[EL] Steve King on voter fraud

[Justin Levitt]

The New York Daily News "study" cited in the article Brad sent is the 
largest-scale comparison of NYC and Florida around the 2000 election 
that I'm aware of.  The Slate piece links to dead space; the original 
Daily News article is here 
<http://articles.nydailynews.com/2004-08-22/news/18273011_1_election-officials-voter-registration-presidential-election>.  
It claims to have found 46,000 individuals listed on both the NY and 
Florida voting rolls (which speaks to database maintenance practices 
before HAVA and statewide registries), and between 400-1,000 
double-voters.  I'm not sure where Rep. King is getting his 25,000 figure.

Of course, some of the Daily News' figures will reflect people who 
actually voted twice.  But the way they got their figures is by 
comparing names and birthdates (and gender, which adds comparatively 
little incremental information to name, statistically) on registration 
rolls with millions of people (at the time, 3.7 million in New York and 
10.7 million in Florida).  And -- as acknowledged at the very end of the 
Daily News article itself, after the more salacious allegations that 
lead the piece -- there will be "false positives" in a match of that 
scale.  As discussed here <http://ssrn.com/abstract=997888> and here 
<http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/truthaboutvoterfraud/>, 
such false positives will be fairly common -- indeed, as Michael 
McDonald and I have demonstrated, you'd expect, statistically, to find 
at least several hundred false positive matches in comparisons of two 
pools of several million names.

Justin


On 11/17/2011 9:52 AM, Smith, Brad wrote:
> http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2004/10/people_who_vote_twice.html.
>
> I vouch not for the accuracy of the report or any allegations therein, or for the claims of Rep. King (and I appreciate Doug's subtle pun about Rep. Steven King and ghosts).
>
> Bradley A. Smith
> Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault
>    Designated Professor of Law
> Capital University Law School
> 303 East Broad Street
> Columbus, OH 43215
> (614) 236-6317
> bsmith at law.capital.edu
> http://www.law.capital.edu/faculty/bios/bsmith.asp
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Doug Hess
> Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2011 12:46 PM
> To: Election Law
> Subject: [EL] Steve King on voter fraud
>
> Rep. King is quoted in The Hill as saying the following on the House floor(see the article Rick links to here:
> http://electionlawblog.org/?p=25538 ):
>
> "I find it a bit ironic that I'm watching the representatives from Florida, New York and Texas speak to the speaker pro temp... about the election situation," he said. "I'm thinking about the 2000 election when it was reported... that as many as 25,000 people from New York voted both in New York and in Florida either for a president from Texas or one from Tennessee."
>
> Anybody know what "report" he is talking about? I guess there are all kinds of "reports" including reports of ghosts, etc., but is he referring here to an analysis of some kind?
>
> Doug Hess
> 202-277-6400 (cell)
>
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-- 
Justin Levitt
Associate Professor of Law
Loyola Law School | Los Angeles
919 Albany St.
Los Angeles, CA  90015
213-736-7417
justin.levitt at lls.edu
ssrn.com/author=698321

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