A Misuse of Statistical Reasoning: The Statistical Arguments Offered by Texas to the Supreme Court in an Attempt to Overturn the Results of the 2020 Election

Abstract

In December 2020, Texas filed a motion to the U.S. Supreme Court claiming that the four battleground states: Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin did not conduct their 2020 presidential elections in compliance with the Constitution. Texas supported its motion with a statistical analysis purportedly demonstrating that it was highly improbable that Biden had more votes than Trump in the four battleground states. This article points out that Texas’s claim is logically flawed and the analysis submitted violated several fundamental principles of statistics.

Keyword:

• 2020 Presidential Election
• Control group
• Early voting
• Random sample
• Voter turnout

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the referees and Associate Editor for many helpful comments and suggestions.

Notes

1 State of Texas v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, State of Georgia, State of Michigan and State of Wisconsin, docket number 220155 (available at www.scotusblog.com, which has all of the briefs filed in the case).

2 Texas v. Pennsylvania 592 U.S._ (2020). The decision was based on legal considerations.

3 Page 8 of State of Texas v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, State of Georgia, State of Michigan and State of Wisconsin, citing expert’s declaration in the Appendix at 4a–7a, 9a.

4 Id at 8.

5 Expert Declaration, appendix 3a.

6 Expert declaration 4a. These percentages exclude third-party candidates.

7 Expert Declaration, appendix 5a.

8 Expert Declaration, appendix 7a.

9 The compromise and settlement of the lawsuit, Democratic Party of Georgia v. Raffensperger, No. 1:19-cv-5028-WMR (N.D. Ga.), stipulated that before a signed ballot would be rejected, three registrars would need to examine it and compare it to the one on file.

10 Opposition to Motion for Leave to File Bill of Complaint, December 10, 2020, No. 22O155, at pages 7 and 8.

11 Id. at 8.

12 Reply in Support of Motion for Leave to File, No. 22O155, December, 11, 2020, pages 2–3.

13 Id. at 156a. The expert removed cities in the four battleground states in determining the top-50 cities.

14 Id. at 157a.

15 Expert declaration at 4a.

16 https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/laus.pdf.

17 According to https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2016/unemployment-rate-declines-to-4-point-6-percent-in-november-2016.htm, the unemployment rate in November 2016 was 4.6%.

18 https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/voter-turnout-in-presidential-elections.

19 http://www.electproject.org/2020g. The website also contains the voter turnout rates for each state.

20 Derived from Table K200701 from the U.S. Census Bureau’s data on geographical mobility obtained from the Bureau’s website. The data indicate that about 2.2%–2.3% of the population moves each year.

21 McKinley (1896, 1900), Reagan (1980, 1984), and Bush (2000, 2004).

22 The Declaration does not state this explicitly, but when drawing conclusions from standard statistical tests using p-values, the expert implicitly assumed random samples from the same population. See expert’s original declaration, pages 3a–7a.

23 The need for an appropriate control or comparator is noted in equal employment cases, for example, Crawford v. Ind. Harbor Belt R.R. Co. 461 F.3d 844 (7th. Cir. 2006) and in trademark infringement cases (Jacoby 2002; Diamond and Franklyn 2014).

24 Page 156a of the expert’s Supplemental Declaration.

25 Dan McLaughlin: No, Joe Biden Did Not Only Improve in Four Major Swing-State Cities. National Review (November 16, 2020) (available at https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/no-joe-biden-did-not-only-improve-in-four-major-swing-state-cities).

26 Pages 4a and 5a of the expert’s original declaration.

27 Delays in Verifying Mail-In Ballots Will Slow Election Tally, by Anthony Izaguirre, Associate Press on October 4, 2020.

28 We Have Never Had Final Results on Election Day, New York Times, by Maggie Astor, updated on November 3.

29 Record-Setting Turnout: Tracking Early Voting in the 2020 Election, by Lazaro Gamio, John Keefe, Denise Lu and Rich Harris, New York Times, updated November 12, 2020.

30 Page 7a of expert declaration.

31 Brash, B. (2020). Fulton County election results delayed after pipe bursts. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (November 3rd).

32 Biden to Carry Georgia After Second Recount: State Election Official https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2020-12-02/biden-will-carry-georgia-after-second-recount-secretary-of-state.

33 Table 1 on page 5a of expert’s original declaration.

34 The increase was noticeable except in the three states that mailed ballots to registered voters in both 2016 and 2020.

35 See footnotes 27 and 28.