7 November 2022 — 0904 mst
MT voter registration up from 2018, down from 2020;
guns at the polls; freezing in the dark in Ukraine
By James Conner
It’s election eve — and in Kalispell, MT, it’s unseasonably cold: 19°F with a hard northeast wind that the weathermen expect to drive snow later today. Tomorrow will be colder. Indeed, for me it will be the coldest election day since I began voting in northern Minnesota in 1968.
Tomorrow, I will post county level Montana data on population, the voting eligible population, registered voters, and absentee voters. Meanwhile, here are the state level numbers for 2016–2022. Registered voters as a percentage of population is slightly ahead of 2018, and approximately twice as far behind 2020. This statistic does not predict turnout.
The last polls. Today and tomorrow, the results of the final pre-election polls will be released. I do not expect any new polling for Montana to be announced. I think the best aggregation and analysis of polls is at Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight website. At this point, ignore the average. Instead, look at the last polls, and at who sponsored and who conducted them. Look for polls of likely voters.
Silver does not present the margin of error for these polls. But you can do that yourself. Divide the sample size by 1.5 to account for design effect, then plug the sample size into the MOE calculator at the American Research Group.
If the numbers are within the MOE, plug those numbers and the adjusted sample size into ARG’s ballot lead calculator. That will give you the probability that Smith is leading Jones.
Polling caveat. State level polling is notoriously difficult. Polls released today and tomorrow will not account for last minute developments that affect the decisions of voters casting their ballots on election day.
Will gun toting MAGA Stop the Steal thugs intimidate voters tomorrow? They’re already trying in Arizona, brandishing firearms and photographing voters near ballot dropboxes. A federal judge ordered these Arizonans to step back 250 feet from the dropboxes and not openly carry weapons. He did not enjoin concealed weapons.
According to The Conversation, not many states forbid weapons at the polls. One notable exception is Delaware. Another, New York.
…election-related violence is a part of America’s past. For example, the anti-immigrant Know-Nothing party of the 1850s often employed armed violence using an array of weapons, and Democrat-Whig party battles erupted in the 1830s. Throughout the middle of the 19th century, such cities as Philadelphia, Baltimore and New Orleans at times witnessed pitched battles between warring political factions at election time. And lethal violence was used extensively after the Civil War to systematically terrorize and disenfranchise Black voters in the South.
Yet many people in the United States also believed from the start that guns and violence were contrary to the values of a democratic nation, especially, though not limited to, during times of elections. As early as 1776, Delaware’s state Constitution stated: “To prevent any violence or force being used at the said elections, no person shall come armed to any of them.” It further stipulated that, to protect voters, a gun-free zone would be put in place within a mile of polling places for 24 hours before and after election day.
In its state Bill of Rights of 1787, New York decreed that “all elections shall be free and that no person by force of arms nor by malice or menacing or otherwise presume to disturb or hinder any citizen of this State to make free election.”
In my own research on historical gun laws, I found roughly a dozen states that specifically barred guns during elections or at polling places in laws enacted between the 1770s and the start of the 20th century. But even more importantly, from the 1600s through the 1800s, I found that at least three-quarters of all Colonies and later states enacted laws criminalizing gun-brandishing and display in any public setting — and that would certainly include voting stations at election time.
Putin wants Ukrainians to starve and freeze in the dark. During the last month, he’s sent hundreds of missiles and drones to damage or destroy the electrical grid and sources of potable water. Kyiv is on the verge of being blacked out for months, requiring an evacuation of hundres of thousands of residents.
It is not clear whether Russia also is attacking generating stations, or is concentrating on powerlines and transformer substations. Wrecking the distribution system requires few weapons than wrecking huge generating plants.
These attacks on infrastructure tell me that Putin has not abandoned his goal of subsuming all of Ukraine into Mother Russia. He’s changing tactics, but not his goals. As long as he’s in power, he’ll continue this war. The best Ukraine can hope for is a cease fire in place that holds for the duration of his rule, followed by a genuine peace negotiated by Russia’s new rulers.
Meanwhile, Republicans in the U.S. House are threatening to not approve additional funding for American weapons for Ukraine. This is not a policy of isolationism. Rather it’s a policy of “If Biden’s for it, we’re against it.” These zealots are willing to sacrifice Ukraine to win elections. I hope decent Americans will remember that when they vote.