Arafat

Based on this picture on CNN.com, you'd think he won the Nobel Peace Prize or something:

What do you see?

No, it's not an ink splotch. It's a map I'd been hoping someone would create: a shaded, population-weighted map of which regions voted for who.

Election Day

I'd been meaning to write this post for a while now, but I needed to unwind a bit after the voting age protests and the election. Now that I've gotten a chance to do so, I want to basically describe how my Election Day went, which includes some (I think) interesting stories, as well as offer my thoughts for the future.

Voting

First: I got up around 11, to give myself enough time to vote, finish the preparations for the voting age protest, pick up a friend, and arrive in Boston by 4:30 pm.

I went to vote at 12:15. Had a little trouble finding the polling place, because its address was a bit confusing. But I found it, and the wait to vote was real short: maybe five minutes. At first the optical scanner spit out my ballot, but it accepted it on the second try (I assume it was read right, but who knows?) I had voted in 2002 in the Massachusetts election, but this was my first time ever voting in a presidential election. It felt surprisingly ordinary and a bit surreal at the same time. Maybe it feels slightly more ordinary to me than most 21-year-olds, having been a student at Sudbury schools. Still, I couldn't help some tears when I was driving back home, to think that I'm able to participate in such a momentous activity.

The Protest

Rain was expected, so I took the signs to Kinko's to get them laminated. They really raped me on price, charging me $56 for four 18" x 24" signs. In retrospect, I think it was a mistake to pay it. I could've made new signs if they got destroyed, and for not much more than the cost of lamination to begin with. But I had to leave in an hour and I didn't want all my hard preparatory work to go to waste simply because of some rain. So I let them rape me.

I picked up my friend, met several others at Alewife Station, and arrived at Boston City Hall at 4:40 pm, 10 minutes late. Turned out to be a terrible location. Well, it was really too late in the day to hold a protest. It was already dark by time we got there, and very few people came by (even though City Hall is a polling location). If I'd had my druthers, I would've held the protest earlier, but I wanted to make it possible for kids getting out of school to attend. Turns out the group I was expecting of 4-5 teens from public school cancelled anyway, so that became mostly a moot point, and we ended up with a skeleton crew of seven people.

None of the major media showed up either. Just some reporter from Boston University who noticed us immediately as we were setting up. So I was a bit disappointed. I knew there was a chance of this happening, though. It was, after all, the most-followed American election in decades. I was hoping that the interest in the election would carry over to our voting age protest, but I was well aware of the possibility that everyone would be simply too distracted to care.

Ultimately, we decided to move to Copley Square, the location of John Kerry's expected appearance later that night, since that was the focus of all the media attention, and John Kerry wasn't expected to show up for at least five hours (it was only 6 pm).

There were literally thousands of people there. Somewhat strange, since I used to walk by that area every day on my way to high school. When I tried to drop out of high school, the Copley Boston Public Library was my sanctuary, where I picked up many books on physics, philosophy, and education (I read virtually everything by and about Richard Feynman, as well as A. S. Neill's Summerhill, which changed my life).

John Kerry's stage was set up in front of the library, and was fenced off probably 100 feet in all directions, with no one allowed inside the fence. As such, the bulk of the crowd had gathered across the street in the square in front of Trinity Church. In that square is a small depression which is sometimes filled with water in the summer. Since everyone wanted to be high enough to see the artists (such as Jon Bon Jovi) performing on stage, no one stood in the depression. Thus, it was a perfect spot to set up our protest: visible by all, occupied by none.

We set up in the depression, and were immediately approached by curious people (reporters and rally attendees alike). We had a good swarm operation going on. Though I was officially in charge, everything happened way too fast for me to keep track of it all. Our August protest was good practice, because everyone knew what to do this time around, and they all did an excellent job of handling the questions, distributing buttons and position papers, keeping track of all our property, and taking pictures and video.

Probably 10 different media outlets approached us during the two hours we were there. No major ones, unfortunately, but a lot of medium-sized ones, some from other states. At least two video cameras as well.

