• Minnesota voters have awoken from their summer slumber. More than 8 out of 10 Minnesotans are interested in the November elections, a substantial increase that is being propelled by the energizing of formerly turned-off Democrats.
•Horner is crippling Emmer's campaign, soaking up one-fifth of Republican voters while taking only half as much from Dayton.
• Dayton is tapping voter frustration and appears better positioned among voters who have not yet declared their support for a candidate.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
GPI update; what happened to a tight race?
MPR/Humphrey released a new poll of the governor's race today and it's good news for the blue team. Not only do they show Mark Dayton with an 11 point edge, 38-27, the internals paint an even better picture.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Minnesota Senate Race Ratings
Last week I posted ratings for the Minnesota House races, this week it's the Senate's turn.
Quick Overview
The Senate is also up for grabs, if the Republicans run the table in the Toss-ups they would take control, but the DFL only needs to win three of them to remain in control, assuming they hold the rest of their seats. The overall picture for the Democrats is better in the senate than it is in the house if only marginally so.
Quick Overview
The Senate is also up for grabs, if the Republicans run the table in the Toss-ups they would take control, but the DFL only needs to win three of them to remain in control, assuming they hold the rest of their seats. The overall picture for the Democrats is better in the senate than it is in the house if only marginally so.
Monday, September 27, 2010
GPI update; mo' polls mo' problems
The StarTribune released a poll of the governor's race on Sunday with very different results from the last three polls to come out on the race, but with almost exactly the same results as their previous, pre-primary poll. So what's going on here?
First I'll update the GPI and then we can get into the poll itself.
With the inclusion of the Rasmussen poll last week Tom Emmer had gotten as close as he's been in a while, with this update he's lost ground. Looking back at all the polls of this cycle you see a definate pattern, Mark Dayton is polling anywhere from around 41-35, Tom Emmer is polling around 36-30 and Tom Horner is polling around 18-10. The only recent poll that has shown a number outside these ranges was Rasmussen showing Tom Emmer at 42 last week.
It might be that the Rasmussen poll was an outlier or it could have something to do with their pushing of leaners, but even before pushing leaners they were showing Emmer ahead 36-34, which was Emmer's first lead in a poll since a May Rasmussen poll. More likely than not it's just a case of Rasmussen being Rasmussen and showing a GOP advantage.
First I'll update the GPI and then we can get into the poll itself.
With the inclusion of the Rasmussen poll last week Tom Emmer had gotten as close as he's been in a while, with this update he's lost ground. Looking back at all the polls of this cycle you see a definate pattern, Mark Dayton is polling anywhere from around 41-35, Tom Emmer is polling around 36-30 and Tom Horner is polling around 18-10. The only recent poll that has shown a number outside these ranges was Rasmussen showing Tom Emmer at 42 last week.
It might be that the Rasmussen poll was an outlier or it could have something to do with their pushing of leaners, but even before pushing leaners they were showing Emmer ahead 36-34, which was Emmer's first lead in a poll since a May Rasmussen poll. More likely than not it's just a case of Rasmussen being Rasmussen and showing a GOP advantage.
Friday, September 24, 2010
GPI update; the new normal
Let's just get to it:
That's three polls in a row showing essentially a tied race, regardless of whatever issues some of us may have with some of these polls, an even evenly split electorate seems to be the new normal of the Minnesota Governors race.
While I usually agree with Joe, I don't have a problem with Rasmussen pushing leaners in this poll. As this old fivethrityeight post points out, most pollsters will push leaners to some degree or another and publish the with leaners and without leaners results, usually using the with leaners for their top lines. In the end most leaners will end up voting their lean anyways, so I don't see the problem with this method.
What's interesting about these numbers though is what happens to Tom Horner's numbers when leaners are pushed, he goes from 18% to 9%. This is indicative of what is likely to happen to much of his support if he can't pull into actual competitiveness, but for half of his support to evaporate means it's mostly soft support right now.
If the dynamics remain as they are the key to this whole thing will be who can GOTV.
That's three polls in a row showing essentially a tied race, regardless of whatever issues some of us may have with some of these polls, an even evenly split electorate seems to be the new normal of the Minnesota Governors race.
