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From the Editors’ Desk: Something Rotten in the State of Iowa?
From the Des Moines Register’s editors:
What happened Monday night at the Democratic caucuses was a debacle, period. Democracy, particularly at the local party level, can be slow, messy and obscure. But the refusal to undergo scrutiny or allow for an appeal reeks of autocracy. The Iowa Democratic Party must act quickly to assure the accuracy of the caucus results, beyond a shadow of a doubt.
It doesn’t let up:
Published in PoliticsFirst of all, the results were too close not to do a complete audit of results. Two-tenths of 1 percent separated Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. A caucus should not be confused with an election, but it’s worth noting that much larger margins trigger automatic recounts in other states.
Second, too many questions have been raised. Too many accounts have arisen of inconsistent counts, untrained and overwhelmed volunteers, confused voters, cramped precinct locations, a lack of voter registration forms and other problems. Too many of us, including members of the Register editorial board who were observing caucuses, saw opportunities for error amid Monday night’s chaos.
[…]
Democrats should ask themselves: What do we want the Iowa caucus to be? How can we preserve its uniqueness while bringing more order? Does it become more like a straw poll or primary? How do we strike the balance between tradition and transparency?
That was about the best result we could have hoped for. Let’s the sleaze that is he Clinton’s hang over he entire nomination. I hope that whoever our nominee is has the good sense to divide them over this.
Do you suppose the RNC and whoever is the eventual GOP nominee are paying attention? Preparing to take on the Clinton Crime Family™?
Nah.
Of course. Now what are Republicans doing to defend against wild abuse in the biggest cities. Do they think Democrats are concerned about voter ID because it discriminates? Are we that stupid?
Mark Steyn casts equal opprobrium on the Cruz campaign.
That’s exactly the point I was making here.
Politics ain’t beanbag.
Hilliary won the delegates in six out of six coin tosses. And the odds of that are about the same as her being indicted.
Fricosis Guy
Politics ain’t beanbag.
Is so like beanbag:
What happened in the Democratic caucuses just underscores how sleazy our political system is. Make no mistake, there is plenty of cheating on the Republican side, too.
Not so. I’m willing to believe there was untowardness in the process (because it’s Clinton), the coin tosses are the least likely culprits.
Each coin toss can be assumed to have a 50-50 chance of going for Hilary. It’s always 50-50, there’s no cumulative odds going one way or the other. Each toss is an individual event unrelated to the other tosses. There’s never an increased chance that Sanders will win one toss if Clinton won the previous toss, or previous two, three, four, or five. That is, just because Clinton won a toss or more, Sanders winning a toss is never “due”.
Our minds, however, see the results relating to the tosses. Our brain loves patterns, loves order, and loves to see things relating to other things. It’s an advantage in our thought processes in general, but probability frequently goes against this natural processes.
Though all the coin tosses are going to the same purposes, the tosses themselves are unrelated to each other and there’s never cumulative odds against Clinton winning each one. In the Iowa mess, the coin tosses are probably the most honest thing there.
Unless Clinton aides slipped a two-headed coin. Then all bets are off.
The odds of 6 out of 6 favorable coin tosses is 64 to 1.
This overlooks the fact that there were more than six coin tosses in total. I am uncertain how this “six out of six” rumor started but my understanding is that the actual number was closer to a dozen.
Mrs. Clinton did not win all the tosses, here is one Senator Sandors won:
Here is a toss which Mrs. Clinton won:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=aaDLkg2hUOY
Someone please identify the fraud being committed by these soccer moms as it continues to elude me.
Douglas
The chance of winning any one coin toss is 50%
The chance of winning 6 consecutive coin tosses is 1/64
Try betting Black for 6 straight passes in Roulette, see how often you win.
Again, not really.
Yeah. Really.
Well in this universe anyway.
Let’s look at Roulette. For the sake of your argument, we’ll ignore that Green spaces exist so I don’t have to calculate 48/100 every time.
So C. U. Douglas sits down at the table and puts his C. U. Bucks down on “Black.” The odds of him winning are just shy of 1 in 2, about 50-50. Sure enough, black comes up. He cheers and says, “Put it all on black again.”
What are the odds of it coming up black? Again, just shy of 1 in 2. Not 1 in 4. Red is not more likely to come up because black came up last time. Even if C. U. Douglas had a C. U. Streak on black, each time he let’s it ride it’s just shy of 1-in-2. At no time does that odd get worse.
Again, each spin of the Roulette wheel is an individual event. It is not related to the previous spins nor subsequent spins. The odds are always against C. U. Douglas as it’s always worse than 1-in-2, but the odds of him winning again each time he rides on black is always just shy of 1-in-2 and never worse.
Also, 50-50 is bad and that’s one reason I don’t gamble.
EDs,
As Arahant and I were discussing the other day, the democratic party really is special. First, Ari pointed out how hard they work. To get 105% turnout in a precinct takes a lot of work. Second, I mentioned how spiritual they were. Many people who have died have come back from the other side and voted. Truly a transcendental mystery.
Regards,
Jim
Roberto is correct. Apparently the whole coin flip fiasco is being misreported by the conservative media. According to the Des Moines Register, the correct number of coin flips is unknown (to the public, anyway).
I have seen confused reporting everywhere on this, the manner in which Democrats run their caucus system is so byzantine that it is very difficult to follow.
That is from the Washington Post, even professional reporters are unable to find a full tally, supposedly the party does not keep such numbers. As you say, unknown.
The fact that Democrats are pushing us to European style socialism is great news for the GOP during the next four cycles. The bad news is that the zealots who sympathize with the Communiste Manifesto will be running the federal government en masse by 2050. Hopefully we can innovate enough by then that there will be so much wealth in the U.S. that we can sustain the forced redistribution of it.
The odds of CU Douglas leaving his bet on black for 6 consecutive turns and winning all six is 1/64.
( ignoring 0 and 00).
The odd of winning any one of the bets is 0.5
As has been remarked, it does sound like there were more than 6 coin flips, so it’s entirely possible that random chance did just favor Clinton here.
With that said, the whole caucus process on the Dem side is an utter clusterflop. As I understand it, they wanted a process that would produce a strong and clear result for at most two candidates, in hopes that this would give a good indication of the party’s mood and let them coalesce around a leader.
Being Democrats, the opposite has happened. The wound up with a process stuffed with obfuscation and tension, with little accountability or transparency. It seems designed to ensure that no one can ever know how many votes were cast at what time for which candidates. They have managed to create a situation where the Sanders and Clinton camps are prevented from ever reconciling, precisely because of how this was designed. The party leaders probably assumed that this process would produce a clear winner and the losers would fall into line like good little foot soldiers.
So the turmoil in the Iowa Democrat Party is delicious, and I can only hope that their ineptitude has managed to poison their GOTV for the general election. But I’m sure that once a nominee is eventually coronated they’ll fall into line like they should.