The trial is to resume at 1:30pm. I have to step out of the office for a bit. Keep us posted in the comments!
(2:36pm) Okay, I'm back. The big deal was that Judge Bridges apparently followed his M.O., and allowed evidence to be submitted while punting on what to do with it. As Croker Sack blogger "Micajah" posted in the comments:
The question to be decided was whether the expert testimony regarding "proportional reduction" was admissible. Judge Bridges didn't actually decide -- but he did make it clear that the GOP didn't persuade him that it is admissible.* Thomas Ahearn, representing Secretary of State Sam Reed seems to be implying that illegal voters should be asked to state how the voted on the witness stand. Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at May 26, 2005 01:16 PM | Email ThisHe seems to be saying that he wants to move along and let the GOP pile everything they have in the middle of the floor -- and then he will pronounce judgment, perhaps sorting through some of the stuff on the floor and telling everyone what he thought about it in findings of fact.
Thanks Shark
Posted by: Ron A. on May 26, 2005 01:27 PMDEM LAWYER: Objection
BRIDGES: Overruled.
plausible or total bull?
Posted by: Andy on May 26, 2005 01:41 PMNow he's setting himself up for a fall.
Posted by: Andy on May 26, 2005 01:50 PMHow much ya wanna bet?
Posted by: DeadManVoting (aka Iguana) on May 26, 2005 01:50 PM"Thank you for your support. I go to SP constantly! At this point the lawyers are in complete control of the case and I think it is legally too late for new ideas to be introduced."
Chris Vance
And when asked if he minded if I posted this his response was that he regularly posts here.
How does it feel to know that our collective genius has been helping all along? Right on! Everyone here (except the trolls) rocks!
Elephant expert isn't an expert- ....because donkey experts said so.
Donkey experts are not experts because they have no experience whatsoever with elections. But they are good at making the water muddy.
There is a remarkable silence from the trolls, did someone put a bolder in front of their caves? Ms. Way perhaps?
Posted by: Fred on May 26, 2005 01:56 PMYes, Judge, it is entirely possible that your 'sample' of one could be the extreme example. It could also have been the opposite example - it could have been Jeff Cirrilo. Regardless, it is _more_likely_ to be one of the other 23 players who are somewhere in the middle. So if I was asked "I've picked someone on the 2004 Seattle Mariners, what is your best estimate of their batting average" I would have to say 0.270. And acknowledge that the actual result might be 0.200 or 0.372.
Posted by: Al on May 26, 2005 01:58 PMThis being the closest gubanatorial election contest in American history -- one election contest every 200 years should not overburden our judicial system.
Posted by: Daniel Kauffman on May 26, 2005 01:59 PMProfessor Katz builds case given certain constraints.
Democrats dispute the validity of those constraints.
Therefore, common sense would dictate either:
1) Constraints are valid, and the analysis is valid.
2) Constraints are invalid, and outcome is unknown.
Very interesting!!!!
Posted by: Orange Robyn on May 26, 2005 02:07 PMHe is refraining from ruling on Frye, regarding the admissibility of expert witness, about whether or not statistic methods as applied to this case would be generally accepted in the scientific community.
He seems to strongly emphasize a pragmatic approach, that is, what is the best method we have available... it seems he also reproofed the Republican lawyers to brief their expert witnesses better as to what they were actually arguing for, which should have been the general acceptance of their methods, and not so much the process of the methods themselves.
Posted by: Daniel Kauffman on May 26, 2005 02:11 PMHe seems to be saying that he wants to move along and let the GOP pile everything they have in the middle of the floor -- and then he will pronounce judgment, perhaps sorting through some of the stuff on the floor and telling everyone what he thought about it in findings of fact.
Posted by: Micajah on May 26, 2005 02:15 PMThat would mean he could give us his decision today, because you better believe that the supreme banana court has already decided what it's going to do on appeal. They will keep Gregoire in office - she already knows it, this is why she is not worried about the trial.
