GAVoting {ConSpline}

Voting Data for Counties in Georgia, for the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election

Description

Voting data by county, for the 150 counties in the state of Georgia, in the Bush vs Gore 2000 presidential election.

Usage

data("GAVoting")

Format

A data frame with 159 observations on the following 9 variables.

county

the county name

method

the voting method: OS-CC (optical scan, central count); OS-PC (optical scan, precinct count); LEVER (lever); PUNCH (punch card); PAPER (paper ballot)

econ

the economic level of the county according to OneGeorgia: poor; middle; rich

percent.black

proportion of registered voters who are black

gore

number of votes recorded for Mr Gore

bush

number of votes recorded for Mr Bush

other

number of votes recorded for a third candidate

votes

number of votes recorded

ballots

number of ballots received

Details

The uncounted votes in the 2000 presidential election were a concern in the state of Florida, where 2.9 percent of the ballots did not have vote for president recorded. Because the election was close in that state, the voting methods and other issues were scrutinized. In the state of Georgia, 3.5 percent of the votes were uncounted. This data set gives votes by county, along with other data including voting method. A properly weighted ANOVA will show that proportions of uncounted votes are significantly higher with counties using the punch card method.

References

Meyer, M.C. (2002). Uncounted Votes: Does Voting Equipment Matter? Chance Magazine, 15(4), pp33-38.

Examples

data(GAVoting)
obs1=1:5
obs2=1:3
meth=1:159
econ=1:159
types=unique(GAVoting$method)
econs=unique(GAVoting$econ)
for(i in 1:159){
	meth[i]=obs1[GAVoting$method[i]==types]
	econ[i]=obs2[GAVoting$econ[i]==econs]
}
punc=100*(1-GAVoting$votes/GAVoting$ballots)
par(mar=c(4,4,1,1))
plot(GAVoting$percent.black,punc,xlab="Proportion of black voters",
  ylab="percent uncounted votes",col=meth,pch=econ)
legend(0,18.5,pch=1:3,legend=c("poor","middle","rich"))
legend(.63,18.5,pch=c(1,1,1,1,1),col=1:5,
  legend=c("lever","OS-CC","OS-PC","punch","paper"))

zmat=matrix(0,ncol=4,nrow=159)
for(i in 1:4){zmat[meth==i+1,i]=1}

ans1=conspline(punc,GAVoting$percent.black,1,zmat,wt=GAVoting$ballots)
lines(sort(GAVoting$percent.black),
   ans1$fhat[order(GAVoting$percent.black)],col=1)
for(i in 1:4){
	lines(sort(GAVoting$percent.black),
	ans1$fhat[order(GAVoting$percent.black)]+ans1$zcoef[i],col=i+1)
}