In addition, one guy from Quebec interviewed me on video for a documentary he was making of America. At first he asked about the voting age protest, but questions quickly led more generally to my personal thoughts about the election as a whole. "If you could vote, who would you vote for?" I answered this as I had to others: "I can vote; I'm 21. But it would be hypocritical of me to change my tune simply because I'm over 18. I believe in no voting age on principle, not just for myself." "So who did you vote for?" he asked. I tried to dodge the question, not because I'm ashamed of who I voted for by any means, but because I was representing ASFAR on video, and unlike a written interview, my comments needed to be quick and to-the-point, lest they be twisted out of context. Still, he insisted, so when it was finally clear that his questions were of me personally, and not ASFAR, I explained to him my vote for Bush: no, I don't agree with him on everything (abortion and gay marriage, for example), but I think we need to take a proactive role in eliminating the conditions and root causes, if you will, of terrorism, and that is 99% of my vote (I also like his economic policy, but that's irrelevant). He betrayed his disdain for my views through his questions; he must have been shocked to find a real-life Bush supporter who didn't come across as a total idiot (I think I didn't come across that way, at least), at the largest Kerry rally anywhere in the world. I wonder if I'll ever get to see his documentary when it's done.

Bad News

At around 7:30 pm, I gave Justin a call to find out how the election was going, since we'd been starved of news for the three hours we'd been in Boston. He told me that the exit polls have Kerry ahead in Ohio and Florida by large margins, and the market price for Bush had dropped from the 57 it was at earlier in the day, to barely 25. I felt the life get sucked out of me. I knew I'd be upset if Kerry won, but I simply wasn't prepared for how upset I'd be. This isn't like the mild disappointment you feel when the Red Sox lose to the Yankees in the 11th inning of the 7th game. It's serious business: elections are real. There are winners and losers. And it sucks to be the losers. I don't really blame those who were around me for laughing at my misery when I heard the news; it's not like they actually wanted me to be unhappy, and hell, until I actually got hit by it, I didn't even realize how gut-wrenching it'd be, so I certainly couldn't blame them for not understanding. (For your viewing pleasure and my embarrassment, here's video of me on the phone, and my reaction to the news, taken mischievously by Jacob.)

Still, I just wanted to go home at that point. Having spent months preparing for these protests, putting hours upon hours into hundreds of phone calls and emails to people all over the country, and over $100 into propaganda for the Boston protest, it didn't matter. It was like being asked to to sing a show tune after your dog got run over by a car.

Add to this the effect of the huge reality distortion field of the Kerry rally: some guy was running back and forth yelling "IT'S GONNA BE A LANDSLIDE EVERYONE!" to wild applause. Based on the little information I knew, a Kerry landslide actually seemed plausible at that point. I felt physically sick. Part of me just didn't believe it. I mean, I knew Kerry had a chance of winning, but a landslide? It just didn't seem right. I started to understand the mindset of Gore's supporters in 2000, who simply couldn't accept defeat, but I vowed to myself to accept the results whatever they were.

As much as I wanted to go home, I knew I needed to stick it out for at least a while longer. I was, after all, the coordinator, and I would have been quite upset if the attendees decided to go home just because Bush was winning. I think I did a pretty good job of holding out, all things considered.

The Comeback

Justin called me back about a half hour later, to inform me that Bush actually was ahead in Florida, based on actual returns. That certainly put the life right back in me. Also: I started to notice that much of the crowd's elation was totally irrational. At first, a 77-66 electoral vote tally favoring Kerry appeared on the giant screen. This received a tremendous reception by the crowd, but not a single one of those states were swing states to begin with, so the numbers were meaningless! The crowd simply didn't understand that, and was caught up in its zeal. Every couple of minutes, further waves of cheering swept through the crowd for no apparent reason. Each time, I asked someone if she knew what she was cheering for, and each time, she hadn't a clue.

Still, I was feeling anxious and information-deprived, the crowd had stopped paying attention to us, and even my fellow protestors were getting tired. So we closed up shop at 8:20 and headed home. On the ride home, I felt new hope as Justin reported that Bush's market price had rebounded to the low-40's, and he was competitive in Ohio.

The Victory

TV was nearly useless on election night. I guess they'd just been made extremely timid by the 2000 debacle, but they weren't calling states until an hour or two after the results were obvious. Much more timely information was available on the Internet, and my array of three TVs turned out to be quite superfluous.

