Huh… well that’s disappointing.

Was it the paper they cite in the article or was it another one?

I’m supposed to be writing now but I suppose I’m diving down this rabbit hole again.

My read here is that Mebane found this method he thought was cool and has written some conference papers because he thought the results were really interesting.

Then ETA found his paper, took it entirely out of context, and didn’t do literally any background research before they ran with it.

The other thing is like, political scientists get really finicky about definitions. So my guess, is that he’s either calling it fraud based on a definition from existing literature or the person who created the method called the observations frauds and he’s following that.

Mebane himself isn’t necessarily a red flag. He’s been tenured faculty for a while and a not insignificant number of professors only really publish with grad students at that point in their careers. Michigan is a top school, which means they have a lot more grad students solo authoring papers.

An eye roll plus annoyed resignation is probably the best description

Mebane has been writing this stuff for years and doesn’t walk readers through his logic anymore based on what I’ve read. I’m sure someone sent him a vague email and then took a vague reply as his blessing.

It’s definitely a choice.

But I mean, how could we possibly expect them to think for longer than, I don’t know, three minutes.

That’s entirely too big of an ask when someone is trying to make up numbers that say an election was stolen.