The Curious Case of Alvin Greene

[jimrtex]

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38433.html#ixzz0qZXV3RTm

In Lancaster County, Rawl won absentee ballots over Greene by a staggering 84 percent to 16 percent margin; but Greene easily led among Election Day voters by 17 percentage points.

Curiously, 4% of Republican votes were absentee; but 27% of Democratic votes were.

The anomaly here is actually the number of Democratic absentee ballots in Lancaster County and how strongly they went for Rawl.

If you look at the neighboring counties of Chesterfield, Kershaw, and Chester, absentee ballots for Democrats were 7. 10, and 9%, and 2, 10, and 5% for Republicans, respectively.  So there were slightly larger share of Democratic absentees.  But given the relative interest level, this probably indicates more election day Republicans.

Absentee percentage for Greene: 60, 52, 56, and 16 (Chesterfield, Kershaw, Chester, Lancaster)

Election day percentage for Greene: 61, 57, 61, 59

So it is the absentee Democratic voting in Lancaster that is out of line, both in share of absentee votes and how strongly it went for Rawl.

In Spartanburg County, Ludwig said there are 25 precincts in which Greene received more votes than were actually cast and 50 other precincts where votes appeared to be missing from the final count.

“In only two of 88 precincts, do the number of votes Greene got plus the number we got equal the total cast,” Ludwig said.

Spartanburg County has 98 precincts.

There were 9 precincts where the total of Greene and Rawl voters equaled votes cast, but that was because only about 90.1% of voters voted in the Senate race, compared with 98.7% in the Democratic governor's race (which was visibly contested) and 99.7% of the vote in the GOP governor's race (86% of Spartanburg County voters voted in the GOP primary - voters pick a party at the polling place).  The precincts where there were no Dem senate abstentions were very low turnout precincts (If 10 voters are independently 90% likely to vote in a race, 34% of the time all 10 will vote).

I don't see any precincts where Greene got more votes than were cast.  The precincts where Rawl defeated Greene were pretty strong Republican (85-95%).  The precincts where more Democrats voted than Republicans - and presumably Black were slightly more favorable to Greene, but not sharply.

Overall, the results are pretty consistent with a very low information race, where most of the media attention would have been on the GOP governor's race (and lots of other races including congressional races such as Bob Inglis, and a 9-candidate race in Charleston with Strom Thurmond's son and a Black Republican).

There was a contested Democratic governor's race, and the two white candidates were from 2 of the counties where Rawl did slightly better.  And Rawl did better around Charleston and  Columbia.

In 18 counties, Greene ran 5% better than his statewide average
10 were 2 to 5% better.
8 counties were near to the statewide avearge.
2 were slightly more favorable to Rawl.
8 were 5% better for Rawl than his statewide average.

So Greene generally did better in more rural areas, where it is likely there was less news.  He did especially well along the Georgia border - which might get their TV from Augusta and might give superficial coverage to SC; and the eastern corner, where Florence stations might have a weak signal and weak news content, so that people depend on cable or satellite.

[jimrtex]

Is this all a function of uber low information primary day voters? I mean the suggestion that there was massive ballot tampering in SC just doesn't seem very believable.

His support was reasonably consistent across the state, and generally strongest in rural areas, with a slight but not overwhelming bias toward areas with a larger black percentage.  But it probably isn't really reliable to base this on share of the population, rather than share of the primary electorate.  In some areas, like Greenville and Spartanburg, around 85% of the turnout was in the Republican Primary.  So even there, the Democratic primary might have been strongly black.

Greene had 5% better support than his statewide support in more counties than Rawl was at his strongest.  So Greene did better in rural areas.  He did especially well along the Georgia border, some of which is in the Augusta TV area, and in the Florence area in eastern SC, which is a smallish market.   These areas probably have weaker local news reporting, since anyone with talent is going to move to a larger market, and they might have weaker TV signals so more people rely on cable or satellite and do without local news.

The areas where Rawl did better in areas with a significant black population were scattered.

Orangeburg (south of Columbia) and Jasper (in the southern tip across from Savannah) had Democratic primary elections for legislative races, which I'm presuming would be decisive.  Democrats were 90% of the turnout in Jasper, and 65% in Orangeburg.  So it could be that there was a strong GOTV effort in those areas.  In other areas it could be more a matter of persons being vaguely aware that there was election day, but being so unaware that they would choose a Democratic ballot (South Carolina doesn't have party registration, so voters can choose a party on election day).  Rawl also did better around Charleston and Columbia, which may have had a little bit of news coverage of the senate race.  Rawl is from Charleston and was a legislator at one time, but I don't think recently.  Columbia is the state capital and also University of South Carolina, so there is probably more political awareness. 

Another strong Rawl county was Lancaster (on the NC border south of Charlotte).  But it had a really high volume absentee turnout (27% of Democratic vote which went 84% for Rawl), and only 4% Republican absentee.  But the election day support for Greene was very similar to neighboring counties, and in the neighboring counties absentee support for Greene was just a few percentage points lower than on election day, and absentee ballots were under 10% of the vote.

Presumably, absentee voters are a little bit better informed, since some election day votes will be more on impulse.  So absentee voting for Rawl in Lancaster looks suspicious.  It is the Rawl vote that is out of line, not the Greene vote.

The vote share for Greene was reasonably consistent across the state and even within counties.  So if you were flipping votes you would have to be doing it in 100s of precincts.  So unless someone planted a "Greene" hack in the firmware and if SC has bought its voting machines statewide, not too likely.

