November 1st: 8 days and 60K ballots remaining?

Whatcom County preferred party vote shares from 10.31.2016 'MatchBack' Report by AVReturnedDate. Click to enlarge.

Ballots Drop Tommorrow, October 18th...

Ballot drops tomorrow, October 18th. Look for your ballot in your mail.

This has been an unusual election season. Full of ... interesting developments and laden with lots of public interest.  In Whatcom County (and WA State), you should have received your 151 page Voter's Pamphlet. If not, you can read it online. If you are looking for Election Forums in Whatcom County, you can find at least two at the Whatcom County League of Women Voters.  They are:

Why do we vote Democrat? Part I

Picture of the author's grandfather (circa 1972). "Bompa" worked on the waterfront most of his life, dropping out of school in sixth grade to support his family. He joined "Harry Bridges and his men" in 1934. During WWII, he and his fellow longshoremen laid on their backs and rolled 55 gallon barrels of oil with their feet into the hull of freighters destined for the war effort. After the mechanization of the waterfront, he became a hod carrier and then a brick mason until his retirement at 65.

Why do we vote as Democrats?

It would be 82 years ago that my grandfather was shouldering 100 lb. sacks of sugar from ship to warehouse on the Oakland waterfront. The year was 1934 and the times were desperate. During my youth, when the discussion turned to politics  my grandfather would often say with some emphasis:

"We knew people, Ryan. We knew people who were hungry. They were standing in the bread lines and starving to death!"

November Election Resources and Links

Resources for Voting and Participating in the November 8th General Election:

Why you should check myvote.wa.gov before October 10th...

Editor's note: The deadline for online registration (October 10th) has passed for this year. If you are a new WA state resident you can still walk into the Whatcom County elections office until October 31st to register. For all other questions, please call the Whatcom County Elections office at the contacts here: http://www.whatcomcounty.us/1732/Current-Election . Thanks, -RMF

"How and Why Donald Trump and Republicans will win Whatcom County this Fall."

"First, don’t think of an elephant. Remember not to repeat false conservative claims and then rebut them with the facts. Instead, go positive. Give a positive truthful framing to undermine claims to the contrary. Use the facts to support positively-framed truth. "  - George Lakeoff from https://georgelakoff.com/2016/07/23/understanding-trump-2/

I published the blog post below the break  ("How and Why Donald Trump and Republicans will win Whatcom County this Fall.") on August 22nd, let it run for a week and then I pulled it because I thought it was very negative. But I've changed my mind. I think many Clinton Democrats are operating in shrinking closet, accomplishing little but kibitzing with one another on why they think Donald Trump can never be President of the United States.  November may well bring a Republican landslide of epic proportions here in Whatcom County and the state of WA, if the numbers I have looked at are indicative of the general election. Personally, I think it is a really bad idea to sit around and bitch about Donald Trump. You are wasting time you could be using to support Democrats. My guess is George Lakeoff would agree. Here are some ways you can support the Democratic Party, even if you really don't like Hillary Clinton or the federal (e.g. "super delegate") candidates:

Withering Primary Participation in Whatcom County and WA ahead of August 2nd Primary

May 24th and August 2nd  (2016) Primaries in Whatcom County: Comparing 'AVReturnedDate' by volume. Click to Enlarge.

Whether because of summering students or depressed Berners, primary participation in Whatcom County and across WA is unimpressive to date. After a strong weekend showing of 3,990 ballots on Monday, an underwhelming 430 ballots were received today (Tuesday) bringing Whatcom County's turnout to 12,557 (9.49%) with five (5) counting weekdays left. It is an unfair comparison due to student participation in May, but the recent Presidential Primary had 30,869 ballots received in the same number of days ahead of May 24th, 2016.  Most of the state is doing no better than us: www.sos.wa.gov/elections/research/Ballot-Return-Statistics.aspx.

HTML Table of Whatcom County Sample Ballot with Endorsements

August 2nd Primary: Are we voting yet?

NOPE. NOT YET! Not really... Millennials aren't voting either...

Who do I vote for?

If I were a voter in Whatcom County, my number one question right now is: "Who do I vote for?"

Come August 3rd, if you eventually find your precinct turnout is low or that falloff is high, the lists below the break taken from the sample ballot might explain why.  PCO elections are not listed here. I am imagining a wave of electoral choices washing over casual or "low information" voters like a rogue wave overwhelming an unaware beach comber. 8/10s of 1% of all ballots have been returned by this morning.

Ballots Mailed: July 13, 2016
Number of Registered Voters: 134,011
Ballots Returned: 1,093
Percentage of Ballots returned: 10:59 AM 7/18/2016
(1093/134011) * 100
[1] 0.816

Demographics from the July 6th WA State Voterdb

Democrat Candidate Links: Sharlaine LaClair, Tracy Atwood, others

Legislative District 42:

Sharlaine LaClair

• http://sharlainelaclair.nationbuilder.com/
• https://www.facebook.com/Elect-Sharlaine-LaClair-391834654273919/

Tracy Atwood

• http://www.make42blue.com/
• https://www.facebook.com/atwoodfor42/
• ttps://twitter.com/@make42blue

Other Sources of Election Recommendations:

Whatcom Democrats

http://www.whatcomdemocrats.com/content/candidates

WA State Democrats Endorsement Finder

http://www.wa-democrats.org/endorsements

FUSE (Progressive Voter Guide)

http://progressivevotersguide.com/node/1036

Whatcom GE 2015 vs Whatcom Presidential Primary 2016

The 2015 GE had about 7K more votes than the 54K 2016 Presidential Primary.  In the quantile (equal-frequency) class intervals  and the spreadsheet below the break, here is what Bellingham and  Whatcom County turnout looked like per precinct last week and six months ago.

