ClydeR
05-21-2013, 02:35 PM
You know what's wrong with this Harvard study? It's that there's nothing wrong with not responding to people who aren't supposed to vote anyway.
Faller, Nathan, and White “contacted every local official or election commission responsible for overseeing elections for each county or municipality at which elections are administered in 48 states.”* One quarter of the e-mails used a Latino-sounding name, like “Luis Rodriguez,” and asked the voter ID question you see above. Another quarter used a non-Latino-sounding name, like “Greg Walsh”. The other half asked a control question (“Do you have to vote in the primary election to be allowed to vote in the general elections?”) using both sets of names to see if asking about voter ID in particular had any effects.
After all the responses were back, they had a sample including 6,825 sent e-mails to officials in 46 states.** At least 4,557 officials replied. But the interesting story is in who they did and didn’t reply to. “Responses to Latino names,” the researchers write, “are three-and-a-half to four percentage points less likely than to non-Latino white names.” The bias against Latino e-mailers was about three points greater in voter ID questions, though the difference between that and the primary election question wasn’t statistically significant.
The finding holds up when you drop certain regions, when you drop small towns, and when you control for whether officials are elected or appointed. What’s more, they find that there are actually statistically significant differences in the quality of response from officials, depending on what kind of name is used. Responses to Latino voters were likelier to be non-informative, less likely to be “absolutely accurate” (that is, giving complete and accurate information about the relevant topic), and even less likely to take a friendly tone:
More... (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/21/study-election-officials-are-biased-against-latino-voters/)
On page 18 of the actual study (http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/arwhite/files/fallernathanwhite_voteridexp_may2013.pdf), you can see how your state did.
Faller, Nathan, and White “contacted every local official or election commission responsible for overseeing elections for each county or municipality at which elections are administered in 48 states.”* One quarter of the e-mails used a Latino-sounding name, like “Luis Rodriguez,” and asked the voter ID question you see above. Another quarter used a non-Latino-sounding name, like “Greg Walsh”. The other half asked a control question (“Do you have to vote in the primary election to be allowed to vote in the general elections?”) using both sets of names to see if asking about voter ID in particular had any effects.
After all the responses were back, they had a sample including 6,825 sent e-mails to officials in 46 states.** At least 4,557 officials replied. But the interesting story is in who they did and didn’t reply to. “Responses to Latino names,” the researchers write, “are three-and-a-half to four percentage points less likely than to non-Latino white names.” The bias against Latino e-mailers was about three points greater in voter ID questions, though the difference between that and the primary election question wasn’t statistically significant.
The finding holds up when you drop certain regions, when you drop small towns, and when you control for whether officials are elected or appointed. What’s more, they find that there are actually statistically significant differences in the quality of response from officials, depending on what kind of name is used. Responses to Latino voters were likelier to be non-informative, less likely to be “absolutely accurate” (that is, giving complete and accurate information about the relevant topic), and even less likely to take a friendly tone:
More... (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/21/study-election-officials-are-biased-against-latino-voters/)
On page 18 of the actual study (http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/arwhite/files/fallernathanwhite_voteridexp_may2013.pdf), you can see how your state did.