
Google Trends Electionland - wlj
http://electionlandtrends.appspot.com/
======
dmix
Apparently a bunch of states (23?) are using a software system called
Interstate Crosscheck to look for "double voters".

> Election officials in more than two dozen states have compiled lists of
> citizens whom they allege could be registered in more than one state – thus
> potentially able to cast multiple ballots – and eligible to be purged from
> the voter rolls.

The problem is that it often only uses a persons name as a singular data
point. So if a person votes with the same first/last name as another person in
another state, it's possible that vote could be wiped out. It was even
matching names even though there were differences in middle names or had Jr/Sr
at the end.

The journalist, Greg Palast, who investigated this back in 2014 has been doing
radio circuits again recently saying that it's still being used in a bunch of
states. Not sure about the validity of this since there hasn't been much
reporting elsewhere on this. He seems to be the only one talking about it. And
googling 'Interstate Crosscheck' only brings up his articles and democrat
superpac websites.

[http://projects.aljazeera.com/2014/double-
voters/index.html](http://projects.aljazeera.com/2014/double-
voters/index.html)

[http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/the-gops-
steal...](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/the-gops-stealth-war-
against-voters-w435890)

~~~
BinaryIdiot
Interesting. I'm registered in 3 states (I always kinda assumed registering in
a new state unregistered you in another) and my wife is registered in 2. I
wonder if my name is on that list. Damn even the criteria they use doesn't
technically have to be unique; it's possible to have the same name, DOB and
last 4 digits of a SSN (though that's likely incredibly rare but still the
possibility is theoretically there).

I feel as if our entire election and voting process needs a `re-write`.

~~~
foxylad
> I feel as if our entire election and voting process needs a `re-write`.

I'm not American, but in my opinion this should have been the the major issue
in this election. All the tripe about email servers and orange-tinted buffoons
seems designed purely to prevent people considering this.

May I humbly suggest two things: first, you swap the right to bear arms for
the right to hold citizen's initiated referendums. As I understand it, the
second amendment was designed to prevent government tyranny, but it's
obviously not working and causes a LOT of collateral damage.

Second, somehow beef up your fourth estate. Citizens need reliable information
that is not tainted by political or corporate agendas. I have no idea how to
do this, but you are a resourceful people.

~~~
zeveb
> May I humbly suggest two things: first, you swap the right to bear arms for
> the right to hold citizen's initiated referendums.

Most states have them, and they're pretty terrible. Get 51% of those of your
fellow citizens who bother to show up to support it, and a referendum can
rewrite any law — worse, an amendment can write anything into the state
constitution.

Our problem at the moment is that we're too much a democracy and too little a
republic.

> Second, somehow beef up your fourth estate.

I think that the media — particularly their coverage of the primaries — bear a
great deal of the blame for today. Making them stronger would exacerbate that.

------
NelsonMinar
It's pretty but what is this really telling us? There's a 126% increase in
searchers for "Voter intimidation" in Hoback, Wyoming. OK, so does that mean
that someone's being intimidated? Planning to intimidate? Curious about the
news? Does a "126% increase" mean there were 7 searches today instead of just
4?

~~~
nostromo
It's meaningless.

Near Seattle there are trends reported for "voter intimidation" and "long wait
times" and "voting machine problems."

Those trends make no sense for a region that votes by mail.

~~~
folksinger
The reports of "voter intimidation" on the electionlandstrends map matches the
boundary of this racial demographic map.

[http://www.censusscope.org/us/map_nhwhite.gif](http://www.censusscope.org/us/map_nhwhite.gif)

Here's those two maps combined:

[http://i.imgur.com/eKT5s0h.png](http://i.imgur.com/eKT5s0h.png)

~~~
nostromo
[https://xkcd.com/1138/](https://xkcd.com/1138/)

~~~
folksinger
Yeah but the maps I'm showing don't follow general population density so the
point being made by this comic doesn't apply in this instance.

~~~
arcticfox
Unless I'm reading something on your graph incorrectly it's almost perfectly
correlated with Martha Stewart Living subscribers. Looks like it applies
almost exactly to me.

~~~
folksinger
Well I already did the work I'm willing to do on my end. Further research
would obviously have to take in to consideration deviations from general
population density, but just looking at the map, there's a lot of voter
intimidation being reported in the south that clearly has nothing to do with
population density.

Also, there's no correlation with voter intimidation and population density
for cities in the midwest.

So I guess it's just my word and my graph against your word and, well, nothing
else. So you better get to work!

