New Jersey: Brennan Center wieghs fraud reports and finds them wanting
The Brennan Center says in a press release: A new analysis conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law and Dr. Michael McDonald, an elections expert at George Mason University, found factual and methodological errors in a recent voter fraud report submitted to the state Attorney General in September. The report claimed to have uncovered deep problems of voter fraud in New Jersey. In its continuing effort to scrutinize the accuracy of claims of voter fraud, the Brennan Center enlisted Dr. McDonald’s assistance in analyzing the report’s underlying data.
The analysts found serious methodological problems with the report, echoing the problems with the notoriously flawed “suspected felon” purge lists in Florida in 2000 and 2004. They cautioned election officials not to rely on the flawed report and urged the Attorney General to follow the normal statutory procedures for maintaining the state’s voter registration rolls.
“Even a cursory examination shows that the methodology used to develop the alleged fraud lists is seriously flawed,” said Dr. McDonald, who analyzed the lists of allegedly illegitimate votes submitted with the report, along with the New Jersey voter file. “For example, it fails to resolve inconsistent data within individual records. Moreover, by assuming that two people who share a name and birth date are the same individual, the report fails to take into account even the most basic principles of statistics.” -- Brennan Center