Posted by: DeadManVoting (aka Iguana) on May 26, 2005 02:16 PMThere was a large sign in front of the group that read:
"Reading Plato To End Fascism"
I couldn't help but bust out laughing when I read that...yep, the trolls are definitely getting desperate now.
The liberal hooey here at UW never ceases to amaze, and is often quite entertaining :)
Posted by: Scott on May 26, 2005 02:17 PMYou can also make links.
<a href="http://skorgrimm.blogspot.com/">Skor Grimm</a> makes Skor Grimm.
Hope this was helpful.
Overruled.
Posted by: Jeff B. on May 26, 2005 02:24 PMI did not hear direct the court proceedings today but glancing at the commentary here I would say the Judge was presented some highly technical statistical mumbo-jumbo.
I am a Ph.D. in statistics. I love the science, its theory and think in terms of unbiased minimum variance observations.
That said, I would think that Judge Bridges is after a simple common sensical approach to deciding the admissibility of evidence. Needless to stay a "nonparametric bootstrap from weighted precinct proportions" might be a great idea for a paper, but not for setting precedent in law.
Please clue me as to Katz's approach. Was he over-complicating matters?
The Republicans would do well to just have a statistical expert estimate the margin of error that a proportional assignment of illegal votes generates, or was the topic completely different?
BTW appreciate your comments and your fine papers on your blog. That goes for Stephan too.
Posted by: Michael on May 26, 2005 02:27 PMThe D's approach is to head off directly into the tall weeds of extreme multivariate analysis, and to complain both about the R's sample, and to expect sampling of race, age, sex, income, education, life experiences, etc.
Which, while all 'true', is off multiplying the errors unless you have scientific studies of each. Shrug.
Posted by: Al on May 26, 2005 02:37 PMKatz has been coming off on the stand as being rather eccentric, while the dems witnesses, especially Adolph, seem a bit more grounded. That being said, I believe that Bridges still knows that Katz knows what he's talking about. It's just that he cant convey it well in layman's terms.
Posted by: Balkstar on May 26, 2005 02:41 PM
Katz, the GOP expert, has estimated the felon vote as a random draw from the precinct voting results where they were shown to have voted. So he simply takes the precint proportion voting for Gregoire, Rossi, and the Libertarian candidate, and assigns that proportion to each felon vote. His error estimate was just the standard error from the binomial or trinomial sample.
The big assumption is whether or not he can reliably claim that the felon/illegal vote is a random draw from the precinct pool. I can't tell whether the DEMs have done a very good job of raising this issue. What they must show is how the error estimates increase if this assumption is not true or only partly true.
You can also make links like this:
Silly Seattle
Cool !!
Is that a book of ballots just found in KC?
Posted by: DeadManVoting (aka Iguana) on May 26, 2005 02:55 PMI didn't listen to all of Katz's testimony -- and probably wouldn't have understood half of what he said anyway.
What I did hear was Judge Bridges telling the lawyers what he was doing on the question of admissibility of the evidence.
Look at it this way: If the judge wasn't persuaded that the evidence is admissible, what probability is there that he will find that same evidence to be persuasive as to the way the illegal votes affected the election's outcome?
It seems the petitioners' lawyers need to do something more just to get the judge to consider the evidence in arriving at the judgment in the case -- and quite a bit more to persuade him that it proves any of the things he says they need to prove.
DeadManVoting (aka Iguana)
I didn't put it together until now that Silly Seattle was your site. I really enjoy your blog and think you bring up a lot of issues important to a single guy like me. Although I've been tempted, thankfully I haven't moved in with a woman that I was dating before. After reading some of the postings on your blog...I definately won't do that in the future. I'm even concerned about living with a male roommate after some of the stuff I came across.
Mark
Posted by: Mark D on May 26, 2005 03:04 PM1) The election had serious problems, and common sense suggests remedial action.
2) The election statutes are weak, so I have to be careful what I rule on.
3) The election statutes do not support throwing out the election on its face.
4) Secret ballots make it difficult to survey voters as to how they voted. (And such a survey would be scientifically flawed. Bummer.)