While I usually agree with Joe, I don't have a problem with Rasmussen pushing leaners in this poll. As this old fivethrityeight post points out, most pollsters will push leaners to some degree or another and publish the with leaners and without leaners results, usually using the with leaners for their top lines. In the end most leaners will end up voting their lean anyways, so I don't see the problem with this method.
What's interesting about these numbers though is what happens to Tom Horner's numbers when leaners are pushed, he goes from 18% to 9%. This is indicative of what is likely to happen to much of his support if he can't pull into actual competitiveness, but for half of his support to evaporate means it's mostly soft support right now.
If the dynamics remain as they are the key to this whole thing will be who can GOTV.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Minnesota House Race Ratings
Due to the dearth in information about the competitiveness of the Minnesota state legislative races I decided doing race ratings for the house and senate would be a good idea. If you don't know what I'm talking about when I say race ratings, I mean something along the lines of this. While Cook and some of the others who do this sort of thing on a national level usually use four tiers of rankings, I'm only going to use three; Safe, Tilt and Toss-up.
A Safe rating implies a very high confidence level, approaching 95%, so unless it's an upset of Weltian proportions, the chances of another outcome are not good. A Tilt rating is still likely to go in that direction, but there may be a red flag or two that is cause for hedging. A Toss-up means just that, it's a wide open race.
Quick Overview
First off, let's quickly go over the bottom line numbers before getting into the minutia of how the ratings were made and the actual ratings.
If these ratings are close than control of the house is in play this election, but all Democrats need to do is win a third the toss-ups to retain control and since most of the toss-ups are currently held by Democrats it's likely that they will. And if 32 seems like a lot of toss-ups, it's less then 25% of the total seats. I'll do an update to these when we're closer to the election that will likely push some of the Toss-ups out to Tilt status.
A Safe rating implies a very high confidence level, approaching 95%, so unless it's an upset of Weltian proportions, the chances of another outcome are not good. A Tilt rating is still likely to go in that direction, but there may be a red flag or two that is cause for hedging. A Toss-up means just that, it's a wide open race.
Quick Overview
First off, let's quickly go over the bottom line numbers before getting into the minutia of how the ratings were made and the actual ratings.
If these ratings are close than control of the house is in play this election, but all Democrats need to do is win a third the toss-ups to retain control and since most of the toss-ups are currently held by Democrats it's likely that they will. And if 32 seems like a lot of toss-ups, it's less then 25% of the total seats. I'll do an update to these when we're closer to the election that will likely push some of the Toss-ups out to Tilt status.
Friday, September 17, 2010
SILVER; US House
Last week I posted the complete SILVER listings for the US Senate, now for the US House. First a graph of the House Republicanss, just like when I did this for the Senate, the DW-Nominate scores are plotted on the x-axis and PVI on the y-axis.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
GPI update; SurveyUSA's Dem Downer Tour
SurveyUSA has shown some particularly bad numbers for Democrats this cycle and while their latest poll on the Minnesota governors race isn't bad news, it certainly isn't good. Here are the toplines:
There has been some significant movement towards Tom Emmer from the last SurveyUSA poll, both of which have been polls of likely voters, while Tom Horner has doubled his polling number. As I mentioned previously SurveyUSA has been Rasmussenesque in their election polling this year, often showing the Democratic candidate doing far worse then other pollsters, but they had been bucking that trend in Minnesota, until now that is.
There has been some significant movement towards Tom Emmer from the last SurveyUSA poll, both of which have been polls of likely voters, while Tom Horner has doubled his polling number. As I mentioned previously SurveyUSA has been Rasmussenesque in their election polling this year, often showing the Democratic candidate doing far worse then other pollsters, but they had been bucking that trend in Minnesota, until now that is.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Waiting for Tom Emmer's budget, A Samuel Becket play in many acts
Tom Emmer has now released parts 1 and 2 of his budget plan, and yet we still wait for Tom Emmer's budget plan.
(peers into shoe)
Part 1, the "jobs" part, consists of tax cuts that will magically pay for themselves. Part 2, the "kids" part, consists of kicking the can down the road, Pawlenty style, for another four years and a complete education reform that will, also magically, not cost any money.
What will Part 3 be? Will it be the end, or does Tom have yet more acts to follow it? Like Vladimir and Estragon we will have to wait, however impatiently, for our Godot to arrive.
