"A Month After Elections, 200,000 Votes Found."

In New York. That's 17% more votes than originally reported.

"He's a scourge on the whole profession of political science."

Yikes.

Look what I started. (Limbaugh doesn't name me but reads from the Byron York piece that plays off of a blog post of mine.)

Sally Quinn — who says "Dancing is my religion" — denounces Bristol Palin's success on "Dancing with the Stars" as "unholy."

And this strangely sanctimonious journalist — she's writing in the always awful "On Faith" section of The Washington Post — condemns Palin voters for "cheating" 7 paragraphs after she confesses to doing something that is at least as much cheating as what the Palin fans are said to be doing.

My husband and I are "DWTS" fanatics.  We plan our social life around it, often regretting invitations that fall on the night of the show....

Ridiculous!

Not only that, but I vote.  Under the show's rules, you're allowed to vote five times on one line. I have six lines at home and my cell, so I vote as many times as I can for my favorite. 

So this lady, this longtime Washington powerbroker, has 6 phone lines, and she maxes each line out, each week, voting 30 times. But that's the show's rules. They can't tell how many individuals vote are voting. They can only see phone numbers. So if your family of 5 watches the show and you — you economic losers — only have one phone, you can make 5 calls. Sally Quinn happens to have 6 phone lines, so she gets 30 votes — under the rules.

This season, I'm voting for Jennifer Grey all the way. She is by far the best dancer on the show.

She's voting correctly. For the best dancer. You stupid people are voting for Bristol Palin. Lord knows why.

.... Brandy - a fabulous dancer -- was eliminated last week. She was definitely my runner up. (Jennifer has to win. She's head and shoulders above everyone else.) We were having a dinner party and I made my guests leave the table to watch the final half of DWTS. Norman Lear was with us. Norman is not a DWTS follower but got caught up in the moment too. As the music started and I waited breathlessly to see Bristol be told she was out. I was squeezing Norman's hand when Brandy, not Bristol, was sent home. I couldn't believe it. Neither could the judges and studio audience. Derek  and Jennifer's mouths dropped open. Boos could be heard.

Oh, the social life I'm missing! Norman Lear! Ah! And I'm stranded out here in the heartland where I can only imagine the sparkling, witty conversation. Perhaps: "The American voters are pretty damned stupid"... that sort of thing.

It seemed Bristol and her partner were just as surprised. Brandy cried. I have to confess I teared up. It just didn't seem right.

Bloggers, columnists and TV commentators jumped on the results.  There must be cheating going on, they said.  It was all a tea party plot. That could be the only explanation for this appalling miscarriage of justice.

Sarah Palin's detractors point to the Christian right as the culprits here. The say groups organized voting schemes to game the system and were telling each other how to cheat when voting at ABC.com.

Commenters on the conservative blog Hillbuzz.org said they had figured out how to enter more votes than the rules allow by creating fake e-mail addresses. One person posting on Hillbuzz said "Lord have mercy, I voted for three hours online! I got 300 in."

What is a "fake e-mail address"? The rules say you are allowed 5 votes from each email address, just as you are allowed 5 votes from each phone number. Some people have multiple phone numbers and some have multiple email addresses. What's the difference? All I can think of is that you have to spend money to have multiple phone numbers, and you can get multiple email accounts free. It feels so right for rich folk to get more. I love when liberals slip up like that.

I never remember all Ten Commandments off the top of my head, but there should be one that says, "Thou shalt not cheat while voting on 'Dancing with the Stars.'" Polls have shown that the majority of tea party members are conservative Christians. Are these Christians who are voting 300 times and not using valid email addresses? Doesn't it offend their sense of fairness, if not ethics and morals?

Well, that whole paragraph offends my sense of reason. You're just assuming that the votes are coming from Christians, imagining that these Christians pontificate about morality, and accuse them of cheating when they seem to be following the same rules that let you vote on 6 phone lines? You're blind to your own hypocrisy, even as you have a platform in the Washington Post where you can preen and try to look like you have something especially important to say about religion.

Byron York, tipped off by a post of mine, takes aim at a UW professor.

