[EL] Uh oh, Rick...

Tue Oct 28 06:30:47 PDT 2014

I’m glad Jesse has made his replication data and code available. The first step in verifying research is being able to replicate it.

The main point that I make, and others like Michael Tesler are making:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/10/27/methodological-challenges-affect-study-of-non-citizens-voting/

is the there is a lack of deep thought by Jesse and David about the reliability of the survey data and matching algorithm. Survey misreports are well-known, yet none of the extensive literature on, say vote over-report bias, is discussed as how it may affect the analysis. Survey respondents over-report their voting rates, and this at the least affects the upward bound on the number of non-citizen self-reported voters. Vote validation is challenged by matching and database reliability issues, but generally because respondents over-report their vote, validated vote is preferred to self-reports only. The most reliable measure is a person who both self-reports and has a validated vote, or 5 non-citizen voters (granting no issues in vote validation). Yet, Jesse and David ignore these issues and analyze both anyone who self-reports or has a validated vote, even if they did not report voting. As I stated before, this is logically inconsistent. Either you trust the validation or the self-reports, you don’t get to trust them both. If you believe a noncitizen who self-reported they did not vote but is validated as voting is misreporting, to be logically consistent you have to believe that a noncitizen who reports they did vote but is validated as not voting is also misreporting.

Also neglected in the manuscript is any discussion of the extensive matching of voter registration files against the SAVE database and follow-up contacts that election officials have done to verify if non-citizens are on the registration rolls, and if non-citizens have voted. This is important as Jesse and David note at one point they believe the CCES non-citizen voters are predominantly in the country legally. They would be in the SAVE database. If there was noncitizen voting on the massive scale found in the study, we would have indication of it through election officials’ efforts. Not to say that there is no noncitizen voting - we know of a handful of documented cases - it’s just several orders of magnitude less than what Jesse and David find.

Michael Tesler questions self-reported citizenship, finding in the panel design of the survey:

“41 percent of self-reported non-citizen voters in the 2012 CCES reported being citizens back in 2010.”

Somehow a good number of people who reported being citizens in 2010 reported not being citizens in 2012. That doesn’t make much sense, and again speaks to the limits of the survey data to understand this issue since respondents are obviously misreporting their citizenship status.

============
Dr. Michael P. McDonald
Associate Professor
University of Florida
Department of Political Science
234 Anderson Hall
P.O. Box 117325
Gainesville, FL 32611

phone:   352-273-2371 (office)
e-mail:  dr.michael.p.mcdonald at gmail.com                
web:      <http://www.electproject.org/> www.ElectProject.org 
twitter: @ElectProject

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Paul Gronke
Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2014 8:31 AM
To: Richman, Jesse T.
Cc: Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Uh oh, Rick...

The ANES sample, 2000-3000, is far too small to be able to make any sort of inferences about what everyone agrees is a very small proportion of the population.  It would be good to have the information on the CPS but without the validation step, once again there is little that could be done.

I admire you for responding to the list, Jesse, but I think the title of your Electoral Studies article was overly provocative, and to follow up with the Monkey Cage posting fanned the flames.

You've put a bullseye on your research. Perhaps that was your intention, it has certainly brought attention. We will see what the inevitable replications and retests show.

---
Paul Gronke     Ph: 503-517-7393
Reed College and Early Voting
 Information Center

http://earlyvoting.net

On Oct 28, 2014, at 2:15 AM, Richman, Jesse T. <JRichman at odu.edu <mailto:JRichman at odu.edu> > wrote:
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 <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=> &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 <http://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://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/> http://electionlawblog.org <http://electionlawblog.org/> 
> 
> 

-- 
Stephen M. Hoersting
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