(peers into hat)
What shall we do to pass the time? Let me think.
(places hat on head)
(thinks)
I've got it! Let's play a game. What will Part 3 of Tom Emmer's magical budget plan be? Will it be a unicorn for all little girls and a hockey stick for all little boys? Will it be fairy dust that when sprinkled on problems magically makes them go away? Will it be something else, something not so magical, like the elimination of LGA?
Play along in the comments for your chance to win nothing!
(peers into shoe)
Part 1, the "jobs" part, consists of tax cuts that will magically pay for themselves. Part 2, the "kids" part, consists of kicking the can down the road, Pawlenty style, for another four years and a complete education reform that will, also magically, not cost any money.
What will Part 3 be? Will it be the end, or does Tom have yet more acts to follow it? Like Vladimir and Estragon we will have to wait, however impatiently, for our Godot to arrive.
(peers into hat)
What shall we do to pass the time? Let me think.
(places hat on head)
(thinks)
I've got it! Let's play a game. What will Part 3 of Tom Emmer's magical budget plan be? Will it be a unicorn for all little girls and a hockey stick for all little boys? Will it be fairy dust that when sprinkled on problems magically makes them go away? Will it be something else, something not so magical, like the elimination of LGA?
Play along in the comments for your chance to win nothing!
Thursday, September 9, 2010
SILVER; US Senate
As promised here are the SILVER rankings for the entire U.S. Senate, but before we get to that, a few graphs.
That's a scatter plot of Senate Republicans, the X axis represents the DW-Nominate score and the Y axis is the PVI score. You'll notice that the scatter plot is basically random and that is reflected in the r-squared number, there isn't much of any correlation between Senate Republicans voting tendencies and the partisan nature of the states they represent.
Here's the Senate Democrats scatterplot:
What you see is a somewhat tighter, somewhat more linear distribution, with an r-squared value approaching 50. The Senate Democrats DW-Nominate and PVI scores are more correlated than the Senate Republicans.
When you put the two graphs together and you can actually see the partisan split.
What you can also see by looking at the SILVER rankings for the entire Senate GOP below, and as Nate pointed out last week, the Tea Party has actually been pretty smart in the incumbents they've taken out, as Bennett and Murkowski are among the least valuable GOP Senators according to this metric.
That's a scatter plot of Senate Republicans, the X axis represents the DW-Nominate score and the Y axis is the PVI score. You'll notice that the scatter plot is basically random and that is reflected in the r-squared number, there isn't much of any correlation between Senate Republicans voting tendencies and the partisan nature of the states they represent.
Here's the Senate Democrats scatterplot:
What you see is a somewhat tighter, somewhat more linear distribution, with an r-squared value approaching 50. The Senate Democrats DW-Nominate and PVI scores are more correlated than the Senate Republicans.
When you put the two graphs together and you can actually see the partisan split.
What you can also see by looking at the SILVER rankings for the entire Senate GOP below, and as Nate pointed out last week, the Tea Party has actually been pretty smart in the incumbents they've taken out, as Bennett and Murkowski are among the least valuable GOP Senators according to this metric.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
The GOP's missed votes
While looking at missed votes for my earlier post on Tom Emmers missed votes there was something else I noticed, Tom Emmer wasn't the only Minnesota House GOPer who missed a lot of votes. The member that missed the second most votes was a Republican, Slayton Rep. Doug Magnus. Third most was also a from the GOP, Jim Abeler. Fourth most, you guessed it, Republican Paul Kohls. Fifth was Paul Thissen, the first Democrat on the list.
It gets worse though. The DFL has 87 members in the house the GOP has 47, the DFL missed a total of 1,194 votes, the GOP missed 1,370. The DFL has 85% more members in the house and yet the GOP still missed 15% more votes. Even excluding Mr. Emmer and his gargantuan 147 missed votes the GOP still missed more votes than the DFL. To further an analogy, if Tom Emmer is the Babe Ruth of missed votes, the house GOP are the New York Yankees.
I suppose when you're as deep in the minority as the Minnesota GOP is in the house you can get kind of discouraged about voting, but really, is there any excuse for this kind of systematic failure to show up and do your job?
