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Politics : Electoral College 2000 - Ahead of the Curve -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MasonS who wrote (4294)	12/2/2000 4:22:00 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 6710

At least you understood about the 1998 ballot gaffe, didn't you? The first guy testified that there are mechanical reasons, other than voter error, which cause an undervote on the left hand side when people use punch card ballots - 1) the rubber strips get hard with use; 2) the chads pile up and clog the machine; 3) the funnel shaped holes get scratched out of shape. He testified that this affects the left hand column more than the middle or the far ends because the left hand column is used more. But since he didn't inspect the actual machines, he can't say for a fact that any of those facts were present. So then they bring out the statistician to demonstrate that there is a statistical aberration with the undervotes for the president which can't be explained by anything other than machine failure. He testified only to the 2000 race but on cross Beck wants to shake his testimony. So Beck waltzes the statistican through other possible hypotheses. I believe in statistics these are called "null hypotheses", at any rate you are attempting to prove that something isn't true or is true by hypothesizing all the potential variables and then testing to see if they have an effect or an association and then if not excluding them. Whatever is left, whatever hasn't been excluded from probability, is probably true, if you have considered all the possibilities. So Beck wanted to see if the statistician excluded all the possibilities. He kinda sorta got the statistician to concede that he hadn't tested whether there were statistical anomalies on the middle or far right of the ballot, and the statistician started talking about the 1998 election, for which he did test the middle of the ballot, the governor's races vs. the senate race, which was on the left side of the ballot, and said that there were more votes for the governor which proved that there were more votes in the middle of the ballot than in the left. Then Beck showed him the ballot, which had the senate race and the governor's race both on the left column. The statistician had never looked at the ballot, he just assumed it must be on a different column because it was a different race. Whoops. So he's never tested the Dem hypothesis that there is something about voting the first column which is different than voting on the rest of the ballot. They did not make their prima facie case. They tried to prove that it was more likely than not that there was something about the left side of the voting machines in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade that made it harder for people to make an accurate vote for president through no fault of their own. They did not make their case.