Theft of the YFP

You've heard the rumors, now hear the truth: the matter is still under investigation, but some preliminary details are available here.

Here We Go Again

When you thought that it was over, that the whole e-voting/Democratic counties voting overwhelmingly for Bush thing was over, researchers at UC-Berkeley come up with a study that uses regression techniques to show that Bush got at least 130,000 votes that he shouldn't have that can only be attributable to the use of e-voting. The summary of their findings is:

Because many factors impact voting results, statistical tools are necessary to see the effect of touch-screen voting. Multipleregression analysis is a statistical technique widely used in the social and physical sciences to distinguish the individual effects of many variables.
This multiple-regression analysis takes account of the following variables by county:

- number of voters - median income - Hispanic population - change in voter turnout between 2000 and 2004 - support for President Bush in 2000 election - support for Dole in 1996 election

When one controls for these factors, the association between electronic voting and increased support for President Bush is impossible to overlook. The data show with 99.0% certainty that a county’s use of electronic voting is associated with a disproportionate increase in votes for President Bush.

Now, this is a slightly different argument from before. It is no longer claimed that Democratic counties disproportionately voted for Bush. Rather, it is that Bush mysteriously increased his voter total from 2000 in counties that had e-voting machines.

Yeah yeah, that's great. Except that they do not look at one very important variable that they cannot measure in any way other than just the number of votes he was given: Bush's effectiveness. I don't understand the allure of using statistical techniques to look at elections. Statistical techniques require the fact that the variables you measure are the ONLY variables out there. There could be various lurking variables that the researchers either fail to measure, or cannot even measure since they are not quantifiable.

For example, the study concludes that there was less than a 0.1% chance that the results could have been due to randomness. But no one claimed that they are due to randomness! Bush actually increasing his popularity in those counties is a non-random event that would easily explain these results. If we could do this kind of analysis and state with conlcusion that you can in fact measure future performance based on past results, then why even conduct elections? Suppose Goldwater got trounced in some state in 1964 and that even beyond the margin of error (at say 99.9% confidence), we can determine that Nixon would have lost the same state again, why even hold the election in that state? The fact that we don't do that, seems to indicate to me that using statistical techniques as predictive devices for elections is a fruitless exercise.

I don't have time to do the analysis. But, I wonder if their model and technique would be able to predict the results for the same counties in 2000 or 1996 based on say, the 1996, 1992, and 1988 electoral results. I'm not so sure.

Update:Keiran Healey at Crooked Timber performed some statistical analysis and showed that the effects are all concentrated in Broward and Palm Beach Counties. Meaning, that without them, there is no statistically significant correlation between electronic voting and Bush's gains in 2004. Andrew Gelman of the Columbia Statistics Department also arrives at the same conclusion. He writes:

Two counties explain all the difference. I don't know what was going on in these counties, what else was on the ballot, etc., but an obvious alternative explanation is that, for various reasons, 3% more people in those counties preferred Bush in 2004, compared to 2000. As can be seen in the graphs above for 2000, 1996, and 1992, such a swing would be unusual (at least compared to recent history), but that doesn't mean it couldn't happen!

Healey writes:

In other words, if there is cheating it’s not centralized cheating where all the e-voting machines mess up in the same way. If you believe that the machines were rigged, focus on the ones in Palm Beach and Broward county. But it seems more likely that these results show the Republican Party Machine was really, really well-organized in Palm Beach and Broward, and they were able to mobilize their vote better than the Democrats. The general swing toward Bush in Florida seems consistent with this story.

I believe that Broward and Palm Beach are among the counties where he did the worst in 2000 (and they are also the biggest), while in counties that used Optiscan, Bush already did really well in 2000 (see the list of counties with Optiscan technology here) (he won Brevard, Duval, and Seminole, which are three of the five largest counties using Optiscan). So, he didn't have as much room for growth in Optiscan counties (also, the populations of the various counties that used Optiscan are way smaller than the ones that used e-Voting. The five largest counties in Florida all used e-Voting. So, it would make sense that he would be able to increase his support in areas where he doesn't already have very much support. Again, voting processes are very nonlinear. There are things like edge effects (if a candidate has maxed out his possible support in a particular area, weird things might happen). There are weird feedback mechanisms as a result of the dynamical nature of information spread. Also, read the comments for the Crooked Timber post. Some commenters are suggesting that the independent variables used by Hout, et al. have collinearity effects (since support for Bush and support for Bush squared have some significant collinearity effects... you have to read the actual paper by Hout, et al. to understand what I'm referring to).

The Myth of Ignored Christian Values
Many people have recently commented (on TV and elsewhere) that many people in this country vote based on religion, but do not truly understand or vote based on the full gospel of Jesus. For example, they say that abortion and the sanctity of marriage are not the only Christian values preached by Christ. Christ also spoke about the need to give to charity and care for the poor and to bring peace to the world. Before the election, a liberal Catholic group even released a voter guide and took out a newspaper ad in battleground states with lots of Catholics to make this point.

Now, I am not going to argue with them on a theological basis, mostly because I am not qualified. I will even grant them the theological aspect of their argument in its entirety. But I believe that they are shifting the dialogue away from even what they claim Christ said and to leftist ideals, a conclusion that I believe is at the heart of the problem with modern liberalism.

Certainly, Christ did indeed speak about the need to give to charity and take care of the poor. But my understanding is that Christ made this a personal responsibility that each and every one of us ought to take on. Nobody on the Right (with the exception of the Objectivists (who, incidentally endorsed John Kerry) nor the evangelicals in the Red States, believe that contributing to charity and helping the poor are bad things. In fact, there is evidence that the Red States are much better about giving to charity than the Blue States. The point is that most people on the Right simply believe that the government ought not be in the business of forcing people to do so or redistributing our wealth for us, that rather, we can do it on our own, thank you very much. Just because someone opposes government imposed charity (via taxation and then income redistribution via welfare and medicaid) does not mean that he sits in his office in a Monty Burns kind of way, rubbing the palms of his hands together and saying "Excellent" at every new opportunity to make the poor suffer.

But then, the question can be turned, "well, if you believe that helping the poor is a personal choice, why not abortion as well." I think that these are entirely different issues. One has to do with forcing someone to engage in "virtue". The other has to do with keeping someone from denying others the ability for virtue (in the case of abortion) or fundamentally changing our understanding of natural law (in the case of gay marriage). I am pro-choice and believe in civil unions (and possibly gay marriage) but it seems to me that pro-lifers genuinely do believe that abortion is murder. So, stopping someone from committing murder is different from forcing someone to give to charity. A more apt analogy to abortion would be stopping someone from stealing from the poor. I am certain that most conservatives would oppose stealing from the poor.

This is also entirely leaving aside the question of whether the particular governmental policies actually achieve their intended goals. Most conservatives would argue that no, they do not, and that they actually cause more harm than good. Liberals strongly disagree. But these are legitimate policy differences not depraved indifference by the Right of the needs of the poor. While good intentions are great, if the end-result ends up being worse than doing nothing, then who needs those good intentions in the first place?