Once Ohio was called by NBC shortly before 1 am, NBC refused to call a single other state. I felt like they were deliberately refraining from stating the obvious because they were afraid to declare a victor. Bush, with 269 electoral votes, was only one vote shy, and he had obviously won in Nevada despite the fact that NBC refused to call it. Turns out I was right about NBC, as Tom Brokaw later admitted.

Still, it was obvious at that point that Bush had it wrapped up, and I felt pretty relieved. Interestingly, though, my feeling of relief wasn't nearly as great as my initial fear when I thought Kerry was winning. I guess, in my heart of hearts, I had always expected Bush to win, so while it was a relief to have that expectation confirmed, it didn't have the same effect on me as when it seemed the previously-unexpected would happen. Plus, it's not like Bush's victory is the end. It simply means the war can continue to be fought.

When John Edwards gave his defiant speech a couple hours later, I assumed it meant they were suing, given their actions in 2000, and all the telegraphing the DNC had done ahead-of-time, what with its army of 10,000 lawyers and fleet of six jets. My feeling at that point was mostly amusement, not surprise: if they sued when the margin of victory was as great as this time, it would just further accelerate the party's own destruction.

I'm glad to know I was wrong, and that they were simply waiting for Ohio's precincts to finish reporting. I guess I would have done the same thing if I were them.

The Future

By now it's settled in more for me that Bush will be president for another four years, and that our civilization made the right choice in one of the most important referendums it's ever faced. The oxygen is literally flowing better for me this week.

Part of me wonders if the election was responsible for the deterioration of Arafat's health which came one day later, given that he's now guaranteed to be totally marginalized for the remainder of his life. His only hope of being relevant before he croaked (assuming he did recover) was a Kerry presidency.

It also seems quite possible that the election helped persuade Iran to reach a deal with the "good cop" of Europe, now that it knows the bad cop will be staying around for quite a while longer. I'm skeptical, however, of Iran's seriousness. We'll see.

Andrew Sullivan also notes a development in Iraq which he thinks might be a result of the election:

Is this the beginning of the end for Iraq's Tet Offensive, now that its desired political effects have failed? Time will tell. But immediately following Bush's victory, contracts on Intrade for a successful Iraqi election in January jumped from around 65 to 84.

I'm not going to gloat about or rub in the victory to those who were saddened by it. After going through what I went through earlier that night, I have some understanding of how seriously bummed out some people are right now, and I take no pleasure in their unhappiness (unless you're talking about people like Michael Moore and Jacque Chirac). I sincerely believe — and hope — that time will show this decision to be a victory for all of us. If Kerry had won, I like to think I'd be rooting for his success and that I'd give him a serious chance to achieve it. I ask for the same from those who hoped for a different outcome in this election.

I recognize the possibility that I may be wrong: the Bush Doctrine may turn out to be a failure. But it's a calculated risk, and I earnestly believe it is the right direction. Its effects so far have been mixed, but on the whole positive, I believe. However, a year and a half is simply not enough time to measure its results, and throwing its executor out of office simply because we have faced difficulties seems to me a rash decision, and one that makes us vulnerable to Tet-like manipulation by our enemy.

Five and a half years, however, may very well be enough time to measure results, and how those years go will determine whether the Lieberman wing or the Dean wing of the Democratic Party will prevail. But the least-common-denominator of John Kerry was perhaps doomed to failure, even against a relatively poor politician such as Bush.

So it's a big win for Republicans, and one I celebrate. A 286-252 electoral vote victory may not seem like much, but accompanied with a pickup of four Senate seats and even more House seats, it adds to 2002's gains to give Republicans a convincing grasp on the levers of government.

With this power comes downsides, however. The success of constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage in 11 states is not a happy one. In practical terms, those amendments have little effect, since those are states where gay marriage had no chance of being legalized in the foreseeable future anyways.

However, it's a symbolic example of the dangers of too much power in the hands of one political party, and I'm certainly wary of any further Republican gains — especially one which would reach the 60 senate seats necessary to stop a filibuster. Even so, the Democrats really deserved this defeat, given their behavior over the last several years. I hope that the Democratic Party will take this opportunity to figure out how to become a responsible opposition party, deciding where it stands on foreign policy and arguing seriously for that position, rather than basing their platform on vague equivocation and even dishonesty.

