Hand recounts are more prone to error and fraud; why would Nickelson want one?

4 December 2023

It was certainly likely that John Nickelson, after being defeated in the Caddo sheriff election against Henry Whitehorn by a single vote, would challenge the results of the election. It’s not necessarily being a sore loser to want a recount after that kind of loss, and Nickelson did get one. A machine recount was performed, leaving the outcome unchanged, down to the vote differential.

Team Nickelson, however, has still not accepted the loss, and has made a series of allegations about the machine recount and the validity of certain ballots. Specific complaints include the counting of early voting ballots casted by voters who died before election day, and the possibility of a machine counting one vote twice. Attempting to force Whitehorn to win the election a third time, he has petitioned for a hand recount, which a judge will issue a ruling on this week. (Whitehorn’s team, for their part, filed a response brief two days later.)

Despite Nickelson’s insinuations, a machine recount is more accurate than a hand recount. A hand recount, because of the intimate inclusion of a human element, is more subject to fraud and simple error, not to mention more expensive in terms of monetary and time expenditures required to conduct one. One study from 2018 published in the journal “Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy”, found that optical ballot counting machines were more accurate than hand counts. With the election coming down to a single ballot, it seems like Team Nickelson wants to use these flawed aspects of a hand recount to his advantage, as the greater margin of error could swing his way.

There is also a semi-philosophical question that the judge should consider about the validity of early ballots whose casters were dead by election day. The same standard isn’t held to voters who cast their vote on election day, but die before the polls close (say, because they were fatally struck by a car after voting). Being dead before the election is called also does not disqualify a ballot by statute in the state of Louisiana. Eight states, including Arkansas, have statutes which permit those kinds of ballots to be counted.

A hand recount in Nickelson’s favor is likely to result in a special election being called. A special election, like a hand recount, could also swing the odds in the Caddo GOP’s favor, as the election turnout would likely be depressed and feature disproportionately more white, wealthy, voters than on election day in November 2023 (assuming historical trends hold and Democrat candidates fail to get out the vote for elections - the conditions being so unique here make it a hard election to predict the result of, as Whitehorn being perceived as being robbed of his victory may increase his supporters’ fervor and increase the turnout).

In their demand for a second recount, Nickelson and the Caddo GOP are exploiting their conservative constituents’ generalized suspicion, casting aspersions about the integrity of the electoral process in order to request a recount conducted by a more faulty process, one which is significantly more likely to be marred by fraud and error and therefore more likely to produce a false result.

It’s hard not to cast aspersions right back: why would Team Nickelson want a hand recount if hand recounts are more prone to fraud and human error? Is he simply under a kind of romantic impression that human, one might say “artisanal,” vote counters are incorruptible scions of big-D Democracy, and extremely good at their jobs to boot? The alternative is that he knows recounting by hand is more error prone and wants to exploit this possibility to trigger a special election.

Nickelson taking office under such circumstances would make the office even more unpopular with those who voted on election day for a change in the way the CPSO is run. It will tell everyone who used their vote to make such a change that the whole effort was for naught. There is a philosophically conservative argument here to be made for Whitehorn as sheriff: not only did he win the election plus the recount, Nickelson coming to power - as the hand-picked successor of the incumbent sheriff at that - through such a means would inspire widespread resentment of the CPSO and perhaps provoke a consideration of alternative means of change than the ballot box among the masses of people who voted for and sympathized with Whitehorn.

Neither candidate can honestly predict what direction crime will take under their watch. The most important factor influencing the crime rate, the intensity of economic precarity in Caddo parish, is not under their control. Still, Whitehorn’s campaign has promised to pursue policies which are preventative and not just punitive, while Team Nickelson and the Caddo GOP have campaigned against these kinds of measures in the past, most recently when the Caddo District Attorney attempted to pass an additional property tax aiming to fund such programs (incumbent sheriff Steve Prator argued that tax money should instead be raised for more beds in the parish’s juvenile detention facility, which is not at capacity, but which signals an intention to expand juvenile incarceration, sending more children to the universities of crime we call “correctional facilities”).

The Caddo GOP are, in the long-term, on the decline in Caddo, and are trying to hold on to the sheriff’s office for as long as they can. This charade by Team Nickelson is part of that clawing on to power. Conservative ideology is not enough to explain why Team Nickelson is so bent on overturning the result of this election, as Whitehorn is already a rather conservative candidate. This is a matter of party loyalty and a class loyalty to the social strata in Caddo Parish which the GOP and Nickelson as a candidate represent. It would be another great shame in this parish’s history if the election of the first Black sheriff since reconstruction gets overturned because Nickelson’s mere suspicions of irregularity spurred a faulty and error-prone hand recount.

UPDATE:

About one hour after posting this, Judge E. Joseph Bleich ruled in favor of Nickelson, ordering a special election to be held 23 March 2024. Bleich was the fourth judge to take the case, after three others recused themselves due to personal relationships with the candidates. This ruling virtually ensures that if Nickelson is elected in March, he will assume office with a tarnished reputation, which will extend to the wider sheriff’s department.

This is a dangerous mix for a politician like Nickelson who asserts the need for constitutionally dubious “stop and frisk” policing, and who echoes sheriff Prator’s demand for the expansion of incarceration. Whitehorn’s team also alluded to the potential for increased disorder in their document filed against Nickelson’s. Caddo’s white, so-called “conservative”, network of political elites (who are insulated from violent crime and only deal with the police when they get a traffic ticket) has not taken this seriously. The sheriff’s department under Nickelson’s watch promises more authoritarian policing and the continuation of a political culture that seems to want to antagonize Caddo parish’s Black demographic plurality.

The best hope for Whitehorn, besides Bleich’s decision being reversed, is that being robbed of his victory by the efforts of Caddo’s GOP will energize people to vote in the special election, and that Whitehorn can thereby win the election a third time. But this depends on political education efforts to make his base more aware of the real risks of the continuation of the old Prator regime and what benefits could be had by installing a new regime. Whitehorn’s campaign was relatively subdued before. Only time will tell if Nickelson’s chicanery will result in a political reawakening in Caddo.

I stand by the above, about the overturning of the election being a great shame. From the original removal of Indians from this land, to “bloody Caddo” being the epicenter of lynchings in the state of Louisiana, to the era of Jim Crow and segregation, to the Hot Biscuit riot in 1989, to the long and drawn out battle to remove the confederate battle flag and monument to confederate generals from the front of the Caddo courthouse, Caddo parish has a sordid history when it comes to racial oppression. We are still living with the legacy of institutionalized, de jure white supremacy in Louisiana. Segregation laws were in effect in this state and in this parish within living memory, and the city of Shreveport is still scarred and de facto segregated by the decisions of white municipal governments in the twentieth century to construct interstates through inner-city neighborhoods, which then divided the city along racial lines. The so-called “war on drugs” has helped to perpetuate systematic racism in this state as well as others. Black communities are subject to disproportionate police surveillance and disproportionate arrest and sentencing rates. Nickelson and the Caddo GOP clearly do not care that their actions and policies could inflame tensions further: what matters to Nickelson and the GOP is the preservation of Republican party rule in the parish at all costs, and thereby to protect the interests of the predominantly white elites who make up the leadership and rank-and-file of the Caddo GOP.