Does A Low Voter Turnout in Special Elections Favor Republicans?

Common wisdom has said yes. So I was interested to see an analysis by Matt Glazer on Burnt Orange Report that gave facts that belied this so-called truth.

And I was not convinced.

Yes, I was also interested in the HD 97 results that had the same two opponents with opposite results, favoring the Democrat in the low voter turnout special election, as opposed to favoring the Republican in a general election. But thanks to Elbridge Gerry the patron saint of district boundary manipulation, districts vary in their affinities to one party or another.

So what I decided to do was to look at nearly every state house or senate special election or special election runoff held since 2000 and look for central tendencies. Nearly every special election because some of these are held in lopsided districts where no member of the minority party would bother running.

And by my count, there are about 13 special election races between then and now, with 7 of them, or just over half, classified as low turnout. Low voter turnout, by my definition, is any election where total voter participation is 12% or less.

And of these 7 races, 5 were won by Republicans and 2 were won by Democrats.

If voter turnout is moderate (20-30%) or high to very high (35% and greater) it doesn’t seem to matter. 3 races with moderate turnout favored Democrats 2 to 1, and 3 races with high turnout favored Republicans 2 to 1.

It’s only the low voter turnout elections that seem to be anomalously tilted toward Republicans.

Glazer also cited the extremely low turnout in HD 29, pointing out that “House District 29 hasn't elected a Democrat since 2000” which is absolutely true. However, HD 29 is a consistent R:D 60:40 district, even when a dead woman is the R. However, in 2006, Democrat Anthony DiNovo could only scrape together 22.5% of the vote in a district that by all rights should have delivered 40% of its votes to him.

So I am still pessimistic about Democratic chances in low turnout special elections.

Which is why it is more important than ever that Texas Democrats should band together in SD 17 and help deliver the upcoming special election to Chris Bell.

The trouble is, and has been pointed out here, that, in Fort Bend County at least, there is no information on where a voter is to go and vote in next month’s runoff election. And it’s obvious that this is some basic information that a phone banker or a block walker would want to have to better inform the voters.

It’s one thing to tell voters to go and vote. It’s yet another that they know where to go when it’s time.

Now, in reaction to my posting from yesterday, I was contacted by a reader who went ahead and phoned the Fort Bend County elections office and got some information. That yes, they had settled on a list of voting locations, and no they would not be making that list public anytime soon. The voting locations, it turns out, need to be approved by the County Commissioners, and they only meet on Tuesdays.

And, oops, Tuesday was yesterday.

Oh, wait, they don’t meet on the third Tuesday of any given month.

And, oops, that was the Tuesday of last week.

So the earliest we get an idea of the special election voting locations is Tuesday December 2nd.

What better way to keep the vote totals low than to have a special election 9 days before Christmas, and withhold the voting locations until a less than a week before early voting starts?

This is your Republican-dominated county government, playing those 5 to 2 odds, 24/7.

Voting Locations in Fort Bend County: A Shell Game

A couple of days ago I mentioned in passing that it looked like the Fort Bend County elections office had unceremoniously changed the polling locations of precinct 2123.

It’s a little worse.

The polling locations of several precincts have been changed without word or warning. Thousands of voters could be left standing in front of a dark building on Election Day.

I view this as highly suspicious as I mentioned previously. This is a classic bait and switch voter suppression tactic.

And I wouldn’t be too concerned, but it looks like the county targeted two very Democratic precincts to do their nasty business. 2123 as previously reported, and also Precinct 1114, a precinct centered on the liberal leaning Teal Run development.
And I do mean liberal.

In 2006, voters in Teal Run, Precinct 1114 cast 760 straight Democratic votes (92% of all straight ticket votes cast in the precinct). In 2006 voters in Teal Run, Precinct 1114 cast 1016 votes for Barbara Ann Radnofsky who ran for US Senate against Kay Bailey Hutchison. That’s 83% of senate votes cast. Barbara Ann mustered just 36% of the vote statewide.

