House Oversight and Reform Co-chair Jake Johnson’s op-ed on the State Board of Elections party-line vote against the Justice For All Party ran in the Raleigh News & Observer, Charlotte Observer, and Durham Herald-Sun on July 31, 2024. A federal judge later ruled in favor of the Justice For All Party and the State Board of Elections then voted unanimously to allow Cornell West to appear on the November ballot.
Rep. Johnson explained how members misused the unrepresentative results of a non-random survey to justify their party-line vote.
“The board’s decision on the Justice for All party also was a methodological mess. First, Board staff pulled a random sample of 250 people from this non-random and potentially skewed population for follow-up phone calls, according to board staff. Such a random sample can be unrepresentative, however, and staff did not take any steps to ensure its sample reflected the larger population of those who provided phone numbers, let alone the entire population of petition signers. Although the State Board of Elections has a statistician on staff, that person was not consulted about the validity of this survey methodology.
“Biased sample in hand, staff made one call to each phone number on the list from State Board of Elections phone numbers during business hours between July 9 and 11. Only 49 of the 250 people responded. Again, staff did not consider how those 49 people differed from the 201 people who did not answer or the 5,040 not in the sample or the 11,951 who provided no phone number at all.
“Despite this, board chairman Alan Hirsch and board member Jeff Carmon both said the survey of 49 people was key to their votes against the Justice for All Party.”
Read the whole op-ed: