Grading PolitiFact (Florida): Is U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Bill Nelson ad accurate?

Context matters -- We examine the claim in the full context, the comments made before and after it, the question that prompted it, and the point the person was trying to make.
--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

Hogwash.


The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Angie Drobnic Holan:  writer, researcher
Louis Jacobson:  researcher
Katie Sanders:  researcher
Aaron Sharockman:  editor


Analysis:

This story by PolitiFact Florida manifests that special type of journalistic incompetence that could easily double as deliberate campaign activity on behalf of the Democratic Party's senatorial candidate, Bill Nelson.

PolitiFact does provide the context of the ad, which gives the lie, directly or indirectly, to pretty much the entire PolitiFact analysis:

U.S. Chamber: "Obamacare will be a nightmare for Florida seniors. Did Bill Nelson consider the consequences when he cast a deciding vote for Obamacare?"

Nelson: "This legislation is gonna let folks that are happy with their insurance keep it …"

U.S. Chamber: "Wrong. 20 million people could lose their current coverage."

Nelson: "... including our senior citizens who are on Medicare."

U.S. Chamber: "But Senator, seniors will see $500 billion in Medicare cuts to fund Obamacare. Call Bill Nelson. Tell him to support the repeal of Obamacare."

It is pretty well established that it was not true of the ACA that folks who are happy with their insurance will necessarily have the opportunity to keep their existing insurance.  Even PolitiFact didn't swallow that line from President Obama.  Criticizing that same line from Sen. Nelson constitutes the immediate context of the ad.

PolitiFact focuses on a would-be broader context where the ad supposedly implies that 20 million Medicare beneficiaries will* lose their current insurance:

Here, we’re checking whether "20 million people could lose their current coverage," and whether those people are older Americans on Medicare as the ad strongly suggests.

Don't hold your breath waiting for PolitiFact to substantiate its claim that the ad "strongly suggests" that 20 million Medicare beneficiaries will lose their current coverage.  It never happens.  Instead, we get a series of statements that essentially repeat the charge without any supporting evidence:  "The ad makes it sound like 20 million seniors will be losing coverage," "The ad blurs these distinctions in a way that’s highly misleading," "Yet it seems like that’s the reasonable interpretation of the ad" and "The ad from the U.S. Chamber makes it sound like 20 million older Americans will lose coverage under the health care law."

Apparently since the ad opens with the claim that "Obamacare will be a nightmare for Florida seniors," PolitiFact assumes that some portion of the ad must support that statement.  But that simply isn't the case.  The ad follows up by showing Nelson making false statements about the health plan he supported and the ad questions whether Nelson considered the consequences of his vote.  That's fair game in politics.

Is the jump from the claim that ObamaCare is disastrous for Florida seniors to Nelson's ill-stated advocacy a proper justification for a "Pants on Fire" rating?  PolitiFact wants us to think so, and uses techniques that make the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ad look completely aboveboard by comparison.

Shenanigan A:

We read (CBO) the report, which analyzes the health care law of 2010, also known as the Affordable Care Act. We quickly realized the ad was mixing apples and oranges.

On the contrary, rather than mixing apples and oranges the ad uses the higher boundary of an estimate of those who will lose existing employer-provided coverage to represent the number of citizens overall who will lose their existing coverage.  Logically, the higher boundary on the loss of existing coverage for all Americans is higher than that for just those in the employer-provided market.  The claim that the ad mixes apples and oranges stands if PolitiFact demonstrates that the ad is saying that 20 million Medicare beneficiaries will lose their existing coverage.  PolitiFact never undertakes that demonstration.

Shenanigan B:

Even if the ad had provided proper context of employer-provided insurance, it’s still not exactly the case that 20 million people will lose coverage under the health insurance law.

The ad said "could lose," not "will lose."

Shenanigan C:

Second, some portion of that (20 million) number are people voluntarily switching to other, better coverage -- not being forced out of coverage against their will.

