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and_dont_blink t1_iztb65t wrote

Reply to comment by Unique-Public-8594 in Recount flips Mass. House election to Democrat by 1 vote by TurretLauncher

There are now three this cycle that gave an election to Democrat by one vote in the NE after recounts.

  • Paulos vs Morrison in CT
  • Kassner vs Mirra in the north shore
  • Mosley vs Gagne in NH

To say it's a statistical anomaly is a bit of an understatement. Here's a list of super-close votes that have occurred across the country from 1800 to 2010.
You'll also notice that most of those are not one-vote wins, but a few hundred, several votes, things like "1.1 votes per precinct across the election" or "we couldn't find 50 votes so decide to do a coin toss" (not making this up). You'll also notice they almost all involve small vote counts in the hundreds (congressional), as the more votes you have the more statistically unlikely it is -- by the time you are talking elections in 5,000-10k range it's powerball-ish.

It's a great way to get downvoted because of all the election-denier stuff, but I think it's fair to say it's weird as hell and if these results were going the other way we'd have a whole lot of questions in the same way you would someone in an area repeatedly winning the Powerball. That it's all favoring one side, and all happening in the same region makes it weirder.

The thing is, if you wanted to mess with an election, why would you make it so obvious? If you were a foreign power that wanted to really destabilize a democracy, this might be an approach -- the side winning feels no choice but to dig in while knowing something is weird harming their faith in elections, while the other side becomes full on rabid that something seems very wrong.

Edit: As mentioned, it's a great way to get down voted but that's fine, it's part of the "have to dig in while knowing something is wrong" part but you have to realize how irrational & impartial it comes off. One election would make the news because of its statistical improbability, three is weird as hell and when you keep adding qualifiers like the same region and for the same party...

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Awkward-Media-3550 t1_iztgb4d wrote

Have you actually measured how much of a statistical anomaly? Highly divisive elections draw people into two groups effectively, lots of elections across several states, once you factor everything, close elections isn’t that crazy.

If anyone was interfering in American elections, it would require covertly corrupting thousands of independent low level election workers, none of whom would say anything.

The main threat to American elections is not fraud, it’s people calling them fraud because they didn’t win.

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and_dont_blink t1_iztj6pj wrote

>Have you actually measured how much of a statistical anomaly? Highly divisive elections draw people into two groups effectively

I think you mean calculated, but that depends on each race -- the higher the vote count the less likely it is. e.g., an election between 20,500 people being decided by one vote is much less likely than an election between 20 or 200. Hence why it never really happens throughout our election history as counts go higher as shown in the link.

>If anyone was interfering in American elections, it would require covertly corrupting thousands of independent low level election workers

We don't know the why of what's behind this, but you're starting with an unproven assumption about how many people it would involve especially in a closer election.

Things like software aside, take for example this recent very weird case in CT which involved a republican town clerk handing over ballots that had been kicked back for being filled in improperly. That person then forged the votes and signatures then turned them into be counted normally. There's still an ongoing FBI probe so a lot of people didn't have to testify as to what was really going on.

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itsgreater9000 t1_izu4xj4 wrote

> I think you mean calculated, but that depends on each race -- the higher the vote count the less likely it is. e.g., an election between 20,500 people being decided by one vote is much less likely than an election between 20 or 200.

This is true, but I think the probability increases are not as stark as we see a higher partisan split among a population of voters. For example, sure, there's a 1% probability that you get a vote total like 51-49, but take into account that the town is evenly split and that there's only really 20 votes that can go one way or the other, and now the probability is now at 5%. I'm not trying to say there isn't electoral fuckery, but I think considering the sample size is so small it's hard to draw conclusions at this point in time. (yes, the sample size of elections is not in and of itself small, but given how elections work these days the actual sample size i think is quite small to draw any specific conclusions from it)

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knign t1_iztimia wrote

Before getting into conspiracy theories, do you have actual statistical estimate?

I mean, for example, in Poulos vs Morrison the total number of votes cast is just over 10,000. With a district evenly split across party lines, 1 vote difference isn't that big of an anomaly.

I am pretty sure your list of close votes isn't exhaustive, it probably only includes a few examples which garnered most publicity.

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AugustusPompeianus t1_iztqt58 wrote

I'm surprised why this isn't more common in more smaller states experience more of these tight elections.

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Rapierian t1_izxcdu2 wrote

I definitely don't trust any election that's decided by so few votes. Even not accounting for malice, the margin of error of just accidentally processing a vote wrong has to be higher than 1 vote for most races...

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