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Felons vote Democratic, national study says
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/4850294p-4452879c.html
KENNETH P. VOGEL; The News Tribune
Originally published: May 10th, 2005 12:01 AM
If disenfranchised felons had been allowed to vote, they would have swung the 2000 presidential race to Al Gore, according to a national study Republicans are touting in their fight to overturn Christine Gregoire’s victory in last fall’s governor’s race.
The study posits that since racial minorities and the poor – groups that tend to vote for Democrats– make up a disproportionate number of felons, a hypothetical felon voting bloc would be so overwhelmingly Democratic it could swing national and statewide elections.
On average, 74 percent of felons would have voted Democratic in presidential and U.S. Senate elections dating back to 1972, according to the study’s analysis of demographic and voting data.
Of Democratic presidential candidates, the study predicts that Bill Clinton’s successful 1996 re-election campaign would have gotten the highest percentage of felon votes, at 85.4 percent. Jimmy Carter’s failed 1980 re-election would have gotten the lowest, at 66.5 percent.
A state GOP-funded study by Jonathan Katz, a political science professor at the California Institute of Technology, estimates that Gregoire received 66.3 percent of the illegal felon votes.
And a study by Tony Gill, an associate political science professor at the University of Washington, estimates that Gregoire received 60.1 percent of felon votes in King County, Gregoire’s base and home to by far the largest number of illegal felon votes the GOP says were cast.
Compared with the national study, published in 2002 in the American Sociological Review, Gill writes that his study’s estimate “is too conservative, giving Ms. Gregoire the benefit of the doubt. In other words, the rate at which felons vote for a Democratic candidate is likely to be higher than the estimates provided by the precinct-level of analysis here.”
Katz did not return a phone call.
But Nick Handy, elections chief for the secretary of state’s office, the primary defendant in the case, said the national study shouldn’t be admissible.
“It strikes me that generalized testimony about how felons probably would have voted is getting pretty remote,” he said.
Todd Donovan, a political science professor at Western Washington University who’s not involved in the case, said the national study is based too narrowly on race and is not applicable in Washington, where racial minorities make up a lower percentage of the felon population than in other states.
The study’s “hypothetical felon doesn’t really exist in most places in Washington. We just don’t fit that. We’re not in Georgia,” Donovan said.
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/4850294p-4452879c.html
KENNETH P. VOGEL; The News Tribune
Originally published: May 10th, 2005 12:01 AM
If disenfranchised felons had been allowed to vote, they would have swung the 2000 presidential race to Al Gore, according to a national study Republicans are touting in their fight to overturn Christine Gregoire’s victory in last fall’s governor’s race.
The study posits that since racial minorities and the poor – groups that tend to vote for Democrats– make up a disproportionate number of felons, a hypothetical felon voting bloc would be so overwhelmingly Democratic it could swing national and statewide elections.
On average, 74 percent of felons would have voted Democratic in presidential and U.S. Senate elections dating back to 1972, according to the study’s analysis of demographic and voting data.
Of Democratic presidential candidates, the study predicts that Bill Clinton’s successful 1996 re-election campaign would have gotten the highest percentage of felon votes, at 85.4 percent. Jimmy Carter’s failed 1980 re-election would have gotten the lowest, at 66.5 percent.
A state GOP-funded study by Jonathan Katz, a political science professor at the California Institute of Technology, estimates that Gregoire received 66.3 percent of the illegal felon votes.
And a study by Tony Gill, an associate political science professor at the University of Washington, estimates that Gregoire received 60.1 percent of felon votes in King County, Gregoire’s base and home to by far the largest number of illegal felon votes the GOP says were cast.
Compared with the national study, published in 2002 in the American Sociological Review, Gill writes that his study’s estimate “is too conservative, giving Ms. Gregoire the benefit of the doubt. In other words, the rate at which felons vote for a Democratic candidate is likely to be higher than the estimates provided by the precinct-level of analysis here.”
Katz did not return a phone call.
But Nick Handy, elections chief for the secretary of state’s office, the primary defendant in the case, said the national study shouldn’t be admissible.
“It strikes me that generalized testimony about how felons probably would have voted is getting pretty remote,” he said.
Todd Donovan, a political science professor at Western Washington University who’s not involved in the case, said the national study is based too narrowly on race and is not applicable in Washington, where racial minorities make up a lower percentage of the felon population than in other states.
The study’s “hypothetical felon doesn’t really exist in most places in Washington. We just don’t fit that. We’re not in Georgia,” Donovan said.
