Polygon, the Dancing Bear

Occasional notes on politics, history, technology, architecture,
and the life of a county clerk

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2003:
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2005:
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2006:
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2007:
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2008:
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Current entries

Tuesday, August 8, 2006, 11:58 am

Don't Rely on Polls. Polling in the 4th Distict of Georgia shows congresswoman Cynthia McKinney trailing 39% to 52% in her runoff race with challenger Hank Johnson.

I'm not a fan of McKinney's. But I wouldn't count her out based just on a poll.

Look what happened in 2005 Detroit mayor's race: incumbent Kwame Kilpatrick, beset by troubles of his own making, trailed in EVERY poll to challenger Freman Hendrix. Polls of Detroit voters were done by all kinds of respected polling organizations. Right up to election day, there was NO poll showing Kirkpatrick leading. There was a very slight trend in his direction in the closing days, but not enough to make a dent in Hendrix's strong lead.

Yet Kilpatrick won by 14,000 votes. It was a historic failure of polling.

For all kinds of reasons, polling is getting harder and harder to do in this country. An increasing number of people, tired of telemarketers, and armed with Caller-ID, are not speaking to pollsters any more. Polling in person is pretty much precluded by gated communities and by general unwillingness to open doors to strangers.

These problems are masked if the people a pollster does get to speak with are not significantly different from the ones who are unavailable. But what if they ARE different?

Polling in low-income minority communities — such as the city of Detroit, or the 4th District of Georgia — faces precisely this difficulty. In those areas, the voters who pollsters can reach by phone ARE qualitatively different than the ones you can't. So poll results are going to be misleading.

Yes, some people in ALL demographic groups have gotten rid of "land line" (pollable) telephones, and switched to cell phones. But, in general, people who have ordinary cell phones, the ones which require a contract and monthly payments, are not really very different from people with land lines.

The problem is people who have no land line, no cell phone contract, but use instead those convenience store prepaid phones. These voters are not pollable using current methods, so their views don't count in any surveys. But many of them DO vote.

These are the poorest and angriest voters. And given a choice between a seemingly militant black candidate (like Kilpatrick or McKinney) and one who is moderate enough to get significant white support (like Hendrix or Johnson), they go with the militant.

I don't know if McKinney will win, but I bet she does significantly better than the polling seems to show.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

Monday, August 7, 2006, 8:11 pm

Primary Election Tomorrow. Here are a couple of things about tomorrow's election. First, today's message to my staff:

Subject: From the Clerk-Register
Date: August 7, 2006

Tomorrow, Tuesday, August 8, is the primary election in Washtenaw County and statewide. At stake are dozens of offices from township trustee and city council to U.S. Senator.

And with one party increasingly dominant in Washtenaw County, the primary usually determines who is elected. We have 28 contested primaries: in 17 of these, the winner will be unopposed in the November general election. There are also 15 tax proposals (each affecting certain areas) and three recalls in Pittsfield Township. I strongly encourage everyone to take a few minutes and vote tomorrow.

Elections are just a part of all the things we do here, but our office is most visible to the public at election time. Today's Ann Arbor News features a front page photo of our own Steve Kirschner demonstrating the AutoMark voting device.

Our Elections staff is facing many challenges all at once. The new AutoMark machines were rushed into our hands to meet a federal deadline, with limited time for testing and training. The discovery of longstanding errors in geographic coding necessitated reprint of some ballots. The recall in Pittsfield Township means that we step into the shoes of the township clerk and run those polling places on Election Day. Our tabulators were upgraded, also on a hurry-up schedule with very short notice. We will be piloting a hand-count audit in six precincts to check on the accuracy of the tabulating equipment. And because this is a primary, we have the usual issues with party voting rules — you can vote in only one party's primary, and some voters get angry or confused about that - and the election of precinct delegates, including probably hundreds of write-in candidates whose votes will have to be individually counted and entered into poll books.

Despite all these issues, I expect to have a smooth election. Whether or not we like the outcomes tomorrow, the public and politicos will be confident in our results. And that reflects well on all of us, even if your job is unrelated to elections.

Let's have a great week!

And here's today's message to all the county clerks in the state from Chris Thomas, the state Director of Elections:

From: Thomas, Christopher M
To: County Clerks
Sent: Mon Aug 07 17:56:56 2006
Subject: Election Day

Greetings,

I wish you all a good election day tomorrow. The weather seems to be cooperating as it will cool off tonight and be a low humidity day tomorrow.

The "News You Can Use" coming out late this afternoon has all the updated numbers on each vendor's help desk. Also, there is policy regarding news media in the polling place. Essentially, they must live under the same rules as poll watchers. They cannot roam around the polling place nor can they talk with voters in the polling place.

Under the state contract, the vendors are required to establish a level of election day support for you and the local clerks. If you are having any difficulties with any of the vendors please call this office. We will definitely intervene to get things on track.

I realize this has been a difficult transition for many of you as both optical scan and AutoMark are new in your county. I have confidence in the quality of the systems in place. It may take an election to work through some issues and the human interaction with these systems. In addition to the Federal mandate, we chose a lower turnout election for the first test drive.

Thank you for all you have done to prepare for tomorrow and to assist local clerks in their preparations.

Chris Thomas

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —

2002:
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