May 24th Presidential Primary in Whatcom County

Click to Enlarge

In Whatcom County, Sanders walloped Clinton in Presidential Primary. 53,234 ballots have been counted according to the Auditor . I have 54,074 good ballots  with a party selected received  from 5/27 matchbacks. Certification is June 7, 2016.

Charts, Data, Conclusions from the May 24th WA Presidential Primary

This data is current as the evening of 5/24/2016. Data from WA SOS.
1.26M ballots (out of 4.08M registrants) have been counted. About 111K are still out.  -RMF

Click to Enlarge. Tonight's primary portrayed as a three way race.

Really Good Reasons to Vote Today in WA

Really Good Reasons to Vote Today in WA for a primary that some might characterize as superfluous:

PCO Candidacy Data as of 11:24 AM 5/23/2016:

PCO signup Data as of 11:24 AM 5/23/2016:
As of Monday the Democrats have a 149 - 74 edge on the Republicans for candidates for PCO. 115 of the Democrat precincts have one or more applicants.

Many Democrats are competing against one another for PCO.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially if everyone gets together, shares responsibility and helps out! 27 Democrat races tonight have 2 or more PCOs. There is only an election choice if there is more than one candidate. Precincts candidates in 302(5 Candidates) might want to consider a meet.

"Cooper, this is no time for caution!"

With a week to go, the Primary return numbers are surprising the Whatcom County Elections Office:

Primary Ballots Returned (5:49 PM 5/17/2016) = 29,609

This strong an early return for a primary, even an all county primary, is huge. Keep in mind we barely eclipsed 60K in last November's GE!  The registration counts below the break show us why so many are voting. The registration rolls in Whatcom County are now clearly bloated with youth and Berners.

If you have ever thought about running for office or PCO, now is the time and this is filing week!  Notice in the registration numbers below that those born after 1966 in Whatcom County now eclipse those born before by (66121 - 64694) = 1,427. Notice that those born after 1980 now eclipse those born before 1950 by a stunning (38503 - 27968) = 10,535. Although we are very youth heavy in Whatcom County (thank you WWU, WWC, BTC), these proportions are now not unusual.  See similar numbers for all  of WA far below.

The future is here. Time for the DNC, local Democrats, and the rest of the world to wake up and smell the Millennials and the Berners. Youth and those of us still young enough not to be suffering cognitive degeneration will inherit what remains of the Earth. As my four year old likes to say: "There is no time to lose!" Perhaps I can also quote from the docking scene in "Interstellar": "Cooper, this is no time for caution!"

Illustrating the 42nd LD electorate for 2016; Post Under Construction

Voters of the 42nd LD Precincts sorted into groups of threes: 3 Votes for last GEs (2013,2014,2015), active but no votes for the last 3 GEs, NA for the last three GEs.  These three groups cover 61% of current active registered voterdb for LD42nd.  Based on 4/15/2016 WC voterdb. Click to enlarge. 

Find R (data.table) code here. Post under construction.

Do you want to become a Democrat PCO in Whatcom County?

Click to Enlarge. Link to larger image here. See also "GIS Precinct Based Maps:Ballots Good, Jack and Joy"

We can talk all we want about the revolution, the corruption, the greed, the incompetence, the futility of the two party system. However, the reality of modern political life means working within the community to spread the revolution, to establish trust, to build alliances with many,  to turn out the vote, to assure that our votes are counted and to make sure the system doesn't fail our children like it has failed us.  

Next week is Filing Week in Whacom County. Would you like to become a Democrat Precinct Committee Officer? This is an elected position. There is no filing fee. Here is information from the WA Secretary of State on the PCO positions:

Summary of Posts on County, LD, CD WA data from 04/01/2015 and 05/01/2016

This is a summary of statistical posts I have written recently that may help 'Berniecrats' running for office.  I am pretty much a self taught stats head, however I mean well. Some of my data may be confusing.  If you are a Berniecrat (in WA especially) seeking election and you need help with your voterdb; send me some of your bonafides and I will see what I can do.  I choose to believe most Berniecrats are high IQ by default. I code in R (with help from PostgreSQL and Redis).

The bottom line in the state of WA in 2016 is this: The "Bernie Effect" has meant a huge increase in registrants in WA districts and counties of Millennials, GenXrs, and other generations that support Bernie. The WA state voterdb now has as many active registrants born after 1966 as before. In certain counties, those born after 1980 have swollen the voting rolls to never before seen numbers. All my demographic data suggest to me the influence of boomers and the pre WWII generations is diminishing in the face of a surge of dissatisfied youth looking for progressive change in WA state. As far as I can see, you will be campaigning to a "Bernie Rally" crowd in most cities, counties, and legislative districts in WA.  I can't but help believe from my data, that if you are a Berniecrat challenger to an incumbent, that you will need all these Berners to vote for you!

Part IV Data on WA Congressional, Legislative, County Districts: Change in registrants for CC, LD, CD over the last 18.5 months

The tables below give the change in registered voters in WA over last 18.5 months (11.16.2014 - 05.01.2016). The active voting rolls increased 156,614 during those months with 135K of that increase coming from the top eleven counties. King County alone added 50K. Four counties (AS, CU, GA, LI) lost a total of  765 voters.

