The complete debacle in the recent (Nov. 8
th,
2022) election for the
Oakland School Board (OSB) led me to think more about
elections.
For those of you who are from
outside the San Francisco Bay Area, after tabulating and announcing the election results,
the Alameda County registrar found an error in how ballots were counting, and On
Dec. 28
th announced a new top vote-getter, less than two weeks before
inauguration day.
Oakland is a city of about 440,000 people just south of
Berkeley (where I live). The OSB is
important, since Oakland schools are facing many problems, including declining
enrollment, educational recovery from Covid closures, and financial
problems. The OSB election used rank
choice voting, so counting took time; the results were announced by early
December. Nick Resnick won in District
5. This result was duly certified.
Then, on December 28th, the registrar dropped a
bombshell. There was a mistake in
tabulating ranked choice votes, and a different candidate, Mike Hutchinson, was
the actual top vote getter. Some voters
did not select a first-choice candidate, but did select ones for second or
third choice. Those second or third
choices should have been tabulated when the ranked choice algorithm got to the
second or third choice, but they mistakenly were not counted at all. This was pointed out by a non-profit that
looked over the voting results and spotted a problem. When this was fixed, the District 5 results
changed.
Despite this bombshell, the originally-certified winner, Nick
Resnick was sworn in to office on Monday (Jan. 9th). The ultimate disposition is in the hands of
the courts, since Hutchinson has, not surprisingly, sued. The
first hearing will be in May, after many OSB meetings and votes.
What does this have to do with physics? Elections can be considered measurements of
the will of the people. Some measurements
give very clear results, while others are ambiguous. Like measurements, elections have statistical
and systematic uncertainties.
The statistical uncertainties are from random fluctuations
in who did or did not vote. If the election were rerun, some different people
would vote, because they were sick that day, or out of town, or just forgot. Further fluctuations come from the lag in
voting when people move into or out of the district, turn 18, or pass away. Mail-in
ballots change the details, but not the overall picture – fluctuations remain.
From the measurement analogy, the statistical fluctuations
are roughly the square root of the number of voters. If 100,000 people cast votes then the
uncertainty is the square root of 100,000, or 316 votes. There are other, more sophisticated (binomial)
formulae, but this is a reasonable estimate.
Elections with a smaller vote difference could easily have gone the
other way.
Systematic errors may be larger, and stem from systemic
issues, such as the OSB debacle. One
difficulty with the analogy is that not everybody agrees on what ‘features’ of
our election system are systematic uncertainties and which are ‘the rules.’ Funding
inequity and unwarranted voter suppression are both major issues which can lead
to unfairness, and incumbents certainly have advantages. It is a matter of defining the question we ask. Are we measuring ‘the peoples will, according
to rules, or ‘the peoples will, as would be measured in a perfect, unbiased
system? The problem with the latter choice
is that people disagree about the biases.
‘According to the rules’ is a clearer baseline. Methodologies exist to try to estimate biases for the latter case.
Either way, though, when elections are within the combined
error, the vote counts are statistically indistinguishable. This is not to say that the different
candidates are similar, or that partisans on both sides will not feel strongly
about the result. But, there is no discernible difference in the people’s preferences.
Treating elections as experimental measurements can help put
their results in perspective. a 51%:49%
split is not a mandate, but a small, and perhaps statistically insignificant
difference. Successful candidates will govern better if
they keep this in mind.
The opinions expressed here are my own, and not necessarily those
of my employer, colleagues, family, friends, or anyone else (although they
should be).