A "Half True" update

Years ago, I pointed out to PolitiFact that it had offered readers two different definitions of "Half True." In November 2011, I posted to note PolitiFact's apparent acknowledgment of the problem, evidenced by its effort to resolve the discrepant definitions.

It's over five years later. But PolitiFact Florida (archived version, just in case PolitiFact Florida notices something amiss) either did not get the memo or failed to fully implement the change.

We then decide which of our six rulings should apply:

TRUE – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing.
MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.
HALF TRUE – The statement is accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.
MOSTLY FALSE – The statement contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.
FALSE – The statement is not accurate.
PANTS ON FIRE – The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim.

PolitiFact Florida still publishes what was apparently the original standard PolitiFact definition of "Half True." PolitiFact National revised its definition in 2011, adding "partially" to the definition so it read "The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context."

PolitiFact uses the updated definition on its main page, and directs readers to PolitiFact's main "principles" page for more information.

It's not even clear if PolitiFact Florida's main page links to PolitiFact Florida's "About" page. It may be a vestigial limb of sorts, helping us trace PolitiFact's evolution.

In one sense, the inconsistency means relatively little. After all, PolitiFact's founder, Bill Adair, has himself said that the "Truth-O-Meter" ratings are "entirely subjective." That being the case, it matters little whether "partially" occurs in the definition of "Half True."

The main problem from the changing definition comes from PolitiFact's irresponsible publication of candidate "report cards" that supposedly help voters decide which candidate they ought to support.

Why should subjective report cards make any difference in preferring one candidate over another?

The changing definition creates one other concern--one that I've written about before: Academic researchers (who really ought to know better) keep trying to use PolitiFact's ratings as though they represent reliable truth measurements. That by itself is a preposterous idea, given the level of subjectivity inherent in PolitiFact's system. But the inconsistency of the definition of "Half True" makes it even sillier.

PolitiFact's repeated failure to fix the problems we point out helps keep us convinced that PolitiFact checks facts poorly. We think a left-leaning ideological bubble combined with the Dunning-Kruger effect best explains PolitiFact's behavior in these cases.

Reminder: PolitiFact made a big to-do about changing the label "Barely True" to "Mostly False," but shifted the definition of "Half True" without letting the public in on the long-running discrepancy.

Too much transparency?

Lois Frankel still not particularly concerned with PolitiFact

Democratic congressional candidate from Florida Lois Frankel apparently didn't get the memo:  PolitiFact helps us find the truth in Politics.

Frankel apparently thinks she can send out fundraising emails like the one excerpted below without PolitiFact Florida rating her distortions on the "Truth-O-Meter."

(click image for enlarged view)

Frankel may have a point.

PolitiFact leaves misleading fact check of Gerard Robinson mostly intact

Updating a past Grading PolitiFact post, PolitiFact Florida made minor changes to its fact check of Florida's ex-education commissioner, Gerard Robinson.

The major errors inexplicably remain.

What changed

PolitiFact Florida altered its quotation of Robinson, adding a pair of ellipses.  The original version drew quotations from three separate paragraphs and, using no ellipses, stuck three of Robinson's sentences together to give the appearance of a single paragraph.

Here's how the new version reads (bold emphasis added):

Robinson penned a June 15 response, which included these comments: "The FCAT neither drives the curriculum nor narrows the educational experience of Florida students. ... These assessments average two to three per student per school year and account for less than 1 percent of the instructional time provided during the year. ... It is worth noting that local school boards require students to take many more assessments than those required by the state."

The changes still do not, so far as I can tell, conform to AP style for quotations.  Statements from separate paragraphs should show as separate paragraphs.

More importantly, what are we missing?


What didn't change

I spoke to PolitiFact editor Aaron Sharockman by phone last week.  I pointed out to him that Robinson had an entire paragraph dedicated to answering the charge that students spend too much time preparing for the FCAT. 

Here's that paragraph (bold emphasis added):

Florida's Next Generation Sunshine State Standards are the foundation for what we expect our students to learn. Subjects covered by Florida standards include English language arts, math, science, social studies, physical and health education, world languages, and fine arts along with other content areas specific to colleges and careers. Contrary to the claim of the FSBA resolution, the FCAT neither drives the curriculum nor narrows the educational experience of Florida students. In fact, at the middle school level, student enrollment in courses such as dance, drama, and world languages has increased more than student enrollment in the subject areas assessed on the FCAT. At the high school level, enrollment in dance, world languages and the humanities has outpaced the growth in student enrollment.

Robinson obviously stresses the point that it is appropriate for students to spend a great deal of time preparing for the FCAT since the FCAT measures "what we expect our students to learn."

PolitiFact omitted Robinson's point from its story.  No quotation.  No paraphrase.  Nothing.

I spoke to Sharockman again today.  I said I received the impression that he agreed with me that Robinson had stressed that it was appropriate to spend a great deal of time preparing for the FCAT.  I asked whether I had received a false impression.  Sharockman said that he did not recall agreeing about Robinson's point and said he thought I had received a false impression.

How does one miss Robinson's point in the above paragraph and then omit it in a fact check story about that same subject?

How does one miss it even after a critical review?


Beyond incompetence?

The update notice provided with the story after the ellipses were added doesn't quite ring true:

Update: During the editing process, ellipses were inadvertently left out of Robinson's comments of June 15. The ellipses are now included.

I alerted the writer and editor by email about the problem with the quotation before 1 p.m. the day after the story published.  The story published on July 30 at 11:53 a.m.  By Friday, Aug. 3, the problem still stems from an inadvertent omission during the editing process?

Something's broken at PolitiFact.

Grading PolitiFact (Florida): Gerard Robinson and the FCAT (Updated x2)

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

The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

Readers should already find themselves wondering whether "FCAT tests" represents the time spent taking the test itself or the time spent preparing for the test.  PolitiFact uses ambiguous wording.  Yet why would we expect the test itself to take more than 1 percent of a year's instructional time?


The fact checkers:

Amy Sherman:  writer, researcher
Angie Drobnic Holan:  editor

Analysis:

Put bluntly, this item isn't fact checking.  It is a disservice to Gerard Robinson and PolitiFact's readers.

PolitiFact:

Reflecting a backlash against testing, more than a dozen individual school boards in the state, including Broward and Palm Beach, have passed a resolution against the FCAT. The Florida School Boards Association passed its own version of a resolution criticizing the FCAT in June.

Robinson penned a June 15 response, which included these comments: "The FCAT neither drives the curriculum nor narrows the educational experience of Florida students. These assessments average two to three per student per school year and account for less than 1 percent of the instructional time provided during the year. It is worth noting that local school boards require students to take many more assessments than those required by the state."

If PolitiFact follows AP style for quotations, the above represents a breach of style guidelines.  Here's how the quotation would look according to AP style:

"The FCAT neither drives the curriculum nor narrows the educational experience of Florida students. 

. . . These assessments average two to three per student per school year and account for less than 1 percent of the instructional time provided during the year.

. . . It is worth noting that local school boards require students to take many more assessments than those required by the state."