All Legislative Districts increased their totals. Eight LDs increased registrants by over 4000: 36, 34, 27, 43, 4, 21, 5, and 1.  Legislative District 36 has swollen to ~108K registrants, increasing by 5,481 since 11.16.2014. WA Congressional Districts have also seen large increases in registration. CD 7 increased by 20,837 registrants during those same 18.5 months. At the current pace, CD 7 will have 500K total registrants by 11/2017.  CD 7 and LD 36 (Seattle) are arguably the most Democratic and most liberal districts in the Pacific Northwest.

Part III Data on WA Congressional, Legislative, County Districts: How many Berners are out there?

The charts and data below the break are dedicated to all you Berners that want to sign up to run  for Legislative Districts next week, the third week of May, when Filing Week opens. See PDFs and FAQs here: 1, 2, 3, 4 . You are probably wondering how many Berners are out there, will they vote for you, can you really take back that LD and become a progressive force in the Olympia?  I will let you answer all the tough questions while you lie awake at night.  Below the break are some data and charts to chew on.

Part I Data on WA Congressional, Legislative, County Districts: Birth Years of Registrants - 04/01/2016

Part II Data on WA Congressional, Legislative, County Districts: Registrants Partitioned by CC,LD,CD intersections - 04/01/2016

The top eleven most registered counties are 84% of the state's registered voters. Active WA voterdb registrants from County (CC), Congressional District (CD), and Legislative Districts(LD)  'partitions' are keyed and sorted by count, registration year, last year voted in the tables below the break. . Additional 'mixed queries' are far below. A 'partition' here I define as the unique number of active registrants that result from the (geographic) intersections of particular CC,CD or LD districts. Currently, there are 141 such unique partitions in WA, however the bottom nine exists simply because county voter rolls have not assigned CD and or LD or both to some small number of voters.

Sites Discussing Election Fraud

"We are not able to elect Bernie because there is so much of this fraud and voter suppression and rigging and caucus cheating going on. So it seems like magical thinking to continue to go forward with this campaign and not address the issue, to not fight the battle that will actually cost the election."

- Debbie Lusignan ("The Sane Progressive")

https://youtu.be/p29Ct_LDzqY?t=1273

Update on "The Bernie Effect" in Whatcom County

New or reactivated registrations are increasingly younger and more urban in Whatcom County. Click to Enlarge.

Density Curves. Left: Birth Years of Voters who have left the voter rolls in the last 17 months. Right: Birth Year of Voters who have joined voter rolls in the last 17 months. Click to Enlarge.

4,962 net voters have been added to the Whatcom County voting rolls in the last 17 months. 12,428 voters have left or been marked inactive. 17,390 have registered themselves as active. (Yes. That is stupendous number for Whatcom County.) We are adding almost 10 registrants per day.  These registrants would be a mix of original registrations and re-activations  or address changes. The last 17 months have been responsible for 3.9% increase in the voter database since 11/22/2014.

Tim Robbins gives 'em hell for Bernie!!

"Bernie is not the obligatory progressive that will keep the left in line until the presumptive moderative nominee emerges. Bernie is not the Democrat party insider that will bow down to the elites in the party. We are done with that! We are done with compromising our ideals! We are done with triangulation and fear based politics! ...Change will not happen by choosing a candidate entirely entrenched in the dysfunction of the past."

-Tim Robbins at Washington Square Park New York Bernie Rally March 13, 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC-ZCD3gE1Y
 

Mountains: The 'Bernie Effect', Berniecrats, Millennials Rising

This is a long technical post discussing the effect of the recent Presidential caucus campaign on voter registration in Whatcom County and Washington state and some of the implications of that surge in voter rolls for the November 2016 General Election. More complete technical paper is available (PDF) - RMF 

"the most honest candidate there is..."

Rosario Dawson, Spike Lee, and Residente rock the Bernie Bronx Rally. Residente gives an incredible speech:  " I support Bernie Sanders because he is the most honest candidate there is."
(Source:  http://www.c-span.org/video/?407458-1/bernie-sanders-campaign-rally-south-bronx )
    

The Bernie Effect in Whatcom County

Note: This is for Whatcom County voterdb data only. For WA state data on "The Bernie Effect" please see links here.

The Bernie Effect: Change totals for voter registration are up 335% in the first three months of 2016 over  the same period in 2015. This may include as many as 4,295 new registrations.  Click to enlarge.  Most data below  the break is for "Registration Date" changes for the period January 1 - March 30, 2016.

"WA Democrat Delegate Math"

On Saturday, I was the PCC  (Precinct Caucus Chair) for my Democrat precinct. Below are some of my thoughts. They might be helpful because Wyoming, Guam, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, North Dakota all have caucuses left to go.

For me, with a very large precinct (Precinct 208-  1200 plus registered voters, 166 caucus votes, 10 allotted delegates), everything worked like clockwork. The experience was well planned, well administrated, no personal contention, excellent helpers, etc.  I want to really thank the generous and energetic Democrat volunteers, tech help from WCC and my excellent Tally Clerk and Secretary.  I didn't get the in-house training. I just memorized the 28 page Precinct Caucus  script. I only had four days because my PCO  had just moved so I was busy reading and thinking and simulating votes before Saturday morning. 