There is also the question: "Can one truly be virtuous if he is forced at gun-point to do good deeds? Doesn't virtue require affirmative intentionality?" I think that this is one of the foundations of libertarian thought. I do not know the answer to this question entirely, but I have a number of thoughts. First, I think that intentionality is a significant aspect of virtue. And indeed, one cannot truly be virtuous if the actions are not truly willed without severe coercion. Having said that, however, there are limitations to how far we can take this. The obvious point is that if we take this to its most obvious conclusion, then the guy who lives above a house of ill-repute and resists the harlots and crack dealers on his corner is the most virtuous out there. In fact, the truly virtuous ought choose to live there. Certainly, this is nonsense. But I think that in terms of positive actions, this is definitely true. What I mean here is the notion that if to be virtuous requires taking a positive action (like giving to charity), then forcing someone to do the positive action would significantly reduce the virtue of the action. If, however, virtue required a negative action (resisting the temptation to cheat on one's wife, for example), then one can still be quite virtuous if the point of the gun is used to remove those temptations to sin from the environment. I am not sure exactly where the balance lies, but I think that my description is at least a good first-order approximation of reality. I think that this is the perspective many who are social conservatives (but economic libertarians) come from.

So, I think that "Jesus called for charity too" argument is really flawed.

Low On Economics
The letter to the YFP Diana posted below by Roger Low reminded me of something Henry Hazlitt once said.. Hazlitt noted that what distinguishes a good economist from a bad economist is that a bad economist will look at only the immediate consequence of an economic decision while a good economist will look at secondary and tertiary consequences.

I am not sure what I think about the national sales tax, but Mr. Low only really looks at one step in the equation. For example, he assumes that people currently spend 100% of their wages on taxable goods and services. This assumption is clearly false. For example, a first-year teacher in New York City makes $39,000 per year. After subtracting federal, state, and local income taxes, mandatory union dues, as well as a modest rent of $600 per month (a very low ball estimate for most inhabitable areas of NYC) and $100 per month in utilities, that first-year teacher would keep about $20,000. Assuming that that teacher spends the entire sum on taxable goods and services, and that her spending behavior would remain unchanged once the sales tax replaces all federal taxes, her tax sales tax burden would be $5609 under the 30% proposal. How did we arrive at this rather than the expected $6000? Well, we assume that she spends $300 per month on groceries which are currently not taxed by a New York sales tax, but would be by a national one. So, that makes $3600 in spending on non-state-taxed groceries. The rest of her spending is taxed by New York State at a rate of 8.625%. This means that the $16400 she spends on NYS taxable goods and services is actually used to purchase $15,097 of products (since the rest is used to pay the state sales tax). So, that means a net total of $18,697 in spending after adding back the grocery spending. This gives $5609 in sales taxes.

But, for one person, the federal poverty line is $9,310 (see here). So, after subtracting 30% of the $9,310 (as is stipulated in most Sales Tax Proposals ever made, including the Schaeffer-Tauzin Bill from 2001) from her non-poverty adjusted taxes, she would only have to pay a net of $2816 in taxes. But currently, she pays around $4600 in federal income taxes. This is a substantial savings.

You can do a similar analysis for a New York City family of four making a combined $60,000 a year. Using standard deductions, they would have a federal tax burden of $4,970. After accounting for New York State and City taxes which would amount to about $3,400 as well as the 7.65% FICA tax amounting to $4590, a $600 per month apartment (let's say it's a rent-controlled 2BR in Brooklyn or Queens.... the teacher's apartment above is likely a studio that has not been rent-controlled for many years since she's likely young) and $100 per month in utilities, as well as $1000 per year for healthcare offered through the employer, they have a net income of $37,640. This means that since New York State has a 8.625% sales tax, and assuming a grocery bill of $600 per month, they would be buying goods and services valued at $35,223. We now assume again, that they do not change their spending behavior after the national sales tax is implemented and continued buying $35,223 in goods and services.

So, after applying a 30% tax rate and subtracting off 30% of $18,850 (the federal poverty line for a family of four), we come up with a net tax of $4911, a savings of $59 from the current national income tax level. Again, this assumes no modification in spending behaviors after the conversion to the new tax plan.

So, it is not so clear that this would cause taxes to go up for the middle class. Not all of current wages are spent on taxable goods and services. As we saw, single people only spend about half of their wages and a family of four would spend only about 60% of their wages on taxable goods and services.

What is also not clear is that taxes for the wealthy would go down. Right now many of them can avoid taxes by making creative use of accounting and investment vehicles. While things like constructive sales (combination of longing and shorting various put and call options on a stock in order to achieve the same effect as selling the original stock) have been eliminated as loopholes on capital-gains taxes, there are various other mechanisms for legal tax evasion on capital-gains taxes. There is also the completely legitimate shelter called state and municipal bonds. Just look at Theresa Heinz's tax returns. She paid very little in personal taxes even though she made millions. So, currently, wealthy people don't pay as much as the gentleman suggests they pay. Mrs. Heinz only paid about 12% in taxes, even though according to Mr. Low she should pay around 30%. I doubt that the rich people's tax burden's would go down in any significant manner. I could be wrong though, but Mr. Low's figures just don't add up.

My reservations about the national sales tax is that it would shift corporate capital spending away from technology innovations (which would be taxed since they would require purchases) and towards labor capital (which would be tax-free). This would have the high potential for creating inefficiency. But, I think that labor unions and liberals ought to support such shifts since it's likely to increase employment levels and potential union members. On the other hand, it might be offset by the fact that more employement means more profits in general due to higher overall purchasing. Furthermore, it might cut into corporate profits, particularly makers of consumer goods since I think that most people will alter their behavior to spend less and save more. Finally, it would significantly hurt the tourism industry and cities like Washington D.C. and New York that profit so much from it, since tourists from abroad are already not paying any income taxes here and so would just be discouraged from coming here due to an automatic 30% hike on their hotel and restaurant bills.


On the other hand, more capital will flow into the market since 1) there will no longer be any capital gains taxes, providing greater incentive for investment and 2) people will be discouraged to spend and encouraged to save and invest. On the other hand, it would hurt investment in certain other markets like the bond market (particularly municipal bonds which are currently largely tax-free) and options markets (where many people currently invest in order to creat constructive-like sales). I am not sure what the net effect of all of these contradictory forces would be.

So again, the effects of a national sales, I think are poorly understood. Brookings claims that to eliminate all federal taxes not just the income one, we would need a greater than 50% national sales tax to be truly revenue neutral (to account for non-compliance and other things). Their formulas seem a little too simplistic to me, relying on various unreasonable assumptions. More on that estimate later.

Right now, I am suspicious of the proposal, though inclined to support it since anything is better than the current tax code and I have heard nothing specific from the left on how to make the tax code simpler (other than a general "I feel your pain" about how complicated the tax code is). The other option would obviously be a flat tax, which is also a serious possibility. Again, more on all of this later.

I just finished reading (most) of Norman Podhoretz's "World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win." First of all, I was just happy to find something that dealt with the wider historical and cultural context - Podhoretz makes comparisons between the War on Terror, the Cold War, and World War II.
But I'm still left wondering, "Why Iraq?" As long as we continue to buy oil from Saudi Arabia, we're funding a totalitarian state that uses its wealth to train terrorists. Shouldn't the first step have been to cut off funds to countries that support terrorism?

Anyway, worth reading, so here's the link.

Norman Podhoretz http://www.commentarymagazine.com/podhoretz.htm

More From Our Mailbag

Since our October issue is not yet up in digital form, the offending article appears below the letter in response to it.

