Daily Archives: November 19, 2007

The Town Talk Understimated Rapides Parish Voter Turn-Out By 20,000 People 4

by • Media Studies

Yesterday, The Town Talk published an article claiming that only 15,000 people in Rapides Parish showed up to vote on Saturday. Either The Town Talk has just uncovered a major story about voter fraud… or they simply failed to check their facts.

The total votes received in Rapides Parish (based on the results of the parish-wide race for Sheriff) was 35,674. I think I may understand the confusion. From the article:

In a 9 p.m. update, Rapides Parish Deputy Clerk of Court Pam Sanchez said 15,000 voters from 35 precincts had voted.

Rapides Parish has 103 precincts, not 35. The Deputy Clerk of Court was explaining to The Town Talk that 35 precincts accounted for 15,000 votes, which makes sense.

The early vote was approximately 5,500, which means that at least 30,174 people voted on Saturday in Rapides Parish.

But their facts get even more confused when they claim, in another article, that 46% of registered voters showed up to vote on Saturday or voted early (a statistic that seems based on yet another made-up “estimate”). Quoting the article:

Rapides Parish voters showed some Police Jury incumbents the door on Saturday, when about 46 percent of parish registered voters showed up at the polls or voted in early balloting….

According to the Rapides Parish Registrar of Voters, 38,854 people were registered to vote for the Saturday election.

This is funny, because in an another Town Talk article from a couple of weeks ago, Joanell Wilson, Rapides Parish Registrar of Voters, clearly tells them that Rapides Parish has a total of 79,624 registered voters. (This makes sense).

35,674 divided by 79,624 equals 0.448 or 45% voter turnout.

So although The Town Talk severely underestimated the number of people who voted on Saturday or voted early, they somehow overestimated voter turnout.

As a postscript, what would really be interesting is if the Rapides Parish Registrar of Voters had actually told The Town Talk that 38,854 people voted on Saturday or voted early, which would mean that 3,180 people simply did not vote in the Sheriff’s race. It does not seem unreasonable, but it also would mean that over 8% of the people who showed up to the polls refused to make a decision between Wagner and Slocum.

38,854 divided by 79,624 equals 0.487 or 49% voter turnout.

A Rundown of the Runoff (And the LCRM) 7

by • Local Political News, Social Activism

When David and Wendy Vitter formed the Louisiana Committee for a Republican Majority, they had one simple goal: To parlay the term limits Vitter had enacted as a State legislator into a new Republican majority. On Saturday night, over a year’s worth of fundraising, recruiting, and campaigning all ended for the LCRM, though we can certainly expect the PAC to reemerge in future elections.

A few months ago, the LCRM published a list of 27 Louisiana House races they were “targeting.” However, even though they officially “targeted” 27 House seats, it seems they changed strategies a little over a month before the jungle primary (or they just lost very, very badly and had no idea what they were doing). That said, it is still instructive to look at the results of the initial 27 seats targeted by the LCRM:

(Note: The LCRM targeted these seats based on their previous support for David Vitter and George W. Bush. In other words, they knew these to be “Republican-friendly” districts).

Of the 27 districts initially targeted by the LCRM, only 8 of them are now held by Republicans.

In fact, 18 of the 27 targeted districts (or 67%) elected Democrats. (There’s one Independent).

In 10 of the 27 districts, the LCRM failed to recruit any Republican opposition.

More…