WHO WERE THOSE GUYS--AND WHAT DID THEY WANT?

(with due credit to Butch and Sundance)

Some of our friends seem to be experiencing advanced dyspepsia about some number of apparent republicans voting in the recent democrat primary. When we consider that many of these are the very same friends who pulled GOP ballots in the 1999 and 2003 Aldermanic primaries and who toiled in the vinyards of the 4th Ward trying to entice democrats into the GOP primary to help a republican they admired, it is a little difficult to understand the nature of the complaint. Still, It seems a sound approach is to first define the activity causing the excess stomach acid, then to quantify it and finally to define what should have been done.

What Really happened?: The turnout in Adams County was a putrid 17.7%. Crowding at polling places was not an acute social problem. There were no parking problems. This turnout was nothing for any of us to be proud of. Yes, there was a snow emergency in the a.m. Yes, the GOP ticket did not offer much of a draw. Predictably, the guy who seems like the kind of decent person we'd like to see in politics, Mowen, lost to Miss Congeniality, version 2.0. She celebrated by taking the weekend off to engage in her favorite activity, pulling the wings off of butterflies to see if she can actually hear them scream. The democrat ticket at least had an interesting statewide race and one local race, hotly contested. A little crossover would have been natural and predictable.

Going back four "off year" elections, the highest democrat turnout was 2700 and the ballot split was usually more or less two to one, republican to democrat. Part of that is probably just underlying partisan inclination, simple redness in a red county. Some of it is just dull races on our side over time. With all due respect for Steve Crabtree, just for an example, folks were not exactly kicking in doors at six a.m. to support him. Some of the disgusting low turnout is an increasing tendency among Walmart/NASCAR nation to skip voting. Finally, the long standing ratio here of republicans to democrats may be explained, to some extent, as it's just a fact of democrat life that our people are a little harder to haul. There are a million theories why (fewer listed phone numbers, more people with multiple jobs and more single parents lead the hit parade.) but it's a fact. So a continued low turnout level would never be surprise. A major shift in the two to one ratio would be quite surprising.

Well, we all got that ratio surprise. Due to the snowstorm, it was very difficult to recognize the change in dem/GOP ratio as a bona fide trend until about five in the afternoon on election day. It held true all day but the sample was initially too small to make any reliable conclusions. About 7800 souls showed up to vote. They split almost right down the middle GOP/Dem. That's cutting the expected ratio in half. This ratio appeared to hold up precinct to precinct throughout the day. Certainly, in committed Republican precincts, it was a little higher and in traditionally Democratic precincts, there were few more Democrats ballots by comparison. Nevertheless, it was really hard to tell the difference by ward or precinct. The ratio cut across ward lines and township lines. It held up all day, all over.

Over any period of five or more elections we can see a fluctuation in the number of Democrats ballots requested. Naturally, this ebbs and flows with the local interest in any particular race. The same thing is usually true on the Republican side. If you look very closely at this, you can see there is a somewhat measurable bloc of voters, 500 to 700, under the best of conditions, who fairly reliably vote in primaries but move back-and-forth between parties. A good guess would be these are folks who simply feel a civic duty to vote but can't generate any enthusiasm for one party over the other.

Because people move from precinct to precinct within the county and move to other counties and do not always vote in consecutive elections, this is a difficult number to ascertain. This year it is perhaps even more difficult because of the snowstorm and the initial experiment with early voting. It is impossible to know what percentage of this "swing primary voter group" would be inclined to participate in the early voting and whether the the early voting opportunity actually increased the number of "Swing primary" voters, decreased it or had no effect on it. Intuitively, we would feel the weather may have decreased it but early voting either increased it or had no effect on it. Still, that's just a guess. We just won’t have data on this for a while.

If we assume that these are "swing primary" citizens are motivated by a strong civic duty, then it is reasonable to believe not a huge percentage of them were dissuaded by the snowstorm. Just to have an assumption, let's suppose that a usual and predictable 500 such voters was reduced by at 10% to 450. Without polling data this would be impossible to prove or disprove but it appears a sound working assumption. Without data we have to make an assumption. This one seems sensible but if someone else wanted to tweak it up or down by 100, they’d get no argument from me.

These are not strictly Republican primary voters, even though they might have voted in the last two Republican primaries. There is no evidence to suggest that these folks came to the democrat primary with any particular predisposition for either candidate. One can argue that the Challenger had an advantage from recent advertising in and one can argue that the incumbent had an advantage from simple long term name recognition. As to the "Swing primary" voters, we simply do not know.