It gets worse though. The DFL has 87 members in the house the GOP has 47, the DFL missed a total of 1,194 votes, the GOP missed 1,370. The DFL has 85% more members in the house and yet the GOP still missed 15% more votes. Even excluding Mr. Emmer and his gargantuan 147 missed votes the GOP still missed more votes than the DFL. To further an analogy, if Tom Emmer is the Babe Ruth of missed votes, the house GOP are the New York Yankees.
I suppose when you're as deep in the minority as the Minnesota GOP is in the house you can get kind of discouraged about voting, but really, is there any excuse for this kind of systematic failure to show up and do your job?
Friday, September 3, 2010
County hPVI Map
After making the map of the counties Mark Dayton won in the DFL primary I got a little map making crazy and made a bunch of maps. One of them is a map of the County hPVI list I posted awhile ago.
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The way the color coding works is any county with an hPVI of D+5 to R+5 is white, any county with an hPVI of D+6 to D+20 is light blue and any county with an hPVI greater than D+20 is dark blue. The GOP counties followed the same parameters, so light red is R+6 to R+20 and dark red is R+21 and greater.
The way the color coding works is any county with an hPVI of D+5 to R+5 is white, any county with an hPVI of D+6 to D+20 is light blue and any county with an hPVI greater than D+20 is dark blue. The GOP counties followed the same parameters, so light red is R+6 to R+20 and dark red is R+21 and greater.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
GPI update, another weird Humphrey poll
With the release today of a new MPR/Humphrey poll I can once again update the GPI. Below is a list of the current polls included in the index followed by the current numbers.
Joe posted an excellent analysis of the Humphrey poll earlier today pointing out some of the issues with it. These are not the kinds of issues that disqualify a poll from being included in the index and is in fact the main reason for wanting to get a composite number from a combination of polls rather then relying on a single poll.
Having said all of that, partisan sampling problems do seem to be something of a trend for MPR/Humphrey institute polls. I posted this about their governor's race poll from May:
This polls breakdown is similar to the Humphrey poll from May in that the partisan breakdowns in both polls look nothing like the partisan breakdowns being used by anybody else who's polled this state. Now, maybe Humphrey knows something that all of the other pollsters don't, but judging by their 3.15 pollster rating, the sixth worst score of any pollster in Nate's database, my guess is that their polling suffers from a flaw in the methodology somewhere.
From MPR's article on the poll:
There is no mention of weighting the partisan numbers, so they probably don't, which would explain why they ended up with the split they did and probably also explains why they have such a poor track record.
Putting that aside, and as Joe pointed out, no matter how you slice it this is bad news for Tom Emmer. In a poll that consists of 46% republicans he could only manage to get the support of 34% of them. In what has to be considered a best case scenario for Tom Emmer he's only at parity with Mark Dayton. Don't let the media reports over the next few days fool you, this race is not "deadlocked" right now, Mark Dayton is clearly in the drivers seat.
Joe posted an excellent analysis of the Humphrey poll earlier today pointing out some of the issues with it. These are not the kinds of issues that disqualify a poll from being included in the index and is in fact the main reason for wanting to get a composite number from a combination of polls rather then relying on a single poll.
Having said all of that, partisan sampling problems do seem to be something of a trend for MPR/Humphrey institute polls. I posted this about their governor's race poll from May:
...the MPR/Humphrey Institute poll's sampling was 42% DFL, 42% GOP and 15% Independent. I honestly don't know where they got these numbers from, perhaps their rectum, but they certainly are not representative of Minnesota's partisan breakdown. First of all 15% is an incredibly low number for Independent's in Minnesota.
This polls breakdown is similar to the Humphrey poll from May in that the partisan breakdowns in both polls look nothing like the partisan breakdowns being used by anybody else who's polled this state. Now, maybe Humphrey knows something that all of the other pollsters don't, but judging by their 3.15 pollster rating, the sixth worst score of any pollster in Nate's database, my guess is that their polling suffers from a flaw in the methodology somewhere.
From MPR's article on the poll:
The survey data has also been weighted to accomodate for factors such as the number of telephone lines, cell phone usage, gender, age, race and ethnicity to approximate the demographic characteristics of the state's population according to the Census.
There is no mention of weighting the partisan numbers, so they probably don't, which would explain why they ended up with the split they did and probably also explains why they have such a poor track record.