PolitiFact:

There are a few interesting claims in Robinson’s statement, but the one that caught our eye was that tiny figure: The FCAT accounts for "less than 1 percent of instructional time." Heck, we wonder if lunch or recess could add up to more than 1 percent. So we decided to research whether Robinson’s 1 percent claim was correct.

PolitiFact reports that Robinson's office backed up his claim with numbers showing that the amount of time spent taking the test amounts to .26 to .90 of the state-mandated minimum of 900 hours of instructional time.

So Robinson's claim was true?  PolitiFact doesn't see it that way:

But Robinson used the phrase "instructional time" in his claim, which could fairly be interpreted to mean classroom time spent preparing for the test.

Yes, Robinson used the phrase "instructional time" in his claim, but it isn't fair to interpret it to mean classroom time spent preparing for the test.

"Instructional time" has a particular meaning in education.  It means the time students spending doing learning activities under a teacher's direction. 

Robinson addressed three specific points with his press release.  The FCAT program is allegedly too expensive, dominates the curriculum and hinders student success.

Robinson addresses the first point by framing FCAT expense in terms of its percentage of state and local investment in the schools.  He deals with the second point in the next paragraph:

Florida's Next Generation Sunshine State Standards are the foundation for what we expect our students to learn. Subjects covered by Florida standards include English language arts, math, science, social studies, physical and health education, world languages, and fine arts along with other content areas specific to colleges and careers. Contrary to the claim of the FSBA resolution, the FCAT neither drives the curriculum nor narrows the educational experience of Florida students. In fact, at the middle school level, student enrollment in courses such as dance, drama, and world languages has increased more than student enrollment in the subject areas assessed on the FCAT. At the high school level, enrollment in dance, world languages and the humanities has outpaced the growth in student enrollment.

PolitiFact ignores this context and tries to make it look like Robinson is saying that the schools spend very little time trying to prepare students for the FCAT.  The above paragraph from Robinson unequivocally puts the lie to the journalists' frame.  He addressed the issue by saying that the test measures things that students ought to spend much of their time learning.

Obviously, then, Robinson was not trying to say that students spend less than 1 percent of their instructional time preparing for the FCAT.  That would argue against his preceding paragraph. 

PolitiFact just ignored the context.

In fact, Robinson's 1 percent figure is more accurate the more time students spend preparing for the FCAT, if one insists on suggesting that he used "instructional time" to refer to test preparation.  For review (bold emphasis added):  "These assessments average two to three per student per school year and account for less than 1 percent of the instructional time provided during the year."  If students spend as little as half of their instructional time on the FCAT then the estimate for time spent on the assessments rises to a range between .52 and 1.8 percent--still in the neighborhood of 1 percent if we willfully ignore Robinson's clear explanation.

PolitiFact appears to conflate the "assessments" with the "instructional time" somehow.  As one is used as a percentage of the other, that path leads to a spectacularly failed fact check.

PolitiFact devotes considerable space to quotations complaining about the FCAT, but none of it addresses Robinson's claim.  We can skip on to the wondrous conclusion consisting of four short paragraphs plus a "False" rating.

One:

Robinson said that the FCAT tests "account for less than 1 percent of the instructional time provided during the year." This was a prepared statement, based on research done by his staff, in response to FCAT critics who say that schools devote too much time to the tests.

Right, but Robinson addressed the critics' point in his preceding paragraph.

Two:

Readers could assume that by "instructional time" Robinson was including regular lesson time in the classroom preparing for the FCAT. He wasn’t. His office says that referred to the number of minutes taking the test out of the total minutes of instruction per year. But he didn’t provide that explanation in his statement.

Robinson may have assumed that those reading his statement have the ability to read.  PolitiFact doesn't explain why people would be seriously misled if they believed taking the FCAT test constituted less than 1 percent of the preparation time.  The smaller the percentage the greater the preparation time by proportion.

It is doubtful PolitiFact could make a coherent case that Robinson was minimizing the preparation time for the test, assuming it would even make the attempt.

Three:

In reality, there is no clear way to quantify how much time teachers spend preparing students for the test. Some teachers say they spend practically all their time on the FCAT.

If all of the teachers spend all of their time on the FCAT then Robinson's statement is perfectly accurate and students spend less than 1 percent of their instructional time taking the assessment.  There's nothing here to use against Robinson's accuracy or veracity.

Four:

Robinson’s goal was to deflect criticism that too much time is spent "teaching to the test." He is suggesting that the FCAT eats up only a smidgen of a school year. But for students, parents and teachers who spend months preparing for those tests, Robinson’s words are misleading.

PolitiFact completely missed Robinson's point by ignoring the context.  The fact check doesn't make a lick of sense.  Robinson's words are misleading if one ignores context, grammar, syntax and logic.


The grades:

Amy Sherman:  F
Angie Drobnic Holan:  F

This case perhaps makes up PolitiFact's penultimate train-wreck to date.  PolitiFact owes Robinson an apology and a front page correction notice.


Update Aug. 1, 2012:

 Gerard Robinson responds to PolitiFact Florida:

In this article, PolitiFact agreed that evidence provided to them by the Department of Education verified the accuracy of my statement when taken in this context.  However, PolitiFact claims my statement was made to deflect criticism that too much time is spent “teaching to the test.”  If this were true, I would agree with PolitiFact’s conclusion.  However, since PolitiFact misrepresents the context of my statement, I rate their finding as False.

Update 2, August 3, 2012:

A Band-Aid for the severed head:  PolitiFact modifies the quotation with the insertion of two ellipses--and no correction notice (at least as of now).

Robinson penned a June 15 response, which included these comments: "The FCAT neither drives the curriculum nor narrows the educational experience of Florida students. ... These assessments average two to three per student per school year and account for less than 1 percent of the instructional time provided during the year. ... It is worth noting that local school boards require students to take many more assessments than those required by the state."

The correction is not quite compliant with AP style by my reading, as the AP Stylebook's example shows a line of space between the sentences prior to the insertion of the ellipse when one pulls sentences from different paragraphs..

That's a minor point, of course.  The story remains incoherent.  The head is still severed and the body is bleeding out through the neck.

Lois Frankel concerned for seniors, not about PolitiFact

Lois Frankel wants people to vote for her instead of (doubtlessly evil) Republican Adam Hasner.  She sent me an important email message:

I won't let Republicans destroy Medicare as we know it, and make health care unaffordable for the Greatest Generation.

Luckily, Frankel can keep her promise without having to serve in Congress.  The Ryan plan does not change Medicare for persons already over 55 years of age.  That covers "the Greatest Generation."

PolitiFact's use of experts

I'll keep this PolitiFact criticism short and sweet, using Monday's PolitiFact Florida rating of Sen. Marco Rubio as an example of a recurrent phenomenon.

PolitiFact:

We wondered where [Rubio] got his $800 billion tax total, as well as the validity of the idea that the law does not "discriminate between rich and poor." So we decided to check it out.

Time for some experts.  PolitiFact:

We consulted several experts, who disagreed on the best way to account for the law’s tax increases.

A couple experts said Rubio’s $800 billion figure is valid, even if it is out of date and does not account for billions in tax credits.