One way or another: it'll be an interesting four years. Will the Republican Party invest its political capital in our war and our economy, or will it pander to the evangelical right? Will Rudy Giuliani be able to overcome social objections and receive his well-deserved nomination in '08, or will we be stuck with a mediocre candidate like John McCain? Will the Democratic Party reform itself and become responsible again? Will Iraq go down the path of freedom and democracy, setting an example for the rest of the Middle East?

Will I ever reach 1 dan?

TO BE CONTINUED...

Florida voting machines rigged?

Kathy Dopp has posted an analysis of Florida's election results by county, as compared to expected results based on voter registration data. She notices that in counties which use optical scanner machines, the Republican turnout tended to be quite large, percentage-wise, compared to the Democratic turnout, whereas in counties which use touch-screen machines, there does not seem to be an overall pattern in terms of which voters turned out in greater numbers:

So, were the optical machines rigged?

First of all, I have compiled a map of which counties in Florida use optical vs. touch-screen tabulation machines, using the CNN Election 2004 map as a template:



Then, I created a map based on the turnout for each county as compared to the expected turnout from the voter registration rolls. The exact formula is:

(Bush votes / registered Republicans) - (Kerry votes / registered Democrats)

Say, for example, that there are 100 Republicans and 160 Democrats in a fictional Norfolk county. On Election Day, 80 votes are recorded for Bush and 100 for Kerry. That's a turnout rate of 80.0% for Republicans and 62.5% for Democrats. Subtract the latter from the former and you get a result of 17.5%.

If your result is positive, you color the county that shade of red (up to 100%), or blue if negative (down to -100%). In the example case, Norfolk county would be colored a light shade of red.

Here is that map, side-by-side with the voting machine map:



Notice that those areas which turned out unexpectedly well for Kerry form a ring around the southern coast of Florida. Most of those counties use touch-screen machines! Further, there's a cluster of five counties just inland from the coast which had high Bush vote counts relative to the Republican registration rolls, and used optical machines. Does this support the notion that the optical machines were rigged for Bush?

In other words, is there a pattern where counties which use optical vote-counting machines report irregularly high turnout for Bush, as compared to neighboring counties which use touch-screen machines?

Well, let's see. There's another cluster of touch-screen machines right in the center of Florida. Did they lean more towards Kerry than their neighboring counties? Looking at the map, there is no evidence that that is the case. Finally, Nassau county in the northeast corner of Florida uses a touch-screen machine, yet it reported a higher Republican-Democrat difference in turnout than the counties directly below it, which all use optical machines.

So so far, it seems that there just happen to be a bunch of counties on the southern tip which shifted unexpectedly to Kerry, and also happened to have touch-screen voting machines. Yes, that is a coincidence, but there's no larger pattern regarding the machines themselves, nor are there enough counties with touch-screen voting machines to detect a meaningful pattern even if there were one.

But what explains the extremely high voter turnout for Republicans in the northern counties, and in that county cluster inland from the southern coast? Actually, the turnout wasn't that high. If you base the map on total votes minus expected votes, rather than divided by, you get a wholly different picture:



So you see, there are only three counties which contributed substantially to Bush's victory in Florida, as compared to the expectations based on the voter rolls: Duval county in the northeast, which contains the densely-populated city of Jacksonville; and the Polk and Hillsborough counties in the center of Florida, one of which even used a touch-screen voting system! Two out of three using optical machines is not statistically meaningful.

In other words, all the northern counties colored deep red by the first map are very sparsely populated, and in fact many of them have such a low number of registered Republicans as compared to registered Democrats, that a shift in a couple hundred votes could cause them to be colored deep red even if the county itself had more people vote for Kerry than for Bush, since a couple hundred votes would constitute over 200% turnout for Bush as compared to the number of registered Republicans.

Also, many Floridians are old, and chose their party registration decades ago. There are certainly a large number of socially conservative people who registered as a Democrat years ago, but now find themselves voting Republican. Sort of the "Zel Miller" type of Democrat, or "Dixiecrat" as they're sometimes called (in fact, Dixie is the name of one of the Florida counties exhibiting that very result).

