Washington Statistical Society Seminars: Bringing Statistical Principles to US Elections

[Wilms]

Washington Statistical Society Seminars

Bringing Statistical Principles to US Elections

March 6, 2008 (Thursday) / 12:30 - 2 p.m.

Sponsor:
Human Rights Statistics, WSS

Speakers:
Arlene Ash, Boston University School of Medicine
Mary Batcher, Ernst & Young, LLP

Discussant:
David Marker, Westat

Chair: Wendy Rotz, Ernst & Young, LLP


Abstract:

Members of The ASA Special Interest Group on Volunteerism and the ASA Scientific and Public Affairs Advisory Committee have been actively working on issues related to elections. Vote counts seem to be off in some measurable way in some precinct whenever there is an election. The most recent example is in the November 2006 results in the 13th district of Florida where the undervote, apparently due to poor design form, appears to have changed the election outcome.

These incidents provide interesting discussions for statisticians and survey methodologists but the more important result is that they undermine confidence in the electoral process.

Electronic vote tally miscounts arise for many reasons, including hardware malfunctions, unintentional programming errors, malicious tampering, or stray ballot marks that interfere with correct counting. Thus, Congress and several states are considering requiring audits to compare machine tabulations with hand counts of paper ballots in randomly chosen precincts.

This session will describe some of the analyses that have been used to indicate potential problems. It will also describe work that ASA members have been doing in conjunction with election activists to bring statistical principles to the procedures for sampling precincts for post-election audits of election results.


Attendance:

To attend seminars at BLS, you should be on the BLS Visitors List. To be sure you are on it, please let Stella Godbolt know you plan to attend this seminar:

Stella P. Godbolt
Bureau of Labor Statistics
Office of Survey Methods Research
202-691-6782
[e-mail]


Location:
Bureau of Labor Statistics, Conference Center
2 Massachusetts Avenue, NE

BLS is located at 2 Massachusetts Avenue, NE. Washington, DC.
The Visitor's Entrance is on 1st Street and is opposite Union Station.


Remember to bring a photo ID.

http://www.scs.gmu.edu/~wss/seminar.html