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Dear Editor,

In his October article, Jon Berry praises Tom Delay’s support for the singularly horrific monstrosity Republicans have ironically labeled the “FairTax”, exhibiting the same Orwellian genius that produced such names as the “Clear Skies Initiative” and the “No Child Left Behind Act.” In fact, Delay’s support for this appallingly idiotic scheme only confirms his Darth Vader-like status in modern American politics.

I admit, sensible tax reform is desperately needed – our current tax code, over 58,000 pages long, is far too complex and too loop hole-ridden. But a 30% national sales tax is not tax reform – it’s a titanic tax cut for the wealthy that dwarfs even Bush’s 1st term tax cuts, and a corresponding, sickening tax hike on the middle class. The arithmetic of this is not very difficult to understand: currently, even after the Bush cuts, taxpayers who earn over about $140,000 fall into an income tax bracket of over 30%, while those earning under (ie, the middle class) fall into a tax bracket of less than 30%. Much worse, people in the middle class spend an astronomically large percentage of their income on consumption, whereas those in the top 2% spend much more on investment. By scrapping corporate, dividend and inheritance or “death” taxes, Berry would create a mammoth wind-fall for CEO’s in the country’s elite upper crust.

While the “automatic rebate” for families at the poverty level will spare the very poor the draconian effects this tax, it will hit the middle class like a sledgehammer. Even with the most generous possible rebate, when you consider that a middle class family spends virtually all of its earnings on consumption, an individual in the $50,000 to $100,000 income range will see his or her overall tax bill increase by 20 to 30 percent. On the other hand, as CEO of Halliburton, Dick Cheney would have saved $10 million per year by the most conservative estimates had this abysmal system been in place in the nineties.

I haven’t even addressed the question of whether the tax is “revenue neutral.” It’s not, as any impartial economist – not a “FairTax advocate” Mr. Berry – will tell you. But even if it were, it would still rate as one of the worst ideas the Republican Party has ever had. And that’s saying something.

Sincerely,
Roger Low
The author, a sophomore in Branford College, is Treasurer of the Independent Party.

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Justice at the Bottom Line
Jonathan Berry – Tom Delay Does Something Right for a Change

Despite his easy-to-hate guts, Tom DeLay has an unnerving tendency to get what he wants. As House Majority Leader and top Republican hatchet man, DeLay is hardly beloved by liberals. Many conservatives, too, come away with a somewhat greasy sensation, for the man does not legislate pork so much as he dresses in it. He does not merely listen to special interests; he channels them like some sort of farm subsidies pope, infallibly guiding millions in corporate welfare to the needy, like Archer Daniels Midland.

This year, however, Congressman DeLay may finally be using his powers for awesome, perpetuating the better Republican stereotypes instead of the downright evil ones he usually propagates. In the past few months, DeLay has come out in favor of the FairTax, an increasingly popular national retail sales tax proposal. The FairTax would replace most federal taxes – individual and corporate income taxes, payroll taxes, estate taxes and gift taxes – with a single sales tax, collected in the same way that state sales taxes are levied. FairTax advocates claim that a 30 percent sales tax rate would be high enough to make the change revenue-neutral. The federal government would not lose money on the deal, but we taxpayers would have a lot to gain.

The utility of a national sales tax is not immediately obvious, and the idea needs a lot of unpacking before it is likely to satisfy skeptics. Most disputable is the claim that a 30 percent sales tax would be revenue-neutral. How could it possibly replace all those federal taxes without costing Uncle Sam? First, the taxes that the FairTax would replace raise about $1.7 billion annually, and a sales tax rate of 30 percent is precisely the one calculated as necessary in order to raise the same amount from consumption. Moreover, the FairTax could successfully capture billions of dollars that now trickle away to tax fraud and tax shelters, since a retail sales tax is nearly impossible to defraud.

But will government income really stay the same? Will people consume less, now that consumption is being taxed? Probably not. Consumption is where people allocate their dollars first; without an income tax, they will have more money for consumption in the first place. Furthermore, it is almost certain that the price level for consumer goods, too, will fall. Corporations do not pay corporate income taxes; their customers do, in the form of higher prices. Corporate taxes simply raise the cost of doing business, discouraging many capitalists from getting started in the first place. No consumer benefits from a taxation-induced shortage of businesses.

The most strident criticism of a national sales tax is the charge that it is monstrously regressive, punishing the poor to the advantage of the rich. To counter this fear, the FairTax includes an automatic rebate, equivalent to the amount of sales tax paid by a family at the poverty line. Thus, a poor family pays no tax whatsoever, while others pay more as they consume more. It is also worth pointing out that good tax accountants are expensive. That is, the rich are currently much better able to pay to have their money sheltered. The national sales tax is in fact much fairer than the various taxes on income, for no amount of wealth will be able to buy tax loopholes. Furthermore, the FairTax would also eliminate a great deal of corporate welfare, since companies could no longer extract subsidies in the form of tax breaks.

The income tax and its perverse relatives drag down our economy. Why do we tax income, punishing workers for adding value to the economy? Would it not make more sense instead to tax consumption, at the point where they take that value out? The more we can encourage people to work and add to the capital stock of this country, the more they will drive down the cost of capital, which translates into more (and bigger) business ventures and thus more jobs and lower prices. Instead, we remain hamstrung by a set of very counterproductive incentives.

For all his GOP hackery, Tom DeLay knows that the FairTax represents a major revolution in the making. Anticipating President Bush’s re-election and GOP pick-ups in Congress, DeLay has already started laying the groundwork for scrapping the IRS and implementing the FairTax. For once, the Republicans in D.C. might actually achieve an economic reform that conservatives want. The next time they push through more farm subsidies or steel tariffs, the FairTax could provide at least some consolation.

Psychologists blasting Rush Limbaugh for mocking traumatized Kerry voters

According to a licensed physician with the American Health Association:
“He’s not only minimizing PEST [Post Election Selection Trauma], but he’s bastardizing the entire psychological field and our clinical expertise.”

That's all very nice, but where were those same psychologists when Democrats nationwide were mocking Rush Limbaugh for his substance abuse problems? Certainly not out there talking to the press about what a serious problem substance abuse is (gee, possibly even more serious than "PEST") and how counter-productive it is to stigmatize people suffering from it.

Connecticut Seeks To Institute Civil Unions Through Legislation
Hallelujah! I think that this is the only way to enact such measures. The judiciary is ill-equipped to deal with such matters, in my opinion. In this case, I side with the likes of Antonin Scalia (even though I think that civil unions and possibly even gay marriage are a good idea). Courts should not be injecting themselves into the culture wars. Not having been democratically elected, the courts cannot force significant shifts in our understanding of moral matters such as this, on the general public. I think that this was the mistake with Roe v. Wade (even though I am pro-choice). The only way that such shifts can come about is by the people. The courts are there to merely interpret the law and see if it fits within the framework set forth by the Constitution. Matters of morality such as this must necessarily be legislated. Why are the courts ill-suited to decide these questions? I do not think that new moral understandings can be forced on the people by institutions. Rather, institutional changes generally reflect the already-felt sentiment of the population. Courts are necessarily unresponsive to these shifts. Only legislatures can be. Are courts sometimes responsive to these sentiments? Certainly. But I do not think that they are the ideal institution to handle such shifts.

People who liken gay marriage to the civil rights movement ought to remember that many of the heralded successes of the civil rigths movement came about through legislation, not court decisions (the obvious exception would be Brown). The Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, the Voting Rights Act, the Fourteenth Amendment were all acts of legislation that provided for the significant expansion of rights and citizenship, which seem to me, to be moral issues.