The $800 billion figure is valid according to two experts.  Therefore it makes perfect sense for PolitiFact to rule the statement "False."

PolitiFact arbitrarily dismissed the testimony of two experts.  Now that's fact checking.

What does expert testimony mean if one obtains varying testimony and then picks one view while dismissing the others?  Not much.  It's just another layer of bias--editorial bias--that helps show that PolitiFact can't be trusted.

Grading PolitiFact (Florida): Rick Scott and rising insurance premiums under ObamaCare

PolitiFact regularly engages in prodigious spin on behalf of the health care reform bill.  The following case featuring Gov. Rick Scott of Florida and PolitFact's state operation in Florida serves as just one example among many.

The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Katie Sanders:  writer, researcher
Angie Drobnic Holan:  editor


Analysis:

PolitiFact quotes Rick Scott:

"(W)e know the Congressional Budget Office said if you’re going to buy your own policy with these exchanges you’ll be paying 10 percent more, or a family will. So about $2,100 more for a family. So you’re going to pay more with these exchanges."

PolitiFact finds that Scott spoke accurately:

As Scott said, CBO expected the average premium per person in new individual policies would rise 10 percent to 13 percent in 2016 compared with where it was before the law took effect.

In this market, average premiums per policy in this market would be about $5,800 for single policies (a $300 increase) and $15,200 for families (a $2,100 increase -- just like Scott said), according to CBO (pages 5 and 6).

If only the report ended there.

The third paragraph hints at significant caveats, especially since we note from the graphic at the top of the story that Scott receives a "Mostly False" rating.  Before we move on, however, note that Scott used the conservative end of the CBO estimate to back his statement.  He used 10 percent instead of 13 percent.  Sometimes PolitiFact uses such factors to award extra credit.  Apparently not this time.

Now for some mighty PolitiFact spin.

PolitiFact explains that using an "apples to apples" comparison in the same CBO report leads to the CBO's conclusion that the provisions of the PPACA lead to a net savings of 7 to 10 percent on the average premium.  The "apples to apples" comparison shows that the exchange system does provide some features that reduce insurance premiums.  The CBO report estimates that for equivalent plans the exchange would save 7-10 percent compared to current law.  Of course the exchanges require much higher levels of insurance, than the current average, and this spikes the cost of premiums.

The CBO's estimate of  the ACA's effect on nongroup insurance premiums

The CBO's chart makes clear that the increase in premiums stems from increases in insurance coverage.  Curiously, PolitiFact calls this a benefit:

People will pay more, but it will be for a bigger swath of benefits. The law requires insurance companies to offer an "essential health benefits" package that would mirror benefits people get through employer plans.

People receive benefits from insurance when their insurance pays for something.  A healthy person who goes to the doctor once per year for 10 years regardless of insurance coverage is not receiving any additional benefit from insurance coverage.  The person is paying much more for the same benefits.

PolitiFact actually refers to coverage when it refers to benefits.  The expanded scope of health coverage primarily enables the government to expand the pool of people paying for insurance so that healthy people who do not have an immediate need of insurance will help pay the benefits of others--a much wider swath of benefits.  In short, overall medical costs go way up while the premium costs per individual go down.  This from a bill that was sold as a means of controlling rising medical costs.  It doesn't do much at all to control costs.  Instead, it coerces the people into paying for higher overall costs.  And the bill contains measures that shift  costs from those who present the biggest risk to those with thicker wallets.

Where does that leave us on this fact check?  PolitiFact charges Scott with leaving things out, and we'll address those charges individually.

Many (CBO estimates 57 percent) seeking nongroup insurance through state exchanges would receive subsidies.

Scott specifically referred to persons paying for their own insurance through the exchanges, which implicitly acknowledges subsidies.  The availability of subsidies through the exchanges should be common knowledge.  It's hard to see why PolitiFact should fault Scott for this omission, especially when the subsidies drive overall costs up instead of bringing them down.  Insurance subsidies represent progressive partial free riding.

Though the insured pay more, they receive a "bigger swath of benefits"

PolitiFact tries to make this seem like a huge benefit, but it's kind of like getting an expensive Buick when all you really need is a Kia.  There's no more Kia.  The Buick is the new entry-level automobile.  And maybe the Buick has leather upholstery, but then again maybe you're a vegan (celibates paying for contraception and pregnancy insurance).  Again,. there's no reason why Scott should need to provide this detail.  He's giving reasons why he's not setting up an exchange.  His objections have to do with overall cost and the priorities of Floridians.  When everyone's driving a Buick, people are paying more for transportation even if Buick drops its prices down to wholesale.

Exchanges do help lower costs in an "apples to apples" comparison

To the extent that Gov. Scott's statement suggests that exchanges do nothing to encourage cost reductions, PolitiFact has a point.  Buick dealers can compete against each other to provide the lowest-cost Buick and that competition does have an effect, not to mention economies of scale.  But Scott emphasizes overall health care costs, so he is justified in keeping the emphasis on the overall increase in premiums.

"People purchasing their own health insurance comprise less than one-fifth of the market"

People who are not purchasing their own health insurance are not purchasing it through an exchange, so this point is irrelevant.  There's no reason for Scott to mention it, since he's giving reasons for not setting up a state exchange.  In fact, the smaller the share of the market, arguably the greater justification Scott has for not setting up an exchange.

PolitiFact routinely asserts that Scott leaves out important information.  PolitiFact routinely leaves out the justification for calling the information important.  Scott's omissions were of borderline relevance at most.

PolitiFact:

Scott said that the Congressional Budget Office said people would pay 10 percent more for policies on the exchange, "so about $2,100 more for a family." What he doesn’t say is that these policies will have to offer comprehensive coverage. So people will pay more, but they’re also get more benefits. Additionally, the federal government will offer subsidies to many of these people to cut the cost.

It’s also important to remember the CBO’s "apples-to-apples" comparison. According to the agency, people in the individual market will actually pay less for the required amount of benefits under the Affordable Care Act than they would for those same benefits under old policies.

We rate Scott’s statement Mostly False.

Note that while Scott emphasized overall medical costs to the state of Florida and its people, PolitiFact's objections all center around costs to the individual.  PolitiFact ignored Scott's central point and graded him according to a standard that failed to respect the context of his remarks.

The "Truth-O-Meter" ruling, as is so often the case, represents an absurdity.  PolitiFact defines "Mostly False" as a statement that "contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression."  But Scott's statement does not simply contain an element of truth.  His statement is perfectly accurate and even takes the lower premium increase estimate from the CBO report.  None of PolitiFact's caveats alter the impression that a family paying for its own insurance faces a 10 percent hike, unless it shows that the CBO said the hike might end up at 13 percent instead.

This case points up again that despite PolitiFact's continued assertions that "words matter" it makes a great big exception for itself when it comes to defining the "Truth-O-Meter" grades.

Scott's statements were more truthful than PolitiFact's, using the same measure.


