Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don't (38 page)

30
See Lott and Kenny, “Did Women’s Suffrage Change the Size and Scope of Government?” For an interesting discussion on literacy test voting requirements in North and South America, see Stanley Engerman and Kenneth Sokoloff, “The Evolution of Suffrage Institutions in the New World,” National Bureau of Economic Research working paper 8512.

31
Literacy tests became less effective over time, reducing turnout by only 1 percentage point by 1960. See John Filer, Lawrence Kenny, and Rebecca Morton, “Voting Laws, Education Policies, and Minority Turnout,”
Journal of Law and Economics
, October 1991, 383.

32
Scott Farmelant, “Dead Men Can Vote: Vote Fraud is Alive and Well in Philadelphia,”
Philadelphia City Paper
, October 12-19, 1995.

33
Ibid., and Mark Fazlollah, “Workers Apparently Broke Residency Rules,”
Philadelphia Inquirer
, May 17, 1995.

34
Jingle Davis, “Even death can’t stop some voters,”
Atlanta Journal and Constitution
, November 6, 2000.

35
Jim Boulet Jr., “Commission Creation,”
National Review
, February 26, 2002.

36
Deborah M. Phillips, Testimony on Election Issues, Senate Rules and Administration, March 14, 2001.

37
Tim Collie, “Florida’s Flawed Election Process,”
Sun-Sentinel
(Fort Lauderdale, Florida), December 10, 2000.

38
John Fund,
Stealing Elections
(San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2004), 62-64. Nearly a third of jurisdictions in Missouri have more registered voters than people. See Bill Lambrecht and Virginia Young, “U.S. Sues Missouri over Voter Lists,”
St. Louis Post Dispatch
, November 23, 2005. See also Jeremy Hagen, “Photo IDs protect one-person, one-vote ideal,”
Springfield News-Leader
(Missouri), April 5, 2006, and “Inflated voter rolls complicate election turnout percentages,”
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
, October 4, 2005.

39
John Fund interviewed on the Dennis Prager radio show on November 8, 2006, first hour (
http://boss.streamos.com/download/Townhall/audio/mp3/7d23b263-65b5-4c19-9ac8-67ebd7cdc3f6.mp3?siteid=PodCast
).

40
Editorial, “Voter Suppression in Missouri,”
New York Times
, August 10, 2006.

41
Chuck McCutcheon, “Absentee Voting Fosters Trickery, Trend’s Foes Say,”
Times-Picayune
, October 24, 2006.

42
Fund,
Stealing Elections
, 44.

43
John Fund, “Absent Without Leave,”
OpinionJournal.com
, October 30, 2006 (
http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110009167
).

44
Rick Montgomery, “Questions abound in voter push,”
Kansas City Star
, October 12, 2006, and Jeff Douglas, “Voter Registration Fraud Alleged in St. Louis,”
Kansas City Star
, October 11, 2006.

45
Both these measures were supported by the bipartisan Carter-Baker Commission on election reform. Such rules are also supported by an overwhelming majority of Americans. A survey by Rasmussen Research indicated that 82 percent of all Americans, including 75 percent of Democrats, agree with the statement that “people should be required to show a driver’s license or some other form of photo ID before they are allowed to vote.” See Fund,
Stealing Elections
, 5.

46
Deroy Murdock, “Cleaning up America’s Election System,” Scripps Howard News Service, September 28, 2006.

47
David Lieb, “Missouri Voter ID Law Latest in National Test Cases,” Associated Press, August 20, 2006 (
http://www.belleville.com/mld/belleville/news/state/15320528.htm
) and “Supreme Court Allows Arizona Voter ID Law,” Reuters News Wire, October 20, 2006 (
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/10/20/AR2006102001203.html
).

48
“Mexican Senate approves mail-in absentee ballots for Mexicans living abroad,” Associated Press, April 28, 2005 (
http://www.azcentral.com/specials/special03/articles/0428mexicovote-ON.html
). Absentee ballots are the source of fraud in many different countries. The United Kingdom also faced claims of widespread vote fraud from “postal votes” during the 2005 parliamentary election. See Zoe Hughes, “Reform call after postal votes row,”
The Journal
(Newcastle, UK), May 21, 2005.