~~~
idanoeman
I'm not sure why you're pretending that it should be someone else's job to
prove the point you're trying to make. You threw up a graph which looks
identical to a population-density graph and are pretending you gave us
evidence of your assertion.

~~~
folksinger
No, I'm saying that he has to provide a better refutation of my point.

I do not agree that the graphs look identical.

What point am I trying to make, BTW?

------
mangeletti
I just had to vote "provisional" myself (Palm Beach County).

I have a feeling there is going to be a lot of fraud reports against the
Florida Board of Elections. We registered almost 2 weeks before our Oct 11
deadline, yet neither my wife nor I were in their system - we received no mail
or anything from the BoE.

My vote, I'm absolutely certain now, will be thrown in the trash. Even if it
isn't, the election will be over by the time it's "counted".

Think I'm simply spreading FUD? Take a look at the 2004 Florida general
election... this state's election board is wholly corrupted.

~~~
biot
Why isn't eligibility automatic? Whether state of federal, doesn't the
government already know whether or not you qualify to vote?

~~~
Someone1234
That would make rational sense, but strangely no.

Unfortunately the US is setup in such a way so that individual states get to
decide who is eligible to vote. This is a state right defined in the
constitution[0].

In practice the vast majority of states have similar voting requirements. But
because, in theory, they could all differ then no unified automated system is
possible, it would have to be per-state.

Of course individual states could create an automatic voter registration
system, and I believe some have/do. But a lot of other states are actively
trying to disenfranchise the poor, young, or minorities who would benefit the
most from automatic registration.

Ultimately voting and voter registration needs to be handled by a non-partisan
organisation within states. But considering it would take partisan politicians
to set up such a non-partisan organisation, it has little chance of happening.

[0] [http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2014/08/constitution-
chec...](http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2014/08/constitution-check-who-
decides-who-gets-to-vote/)

~~~
jimktrains2
In PA, when you change your address with PennDOT (who runs our DMV), there is
a checkbox to update your voter registration. It's not the most obvious
connection, but it seems to work pretty well.

------
jplahn
A 100% increase in searches for "voter intimidation" in my city (Seattle) is
interesting. I'd love additional context on who is searching for that (i.e. is
it the intimidators or the fearful?)

Nonetheless, this seems like the beginning of an interesting tool. What would
it take to do some sort of fuzzy matching on related searches, like broken
voting machines for voting machine problems? I suppose you could wait for a
related term to breach a threshold and begin tracking it with related terms.

~~~
girzel
Given that Washington State is all mail-in, I doubt we're seeing a lot of
actual voter intimidation! I'm also in Seattle, and dropped my ballot off at
one of three drop-off points. There were some nice people in smocks there who
thanked me for voting.

~~~
cwilkes
This. I don't understand the whole going to a location to vote on two dozen
things that I probably don't know well enough versus reading a pamphlet and
taking an hour or so to fill it out at my leisure.

Seriously why do we have voting places anymore? Just do it all by mail.

~~~
mikestew
_I don 't understand the whole going to a location to vote on two dozen things
that I probably don't know well enough versus reading a pamphlet and taking an
hour or so to fill it out at my leisure._

You're doing it wrong. Before you go to vote, do all of that stuff you listed
after the word "versus". Instead of marking a ballot, just write it down on a
piece of paper. Bring that paper with you when you vote. Worked well for me
during 30 years of going to a polling place.

Me, as a Washington resident, I miss going to the polling place. I dunno, I
just liked the whole physical process of going to our designated place,
mingling with my neighbors and fellow citizens...and going into work late
because you wouldn't dare ding me for voting. Because you don't hate
democracy...do you? Now voting is just more paperwork I have to do, along with
rebalancing my 401K and filling out those insurance forms I've been putting
off.

------
jedberg
So far all of these just look like population maps of the US, skewed by time
zone.

Basically if it's a heavily populated area that is awake, then the dots are
big.

Maybe as the day goes on it will level out to more interesting insights?

~~~
partisan
A population density overlay would have been helpful as would a voting trend
by state or even by municipality or district to understand if there are any
statistically relevant discrepancies. That said, I suspect the point of this
tool is to lower the barriers to voting to allow everyone's vote to be
collected.

