When It Comes to R-71 Signatures, to Err Is Human, and to Err More Often is Divine
As the count continues, everyone's least favorite referendum is looking less likely to make the ballot. The petitions for R-71 (which, if you haven't been paying attention, would cancel the recently passed domestic partnership law) are now showing an unsustainable rate of invalid signatures . After yesterday's count, a little over 10% of the petitions have been processed and the error rate is 13%. (To pass, the measure needs an error rate closer to 12%.) Yesterday's batch had a higher error rate than Monday's, which had a higher error rate than Friday's. As Horse's Ass noted, the error rate is likely to increase because the rate of duplicate signatures increases exponentially as you increase the size of the pool. And the duplicate rate has gone up--over half of the duplicate were discovered in yesterday's count of roughly 1/3 of the ballots. Of the 17,317 signatures that have so far been processed, only 45 have been duplicates, but doubling your count, as happened in yesterday's tiny sample size, could work pretty well, as the old wheat and chessboard problem demonstrates. Double down, duplicates!
13% error rate is definitely in the danger zone
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