5) I am running out of options... hmm, statistics look like the only viable option. I wish the Republican lawyers would make a stronger case...
Overall, he seems well-balanced, and to be applying the law as best he may to bring justice that is in agreement with the law, despite the flaws in the statutes.
I'm watching the whole thing with a sick sense of horror.
Posted by: Bostonian on May 26, 2005 03:24 PMI hope you are right, and that the issue is (properly) resolved in our state courts without federal intervention. The real key here is what the people choose -- do they want the status quo, or are they willing to effect change. I believe that choice will have incredible bearing both on this case, and on the fall-out from this case.
BTW, there is another Daniel K., who posts here, and who is not me, so I use my full name to post. :)
Posted by: Daniel Kauffman on May 26, 2005 03:32 PMThe simple fact of the matter is this: regardless of whether the Democrats cheated or not, their behavior was indistinguishable from cheating. They caused thousands of ballots to be removed from legitimate chain of custody, and then later added them back into the ballot stream. Perhaps this was accidental, or perhaps this was done to allow officials a chance to tamper with the ballots. It is impossible to tell which.
Although Dino Rossi would rather have a re-vote than simply assumes the governorship, there may be a basis for awarding Rossi the election: he won the first two counts, and malfeasance on the part of King County officials means there is no reason to believe the third count to be any more accurate than the first two. King County forfeited its right to have a manual tabulation of ballots when it officials deliberately and overtly flouted election laws.
Posted by: supercat on May 26, 2005 03:33 PMDumping the voter rolls, requiring ID, designating _all_ uncredited votes as illegal, or at least as invalid, and setting a 'margin-of-error-exceeds-margin-of-victory' standard all seem like something that could be written up in legalese.
Posted by: Al on May 26, 2005 04:03 PMHere is the problem:
Assume one side cheats. I will leave determining the partisan affiliation of the cheaters as an exercise to the reader...
After the election, we find that there were a certain number of illegal votes, but who those votes were for can not be directly ascertained.
Now, we are trying to remove the illegal ballots from the universe of all ballots cast...
It is unreasonable to ask the cheaters who they cheated for. If we assume the validity of the response, the cheaters recieve double benefit: once when the initial vote was cast, and again when the cheater lies and causes a vote to be deducted from the opposing candidate.
Unfortunately, if we do not ask the cheaters who they cheated for, and instead assume that they voted in the same way as legal voters, we have a similar problem... deducting the votes proportionally again benefits the cheaters. Why? Because they again recieve a double benefit: once when the initial vote was cast, and again when votes are proportionally deducted.
Let me put it another way -- in a given precint, if you keep the votes for each candidate proportional, yet you reduce the size of the ballot pool, you will reduce the spread between the candidates. So if the loser in a precint has cheated, and then the size of the ballot pool is reduced by the number of votes cast by cheaters, the cheater benefits twice!
So although proportional analisys may help in this case, it leads to a conundrum for the future:
In our hypothetical, if you want to cheat, cheat only in precincts you are likely to lose. Then, if you are discovered, proportional deduction will only help your case. If you lose in the first count, produce evidence that cheating occurred in precincts you lost, and use proportional deduction to put you over the top.
Don't mean to sound cynical. Ah, well.
Posted by: Daniel Kauffman on May 26, 2005 04:22 PMThe legal principle of 'unjust enrichment' says that people should not be allowed to benefit from their own improper actions. Applying such a principle here, mistakes by a Democrat should not be 'reversed' when such reversal might leave things better for the Democrats than they would be had the mistakes not been made. Likewise for mistakes by a Republican.
That having been said, proportional deduction may be reasonable as a means of approximating the felon vote. It is certainly not reasonable as a means of estimating the actual effect of "magical mystery ballots", but probably serves as a good lower bound, since there is no reason to believe that such ballots would be less favorable to those in power than legitimate ballots in the same precinct, but it's highly plausible that they'd be more favorable to those in power (e.g. 100% forged Gregoire).
