(Huge) delegate vote anomaly in Alabama verified

[parocks]

It says right on the ballot that votes for delegates that are different than their presidential choice is against party rules. More than likely people did not read or understand that and voted incorrectly. Eg:

Voted for Paul for President
Voted for Joe Smith for delegate (Romney delegate)

And that, by itself, is a problem.

 

[parocks]

Nope. Paul score >20% in only 27 precincts and even there he is stuck at 0.8.

I'm not interested in figuring out what your graph says.

This was taken care of 2 weeks ago.

It looked like major fraud at the time. I thought so. But then I looked at the numbers closely, and it turned out that a lot of people voted wrong.

People voted wrong.

But there were lots of types of wrong voting.

The order of the candidates on the ballot is a factor as well.

Gingrich was first, then Paul, Romney, Santorum.

Gingrich's first delegate race got the most votes, because that was the first delegate race on the ballot.

A lot of people voted wrong, a lot of people voted wrong in many different ways. A lot of people voted for some, but not all, of the delegates for the right candidate.

What can be seen where Paul does well is that the number of real Paul votes exceeds the lowest number of votes in his delegate races.

Much in the way that the "vote flipping" graphs tend to obscure and ignore what is actually happening, so does this chart.

 

[MarkKirk]

i see what parocks is saying i think, so for example, this guy votes for romney and then votes in each slot of delegates so, hes voting in gingrich's 1st slot of delegates and then pauls and then romneys and then santorums..Even though its against the rules to vote for other candidate's delegates other than your pick for pres, the machines are still counting the votes even tho they should be invalid?

 

[parocks]

i see what parocks is saying i think, so for example, this guy votes for romney and then votes in each slot of delegates so, hes voting in gingrich's 1st slot of delegates and then pauls and then romneys and then santorums..Even though its against the rules to vote for other candidate's delegates other than your pick for pres, the machines are still counting the votes even tho they should be invalid?

Right. That happened a lot. That shouldn't be. It's a clear problem and it should be fixed somehow.

 

[drummergirl]

Well, I suppose the elephant in the room which no one wants to mention is that if there was vote flipping from Paul to Romney in the overall and not in the delegate races, the election results make a lot more sense.

But it would be very difficult to show in Alabama because that ballot system is the most convoluted Rube Goldberg device ever conceived by humanity. The results of that election are about as meaningful as a series of "Ask the magic 8 ball" sessions.

 

[RonRules]

The elephant is also missing a baby.

If 10% of the people (for ALL candidates) screwed up their votes, they why did Romney's vote count match his delegate count so close. Same for the Grinch and Santo, but to a lesser extent.

 

[tbone717]

And that, by itself, is a problem.

Oh agreed. It is by far the most confusing ballot I have seen in a while. It took me a few minutes to figure it all out and I get this stuff.

 

[parocks]

a bunch of things happened.

1) some people voted in every delegate race. about 10%

2) some people started voting in every delegate race and then got bored or realized their mistake

3) some people started filling out Gingrich's delegates then stopped somewhere in the process.

4) some people filled out the delegates for the person they voted for and completed it.

5) some people filled out the delegates for the person they voted for and got tired of it and quit.

6) other people randomly picked delegate races to vote in, perhaps because they knew a person there.

7) 100 different other reasons why people voted in some races and not others.

There were a lot of people not voting the way the instructions said. Over 10%.

What you're looking at is a whole bunch of voters voting in a whole bunch of different ways.

I looked at this over 2 weeks ago. It looked like fraud, because we assumed that overvoting would disqualify the ballots, and that there was no way that there would be so many voter errors. It really look like they took away the Ron Paul votes.

But then I looked at where Ron Paul did well, and in those cases, his numbers were about the same as everybody elses, so not fraud.

 

[BamaAla]

When I was at the polls, there was a young lady beside me that voted for Paul and then started filling in Gingrich's delegates (immediately below the Presidential candidates.) She caught herself after a couple and asked the poll workers if she needed a new ballot. They instructed her to finish filling it out and see if the machine accepted it - which it did. That night I saw these discrepancies coming up and figured that problem probably repeated all over the state.

 

[drummergirl]

But then I looked at where Ron Paul did well, and in those cases, his numbers were about the same as everybody elses, so not fraud.

That was the extent of the analysis?!?

 

[drummergirl]

When I was at the polls, there was a young lady beside me that voted for Paul and then started filling in Gingrich's delegates (immediately below the Presidential candidates.) She caught herself after a couple and asked the poll workers if she needed a new ballot. They instructed her to finish filling it out and see if the machine accepted it - which it did. That night I saw these discrepancies coming up and figured that problem probably repeated all over the state.

That's called voter manipulation and it's illegal.

 

[parocks]

That was the extent of the analysis?!?

We saw the oddity, and determined the cause of the oddity.

Ron Paul's numbers were odd when he got low votes. When he got a normal number of votes, there ceased to be a problem.

The anomaly went away. I was able to determine the cause of the anomaly, and there was no reason to go further.

 

[Liberty1789]

We saw the oddity, and determined the cause of the oddity.

Ron Paul's numbers were odd when he got low votes. When he got a normal number of votes, there ceased to be a problem.

The anomaly went away. I was able to determine the cause of the anomaly, and there was no reason to go further.

You have provided only 2 cherrypicked precinct data with high Paul vote share to support your affirmation:

Tuscaloosa - U of A Student Rec
Paul
Range 29-24
Candidate Total 26 (Paul share = 18%)

Tuscaloosa - Green Acres Health
Paul
Range 5-4
Candidate Total 4 (Paul share = 22%)


Here are 2 to with high Paul vote share (>20%) to debunk your assertion.

