
Counties with higher lynching rates have low voter turnout today - smacktoward
https://www.postandcourier.com/politics/counties-with-higher-lynching-rates-have-low-voter-turnout-today/article_627132ba-9375-11e9-b335-3f61123ae128.html
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pmdulaney
Is it an innocent blunder that the editor wrote "Counties with higher lynching
rates" rather than "Counties that had higher lynching rates"? I don't think
so.

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scanny
After skimming through, the author uses present tense for the rate:

" Greenwood County, which has the highest lynching rate in South Carolina with
6.87 blacks lynched per 10,000 people in the black population in 1900,... "

But then uses past tense for the voter turnout

" ... had a black voter registration rate in the 2008 presidential election of
72.4 percent. "

But I am not sot sure that I understand why either.

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ZeroGravitas
I don't think they're limiting the time period for the lynchings. So although
the rate is based on the population in 1900, it's not limited to that year or
decade, so it's not past tense.

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scanny
To someone who understands statistics, why is the method conducted by the
researchers:

" To examine the connection between historical acts of racial violence and
modern-day voting behavior among blacks in the South, Williams examined
county-level voter participation data in the six Southern states where
individuals are asked to identify their race when they register to vote. "

Where they basically drew connections between two sets of statistics,
different from what 'spurious correlations'[1] takes aim at? Although the
article doesn't mention at any greater depth as to how the research was done.

[1] [https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-
correlations](https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations)

