Hey Commander, here's one:
JUDE WANNISKI’S recent article "How Gore, Er. `Won’ The Popular Vote” contains a number of inaccuracies. According to him, Vice President Gore's national majority in the popular vote rests upon the large and questionable majorities that he ran up in many predominantly black and Hispanic areas. As an example, Mr. Wanniski cites what he calls "laughable" figures from Philadelphia:
"The population is less than 1.3 million and there are 1 million registered voters, which implies there are almost no children and all the adults are civic-minded. The turnout was 70% on November 7, with some black precincts reporting 100% turnout and 99% for you, and you carried the city by 300,000 votes!! That’s roughly 500,000 to 200,000."
The laugh, however, is on Mr. Wanniski. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the estimated voting age population in Philadelphia is 1,055,344. Furthermore, voter registration records show that there are 1,025,259 registered voters in Philadelphia, for a registration rate of 97.1 percent. To Mr. Wanniski, such a high rate of registration is inherently suspicious. Perhaps it is, but this is not a problem limited to Democratic strongholds like Philadelphia. The same data show registration rates of 97.9 and 99.3 (!) percent in heavily Republican Pike and Sullivan counties.
Rather than evidence of padded registration rolls, the problem is a more mundane one. The Census figures for the voting age population are estimates and have probably undercounted the true size of the voting population in these counties. Furthermore, since persons who have died or moved are often not immediately purged from voter registration rolls, these numbers are probably artifically high. In short, any proportion derived from a deflated denominator (the voting age population) and an inflated numerator (the number of registered voters) will appear high.
In addition to these errors regarding the registration rate, Mr. Wanniski makes an even larger mistake by assuming 70 percent voter turnout in Philadelphia. In fact, only about 52 percent (553, 444) of the registered voters in Philadelphia actually cast votes in November 7. Consequently, Al Gore won Philadelphia by a margin of 441,834 to 99,234 for George Bush.
If, as Mr. Wanniski asserts, Gore's margin of victory resulted from Philadelphia Democrats turning a blind eye to voting irregularities, their efforts were far less successful than those of the Republicans in other Pennsylvania counties. In Philadelphia, Al Gore's 441,834 represents only about 58 perecent of the 760,315 registered Democrats in the city. In heavily Republican Lancaster county, however, George Bush's 117,203 votes represents 70 percent of the 166,272 registered Republicans in the county.
Perhaps in the future Mr. Wanniski will be more careful.
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