49
Curiously, however, the election reforms resulted in only a trivial increase in voting rates for Mexican congressional elections. Comparing the four congressional elections prior to the reforms with the four afterward produces only a one percent increase, from 56 to 57 percent. For the turnout data up through the 2003 elections see Joseph L Klesner., “The Not-So-New Electoral Landscape in Mexico,” Working Paper, Department of Political Science, Kenyon College, September 15-16, 2003.

50
John R. Lott, Jr., “Evidence of Voter Fraud and the Impact that Regulations to Reduce Fraud Have on Voter Participation Rates,” SUNY Binghamton Working Paper, July 29, 2006.

51
Provisional ballots allow people to vote even if their names do not appear on voter rolls, while no excuse absentee ballots allow any registered voter to receive an absentee ballot without having to provide a reason for needing one.

52
John R. Lott, Jr., “Evidence of Voter Fraud and the Impact that Regulations to Reduce Frand have on Voter Participation Rates,” SUNY Binghamton Working Paper, July 29, 2006.

53
“Vote Fraud, Intimidation, and Suppression in the 2004 Presidential Election,” American Center for Voting Rights Legislative Fund, Washington, D.C., August 2, 2005. If there is another report, I haven’t been able to find it.

54
John R. Lott, Jr., “Evidence of Voter Fraud.”

55
Since the study follows states both before and after they either adopt or stop the practice, the result can’t simply be attributed to low voter participation in states adopting the rule.

56
Much of this discussion is based on John R. Lott, Jr., “Non-voted Ballots, The Cost of Voting, and Race,”
Public Choice
, forthcoming.

57
“
Poll: Voter Interest Highest in Decade
,” Associated Press, October 11, 2006 (
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/10/11/motivated.voters.ap/index.html
). Nor are these concerns new. Nationally, as many as 18 percent of African Americans and 20 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds claim they don’t believe their votes are counted accurately. See Rad Sallee, “Voters lose some faith in election accuracy,”
Houston Chronicle
, July 9, 2004.

58
Kimball Brace, “69 Million Voters will use Optical Scan Ballots in 2006,” Election Data Services, February 6, 2006 (
http://www.electiondataservices.com/EDSInc_VEStudy2006.pdf#search=%22PUnch%20card%20machines%20million%20voters%22
), and US Census Bureau, “Voting and Registration in the Election of November 2000,” US Census Bureau, February 2002 (
http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/p20-542.pdf
).

59
These data are for presidential elections from 1988 to 2000. See “Residual Votes Attributable to Technology,” Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, March 30, 2001.

60
John R. Lott, Jr., “Non-voted Ballots.”

61
This pattern has held true for decades. Even an expert hired by the ACLU, Professor Herb Asher at Ohio State University, found that punch card machines overall had much lower rates of non-voted ballots than other machines during the 1978 election. After this became clear, the ACLU declined to call on Asher to testify in a voter fraud court case.

62
Susan King Roth, “Human Factors Research on Voting Machines and Ballot Design: An Exploratory Study,” Virginia Commonwealth University working paper, undated. See also Bederson, Benjamin B. Bongshin Lee, Robert M. Sherman, Paul S. Herrnson, and Richard G. Niemi, “Electronic Voting System Usability Issues,” University of Maryland working paper (
ftp://ftp.cs.umd.edu/pub/hcil/Reports-Abstracts-Bibliography/2002-23html/2002-23.html
).

63
Ibid. Bradley Smith, then chairman of the Federal Election Commission, suggested to me in a telephone interview that older people’s eyes may have a harder time focusing on computer screens, especially for longer periods of time.

64
And even then, the race of voters only explains 0.4 percent to 3 percent of the variation in non-voted ballot rates, itself an already small number.

65
This compares voters in households making under $15,000 annually with those in households with income of over $500,000.

66
John R. Lott, Jr., “Hacker Hysteria,”
Washington Times
, May 11, 2004.

67
Michael I. Shamos, Testimony before the Maryland General Assembly House Ways & Means Committee, December 7, 2004 (
http://euro.ecom.cmu.edu/people/faculty/mshamos/WaysMeansTestimony.htm
). Shamos went so far as to wager a bet at 2 to 1 odds that such tampering could not occur (
http://www.votingmachinesprocon.org/tamperingchallenge.pdf
).