The grades:

Katie Sanders:  F
Angie Drobnic Holan:  F

This story reads like a PPACA apologetic, not like a fact check.  The PolitiFact team substituted its own point for Gov. Scott's point and graded Scott according to the result.  That's a wrong approach for fact checking, as PolitiFact admits in its statement of principles:

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.

PolitiFact may think it grand that everyone in the exchange gets a good deal on a Buick, but that doesn't undermine Scott's point that getting everyone a Buick imposes a heavy burden in terms of cost.

Buick.com

PolitiFact uses "In Context" feature to vanish Bill Clinton's clearest statement on tax hikes

I was intrigued to see the latest "In Context" article at PolitiFact minutes ago.  I was intrigued initially because it claimed to provide the context surrounding Bill Clinton's remarks that Republicans have construed as opposed to President Obama's policy stance on the future of the Bush tax cuts.  Those cuts are set to expire after this year.

I was intrigued even more because I had referenced Clinton's statement in a discussion on PolitiFact's Facebook page about the wisdom of raising taxes to the levels existing during Clinton's presidency.

And I was especially intrigued when the "In Context" story did not include the quotation of Clinton I used, which was from September of last year.

Here's what I referenced from Politico:

“I personally don’t believe we ought to be raising taxes or cutting spending, either one, until we get this economy off the ground,” Clinton told Newsmax in an interview Tuesday. “This has been a dead flat economy.”

This "In Context" feature seems designed to let Clinton make us believe the economy has taken off.  It leaves out the context of Clinton's clearer statements on tax increases.

Rex Nutting and PolitiFact

PolitiFact tried to get away with an absolutely epic non-endorsement endorsement of Rex Nutting's claim that Presdent Obama hasn't been a big spender.

PolitiFact Bias now hosts a detailed response to Nutting and PolitiFact that brings to light some of the misleading tricks both of them pulled over the past two weeks or so.

PolitiFlub: PolitiFact Florida and the loss of existing insurance

PolitiFact Florida published a fact check yesterday parallel to one I blasted just last week concerning the loss of existing insurance plans with the implementation of the health care reform bill.

The PolitiFact Florida conclusion:

Our ruling

The U.S. Chamber said, "Obamacare could cause 20 million people to lose their current coverage." It's a claim that is oft-repeated and much exaggerated.

The chamber employs a worst-case projection by a nonpartisan research agency. The agency’s other forecasts are lower, but you wouldn’t know that from watching the ad. And unlike Priebus, the group does not specify that the type of insurance potentially affected is a specific type of insurance -- "employer-based" insurance.

Plus, this 20 million estimate only counts people who receive coverage from their employer -- and not those who might receive better coverage elsewhere.

Most importantly, this figure does not represent uninsured people who will get coverage because of the law.

We rate it Mostly False.

How doth PolitiFact mislead thee?  Let me count the ways ...

1)  "The chamber employs a worst-case projection by a nonpartisan research agency"  Following as it does on the heels of "oft-repeated and much exaggerated," this sounds bad.  But the worst case scenario is exactly how one ought to support a claim of potential damage ("could cause 20 million people to lose their current coverage").  PolitiFact's observation is a positive posing as a negative.

2)  "The agency’s other forecasts are lower, but you wouldn’t know that from watching the ad." Hidden context?  One wouldn't know that "could cause 20 million" calls for a high-end estimate from reading PolitiFact's fact check.  Basic English interpretation tells the viewer that "could cause" implies a high-end estimate and a worst-case scenario.  But the 20 million figure is neither of those in the context of the ad.

3)  "(T)he group does not specify that the type of insurance potentially affected is a specific type of insurance--'employer-based' insurance."  PolitiFact doesn't tell you that by using a number specific to one type of insurance it implies that any loss from other types of insurance gets added to the worst-case scenario number.  Consider all types of insurance and the number can only be equal or higher.  So how is it misleading except by underestimating the worst-case scenario?

4)  "Plus, this 20 million estimate only counts people who receive coverage from their employer -- and not those who might receive better coverage elsewhere."  This isn't even a coherent objection.  PolitiFact is probably trying to say that the 20 million figure includes those who opt for "better" coverage apart from an employer-offered plan.  The report on which PolitiFact relied makes no reference to spurning the employer offer for a "better" plan unless by "better" PolitiFact means cheaper.  The report indicates that customers offered more than one option for health insurance strongly prefer less expensive plans.  The report does not mention any alternative motivation, so PolitiFact apparently dreamed up the one it mentions.  It's possible to argue that those who leave employer insurance because of pricing are not forced into cheaper insurance plans, but PolitiFact's implication that consumers freely choose better plans obscures the factors at work and allows readers to assume that the "better plans" idea comes from the CBO/JCT report.  It doesn't.

5)  "Most importantly, this figure does not represent uninsured people who will get coverage because of the law."  A figure for persons losing current coverage should never represent uninsured people who will get coverage because of the law.  Uninsured people have no existing coverage to lose in the first place.  PolitiFact's most important point is irrelevant to the accuracy of the 20 million figure.  At most, it is relevant as context trying to balance the 20 million figure against a benefit of the health care reform law.

6)  A real fact check would have looked for types of existing insurance other than employer insurance likely lost as a result of the health care law.  The same CBO/JCT report lists such losses on the line below losses to employer insurance.  PolitiFact somehow neglects to notice (the figure is an additional 3 million for the baseline scenario and an additional 1 million for the worst-case scenario):

http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/03-15-ACA_and_Insurance_2.pdf

Nice job of plowing another train into your existing train-wreck, PolitiFact.

We rate it Mostly False.

Trading on what credibility, pray tell?

How did this fact check pass an editor's examination?

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.

Grading PolitiFact (Florida): The IPAB, rationing, and Pat Boone

PANTS ON FIRE – The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim.
--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Angie Drobnic Holan:  writer, researcher
Aaron Sharockman: editor

Analysis:

The Independent Payment Advisory Board is a "death panel" as Sarah Palin originally used the term.

PolitiFact is dead set against admitting it.

It's fun to watch the contortions as PolitiFact does its usual denial in the context of the Pat Boone television ad.

PolitiFact:

Here’s part of Boone’s criticism; it focuses on the law’s Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB:

"This IPAB board can ration care and deny certain Medicare treatments so Washington can fund more wasteful spending. Your choices could be limited and you may not be able to keep your own doctor. ... Washington politicians, like Bill Nelson, are ignoring the problem, putting their own re-elections first. Call Sen. Nelson. Urge him to support real Medicare reform and protect our seniors."

The ad makes several claims, but here, we’re going to specifically fact-check Boone’s claim that the IPAB "can ration care and deny certain Medicare treatments so Washington can fund more wasteful spending."

The statement PolitiFact chooses is obviously a compound claim, including the assertions that the IPAB can ration care, that it can deny certain Medicare treatments, and that some combination of the former two enable Washington to fund "more wasteful spending."  The obvious warrants mention because PolitiFact makes little effort to keep its treatment of the constituent statements distinct from one another.

PolitiFact:

Under the health care reform law, if Medicare spending growth is projected to exceed pre-set targets, the IPAB must come up with plans to slow that increase. If Congress does not act on the recommendations within a set time, IPAB’s recommendations automatically go into effect. (For a more detailed explanation of how this would work, we recommend this April 2011 report from the independent Kaiser Family Foundation.)

