Mathematics Says Romney and Santorum Tied In Iowa

Hugh Pickens writes "Presidential candidate Mitt Romney received eight more votes than candidate Rick Santorum or 0.007 percent of the total number of caucus votes in the Iowa caucus, 'eking out a victory' on the path to winning the Republican nomination for president but experts in statistics say Romney and Santorum actually tied. 'From a statistical point of view, you can't say Romney won any more than you can say Santorum won,' says Charles Seife, a professor of journalism at New York University who studies election error. That's because in the Iowa caucus, where voters marked their choices with check marks or by writing the candidates' names in by hand, the error rate in counting the votes, which is also done by hand is orders of magnitude above the victory margin — around 0.5 to 1 percent. There are several sources of error that could easily render eight votes meaningless." (Read on for more.) Hugh Pickens continues: "First, ballots sometimes stick to the bottom of ballot boxes when the boxes are overturned, and fail to be counted. Next, election officials occasionally misread messy handwriting, or tally their totals incorrectly. Finally officials can misjudge who a voter intended to vote for: 'You'd be surprised how often people place a check mark in an ambiguous place,' says Seife. Whether it's statistically significant or not, any official declaration of victory can have big ramifications. With political pundits regarding Romney's 'victory' as evidence that he's in a good position to win the Republican nomination, the failure to recognize a statistical tie in Iowa could impact the future of the country. 'It's Romney, not Santorum, who can head to New Hampshire claiming the win,' writes Nick Rizzo. 'But if you just counted the exact same votes all over again, there's a good chance the result would be different.'"

Comments

Re:Higher Power

[Myopic]

Neither of the counts you mention counted all the votes cast. That is my problem. The court said, yes, if statute says a state doesn't have to count all the votes, then we, the Supreme Court will uphold that statute. I think they were wrong to do that. My reasoning is this:

1. the Constitution guarantees a republican form of government
2. republican governments are premised on voting for representatives
3. voting is meaningless if you don't count enough votes to make absolutely sure you know who got the most votes
4. therefore, it is not Constitutional to count fewer votes than needed to absolutely certify a winner

Yes, there were procedural issues. The statute said the count had to be done by a certain date. That's great! That's what the statute says in Florida. Well, unfortunately for Florida the Constitution is supreme over Florida statute. All the court had to do was say, hey Florida, did you count all (I mean, enough of) the votes? No? Well then you are out of compliance with the Constitution, and any statutes which say otherwise are invalid. Go get your shit together and count enough votes to make sure you know the winner.

In the case of Florida, if the margin between the candidates was (say) 1000 votes, then Florida needed to count all but 999 votes, because those remaining votes couldn't change the outcome. They didn't do that. Therefore they were in violation of the Constitution, in my opinion.