Statistical inference and the secret ballot

Ring Lardner, Jr.:

[In 1936] I was already settled in Southern California, and it may have been that first exercise of the franchise that triggered the FBI surveillance of me that would last for decades. I had assumed, of course, that I was enjoying the vaunted American privilege of the secret ballot. On a wall outside my polling place on Wilshire Boulevard, however, was a compilation of the district’s registered voters: Democrats, a long list of names; Republicans, a somewhat lesser number; and “Declines to State,” one, “Ring W. Lardner, Jr.” The day after the election, alongside those lists were published the results: Roosevelt, so many; Landon, so many; Browder, one.

4 thoughts on “Statistical inference and the secret ballot

  1. Voting for the Moscow-controlled CPUSA candidate after the Ukrainian Holomodor and during the early period of the Great Terror is something to be really proud of, Ring!

    • Steve:

      I agree, but on the other hand, the guy had no chance of winning and there is an argument for casting an extreme ballot in order to send a message. Sort of like how someone might vote for Rick Santorum without actually wanting him to win.

  2. Identifying individual voting behavior is, of course, much easier today than in 1936:

    “The firm gathers publicly available voter files from all 50 states and supplements this with records of political donations and other profiles purchased from commercial data brokers… then, working with about 100 high-traffic websites that register their users, they can match the offline data to the online identities of individuals.”

    http://j.mp/M4qHis (Technology Review via NNSquad)

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