"Political reporters often rely on University of Wisconsin political scientist Charles Franklin for expertise," says York:

If you read his quotes in mainstream publications, you'll find a series of measured statements on political trends.  Democrats appealing to the youth vote in the run-up to the midterms are "betting long odds, given the very long history of low turnout in midterms among young voters," Franklin told the Washington Post recently.  Final pre-election polls suggested "a Republican wave of genuinely historical proportions," he told USA Today.  Feingold's problems had "more to do with the mood of the country than with Feingold himself," he told the Boston Globe.

It's all pretty unremarkable stuff.  And readers would have no idea what Franklin really thinks about the voters whose opinions he's measuring and commenting on.  But now they do.

Here's the post of mine that York read, and here's the Isthmus article that I drew to his attention to Franklin's opinion of the voters ("They're pretty damn stupid.").

ADDED: Professor Franklin appears in the comments section of yesterday's post and says:

Sigh. Bill's Lueder's quote is exactly accurate. I said exactly what he says I said. Normally I would just let it go at that since once such a quote is out it will spread no matter what. The only complaint I have is that Lueder's subsequent conclusions from that quote are his own and not mine.

The context was the Senate race and the point I was making, which I've made numerous times before, was that voters embraced Ron Johnson before they knew much about him. In a June 26-27 poll by Public Policy Polling, Johnson trailed Feingold by just 2 points, yet in the poll 62% said they had neither a favorable nor an unfavorable opinion of Johnson. I've used that poll frequently to illustrate the fact that voters were ready to embrace a Republican they knew almost nothing about over a three term incumbent Democrat. The race wasn't about specific details of Johnson vs Feingold, it was a rejection of Democrats more or less regardless of what voters knew about the GOP candidate.

That was the context in which I said voters are "pretty damn stupid". Too hyperbolic indeed, but I said it and have no complaint that it was quoted when I knew I was speaking to journalists.

But I wish what I said next had also been quoted. I went on to say that despite not knowing the details of Johnson's policy positions, the voters did NOT make a mistake in choosing Johnson as the more conservative candidate and certain to be more favorable to cutting government. That was indeed the correct connection by an angry electorate, even if the details were quite vague.

Voter's often act on little information and can be astonishingly unaware of things one might consider "facts". A post-election Pew poll finds less than half (46%) know the GOP won only the House but not the Senate. And at times voters appear to vote for candidates who are likely to take positions at odds with the voter's interests.

But in the Johnson-Feingold race, I think despite lack of details about Johnson, a majority of Wisconsin voter's picked the guy they wanted, and for basically the right reason. Dems may be astonished at the rejection of a favorite son, but in making this choice I think voter's properly expressed their preferences and matched them to the right candidate.

So I wish I had phrased this differently but that's my bad, no one else's. But I do not agree with the conclusion that voter's were "stupid" to pick Johnson over Feingold. In fact I believe a majority got the Senator they wanted, and that is always good for a republic.

Why do the Dems win all the close races nowadays? It's uncanny!

"Am I crazy to think that close elections—the ones that are separated by a mere hundreds of votes, that go into overtime and threatened recounts well past Election Eve—almost always are won by the Democrat these days?"

How misspelled can a write-in vote for Murkowski be before it shouldn't be counted at all?

Joe Miller is arguing for 100% correct spelling.

Lt. Gov. Craig Campbell, who oversees Alaska elections, has indicated that he will accept minor misspellings of Murkowski's name as long as the "voter intent" is clear.

Intent of the voter. Ah! That brings back delightful memories of the Bush v. Gore recount.

Miller is overdoing it. Clearly, they've got to count stuff like "Murakowski" and "Murkowsky" and "Murcowski" and even "Mercowsky." But where's the line? What about "Merssky"? Or "Murk."? What about "Lisa"? That's dimpled chad territory, no?

ADDED: A poll:

How strictly would you judge the write-ins?
	Miller's right. The spelling must be perfect.
	It must be phonetically accurate or only 1 or 2 letters off.
	If you can tell it was meant as a vote for Murkowski, it should count.
pollcode.com free polls

After the break, a second poll:

Now, be honest:
	My preference for Miller influenced my choice on the first poll.
	My preference for Murkowski influenced my choice on the first poll.
	I gave a neutral, principled response to the first poll.
	Honestly, I can't vouch for how my mind worked.
pollcode.com free polls

Should all the many elections around the country today be seen as one big referendum on Obama and his Congress...

