Intelligence Squad #93

2/1/05

THE CHOICE IS YOURS

Voting, From Iraq to America

While many critics have rightly pointed out that this week’s Iraq election was essentially a sham, we choose to look on the positive side of things. Note, for example…

WAYS IN WHICH THE IRAQI ELECTION WAS SIMILAR TO THE U.S.’s

Low minority turnout – Few in the Sunni minority in central Iraqi cities like Fallujah and Ramadi participated. Some question the legitimacy of the election, and some were intimidated out of voting. In the Kurdish region, Christians were literally prevented from voting. In the U.S., many blacks typically fail to vote for all of the same reasons.
Premature announcement of turnout – In the immediate aftermath of the vote, U.S. media spent the day declaring higher-than-expected turnout, though no reliable turnout numbers are even close to being available. In the most recent U.S. presidential election, the news media rushed to declare a "smooth" election before reports of 10-hour long lines in urban Ohio neighborhoods became available to the public.
Wealthier candidates have the advantage – Most candidates couldn’t campaign even had they not feared for their lives; only those with the connections could afford enough posters and campaign trips to be effective.
Media are a corporate subsidiary of the chief executive – A few weeks ago, the interim American-appointed prime minister of Iraq, Iyad Allawi, openly bribed journalists with $100 each in exchange for favorable news coverage.
Massive, confusing ballot – puts the "butterfly" ballot to shame.
Counting done out of sight, with no media review – Warren County, Ohio officials would be proud.

WAYS IN WHICH THE IRAQI ELECTION WAS BETTER THAN THE U.S.’s

The use of proportional representation – If a party gets 20% of the vote, it gets 20% of the seats in the National Assembly. Compare this to the U.S.’s district-based, winner-take-all system of picking the Congress, in which a party receiving only 20% of the vote would be all but completely shout out.
Proof of voting – Dipping the voters’ fingers in ink prevents multiple-voting fraud. In the U.S., nothing prevents such a thing.
Hand counting – The Iraqi’s are not using machines – which, either through malfunction or malfeasance, can incorrectly tally the vote without anyone’s noticing – to count their ballots.
Voting on the weekend – No one could use the "I can’t miss work" excuse for not voting, since Election Day was held on a Sunday (and was essentially made a national holiday)
Everybody uses same voting method – None of this "if you live here, you use the reliable voting method, if you live there you use the unreliable one" nonsense found in the U.S.
No poll watchers – No party goons standing around the polling place looking to challenge the eligibility of minority voters
Absentee balloting done in person – Iraqi expatriates who wished to vote had to present themselves in-person to cast a ballot. That takes Katherine Harris-style selective acceptance of mailed-in ballots out of the equation.
Felons allowed to vote – As long as you weren’t one of Saddam’s Baathist goons, you could vote if you serve your time and paid your debt to society.

Speaking of American elections, here are a couple of fascinating nuggets to chew on:

EXIT POLLS

A couple of weeks back, the research duo which conducted the exit polls for the 2004 election, Edison/Mitofsky, released a report attempting to explain why those polls showed that Kerry won by 3% nationwide while the official tallies showed him losing by almost the same amount. The explanation offered was that Kerry voters were more likely to participate in the exit polls than Bush voters, skewing the results of the poll.

This week, USCountVotes, a research collective of 8 PhD’s, one PhD candidate, and one Masters-level mathematician released a response to the Edison/Mitofsky report. They point out that Edison and Mitofsky provided zero evidence to support their odd theory. USCountVotes also points out that the only data Edison/Mitofsky provided (though, oddly, chose never to discuss) that even comes close to addressing the matter suggests the opposite happened: voters in Bush territories seemed more likely to participate in the polls. They also point to data from the Edison/Mitofsky report that shows the discrepancy between the exit poll numbers and the official numbers was smallest (insignificantly small) in the regions that used paper ballots, and higher (5-10 times higher!) in the regions that used any type of machine -- touch screen, optical scan, etc. -- to tally the vote..

Which leaves us right where we began on November 3, 2004: by no method has it been proven that the voting machines were right and the exit polls were wrong.

BLACK CAUCUS

Last week, Bush held his quadrennial show-meeting with the leadership of the Congressional Black Caucus. The Caucus discussed its agenda for addressing the racial disparities that exist in the U.S. on a range of issues, and Bush pretended to care.

At one point, the Caucus members raised the issue of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, parts of which are set to expire in 2007 unless renewed by Congress and the president. The Act protects the voting rights of African-Americans from cleverly-designed methods to undermine them, such as the notorious poll taxes of the pre-civil rights era South. Bush’s response to the Caucus was that he was "unfamiliar" with the Voting Rights Act, but that he would get back to them on it. That a U.S. president who makes a show of reverence for the work of Martin Luther King every year, and who last year held a ceremony celebrating the 40^th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, would know nothing of one of King’s and the movement’s crowning achievements only confirms suspicions that rather than gray matter, the cranium of the U.S. president is solidly packed with equine manure.

By the way, Bush apparently had Condi Rice sit in on the meeting, and she managed to say nothing the entire time. No surprise there. Asking Rice to sit in on a discussion of African-American issues is like asking Michael Jackson to sit in on a discussion of adult male-female relationships.

All of the above election-related issues – and more – are broken down in this book. Check it out.

Knowledge is Power