How many true GOP "Drop-ins"?: This leaves about 650 "New" democratic primary voters who appear to have come from habitual Republican primary voters for whom we must account.

In one ward we have a statistical aberration because, in 1999 and 2003, approximately a hundred (using round numbers) known Democrats voted inthe Republican primary. Thus we have to reduce the remaining 650 possible crossover votes by 100, actually reverse crossovers, for a total of 550. Certainly, this is not an exact number but it is a useful working assumption.

Anecdotally, we know that some of this number, prominent, quotable people, voted for the incumbent. We really do not know and cannot know that this body of some 550 people voted as a group. The only even moderately effective way to do this would be by exit polling and even that technique can be misleading. But it is still statistical malpractice to say "Dave Bockhold's family voted for the Clerk, therefore all these crossovers were votes for the incumbent." There's just no statistical support for that. It's a silly proposition and one for which there is no statistical support. The elections is close in the Rural County, Collar Townships, Dem. wards and Republican Wards, yet we are supposed to believe it is not close among one demographic, apparent crossover voters? With great respect for Dave Bockhold, does he speak for all those foks? Anyone who says they know how this bloc voted is just guessing.

Thus, there's a really no accurate assumption that we can make about these folks. We know that both sides had crossover efforts. We know that the challenger's side was more experienced at negotiating crossover votes than the incumbent’s. We know that the challenger's side had large numbers of GOP primary voters deeply in their debt for the crossover efforts by democrats in 1999 and 2003. It is reasonable to believe that Carper's crossover effort was more effective that Volms, despite the white hot publicity trumpeted by the local paper since the election. (A headline with no empirical support is just a guess in bold type). The newspaper is not talking about the folks who pulled up to polling places in utility trucks and took their first ever democrat ballot. I'm pretty sure they were not there to vote for Georgia Volm. As noted, each side has bystanders reports which confirm crossover activity by the other side. Because there was no exit polling, eveybody has anecdotals but nobody has hard numbers. We could go precinct by precinct and show that the GOP infusion in some areas was necessarily Carper-driven. We could go some other places and show it was strong Volm support. That would still be more supposition than it's worth. So it is anybody’s guess how these 550 or so folks voted as a body, if at all. The only thing we know for sure about them is that they are true crossovers.

Why the heartburn?: Well, if both sides did it, why are the Carperites unhappy? First, their estimable candidate didn't win. That always makes for unhappiness. Second, they are the crossover experts. They've been tinkering with this technique Since Gary Sparks was chairman. It must be galling that somebody else actually used it to advantage. Finally, it must be difficult to have GOP big jocks talking about their family's votes for GV openly. Before we get off of this, though, we really should address some questions. Chuck Scholz was elected in 1993 with crossover votes. That was a good thing. Why was this a bad thing? Why was it OK for democrats to vote in the GOP primary for Tony Sassen x 2 and Ray Coleman and even Mike Rein but it is not a good thing for Repubs to vote in the Dem. Primary? Speaking of those races, is it not reasonable to assume that those Republicans who were helped by the now-Carperites reciprocated this time and went into our primary, urged their friends and family to do so as well, and plugged for Carper? That is, after all, how the game of "strange bedfellows" is played. I think it's not only a reasonable but compelling assumption. In short, there is a touch of hypocrisy in the crossover specialists screaming about a crossover vote.

What Should the Clerk have done?: -- It is not legal to hire polling place bouncers to keep potential crossovers away from the polls. Snipers on adjoining roofs is a little extreme. Disappearing ink pens for the crossovers is at least creative but it would be hard to limit them just to GOP voters. The pens recirculate. Perhaps our friends think GV should have taken out a radio ad asking not GOP voters pretty please not to cross over. Maybe some billboards. Are you starting to get the idea this debate is a little silly?

Rules of Engagement Were the same for everybody--We all knew this was a self-selection primary. We all knew that there was risk in a full out attack mode campaign by Carper bringing in non-traditional primary voters. We all knew that the GOP primary was the sound of one hand clapping. Nobody changed the rules in the middle of the game. We all went after the same population base. We could all adjust our mailing lists. I'm sure nobody over at Camp Carper was stupid enough to leave the mailing lists just to "double D" voters. We surely didn't. We could door-to-door with more creative walk lists and in areas we might not take on in a restricted democratic primary. It would have been foolish not to. This was not a county convention and it was not a caucus. Neither side was foolish enough to run it like one. I won't say it was a fair fight, but that's another column for another day. It seems to me our friends only disliked the rules of engagement after they saw the results.

Next Column: Precinct by Precinct Chaos.