... and will you cast each of your votes accordingly?

Well, is it and will you?
	Yes, it is and I will vote no (that is, Republican).
	Yes, it is and I will vote yes (that is, Democrat).
	Yes, it kind of is, but I'll still vote for individual candidates on their individual merits.
	No, it's not. It's a whole lot of separate elections that should be viewed individually.
	No, it's not one big referendum, but I'll still vote a straight party line: Democrat.
	No, it's not one big referendum, but I'll still vote a straight party line: Republican.
	I'm not voting.
pollcode.com free polls

Early voting *depresses* voter turnout.

Say University of Wisconsin-Madison polisci profs Kenneth R. Mayer and Barry C. Burden in an op-ed in today's NYT. They worked on a rather sophisticated study of the numbers, controlling for various factors. Click through if you want to look for flaws in the methodology. Here's the speculation about why there's about a 3% lower voter turnout in states that permit early voting:

Early voting ... dilutes the intensity of Election Day. When a large share of votes is cast well in advance of the first Tuesday in November, campaigns begin to scale back their late efforts. The parties run fewer ads and shift workers to more competitive states. Get-out-the-vote efforts in particular become much less efficient when so many people have already voted.

When Election Day is merely the end of a long voting period, it lacks the sort of civic stimulation that used to be provided by local news media coverage and discussion around the water cooler. Fewer co-workers will be sporting “I voted” stickers on their lapels on Election Day. Studies have shown that these informal interactions have a strong effect on turnout, as they generate social pressure. With significant early voting, Election Day can become a kind of afterthought, simply the last day of a drawn-out slog.

Personally, I like the intensity and theater of voting at a polling place. If I had to stop by some office to fill out a form, I might put it off until it's too late or start rationalizing about how it doesn't really matter. (My one vote isn't going to tip the election.) But if a ballot were mailed to me and I could just mail it back, I'm sure I'd do that. (Though in some of these local elections, I'd probably just stare at names I didn't know much about until I finally admitted to myself that I didn't care, even as it would annoy me that straight party voters, who also didn't know much, would be determining the outcome.)

Mayer and Burden go on to connect the problem of early voting with same-day registration:

Fortunately, there is a way to improve turnout and keep the convenience of early voting. Our research shows that when early voting is combined with same-day registration — that is, you can register to vote and cast an early ballot on the same day — the depressive effect of early voting disappears. 

Unfortunately, they say nothing about the possibility that same-day registration pumps up the numbers with fraud.

***

Accompanying this op-ed is a pen-and-ink illustration by James McShane that's quite nice but that — I'm sure it was unintentional — tricked my eye. It's the panel that shows a letter being mailed. This is also the panel used for the front-page teaser to the op-ed. You look at it first. I'll tell you what I saw later.

"[D]eep divisions within the Justice Department... over whether the agency should focus on protecting historically oppressed minorities or enforce laws without regard to race."

Washington Post investigates and reports.

Andrew Breitbart enthuses:

So the Post does what nobody has been able to do – obtain deep sourcing inside the Department confirming what Adams and Coates have been saying for months. This is a devastating piece of work by the Washington Post. This is a rare moment where the old print media has returned to the higher standards of years past, and reported facts. A week from an election, it couldn’t have come at a worse time for Eric Holder.

Should professors use class time to urge students to vote?

I'm getting internal university email telling faculty to do that (with a reminder to keep it "nonpartisan").

"Rich Whitey" — a misspelling that just happened to get onto the electronic voting machines in 23 wards in Chicago.

"I don't want to be identified as 'Whitey.' If this is happening in primarily African-American wards, that's an even bigger concern. I don't know if this is machine politics at play or why this happened."

Rich Whitney is the Green Party candidate for governor in Illinois (where the race between the Democratic and Republican candidates is close). And the problem is not going to be corrected!

"This doesn't have to do with the Black Panthers..."