Why were new moral understandings possible in 1964 and 1965 in regards to black people? Well, I think that's largely because there already was an attitude amongst the public that blacks deserve rights and that Jim Crow laws really were immoral and dehumanizing. Certainly, there were regional differences, where the South was seriously opposed to desegregation. And yes, Southern politicians (most notably Strom Thurmond) fought the Civil Rights Acts tooth and nail. But, the rest of the nation believed that it was time and their representatives obliged. Charles Murray makes a similar argument in What It Means To Be A Libertarian.

Hat Tip: Daily Kos

Birth rate for girls between 10 and 14 lowest since 1946

Perhaps our culture is not going down the drain as continuously as social conservatives claim it is. If any of them wish to argue that this is due to the introduction of programs emphasizing abstinence more, they can feel free to provide data that backs this idea.

International Legitimacy

Greg Djerejian linked to an insteresting piece in Foreign Affairs on Bush's radical erosion of the "four pillars" that traditionally guided American foreign policy after 1945. The backdrop for all of this, is legitimacy.

The conclusion of the authors, Robert W. Tucker of Johns Hopkins University and David C. Hendrickson of Colorado College is in the abstract:

Throughout its history, the United States has made gaining international legitimacy a top priority of its foreign policy. The 18 months since the launch of the Iraq war, however, have left the country's hard-earned respect and credibility in tatters. In going to war without a legal basis or the backing of traditional U.S. allies, the Bush administration brazenly undermined Washington's long-held commitment to international law, its acceptance of consensual decision-making, its reputation for moderation, and its identification with the preservation of peace. The road back will be a long and hard one.

This is a position that has been taken by many in the foreign policy establishment. Somehow, we have been undermining the traditional virtues of diplomacy that America has held dearly, by engaging in a policy of preventive war without necessitating UN or NATO approval before doing so.

The four pillars by which Washington gained legitimacy for its actions, according to the article are 1) devotion to international law, 2) "consensual modes of decision-making", 3) reputation for moderation in policy, and 4) actually succeeding in bringing "peace and prosperity" for our allies. While, I think that the article is rather well-argued, a number of problems present themselves. To wit:

Past Results Not a Guarantee of Future Performance
I believe one of the main problems with the article is the authors' absolutely shallow assessment of American action in relation to what is allowable under their framework and what is not. The most damning piece of evidence is this graf:

The neoconservatives responsible for this startling loss of U.S. legitimacy have defended themselves by pointing to various precedents in which the United States engaged in illegal or unilateral conduct. But although certain aspects of the Bush doctrine were presaged by earlier administrations, no preceding administration brought all of these elements together in so alarming a way. Ronald Reagan proclaimed the right in theory to overthrow undemocratic regimes, but in practice was hobbled by a resistant Congress and was himself unwilling to commit U.S. forces for this object. George H.W. Bush declared in the aftermath of the Gulf War that he possessed the authority to go to war without the authorization of the UN Security Council or Congress, but he had still sought and received approval from both institutions. Bill Clinton embraced regime change in Iraq but was unwilling to fight a major war for it, preferring the more modest (and ineffectual) strategy of supporting a military coup against Saddam Hussein. Clinton also did not rule out in theory a doctrine of preventive war to forestall the acquisition by "rogue states" of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), but in practice he did not fight one. The precipitous collapse of support for U.S. aims under George W. Bush demonstrates that the nation's allies, indeed most of the world, believe that something fundamental in the U.S. global posture has changed-for the worse.

The argument here is essentially that, "Yeah, sure, past administrations have wanted to undermine the four pillars but were unsuccessful due to some practical constraint on their power and political capital. This administration succeeded! For shame!" But this undermines the entire point of their original claim. They didn't just claim that the US acted in accordance to those four pillars in order to obtain international legitimacy, but in fact held these four pillars as principles by which they conduct foreign policy. All of these examples of previous administrations' attempts to overthrow the four pillars as their guiding principles are irrrelevant to the authors, because the administrations had mixed success. For example, the 9/11 Commission even concluded that one of the reasons that Clinton was unable to have good follow-through in capturing bin Laden and severely hampering al Qaeda's operations is that he was having political problems with the Monica mess, thereby depleting his political capital. So the only problem Tucker and Hendrickson have with the Bush administration, isn't the principle of the Bush doctrine as they seem to claim, but rather that, unlike previous administrations, he had a rather compliant Congress and public, and was therefore successful in overturning the four pillars. Seems like a pretty shallow critique to me.

The corollary to this problem with their argument is their claim that we did have international legitimacy before Bush took office, but now do not. Without attacking this claim, for I have limited time, I will accept it as true. But, if in the past, our principles were not in accordance with the four pillars (even though the end actions may have been), then how were we still able to maintain legitimacy in the realm of foreign policy? I have an answer, but I am afraid it will come at the end of the post.

Flaunting of International Law Now
The question of international law is certainly a very important one. The authors note:

In obligating the UN's individual member states to refrain "from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state," the charter permitted but one clear exception: force could be employed in self-or collective defense against an armed attack.

They then refute an argument that they claim is often used to delegitimize UN law, namely that the UN Charter would prevent us from warding off an attack or retaliating without first seeking approval. They even have the documentation from the charter itself to prove that these UN critics are all wrong!

Yet the injunction to return to law must nevertheless contend with two powerful objections: that it would be both imprudent and immoral. It would be imprudent, say the critics, because the principles of the UN Charter that allow for force only in circumstances of self-and collective defense cannot meet the dangers of a world in which terrorists and "rogue states" may acquire WMD. We have to be prepared to take the war to the enemy before he takes it to us. It would be immoral, runs the second line of criticism, because there are certain circumstances in which it is morally imperative to transgress state sovereignty and intervene militarily in the domestic affairs of repressive regimes, especially when acts of genocide are contemplated or ongoing. The United States cannot, according to the now dominant view, allow the Security Council to prevent it from acting in either of these instances.

All of this declaiming against the UN overlooks the fact that the charter itself provides a basis for states to act for their national security without seeking the approval of the Security Council. Nothing in the charter, reads Article 51, "shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to maintain international peace and security." The United States, if attacked, is obligated to report its counterattack to the Security Council, but its right of individual or collective defense is otherwise unimpaired, and with its veto power it may legally prevent any constraint on its right to respond by force. The question is not, then, whether the United States should accord a veto to the Security Council in cases of national or collective defense, but whether it should do so when the use of force would otherwise be illegal.

But I believe that the authors are misstating the UN critics' position. Rather, more rightly, they are not answering the criticism in the first place. Nothing in Article 51 that they cite mentions pre-emptive action, which is the real worry of the critics that they UN does not allow, and rightfully so. Article 51 seems to indicate that if we were attacked or we had concrete evidence that we were about to be attacked immediately, then we have the right for unilateral retaliatory action without first consulting with the UN to seek permission to do so. But, this is not the question the critics ever posited. The question is whether or not UN law would allow us to prevent attacks before they fully materialized. So, in other words, the critics are correct to worry that the UN would keep us from being able to stop attacks before they start, which means before they become impending.

Now, since I am not an expert in international law, I would even be willing to grant the argument that they make that Article 51 can be used to justify preventive action against another state should the circumstances warrant it. That seems to me the point of their response to critics such as John Bolton, whom they criticize for being negligent and in fact contemptuous of international law and institutions. But, would it then not undermine at least structurally their claim made earlier that the Bush administration acted against the will of international law when it decided to invade Iraq?