Precinct 2123, tucked in the far eastern corner of Fort Bend County, is even more impressively Democratic, percentage-wise anyway.

In 2006, voters in Precinct 2123 cast 314 straight Democratic votes (95% of all straight ticket votes cast in the precinct). In 2006 voters in Precinct 2123 cast 419 votes for Barbara Ann Radnofsky who ran for US Senate against Kay Bailey Hutchison. That’s 87% of senate votes cast.

But now, after voting in the same location for years, voters in 1114 and 2123 must find their way to new polling locations

Precinct 1114’s old location at Burton Elementary School is changed to Fort Bend County MUD 23, the M.R. Massey Admin B building.

Precinct 2123 old location at Meadowcreek Clubhouse is changed to Quail Valley Elementary School.

The democratic process, it seems, in Fort Bend County anyway, has become some sort of bizarre shell game with the pea being a place to cast your vote.

Quite frankly, the voting process in Iraq, blue thumbs and all, makes this democratic system look more like that of a banana republic’s.

Machiavelli would be pleased.

NASA’s Political Suppression of Science Laid at the Feet of . . .

Today the Associated Press is reporting that NASA’s Office of the Inspector General has issued its final report on the suppression of scientific evidence regarding global warming. In its brief statement the AP says that NASA had inappropriately interfered with the dissemination of NASA studies of global warming, and that it was political in nature.

Oh my. What a surprise.

Actually there is more to it. Examination of the Inspector General’s report, found here, reveals that, apparently, there were political appointees in NASA’s Office of Public Affairs, headquartered in Washington, D.C. who were responsible for the suppression of the works of several NASA scientists, but notably, the office moved to prevent Dr. James E. Hanson, a NASA global warming investigator, from participating in a radio interview in December 2005.

The report reveals that “NASA’s decision was based, in part, on concern that Dr. Hansen would not limit his responses to scientific information but would instead entertain a discussion on policy issues.”

That is, the press office decided that Dr. Hansen would not limit his discussion to scientific fact, but would extend toward the forbidden turf of public policy. Bush knows that only political hacks can synthesize all of this science into a cogent public policy. Heaven forbid that a scientist would want to draw a conclusion based on the data.

But now comes the question that comes when the government is caught with its censorship markers in inappropriate areas: how high did it go? Who gave the order?

Well, according to the OIG, it was a lowly junior grade political appointee, acting alone, but in general concert with the overall management policy of this kind of information.

“NASA maintains that the decision to deny media access to Dr. Hansen was unilaterally made by a junior Schedule C political appointee in the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs. The evidence, however, reflects that this appointee acted in accord with the overall management of climate change information at that time within the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs.”

Who sets the tone then? Who made sure that the Office of Public Affairs wielded a heavy mallet whenever information supporting the notion of global warming poked its head out of the ground?

Well, they looked and they looked but they just couldn’t find the connection between NASA’s information suppressing press office and anywhere else. They laid blame on a seeming contradictory structure at the headquarters, wherein political appointees were placed in charge of “the seemingly contradictory position of ensuring the “widest practicable” dissemination of NASA research results that were arguably inconsistent with the Administration’s policies, such as the ‘Vision for Space Exploration.’”

In other words, they placed the foxes in charge of the hen house.

And surprise, surprise, senior management at NASA’s Office of Public Affairs were completely in the dark:

“…the alleged improper political interference with dissemination of climate science research and dysfunction between the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs and a group of Agency scientists had apparently occurred unbeknownst to senior NASA leadership over a sustained period of time.”

This is the absolutely oldest game in the history of science, and here we have top leaders in the government’s premier scientific endeavor claiming absolute ignorance that such a thing has occurred – or for that matter could occur.

It boggles the mind, and I’ll bet that if Galileo Galileii, Nicholas Copernicus, Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin could hear the plaintive whines of NASA senior management, they would be spinning in their graves.

