🚀 go-pugleaf

"Baxter" <lbax01.spamguard@baxcode.com> wrote in message
news:100ub47eu96m604@corp.supernews.com...
> 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.

Prove it.

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>
> "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
> >
>
>
>