This approach would have been unconvincing even if banned weapons had been found in Iraq-possessing weapons is not proof of impending attack-but it utterly collapsed when no weapons were discovered. Advocates for war then argued that the administration had never actually said that the threat was imminent, only that it was "grave and growing." Absent a showing of imminence, however, one could not make a plausible claim for the lawfulness of the action. In truth, the Bush administration did not care a fig for whether the war was lawful. It wanted its strategy of preventive war to seem lawful, but the doctrine's implementation never depended on whether the administration's lawyers could write a coherent brief in its favor.

Either Article 51 does or does not allow for preemptive action. If it does, then it seems to me the question of whether the war in Iraq falls under the allowable types of preemptive action is a matter of judgement rather than law. What to one is imminent or grave and growing is faint to another. If, however, Article 51 does not allow for preemptive action, then the authors fail to answer a critical objection that the critics of the UN posited: The UN Charter's suppremacy as a body of international law that we ought follow is in question as it does nothing to allow preemptive action to stop threats before they become impending. The authors cannot have it both ways. They cannot claim that A) Those who criticize international institutions for being impotent to do anything preventative in the realm of international security are wrong because the UN does indeed allow such actions AND B) Preventative action in the realm of international security is not legitimate, but rather only actions necessary to stop impending attack. Which is it?

I would suspect that the authors would claim that B is the correct choice and that only impending attacks ought be allowed the prevention of force (after all they do say that even if WMD were found in Iraq, the war would still be illegal due to lack of impending threat of attack). But this would still leave each nation's security at the whim of the fates... and madmen. If only impending attacks were allowed to be preempted, then even a minor error that fails to predict the exact time of impending attack would be catastrophic. Instead, preemptive force without an impending threat against a state that has: A) Publicly vowed to destroy us; B) Taken unilateral action to harm our strategic and security interests in the past; and C) Possesses the ability to destroy us or significantly undermine our security, would provide us with enough time to neutralize the threat before it becomes impending and we would have to rely on Lady Luck to keep us from being asleep at the wheel.

Questions of Legitimacy
The authors begin with a brief lesson on legitimacy.

Legitimacy arises from the conviction that state action proceeds within the ambit of law, in two senses: first, that action issues from rightful authority, that is, from the political institution authorized to take it; and second, that it does not violate a legal or moral norm. Ultimately, however, legitimacy is rooted in opinion, and thus actions that are unlawful in either of these senses may, in principle, still be deemed legitimate. That is why it is an elusive quality. Despite these vagaries, there can be no doubt that legitimacy is a vital thing to have, and illegitimacy a condition devoutly to be avoided.

I think that in the end, this is the exact problem of such vagaries as international law. It assumes here that in some sense, national actors are value-neutral. All that matters is who is the aggressor and who is the defender. I think that this is the biggest problem with certain aspects of the UN Charter. Certainly, being the aggressor is not always the best idea. But, aggression ought not be viewed with skepticism in all cases as these authors seem wont to do. Now the authors do provide a little smidgeon of hope in their use of the term "moral norm" as something that contributes to legitimacy. But what would this "moral norm" be? Would it be not being the aggressor? Or is it being popular in the eyes of world public opinion? I have no idea. The entire question of value and moral truth is not discussed in this article, which is I think its biggest flaw. What if world opinion is just, well, wrong? Does that mean that an action that is morally righteous is illegitimate, as they claim that "ultimately, however, legitimacy is rooted in opinion?" The authors provide no answer to the question of how do we tell if world opinion is right, or "on the right side of history"? Or better yet, how can we measure world opinion? Is this what the foreign ministers say? Or what the people in the streets of Berlin, Paris, and London think? Or is it what people in the State Department say people around the world think? How do we measure it? I think that these issues are exactly where the article falls apart.

Why Might Really Does Make Right
The problems with this article are many. The most salient ones are: their admittedly vague definition and notion of legitimacy; their inability to fit many high-profile actions by the US in the past into their rubric of the four pillars that they claim have traditionally guided American foreign policy and helped establish legitimacy for our actions; and their contradictory stance on international law: that preemptive action that is not merely for impending dangers is illegal and that international insitutions are robust enough to allow preemptive action for not-necessarily-impending dangers.

I think that the incoherence of their article stems largely from the way that the authors view international law and legitimacy. To them, international law has supremacy and actions are rightful in the realm of international law beyond just a mere "might makes right" claim. But, who is there to enforce international law? If the regimes that are committed to its enforcement refuse to enforce it, then international law falls apart and we do end up relying on judgement calls by individual state actors. In the realm of international law, we do indeed have a state of anarchy. The states that are the mightiest provide the enforcement regime for international lawmaking. States choose to enforce international law not because it's international law, but because it is in their interests to do so. And the success of international law is directly proportional to the political and military strength of the nations in the "Coalition of the Willing" of the moment (ie: those states that have chosen to enforce international law in the particular moment in question). And if Denmark is the only nation that really wants to enforce a particular bit of international law, then well, I bet that that little bit will go unenforced this time and will be undermined. Sounds to me like might makes right.

The Iraq War was a clear example. After countless resolutions threatening "serious consequences" (I cannot imagine what those would be other than use of force), Iraq was found in material breach of the international community consensus. The authors cannot dispute this fact. Also, they cannot dispute the fact that certain members of the "international community" chose not to enforce the international community consensus and in fact, international law. As such, as a result of refusal of enforcement, might therefore made right, with the United States stepping in and choosing to enforce the law. If say, it weren't the United States, but rather the Ukraine or Romania that wanted to. I doubt that it would happen since they do not have the military might to do so.

These are just theoretical arguments for why might makes right. There is also an important argument about the particular international structure at this time. Five countries have a veto on the UN Security Council: the US, UK, France, China, and Russia. Lo and behold, they happen to be the most powerful militarily at this time. Is it not then the case that the UN's own structure is committed to the idea of might makes right, contra to the declarations made by Justice Jackson at Neurenberg that Tucker and Hendrickson cite at the beginning of their article?

Finally, this brings me to the answer of my original question. How was it that we still maintained international legitimacy even though clearly, our principles were not devoted to the four pillars Tucker and Hendrickson attribute to our foreign policy successes? It wasn't that structurally, other nations agreed with our approach. It is that they agreed with the contents of our approach. I am still skeptical that we did have legitimacy under their definition. But if we did, it was not because other nations believed that we were acting within structural constraints on our power. It is because they liked what we did.

UPDATE: Welcome Oxblog readers. Thanks to Dave Adesnik for linking. He also raises a good point that I failed to, largely due to my timidity in taking foreign policy historians to task, well, for their account of history (I'll stick to addressing the logical inconsistencies as token math grad student blogger):

Hello? Vietnam? The Contra war? CIA coups in Guatemala, Chile and Iran? The invasions of Panama, Grenada and the Dominican Republic? Even Jimmy Carter got in trouble with the French and Germans for provoking the Soviets by talking about human rights!

My point here is not that the United States' long history of unilateralist behavior provides a justification for anything that George Bush has done. Rather, the point is that apocalyptic predictions about the breakdown of US-European relations have been standard fare for the last sixty years. These predictions crops up every decades or so and they are always wrong.

Ouch.

Does abortion increase the risk of cancer?