However, I had tables, my laptop, auditorium projector, wireless mic.  I kept the script on the big screen and also a spreadsheet I had designed to simulate delegate math.  I think it is important as a PCC to be funny, humble, helpful, honest, fair, ask for help, let people speak. We did four rounds of Bernie v. Hillary.  We had to because it takes a while to count 166 sheets! Our Tally Clerk  actually numbered the corners sequentially of each voter's sheet she received as if she had been trained as a database professional! People really enjoyed speaking. I really had a great though exhausting morning. One subject that has come up is discussion afterwards is precinct caucus math. Below is my take on this math and the delegate selection process.

My Sunday with Bernie Believers

Bernie Believers line up early Sunday morning.

Early Sunday morning my accomplice and I car pooled from Bellingham to Bernie's Seattle rally at the Key Arena . A friend of our family had made it to the head of the line before 6:00 AM and posted as such on Facebook. "I think I can be at your house by eight," my fellow Bernie supporter said.  By 9:30 we had made Key Arena and were standing in a line probably about 200 ' x 6 people deep in the light rain. That line would quickly grow much longer. It was 2 1/2 hours before before the noon admission and you might think those hours would be an arduous wait, but then you probably have never stood in a crowd of Bernie Believers before.

Democrat Caucus Locations for Saturday, March 26, 2016 9:30 AM Registration! 10:00 AM Start!

3:05 PM 3/19/2016 Update! Best links for finding your precinct and your  March 26th caucus site:

• http://pollingplaces.democrats.org/
• https://www.demcaucus.com/register

These links may also be informative for all of us Bernie Believers:

• https://vote.berniesanders.com/
• http://whatcomforbernie.com/
• https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zPrEbjVkRCzQ.kTGDlekyJebU

All this week long the 103 E. Holly Bernie office needs your help canvassing and phone banking. I just talked with the Bernie campaign representatives there and the focus is on making sure they get people going to the caucus and involved in the process. They need precinct captains. If you are willing to volunteer or help, make sure to make it to 103 E. Holly. There are a lot of Bernie groups on Facebook, but the official Bernie office needs your help canvassing the neighborhoods! Bring your smart phone to do this so you can download the MiniVAN app. If you are coming to the office to phone bank, bring your laptop, smart phone, chargers. You can also phone bank for Bernie at home. Be Ready for next Saturday: The March 26th Democrat Caucus!!

voterdb data as 03/16/2016

Age, Gender, City, Zip, LastUpdateDate, Status Reason, Ballot Counted for Last Five Primaries below the break.

Please Caucus!

Dear Readers:

On March 26th, the Whatcom Democrats will host this year's Democratic Caucus. This is your chance to caucus for your presidential candidate! Yes, you need to be there unless you filled out a surrogate form by March 18th. Otherwise, you need to be there  and stay there to cast your votes.  Make sure your address and registration is up to date at http://myvote.wa.gov , fill out the Democratic caucus precinct sign-in, find your caucus site  and come ready to debate, paricipate and cast votes! Be there early, doors will open after 9:00 AM! Should you want to do more, you can join the party, volunteer for the Democratic Party or you can volunteer for Bernie. You can probably volunteer for Hillary as well, but I will let you find your way to that :-).  Team Bernie is hosting two days of action today and tomorrow. Please see more after the break below.   Please Caucus!!!

Phone Banking for Bernie Sanders

I sat through the phone bank training for Benie Sanders:  https://go.berniesanders.com/page/content/phonebank .  They have 15 minute interactive training going on all the day long and they could really use you for GOTV messages for the next two days. The March 15 (!Tuesday!) primaries are 691 delegates:

• Florida:214
• Illinois:156
• Ohio:143 delegates 
• North Carolina:107
• Missouri :71

These are the 3, 5, 7, 9 and 18 largest states . Together, they represent over 61M people or about 20% of the U.S. population. I am going to practice the script, acquaint with Bernie issues and start calling.   Person to person makes the biggest difference in politics. North Carolina and Florida are the last and perhaps the most important southern states for Democrats because they are large and Democrats win them sometimes. However, Illinois, Missouri, and Ohio are critical as well. More information is here: https://go.berniesanders.com/page/content/march15/

For those of you who haven't done phone banking before, you will probably need a laptop or tablet, dedicated phone line or cell phone, cell buds or headset for your analog phone, comfortable chair. It seems daunting when you first start and then the script just falls into place. Sticking to the script and seeming authentic isn't as hard as it seems after your first ten calls.  It is good practice talking and working with others.  This is something that is critical right now you can do if you have the time.

The failed "Southern Strategy" of the 2016 Democrats

Click to Enlarge: Sum of all Democrat votes divided into CVAP_EST 2014

Code for this post. [1,2]

We have to ask ourselves at some point: What are the mechanisms for the suppression of the black vote in the South and how do we define it? Is it any different than in regions outside the South? The Democrats lost 910 legislative seats nationwide between 2009 - 2014. This happened here in WA as well. But it *really* happened in the South where literally dozens of legislative seats flipped from Democrat to Republican. 

