Read on Twitter
1. One last pt. on this Harlan Hill claim about WI turnout that's gotten an incredible amount of traction in the right-wing mediasphere, with Eric Trump and Kimberley Strassel picked up, and Sean Hannity actually featuring it on his show last night. https://twitter.com/Harlan/status/1324039094524137472
2. I've already written about the fact that having 89% of registered voters vote in a state like Wisconsin is actually not unbelievable or surprising - in 2016, 84% of registered WI voters voted, and 90% of MN voters did. But there's something else deceptive about Hill's claim.
3. Wisconsin has same-day voter registration. So some of the 3,288,771 votes were cast by voters who registered on 11/3.
But the number Hill says is the total number of registered voters doesn't include those people. His number is the number who were registered as of 11/1.
But the number Hill says is the total number of registered voters doesn't include those people. His number is the number who were registered as of 11/1.
4. Hill gets to the 89% registered-voter turnout number by dividing total votes by number of registered voters.
But his total-vote number includes voters who registered on Election Day, while his registered-voter number does not. And that inflates the turnout number.
But his total-vote number includes voters who registered on Election Day, while his registered-voter number does not. And that inflates the turnout number.
5. In other words, in mathematical terms, Hill is adding voters to the numerator of his equation without adding them to the denominator, which of course makes the result bigger than it otherwise would be.
6. Now, it's possible Harlan Hill is just too stupid to understand this is what he's doing. But it seems more likely that he knows perfectly well what he's doing, and he's inflating the number to make it look more suspicious (even though even the inflated number is unsurprising).
7. What Hill, and ppl like him, are doing is lying with statistics, in order to discredit the election results.
8. Sometimes they're doing so by just making up numbers, sometimes by setting up false comparisons, sometimes by saying things are "eye-popping" when they're not. Regardless, it's all deceptive. It's all done purely to serve a political purpose. And it should stop.