------
mastermachetier
The UI on this app is spectacular actually . I want to sit down with the team
that wrote it and just ask questions for days.

~~~
twhb
Performance is poor on my older laptop. Maybe I'm getting to the point where
web devs should leave me in the dust, but, it's also a shame to waste
resources on newer systems. I suspect the problem is that it's built on React,
which struggles with large data sets.

If the team is reading this, I'd bring up a point made on the Netflix dev
blog: the key to great React perf is doing the expensive stuff outside of
React. Do it low-level, stitch it in with lifecycle callbacks. You can end up
keeping most of your code in React's world, while fixing most of the
performance problem.

------
tangue
Google did something similar for the flu without any significant result[0].
Did things improved ?

[0] [https://www.wired.com/2015/10/can-learn-epic-failure-
google-...](https://www.wired.com/2015/10/can-learn-epic-failure-google-flu-
trends/)

------
ryanSrich
On days like this I'm glad I live in Oregon. Honestly it's the only sane and
responsible way to vote.

~~~
Munksgaard
Forgive my ignorance, but how do you vote in Oregon?

~~~
ryanSrich
You don't get the option to vote in person. We don't even have voter booths.

Instead, the state mails you a voter guide and a ballot that you fill out in
the convenience of your own home. This allows you to review the candidates and
new proposed bills line by line.

Once filled out you simply drop it off at one of the hundreds of drop-off
locations and you're done (or mail it in if you have time). This can all be
done weeks ahead of November 8th.

~~~
AndrewOMartin
And what if an intimidating person in your household has strong opinions about
how you should mark that ballot?

~~~
davidw
There is always going to be some potential for that. "Take a picture of how
you voted or I'll beat you" would work fine even with polling places, although
it'd be a little trickier.

The system saves a ton of money and time, and we have record numbers of voters
in Oregon this year.

~~~
jachee
Taking photos of your ballot is actually illegal in my state. (MS) Presumably
for this very reason.

~~~
davidw
Sure, but if the ballot booth provides real privacy... it's not hard to do.
It's also a common method of proving you voted a certain way in order to sell
your vote.

Or hey, you can just peer over their shoulder:

[https://twitter.com/Gabbienain/status/796031055715246080](https://twitter.com/Gabbienain/status/796031055715246080)

~~~
kzisme
This morning when I voted I was surprised that it was hardly a "booth". It had
sides to the screen to attempt to block it from view, but it you turn your
head you could see the screen next to you - and their screen.

------
protomyth
I'm a bit peeved polls didn't open until 9AM in New Rockford ND when the state
(and a fair number of farmers) said they would open at 7AM. Wonder what that
would be on Google's chart.

~~~
ma2rten
"Long Wait Times"?

~~~
protomyth
I suppose two hours could be considered that. Its still harvest for a lot of
these folks so this is a not good thing. Lot of farmers were getting a full
mad on as I went back to my car. I'm not very fond of being late to work, but
I would not have made it back in time tonight.

------
idm
Sortof OT: I was also interested in election trends. While Google is focusing
on real-time search trends regarding voting, I looked at meme trends leading
up to the election. There are interesting trends in the amount of attention
different candidate memes received over time. It will be interesting to see
whether the attention received by candidates is translated into votes, today.

Here's the working paper: [http://iandennismiller.github.io/election-
memes](http://iandennismiller.github.io/election-memes)

EDIT: quick link to viz: [http://imgur.com/S6nHNLT](http://imgur.com/S6nHNLT)

~~~
nhebb
They missed out on not including Reddit in the social networks. Reddit seemed
like meme-central this election for Sanders and Trump.

~~~
hannipede
Too many CTR shills on reddit

~~~
jrockway
How do you distinguish between legitimate Hillary supporters, and CTR shills?

------
timdierks
This is pretty, but it's all statistical outliers; every highlighted spot is a
small city where random fluctuations above a low baseline are most likely to
generate seemingly-impressive spikes in query volume.

~~~
anonymoushn
like Austin, Phoenix, and San Francisco?

------
TallGuyShort
This is cool, but seems to me to be very especially vulnerable to the Observer
Effect. Any fluctuation in these search terms that shows up here will cause
people to try and find out more by searching for those terms themselves. What
may have started out as random noise gets fed through a feedback loop and
amplified, while not necessarily being signal.

I saw an increase in searches for voter intimidation near where I live. I
immediately went to DuckDuckGo, and "!n voter intimidation". Now I'm part of
the problem, apparently :)

------
traskjd
What's the visualisation library they're using here? Looks great (I'm
_guessing_ D3, but it's hard to break through the webpack file to figure it
out).

~~~
nthitz
React + d3 + Canvas + More. Disclaimer: I helped build it.

~~~
deckar01
You might consider including the BSD licenses those projects were published
under in your minified JavaScript file. Is this project's source code
published anywhere?

~~~
nthitz
Thanks for the heads up. Our deploy process was stripping out all the
attributions :(. This has been fixed and they are back in now. Regrettably the
project's source is not currently available.