"... this has to do with their fantasies about how they could use this issue to topple the [Obama] administration... My fellow conservatives on the [U.S. Commission on Civil Rights] had this wild notion they could bring Eric Holder down and really damage the president."

"Felons Voting Illegally May Have Put Franken Over the Top in Minnesota, Study Finds."

At least 341 convicted felons voted, illegally, in Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Franken won by 312 votes.

So... at what rate do convicted felons go Democratic... in predominantly Democratic twin cities?

"The View" women — joined by Meghan McCain — trash Sarah Palin and Tom Tancredo.

The smugness and condescension of these women is irritating as hell, but please watch, so we can talk about this:



There's no balance, with Meghan McCain in lieu of Elisabeth Hasselbeck. McCain is way too eager to win the love of liberals. She says:

Congressman Tancredo went on TV, and he was the first opening speaker, and he said, "People who could not even spell the word 'vote' or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House whose name is Barack Hussein Obama." And then he went on to say that people at the convention should have to pass literacy tests in order to be able to vote in this country, which is the same thing that happened in the 50s to prevent African-Americans from voting. It's innate racism, and I think it's why young people are turned off by this movement. And I'm sorry, but revolutions start with young people, not with 65-year-old people talking about literacy tests and people who can't say the word 'vote' in English.

Now, the funny thing to me about that is, if you think racism is bad, you should also reject the idea that ideas are inborn. And you should reject categorizing people by groups like young and old. People are individuals, and they are what they develop into as they live and act in this world, not what was programmed into their genes. Maybe McCain doesn't know the meaning of the word "innate." Maybe she meant something like "ingrained." She's borderline incoherent, and that's almost as annoying as her need for liberal love (which she's not going to get!).

And, by the way, I think it was foolish of Tancredo to bring up literacy tests. They were used in some parts of the country in the past to keep black people (and poor white people) from voting. There are better ways to say that people were dumb/uninformed, and that's why they voted for Obama, if that's what Tancredo meant to say. Maybe he did intend to resonate with racism, or he has fond feelings about the bad old days. Who knows? In any case, in complaining about people being dumb, he was dumb. Whether he's also suffering from racism is another matter. But if he is, it's not innate racism — which makes him more responsible for it, not less.

Bruce Ackerman defends "Democracy Dollars" — the proposal to empower everyone to donate $50 to political campaigns.

Remember this post of mine about a WSJ op-ed by Bruce Ackerman and Congressman David Wu proposing a $50 tax credit for people to donate to presidential candidates? It was presented as a kind of antidote to the Citizens United case, which recognized a First Amendment freedom for corporations to engage in political speech.

I had some questions about the proposal because, for one thing, it's about enabling people to channel money to candidates, which is different from doing your own speaking. I worried about those immediate electronic refunds:

Ah! How the cash could flow! Just push buttons on line. Is that too easy? Do you worry about corruption? Does it unduly favor the kind of people who use computers and credit cards... or is that really everybody now?

Professor Ackerman emailed me to say that he had answers to my questions in his book  "Democracy Dollars" (co-written with Ian Ayres and not with Wu), and I asked for some electronic text, which he sent. From pages 69-70:

In our brave new world, Americans simply go to their neighborhood ATM and vote their Patriot dollars under three ground rules.  

Vote. Presumably in the lingo of the book, the $50 donation is equated to a vote. You get a donation to channel to someone, which is sort of like voting.

The first gives each voter five days to change her mind. This not only encourages sober second thought but makes a black market tough to organize. To see why, suppose that a fraudster offers Citizen X $20 in private money if she allows him to accompany her to the ATM and watch her transfer 50 Patriots to his favorite candidate. X accepts the offer, executes the transaction, takes the $20 — and then returns the next day to countermand the order!

That assumes Citizen X cares about politics... and isn't afraid of the fraudster. I think a lot of people would gladly pocket the $20 and not give a damn about where the $30 went. It's not like they have a way to get their hands on the $30. They have to give away the $50, so there will be endless schemes to get hold of those millions of $50s.

Not a good deal for the fraudster, especially if we add two rules. Patriotic contributions should be anonymous — making it impossible for the fraudster to contact his favored beneficiary to see whether the transaction sticks.  

Citizen X would need to believe that anonymity is secure.

