The 2018 midterm election seems to repeat the 2000 election Florida patterns. After the first results showing Republican victories in key states tens of thousands of lost" or uncounted" votes are starting to emerge while Democratic candidates pull back their concessions or refuse to concede. In return they demand all votes" to be counted.
In New Mexicos Second Congressional District Yvette Herrell a Republican state representative won by 800 votes against Xochitl Torres Small a Democratic water rights lawyer and delivered already a victory speech on Wednesday November 7. Then the New Mexico Democratic Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver announced Herrell that she lost the election due to some newly found" 8000 Democratic ballots (in two sets of 4000 ballots each).
In the Arizona Senate race Republican Martha McSally had a lead of 2400 votes but the last ballot count showed Democrat Kyrsten Sinema standing more than 28000 votes ahead of McSally.
In the Florida Senate race Republican Rick Scott (the state governor) had a lead of over 70000 votes on Wednesday November 7 2018 over the Democrat senator Bill Nelson. Since then Scotts lead has steadily dropped to 12500 votes. Rick Scott and President Trump raised the specter of voter tinkering but Bill Nelson has refuted their allegations.
In the Florida gubernatorial race between Republican Ron DeSantis and Democrat Andrew Gillum DeSantis leads Gillum by over 33600 votes.
However both Florida races will proceed to machine recounts.
As a result Democrat Andrew Gillum withdrew his concession in the Florida gubernatorial race following the recount. At a press conference in Tallahassee on Saturday November 11 2018 he said: I am replacing my words of concession with an uncompromised and unapologetic call that we count every single vote."
In Georgia the gubernatorial race has been among the most expensive and vitriolic in the country. Election results show Republican Brian Kemp (the state Attorney General) leading Democrat Stacey Abrams (endorsed by Oprah Winfrey) by almost 60000 votes with 100 percent of precincts reporting.
Still Abrams refuses to concede and insists that all votes" should be counted.
Two points to be made here.
First whenever you hear the all votes should be counted" catch phrase you know immediately the one who said this is a Democrat. What this codified expression really means is adding the illegal votes of living non-U.S. citizens and multiple votes of living and dead U.S. citizens to the total number of legal votes. When you ask Democrats about electoral frauds they reply fast that no frauds have been proven."
Other similar catch phrases from the Democratic repertoire include: all immigrants should stay in the United States" (legal and illegal) and all Americans should have health insurance" (including the ones who dont want it).
Second the Democrats call for all votes" to be counted defies logic and statistical laws.
In election polls for instance average survey error is approximately 3.5 percent about twice as large as that implied by most reported margins of error. According to studies survey error is decomposed into election-level bias and variance terms. Average absolute election-level bias is about 2 percent meaning that polls for a given election often share a common component of error (e.g. difficulties in reaching various subgroups of population and reliance on similar screening rules when estimating who will vote). Average election-level variance is higher than implied by simple random sampling (e.g. polling organizations often use different complex sampling designs and adjustment procedures).
In terms of manipulating voting results statistical methods can detect deviations from statistical laws where the logarithm of the first significant digit is uniformly distributed. These deviations may indicate that possible fraudulent mechanisms are at work.
Parametric models can quantify to which extent ballot stuffing or mechanisms of extreme fraud may have contributed to these deviations.
For instance one can say almost certainly that an election doesnt represent the will of the people if a substantial fraction of units reports a 100 percent turnout with almost all votes for a single party as the Arizona case suggests. Or if any significant deviations in the cumulative distribution of votes vs. turnout are observed like in the New Mexico case.
Another indicator of systematic fraudulent or irregular voting behavior is the incremental fraud parameter which is significantly greater than zero on each aggregation level like the Florida cases indicate in the Broward and Palm Beach heavily dominated Democratic counties.
George Bernard Shaw used to say that democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."
In other related news Dennis Hof a deceased brothel owner entrepreneur and Republican politician wins Nevada legislative race after death.
Does it mean that Americans find dead Republicans more competent that living Democrats after all?!
NOTE - A version of the article was previously published in MEDIUM.
TIBERIU DIANU has published several books and a host of articles in law politics and post-communist societies. He currently lives and works in Washington DC and can be followed on MEDIUM.