Notice also that, barring the five southern exceptions, every county which is colored deep red on the first map is located in the northern section of Florida. Also note that there is only one county in that northern section which actually uses a touch-screen machine, and it does not report any larger Republican-Democratic turnout ratio than its neighboring counties. Therefore, the entire anomaly is geographically-based. If you removed those northern counties, the anomaly would essentially disappear. And since there are basically no touch-screen machines in northern Florida, you have no way to actually control for geography.

To conclude, there is simply no pattern here that remains when you control for geographic location. Kathy does note that:


However, doing a simple geographic map of the counties, as I did, should be the first thing one should think of when you're considering the possibility of voter fraud, before you say:


Certainly Kathy made no explicitly false claims, and there's nothing wrong with asking questions, but I can only guess at what causes someone to be so curious as to be stumbling around in the dark looking for conspiracies like these. I attribute it to the irrational "Bush stole the election" mentality which has permeated the left since 2000.

It's sad, too, because when real fraud happens, how are well-meaning people supposed to know? We're so used to tuning out the conspiracy theories.

Final Projection

Bush - 289.
Kerry - 249.

Whoops

The GeekMedia TradeSports map shut down prematurely. Use Intrade to monitor prices in real-time (though no map, unfortunately).

:sigh:

BBC's West Bank correspondent (via InstaPundit):

The electoral map

This is the site to watch tomorrow evening, as the election takes place. It will update regularly with a color-coded map of the states, based on the odds of that state going for Bush or Kerry as currently indicated by the Intrade market prices.

The white states are the ones we should be focused on. You can also view a distorted map based on electoral vote count for each state.

Flip-flopping

I know I promised a followup to my Is John Kerry a flip-flopper? post today. Unfortunately, what with the voting age protests and the election tomorrow, I don't think I'll have time to do an in-depth post. I did do some research, and I'll summarize what my basic conclusion is (with an in-depth followup some other time).

My conclusion based on watching the first Democratic debate is: it is fair to call John Kerry a flip-flopper. His statements which are often quoted to support that claim are not quoted out of context. Some will often counter that there's a difference between being a flip-flopper for political gain, and simply changing your mind. They'll suggest that Bush is stubborn and incapable of changing his mind, as opposed to "steadfast" or "principled".

But here's the thing: if John Kerry actually changed his position on Iraq, he won't admit it. He says he had the same position all along. That simply isn't true. The apparent truth is he doesn't have a position at all.

On the other hand, Bush did change his mind, and will readily admit it. He changed his mind on September 11th. He promised, in 2000, a humble foreign policy. That was, up till that day, what he delivered. But then he changed our foreign policy, because his worldview changed.

The basic difference is between changing your overall strategy when the world has drastically changed, and between changing your position every couple of months when the political situation has changed. Bush seems to do the former (whether you agree with his strategy or not). Kerry seems to do the latter.

Followup: Is John Kerry a dangerous pick?

Back in July, I analyzed the prices of several contracts on the Foresight Exchange fake money idea futures market, to determine the expected odds of a nuclear attack on a U.S. city by 2010, based on who becomes president. I concluded based on the prices at the time that the market seemed to suggest that "the U.S. is over three times as likely to be nuked by 2010 if Kerry is elected than if Bush is reelected".

The contracts I looked at were:

• Bush04 — Bush is reelected.
  
• NukeUS — The U.S. is nuked.
  
• GBNuke — Bush is reelected and the U.S. is not nuked.

Utilizing simple algebra, one can extrapolate from the market prices of those three contracts what the expected odds of the U.S. getting nuked are, given a Kerry presidency vs. a Bush presidency.

However, there are many possible market distortions which could have been in play, many of which I mention in the original post. One that I didn't mention was the fact that there was no analgous "JKNuke" contract based on the odds that John Kerry will be elected and the U.S. will not be nuked. As such, a slightly different process was required to extrapolate the Bush nuke odds than to extrapolate the Kerry nuke odds.

