Reply #5: There's a lot to chew on here [View All]

I appreciate the detailed response. As you may be aware, what you are doing is the nuts and bolts of the vote suppression issue in Ohio. As an Ohio resident, and voter your expertise as an observer, and possibly as a statistician are unparalleled. Carried a little further, your data could bulwark a legal argument that mis-allocation of machines and with arbitrary and capricious time limits may have had three consequences--suppressing the turnout through waiting; suppression of the vote by intimidation in the voting booth; and ballot mis-allocation or spoilage by hurrying the voter with an artificial time limit.

On the Danaher machine, it appears that all choices are on a single screen, about what font would you say? Is it possible that the manner in which the choices were formatted to a single screen aggravated the amount of time making selections? What I am getting at of course, is that eye strain, and weak vision cut across all economic categories.

It would seem that putting a time limit on how long one may be in the booth, and actively informing voters that they were exceeding it would amount to voter intimidation. Hurrying people may lead to improper ballots, such as the spoilage patterns you mapped previously for Cleveland (of course, you are directly familiar with Franklin, not Cuyahoga) or lack of opportunity to address balloting errors. Was this five minute limit applied uniformly throughout Ohio? Why five minutes?

What gives me pause is the use of percentage on the x axis rather than numerical values. This can disguise small or large populations that may reweigh the curve when extrapolating to the numbers disenfranchised because they were forced by the long lines to make economic decisions regarding whether they could afford to stay and vote. Since these are precinct level data, are the precincts equivalent to the appropriate magnitude, that percentage remains a determinant of the pattern, or is there such variability in turnout and total number of voters in a precinct that this could be a problem?

Are there differences in percentage turnout from the precincts with greater time available to cast one's vote to the ones that were hurried? If they are higher, when correcting for the difference, what might be the total number of voters affected? Is this number sufficient to allow one to re-evaluate the outcome of the election in Ohio? Or do other factors need to be considered from elsewhere in Ohio?

Mike