PolitiFact summarizes the function of the IPAB reasonably well.  The challenge comes from trying to identify IPAB recommendations that do not result in economic forces that result in the rationing of Medicare services, though there's always the option of ignoring the economic implications.

We should emphasize here that IPAB recommendations would not apply to any particular individual, but would be across-the-board policy recommendations applied to the entire program. Given Boone’s rhetoric, some people could get the wrong impression that the board would review individual patient treatments and deny care. That’s not the case.

There's nothing about Boone's statement that particularly suggests he's talking about a policy managed at the level of individual patients.  No statement is idiot proof, so PolitiFact's observation is effectively irrelevant without something straight from Boone that contributes to a misleading impression for a reasonable person.

PolitiFact (bold emphasis added):

Boone calls the members of the IPAB "15 unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats." Rather than career government workers, the law says IPAB members shall include people with national recognition for health care expertise, including "different  professionals, broad geographic representation, and a balance between urban and rural representatives." (Board members are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.) On the point of accountability, we’ll just repeat that Congress retains the power to overrule any IPAB recommendations, though there are special rules in place so that the recommendations cannot be filibustered or otherwise delayed. 

Though it's a bit of a digression, it is useful to point out PolitiFact's failure to address Boone's point about a lack of accountability for the IPAB.  The IPAB is parallel to the Supreme Court in some ways.  The board members have no constituency or higher body to which they are accountable.  It is an independent board.  It says so right on the label.  It is irrelevant to the accountability of the board members that Congress has a shot to overrule its recommendations.  That is a check on its power, not a form of accountability.

The IPAB has restrictions on what it can recommend in the name of cost savings. It can’t raise rates, drop beneficiaries or ration care. Here’s the exact language from the law itself:

"The proposal shall not include any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums under section 1818, 1818A, or 1839, increase Medicare beneficiary cost-sharing (including deductibles, coinsurance, and copayments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria."

Boone says the IPAB seeks to reduce Medicare spending so the government can spend money on other "wasteful" things. But the IPAB is intended to slow Medicare spending if its growth exceeds pre-defined targets. It’s also capped on how much it can reduce spending: It can recommend measures to bring Medicare within specific cost-savings targets and no more.

1)  Given the second paragraph above along with the stipulation that the IPAB cannot recommend rationing, we again find ourselves confronted with the question of what IPAB can do to control costs--and whether those measures result in rationing after all.

2)  The third paragraph repeats the pattern noted above regarding Boone's point about accountability.  PolitiFact does not address the congressional option of wasting money saved through the implementation of IPAB recommendations.

3)  One continues to wonder what the IPAB can do to cut Medicare spending without encouraging rationing as a result.  The "pre-defined targets" are a soft cap on Medicare spending.  Capping spending directly encourages rationing of services.  If a family goes out to dinner with a cap on spending then it is price-rationing the meal.  If a dining-out IPAB finds a way to reduce the tab to bring the family's meal down within the bounds of a soft cap that is likewise a rationing force.  It's inevitable.  One can plan to stiff the server, but that route by analogy leads to yet more rationing in the health care context.

PolitiFact:

Our ruling

Boone said, "This IPAB board can ration care and deny certain Medicare treatments so Washington can fund more wasteful spending." Actually, the law specifically states that the board cannot ration care. The board doesn’t look at individual patients or deny individual treatments. Instead, it makes system-wide recommendations to rein in the future growth of Medicare spending, and it makes those recommendations within limited parameters. It also was created to stop runaway spending growth within the Medicare program itself, not to divert money to other budget items. We rate Boone’s statement Pants on Fire.

It's just crazy to render a ruling without giving a single example of a cost-cutting strategy the IPAB can recommend without some type of rationing occurring as a result.  If the IPAB can only recommend measures that lead to rationing then the ruling "Pants on Fire" cannot reasonably apply to Boone's claim.

Maybe the IPAB has tools at its disposal that will limit costs but PolitiFact simply failed to take note?

Let's look at the Kaiser Family Foundation summary of the IPAB to see if it helps answer that question.

The statute sets target growth rates for Medicare spending. The target is not a "hard cap" on Medicare spending growth, but if spending exceeds these targets, IPAB is required to submit recommendations to reduce Medicare spending by a specified percentage (discussed below).

There's the soft cap.  It's important to note that a soft cap is nothing like no cap at all.  The IPAB is charged to act any time Medicare spending exceeds the targeted goal.  The recommendations must reduce the amount of excess spending:

If projected growth for the implementation year exceeds the target, and the medical care component of the CPI-U exceeds the CPI-U, then IPAB is required to develop and submit a proposal to bring Medicare per capita growth within the target in the implementation year, subject to the applicable limits (maximum savings) on reductions described below.

Congress cannot overrule the Board's recommendations without substituting its own recommendations to meet the cost reduction goal:

Finally we get to see some examples of recommendations the IPAB might make (bold emphasis added):

IPAB is prohibited from including any recommendation that would: (1) ration health care; (2) raise revenues or increase Medicare beneficiary premiums or cost sharing; or (3) otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria. In addition, for implementation years through 2019, mandatory proposals cannot include recommendations that would reduce payment rates for providers and suppliers of services scheduled to receive reductions under the ACA below the level of the automatic annual productivity adjustment called for under the Act.16 As a result, payments for inpatient and outpatient hospital services, inpatient rehabilitation and psychiatric facilities, long-term care hospitals, and hospices are exempt from IPAB-proposed reductions in payment rates until 2020; clinical laboratories are exempt until 2016. These exclusions leave Medicare Advantage, the Part D prescription drug program, skilled nursing facility, home health, dialysis, ambulance and ambulatory surgical center services, and durable medical equipment (DME) as the focus of attention.

The above implies that price controls on some services and medical supplies will end up the IPAB's method of choice for controlling costs.  It is widely recognized in economics that price controls--price ceilings--reduce supply.  Reducing the supply results in a rationed market for those services or goods.

Put simply, text of the health care law is incorrect when it says the IPAB cannot cut costs via rationing.

Journalistic curiosity ought to prompt hard questions on these points--especially in a fact check.  One could hazard a guess that journalistic curiosity was anesthetized by ideology.


The grades:

Angie Drobnic Holan:  F
Aaron Sharockman:  F

The first PolitiFact Bias research project will suggest that all "Pants on Fire" ratings are unfair and the result of a subjective determination by the responsible PolitiFact teams.  Pat Boone's statement was neither false nor ridiculously false in any non-subjective sense.  It was at least somewhat accurate when considered objectively.

These journalists are probably either biased in favor of health care reform roughly along the lines of the ACA or else painted into a corner on this ruling by other PolitiFact rulings that were influenced by ideology.  It's hard to explain the collected set of rulings on health care reform any other way.


