11/15/00 9:55 a.m.
Was Gore Harmed by the Buchanan Vote?
The issue is of immediate concern.

By John R. Lott Jr., senior research scholar at Yale University Law School

he conclusion that Palm Beach's "butterfly ballot" confused voters and caused Gore voters to accidentally check off Pat Buchanan's name seems incontestable. Democrats have collected sworn statements from voters saying that they unintentionally punched the hole for Buchanan. Many also claim that they voted for two candidates — Buchanan, and then tried "correcting" their mistake by also punching a hole for Gore.

The issue is of immediate concern. Suits continue being filed in Palm Beach by voters who claimed to have been misled. The Gore's own ability to press on for recounts depends upon the general public's belief that he was "cheated" out of votes that were legitimately his.

Last week two economists working for the Gore campaign generated a great deal of attention. They contended that there was statistical evidence confirming this unusual confusion: if Palm Beach had voted for Buchanan at exactly the same rate as other counties in the state, the campaign said he "should" have received only about 1,200 votes, not the 3,400 he actually got.

However, if Gore voters accidentally punched out a hole for Buchanan, rather than Gore, Gore's votes should be unusually low. In fact, this is not the case. Using the Gore campaign's very own method to figure out how many votes Buchanan "should" have received in Palm Beach implies that Gore got more votes than he "should" have. If Gore had gotten the rate of votes that he had received in other counties, he would have gotten 235,361. He received 269,696, over 34,000 more than he "should" have gotten.

No one raised the issue of Bush possibly losing votes to Buchanan due to the ballot, so presumably Bush should have received votes at the same rate he did in other counties. Not so. It is actually Bush who appears to have suffered undervoting. 152,954 people voted for Bush, but supposedly, again using the Gore campaign's method, he should have received 188,019 -- 35,065 fewer than he "should" have received.

One problem is obvious with the Gore campaign's method: Bush's deficit is much larger than Buchanan's excess. At best, one would have to claim that not only is Bush losing votes to Buchanan, he must have lost even more to Gore.

Actually, the whole premise that politicians should receive votes at similar rates across all counties is suspect. Some counties simply have more Democrats or Republicans or Reform Party members than other counties. Doesn't one expect that strong Democratic counties like Palm Beach will give Gore a greater percentage of the votes than not so Democratic counties?

Party membership in the different counties is just one way of measuring different levels of support. It turns out that not only is Palm Beach a heavily Democratic county, it is also a heavily Reform party, American Reform party, and Independent party county, with over 16,695 registered members in those parties. Buchanan and Gore still get "too many" votes, and Bush still gets "too few," though the differences are smaller than the ones obtained using the Gore campaign's method.

One could probably "explain" the Buchanan vote even better by spending the time sifting through data on population statistics and past voting behavior. Take for example the fact that Buchanan lives part of the year in Palm Beach County and has many close friends there. Or, what about the almost 9,000 votes he received in Palm Beach in the 1996 Republican primary?

Clearly, even accounting for differences in support using party membership has its problems, but the bottom line is evident: the method proposed by the Gore campaign actually "proves" the opposite of what they claim. If they really believe their own methods, it is George W. Bush and not Al Gore who should be clamoring to be given some of Buchanan's ill-gotten votes.