As for a well-targeted direct mail campaign.  Around 7% of registered voters voted in the Democratic Primary (17% in the Republican). 

So you can pick 2% of the population and have 100% success rate in getting them to vote for your guy.  That is either exquisite targeting or extremely convincing literature.  I think 1000s of voters walking into polling places with arms rigidly in front, saying repeatedly, "Must vote for Alvin Greene ..." would be noticed.

Or you can target 10% and have 20% success in getting them to the polls for your guy.  And if you can target 10% and not have anyone tumble across the mail-out to 250,000 voters, you also deserve to win.

So I vote for general cluelessness, in a very low turnout election for a down ballot race (SC puts federal elections below state elections), with perhaps blacks more likely to vote for the blacker sounding name - when I read Vic Rawl, I think "Lou Rawls".  Of the two Green congressmen from Houston, one is black and one is white.  I did read one comment by the black candidate for governor, who said that former slaves didn't know how to spell and added an "e" to the end of the name.  And that Green's are white, and Greene's are black.  I don't know if that is true or not.  Nathanael Greene, for whom Greene County in 16 states was named for (Kentucky and Wisconsin dropped the final 'e') was white.

The news reports are now saying that he was a 2000 Political Science graduate from University of South Carolina.  His spoken vocabulary and pronunciation suggest that it is possible.  He is somewhat reminiscent of a stutterer.

He is 32 and lives with his father who is 81 years old and has had kidney dialysis and has a heart attack.  He lives in a small town of I-95 in the eastern part of the state.  So I don't think it is unusual to be living with a parent at all, especially if you don't have a job.

He has been in both the AF and the Army, and was discharged involuntarily, though perhaps not dishonorably from the Army in 2009.

The disseminating obscenity charge happened in a computer lab in a dorm at USC, when he sat down next to a coed, and started talking about football, and then showed her some porn on his computer screen, and then suggested they go up to her dorm room.  He may be in some sort of his diversion program.  The lab was in a card access area, and it doesn't sound like he has any current student standing.

[jimrtex]

In the 1930 census, I have "Green" being 66.0% white, while "Greene" is 79.3% white.  Obviously, there are big caveats on this (namely, that the census had names written down by enumerators, who often didn't ask for spellings of names... woe upon those who were illiterate ), but... at least it's data rather than anecdote.

Is this for South Carolina or the US?

There could be big regional differences.  If there is a large slave plantation like you had in South Carolina, then it would be like some Mormon polygamist with dozens of "children" who have his surname.

I think that Greene would be a favored spelling in South Carolina (and perhaps much of the US, because of Nathanael Greene, who was head of American forces in the south during the Revolution.

There are counties named for Greene in NY, PA, VA, NC, GA, AL, MS, AR, TN, KY, OH, IN, IL, WI, MO, and IA.  Practically every state that had any counties to be named after someone, up through about the mid 19th century named a county for him.  Greenville, South Carolina and Greensboro, NC are both named for him.

So if you weren't sure how your name was spelled, you might be more likely to choose Greene, if that is the way it was spelled in your history books.

[jimrtex]

I'm actually more interested in why it costs that kind of money to file for election? Seems it's not even a deposit? How can that be constitutional in any democracy? Pretty perv.

Yeah, that's a disgusting little detail. I suppose the justification is some bullshit along the lines of 'the costs of running the election'.

The South Carolina election commissions says the fee is set by the parties, but the link takes you to a single sheet.  So maybe the two parties agreed to the fees.

The fee for US Senate is 6% of the salary.  The fee for US House is 2% of salary (Representative and Senators are paid the same salary, so it looks like they said OOPs we better make them different percentages)

Fees for state and county offices appear to be 4% of salary, so there are some judgeships in larger counties where the fee is around $5000.  So Greene got a bargain for a statewide race.

If a state requires parties to nominate by primary, it has to pay for the primary, and the filing fee is set by the state, and there has to be a in lieu of petitioning process.  South Carolina doesn't not require parties to nominate by primaries.

South Carolina appears to have some election laws that have been left over from the time when the the parties (or party at that time) ran their own primaries.  But the State has become involved in actually running the primaries, probably related to the VRA.

Some States set high fees and low or no petition standards.  When you have low fees and high petition standards, you have candidates cheating and keeping other candidates off the ballot by challenging their petitions (like Obama did when he ran for state senator).  In some states, petitions are presumed to be valid, unless someone challenges them.  So you can have someone file with 100 signature when they need 10,000 and get on the ballot.  And someone else files 100 signatures and they get challenged and knocked off the ballot.

So it is actually more practical and fairer to charge a high fee.  Serious candidates pay the fee because it is cheaper than collecting a bunch of signatures.

Kendrick Meek filed his in lieu petition for publicity purposes.  He spent a lot more collecting them than the fee would have been.

[jimrtex]

I find it rather amusing that nobody bothered to explain, or at least speculate, how this guy found the money to file for election and why he even decided to do that.

I mean, the guy is an indigent accused for felony but all of a sudden decides that it would be a good idea to run for the US Senate? What's wrong with this picture?

He say he decided to run when he was serving in Korea.  He was separated from the Army last August, and arrested in November.  He hasn't been indicted, so it sounds like perhaps he is in some sort of diversion program.

[jimrtex]

Greene lives with his mom and Obama is a Harvard/Columbia graduate...Obama actually has charisma...

Greene shares a home with his 81-year old father, who has had kidney dialysis treatment and had a heart attack 4 years ago.  His brother lives next door, in a small town in rural SC.  Maybe if his grandmother was a bank vice president, he could have gone to prep school.