Ah, the old "conjecture as evidence" ploy.  "Are" suggests a fact in evidence.  But the consequences of the law foretold in the CBO report are not yet in evidence.  As chronicled in an earlier "Grading PolitiFact" entry, PolitiFact invented its evidence on this point.  Is it possible that a person will voluntarily leave employer-provided coverage for coverage under an exchange?  Sure, barely.  But subsidized exchange coverage under the health care reform act is not available to those forsaking employer-offered coverage.  Those doing so pay for their insurance out of their own pockets, and in addressing that point the CBO notes that consumers in the insurance market strongly tend to choose the less expensive option.  PolitiFact has an excellent record of ignoring that detail from the report.

Shenanigan D (bold emphasis added):

We contacted the Center for Medicare Advocacy, a nonprofit group that works with Medicare beneficiaries to educate them on the program and help them get access to care. We asked executive director Judith Stein if there was any scenario in which seniors would lose coverage under the new health care law.

"If they’re stating that 20 million people would lose Medicare because of the Affordable Care Act, that is simply not true. In fact, the health care law strengthens Medicare coverage," Stein said.

Note the leading nature of the question posed to Stein.  The question uses as its premise the supposition that the ad says seniors will lose insurance coverage, not that seniors will lose their current plan.  And for many seniors, the current plan is a Medicare Advantage plan.

From the Medicare's chief actuary, Richard Foster:

The new provisions will generally reduce MA rebates to plans and thereby result in less generous benefit packages. We estimate that in 2017, when the MA provisions will be fully phased in, enrollment in MA plans will be lower by about 50 percent (from its projected level of 14.8 million under the prior law to 7.4 million under the new law).

As with the decreased enrollment in employer-provided insurance, the abandonment of existing Medicare Advantage insurance plans will occur primarily because of price rationing.

PolitiFact would leave its readers none the wiser.

Now to evaluate the ad according to an alternative reasonable interpretation.

The ad doesn't support its claim that the health care reform bill will prove disastrous for Florida seniors.  Instead, it makes the case that Bill Nelson's advocacy for the reform bill was misplaced.  That is the meaning of the ad's question "Did Bill Nelson consider the consequences when he cast a deciding vote for Obamacare?"

To support the idea that Nelson's perception of the consequences was awry, the ad shows him making the debunked claim that those who like their current insurance plan will be able to keep that plan.  Nelson expands on that claim by specifically mentioning Medicare.  The response in the ad points to a Medicare "cut" that reallocates the funding toward ObamaCare.  A portion of that reduction to projected Medicare spending comes from the reduced Medicare Advantage rebates mentioned above by Medicare's chief actuary.

PolitiFact crashes into this problem again and again.  Fair interpretation requires charitable interpretation of every statement.  It is flatly improper for fact checkers to arbitrarily prefer one "reasonable" interpretation over another.  The claim that 20 million may lose existing insurance--the claim PolitiFact chose to check--is flatly true by the CBO report because the total number of Americans who may lose existing coverage cannot be less than the number of Americans who may lose employer-based coverage.  PolitiFact's suggestion that the ad implies that the full 20 million come from Medicare carries the appearance of mendacity.


The grades:

Angie Drobnic Holan:  F
Aaron Sharockman:  F

I'm not offering grades for those who merely contributed research.

The two listed above are journalists reporting badly.


*Update/Clarification 5/18/2012:   I wrote early in the post that PolitiFact says "the ad supposedly implies that 20 million Medicare beneficiaries will lose their current insurance."  That statement is accurate in the context of the the entire fact check but is not fully supported by the quotation immediately following.  I considered changing it but decided on an explanatory note instead.

"Shadowy" Crossroads GPS PAC

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) recently sent me a message warning me about an ad campaign rolled out by the Crossroads GPS PAC.  Crossroads GPS is Karl Rove's baby.  You know, Darth Vader.  That makes Crossroads GPS a sort of Luke Skywalker, I suppose.

Anyhow, here's the ad:




And here's what Nelson says about it:

As part of a series of $20-million in TV attack ads, I have been targeted by Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS. Their ad is a total distortion of my record. But I'm trusting Floridians will see this attack for what it is: rubbish paid for by a shadowy, partisan front group funded by just a handful of billionaires.

