Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don't by John Jr. (books that read to you TXT) 📕

new concerns over potential vote fraud. These range from the lack of a “paper trail” on most machines to the possibility of manipulating their programming.66 Similar to the concerns over punch cards, these new objections are largely misguided—paper records are not necessarily superior to electronic voting machines, which keep three separate “read only” memories that are unchangeable. Likewise, tampering would be near-impossible, since electronic voting machines are stand-alone units that are not connected to the Internet or any other network. 67 Tampering with them would be akin to someone trying to hack into your own personal computer while it isn’t online.

Most electronic voting machines transfer election results to a compact disk or some other “read only” format. These CDs are then taken to a central location where they are read into a computer. In the twenty-plus years that these machines have been used in counties across the nation, there has never been a verified case of tampering.68

When computer scientists warn of possible tampering with voting machines, they are not referring to hacking attempts, but to someone physically breaking open the lock on each individual machine and reprogramming each computer. Even if someone could break into a machine and overcome the supposedly tamper-proof seals without being noticed, going through one computer at a time hardly seems like a realistic way to steal an election. Besides, accuracy checks conducted on the machines before, during, and after the votes would detect any reprogramming to transfer votes from one candidate to another.

Contrary to the various conspiracy theories, many people who registered non-votes for some races were most likely conflicted over whom to vote for and simply decided not to support anyone. Undoubtedly, the promotion of these unfounded accusations of selective disenfranchisement offer a short-term political benefit for certain groups. But such claims risk poisoning the political debate for years to come.

The 2000 Florida Vote

Florida’s 2000 presidential election was a battleground for not just punch card voting, but for explosive charges of systematic discrimination against African American voters. Reverend Jesse Jackson was not alone in charging “a clear pattern of suppressing the votes of African Americans.”69 Mary Francis Berry, then chairwoman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, called for a criminal investigation of the vote. But how does one determine empirically whether there was systematic discrimination against African Americans during the Florida election and whether such discrimination cost Al Gore the election?

Data are available for every Florida precinct on vote totals for each candidate, the number of non-voted ballots, and on voters’ race and party affiliation. At first glance, the numbers seem to confirm the disturbing claims that African American had higher rates of non-voted ballots than other groups. But critics are wrong in charging that this aberration cost Gore the election, for the group most “victimized” by non-voted ballots, in fact, was African American Republicans.

African American Republicans who voted in Florida were an incredible fifty-four to sixty-six times more likely than the average African American to have had a ballot declared invalid. Another way of phrasing this is that for every two additional African American Republicans in the average precinct, there was one additional ballot that did not register a vote for president.70

In 2000, there were 22,270 registered African American Republicans voters in Florida—or about one for every twenty registered African American Democrats. In a state where the 2000 presidential race was decided by fewer than 1,000 votes, this is no trivial number. Since we can assume that these voters, as Republicans, would vote mostly for the Republican candidate, the overall numbers show that George W. Bush was hurt more by the loss of African American votes than was Al Gore.

These results are indeed disturbing. They indicate that, if there was a conspiracy to disenfranchise some group of Florida voters, that effort was directed at Republicans, not at African Americans as a race. This conclusion conforms with another fact that the data reveal: among white voters, Republicans were much more likely than Democrats to cast non-voted ballots. Additionally, I found that the overall rate of non-voted ballots was 14 percent higher when the county election supervisor was a Democrat, and 31 percent higher when the supervisor was an African American Democrat.71

So where does all this leave us? It’s hard to believe that there was some nefarious plot to disenfranchise Republicans overall or African American Republicans in particular. More likely, a significant proportion of these Republicans, particular those living in heavily Democratic areas, simply did not like the choices for president and therefore declined to vote for that race. Although tampering cannot be definitely ruled out, we can dismiss claims that the poor and African Americans overall were disenfranchised, since figures show that income and race were only one-third as important in explaining spoiled ballots as were the methods and machines used in voting.72

Early Media Calls

What happens when exit polls leak out on election day? Would you still vote if you knew the election was already decided and your candidate had lost?

As noted earlier, people are usually most interested in voting for the top races on the ballot—for president, governor, or U.S. Senate. Close contests in these top races typically increase voter turnout, while an expected blowout keeps more voters at home. It is widely assumed that an expected landslide primarily discourages those who support the losing candidate, since no one wants to be on the losing side. This is borne out by post-election surveys in which greater proportions of respondents claim to have voted for the winning candidate than is indicated by the actual vote count.73

The media has made three early calls in presidential elections: 1980, 1996, and 2000. During the landslide Republican victory in 1980, NBC named Reagan the winner at 8:15 p.m., well before voting ended on the West Coast. President Jimmy Carter “dispirited” many fellow Democrats when he conceded the election at 9:45 p.m., an hour and fifteen minutes before voting had ended in .California.74 Many Democratic candidates on the West Coast blamed