Baldwin - Douglasville Comms
Paul
Range 19-16
Candidate Total 8 (Paul share = 22%)


Mobile - Toulminville Library #2
Paul
Range 5-4
Candidate Total 2 (Paul share = 22%)

1) some people voted in every delegate race. about 10%

As to the idea that 10% of voters just cast their votes for all delegates, (a) you have provided no evidence to support the number, in this thread or in the previous one that you kindly linked to, and (b) the math below shows it would have thrown Romney and Santorum delegate votes out of kilter, far away from their presidential votes. And that did not happen, so this assumption, albeit interesting, just does not fit the data and can be rejected.

In other words, a 10% idiocy rate was picked out of thin air to minimize Paul's discrepancy, at the cost of creating 2 big ones for Romney and Santorum, which makes the proposed model fit the presidential vote EVEN LESS.

 

[tbone717]

We saw the oddity, and determined the cause of the oddity.

Ron Paul's numbers were odd when he got low votes. When he got a normal number of votes, there ceased to be a problem.

The anomaly went away. I was able to determine the cause of the anomaly, and there was no reason to go further.

And if I recall, wasn't the only reason you voted for a delegate was because there were two people running for delegate from the same district and you were choosing between the two, otherwise the delegate in that district (if there was only one) automatically got your vote based on your presidential selection?

 

[kathy88]

I think the more important issue here is that the ballots that were WRONG were supposed to not go through the machine, therefore not valid. They allowed all the bad ballots through, obviously or we would not be even having this discussion. I'm pretty sure Paul supporters know to vote for delegates, it's in our blood.

 

[PaulConventionWV]

We saw the oddity, and determined the cause of the oddity.

Ron Paul's numbers were odd when he got low votes. When he got a normal number of votes, there ceased to be a problem.

The anomaly went away. I was able to determine the cause of the anomaly, and there was no reason to go further.

You didn't identify the cause. You identified the source.

 

[Liberty1789]

Voter fatigue

Many people could not be bothered to go thru the entire ballot, and in particular thru the delegate list. The data shows it spectacularly:

It is very instructive to see that Paul and Romney supporters were tiring at the same speed. If a vote-for-all-delegates idiot factor was at work, those idiotic votes would represent a much larger proportion of Paul's votes than Romney's and the fatigue would follow a different pattern: it is not the case and it is another debunk of that argument. Both candidates got their votes from equally commited people with identical endurance.

Gingrich's relative decline is much steeper, even though his list was half as long and the 1st on the ballot. As was said before, voters realized that they were voting for Gingrich even though they should not have, and just stopped in the middle. Another evidence of it is to compared the difference between the votes received by the 1st delegate vs the presidential votes (as a % of the latter):

Gingrich +16%
Romney +0%
Santorum -9%

Gingrich got a 16% artificial boost from his top position in the delegate listing. However, the electorate corrected some of the mistake quickly, as evidenced by the steepness of the decline of the blue line.

Being 1st-listed helps a great deal and Santorum feels the impact of being last, with his delegates only on the back side of the ballot. Romney was on both sides. Paul? Well, his delegates were 2nd-listed so you would expect that his number should be somewhere between Gingrich and Romney. Not quite:

Paul +180%!

And that makes no sense whatsoever.

 

[dsw]

Are you assuming that every voter either voted in all delegate races OR else they voted for all and only their candidate's delegate races? Because there's a third case: voters who didn't vote for any delegate races, not even the ones they were allowed to vote in. (And even this is still not the whole picture because of the ballot fatigue that you demonstrated so nicely.)

Then the question is what percentage of supporters for each candidate didn't vote in any delegate races. Santorum probably lost some from people who didn't turn the ballot over. Gingrich benefitted from being at the top of the ballot. Some presumably also just voted for their candidate and turned in the ballot without looking any further.

My back-of-an-envelope calculation, starting from the numbers in your spreadsheet, is that to make the numbers come out roughly right would mean roughly 10% of Gingrich supporters didn't vote for Gingrich delegates, and similarly for 25% of Romney supporters, and 30% of Santorum supporters. That could either be getting closer to an explanation of what really happened, or merely an example of overfitting. Or my math could be wrong. But in any case the model needs to be refined to include voters who didn't vote in any delegate races, whether out of confusion or apathy.

 

[Liberty1789]

Because there's a third case: voters who didn't vote for any delegate races, not even the ones they were allowed to vote in. (...) Then the question is what percentage of supporters for each candidate didn't vote in any delegate races.

That is an easy one.

Out of 1,864 precincts, number of occurences with presidential preference vote and no delegate vote:

[TABLE="class: grid, width: 150"]
[TR]
[TD]Gingrich
[/TD]
[TD]7
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Paul
[/TD]
[TD]0[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Romney
[/TD]
[TD]11
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Santorum
[/TD]
[TD]9
[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]



So no 3rd case.

 

[kathy88]

That is an easy one.

Out of 1,864 precincts, number of occurences with presidential preference vote and no delegate vote:

[TABLE="class: grid, width: 150"]
[TR]
[TD]Gingrich
[/TD]
[TD]7
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Paul
[/TD]
[TD]0[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Romney
[/TD]
[TD]11
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Santorum
[/TD]
[TD]9
[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]



So no 3rd case.

Ouch. This looks crazy.