*****
The 2018 midterm election seems to repeat the 2000 election Florida patterns. After the first results showing Republican victories in key states tens of thousands of lost" or uncounted" votes are starting to emerge while Democratic candidates pull back their concessions or refuse to concede. In return they demand all votes" to be counted.
In New Mexicos Second Congressional District Yvette Herrell a Republican state representative won by 800 votes against Xochitl Torres Small a Democratic water rights lawyer and delivered already a victory speech on Wednesday November 7. Then the New Mexico Democratic Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver announced Herrell that she lost the election due to some newly found" 8000 Democratic ballots (in two sets of 4000 ballots each).
In the Arizona Senate race Republican Martha McSally had a lead of 2400 votes but the last ballot count showed Democrat Kyrsten Sinema standing more than 28000 votes ahead of McSally.
In the Florida Senate race Republican Rick Scott (the state governor) had a lead of over 70000 votes on Wednesday November 7 2018 over the Democrat senator Bill Nelson. Since then Scotts lead has steadily dropped to 12500 votes. Rick Scott and President Trump raised the specter of voter tinkering but Bill Nelson has refuted their allegations.
In the Florida gubernatorial race between Republican Ron DeSantis and Democrat Andrew Gillum DeSantis leads Gillum by over 33600 votes.
However both Florida races will proceed to machine recounts.
As a result Democrat Andrew Gillum withdrew his concession in the Florida gubernatorial race following the recount. At a press conference in Tallahassee on Saturday November 11 2018 he said: I am replacing my words of concession with an uncompromised and unapologetic call that we count every single vote."
In Georgia the gubernatorial race has been among the most expensive and vitriolic in the country. Election results show Republican Brian Kemp (the state Attorney General) leading Democrat Stacey Abrams (endorsed by Oprah Winfrey) by almost 60000 votes with 100 percent of precincts reporting.
Still Abrams refuses to concede and insists that all votes" should be counted.
Two points to be made here.
First whenever you hear the all votes should be counted" catch phrase you know immediately the one who said this is a Democrat. What this codified expression really means is adding the illegal votes of living non-U.S. citizens and multiple votes of living and dead U.S. citizens to the total number of legal votes. When you ask Democrats about electoral frauds they reply fast that no frauds have been proven."
Other similar catch phrases from the Democratic repertoire include: all immigrants should stay in the United States" (legal and illegal) and all Americans should have health insurance" (including the ones who dont want it).
Second the Democrats call for all votes" to be counted defies logic and statistical laws.
In election polls for instance average survey error is approximately 3.5 percent about twice as large as that implied by most reported margins of error. According to studies survey error is decomposed into election-level bias and variance terms. Average absolute election-level bias is about 2 percent meaning that polls for a given election often share a common component of error (e.g. difficulties in reaching various subgroups of population and reliance on similar screening rules when estimating who will vote). Average election-level variance is higher than implied by simple random sampling (e.g. polling organizations often use different complex sampling designs and adjustment procedures).
In terms of manipulating voting results statistical methods can detect deviations from statistical laws where the logarithm of the first significant digit is uniformly distributed. These deviations may indicate that possible fraudulent mechanisms are at work.
Parametric models can quantify to which extent ballot stuffing or mechanisms of extreme fraud may have contributed to these deviations.
For instance one can say almost certainly that an election doesnt represent the will of the people if a substantial fraction of units reports a 100 percent turnout with almost all votes for a single party as the Arizona case suggests. Or if any significant deviations in the cumulative distribution of votes vs. turnout are observed like in the New Mexico case.
Another indicator of systematic fraudulent or irregular voting behavior is the incremental fraud parameter which is significantly greater than zero on each aggregation level like the Florida cases indicate in the Broward and Palm Beach heavily dominated Democratic counties.
George Bernard Shaw used to say that democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."
In other related news Dennis Hof a deceased brothel owner entrepreneur and Republican politician wins Nevada legislative race after death.
Does it mean that Americans find dead Republicans more competent that living Democrats after all?!
NOTE - A version of the article was previously published in MEDIUM.
TIBERIU DIANU has published several books and a host of articles in law politics and post-communist societies. He currently lives and works in Washington DC and can be followed on MEDIUM.
*****