Category: public policy

How the PA votes came in

I kept a running tally in a spreadsheet and posted updates to my facebook timeline. For posterity’s sake, I’m going to gather those posts here. The main complicating factor in my calculations was the number of votes remaining to be counted. Difficult to report what proportion a candidate needs when the denominator is unknown. You’ll see some comments on that in the entries below.

November 4, 2020

The latest addition was over 9k votes, with 79% going to Biden. If there are 1.057 million left to tally (extrapolating from the 85% estimated votes counted), and Biden got 79% of those, he’d win PA by 300,000 votes. If Biden got 65% of the remaining votes (and Trump got all the rest), Biden’d win PA by 2,700 votes.

NOTA BENE: A complicating factor is that I don’t know exactly how many votes are left to be tallied, and since the sources don’t report decimals, the remaining votes are bouncing around. We need to smooth, so I’ll just keep adding observations (if that means nothing to you, don’t worry about it).

5:22pm Added 17, 425 votes, 68.3% Biden
Biden needs 66% of remaining

5:39pm Added 9,696 votes, 75.5% Biden
needs 66% of remaining

5:58pm Added 26,525 votes, 70.5% Biden
needs 65% of remaining

6:18pm Added 37,700 votes, 76.7% Biden
needs 65% of remaining

6:44pm Added 33,186 votes, 69.0% Biden
needs 65% of remaining; T’s lead is 4.24 points

8:44pm Added 147,175 votes, 71.0% Biden
needs 63% of remaining,T lead is down to 3.13, approximately 3/4 mil left to count

10:37pm Added 56,219 votes, 72.1% Biden
T’s lead down to 2.7, Inquirer/AP also adjusted the estimates of votes left to be counted (more left than previously thought). According to new estimates, Biden needs 60% of remaining 944k votes. Even if that’s incorrect, and we have a lower total of say, 7mil votes in PA, Biden would win with 63% of remaining. But the average of the estimates of the total “expected” votes I’ve tallied this evening is 7.052 mil. And, of the total votes reported this evening, Biden took 71.6%.

NB 35,000 votes in Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) cannot legally be counted until Friday.

November 5, 2020

7:29am 16,824 votes added, 67.1% Biden
Biden needs 59% of remaining votes, T’s lead 2.59 points
[13% of expected votes still to be counted]

Updating from my pickup’s tailgate
10:03am 45,502 added, 81.2% Biden
needs 58% of remaining, T’s lead 2.13

Another tailgate update
12:24pm 30,208 added, 83.6% Biden
needs 57% of remaining, T’s lead 1.79

1:56pm 10,504 added, 67.4% Biden
needs 57% of remaining, T’s lead 1.73

4:42pm 32,217 added, 71.5% Bidenneeds 56% of remaining votes, T’s lead 1.51NB: Since I started this tally yesterday, the lowest proportion of added votes to Biden was 67.10% (highest prop was 83.6%)

5:07pm 20,664 added, 65.6% Biden (that’s the lowest margin yet of added votes) needs 56% of remaining, T’s lead 1.40
According to Inquirer/AP, still have 12% of votes left to count

6:06pm 37,203 added, 65.8% Biden
T’s lead 1.20

NYT reporting similar numbers but saying 93% counted, while Inquirer says 89%. “Worse” case is NYT, for which Biden would need at least 59% of the remaining 7% of votes. If it’s 89% votes in, Biden needs 55% of remaining 11% of votes. (Annoyingly, NYT isn’t reporting Jorgensen votes, so their available info is incomplete.)

7:01pm 22,064 added, 81.4% Biden, T’s lead now 0.98 points
Wish I had a better sense of how many left to count, but apparent range of estimates suggests Biden safe with 57% of rest.

8:34pm 13,933 added, 70.6% Biden
T’s lead is 0.89 points, the margin is 58,281 votes

9:08pm 12,768 added, 75.7% Biden
T’s lead 0.79 points, margin is 51,622 votes

November 6, 2020

7:22am 64,430 votes added, 75.5% Biden
T’s lead now 0.27 points, 18,042 votes

Biggest unknown is how many votes left to count. Estimates vary widely. According to PA Secretary of State’s (very clunky) site, there are 163,501 mail-in ballots yet to be counted and 17 precincts from Philly yet to report Election Day counts. (Super duper wtf on the Philly precincts.)

Anyway, if Biden gets 56% of remaining votes (however many there are) he wins PA.

9:32 am 31,342 added, 87.4% Biden

With that, PA has flipped to Biden.

Biden’s lead is 5,596, or 0.08 points
And others reported additional returns the Inquirer hasn’t yet included, putting Biden ahead over 25k votes, with no remaining path for T.

1:10pm Added 18,828 votes, 67.5% Biden
Biden’s lead is 0.19 points, 12,497 votes

Somewhere around 120,000 or more votes yet to be counted. Nate Silver is reporting that Lehigh County’s 7,000 added were 68% Biden. Thank you, Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton! Lehigh County has a small but not insignificant minority population, including LatinX, and those are not generally Cuban (or Mexican), more frequently Puerto Rican or Central American. We know the Latinx population is much more politically diverse than Black Americans.

Subsequent returns only widened the margin until the race was called midday November 7.

Race and Ecological Justice are Connected

They are connected in many many ways, but one of the most insidious is location. For instance, low income housing (often with higher proportions of minority residents) is often near polluted sites, large factories, and dumping.

But today I was nonetheless appalled to learn where Southern University is situated. I mean, Southern! The home of the Human Jukebox! It’s one of the flagship HBCUs, and is highlighted every year during the Grambling vs Southern football game with those amazing marching band shows.