I was reading this article, which claims:

In several states, women considering abortion are given government-issued brochures warning that the procedure could increase their chance of developing breast cancer, despite scientific findings to the contrary.

The article goes on to explain why findings on the topic are not conclusive, ending with:

Still, anti-abortion activists are unconvinced. Joel Brind, a biochemist at Baruch College in New York who advises the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, noted that a woman’s chances of getting breast cancer go down if she gives birth at a relatively young age. He reasons that those who opt for abortion are giving up a chance of reducing their breast cancer risk. Therefore, he says, abortion increases the risk of cancer. He dismisses the findings of the National Cancer Institute, calling it a “political exercise, a charade if you will.” He participated in those discussions and filed a minority report.

So what is the truth on the matter? I find it hard to believe that many people who believe in the link do so simply because giving birth at a young age reduces the risk of cancer. Anyone who can offer scientific evidence either way should please leave comments on this topic given that what often hears about a "potential link/biological explanation" is not too helpful.

Arafat: In Memoriam

"Thirty years later, no one speaks of Ma'alot anymore. The dead children have been forgotten. Everyone knows Arafat's name, but who ever recalls the names of his victims?

So let us recall them: Ilana Turgeman. Rachel Aputa. Yocheved Mazoz. Sarah Ben-Shim'on. Yona Sabag. Yafa Cohen. Shoshana Cohen. Michal Sitrok. Malka Amrosy. Aviva Saada. Yocheved Diyi. Yaakov Levi. Yaakov Kabla. Rina Cohen. Ilana Ne'eman. Sarah Madar. Tamar Dahan. Sarah Soper. Lili Morad. David Madar. Yehudit Madar. The 21 dead children of Ma'alot -- 21 of the thousands of who died at Arafat's command."

Tin Foil Rebuttals
I thank everyone who has come to the YFP blog to read my post on Keith Olbermann's idiotic suggestion that the election in Florida was stolen. Also thanks to those of you who posted good comments that did not include, "Well, you might have gotten us on this one. But Republicans are eeeeeeeeeevil."

Now, time to rebut some of the critics of my analysis.

First, Rotten Denmark takes me to task for the argument I made in private emails to Slate's Josh Levin and Mickey Kaus that the reason Clinton and Gore got higher percentages of the vote in those 28 counties (albeit Gore losing the same ones as Kerry did and Clinton only winning 16, and only 11 by margins of more than 2%) is that they were both Southerners from a rural state. He writes:

But I think it's a little faulty to give Kerry's New Englandness as a big explanation for why he did worse than Clinton and Gore -- let's remember something that we've all forgotten about Gore in 2000. He was running with the burden/mantle/cough cough "legacy" of Clinton around his neck -- meaning, all the Monica and impeachment stuff. (Which, by the way, is why I don't buy the "evangelicals came out in droves this year" explanation -- if they weren't out there in 2000, when we had just spent several years discussing where the President of the United States put his po-po and why a blue dress needed dry cleaning, all over our major news media outlets, then why would they come out in 2004?)

Well, two points. First, I didn't claim that this is the definitive reason why. Remember, Kerry did get more votes in most of those counties than Gore did in 2000. It's just that Bush exceeded his totals from 2000 by a lot more. The Clinton scandal didn't hit till 1998, so it wouldn't explain excitement to vote him out of office in 1996. As for Gore, Rotten might be right. I was just suggesting that it is plausible that Bush would improve his vote totals from 2000.

Next, remember that most of these 28 counties are very small. 11 of them have less than 10,000 registered voters. Only 1 exceeds 30,000 and 1 exceeds 40,000. So, since Bush only picked up about 1200-2000 votes in most of those counties from his totals in 2000, that will lead to wild electoral swings. And remember, he didn't have to convince former Gore voters to do it. He just had to have higher turnout (which is exactly what happened, buttressed by the fact that Kerry improved his totals over Gore in most of these places). I would imagine that the hurricanes helped drive up turnout for Bush, and Rotten agrees with my point here. It is also possible that a small-town endorsement by say, the local sherriff, or mayor, or minister, would have made a big difference in a small county.

Second, he criticizes the analysis by saying that it doesn't help explain why this only happened in counties with optical scanning machines and not in those with the e-voting machines. He writes:

But more importantly: this does not explain why Bush did not see such a surge in votes or voting in demographically similar conservative counties, either in the Panhandle or, like Lee County, other parts of the Florida with a conservative bent. This also (sorry, Intrepid Young Yale Free Press Reporter!) does not explain why the conservative counties with Opti-Scan machines experienced so much more of a surge in Bush votes than the counties without.

According to the chart here the counties with e-voting machines were much much bigger. In fact, only two counties had registration totals under 50,000 (Nassau and Sumter) and 5 had registrations above 500,000 (out of 15 counties that used these machines). Also, notice that the two counties with registrations under 50,000 did indeed have the voting disparity between registrations and actual voting (just not as great as some of the 28 I examined earlier). But if you look at the chart for Putnam County, which had the number of registered voters similar to that of Nassau and Sumter but used the optical scanning machines, the disparity between registrations and votes was among the smallest of the 28 I examined.

So, what does this tell us? Well, it seems to tell us that the size of the county matters. And that's the point. You cannot compare small counties and big ones. As I said before, an extra 1000 votes for one candidate in a county that only has 10000 registered voters gives that candidate an additional 10%, which is a huge margin. An extra 1000 votes in, say, Hillsborough County (also Conservative in the Panhandle, 621,000 registered voters) is nothing.

Now, for his Lee County argument... if he means that Lee County is Conservative, but there was no disparity between registrations and votes, well of course not! Lee County has a majority Republican registration (47.5% - 29.7%), so our situation isn't even applicable. But, if he means that Lee County is Conservative, but Bush's share of the vote didn't go up there from 2000 as it did in the 28 counties I analyzed, well, he is right. In 2000, the County went for Bush 106K-73K and in 2004, it went for him 114K-77K (I'm rounding here). However, again, you cannot compare Lee County, which has 300K registered voters to say, Columbia County which had 34K total registrants (voted for Bush in 2000 11K-7K, but in 2004, voted for him 17K-8K). Bush got 6K extra votes in Columbia from 2000 (Kerry got 1K extra over Gore). Is that all that implausible? Bush got 8K extra in Lee which is more than 6K (though of course not ten-fold).

People think that elections are scalable, but that is just clearly false. Elections are a very nonlinear process. So, a county with 300K registered voters will not see 10 times more votes for the same candidate as a county with similar demographics and 30K registered voters. It just doesn't work that way. Just as a perfect example, Kerry improved his numbers by 1K in Columbia over Gore. But, in Lee, he improved by only 4K even though the number of registered voters there is 10 times what it is in Columbia (even if you take the lower turnout in Lee into account... 63% for Lee, 72% for Columbia). Still, Kerry underperformed in Lee in comparison to Columbia. So, this comparison isn't very accurate. Population densities, number of media markets, number of newspapers, etc. all contribute to the flow of information, which in turn, affect voting. Voting is much more like Statistical Physics than it is like Newtonian Mechanics (which is why Statistical Physicists use voter models to predict phase transitions and various phenomena).

I hope that this clarifies some of the issues and arguments involved.

