[EL] Steve King on voter fraud

Thu Nov 17 12:00:06 PST 2011

And to just add...this assumes that the matches in the study were
executed correctly. In our investigation of double voting claims in New
Jersey, we noted that in some counties only birthyear was available and
for a county with missing data birthdates were provided by those making
the claims. In some cases there were obvious errors, such as Jr./Sr.
pairs assigned the same birthdate.

============
Dr. Michael P. McDonald
Associate Professor, George Mason University
Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution

                             Mailing address:
(o) 703-993-4191             George Mason University
(f) 703-993-1399             Dept. of Public and International Affairs
mmcdon at gmu.edu               4400 University Drive - 3F4
http://elections.gmu.edu     Fairfax, VA 22030-4444

-----Original Message-----
From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of
Justin Levitt
Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2011 2:36 PM
To: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Steve King on voter fraud

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.  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 and here, 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
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