Opinion ID: 2973599
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Plaintiffs’ Voting Rights Act Claim

Text: On their Voting Rights Act claim, the plaintiffs alleged that the punch card system used in Hamilton, Montgomery, and Summit Counties produces a higher residual vote rate for AfricanAmerican voters than for white voters. The plaintiffs presented regression analysis that the correlation between overvoting and the percentage of African-American3 voters in a given precinct in Hamilton County was .517 and in Summit County it was .682. The plaintiffs’ experts characterized these correlations as “strong.” In Montgomery County, where only data of overvotes mixed with undervotes was available at the precinct level, there was a smaller, but nevertheless “strong” .440 correlation. The plaintiffs’ expert, Dr. Richard Engstrom, analyzed the data based on methods of statistical analysis approved by the Supreme Court and other federal courts in voting rights cases. See e.g., Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30 (1986); Mallory v. Ohio, 173 F.3d 377 (6th Cir. 1999). The three methods are homogeneous precinct analysis, ecological regression, and ecological inference. Dr. Engstrom used all three methods and triangulated among them to verify that his findings moved consistently in the same direction; the defendants’ expert did not use any of these methods. Dr. Engstrom concluded that: (1) African-Americans in Hamilton County overvoted at a rate seven times higher than non African-Americans; (2) in Summit County, African-Americans overvoted at a rate nine times higher than non African-Americans; and (3) in Montgomery County (where only combined over and undervote statistics are available on a precinct basis), AfricanAmericans had a residual voting rate 2.5 times that of non African-Americans. In contrast to the three punch card counties, Franklin County had no overvotes because it used DRE machines that prevent overvoting. Based on this information, Dr. Engstrom testified that punch card equipment interacts with socioeconomic conditions, resulting in statistically significant disparities between the levels of residual voting among African-American and non African-American voters. 3 Regression coefficients measure the strength of association between two variables. They range from –1.0 (a perfectly inverse relationship), through 0 (no relationship), to +1.0 (a perfect relationship). HUBERT M. BLALOCK, JR., SOCIAL STATISTICS 396-97 (2d ed. 1979). No. 05-3044 Stewart, et al. v. Blackwell, et al. Page 7