UPDATE: The title is not meant to suggest that Rotten Denmark is a tinfoiler. His blog posts are actually rather calm and not hysterical. So, didn't mean to suggest that. On another note, he "outs" the fact that we receive funding from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a conservative foundation that helps fund conservative papers all over the country. Well, what else can you do when the Yale administration steals your office, but lets the other papers (even ones with lower readership) have permanent university space? Don't even get me started buddy.

UPDATE: A commenter to my previous post raises important and interesting points. I agree with his analysis completely. One point, I would like to make, however, is that the original charge wasn't that Bush increased his vote totals from 2000, but that Democratic Counties voted for Bush. The latter was the argument that I was rebutting. As for the modest increase in vote totals, I dealt with it in this post. Most of these counties are small, which means any small increase in turnout is going to have significant effects. Also, small counties tended to use optical scan technology rather than e-voting. In fact, no county with fewer than 40,000 registered voters used e-voting machines. Also, kudos to the poster for mentioning the Central Time Zone issue from the last election which I didn't even think about. In case people don't recall, in 2000, the networks said that polls in Florida had closed and that Gore had won Florida, before the polls in Florida that are in the Central Time Zone had actually closed. This, according to some, including John Lott (a.k.a. Mary Rosh), led to Bush losing as many as 10,000 votes in Florida in 2000.

On a Lighter/Scarier Note

For some reason, a post I made a long time ago about same-sex marriage has been linked to by a gay porn site as one of the best places on the web to find information about gay orgies. As flattered as I am, does anyone have legal advice on how I can force them to take it off, as it comes up whenever I google my name. Would a cease and desist letter to them and the ISP do it?

Thanks so much. Email me at yv226-at-nyu-dot-edu.

A More Thorough Analysis of Tin Foil Hats

In the post below, I partially debunk Keith Olbermann's claims about counties in Florida that have 2-1 Democratic to Republican registrations going for Bush (or Bush outperforming significantly there relative to registrations).

Here is a PDF file of a table I compiled of the counties with what seem to me to be the biggest disparities between votes for Bush in 2004 and Republican Party registrations along with their 1996 and 2000 vote totals totals. I don't think that Olbermann's claim of fraud holds up.

The 28 counties I analyzed all voted for the same party's candidate as they had voted for in 2000. Of the 28 counties I looked at, only two voted for Gore in 2000 (the same ones went for Kerry in 2004). It is certainly true that in most of them, Bush increased his totals over 2000. But that is likely due to the fact that Gore was a Southerner (having been a Senator from Tennessee) while Kerry is a New Englander through and through or to the fact that this time terrorism was on the table. (UPDATE: On a second reading of the data, it looks like in 21 of the 26 counties Bush won this time, Kerry actually increased his vote totals. It's just that Bush increased his more, likely the result of a better Get Out The Vote effort by the Republicans. This is completely in line with Ken Mehlman's strategy of focusing on suburban and rural voters - which most of these are since the counties have tiny populations).

Also, in 1996, in an election that was largely a landslide for Clinton and with Perot in the race, Dole won 12 of those counties. Of the 16 Clinton won, he won 5 by less than 2%. And let me remind you that 1996 was a three-way race with about 8-15% of the vote going for Perot, that ended up being a landslide for the Southerner, Bill Clinton. So, it seems that party registrations played very little role. Just as an example, Liberty County has 10-to-1 Democrat to Republican registration. But, it went for Dole in 1996. Similarly, Calhoun County has 7-to-1 Democrat to Republican registration, but only went for Clinton by less than 2%. I think that this concludes that Olbermann's analysis is bunk.

One interesting bit: all of these are small counties, likely rural. Is it possible that maybe a local Democratic official like the County Sheriff or County Commissioner endorsed Bush? Does anyone have that information? If so, I'd appreciate it if you could share it with me.

UPDATE: I have been reading the comments on various hard Left discussion boards and noticed that when my analysis is brought up to debunk the myth, someone always says that this doesn't prove that fraud didn't happen (see the Democratic Underground discussion I linked to below). But in a similar fashion, I cannot disprove that we're all brains in a vat, that reality is a Cartesian dream, that there are pink elephants who fly and give birth to unicorns. The point is that voter registration was proposed by Olbermann and other conspiracy theorists as a good predictor of who people will vote for. They then looked at the data and said, "wait, the people actually voted for someone different than what our model predicts." Instead of making sure that their model predicts even past data, they decide to claim that some kind of fraud had occurred. I am merely saying that their model is clearly flawed since it can't even accurately predict the outcome of the election of 1996. Unless they are willing to claim that there was fraud even then too. But we must recall that many of these counties who voted for Dole in 1996, voted for Carter in 1980. So, the claim then has to become that sometime between 1980 and 1996, some organ was installed in the local county government that has defrauded every single election. I think this is starting to get into the pink flying elephants category of epistemology.

Another reason why any kind of "statistical" techniques for analyzing the election seem problematic is that statistical techniques assume that you have independent trials with essentially the same variables. But from election to election, you have all kinds of different issues on the table, different personalities running, etc. For example, here is an argument that claims to justify this conspiracy theory by saying that the fact that these counties were rural can't explain the disparity. Because if you compare it to rural counties in Pennsylvania, you get different results. Right, but that's why those counties are in Pennsylvania and these are in Florida. Pennsylvania is not a Southern state. Florida is. There are too many variables to list. But I am just saying that this is terrible methodology since it doesn't even attempt to control for the relevant factors involved. As for the argument that the only variable in common with all of these counties is optical scanning machines, I am not sure how this is relevant. What other characteristics do these counties have? Without extensive demographic information there is no way to conclude that there isn't a lurking variable in there somewhere. Look, I'm a Ph.D. student in math. I like numbers and statistics and boo-ya's. But, certain methodologies are just not suitable for election analysis because no two elections are even remotely similar. Period.

UPDATE: The discussion in the comments section in the earlier post requires me to stress this point. NO ONE CLAIMS THAT VOTER FRAUD DOESN'T OCCUR. By God, any Republican from Chicago can attest the falsity of that claim. But, to claim that Republicans do it more than the Democrats is disingenuous. I've seen no evidence that this is the case. Both parties seem to do it about as much as the other. Furthermore, it seems that if you really do care about voter fraud (rather than just making the other side look bad), it's rather imprudent and ineffective to yell "voter fraud!" without thoroughly researching what happened first. The Keith Olberman claim I discuss here is the prime example. The reason is that if you make wild accusations of voter fraud without a reasonable understanding of what is going on, then no one will ever take claims of voter fraud seriously. People will just shrug and say, "Well, both sides do it. I don't know which claim is true and which isn't and I don't have the energy to investigate." If anyone had just looked at the results from the previous two, three, four, etc elections and thought about these counties (all of which are tiny in population), they would have realized that this isn't all that weird. Where is people's common sense? I think voter fraud is very serious and undermines our democracy. But that does not mean that people ought be making spurious claims of fraud before thoroughly researching the subject.

UPDATE: Many people have objected here in the comments and elsewhere about the fact that the counties where this surge occured most (in support for Bush) were all using opti-scan technology rather than e-voting technology. In case you can't see the post I made later, addressing this exact issue, here it is. I hope that this answers your questions. I am now officially done updating this thread. I have a life outside of debunking false claims of fraud/irregularities, you know. So, hopefully others will take up the mantle, as Mickey Kaus said and either debunk the irregularities theories/stories or provide *proof* that something bad did occur on a significant scale that helped one party more than another. I would like to caution people against only posting stories on irregularities that hurt Kerry. I'm sure there were some that hurt Bush. It's just for some reason in no one's interest to investigate them. Ok, I've said my bit.

