Rep. Tubbs Jones: 5 Regional Forums on Ohio Voters' Primary Experiences

[eomer]

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1148027466227450.xml&coll=2#Scene_1

U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones has organized five regional forums for Cuyahoga County voters to speak out on their voting experiences during the May 2 primary. Poll workers are also invited to attend.

The first forum will be at 7 p.m. Monday at Beachwood City Hall, 2700 Richmond Road. It is slated to last 90 minutes.

Voters from Beachwood, Shaker Heights, Cleveland Heights, Orange, Pepper Pike, Woodmere and University Heights are invited to attend, though residents from other communities are also welcome.

Court reporters will take down voter and poll worker testimony so that a summary can be delivered to the election review panel set up by the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections to investigate major problems that arose during the primary.

Other regional hearings are planned in Bedford, Cleveland, East Cleveland and Euclid.

-snip-

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1148027466227450.xml&coll=2#Scene_1">Click here for full story, including times and places for Bedford, Cleveland and Euclid forums. Time and place for East Cleavland not known yet, will be announced.

I will also cross-post in the Ohio forum.

[paineinthearse]

1. HTJ & BB - two of the ballsiest members of Congress

[mod mom]

2. but...but...ESI said the voters were overwhelmingly satisfied.

<snip>

"The voters were overwhelmingly satisfied with the system," Steven Hertzberg, project director of Election Science Institute, said Friday.

Still, an independent committee began Friday to investigate the primary's many problems, including missing memory cards, hours of delay in opening some polls and days of delay in counting absentee ballots by hand.


<snip>

http://www.cleveland.com/search/index.ssf?/base/isele/114753420894840.xml?isele&coll=2

This from Steven Hertzberg's bio:

Mr. Hertzberg spent the first several years of his career as a civilian within the US Department of Defense. While serving as a Project Manager and Test Director for highly visible military development programs, Mr. Hertzberg received the U.S. Army’s Civilian Special Act Award.

http://www.hertzberg.org/

you can draw your own conclusions.

[OnTheOtherHand]

6. cheap shot

There is no contradiction between the favorable voter reactions reported in the ESI exit poll and the problems described in the story. (For that matter, in principle, DREs could be stealing votes right and left -- or left and left? -- and the voters might still love them. Or they could be functioning perfectly and counting the votes correctly, and voters could find them hopelessly confusing.)

I don't know Hertzberg, although we have traded a few e-mails. I do know it is unreasonable to argue that we shouldn't trust his organization's exit poll because he spent "several years" working for the Defense Department. Poking around Hertzberg's blog, I surmise that I agree with him on a lot of political issues and disagree on a lot of others. But as a professional, I evaluate his organization's work by evaluating the work. You can make pretty much anyone who has ever said anything about this issue -- on any side -- sound bad by cherry-picking their CV and tossing in some heavy innuendo. Joe McCarthy was good at that. I don't think we should be.

[eomer]

7. I don't trust Hertzberg, but it has nothing to do with working for DoD.

Hertzberg dropped in to the ER forum about a year ago and had an exchange with a few of us, including mod mom. It seemed to me that he had a strong bias toward the "nothing to see here, move on" approach and that he unfairly characterized his views as objective and others' as subjective when his views were not based in fact but rather in assumptions. Here is the thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=353045

Here is one very small snippet from that conversation that seems relevant to the current discussion:

-snip-

We are all trying to raise confidence in our electoral process prior to the next big election, and I believe that this type of collaboration is the best way for us to realize this goal.

-snip-

The questions in ESI's current poll about voters' views of DRE voting seem to fit in with that goal of raising confidence. If that is a correct statement of Hertzberg's goal then he his in opposition to most people in this forum, who believe that confidence in the current system would be misguided and dangerous. I'm inclined to believe that the questions in the poll were designed to create the kind of publicity that we see in that article -- sort of a "everyone else thinks DRE voting is safe and fun so you probably should too" approach.

[OnTheOtherHand]

8. well, here is my take on that

When I was at ASA/JSM in August, ESI was represented by Mary Batcher of Ernst & Young. She gave a very strong presentation on election audit and transparency requirements. She made much the same points in a statement at the Mitofsky/Freeman "joint appearance" in Philly last October. So, if Mary Batcher represents ESI, I construe their position not as "people ought to trust the system" but "the system ought to be trustworthy." Or, as Hertzberg wrote in that thread at #16, "Our goal is to improve the election system for everyone."

Given ESI's overall portfolio of activities, I just don't think they are in the business of making elections look good no matter what.

I know folks like me sound incredibly pompous at best when we start talking about Science, but I don't think that thread supports a "strong bias toward the 'nothing to see here, move on' approach" on Hertzberg's part. In my view, what he said over and over was that ESI needed to look very closely at the facts and carefully substantiate whatever it finally reported. He didn't say 'Everyone should be like us'; he said, 'This is what we do.' Considering the tone of the thread before he (or you and gary) arrived, I think he handled himself pretty well. And I don't think what he said about EIRS was fallacious, although a bit of it was poorly written. I thought you were both right: one can do inferential stats on the EIRS data, and one can't extrapolate freely from the results. (There are purists who would insist that you simply can't do inferential stats on data that aren't randomly sampled, but as a political scientist, I can't afford to be that pure.)

I have worried about the confluence of science and politics as much as anyone else on the board, and I don't think that ESI has always gotten things right. But mod mom opened that thread with the info that Hertzberg had worked for DoD, and she offered the same info here, and I am professionally obligated to say, "Eww." That trumps anything else we could say about ESI. I try to extend the same discursive courtesy to everyone on the board (although I owe BeFree one -- someone called him a BevBot, and I've lost the post).

Without having seen the survey instrument, I don't know whether it was one-sided. I personally doubt that it was designed to generate Good News for e-voting, but that is a separable (and speculative) question.

(ETA: I appreciate the OP, and I will be interested to see how the meetings turn out.)

[mod mom]

10. Then please invite him to assist in voter confidence in your state, but in

Ohio, the election reformers I work with do NOT trust him. Where was his expertise prior to being brought on board by Matt Damschroeder in Franklin County? There were many election reformers who worked w votewatch/ESI after '04. They were promised reports on the data that was gathered. He failed to respond to request on this info.

Ohio does not need voter confidence until the system is corrected. Issuing happy reports is not the answer to a broken system. Did the 60 year old man who attacked the Diebold machine have confidence? Ohio is heading for a train wreck come November. It is better to raise issues and attempt to correct the system, rather than paint a rosey scenario. Perhaps Mr Herzberg should delve into the warnings of electronic voting. He could also raise the issue of the upcoming bottleneck (read: long lines) that will occur due the HB 3 mandated voter IDs.

[nicknameless]

3. Recommended earlier. Here's a kick

:kick:

[Kurovski]

4. K&R for the good people of Ohio.

:patriot:

[Steve A Play]

5. Kicked and recommended!

Thank you Stephanie! :kick:

[eomer]

9. A kick to remind that Cuyahoga County forum is tonight at 7p.m.

Beachwood City Hall, 2700 Richmond Road