And the ATM will accept only Patriot accounts linked to standard electronic cards. This prevents the fraudster from demanding possession of X's ATM card for the five-day cooling off period, thereby making it impossible for her to change her mind. While X might give away a free-floating Patriot card, she will refuse to surrender a standard credit card to somebody who is not, by definition, very trustworthy. If she ever gets her American Express back, she may find not only that her Patriot account is empty but that the fraudster has used it to finance his trip to Las Vegas!

Does everyone have a credit card? Do we really want a government program bound up in the operations of private credit card companies? Will the credit card company get a cut of all these transactions? Or are we going to end up with a government credit card company?

As a final anticorruption safeguard, all Patriot accounts will expire after six years. Renewal will be easy — a citizen must simply vote once during the period, and swipe his card once again through the electronic reader available at his polling place. Regular renewal prunes the files of dead and incapacitated cardholders-cutting out another source of fraud. To be sure, it also eliminates people who fail to vote once in six years. But this seems entirely acceptable. Nonvoters can regain their patriotic status simply by reregistering.

I also asked whether "incumbents [would] snap up the money and make it even harder for newcomers to get started." And Professor Ackerman pointed to this, at pages 78-79:

Fundamental fairness may be compromised if one candidate conducts an expensive primary battle while the other doesn't. The problem is at its maximum when a sitting president is running for reelection. The man (or woman!) in the White House comes to the table with such great advantages that he may avoid a significant challenge in the primary. This will allow him to stockpile the pool of Patriots from members of his own party while challengers raise and spend large sums for the privilege of running against him in November. By the time the out-party selects its candidate, the successful nominee may confront a serious problem raising patriotic donations from the party faithful. Many will have spent their wad during the primaries, leaving the challenger to face an incumbent sitting on a large patriotic stockpile. It is tough enough ousting a sitting president without giving him this further advantage.

The problem is of constitutional dimension. After Franklin Roosevelt's four-term presidency, the American people said "never again," and enacted a constitutional amendment checking the power of incumbent presidents by limiting them to two terms in office. Our approach to Patriot is guided by this decision. In the case of incumbents running for reelection, we divide the 25 Patriot dollars allocated to each presidential account into two subaccounts-allocating $10, say, to the primaries and $15 to the general election. This will permit the out-party to wage a fierce struggle over the nomination without compromising its capacity to run an effective race in the fall.

The system is infinitely tweakable. I note that it will be tweaked by incumbents and the party in power. Why would they "permit the out-party" to do anything they don't want? Once the system is in place and all that money is at stake, the game will be played by ambitious politicians, not by neutral wise men (and wise women!) trying to perfect democracy.

I also asked about what was going on in the states that had programs like this. Here, Professor Ackerman quoted a law review article by Thomas Cmar, "Toward a Small Donor Democracy: The Past and Future of Incentive Programs for Small Political Contributions," 32 Fordham Urban Law Journal. 443, 462-75 (2005):

Oregon has the highest participation rate in the country for a political contribution incentive program, and in large measure this is due to the state providing the credit for contributions to PACs as well as candidates and parties. Many PACs solicit credit-eligible contributions aggressively, promoting the credit as a central aspect of their fundraising appeal. The result is that in recent electoral cycles, a substantial portion of contributions on which a tax credit was claimed went to PACs rather than to parties or candidates. ... Data from Oregon suggests, however, that Oregon's higher participation rate is driven by the mobilization efforts of contribution recipients."

PACmania. Comments? Personally, I'm terrified of all that money flowing around.

Don Surber recounts the 2008 electoral college using Obama's current state-by-state approval numbers...

... and figures Obama would lose if the election were held today.

But approval numbers don't answer the question whether Obama would win when pitted against a particular candidate. Even if a poll asked people whether they'd vote for Obama over an unnamed Republican candidate, those imaginary opponents tend to do better than real candidates. You've got to account for all the voters who disapprove of both candidates but still have to vote for someone.

A "well-connected Democratic strategist" thinks Coakley is "is destined to lose."

"I have heard that in the last two days the bottom has fallen out of her poll numbers.... If she's not six or eight ahead going into the election, all the intensity is on the other side in terms of turnout... So right now, she is destined to lose."