Super Tuesday Data

Note: Fixed Vermont totals - RMF 1:09 PM 3/2/2016
Super Tuesday Data. For these 12 states, some data is incomplete or incomparable for various reasons: Dem caucus held later for AK, Republican Caucus will not be held at all for CO, all precincts were not 100%  reporting as of this morning, MN,CO,AK held caucuses, not primaries etc. But here are some interesting factoids:

• 2.7M more votes for Republicans than Democrats in these states primaries/caucuses as opposed to the 1.9M for Romney than Obama in GE2012
• These 12 primaries/caucuses generated (5.9M(D) +  8.5M(R)) = 14.5M votes.  In the 2012GE these same states generated 32M votes, 14.7M for Obama alone.
• Only MA,MN (Caucus),VT had more Democrats vote than Republicans
• Reputedly, AR had more Republicans vote than Democrats for the first time since the Reconstruction
• The states here showing some "swing" potential are Virginia,Oklahoma,Colorado. Fundamentally a (complicated) southern state, Virginia actually went to Obama in 2012 as did Florida.Oklahoma went Republican in 2012, Colorado went Democrat. Both came out for Bernie Saunders in this primary.

If you see errors, let me know. Click to enlarge charts. Charts and data compare GE 2012 with Primary 2016:

Data from:
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/showelection.php?year=2012
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/01/super-tuesday-trump-clinton-sanders-cruz-rubio

Register to VOTE!!...then...Sign In to your Democratic Precinct Caucus!

After you have made sure you are a registered voter at myvote.wa.gov, you can fill out, print and sign your *DEMOCRATIC PRECINCT CAUCUS SIGN IN* : https://www.demcaucus.com/register. I found on Win7/Chromium that I could save to it to PDF if I couldn't print it immediately. That put me in the system, gave me my primary location, my precinct ID, my VAN ID and let the Democrats know I was coming! You eventually need to print it out and sign it and bring it with you to your caucus location!

Whatcom County Voter History Database as of 1/27/2016

Editor's note: Are you a WA candidate that needs information like the data and analysis below for your campaign? I am considering marketing my data analytic services this year. If you are interested, you can find me from my blogger profile. -RMF

The data above is from a 1/27/2016 voterdb history.  On the left, the rainbow background and the fading shadows in front of it show the per precinct difference between registered voters and participation in the GE 2014 and GE 2015 balloting. (The most recent voter birth years are not included.) Curiously, despite heavy registration of those under 65, voter turnout has collapsed as it heads toward the youngest birth years in Whatcom County. Click on the graphs to enlarge.

The dense band of mean birth years of registered voters between years 1960 and 1970 is a statistical mirage brought about by heavy registration of both boomers and millenials on either side. GenXrs are the bluish trough (far top left chart) between prewars  + boomers and millenials, + perhaps Gen "Z". At right, a relatively high SD per precinct helps hide an accurate assessment of voter age in Whatcom County. More age statistics are below. Click on the graphs to enlarge.

All school and fire Levies pass. A look back at November 2015

Updated 2/10/2016: All School and Fire levies pass. 32% turnout with 40K voting.
Today (February 9th) there is a special election for school  and fire district financing throughout the county ... Remember to Vote. Drop Boxes are placed throughout the county. If you mail your ballot, it must be postmarked (with stamp) by February 9th. If you are around downtown Bellingham, there will be a drive through drop box near the court house open until 8 p.m.  You can check your voter status, update your address, or register to vote online in WA at MyVote.wa.gov .  Some Charts from the 2015 Election are below the break.

The Death of LaVoy Finicum

Defense Indexes vs Mass Shooting Database >= 14 'Dead + Injured'

In my last post, I established that the FBI will complete the three year period (2013 - 2015) with ~64M NICS background checks for firearms purchase.  In this post, I look at the relationship between two Defense  index/exchanges traded over the same period. Specifically, I am interested in the whether there is a relationship  between high volume "spree shootings" and equity increases for defense companies. If widespread publicity of spree shootings encourages Americans to purchase extraordinary volumes of weapons, does this in turn equal greater purchase of defense stock? R code here.

Here are the eleven events with (Dead + Injured) >=  14 mass shooting incidents according to Mass Shooting Tracker. I have left out shooter names. Some of these events will be recognizable by location:

AR-15s, Shopping Carts and Gun Ownership in America

Update: December 2015 and 2015 the year broke records which rendered my 2.3M projection for December short. 3.3M NICS  checks were completed for December 2015 bring the yearly totally 23M. Both numbers are records. I will update my projected  December data at some point. - RMF

Last week's cover for the "New Yorker" shows a happy, clean cut, young couple picking up their AR-15 (?) with their milk and hand grenades in their shopping cart at a local super mart.  2.2M NICS FBI  firearm checks were completed in Novermber 2015. After the December totals come in, it looks like we will have over 23M NICS checks for 2015, an all time annual record. Ironically, the day of the San Bernardino shooting (12/2), the NYT announced we broke a record for single day guns sales on the last Black Friday. If we don't already, we probably now have more firearms in America than cars. This would make sense because more people now die from firearms than car accidents in America.  I made a quick projection of the 221M NICS gun checks in America for the last 17 years. Between 2013 - 2015, 29% of all gun checks for the last 17 years will have been processed. I projected December 2015 at 2.3M.:

 (21093273 + 20968547 + (19827376 + 2300000)) / (222363898 - 892840)

2013 + 2014 + projected(2015)  / (eighteen year total  - first incomplete year)

[1] 0.2898311

For the three years 2013 - 2015, there will be (projected) 64,189,196 (~64M) NICS FBI gun checks processed. If all of those checks were approved, that three year total would be equivalent to 20% of our 315M population.  More data on NICS Operations can be found here

This is a (table) matrix from the data found here.  December 2015 data projected. Click to enlarge tables and charts.