Posted by: supercat on May 26, 2005 04:28 PMsupercat - Determining who the felons plausibly voted for, is, as you say, only part of the problem. The other part is determining with any reasonable certainty who non-existant voters voted for. As far as I know, we don't have demographic information for voters who do not exist...
Dogbert - Yes, and make it hurt. Maybe bring in a corporal punishment expert from Singapore. Can you see the headlines: Gregoire Canned, Crooks Caned!
Posted by: Daniel Kauffman on May 26, 2005 05:06 PMIt's a pretty good bet that they belong to MoveOn, if that gives you any idea of how they might have voted.
Posted by: Dogbert on May 26, 2005 05:45 PMIt seems the petitioners' lawyers need to do something more just to get the judge to consider the evidence in arriving at the judgment in the case -- and quite a bit more to persuade him that it proves any of the things he says they need to prove.
*********************************
Let's see, so far they have set categories of 'errors' into
1. unverified provisional ballots,
2. provisional ballots without voters
3. absentee ballots without voters,
4. illegal felon voters,
5. dead voters,
6. multiple voters,
etc.
and they have also uncovered a false canvassing report.
It is the latter that I think the case rests on, at least in my mind.
Suppose King County had not falsified the report and had come forward while hanging their headsin shame to admit they lost control of the accounting of ballots and had no idea if their tabulations were valid. What would be the ramifications of such a shocking revelation?
They would have had to withhold ALL of King County's votes from certification until an investigation concluded what is now possible to see and what the Rossi camp has claimed from day one. That is, it is such a mess that there is no way to know who won the election.
What would be done then?
Obviously, the King County voters would have revolted and demanded not only a new election but also the heads of Sims, Logan and all the rest of the members of this fiasco.
It would make perfect sense of justice to me if Judge Bridges were to nullify the election tomorropw based on the testimony of Nicole Way and corraborating evidence of a false accounting in King County.
Let the Supremes then try to convince the State that false election accounting is no basis for nullifying an election. I think any reasonable person would never think to strike down an election nullification based on deliberate false accounting.
Our Senators and Representatives are elected as well, and we just got through seeing how far THEY were willing to stray from the 'will of the people.' The incredible tax burdens, the shifting of the clear intent of the voters on things like 601, and general nonsense that had no bearing or support of we, the governed.
Somehow, I don't think the Supremes are too intimidated right now. History shows that if you are elected in this state, you can do what you want and not suffer sanction of any form.
I hate sounding cynical, but the reality we see is disturbing. To speak of it does make one sound a bit cynical.
Patches Pal
Posted by: Patches Pal on May 26, 2005 08:59 PMJudge Bridges was commenting about the Dems asking for the election contest to be tossed out and the Republican's rebutting that motion. The repub. counsel, Korrell, I believe said that the Dems could make their motion tomorrow and the petitioners could respond on Tuesday. Bridges then made a comment about thinking the Dems would not like that, then laughter (with Memorial Day on Monday that would give the petitioners 3 days to prepare their response). In a nutshell I think tomorrow we'll see some depositions being submitted, and the dems asking for the case to be tossed out, and of course, the petitioner's response to that.
Hope that helps.
Forgive my grammatical errors. I had a medical situation come up (one reason I am getting to watch all of this), and am on some meds this evening.
P.S. Carlson talked about how borring today's testimony was, but I have to disagree. I thought it was very interesting. And, I particularly liked watching Katz. That man is intelligent and not easily intimidated. :)
Posted by: Orange Robyn on May 26, 2005 09:48 PMI thought today was great! I agree with you about Katz' testimony..
So the Dems are going to ask that the contest be tossed out tomorrow...? It's hillarious to read the WA state Democratic Ass. website tonight... Paul Berendt has the most incredibly 'spun' take on today's testimony and Judge rulings....
Do people actually believe his blather? He should be ashamed of himself....
OK - on to tomorrow!
I hope you feel better!
Thanks again.
Sorry, Dino.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002290397_danny27.html
Posted by: The_Gent on May 27, 2005 02:28 PM