Journalism 101: RG Ratcliffe Must Have Taken It In Summer School

Being in the education business in Texas, I know that when you take a course in summer school, it’s because you didn’t do very well when you took it during the regular school year. I’ve never taken a course in Journalism. I do know some things about it though, and in reading RG Ratcliffe’s piece about Rick Noriega and his blogger supporters in the San Antonio Express-News earlier today, I find it difficult to believe that someone pays him to write. So much so that I am guessing that it’s not so much about the writing it’s about the misdirection.

The timing and placement of the piece is precious indeed. Ratcliffe put the piece in the city newspaper in Mikal Watts’ new home town, and not in the Houston Chronicle, and he did it this weekend when he knew that Rick Noriega was on duty with the Texas National Guard and cannot be reached.

So let’s look at a couple of journalistic aspects of RG’s article.

First, RG violated Rule Number One: Get Name Right. The first W in WWWWW and H is Who. I’ve looked and can’t find anywhere a group that calls itself the “Texas Broadcasters’ Association”, a group whose convention RG says Noriega visited last month. I DID find the “Texas Association of Broadcasters”. Maybe that’s the group RG was writing about.

If that sounds like nit-picking, then how about this: RG got it wrong about something I know about. If that’s the case, can he not get it wrong in something I DON’T know about?

Then there’s this thing about objectivity. I was telling a friend earlier today that there definitely is a difference between bloggers and mainstream media. The difference being that bloggers, especially political bloggers, are very much in the fray. We claw and scratch along with everyone else. The mainstream media is, or is supposed to be, very much above the fray. Objectively (or at least trying to) reporting the who, what, when, where, why, and how of an event. But speaking as one who has done both, I find the latter to be boring, and assume RG just needs to spice his life up from time to time by raking up a little muck.

So in that sense, RG Ratcliffe is a blogger in the truest sense of the word. And while I believe that is a badge of honor, I am sure that RG looks down his nose at bloggers and the blogosphere. But he is truly one of us.

And saving the best for last, another thing that I do that is not proper journalism (the big story goes up front), RG with his quotation of Rick’s speech at the Texas Association of Broadcasters, and his later quotation from a Noriega campaign spokesman intimates that Noriega is very much against his blogger supporters. I’ll just bet that he did say something about Rightwing talk shows and Lefty bloggers and I say that because it sounds like something Rick would say. He’s always coming up with thoughts that are out of the box. But I have talked to Rick, saw him last weekend in fact. And one thing I can say for definite sure is that there is no way Rick Noriega is criticizing his blogger supporters as RG suggests in his devious little segue into the fact that no pro-Watts blogger is to be found on the internet. Here are the offending paragraphs:

Noriega spokesman James Aldrete said Noriega was not criticizing all politically active blogs, just those that engage in the "politics of division." Aldrete said Noriega believes talk radio and some bloggers would rather keep the country divided than find solutions to problems.

Even if that is the case, the blogs right now are on Noriega's side. No pro-Watts blogs could be found on the Internet other than his own campaign Web site. And only a few blog commentators have been defending Watts.

Watts spokeswoman Kim Devlin said Watts is not concerned about the imbalance in blog coverage.

See what I mean? Wasn’t that clever? Apparently there is a little bit of rat in Ratcliffe.

This isn’t journalism. It’s political hackery. Clearly Ratcliffe is trying to drive a wedge between Noriega and his netroots supporters. He’s in the fray. And the word I get that the guy who is actually behind RG’s article, the guy who put him up to, it is none other than Watts’ own handler, Jason Stanford. A double edged sword, damage control if you will, to take the heat away from the Chronicle articles on Watts’ memo on being a major campaign contributor to state appeals court justices as well as a way to negate Noriega’s lopsided support among the netroots.

Well, that didn’t work. Bloggers still like Rick and his story.

And now that you can see through this political sleight of hand as well, why not make your disgust known and at the same time support Rick? Go to ActBlue. Drop a few dead presidents off there. My all-time favorite dead president is Ulysses S. Grant. But don’t you think that Benjamin Franklin would have made a great president, too?