Putting that aside, and as Joe pointed out, no matter how you slice it this is bad news for Tom Emmer. In a poll that consists of 46% republicans he could only manage to get the support of 34% of them. In what has to be considered a best case scenario for Tom Emmer he's only at parity with Mark Dayton. Don't let the media reports over the next few days fool you, this race is not "deadlocked" right now, Mark Dayton is clearly in the drivers seat.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Tom Emmer's missed votes
Alliance for a Better Minnesota is currently running an ad highlighting Tom Emmer's habit of missing votes in the legislature. It just so happens that I am currently in the process of compiling all of the legislative votes of all of the current legislators for the formulation of a state level DW-Nominate style scoring system, meaning I just so happen to have a database of all of the roll call votes for the 2010 session and can evaluate these claims.
Anytime you hear "so and so has done a thing X number of times," it's helpful to know what X is relative to Y and Z. In this case Alliance for a Better Minnesota claims that Tom Emmer missed 142 votes of 621 taken, so at the very least it would be nice to know what the average number of votes missed is.
My database includes a total of 650 votes for the 2010 regular session and special session combined (there were two votes that took place in a one day special session) and Tom Emmer missed 147 of those votes. I'm not sure which votes I'm including that Alliance for a Better Minnesota isn't, the link they provide for their source is the same source I used to compile my database.
So while Alliance for a Better Minnesota claims Tom Emmer missed one out of every five votes (it's actually more, over 22% if you figure 142/621) according to my database Tom Emmer "only" missed over 18% of votes. The word only in that sentence is in quotes because Tom Emmer only missed more votes than any other legislator and it's not even close.
Again according to the database I compiled of roll call votes Tom Emmer missed 147, second in missed votes was Doug Magnus with 111 and they're the only two who missed more than 100. The mean number of votes missed was 19, but in a skewed data set like this one mean is not the measure that you want to use for average, median is and the median number of votes missed was 9.
That's rather staggering when put into context, Tom Emmer missed 147 votes and the average legislator missed 9. The z-score, standard deviations from the mean, of Tom Emmer's missed votes is an out of this world 4.61. You could say that Tom Emmer is the Babe Ruth of missing votes.
To be fair to Tom let's just compare him with other Representatives who were running for Governor.
Even among those house members who were also running for Governor, Tom Emmer was the gold standard of missed votes. The guy he beat for the Republican nomination, Marty Seifert missed only 1 vote.
I would say that the missed votes critique is a perfectly fair one and if anything Alliance for a Better Minnesota went easy on Tom Emmer by just focusing on how many votes he missed without putting it in the context of how many votes other legislator's missed.
Anytime you hear "so and so has done a thing X number of times," it's helpful to know what X is relative to Y and Z. In this case Alliance for a Better Minnesota claims that Tom Emmer missed 142 votes of 621 taken, so at the very least it would be nice to know what the average number of votes missed is.
My database includes a total of 650 votes for the 2010 regular session and special session combined (there were two votes that took place in a one day special session) and Tom Emmer missed 147 of those votes. I'm not sure which votes I'm including that Alliance for a Better Minnesota isn't, the link they provide for their source is the same source I used to compile my database.
So while Alliance for a Better Minnesota claims Tom Emmer missed one out of every five votes (it's actually more, over 22% if you figure 142/621) according to my database Tom Emmer "only" missed over 18% of votes. The word only in that sentence is in quotes because Tom Emmer only missed more votes than any other legislator and it's not even close.
Again according to the database I compiled of roll call votes Tom Emmer missed 147, second in missed votes was Doug Magnus with 111 and they're the only two who missed more than 100. The mean number of votes missed was 19, but in a skewed data set like this one mean is not the measure that you want to use for average, median is and the median number of votes missed was 9.
That's rather staggering when put into context, Tom Emmer missed 147 votes and the average legislator missed 9. The z-score, standard deviations from the mean, of Tom Emmer's missed votes is an out of this world 4.61. You could say that Tom Emmer is the Babe Ruth of missing votes.
To be fair to Tom let's just compare him with other Representatives who were running for Governor.
Even among those house members who were also running for Governor, Tom Emmer was the gold standard of missed votes. The guy he beat for the Republican nomination, Marty Seifert missed only 1 vote.
