{news} Re: vote results: how Green is your town?

[Richard Duffee]

This is increasingly interesting. If we are able, twice in a row, to spot
figures that are probably incorrect simply by having done the simple--but
repeated--arithmetic needed to get percentages, why isn't SOTS doing this
as a check on their own figures?

Do they LIKE putting out erroneous figures only to have other people correct
them? Fat chance. So do they think that people like us can't spot such
errors? More likely. So why do they think that? My guess is because the
newspapers don't ask any questions SOTS thinks no one else will.

So shouldn't we be complaining to the newspapers as well as to SOTS? They're
supposed to have the past figures at their fingertips: they've got services
that keep all that information on file for use by reporters when writing
their stories. The reporters are supposed to be asking, "Why should Monroe
be so different from its neighbors?" and "What's the big difference between
Cornwall in previous elections and this one?"

They're NOT asking those questions--certainly not if they're about US.
They're satisfied to just ask about the Republicans and Democrats. But their
failure to ask anything about us involves them in failing to ask about the
Democrats too: they missed the fact that the Himes figures under the Working
Families tab were the same as the figures under the Democrat tab. That's
pretty sloppy.

So the papers' unambitious conduct in wanting no more than that
readers should know who their new office-holders are implies that the
papers may be quite willing to watch passively while a phoney election is
conducted under their noses. They're not going to raise the issue unless
someone else does.

So it looks like we have yet another role for ourselves. We should look up
each paper's report on the elections and write letters to the editors
congratulating papers that got the figures right and criticizing those
that them wrong. But are the papers going to publish such analyses if we
submit them? I guess that the way to do this is to find a paper that did it
right and write them a congratulatory letter that criticizes papers that did
it wrong. Then the letter is in print and so more likely to be answered.

Then our job is to pressure the embarrassed papers into reporting us more
accurately and openly while rewarding the papers that report us better.
Richard

On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 4:44 PM, David Bedell <dbedellgreen at hotmail.com>wrote:

> Connecticut Green Party - Part of the GPUS
> http://www.ctgreens.org/ - http://www.greenpartyus.org/
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> I got the results from the Cromwell Registrar of Voters (see below).  As
> suspected, results reported by the Secretary of the State were incorrect.
> Steve Fournier got 146 votes, not 11, which is 2.11%, not 0.16%.  And the
> Working Families Party got 153 votes which were either not reported, or
> were
> reported as Democratic votes.
>
> I've reported this to the SOTS.  Let's see if they publish corrected,
> certified results.
>
> David Bedell
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Amenta, Mary" <mamenta at cromwellct.com>
> To: "David Bedell" <dbedellgreen at hotmail.com>
> Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 10:05 AM
> Subject: RE: Congressional election results
>
>
> sorry for the delay
>
> fournier-  146
>
> larson-
>
> working families-  153
>
> unknown-  92
>
> mary amenta, r.o.v
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Bedell [mailto:dbedellgreen at hotmail.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 2:05 PM
> To: Amenta, Mary; Duren, Linda
> Subject: Congressional election results
>
>
> Dear Cromwell registrars:
>
> I saw  published election results that John Larson beat Joe Visconti
> 4,646-2,130 in Cromwell.  Can you tell me, in addition, how many votes were
> cast for Steve Fournier (Green), and how many of Larson's votes were cast
> on
> the Working Families Party line?  I am trying to assess the impact of
> third-party voting in CT.
>
> Thank you for your assistance.
>
>
> David Bedell
>
>
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