[EL] Uh oh, Rick...

[Richman, Jesse T.]

Rick,

As you aptly framed it, one of the key empirical challenges is quantifying the level of non-citizen voting.  There are examples that you and others have previously identified so we know it happens.  The challenge is to identify how often.

I wonder if perhaps the gap between estimates based on identified instances of non-citizens voting and the survey estimates my coauthors and I presented in our Electoral Studies piece is similar to the large gap between survey based estimates of the number of sex crimes committed on college campuses, and the number of such crimes that are prosecuted.  In part this gap may reflect measurement error in the survey instruments used, and in part it seems to reflect the substantial difference between true incidence on campus and limitations in the capacity and willingness to identify and prosecute such incidents.  The same pattern occurs for a variety of other crimes, with some going unreported.  Non-citizen voting is nearly always victimless (and our estimates show that only a very small number of races have plausibly been shifted by non-citizen participation), so that's probably especially likely in this case.

While I believe the CCES provides useful data with which to approach this topic, I hope that the attention the Electoral Studies piece has received will motivate other major electoral surveys beyond the CCES to ask non-citizens about voting.  If both CPS and ANES with their very different methodologies could be included in the analysis we would surely have more and better data to work with.

I look forward to talking about these issues more with you in the future.

Best Regards,

Jesse Richman

Associate Professor of Political Science

Old Dominion University


On Fri, Oct 24, 2014 at 4:57 PM, Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu<http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election>> wrote:

>  I linked to the the story Drudge links to earlier today on my blog. (See
> the end of this message).  I have always said (and say in my book) that
> non-citizen voting is a real, though relatively small, problem (unlike
> impersonation fraud, which is essentially a blip).  For this reason I have
> supported efforts to remove non-citizens from voting rolls, though not in
> the period right before an election when errors are more likely to
> disenfranchise voters.
>
> The new study appears to find a much higher incidence of non-citizen
> voting than I've previously seen, and I look forward to hearing whether
> people think the methodology in this paper is sound.  But even if it is
> sound, this would not justify the hysteria and nonsense (and in some cases
> outright dissembling) coming from some of the people you have listed below.
>
> Rick
>
>
>
>
>   “Could non-citizens decide the November election?”
> <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=67408>
>
>  Posted on October 24, 2014 12:27 pm <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=67408>
>  by Rick Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
>
> Jesse Richman and David Earnes
> <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/10/24/could-non-citizens-decide-the-november-election/>t
> at the Monkey Cage with some provocative findings on the extent of
> non-citizen voting. I will be very interested to hear what others think of
> the methodology in this forthcoming article
> <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379414000973> in
> Electoral Studies.
>  [image: Share]
> <https://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D67408&title=%E2%80%9CCould%20non-citizens%20decide%20the%20November%20election%3F%E2%80%9D&description=>
>   Posted in election administration <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>, The
> Voting Wars <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>
>
>
> On 10/24/14, 1:51 PM, Steve Hoersting wrote:
>
> It's getting tougher and tougher to dismiss and discredit John Fund, Hans
> van Spakovsky, James O'Keefe, J. Christian Adams, Catherine Engelbrecht and
> Rush Limbaugh:
>
>  http://drudgereport.com/
>
>  --
> Stephen M. Hoersting
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Law-election mailing listLaw-election at department-lists.uci.eduhttp<http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election>://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
>
>
> --
> Rick Hasen
> Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
> UC Irvine School of Law
> 401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000
> Irvine, CA 92697-8000949.824.3072 - office949.824.0495 - faxrhasen at law.uci.eduhttp<http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election>://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/http://electionlawblog.org<http://electionlawblog.org/>
>
>


--
Stephen M. Hoersting
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