Posted on January 28, 2014by letters2pppapers
There is an old
proverb in English, “Figures don’t lie”. Perhaps because of the increasing use
of statistics by politicians and their agents, the proverb was long ago
modified: “Figures don’t lie, but liars can figure”. A later version of this
saying is “How to lie with statistics”.
For some reason, these
modified proverbs kept coming to mind as I read the report of the Electoral
Reform Association released in early December. Among its many accusations
against the conduct of the 28 July general election, the ERA report includes
what it considers some very suspicious numbers emerging from voter registration
and the voting.
The report’s authors
claim to discern “unusual patterns” in the additions and deletions to the voter
list in the 2012 annual updating of the list. They don’t mention the fact that the appropriate and
legally specified time to raise objections to anything that seemed illegitimate
about the voter list was then, when it was being updated. The (at that time
two) opposition parties boycotted the whole process, and the organisations that
make up the ERA seem to have followed them. Now they want to convince us that
there was something wrong in the procedure that they refused to observe a year
earlier – based on figures.
Not so ‛unusual’
The “unusual patterns”
of the ERA are the fact that, in the updating, the number of voters in some
polling stations increased or decreased more than at other stations. A moment’s
thought makes it obvious that this is not really unusual. It would be unusual,
bordering on the impossible, for all polling station voter numbers to increase
by the same percentage. Social science developed averages and other statistical
tools because social processes involving more than about three people nearly
always vary.
The ERA presents a
chart that “shows the number of polling stations in each province that
increased in size by at least 50%” in the 2012 update. Such an increase, it
asserts, implies that “either half the population in the community turned 18
recently or there was large migration to these areas”. The report’s authors
have a great ability to imagine misdeeds by the electoral authorities, but when
it comes to looking for simple explanations, their imaginations fail them.
Instead of either large numbers turning
18 or large migration, isn’t it possible that both phenomena happened in the same commune?
Anything else? It seems that NGOs that are continually complaining that
eligible citizens aren’t registered are unable to imagine unregistered citizens
deciding to register.
From the report’s
chart (Figure 21), it appears that there were 1274 such polling stations. That
is 7.0% of the 18,109 stations that existed at the time of the 2012 commune
elections. That is not a large number for Cambodia, which has a highly mobile
population.
What they didn’t notice
The figures in the ERA
report also point out something else, which seems not to have been noticed by
its authors. The law sets a maximum of 700 voters per polling station. As a
result of the 2012 voter list update causing some stations to exceed the
maximum, 691 polling stations were “split” into two, and 209 completely new
stations were created. The report singles out Kampong Cham, Kandal and Takeo as
having especially high numbers of stations in which the number of voters
increased by 50% or more. For instance, there were 188 such stations in Kampong
Cham. But the number of split and totally new stations in that province,
according to the report’s Figure 23, was only 97. So at least 91 of the 188
stations with “unusual” increases in the number of voters did not increase
sufficiently to exceed the 700 maximum. (There could be more than 91, because
one or more polling stations close to the maximum might have gone over the
limit with only a small increase in numbers.)
What this means is
that at least 91 of those Kampong Cham polling stations with large percentage
increases had relatively small numbers of voters prior to the 2012 update. In
order not to go over the 700 limit with a 50% increase, they must have had
fewer than 467 registered voters. The significance of this is that percentage
increases of course appear much larger if you start from a low base. If a
polling station increases by 75 voters, that is a 75% increase if it previously
had 100 voters but a 15% increase if it previously had 500 voters.
In all three provinces
singled out by the report, around half of the polling stations with “unusual”
increases were stations in which the percentage seems large because the
stations had a relatively small number of registered voters prior to the update
(at least 91 of 188 stations in Kampong Cham, at least 66 of 135 in Kandal, at
least 69 of 112 in Takeo). For the whole country, there were 1274 stations with
a 50% or more increase and only 900 new stations, so in at least 374 stations,
and probably many more, the increase appears unusual only because the the
report’s authors chose to present the figures as percentages in which the base
of the fraction is hidden from the readers.