UPDATE: The transcript for Olbermann's Monday night show is here.

Keith Obermann -- Where's Your Tin Foil Hat?
On today's show, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann promulgated the myth that somehow results in Florida are tainted because certain counties that have more than 2-to-1 Democrat-to-Republican registrations overwhelmingly voted for Bush. Counties he cited on tonight's show were: Baker, Lafayette, Liberty, and some others. He repeats this on his blog, but with less detail here (the transcript of the show is not yet available. Will post as soon as it will be):

... huge margins for Bush in Florida counties in which registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans 2-1, places where the optical scanning of precinct totals seems to have turned results from perfect matches for the pro-Kerry exit poll data, to Bush sweeps.

So, I decided to go to the Florida Secretary of State's office webpage and look at the results for Lafayette, Baker, and Liberty, the three counties whose names I could catch, and see how they voted in 2000 and in 1996. Well, quite a fascinating result:

Election of 2000
Baker voted 5610-2392 for Bush against Gore.
Lafayette voted 1670-789 for Bush against Gore.
Liberty voted 1317-1017 for Bush against Gore.

Election of 1996
Baker voted 3684-2273 for Dole against Clinton
Lafayette voted 1126-899 for Dole against Clinton
Liberty voted 913-868 for Dole against Clinton

Game. Set. Match, Keith. I loved you on ESPN, but you should stick to what you're good at: sports. The reason these counties have such high Democratic registrations is because they likely still have traditional Southern loyalties to the Democrats, but being in Northern Florida and the Panhandle, they are all very very conservative. No wonder, they even voted for Dole! As soon as the transcript of his show is up, I will check the other counties for which he peddles the conspiracy theory. (UPDATE: I have a post above that considers the 28 counties where the disparity between Bush's 2004 totals and Republicans' share of registrations is the highest... Let's just say that Olbermann has a whole lot of nothing).

Why am I not surprised that the wacky left couldn't accept the results of this election?

UPDATE: Welcome Volokh Conspiracy and The Corner readers! Thanks to Prof. Volokh and Jon Adler (who is a former editor of The Yale Free Press) for linking. So, check it out and stay for a while. Also, see this post I made, doing a full county-by-county analysis of these "disloyal" counties, showing their totals for the 2000 and 1996 election. Also, check out the articles that have appeared in our print edition.

Yes, I do know I misspelled Olbermann's name in the title, but Blogger puts the title in the URL for the link and I noticed the problem only after people started linking to me. One thing I realized I didn't touch enough on is how this seems to demonstrate my previous point that the Left hates Bush no matter what. Even with this election, which was quite clean and free of controversy, they have to invent controversy because they cannot believe that they could lose to this simpleton. So much for uniting the country and healing the wounds.

UPDATE: Keith Olbermann still seems to stick to his story, while conceding that Bush won most of the counties Olbermann mentioned, in 2000. Olbermann just says that he mentioned mostly panhandle counties and should have presented a better mix of the other 24. I'll try to have a more thorough analysis of the other cases where the voter "disloyalty" phenomenon occurred, later. But on face, this seems like Obermann is seriously stretching the bounds of plausibility.

UPDATE: The myth is repeated here for Baker County. It also claims that a ballot initiative in favor of raising the minimum wage in Florida passed with more than 70% of the vote, while Kerry only got 48% (Olbermann mentioned this point on his show tonight as well). Does that mean that since the initiative to define marriage as that between a man and a woman was supported overwhelmingly in Oregon and Bush lost overwhelmingly there, that the election in Oregon was stolen? My understanding is that Southern Democrats tend to be economically liberal but socially conservative. They might vote for some populist measures, but on social issues and national security they will vote for the Republicans. Another interesting paradox of that sort is the success of trial lawyers like Dickie Scruggs in Mississippi, where they find some small-town jury and sue a big corporation in that small town, and almost always win because they can frame the debate in terms of David vs. Golliath. Mississippi overwhelmingly votes for Republicans for President, who tend to support tort reform, but still hold lawyers like Dickie Scruggs in high regard. One final point is that states like Indiana and North Carolina have Democratic legislatures, but also overwhelmingly vote Republican for President. Louisiana hasn't had a Republican Senator since Reconstruction (until this year, when David Vitter won to replace the retiring John Breaux), but also always votes Republican for President.

UPDATE: Similar, albeit more "scientific"-looking claims are made here. Still bunk because the analysis entirely ignores the vote from 2000 and 1996 in those counties. They compute an expected number of votes that each candidate should have received in various counties. Their expected number votes is entirely based on the voter registration by party in that county:

EXPECTED_VOTES REP = the percentage of registered REP * the total number of voters who voted in each county on Tuesday.

EXPECTED votes would normally vary from the ACTUAL votes due to increased voter turnout by one party, Independents voting REP or DEM or other factors. What seems very odd in these numbers is that the increase in ACTUAL votes from EXPECTED votes has a striking pattern of being so much higher for REPs than that for DEMs in counties using optical scan voting machines, even when smaller counties are excluded from the analysis.

And would their model of expected votes account for the election results in 2000 and 1996 for Baker, Lafayette, and Liberty? Most definitely not. Any good model ought predict at least past events before it can be used as a candidate for future events!

UPDATE: This is a thread at the Democratic Underground on precisely this issue. One post says:

If they have officials committing fraud, it's likely they had them then too. In fact, we know elections have been rigged in the deep south for generations upon generations.

Proof that the Republicans have ALWAYS won in a heavily Democratic area could perhaps be a strong case FOR fraud, and in fact that seems to be the case, prima facie. Your evidence may support the fraud allegations, in other words.

That doesn't make sense. I just checked on the Florida Department of State page and for example, Baker County voted for Jimmy Carter (a Southern Democrat) over Ronald Reagan in 1980 (the last Presidential Election for which data is available there) by a margin of 2606-2271. So, it seems that this long tradition of fraud for generations and generations doesn't make much sense. This is especially true of the South, which only until the last 25-30 years, had voted predominantly for Democrats for President. So, sorry, this won't cut it. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by stupidity being promoted on the Democratic Underground site.

A Model for Trademark/Copyright Disputes?
One of my favorite groups, The Postal Service settled a trademark dispute with the United States Postal Service over its name (a registered trademark owned by the USPS) by agreeing to do advertising for the USPS. The story of their name is probably what saved them:

About two and a half years ago, Jimmy Tamborello and Ben Gibbard began to make music together despite the distance between them. Mr. Tamborello, who makes electronica with a group called Dntel, lived in Los Angeles, while Mr. Gibbard, who sings in the emo band Death Cab for Cutie, lived in Seattle. They sent each other music through the mail, completing songs bit by bit, and after about five months, they had finished an album.

In honor of their working method they called themselves the Postal Service.

Nifty, eh?

Voting Early and Often
So when I moved to NYC to go to grad school, I moved my voter registration from Maryland to New York state. My mother called me this week to let me know that Maryland has sent me a sample ballot expecting that I will vote there on Tuesday, even though I have also received a registration card in my new state, New York. So, if we should let every vote count, as the Dems say we should, do you think that after voting in Manhattan, I ought to hop on a Metroliner and swing by my old middle school in Baltimore and vote? As Mayor Daley said, "Vote early and often." Please leave a comment to let me know whether you think I ought to maximize my vote.