Gun Deaths in America: Suicides, Homicides, "Mass Shooting Tracker" Data

Introduction

Important note: RMF:12/24/2015 Shooting Tracker data  is now maintained by Gun Violence Archive at http://www.shootingtracker.com/wiki/Main_Page

This is an attempt to parse some of the data from Shooting Tracker and talk about death by firearms in America. The project took me a bit longer than I wanted because that data needed normalization and corrections and because the subject is somewhat poorly researched due to Congressional limitations on research. See my R code here.  I bound together Shooting Tracker data from three years of  mass shootings which those publishers define as any shooting that injures and/or kills four or more combined. This definition gives us 1,347 dead and 3,817  injured  from "mass shootings" for the three year period 2013 - 2015 (to date).  Before we talk about this comparatively small number of deaths and injury, some background statistics are in order on gun violence in America. I assume the data is accurate and analyze it as I find it for all my sources including Mass Shooting Tracker, CDC and the FBI.

GIS based precinct maps: Ballots Good, Jack and Joy.

These are 2015 precinct election maps. GIS code in R is time consuming and complex. Click to enlarge these maps. The equal frequency (quartile) class intervals are expressed as: (min,max) for good ballots for the 2014 and 2015 general elections. The Jack Louws, Joy Gilifilen, and  precinct differences (Jack - Joy) totals for 2015 are expressed in color driven scales which have separate ranges (indexes) per map. Both precincts 182 and 183 have part of their data hidden in the totals by the state of WA to protect privacy. The shape files  and precinct maps can be found here. My R code (which is very derivative - see 1,2) can be found here (3,4).  If you are a friend and you need code and data, email me.

2015 Voting Analysis Under Construction: Joy vs. Jack, Jail_yes vs. Jail_no

 By precinct diffs. Those points above the horizontal blue 0 line are precincts that sided with Jack Luows. Those points left of the vertical red 0 line are precincts that voted against the jail.   (Vertical Axis: (Louws - Gilfilen) ~ Horizontal Axis ( Jail_Yes - Jail_No)) . Strong relationships are revealed between those precincts voting  more for Jack and the Jail  (far right) and those voting more for Joy and not for the Jail (bottom left).  The dense 'crook' in the middle of the graph represents those precincts still mostly totaling for Jack  Luows but very split in voting for or against the jail.  Click to enlarge.

Race and WWU

Belina Seare, president of WWU’s Associated Students,  discussed racial threats made against her and others on WWU campus. King5 has additional reporting:

http://www.king5.com/story/news/local/2015/11/24/western-wash-cancels-classes-due-online-hate-speech/76303356/

http://www.king5.com/story/news/local/bellingham/2015/11/25/threatened-wwu-student-know-my-safety-not-priority/76381562/


http://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/local/article46488630.html

Still Counting Ballots, 11/16/2015 Matchback Report, We are the sixth highest in total ballots in WA.

Top ten WA Counties by ballots counted in table below. Note that Whatcom County outvoted three counties more populous than than itself this year, making us the county with the sixth largest vote in WA. 2014 population figures (1000s): Whatcom = 208K, Yakima = 247K, Kitsap = 254K, Thurston = 265K . High turnouts are very useful and advantageous. Politicians and other pundits notice when your county can "bring it"!

Matchbacks for 11/12/2015

11/06/2015 Matchback Report

Hoping there won't be too many more of these...

Curing your Ballot: A look at Signature Issues

So these numbers below might help those reclaiming challenged ballots or "curing ballots". If we look at the results to date, we see there are 656 Challenged Ballots.

Matchback Report 11/04/2015

Matchback Report 11/03/2015

Ralph Schwartz is reporting from the Auditor that our ballots will roll in heavy through Thursday because of  "the move of our mail processing facility from Everett to Redmond."  Heaven help us. Our ballots have to ship four counties away and come back? What kind of secure "chain of custody" is that?!!

Carbon, Snow and Ice: How I voted and why...

Three PDF based snapshots from the Whatcom County Sample Ballot are at the end fo this post.   Here's a rundown on how I voted:

Matchbacks for 11/02/2014

Tonight's Whatcom County matchbacks counted 10,560 votes from this last Friday evening until Monday evening. The voter roll now stands at 129,857 registered voters. It has not been frozen. I asked the election staff tonight to update that figure, but they will not update it until after the election. 93,862 ballots remain out. Currently, there are 34,752 Good ballots (e.g 'ready for tabulation'), 245 Challenged Ballots, 504 Undeliverable, 904 ballots have been marked Void. You should receive notice if your ballot has been challenged. If you would like to check, go to myvote.wa.gov to see the status of your ballot. If you have not received a ballot and believed you were registered but did not change your address at myvote.wa.gov, you may still be able to contact the Elections office and work that out.

Matchback Report 10/30/2015

Matchback data 10.28.2015

Matchbacks 10.26.2015

Another 4,903 ballots were returned from Friday to Monday afternoon, bringing the total marked good ballots to 14,146 to date. These are the top ten precincts with the most "Good" ballots:

Now is the time!

MatchBacks through 10.23.2015 (now with more data)

Matchbacks through 10.21.1015

Below are the matchbacks for the Whatcom County General Election through 10.21.2015. 3,621 ballots have been marked as good. 251 Ballots have a return status of either Undeliverable, Challenged, or Void:

To win us to our harm

"To win us to our harm": An expository on whether we should build a new a jail in Whatcom County.

