A Misuse of Statistical Reasoning: The Statistical Arguments Offered by Texas to the Supreme Court in an Attempt to Overturn the Results of the 2020 Election

In December 2020, Texas filed a motion to the U.S. Supreme Court claiming that the four battleground states: Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin did not conduct their 2020 presidential elections in compliance with the Constitution. Texas supported its motion with a statistical analysis pu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Statistics and public policy (Philadelphia, Pa.) Pa.), 2022-12, Vol.9 (1), p.67-73
Main Authors: Miao, Weiwen, Pan, Qing, Gastwirth, Joseph L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
2020 Presidential Election
Compliance
Control group
Early voting
Election results
Hypotheses
Presidential elections
Probability
Quantitative analysis
Random sample
Statistics
Supreme courts
Urban areas
Voter behavior
Voter turnout
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Summary:In December 2020, Texas filed a motion to the U.S. Supreme Court claiming that the four battleground states: Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin did not conduct their 2020 presidential elections in compliance with the Constitution. Texas supported its motion with a statistical analysis purportedly demonstrating that it was highly improbable that Biden had more votes than Trump in the four battleground states. This article points out that Texas's claim is logically flawed and the analysis submitted violated several fundamental principles of statistics.
ISSN:2330-443X
2330-443X
DOI:10.1080/2330443X.2022.2050327