"Total distortion."  Hmmm.  It's a pity Nelson wasn't more specific.  Most if not all the factoids in the ad appear plainly true at first blush.  Nelson might have a point that the conclusions drawn from the factoids paint him in an unnecessarily negative light.  But isn't Nelson doing the same thing or worse by calling the ad a "total distortion"?

This much is true, at least:  Nelson's would-be Republican replacement will serve as a more fiscally restrained member of the Senate than Nelson.  "Total distortion" that, Mr. Nelson.

Grading PolitiFact (Florida): Bill Nelson and provisional ballot rejection

To assess the truth for a numbers claim, the biggest factor is the underlying message.
--Bill Adair

The issue:

The fact checkers:

Aaron Sharockman:  writer, researcher
John Bartosek:  editor


Analysis:

I wonder if Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) knows that the most important aspect of a numbers claim is the underlying message?  Even more so, I wonder if PolitiFact staffers Aaron Sharockman and John Bartosek realize it.

Nelson used the provisional ballot stat to bolster his claim that a Republican bill affecting election procedures targeted women and young people.  That's the way PolitiFact tells the story, anyway.  Good luck finding a quotation from Nelson making that clear.

Trust PolitiFact.

PolitiFact:

Republicans say it's a way to eliminate possible voter fraud. But Democrats like Nelson say it's an (sic) way to suppress the votes of people most likely to change their names (women) and people most likely to move frequently (young people and college students). At a press conference with Democratic state legislators on May 2, Bay News 9 and Central Florida 13 reporter Troy Kinsey asked Nelson what was so wrong with people having to cast a provisional ballot.

"Look at history," Nelson answered. "Look at the provisional ballots in 2008. Fifty-five percent of them were discounted. Fifty-five percent of the people who cast a provisional ballot in the last presidential election -- their vote did not count."

PolitiFact editor Bill Adair says the underlying message is the most important aspect of a numbers claim.  Since history suggests that PolitiFact often fails to bother separating the underlying message from the literal numbers claim, let's pause to evaluate Nelson's statement.

First, we have a literal numbers claim, that 55 percent of provisional ballots--presumably in Florida--were not counted.

Second, though more importantly using Adair's guidelines, Nelson sends the message that having to use a provisional ballot serves to suppress votes.  We can't reasonably presume Nelson to mean he wants illegal votes protected, however.  If we take that course then things like age restrictions on voting likewise count as voter suppression efforts.  Nelson is reasonably taken as talking about suppression of legal votes.

PolitiFact's subsequent assay of the facts shows that Florida's provisional ballots were considered unevenly according to locale.  For example, Broward County rejected 94 percent of its provisional ballots while Duval County rejected a mere 19 percent.  The differences in the numbers prompt quite a few questions, but the PolitiFact assessment is sadly superficial, limited to a quotation of a Pew Center on the States report mentioning some differences in rejection criteria.  PolitiFact offers no suggestions as to the significance of the rejection criteria, moving quickly to focus on the literal numbers claim:

In total, Pew reported that 35,635 Florida voters submitted provisional ballots in the 2008 fall election (.42 percent of the total 8.4 million who cast ballots for president). Of the 35,635 ballots submitted, 17,314 were counted and 18,321 were not counted.

To line that up with Nelson's claim, that means 51.4 percent of the provisional ballots submitted were not counted for one reason or another.

As Nelson could justify rounding to 55 from 52.5, his number represents an inflation of only about 2 percent.  So the literal claim as to the numbers is close, and we can file the figures away to contribute to our evaluation of the PolitiMath theorem of mathematical accuracy.

PolitiFact:

State Department spokesman Chris Cate also provided us with provisional ballot statistics from the 2010 general election. They are worth noting because the percentage of provisional ballots ultimately discounted was cut in half when compared to 2008. In the 2010 fall election, local canvassing boards considered 13,181 provisional ballots. Canvassing boards wound up counting 9,790 of the votes and tossing out 3,391 provisional ballots -- or 25.7 percent of the total number of provisional ballots.