Addendum:

After publishing, I ran across "The Coming Medical Ethics Crisis" over at Reason.com:

In 2010 the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act established an Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). Beginning in 2014, the 15 presidential appointees on this board will determine what therapies, procedures, tests, and medications will be covered by Medicare, using advice provided by the FCCCER. Such determinations will then be used to design the coverage packages for the non-Medicare insurance offered through the government–run exchanges. The decisions of the IPAB are not subject to Congressional oversight or judicial review.

I have not corroborated some of the information from the article.  Read it all, and consider that the source is a doctor.  Then stay on the lookout for information that confirms (or contradicts) the details and don't say nobody warned us.


Update:  Altered the title and tags to reflect the fact that the fact check was done by PolitiFact's Florida franchise.

Grading PolitiFact (Florida): the ACLU, sharks and voter fraud (Updated)

Something about this one made me think of the old joke about the lawyer forced to swim through shark-infested waters.  PolitiFact Florida impressively confirms one premise of an argument while failing to note that the argument is fallaciously equivocal.  Indeed, the ACLU spokesman only utters the words.  PolitiFact provides the equivocal definitions.

Another great moment in the history of journalism.


The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Katie Sanders:  writer, researcher
Angie Drobnic Holan:  editor


Analysis:

Is voter fraud a problem?

That's the central and underlying issue in this fact check, which stems from a case in Florida where a schoolteacher ran afoul of the law by not properly following new legislation spearheaded by Florida's Republican-dominated legislature.

The Colbert Report produced a non-serious treatment of the issue.  An ACLU spokesperson contributed in kind.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

The video commits any number of distortions of the issue, but we'll focus on just one. 

PolitiFact:

One of the people Colbert interviewed for his sarcastic report is Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. Florida officials claimed they needed to pass the law to prevent voter fraud, but these cases are actually pretty rare, he said.

"There are probably a larger number of shark attacks in Florida than there are cases of voter fraud," he said.

Simon says there are probably more shark attacks in Florida than cases of voter fraud.  His statement is intended to minimize the problem of voter fraud, using the perception that few shark attacks occur in Florida to power his point.  Take a guess at how many shark attacks occurred in Florida last year before encountering the stats.

Simon doesn't merely rely on the potential for inaccurate perceptions about the rate of shark attack.  Better than that, he says shark attacks "probably" outnumber the number of cases of voter fraud.

What is a "case" of voter fraud?

The relevant understanding of "case" in this context is an instance or occurrence.  A case of mistaken identity, for example, is any instance of mistaken identity.

That understanding is not for PolitiFact, however.  PolitiFact takes "cases" and interprets it, at least in the practical sense, as the number of state investigations for voter fraud.  A "case" in this fact check is a  "case" in the sense of a designation by a state agency.

Does that equivocal drift in definitions affect the outcome of the fact check?  Almost certainly.

PolitiFact (bold emphasis added):

The shark attack figures include documented instances of sharks attacking human victims. The voter fraud cases indicate the number of cases deemed legally sufficient for an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Summing up the table PolitiFact provides, shark attacks outnumber the "cases" of voter fraud 72-49 over the past four years.  For only one of those years (2011) did the number of shark attacks fall short of the number of "cases" of voter fraud.

The fallacy in PolitiFact's reasoning comes easily to light.

For most of Florida's history as part of the United States it has prohibited voting by felons.  Every time a felon votes illegally, it constitutes a case of voter fraud--albeit not the phony representation of "case" settled on by the fact checkers.

Most often nothing can be done to prosecute a case of voter fraud against a felon who votes illegally even though it happens with some regularity.  The Miami Herald, for example, reported the following in the wake of its investigations of the 2000 presidential election:

At least 445 Florida felons voted illegally on Nov. 7, casting another cloud over a disputed presidential election already mired in legal challenges, a Herald investigation has found.

The tainted votes -- found in a review of nearly half a million votes cast in 12 Florida counties -- provide evidence that the presidential race was influenced by thousands of ineligible voters. Nearly six million voters in Florida's 67 counties cast ballots.

Got that?  The Herald found evidence that thousands of ineligible votes were cast in just one election.  But let's treat the numbers conservatively.  The Herald says at least 445 felons voted illegally--fraudulently--in Florida.  Add that 445 to the 49 "cases" of voter fraud listed on PolitiFact's chart and we end with a total of 494 cases of voter fraud.  The total documented number of shark attacks in Florida is 637 over its entire history as recorded by the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Who thinks felons failed to vote illegally at least enough to make up the remaining 143 vote difference?

Obviously the number of cases of voter fraud in the relevant sense are more than enough to outpace the number of shark attacks.  It is likely that ideology accounts for PolitiFact's eventual "Mostly True" ruling--not the facts.

The ACLU’s claim is true on its face, but we’re knocking it down a peg with consideration of a few things. One, the state’s count doesn’t represent a complete set of possible fraud being prosecuted in the state. Two, a "case" does not always include just one instance of fraud.

Three, the stat count artificially limits the number of cases of voter fraud in Florida by ignoring a number of sources of fraudulent votes.  Thus the ACLU's claim is not true on its face.  In addition, the ACLU argument misses the point that Republicans try to make in supporting strengthening of voter identification laws:  The law as it stands provides few tools to identify cases of voter fraud.  Nobody knows the full extent of voter fraud because of that lack.

About all we really know is that the cases of voter fraud are overpoweringly likely to outnumber the documented cases of shark attack.

Too bad we can't rely on PolitiFact to make the easy determination.

The grades:

Katie Sanders:  F
Angie Drobnic Holan:  F

This item receives the tag "journalists reporting badly."


Afters:

PolitiFact could have used this fact check to educate readers about the difficulty of uncovering voter fraud.  Instead, it trivialized the issue to almost the degree achieved by the Colbert Report.

A few select comments from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's 1998 report "Florida Voter Fraud Issues":

FDLE's experience in recent years, including cases predating the 1993 and 1994 " Motor Voter" changes, suggests the areas that are "ripe" for potential fraud fall primarily into these categories:

• Voter Registration Fraud: — Minimal identification and citizenship proof requirements provide ample opportunity for voter registration fraud. This includes specialized "changes of address" done solely to allow a vote in a particular election, when in fact, no actual change of address has occurred.

• Absentee Ballot Fraud: — The desire to facilitate the opportunity for each person to vote has resulted in increased opportunity to use absentee ballots improperly. (Once one has registered fraudulently, he or she can obtain an absentee ballot for every election thereafter if he or she wishes. The lack of "in-person, at-the-polls" accountability makes absentee ballots the "tool of choice" for those inclined to commit voter fraud.)

• Illegally or Improperly "Assisting" Others To Vote Their Absentee Ballot: — Those inclined to do so can capitalize on others' access to an absentee ballot by voting their ballot for them, often with the actual voter not knowing what has occurred. This offers tremendous opportunity for vote fraud, particularly to those who have access to the ill or infirm or those who do not have the ability to resist the influence of another as they are urged to vote in a "required" manner. It also encourages those inclined to commit voter fraud to seek to utilize absentee ballots provided to those whose interest in voting is marginal or non-existent.

• Vote-Buying: — Securing votes by payment or other "rewards" or the "selling of one's vote" — is an age-old problem that still exists.

