[EL] Real names / data on double voters

[Bev Harris]

A considerable discussion ensued this weekend over the use of
firstname/lastname/dateofbirth as an identifier for double voters. I pulled a
single election, Nov 2006, from the Shelby County databases. Here are the names
and name frequency numbers for the double voters. I was surprised to find 22
apparent double voters in this election.

The premise in the McDonald paper is that due to common names, many of the
so-called duplicate voters are actually two different persons, with an example
that once you get to, say, 120 people with the same name, you have about a 30%
chance of same lastfirst/birthdate.

The chart below contains the real poop. As you can see, there are 22 double
voters in an election with just under 300,000 voters. The first four may fall
into the probability chart in the McDonald study, but for most of the others,
it would appear likely that they are the same person:

Column 2 is frequency for the name in the whole database; for example, there are
207 Mary Williams, but only 2 Willie Blackshires. Each has a voter history
showing two votes, one under each of their ID numbers.

LastnameFirstnameDateOfBirth	Frequency	VoteMethod (1st) - VoteMethod (2nd)
=====================================================================
WILLIAMSMARY4/25/1933		207		AtPolls - AtPolls
DAVISJAMES2/16/1934		178		AtPolls - EarlyVote
SMITHJOSEPH2/16/1970		73		AtPolls - AtPolls
JACKSONCHARLES4/10/1945		56		EarlyVote - AtPolls
SMITHEDDIE4/27/1951		42		AtPolls - EarlyVote
TAYLORANTHONY8/2/1975		42		AtPolls - AtPolls
BROWNCAROLYN3/15/1951		39		EarlyVote - EarlyVote
HARRISDAVID3/3/1967		34		AtPolls - EarlyVote
GREENWILLIAM9/22/1964		30		EarlyVote - AtPolls
FRANKLINMARY8/27/1944		21		EarlyVote - MethodOmitted
HARRISROBIN7/2/1963		10		EarlyVote - EarlyVote
HOLMESCAROLYN1/31/1954		7		EarlyVote - EarlyVote
NELSONGEORGE10/2/1921		6		AtPolls - AtPolls
MCWILLIAMSJAMES11/25/1944	4		EarlyVote - EarlyVote
KINGSAMUEL8/9/1966		4		EarlyVote - EarlyVote
LAULEDERKINDANNE10/20/1959	2		AtPolls - AtPolls
HOLMANCHRISTINE5/8/1934		2		AtPolls - AtPolls
HARDINGLORRAINE5/4/1971		2		EarlyVote - AtPolls
FLOWERSBRENDA7/23/1958		5		EarlyVote - AtPolls
COWANSRILLA7/16/1974		2		AtPolls - AtPolls
BOLDENANN9/2/1954		2		EarlyVote - EarlyVote
BLACKSHIREWILLIE11/24/1958	2		AtPolls - EarlyVote

Best,

Bev Harris
Founder - Black Box Voting
http://www.blackboxvoting.org

* * * * *

Government is the servant of the people, and not the master of them. The
people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right
to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to
know. We insist on remaining informed so that we may retain control over the
instruments of government we have created.



----------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.