Ballots Coming!! Time to Vote By MAIL!! Why you should vote no matter what...

The 2015 Whatcom County Sample Ballot. Your ballot will be mailed starting October 14.

REMEMBER TO REGISTER TO VOTE!!

Tomorrow (October 5th,2015)  is the last day to register or reactivate your registration at myvote.wa.gov in Whatcom County. If you moved, you must reactivate your registration online with your new address by tomorrow! If you are having trouble, the Elections Office will help you!  There will be important votes for council, jail and political districting. Remember to register to vote! Code and output for this post are here. All data for active registrants: current as October 2, 2015:

Update your new address at myvote.wa.gov by Monday! "Flux" in the Voter Database

I have created this post in part as a type of public service announcement.  October 5th, Monday is the last day to update or register electronically to vote at myvote.wa.gov.  Washington has a somewhat unique and perhaps uniquely convenient solution to voter registration and voting: all electronic registration coupled with vote by mail ballots.  If you want to vote in the primary election in Whatcom County (or any other WA County) you must have a registration in good standing. You can check this at myvote.wa.gov and it is an excellent idea to do so whether you have moved or not.

"the most comprehensive police state in world history"

Dear Readers:

I have now spent good portions of my 'free' time this summer trying to understand crime/incarceration in Whatcom County and the United States. My statistical research is  here on my blog: http://www.bellinghampoliticsandeconomics.com .  A short video summary of my analysis of the Whatcom County press releases for the last 4.5 years is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl6x7b_v7EI

Drug and many other laws are pursued ruthlessly against the poor in America and in Whatcom County. We have created an apartheid society described in variants not exclusive of each other: people of color vs. white, fathers vs. families, men vs. women, impoverished vs. wealthy, prisoned vs. free. The Machiavellian value of the absurdly massive law and justice industry (also known as the 'PIC' or 'Prison Industrial Complex') that now counts as its prisoners 2.3 million of us (both in jails and prisons) is to create a level of social control that imprisons and jails more citizens per capita than either Russia or China.

We traumatize the lower classes and working classes here in the land of the free while terrorizing our middle classes in most urban and many small cities. This also helps keep unemployment and voter participation down and police/military/intelligences branches fully financed and recruited. As a side effect, a number of prison industries make a nice profit. Law and Justice throughout many small counties like Whatcom is functionally a multi-hundred million/year jobs program for white people to put many people of color and poverty in jail. Drug and DUI arrests are perhaps the biggest part of this. If you add to this the ridiculous volume of DV arrests/NCO, we now have a collection of powerful control mechanisns well designed to destroy the famies of people of color and poverty.  The vast advances in forensic, predictive, and surveillance technology now mean that our country has designed and implemented the most comprehensive police state in world history.

There is something terribly,terribly,terribly wrong with all of this. Our jail, law enforcement systems, and incarceration facilities are nothing our founding fathers would approve of.  In fact, I can think of no intellectual leader I have ever read and admired - not Jefferson, Christ, Marx, St. Francis, Einstein, Oppenheimer, Malcolm X, MLK, JFK or RFK -  that would approve of our current law and justice system. Whatever the state of our jail here in Whatcom County, there can be no question that all of us owe it to our own humanity and futures to examine how poverty, racism and incarceration function now in the United States. We owe it ourselves to ask the question: "Why are there so many people imprisoned in the United States?"

The italicized email message in quotes below the break is from Joy Gilfilen for Whatcom County Executive. Joy's campaign facebook site is here: https://www.facebook.com/votingforjoy?fref=ts . Joy's campaign website is here: http://votingforjoy.com.  COB has apparently "cut a deal" to support the new jail proposal. It may be on the agenda for tonight's (Tuesday - 9/15/2015)  county councils meeting. Details are apparently scarce.. The Restorative Community (Wednesday 9/16/2015) event is here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1464033593926637 . The Restorative Community report on community alternatives to incarceration is here: http://www.whatcomrec.org/RCCReport.pdf

Brennan Center report on Mass Incarceration and proposed reforms from political leaders.

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-2016-candidates-want-to-reform-criminal-justice-2015-4

Recidivism in Whatcom County Jail Bookings Records : 1/1/2011 - 7/1/2015

29,637 Bookings for Whatcom County Jail covering the 4.5 year period from 1/1/2011 to 7/1/2015. The vertical axis represents 17,256 unique names. 5,314 of those unique names had multiple bookings for the period with a range of 2  -  22 bookings per individual. Each unique name receives a random color for their bookings. See an animation of this chart here. See R code here. See notes on data/methodology at end. Click on the Charts to enlarge. 

This post discusses recidivism in Whatcom County jail. Recidivism is a primary concern for law and justice and  citizens. The bottom line on 'recidivism' is this: so many re-offend at such high rates that some criminology professors fundamentally doubt whether imprisonment has any significant effect on prohibiting crime.  Literature on this subject is abundant[1,2,3,4].  Some of us have come to the conclusion that imprisonment itself is the primary cause of recidivism; a counter intuitive analysis that has little political chance of wide scale adoption. I am looking at 'booking recidivism' or booking 'return buckets' in Whatcom County over the 4.5 year period from 1/1/2011 to 7/1/2015. (e.g. How many times a user is "booked" in that period.  For this definition of recidivism, I am counting multiple bookings or returns to jail per individual (user).   These aren't necessarily convictions. What I describe are 'return buckets' to our jail. Here are granular views at the 'return buckets' by user booking counts for these 4.5 years.  Click to enlarge chart.