68
Michael I. Shamos, Testimony before the Environment, Technology, and Standards Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Science, June 24, 2004 (
http://euro.ecom.cmu.edu/people/faculty/mshamos/HouseScience.htm
).

69
Zev Chafets, “Florida Got Bad Rap in Vote Mess,”
New York Daily News
, June 10, 2001.

70
By comparison, it took an additional 125 African Americans of all party affiliations in the average precinct to generate one spoiled vote. All these results control for a wide range of factors that influence spoiled-ballot rates, including education, gender, income, age, number of absentee votes, voting-machine type, ballot type, and whether votes are counted at the precinct or centrally. In other words, it is the isolated fact of being a Republican that makes an African American vastly more likely to have his or her ballot declared as not showing a vote. John R. Lott, Jr., “Non-Voted Ballots and Discrimination in Florida,”
Journal of Legal Studies
, vol. 32, no. 1, January 2003: 181-220.

71
Ibid.

72
For example, listing the candidates’ names in a straight line produces fewer problems than printing them on different pages or in separate columns.

73
The discussion in this section is based upon John R. Lott, Jr., “Documenting Unusual Declines in Republican Voting Rates in Florida’s Western Panhandle Counties in 2000,”
Public Choice
, vol. 123, June 2005: 349-361.

74
Reagan Coast-To-Coast,
Time
, Nov. 17, 1980.

75
A Field Institute survey indicated that 10 percent of Democratic voters blamed the media projections for their failure to vote. U.S. Representative Billy Tauzin, House Energy and Commerce Committee Hearing on Election Night 2000, February 14, 2001.

76
There was even one congressional race that spanned the two time zones, so half the district still had polls open when the Senate and presidential elections
were called for the Democrats. After the early call, turnout dropped by several percentage points in the precincts that remained open.

77
Lott, “Documenting Unusual Declines,” 349-361.

78
Ibid.

79
Ibid.

80
Throughout election day, Florida counties report to the State Secretary of State on the voter turnout rate in their counties. It was only during the last part of the day that the turnout fell in the Western Panhandle counties relative to the rest of the state.

81
Lott, “Documenting Unusual Declines,” 349-361.

82
John Stossel and Bill Ritter, “Where the Boys are,” ABC News, March 16, 2001; Robert J. Vickers, “Tinsel Town’s Glitter Factor a Challege for Delegates,”
Plain Dealer
, August 18, 2000; Jim Hopkins, “More Women Flex Muscles in Politics,”
USA Today
, September 16, 2003; “Interview with Bill Maher,” CNN Larry King Live, January 20, 2004; Editorial, “The Angry Left,”
Calgary Herald
, January 8, 2004; and
http://www.newsmeat.com/billionaire_political_donations/
.

83
Ryan S. King, “A Decade of Reform: Felony Disenfranchisement Policy in the United States,” The Sentencing Project, October 2006 (
http://www.sentencingproject.org/pdfs/FVR_Decade_Reform.pdf
).

84
Michelle Chen, “Felon Voting Rights Conflict Hits Federal Courts,”
The New Standard
, June 24, 2005.

85
John R. Lott, Jr. and James K. Glassman, “The Felon Vote,”
New York Post
, March 1, 2005.

86
Dick Gordon, “Voting Rights for Felons.” April 7, 2004.

87
Interview with the Assistant for Clemency for the Governor of Virginia for 1994 and 1995 (Voting Rights for Felons, National Public Radio’s
The Connection
, April 7, 2004).

88
Ibid.

89
The implications for Senate races after the mid-1990s are based upon extrapolating their results. See Jeff Mana, Christopher Uggen, and Marcus Britton, “The Truly Disfranchised: Felon Voting Rights and American Politics,” University of Minnesota working paper, January 3, 2001 (
http://www.northwestern.edu/ipr/publications/papers/manza.pdf
).

90
Survey conducted in Washington State by Venture Data L.L.C. on May 22-23, 2005 for Public Opinion Strategies.

91
While the effect isn’t statistically significant for Hispanics, non-felon Hispanics fall between “independent” and “a few more Democrats than
Republicans,” while felon Hispanics fall between “a few more Democrats than Republicans” and “mostly Democrats.”

92
Brian Faler, “Election Turnout in 2004 Was Highest Since 1968,”
Washington Post
, January 15, 2005.