Nelson said that "55 percent of the people who cast a provisional ballot (in Florida) in the last presidential election -- their vote did not count." Two slight clarifications: Nelson is slightly high on the percentage claim, and he fails to note that the percentage of provisional ballots counted improved greatly in 2010. We rate this claim Mostly True.

It is worth noting, or rather emphasizing, that PolitiFact has implicitly detected an underlying message that figures in the final ruling.  After all, if the question was only the percentage of provisional ballots rejected in the 2008 election then the number of provisional ballots rejected in the 2010 election is entirely irrelevant.  Yet PolitiFact justified dropping Nelson from "True" down to "Mostly True" based in part on the 2010 numbers.

PolitiFact's attempt to evaluate the underlying message qualifies as severely underdeveloped, unfortunately.

As noted above, the reasonable version of Nelson's argument hinges on the number of legitimate votes lost as a result of the provisional ballot process.  PolitiFact fails to address the issue--a great yawning hole in the story.  The difference in the percentages of provisional ballot rejection, by itself, means nothing.  What matters is the extent to which the percentages reflect the loss of legitimate votes.  And that's quite the can of worms that PolitiFact leaves untouched.

It is a type of voter fraud to vote in the wrong precinct.

I'll repeat that to give it time to sink in.

It is a type of voter fraud to vote in the wrong precinct.

Precincts exist for a reason.  They are intended to help limit who can vote on what.  New York residents should not vote in Florida elections, for example.  For that reason, one of the statistics bandied about by PolitiFact (quoted from the Pew Center report) caused me some consternation:  "In Broward County, 100 percent of rejected provisional ballots were not counted because they were cast by voters not registered in the state."

Broward, one of Florida's most populous counties, was the one that rejected 94 percent of its provisional ballots (see above).

The Pew report, in truth, provides only a wisp of support for Nelson's underlying argument.  That wisp comes from the fact that poll workers sometimes make mistakes in handling provisional voters and their ballots bold emphasis added):

Finally, more than 27,000 or 6 percent of rejected ballots were disallowed because of various errors, including incomplete provisional ballot envelopes, missing or non-matching signatures on the provisional ballot applications, incomplete applications, and envelopes that contained no provisional ballots. While a number of these errors were likely committed by voters themselves, some were the result of administrative problems at the polls.

That 27,000 was a national figure, by the way.

It simply isn't clear, contrary to Nelson's argument, that rejecting provisional ballots is a bad thing.  We don't want New York residents voting in Florida even if they are women or college students.  Nor do we want to make it easy for people to vote in the wrong precinct.

Nelson's underlying argument is a red herring offered with PolitiFact's tacit approval.  The vast majority of rejected provisional ballots get rejected for good reason.  And for some reason PolitiFact did not seem to think it was important to Nelson's argument.

Go figure.



The grades:

Aaron Sharockman:  F
John Bartosek:  F


Afters:

It has been argued that provisional ballots should count as legitimate votes to the extent that the votes align with the choices available in a given precinct.  All Florida precincts vote for governor of the state, for example.  While the suggestion addresses, at least partly, the problem of fixing elections with imported votes, it produces an odd result.  Why should voters using the provisional ballot carry a privilege unavailable to voters who turned up at the correct precinct?

Bottom line, this controversy underscores the difference between the Republican and Democrat views of the voting process.  Republicans tend to try to restrict voting to those with at least some qualifications.  Democrats tend to want as many votes cast as possible.

Our battle against extremism

Sen. Bill Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) apparently got the same Democratic Party memo that Sen. Chuck Schumer received.  The Democrats have committed to fighting the budget battle on the basis of Republican extremism.

Nelson let me know via campaign email:

Dear Bryan,

Let me bring you up to date on the government shutdown here in Washington. Thankfully, we've just seen common sense begin to triumph over right-wing extremism.

It took weeks of fighting, but we're beginning to get a spending deal that aims to be fair to everybody. The battle mainly has been against a group of right-wing extremists who tried to hold the federal government hostage in order to pass severe restrictions on women's health care.  But a last-minute compromise to avert a shutdown of the federal government occurred late Friday, because reasonable lawmakers were able to come together and trump the extremists.