Since then, I have introduced just such a contract, so that there is symmetry between the mechanism by which the odds are extrapolated for both candidates. In addition, the volume has increased on all of the relevant contracts, so the data may be somewhat more meaningful than it was in July.

The market prices as I write this are as follows:

	Bid	Ask	Last
Bush04	50%	57%	58%
NukeUS	20%	22%	20%
GBNuke	40%	48%	41%
JKNuke	40%	45%	40%

Now, let's figure out the odds of the U.S. being nuked by 2010 and Bush being reelected (let's call this BushCrap). We know that the odds of Bush being reelected and the U.S. being nuked plus the odds of Bush being reelected and the U.S. not being nuked must add up to the simple odds of Bush being reelected:

GBNuke + BushCrap = Bush04

We can rearrange this as:

BushCrap = Bush04 - GBNuke

If we're generous to Bush, we'll plug in the bid price for Bush04, and the ask price for GBNuke, since that gives you the lowest possible price for BushCrap:

BushCrap = 50 - 48 = 2

In other words, in 2 out of 50 instances of Bush being reelected, the U.S. gets nuked. So that puts the lower bound at 4.0% odds if we choose to reelect him.

Now what if we're not very generous? We'll use the ask price for Bush04 and the bid price for GBNuke:

BushCrap = 57 - 40 = 17

So that gives us 17 out of 57, or 29.8%. In other words: the odds are somewhere between 4.0% and 29.8% of the U.S. getting nuked by 2010, should we reelect Bush.

What about Kerry (100 - Bush04)? Via the same process:

KerryCrap = (100 - Bush04) - JKNuke

If we're generous:

KerryCrap = (100 - 57) - 45 = -2

If we're ungenerous:

KerryCrap = (100 - 50) - 40 = 10

Obviously the odds can't be below zero, so let's put the lower bounds at 0.0%. The upper bounds are 10 out of 50, or 20.0%. Therefore: the odds are somewhere between 0.0% and 20.0% of the U.S. getting nuked by 2010, should we elect John Kerry.

There's a bit more fine-tuning we can do, however. We know that KerryCrap plus BushCrap must add up to equal NukeUS, right? After all, they together encompass both possible ways we could get nuked by 2010. Since:

BushCrap <= 17

and

NukeUS >= 20

we have:

KerryCrap >= 3

Thus, the lower bounds for being nuked if Kerry is elected are actually 3 out of 43 (43 because BushCrap is 17 only if Bush04 is 57), or 7.0%.

With the same logic, since:

KerryCrap <= 10

and

NukeUS >= 20

we have:

BushCrap >= 10

Thus, the lower bounds for being nuked if Bush is reelected are actually 10 out of 50, or 20.0%.

This puts the numbers for Bush at somewhere between 20.0% and 29.8%, and the numbers for Kerry at somewhere between 7.0% and 20.0%. That clearly favors Kerry. I attribute the July numbers to the lack of volume and the lack of an analogous JKNuke contract which now exists.

However, the caveats as mentioned in my first post still apply. One additional substantial caveat I did not mention then is that, since the Foresight Exchange does not use real money, it works more like a subjective poll of those who choose to take it, rather than taking advantage of the "smart money" that already exists in the real world.

As everyone knows, I disagree with this. I think Bush's policies are better for America's security, and I intend to vote on that belief (I also hold 225 shares of GBNuke and -450 shares of JKNuke). But I thought it was important to update my readers on the new data now that it exists.

UPDATE 9:44 PM: Just ran the numbers again, barely an hour after the initial post. Bush is between 21.6% and 23.1%. Kerry is between 16.7% and 18.4%. This still favors Kerry, however it is much closer now. So this confirms my earlier statement that you have to take these numbers with a grain of salt. They're very volatile and can be easily moved by a single trader.

Campaigning in swing states

When pseudo-science and politics combine...

...this is the result.

Skulls of the Candidates

Found this via InstaPundit.

Megan McArdle makes up her mind

Megan McArdle, guest-blogging at InstaPundit, finally makes up her mind on who to vote for, and her thread of logic is very interesting to read.

By the way, sequels to my posts, Is John Kerry a dangerous pick? and Is John Kerry a flip-flopper?, are coming later today. Stay tuned.