~~~
deckar01
Awesome! Thanks for working on this project.

------
throwawayReply
I wish this were normalized by electoral college size, it would go part-way to
normalizing by population but also be normalized with respect to impact on
outcome.

------
josefresco
There's also this:

[https://usaelectionmonitor.ushahidi.io/views/map](https://usaelectionmonitor.ushahidi.io/views/map)

Article:

[http://qz.com/825442/kenyas-crisis-mapping-startup-
ushahidi-...](http://qz.com/825442/kenyas-crisis-mapping-startup-ushahidi-
will-monitor-the-us-presidential-election/)

------
neals
I love the American elections! The data, the coverage, the websites, the data-
driven-campaigning... all of it.

I mean, I'm glad I don't live there and have to choose between these disasters
of candidates and see either of them hand over the control of the world to
Asia... but I do love the elections as a platform!

------
vhost-
Nothing in Oregon because we all sent our ballots in a week or two ago.
Interesting viz to see.

------
whybroke
Particularly intersting is the 'inactive voter status' band along the cotton
belt (a region of African Americans in the southern sates where the voting
rights act was recently repealed). Yet no such searches in KS, CO, NE, WY etc.

------
mbesto
Here's what I wanna know - what has been the increase (or decrease) in voter
intimidation this year versus 2012.

------
farright
While we're on the subject of voter intimidation, there has been constant
intimidation of Trump supporters throughout this whole campaign[0]. And at the
same time, Democrats had a deliberate campaign to incite Trump supporters to
violence[1] although this required provoking them by infiltrating their
private events, while Trump supporters were harassed and abused on the
streets.

Progressives have this insane argument that goes that violence and
intimidation against Trump supporters is actually ok and not contrary to our
deepest values, because it is done by private citizens and not the government.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUBpRexwiPg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUBpRexwiPg)

[1] [http://www.breitbart.com/big-
government/2016/10/17/exclusive...](http://www.breitbart.com/big-
government/2016/10/17/exclusive-okeefe-video-sting-exposes-bird-dogging-
democrats-effort-to-incite-violence-at-trump-rallies/)

------
avivo
This is part of the larger Electionland project, involving over 1000
journalists & journalism students.
[https://projects.propublica.org/electionland/](https://projects.propublica.org/electionland/)

------
zodPod
As someone trying to inspect dots, it's very annoying to me that the detail
windows pop up and can block other dots. I'm not sure how you'd stop this but
I found this very clunky to use. I'm also not sure if it offers anything
useful...

------
joelthelion
Is this kind of realtime data publicly available in any form?

------
meganvito
Just curious, for such a big system, how the quality of such a large service
system is assured? Even just for a single state.

------
lai
I like how Alaska is so chill.

~~~
halviti
I think you know this, but they're all still sleeping.

~~~
lai
They are either still sleeping or chill lol.

------
highCs
How is measured intimidation?

~~~
TheBiv
by searching "voter intimidation"

------
LeoPanthera
Geographic profile maps which are basically just population maps.
[https://xkcd.com/1138/](https://xkcd.com/1138/)

------
jordache
it looks like google wrote their own visualization js library?

------
guelo
This would be more accurate and real-time if it were built on Twitter.
Unfortunately, Twitter's API is a flaming mound of excrement.

------
yotamoron
So cool.

------
riebschlager
Obligatory. [1]

[1] [https://xkcd.com/1138/](https://xkcd.com/1138/)

~~~
kens
Why are xkcd mentions on HN always prefixed with Obligatory?

~~~
TheCoreh
"Obligatory xkcd reference", based on the idea that there are so many xkcd
comics, at least one of them will be relevant to any given thread.

~~~
draugadrotten
[https://relevantxkcd.appspot.com/](https://relevantxkcd.appspot.com/)

------
AznHisoka
I just really want to know how many estimated ppl voted for each candidate in
each state. Couldn't they just extrapolate that based on search/browsing
history (IE. if someone visited BreitBart, they're probably voting for Trump,
if someone visited 538, most likely Clinton)

~~~
TallGuyShort
I would think that's extremely unreliable. If it was true, it would be really
bad. I want to know what Trump and Clinton are saying regardless of who I vote
for. I visit BreitBart but voted for relatively few Republicans. I think one
of the main problems with our political process is that our news feeds are
turning into echo chambers, polarizing everyone who doesn't go out of their
way to really think critically and expand their horizons.