As the chairman of a newly created Senate subcommittee charged with finding ways to reduce the deficit and create jobs, I will be in a position to work on a plan that's good for our country.

I believe workable solutions can be reached only when reasonable people work together. That now seems to be happening in the budget talks. We all agree the government has to live within its means. But to get compromise, we all also have to give up some things we may have wanted.

In the coming days and weeks, Congress still has a lot of work ahead to pass a long-term spending bill. But I believe the temporary agreement is a step in the right direction. At the end of the day, I'm confident that with your support we'll be able to adopt a plan for spending cuts that's fair - and keeps our economy moving in the right direction, too.

Sincerely,
Bill Nelson

Thanks for the update, Sen. Nelson. I'll redouble my efforts to retire you from the Senate. It isn't extreme to cut 100 billion from a budget that was $1.3 trillion in 2010 and rising (not that the budget deal would cut half that much). And if Planned Parenthood can't be cut then we ought to ask where we can make cuts.

SPT on Sen. Bill Nelson: If liberal label doesn't fit, we must elect?

The St. Peterburg Times seems to be trying to inoculate Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) against the charge that he is a liberal.

WASHINGTON — The punch is coming at him in slow-mo:

L ... I ... B ... E ... R ... A ... L.

Even in the earliest moments of his 2012 re-election campaign, Florida Sen. Bill Nelson can see the windup. Twice before Republicans tried to discredit him as a liberal. Twice they failed.

"Facts," Nelson says, "are stubborn things."

Huh.  Nelson must not be a liberal if Republicans failed to discredit him as one on two occasions.

The story goes on like that, even to the point of giving some detail about the two elections Nelson survived--one against the relatively bland Bill McCollum and the other against a self-destructing Katherine Harris.  Is it possible that, all other things being equal, Nelson could have been defeated by stronger candidates?

Could it be???  That the election isn't necessarily about labeling Nelson as a liberal?

Don't float that idea past the Times:

McCollum was perhaps too conservative for the time, and Harris ran a disastrous campaign. A more formidable opponent may be able to wield the liberal stick with more force.

Maybe Nelson will whack himself with that stick?  The story earlier admitted that Nelson reliably supports President Obama's legislative initiatives.  But, hey, maybe Obama is a moderate, too.

In 2009, Nelson ranked as the 39th-most liberal member of the Senate and the 60th-most conservative, according to a National Journal analysis. That puts him in the centrist camp. Longer-range studies show the same.

Interesting definition of "the centrist camp."  One would think that our government is not sharply polarized.  And maybe we'll forget that the Democrats had about 60 senators in 2009.  The cusp of the bottom third most liberal Democrats makes you a centrist.  Go figure.

A statewide poll released Thursday showed that 44 percent of voters think Nelson's views are "about right'' and 23 percent say he's too liberal. A plurality of voters, 46 percent, say Nelson generally shares Obama's views but his disapproval rating dropped 10 percentage points from August, suggesting criticism surrounding the president is not sticking.

That's the good news for Nelson.

The poll came from the folks at Quinnipiac.  Forty-three percent of those polled felt Nelson deserved another term in office.

"Sen. Bill Nelson's numbers are mixed. Only one in five voters is unhappy with his job performance, which indicates he hasn't stirred up strong opposition. But history shows that when only 43 percent of voters say an incumbent deserves another term, that incumbent sometimes doesn't get another term," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

quinnipiac.edu

That's the bad news for Nelson.

But the Times is interested in the positives while pushing the theme that Nelson isn't a liberal and therefore should be re-elected.

We get it, St. Petersburg Times.  You want the incumbent to win.

Nelson's fortunes do ride with Obama's.  If Obama tacks to the right then Nelson can profitably tag along.  If, on the other hand, Obama tacks little then Nelson's record of supporting Obama's legislative agenda will be easy for Republicans to pin on Nelson's lapel.  And that's a true message to the effect that Nelson's a liberal.  Not the most liberal.  But right there in the camp.