommends that. But if Governor Bush and Republican
legislators
> had proposed adopting such a system before the 2000 election, we can
imagine
> the outcry from their political opponents, who would have seen such a move
> as an improper attempt by the governor to control election procedures.
> Indeed, it might well have been argued that such a decision would have had
a
> disparate impact on minority voters, since centralizing the electoral
system
> would have diminished the power of the Democratic local officials they had
> chosen to put in office. It could even have been argued that this transfer
> of power from officials who had the support of most minority voters would
be
> a violation of the Voting Right Act, yet another attempt to deprive
> minorities of their opportunity to exercise political power!
>
> Furthermore, it is inappropriate to be playing the blame game when there
is
> no evidence that anyone understood that the use of certain voting
> technologies might increase the rate of voter error for some groups. Those
> who charge that African Americans were �disenfranchised� in Florida have
> never asked why it is that no one raised this issue before the election.
If
> punch card balloting, for instance, has a racially discriminatory effect,
> why had not the NAACP, the Urban League, or any other organization
belonging
> to the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights ever uttered a peep about it
> before November 2000? If civil rights leaders had understood that
different
> voting systems are conducive to different rates of voter error, and that
> some can serve to disadvantage groups with below average literacy skills,
> why didn�t they raise the issue publicly and demand electoral reforms? If
> they did not grasp this fact, it is hard to see why we should assume that
> public officials did.
>
> http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/vote2000/report/dissent.htm
>