Ecological Fallacy - Legal Applications

Legal Applications

The ecological fallacy was discussed in a court challenge to the Washington gubernatorial election, 2004 in which a number of illegal voters were identified, after the election; their votes were unknown, because the vote was by secret ballot. The challengers argued that illegal votes cast in the election would have followed the voting patterns of the precincts in which they had been cast, and thus adjustments should be made accordingly. An expert witness said this approach was like trying to figure out Ichiro Suzuki's batting average by looking at the batting average of the entire Seattle Mariners team, since the illegal votes were cast by a unrepresentative sample of each precinct's voters, and might be as different from the average voter in the precinct as Ichiro was from the rest of his team. The judge determined that the challengers' argument was an ecological fallacy, and rejected it.