Predicting Crime, Day of Rembrance, Bellingham Racial Justice Commission

Crime and justice issues on board for Sunday and Monday:

There will be a day of remembrance for Mike Brown tomorrow (Sunday) at 5:30 in Cornwall Park. This was also announced in the Herald.

On August 10th, Monday the Bellingham Police will have a hearing on the use of Bair Analytics predictive software. There will be a rally created by the Bellingham Racial Justice Commmission beforehand.

I've created some graphs and tables from 89 days of data from COB summaries. Predictive software uses existing data to predict where crime will happen. There has been some lively discussion about the use of predictive software and racial profiling. Here are the articles I found most interesting in researching predictive policing:

• http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/oakland-mayor-schaaf-and-police-seek-unproven-predictive-policing-software/Content?oid=4362343
• http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR200/RR233/RAND_RR233.pdf
• http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/19/5419854/the-minority-report-this-computer-predicts-crime-but-is-it-racist
• http://www.laweekly.com/news/license-plate-recognition-logs-our-lives-long-before-we-sin-2175357
• http://www.laweekly.com/news/forget-the-nsa-the-lapd-spies-on-millions-of-innocent-folks-4473467

Below is a three month look at crime high points and locations in Bellingham. There were 5533 Offense summaries for those 89 days. I created some tables and charts to summarize that volume. Code for this post is here. Click on charts to enlarge. 

Race and Incarceration in Whatcom County and WA.

"The hypersegregation of the black poor in ghetto communities has made the roundup easy. Confined to ghetto areas and lacking political power, the black poor are convenient targets. ... The enduring racial isolation of the ghetto poor has made them uniquely vulnerable in the War on Drugs. What happens to them does not directly affect—and is scarcely noticed by—the privileged beyond the ghetto’s invisible walls. Thus it is here, in the poverty-stricken, racially segregated ghettos, where the War on Poverty has been abandoned and factories have disappeared, that the drug war has been waged with the greatest ferocity. SWAT teams are deployed here; buy-and-bust operations are concentrated here; drug raids of apartment buildings occur here; stop-and-frisk operations occur on the streets here. Black and brown youth are the primary targets.[emphasis added -RMF]"  -Michelle Alexander "The New Jim Crow" 

Is Whatcom county a racist county in a racist state? I won't pretend to have the complete answer in this post.  I do know that something Bellingham and Lynden (two of Whatcom County's biggest cities) have in common, is that you can often spend the whole day downtown in either without ever noticing a person of color! And that makes it somehow very different from where my wife and I grew up in Oakland, CA.  This post will examine the county jails of WA and question whether or not racial bias is a part of Whatcom County and Washington's law and justice system.  Below is a table of WA state jails and their counts of  Total Population, Average Daily Jail Populations of 'People of Color'  (not white) and the all white populations of those 39 WA counties. City and regional jail data is appended  with no additional population data.

An Analysis of Whatcom County Jail Press Releases: Word Counts, Word Clouds, Relational Graphs,Criminogenic Cycles

Above: A word cloud capturing the most frequent terms (greater than 1000 mentions) of the The Whatcom County Jail Press Releases for  the past 4.5 years. In a word cloud analysis, a larger font equals higher term frequency. Click to enlarge all charts.

The data below in this first part of this post comes from the collected booking records of the Whatcom County Inmate Database: Press Releases. I looked at the collected records of  previous 4.5 years of this data to help me answer these questions:

• Why are citizens being booked into Whatcom County Jail?
• Who is being booked into Whatcom County Jail?

R code for this post: [1,2]

Bookings are not necessarily  representative of arrests nor convictions. Conceptually, bookings are the subset in between these three terms such that Arrests > Bookings > Convictions. I used simple term counting with some normalization, text mining, word cloud analysis, and graph analysis to show relationships and frequencies. My web query routines weren't perfect enough to prevent some small amount of missing data.  The terms used to describe the data and the format of those terms varied some from year to year as well. A sample of the collected raw data  for 4.5 years looks like this:

Jail Roster Booking Chart Data for 2015

Whatcom County Jail Roster Bookings categorized by arbitrary search term from Jaunary 1 to June 19 2015.

Last updated 5:15 AM 6/24/2015 -RMF

Wednesday this week the Bellingham City Club will feature three speakers on the topic: 
"Are we building a jail for the future or are we stuck in the past?". Today and tonight's agenda for the Whatcom County Council includes Jail Items. Below the break are some charts that look at data from Whatcom County Jail Roster press releases for 2015 from January 1st through June 19.  Clearly assault,  DUI,  DWLS, and violations (usually of protective orders) drive the volume of most charges for jail bookings in Whatcom County. 

The charts and data are subject to revision which I will note. This period (January 1st throught June 19, 2015) covers 6217 separate charged crimes from 333 unique crimes types in 72 unique 'Court' Codes.  6217 separate crimes were charged in 3102 separate 'bookings' against 2603 unique (individuals) IDs. 409 individuals were booked more than once in this period. 32 (individuals) IDs were booked more than thrice. Click on the charts to Enlarge. R 3.2 code with some output is here.

Washington’s death squads - World Socialist Web Site

Washington’s death squads - World Socialist Web Site