I would say that the missed votes critique is a perfectly fair one and if anything Alliance for a Better Minnesota went easy on Tom Emmer by just focusing on how many votes he missed without putting it in the context of how many votes other legislator's missed.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
SILVER 2.0
Back in June I introduced SILVER as a metric to measure how partisan a member of congress is compared to the voting tendencies of their district or state. I did this by combining PVI and DW-Nominate and I scaled it (or attempted to) to the same -1 to 1 scale that DW-Nominate uses. Since that time I’ve been forced to give the issue some more thought because of a baseball stat called NERD.
Believe it or not when I first developed the SILVER stat I was not aware that Crisitunity from the excellent Swing State Project blog had already developed a similar thing. Crisitunity computed his version in a different way, ranking the PVI and DW-Nominate scores of all members of the house on a 1 to 435 scale and then using the difference between the two rankings as his score. This might be a better method than the one I employed in my first version, but in the end we’re trying to measure two different things.
The system that Crisitunity developed measures house members against each other without regard to party affiliation, the point is to measure the overall liberalness of a legislator in the context of their district against the house as a whole. SILVER is meant to measure a legislator against his or her own party, not the entire legislative body.
Believe it or not when I first developed the SILVER stat I was not aware that Crisitunity from the excellent Swing State Project blog had already developed a similar thing. Crisitunity computed his version in a different way, ranking the PVI and DW-Nominate scores of all members of the house on a 1 to 435 scale and then using the difference between the two rankings as his score. This might be a better method than the one I employed in my first version, but in the end we’re trying to measure two different things.
The system that Crisitunity developed measures house members against each other without regard to party affiliation, the point is to measure the overall liberalness of a legislator in the context of their district against the house as a whole. SILVER is meant to measure a legislator against his or her own party, not the entire legislative body.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
A victory for public defenders, maybe
From the Pioneer Press:
This is a big deal for a criminal justice system, public defenders in particular, that have been on the receiving end of a number of budget cuts. The judge has given them the green light to hire the needed attorneys on a contract basis, although at this point no one is quite sure how it will get paid for.
That these services need to be funded was central to the judge’s ruling, from Chief Public Defender Karen Duncan’s interview with MPR:
The actual series of events that lead to Duncan asking for relief from the 46 cases is unusual, a combination of six attorneys taking a leave of absence and a case coming in with 17 co-defendants, all needing a public defender. But the underlying problem is real.
Again from Duncan’s interview with MPR:
The big question now becomes, will there be more of this? The 3rd Judicial District is not the only one with an overworked public defender’s office and it will be interesting to see if similar requests are made in other districts.
The entire interview is worth a listen:
A Steele County judge has ruled that public defenders in the 3rd Judicial District may not drop 46 criminal defense cases they say they're too short-staffed to handle.
Instead, the district's office of public defense must contract attorneys to represent the defendants, who would otherwise not be able to afford to hire their own private attorneys.
The ruling sets the wheels in motion for a possible showdown with state officials over staffing and funding for those attorneys constitutionally required to represent defendants facing possible incarceration.
This is a big deal for a criminal justice system, public defenders in particular, that have been on the receiving end of a number of budget cuts. The judge has given them the green light to hire the needed attorneys on a contract basis, although at this point no one is quite sure how it will get paid for.
That these services need to be funded was central to the judge’s ruling, from Chief Public Defender Karen Duncan’s interview with MPR:
"I think it's dangerous for our citizens if we're deciding that we no longer need to fund core government services," she said. "Public defense and the criminal court system is a constitutional mandate. It's not an option. It's not frosting for the citizenry."
The actual series of events that lead to Duncan asking for relief from the 46 cases is unusual, a combination of six attorneys taking a leave of absence and a case coming in with 17 co-defendants, all needing a public defender. But the underlying problem is real.
Again from Duncan’s interview with MPR:
"All of these things were happening at once," Duncan said. "And then I'm seeing more staff people still at work after midnight, working at 4 o'clock in the morning. And it was just so obvious that we cannot continue to do this."
Duncan said that, as a result, attorneys missed several court hearings that week.
"I'm not sure how much worse it can feel to go to court and have your lawyer not be there," she said.
The big question now becomes, will there be more of this? The 3rd Judicial District is not the only one with an overworked public defender’s office and it will be interesting to see if similar requests are made in other districts.
The entire interview is worth a listen:
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