The Election Wasn't Fair

Republicans are correct, the election wasn't fair.

From Political Wire...

A new Hamilton College poll finds that heading into the 2012 election, "both Democrats and Republicans expressed concerns about the fairness of the election. Only 15% of Republicans and 19% of Democrats were very confident that the election would be decided fairly." 

"After the election, fears about voter fraud abated among Democrats but skyrocketed among Republicans, with 58% of Republicans not confident at all about the fairness of the election."

But just not in the way they think.

From the Washington Post...

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 using both sets of names to see if asking about voter ID in particular had any effects. 

[Of] 6,825 sent e-mails to officials in 46 states, [a]t 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. 

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”, and even less likely to take a friendly tone.

Institutional racism at work.