“next to the Devil’s Swamp Superfund site and surrounded by petro-chemical plants and toxic waste sites. A slew of leaks, discharges and accidents have impacted Southern, including toxic leaking railroad tank cars, ruptured pipelines, chemical spills from tank trucks, and leaking barges on the river, making it the most adversely impacted institution of higher learning in the country.” (Source)

The Devil’s Swamp Superfund site is indeed a few miles away from campus. The site was proposed for Superfund status back in 2004, and it’s still “under investigation.” They finally held a meeting with the public about the cleanup strategy in October 2019.

And Petro Processors of Louisiana is located just next to Devil’s Swamp. According to the EPA, “PPI operated these sites as depositories for various petrochemical wastes during the 1960s and the 1970s. These operations contaminated surface soil, surface water, groundwater, air and airborne particulate matter with hazardous chemicals. The site is located over the ‘400-foot sands,’ a major drinking water aquifer.”

And yes, there’s more info out there, for anyone who isn’t sufficiently bothered by the above.

How unemployment works

The word “unemployed” has many definitions, but I’ll focus on three of them. One: the layperson believes someone is unemployed if they are not working. Two: the data analyst or survey taker considers a person unemployed if they are not working but have been actively seeking work for some specified amount of time. And three: the unemployment insurance system provides short-term financial assistance for eligible unemployed persons.

Unemployment benefits are not the same as “welfare.” A person’s current financial condition and family situation does not sufficiently determine eligibility. Instead, unemployment is an insurance system, and some people pay in so some (other) people can get payouts.

The system is a joint state-federal program administered by the states. The state (generally) determines eligibility, benefit amounts, and the tax rate (like an insurance premium) that must be paid into the system. Some states are more generous than others.

Now, who pays the insurance premia? Employers. As a business owner with employees, I pay a percentage of payroll into the unemployment insurance system. By paying into the system, I’m doing my part to make sure that if my employees get laid off (lose their jobs through no fault of their own) they will have some assistance while they look for other work or while they wait for recall to my company.

Some companies hire employees, some hire independent contractors (ICs). I’m not going to get into all of the differences now, but employers who hire only ICs have not done their workers any favors for this current pandemic. See, no one pays unemployment insurance for ICs. An IC who applies for benefits wants something for nothing. If you work for someone who pays you with checks and you get a 1099 for taxes, they haven’t paid into unemployment on your behalf.

If you work for yourself, and just cash checks as they come to you, without paying UI taxes, you have not paid into the system. When applying for benefits, you are asking something for nothing.

Of course, COVID-19 has flung us into a truly unusual situation. Many self-employed people are unable to earn money from work through no fault of their own. And this is where the CARES Act comes in. We needed a special appropriation in order to pay benefits yo people who have not paid into the system.

FWIW, I am an employee of my corporation and pay payroll taxes and UI taxes on my wages, just as I do for all of my employees. Frankly, it’s the right thing to do, and there are a lot of business owners out there who choose to pay themselves and others as ICs when they could be employees. And why do it that way? To avoid paying payroll taxes, workers comp insurance, and UI taxes. To avoid contributing to the safety net that so many Americans need right now.

For example, if I pay an employee $15 per hour, I pay an additional $1.15 for Social Security and Medicare, $1.97 for liability and worker’s compensation insurance, and $0.38 into the unemployment system. I also pay for a payroll service and I offer benefits like paid sick leave and professional development funds. So every $15 hourly wage costs me about $20. Lots of employers choose not to pay that. For shame.

Do you have questions about unemployment? Feel free to ask me, I’ll do my best to answer.

Garden Centers and Gun Stores

Governor Wolf and Mayor Kenney have designated certain businesses essential. I agree with most of their choices, like for grocery stores, laundromats, and pharmacies. I agreed when Governor Wolf deemed gun stores non-essential. But of course the NRA (the front for the gun manufacturers) had to put their considerable money muscle on it post-haste and get those stores back open! Why do people need guns right now? “To protect all the toilet paper they’re hoarding.” Boom! Wish I’d come up with that gem, but I didn’t it. I’ll credit it “anonymous” since it disparages people with violent tendencies. Not giving you guys a target.

Garden centers have been deemed non-essential, but big box stores like Lowe’s and Home Depot can continue to sell ample GMO bio-cide laden plants and materials with no constraints. Meanwhile, industry-leading small businesses like Primex have been forced to shut down. And in an industry where at least 50% of revenue comes in April, May, and June, I worry that the small businesses will not recover.

If garden centers are non-essential, allow no stores to sell garden products.

Garden centers sell food-bearing plants! Apparently, food is only essential if someone else grows it, picks it, ships it, and puts it on a shelf for you.

If our primary intention is to prevent greater spread of COVID-19 by preventing non-essential activities, we should be doing a much better job of defining said activities. And not cave to rich companies who have too much power and money already.

Prepping for my R maps workshop

I’m thoroughly enjoying gathering data and writing the scripts for the maps I’m going to share in my upcoming Women in Tech Summit workshop. I’m starting with world-level maps, then will move to US and then more local. A main challenge is that there are lots of different ways to draw maps in R. My personal favorite is to use ggplot2. I have seen there is a choroplethr package, but I haven’t tried that yet.

Here’s my latest map:

WmGov

It’s based on the wrld_simpl SpatialPolygonsDataFrame, and I merged in data from the World Bank Development Indicators. Next up: gender differences in economic and education outcomes across the US. Whee!