Once registered to vote, any person may request and utilize an absentee ballot without ever having to appear in person to vote. If the voter registration process does not require significant proof of citizenship, address, and identity, then those inclined to commit fraud will capitalize on the process by successfully registering those who have no right to vote, and then "facilitate" their (illegal) vote by absentee ballot.

To re-emphasize the key issue, these vulnerabilities in the voting system remain very easy to exploit and very difficult to detect once they occur.  Assuming that the number of cases deemed worthy of investigation by the Florida Department of State adequately represents the number of cases of actual voter fraud ranks as epic on the scale of folly (aka the Folly-O-Meter).


Update April 6, 2012:

A Florida television station airs a story documenting approximately 100 non-citizens registered to vote in Florida, at least some of whom voted in past elections. 





March 4, 2012:  Replaced "explain" with "exploit" in the final paragraph.

Another embarrassing juxtaposition for PolitiFact

Oy vey.

A little over two weeks ago, I panned a PolitiFact Florida fact check that found "Mostly False" the claim that one can register to vote without proving citizenship.

Just now I stumbled over a parallel fact check from PolitiFact Wisconsin.  Apparently state Rep. Donna Seidel claimed that a new Republican-backed law would allow persons without firearms training to receive a state permit to carry a concealed weapon.

In the Florida case, a person registering to vote needs to sign an affidavit affirming possession of legal citizenship status.  That's it.  That's the proof requirement unless one registers through the "motor voter" program.

In Wisconsin, the law continues to require firearm training but does not specify the amount of training required.  Here's how PolitiFact Wisconsin summarized it:

States typically do one or more of the following: certify the training organization, their instructors or their courses; mandate specific topics for training; set a minimum number of hours; require the instructor to sign the training certificate.

Wisconsin now requires none of those.

The finding?  They ruled Seidel's statement "True" without reservation.  The justification for the ruling provides an amazing comparison with the reasoning applied by PolitiFact Florida with respect to voter registration:

PolitiFact Wisconsin:

The law is still on the books requiring an instructor-led training course, but it’s hard to prove that someone skipped it. So the door is open to "untrained" individuals getting a permit.

PolitiFact Florida:

Individual supervisors of elections do have the ability to determine if an applicant is an U.S. citizen, Cate said, though it would be difficult for a supervisor to ascertain citizenship.

In the former case the difficulty of proving the lack of qualification serves as a key point supporting the Democrat's statement.  In the latter case, the difficulty of proving the citizenship of a registered voter is apparently completely ignored as a reason contributing to the truth of the claim.

If a Wisconsin Democrat raises concerns about untrained persons carrying firearms, PolitiFact sees a problem with a soft standard for proving training status.

If a Florida Republican raises concerns about illegal immigrants registering to vote, PolitiFact finds hardly any problem with a comparable standard of proof.

Despite the similarity of the claims and the related set of facts, the Democrat receives a "True" while the Republican receives a "Mostly False" from the Truth-O-Meter.

And doesn't that fit pretty well with the liberal preferences for easy voting and stricter controls on firearms?

Grading PolitiFact (Florida): Alan Grayson and global wealth inequality

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

The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Louis Jacobson: writer, researcher
Aaron Sharockman: editor

Analysis:

We have here another specimen where PolitiFact makes a clear exception to its principle that the most important aspect of claims involving numbers is the underlying message.  There is no attempt in the story to either identify or evaluate the underlying argument of Democrat Alan Grayson.  One could imagine that PolitiFact did not extend the effort because Grayson's point was opinion--that unequal wealth distribution is unfair at least in some sense--but without any explanation to that effect we're left with PolitiFact relaxing its principles without explanation.

Before we start evaluating the Grayson fact check, have a look at how PolitiFact pans Sarah Palin for an accurate report of the U.S. ranking of defense spending as a percentage of the gross domestic product:

"In absolute dollars, we spend almost as much as all other countries combined," (Todd) Harrison said. "So saying we are 25th is a bit misleading and a selective use of facts."

We agree. Although she's technically correct, the numbers are wildly skewed by tiny, non-industrialized countries. We find her claim Barely True. 

The Palin rating adequately demonstrates that PolitiFact will take an underlying message into account for a number ranking claim such as Grayson's, at least on a selective basis.

Grayson, responding to MSNBC host Rachel Maddow's question about why the "Occupy Wall Street" protests resonate with Americans (yellow highlights indicate portion used by PolitiFact):

The second thing is that they`ve created a system that is enormously unequal. And the result of that is people are struggling to find a job to pay their bills, to pay their rent, to pay their credit card bills.  According to Wikipedia, there are only five countries in the entire planet that are more unequal than the United States in the distribution of our wealth. That`s a system that Wall Street created, that Wall Street maintains, and that Wall Street enforces.

PolitiFact puts immediate and exclusive focus on the numbers claim:

We should note here that we’re glad that Grayson cited his sources -- in the midst of a national TV interview no less! -- but we’re also disappointed that his source was Wikipedia, which is open to editing by anyone.

Luckily for Grayson, the Wikipedia page he cited had sourced its numbers to a peer-reviewed paper. The paper was coauthored by four academics, James B. Davies, Susanna Sandstrom, Anthony Shorrocks and Edward N. Wolff and published in The Economic Journal in 2010.

Grayson was correct that the United States had the fifth-highest Gini coefficient for wealth in the world, trailing only Denmark, Namibia, Switzerland and Zimbabwe. In other words, the U.S. distribution of wealth was more unequal than all but four other nations.

If the PolitiFact team had paid closer attention, they would have noticed that the numbers on which Grayson relies were not published in any peer-reviewed journal.  The numbers Grayson used ultimately came from an appendix (Excel file) to a working paper that preceded the version published in The Economic Journal. 

PolitiFact reports falsely in claiming that PolitiFact sourced its numbers to the linked "a peer-reviewed paper."  Sift through the linked work (see Update below) from now until doomsday and you won't find "Namibia" mentioned at all nor any comprehensive list of Gini coefficients (identified by PolitiFact as the primary statistic used to identify inequality) for all the nations of the earth.

Wikipedia apparently made no secret of the source of the information.  PolitiFact's research simply missed it (click image for enlarged view):

(clipped from Wikipedia.org)

As we continue evaluating PolitiFact's story we'll obtain some potential clues as to why the appendix did not appear with the published version of the paper.

Grading PolitiFact (Florida): The Word Police accuse Marjorie Dannenfelser

Words matter -- We pay close attention to the specific wording of a claim. Is it a precise statement? Does it contain mitigating words or phrases?
--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

The issue:

(image clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Amy Sherman:  writer, researcher
John Bartosek:  editor


Analysis:

PolitiFact tips off its complaint against Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion/pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, in the deck material reproduced above.  The quotation marks setting off "profit" as a word clue us in that PolitiFact's fact check hinges on the word.

Paul Bedard used Dannenfelser as a source for a May 26 blog for U.S. News & World Report:

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, said: “The truly ‘anti-woman’ organization here is Planned Parenthood and the party that continues to defend its taxpayer funding when it has raked in more than $300 million in profits over the past four years. Fifty-four percent of Americans don’t want to be coerced into contributing to an organization they don’t believe in just by paying their taxes—nor should they be.”

