Nate Silver on the Wisconsin debacle

[jimlup]

Not what we want to hear but probably illuminates the truth. Sometimes you just have to know what the truth actually is even if you don't like it.

Like always Nate's analysis is scientific. I don't doubt that it is correct and illuminating. I know it won't be rec'ed and I think he would want the Democratic outcome in Wisconsin as much as we would.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/

[PeaceNikki]

1. I'll rec it. It's logical and scientific.

If there is fraud, it will be caught during investigations and/or recount, but this doesn't appear to be it.

[Botany]

2. ?

"But a look at the turnout estimates in Waukesha County, before and after the
problem was corrected, suggest that her mistake was probably an honest one."

In her press conference she made mention of the fact she did not save the data
after importing it into her computer ..... the system she was running had an automatic
save feature so at the very least she is lying about that.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x842014

[jimlup]

3. It occured to me that the results of 2010 could be part of the same algorithm

That wouldn't be detected by Nate's analysis and would point to a much larger conspiracy which at this point wouldn't surprise me that much really. I mean afterall, when you really think about Wellstone's plane and stuff you know there is something rotten in Denmark. Hard to pin it down but something somewhere smells really bad!

[Botany]

4. This is a huge amount of votes to just find.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x842369

[movonne]

11. I will never believe that this vote fraud is anything but fraud...just

look at the clerk and her crooked background..and her own private computer..we will never know the real truth because they will lie...there is something very, very fishy here..

[Vincardog]

5. I want a thorough investigation before the election is certified. If there is no valid chain of

custody for the 'found' votes they should not count.
There should be a recount of the FULL STATE and we have to make sure that wee have TRANSPARENT VERIFIABLE elections from now on.

[damntexdem]

6. If correct, it settles questions about the overall numbers and their fit with the expected.

It doesn't answer any of the questions about possible election fraud. That must still be investigated.

[fasttense]

7. Nate Silver bases his opinions on turn out percentages

yet he claims the original turn out percentage (without the newly found votes) was also reasonable.

I think the possibility exists that previous vote totals and turn out percentages reported by Katherine Harris, I mean Kathy Nickolaus, were also fraudulent because there was an audit of her office. If she did it once, she probably did it a thousand times. So, Nate's analysis and opinion may be based on fraudulent historic numbers. Garbage in, garbage out.

[jimlup]

12. Not really, not if you read the complete article and understand what he is saying...

The vote count from this county are not consistent with voter turnout models when compared to the 2010 election. But the vote count is consistent after adding in the missing votes.

I certainly think there should be a detailed and through investigation but in the end I believe we will discover that is massive incompetence and not outright fraud. Just sayin' that's what the science says. We don't like it but it is the truth.

Yeah, the lady in this county should be fired and should never work as an election official for another election in her life. We tend to forget how grossly incompetent the republicans actually are. Seriously, these people are not competent. In this case it worked in their favor but maybe not because it drew the national spotlight on the republican operation in Wisconsin.

Never underestimate the Republican's ablity to shot themselves in the foot.

[Bjorn Against]

8. Nate Silver may be good with statistics, but he does not know enough to call this legit

If you read Silver's blog post in full you will see that even he acknowledges the initial vote totals were plausible, just because the new figures are a little more plausible from a statistical standpoint that does not make them the correct figures. The fact is that before the adjustment Waukesha County had the 12th highest rate of voter turnout of Wisconsin's 72 counties, after the adjustment it moved up to fifth place. In other words even before the adjustment was made Waukesha had a higher turnout rate than over 80% of Wisconsin's counties, I don't know how anyone can argue that is abnormally low even if the county has had higher turnouts in the past.

We really can't tell anything based on voter turnout rates, 12th in the state seems plausible as does 5th in the state. What does not seem plausible is that it was an honest mistake for a partisan county clerk who has a record of "mistakes" in her elections just happens to find 14,000 votes for her former employer on her personal PC which she has prevented auditors from reviewing despite warnings that the system was insecure.

Sorry, Nate Silver may be great with numbers but this is about a lot more than numbers and he really does not have the evidence to suggest this election was legit.

[fasttense]

9. Bjorn Against you are right.

I think Nate is moving into waters he has little expertise navigating.
It really comes down to the clerk's honesty and integrity. I really don't think Nate has the credentials for evaluating it.

And here is something I just saw posted here at DU:

"Nickolaus was one of two database experts for Assembly Republicans, spending 13 years becoming one of the state’s leading partisan experts on manipulating voter data. Nickolaus was in charge of developing a computer program that “averaged the performance of Republicans in all statewide races for the previous eight years in each ward and then averaged that information for each city, township, county and district,” making her claim of human error even more ridiculous."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x846154

So Nate Silver's final opinion about her maybe more accurate then he knows.

"If this was a conspiracy, it was one executed with an extraordinarily high degree of cunning and competence."

[Davis_X_Machina]

10. Hell no! DU never gives up the...

...ship narrative!