Interesting. When everyone knows turnout is important, how do polls affect what people do? Why do people lose "intensity" when they think their candidate is likely to lose? Do people lapse into the passive observation of what seems to be destiny — and forget that they are voters? Or is there something particular about the Coakley/Brown race, in that people assumed Coakley should easily win and never thought too much about her, never bonded with her or worked for her? Now that Scott Brown is surging, they are inert and fatalistic?

But what this unnamed strategist is really talking about is how we should interpret a Coakley loss:

"With Obama at 60 percent in Massachusetts, this shouldn't be happening, but it is," the Democrat says.

Given those numbers, some Democrats, eager to distance Obama from any electoral failure, are beginning to compare Coakley to Creigh Deeds, the losing Democratic candidate in the Virginia governor's race last year. Deeds ran such a lackluster campaign, Democrats say, that his defeat could be solely attributed to his own shortcomings, and should not be seen as a referendum on President Obama's policies or those of the national Democratic party.

The same sort of thinking is emerging in Massachusetts. "This is a Creigh Deeds situation," the Democrat says. "I don't think it says that the Obama agenda is a problem. I think it says, 1) that she's a terrible candidate, 2) that she ran a terrible campaign, 3) that the climate is difficult but she should have been able to overcome it, and 4) that Democrats beware -- you better run good campaigns, or you're going to lose."

And Obama has decided not to travel to Massachusetts to help Coakley out. It's all about cutting her loose to sink on her own. Strange to give up and look ahead beyond the predicted loss when her vote is so crucial.

UPDATE: Obama will go to Massachusetts.

"The ABA editors, however, have put us up against one of the oldest and most popular legal sites, Althouse."

Wow. Professor Turley is really trying to kick my ass.

[W]e are up against one of the top three and best recognized sites. It is, therefore, the ultimate Dave and Goliath moment. The Cinderella Man moment. The Crossing of the Delaware moment. The Hail Mary moment. Yes, it is your moment. Think of the children, the unborn, the undead. Think your pets, your country. Think of me for God’s sake.

Senator ACORN.

"Franken won by 312 votes. ACORN claimed to have registered 48,000 new Minnesota voters. If just 1% were ineligible but cast ballots, or had ballots cast for them illegally, and survived the recount process ... that's 480 votes, almost certainly overwhelmingly cast for Franken. ..."

"Congress can impose this disparate treatment forever because of the history in the South?"

Chief Justice Roberts in argument in the Voting Rights Act case, which Dahlia Lithwick summarizes — with unusually labored breeziness — here.

[Justice Scalia] insists that the judgment of Congress is not to be trusted because when it came to reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act, "they get elected under this system. Why should they take it away?" Oh. My. God. You mean legislators are self-interested!?! That must mean the court is free to substitute its judgment for that of Congress.

This is a too-cheap laugh for Lithwick. Obviously, this is not a typical case for deferring to Congress. The challenged law structures the election of members of Congress, and it applies to some states and not others.

Debo Adegbile is in the case representing the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. When he reminds the court that "Congress is permitted to use so much of its power as is necessary" to remedy racial discrimination, the Chief Justice clobbers him with: "Is it your position that today Southerners are more likely to discriminate than Northerners?" When Adegbile replies that the covered states tend to be repeat offenders in this area, Roberts comes back with, "So your answer is yes?"

Scalia asks Adegbile what the vote was when Congress reauthorized Section 5 in 2006.

Answer: 390-33 in the House, 98-0 in the Senate. Scalia retorts that "the Israeli Supreme Court, the Sanhedrin, used to have a rule that if the death penalty was pronounced unanimously, it was invalid, because there must be something wrong there." (And before you liberals start crowing that Scalia is citing foreign law, let it be noted that he is citing religious law, which is totally cool and different than foreign law.) Today Scalia seems to have fashioned a new constitutional principle: The courts should always defer to Congress unless Congress is unanimous, in which case Congress is a sack of self-interested liars. Fascinating.

Well, think about it. They're all there — from all the states — and they all got elected under the existing system, a system that is not uniform among the states. Doesn't that mean something?