Turning to polling
stations in which there was a large percentage drop in voters registered, the
report is even sillier – and not as complicated to dismiss. The ERA managed to
find a grand total of – wait for it – 79 polling stations in which half or more
of registered voters’ names were deleted in the 2012 update. Of the total
18,109 pre-update polling stations, that represents 0.4%. In an honest statistical
treatment, they would probably not even be mentioned except as “other”.
But the ERA has not
concluded its statistical war. “New polling stations had unusually high turnout
rates”. The authors leave us to develop our own suspicions from the fact that,
once again, some stations deviate from the average. Clearly, the increases in
registered voter numbers that the report has been complaining about didn’t
happen or are supposed to be forgotten about while reading this part of the
report, so there was no real need to create the new stations, where all the
names entered were those of the Vietnamese troops that the ERA saw marching
into Cambodia to vote on 28 July.
It is true that the
percentages of registered voters actually voting on 28 July was higher in new
stations than in pre-existing ones. This is what one would expect if commune
authorities were doing their jobs. All of the voters registered in the new
stations would be voting in a different place than where they last voted.
Therefore, local officials would be calling this to their attention, pointing
out to them where their new polling station was located and maybe even
reminding them to find their name on the voter list before election day. They
would be much more conscious of voting in the upcoming election. Meanwhile,
some of those registered at the old station had moved away or forgotten its
location or forgotten the election date. Of course new polling stations had a
higher turnout.
Last gasp statistics
The ERA authors must
have been commissioned to quote the opposition interpretation of every
statistic. For example: “In polling stations with turnout well higher than the
country’s median, [the] CPP performed above its national average.” What more
proof do Sam Rainsy or Kem Sokha need? Where the voter turnout was higher, it
must have been because the CPP dragged military personnel and civil servants to
the polling stations and forced them to vote for the CPP.*
What the ERA report
authors don’t say is that it is also true that: “In
polling stations with turnout well lower than the
country’s median, [the] CPP performed above its national average.”
That’s right: both of
the seemingly contradictory statements are true. Once again, the ERA authors
are illustrating those proverbs. This is because, according to the report’s
Figure 30, the CPP’s vote was higher than its national average in eight out of
10 voter turnout deciles. In only two of the deciles – 60-70 and 70-80 percent
voter turnout – was the CPP vote below 50%.
As in all things where
averages are necessary to understand what is going on, some figures are above
the average and some below it; that is obvious to everyone except the authors
of the ERA report. And so, in the polling stations with an over 90% turnout,
the CPP vote exceeded the CNRP vote by 18%. But in the 30-40% turnout decile,
the CPP outvoted the CNRP by 17%. Is the one figure really more significant
than the other? Only according to the ERA.
Furthermore, according
to the report’s Figure 30, in all deciles,
across the board, the CPP’s percentage of the vote was higher than the CNRP’s.
How, then, can the distribution of these votes among the different percentages
of voter turnout make a case that the CNRP has been illegitimately deprived of
anything? I await the ERA’s answer; I cannot even begin to imagine what it
might be.
The other arithmetical
mystery that arouses great suspicions in the minds of the ERA report’s authors
is the fact that the CPP got a higher percentage vote in polling stations where
there was a high turnout than in stations where there was a low turnout.
If the ERA electoral
experts looked at almost any other country in the world where there are free
elections, they would discover that, when a governing party loses some of its
supporters, some of those disaffected voters vote for the major opposition
parties, but varying numbers of them vote for small parties or don’t vote. Yes, that is a well-known phenomenon:
people unhappy with the party they normally vote for, but not trusting the
opposition, just don’t vote. (The percentage of registered voters who voted on
28 July was 5 percentage points less than in 2008.) End of mystery.
* At one of the CNRP
rallies after the election, Kem Sokha said that 70% of the civil service,
police and military had voted for the opposition. Oops!
By Allen Myers
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