Somehow PolitiFact Florida got wind of this exciting development:

For this Truth-O-Meter, we wanted to check Dannenfelser's claim that Planned Parenthood "raked in more than $300 million in profits over the past four years." We'll focus on two parts: Is the dollar figure right, and is 'profit' the right word?

Off we go on the dollar figure fact check, hopefully bearing in mind the fact that the underlying message is the most important thing when fact checking a numbers claim:

We contacted SBA List spokeswoman Mallory Quigley, who referred us to "excess of revenue over expenses" listed in Planned Parenthood's annual reports. Here is what those reports show:

2005-06: $55.8 million
2006-07: $114.8 million
2007-08: $85 million
2008-09: $63.4 million

Total: $319 million.

While the total comes out over $300 million, in apparent justification of Dannenfelser's claim, the numbers fail to account for a investment loss of $78.1 million in the last of the four reports.

PolitiFact frets over Planned Parenthood's inconsistency in accounting:

In the reports from other years, the financial data does not refer to investment losses or gains, and Sye said those amounts were simply included in the totals for those years. The extraordinary losses when the markets plunged for almost all investors, presented differently in the 2008-09 report, makes it awkward to combine the four years since Planned Parenthood didn't detail its investment losses or gains previously. Subtracting the $78 million would leave the group with about $240 million in revenue over expenses in the four-year period. But how much more or less is unknown since we were unable to obtain the actual investment income for the other years.

 I say pish posh.

The value of investments ought to reflect in the total net assets reported.  The alternate accounting was probably a theatrical strategy intended to influence donors to donate.  Subtract the $78 million from the supposed operating surplus and the remainder matches the newly reported net assets for the year ending in June 2009.  Simply taking the net assets at the start of the string of reports and subtracting that figure from the net asset value at the end ought to provide a useful figure reflecting Planned Parenthood's yearly net income.

Unfortunately, the resulting figure was about $210 million--suspiciously lower than the figure PolitiFact ended up using ($240 million).  About $11 million of the missing amount was reported as "other changes in net assets" and the rest went suspiciously missing between the end of the second report and the start of the third.  That might prove interesting to a journalist.  Or maybe not.  PolitiFact showed no signs of noticing.

As to the raw numbers, if we use Planned Parenthood's dubious reports we can determine that Dannenfelser inflated Planned Parenthood's increased asset value by 43 percent.  PolitiFact's figures would result in a somewhat lower inflation amount of 30 percent.

We should note that PolitiFact has in the past granted Barbara Boxer a "Half True" rating for a claim resting on a figure that was off by 355 percent.  On the other hand, Michele Bachmann received a "False" rating for a figure that was off from 42 to 76 percent.  So it's anybody's guess what ruling is thus far implied by Dannenfelser's imprecision.

PolitiFact:

In the second part of our fact-checking, does the "excess revenue over expenses" constitute a "profit"?

We sent Dannenfelser's claim to experts in nonprofit management and heard back from four. Three disagreed with using the term "profit" to describe excess revenues over expenses: Christopher Stone, faculty director of the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University; Herman B. "Dutch" Leonard, professor of public management at Harvard Kennedy School of Government and at the Harvard Business School; and Beth Gazley, assistant professor at Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

Sound the pedantry alert for this trio of experts.

Pedant No. 1:  Explain yourself, please.

"Bottom line: a nonprofit’s surplus should not be confused with profit," Stone wrote in an e-mail. "Profits are generated by businesses to reward investors. Businesses also use profits to provide additional compensation (bonuses tied to profits) for employees who help generate the profits for investors. Because nonprofits may not use their surpluses for either of these purposes, these surpluses should not be confused with profits. All surpluses must be devoted to the charitable purposes of the organization."

To be fair, PolitiFact may have simply applied Stone's answer in a pedantic fashion.  At face value Stone is exactly right that a nonprofit's surplus cash should not be confused with the profits a business distributes to its ownership group.  But it's hardly clear that Dannefelser's claim commits that type of confusion.  Rather, Dannenfelser simply employs a different (widely accepted) definition of "profit" than the one Stone uses:

3 : net income usually for a given period of time

Merriam-Webster

Pedant No. 2:  Explain yourself, please:

And Gazley wrote: "But more to the point, the 'taxpayer'-funded portions of the Planned Parenthood affiliates’ budgets are either program grants or reimbursements for services eligible for Medicaid. So the government-funded parts of the (Planned Parenthood) budget would NOT be generating a 'profit' – they would be used in full each year. This means any excess of revenues over expenses (AKA 'profit') would have come from other sources – private donations, endowment income, etc. So Ms. Dannenfelser’s argument that the taxpayers are somehow subsidizing this 'profit' is misleading."

Hilarious.  Of course the taxpayers subsidize the profit, just like allowing oil companies to drill for oil on federal lands for free would subsidize oil company profits even though "any excess of revenues over expenses (AKA 'profit') would have to come from other sources."  Gazely's statement is far more misleading than Dannenfelser's.  Even the best accounting tricks can't hide the obvious in this case.

PolitiFact spares us the explanation from Herman B. "Dutch" Leonard, but we do get the explanation from the lone expert out of step with the other three:

Terri Renner, longtime CPA and lecturer at Indiana University's school of Public and Environmental Affairs, argued that "the excess of revenues over expenses is the accounting definition of profit."

Renner's argument is unassailable, given that she is correct in identifying the operative definition of "profit."

But the Word Police from PolitiFact take their cues from the pedants:

We said we'd examine both the dollar figure and the word "profits." We think the "more than $300 million" description is off base because of the $78 million in losses, but neither Planned Parenthood nor the SBA List is saying definitively what the investment gains or losses were for the four-year period. Still, there is some element of truth in that it's at least scores of millions of dollars.


In the second part of our ruling, we looked at whether "excess revenue over expenses" for a nonprofit is the same as "profit." Most of the experts we consulted say no. And the one who would call it profit agrees that it's not treated the same way as profit for a corporation. Companies distribute their profits to shareholders and owners, while nonprofits put their excess revenues back into the organization's work. We think the real sting in this claim comes from the word "profits," so we weighed that more heavily than the vague dollar figures in our ruling. We rate this claim Barely True.

Respecting the numbers claim, remember that PolitiFact's numbers indicate a 30 percent error by Dannenfelser aside from the uncertainty created by Planned Parenthood's inability/unwillingness to divulge more precise figures.

The ruling on the use of "profit" is pure pedantry.  Dannefelser's use of the term fits perfectly with a standard usage and creates no apparent barrier to understanding the statement in accord with the context in which it was offered:  Planned Parenthood operates substantially in the black and therefore does not require over $350 million per year in government money.


The grades:

Amy Sherman:  F
John Bartosek:  F

Journalists simply can't lend themselves out to pedantic experts or indulge in pedantry themselves by using the comments of experts as an ad hoc justification.  The trusting reader is rendered less intelligent by this fact check and therefore the special tag "Journalists Reporting Badly" applies.