Are You Waiting To Go To The Dentist Until Bernie Starts Implementing Medicare-For-All?

If you’ve been reading DWT with even the slightest regularity, you probably know what a big fan of Medicare I am. I feared it when I was in my late 50s because I had what I thought was perfect private insurance, a platinum plan that AOL-TimeWarner gave to divisional chairmen and presidents. But once I retired and turned 65, I had to move to Medicare-- and just as I was diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer. I soon discovered that Medicare wasn’t worse or just as good as my platinum plan… but much better. Yep, much better. Except for a couple of things-- things conservatives had done to make Medicare worse-- making sure it didn’t cover dentistry and more recently, attaching a horrendous drug plan (Medicare Part D), which is meant to pay back pharmaceutical companies for massive campaign contributions and other bribes to members of Congress. Medicare beats even the best private insurance available except for the things conservatives have ruined in the plan the way it was originally conceived. The Bernie and Pramila Jayapal plans pending before Congress-- which will never be voted on until Moscow Mitch and Pelosi are out of power-- fix all those problems.

In 2012 Greg Kaufmann, reporting for The Nation looked at the disaster that is American dentistry in the form of a Q&A with Bernie, who, as chairman of the subcommittee on primary health and aging, had “began preparing for a hearing on The Dental Crisis in America… While the senator is well known for his advocacy of a single-payer healthcare system, he is also a longtime and passionate advocate for the expansion of Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs)-- community health centers in underserved areas that provide primary medical care, dental care, mental health counseling and low-cost prescription drugs on a sliding-fee basis. He fought for these centers as a congressman prior to his election to the Senate in 2006, and he was a major player in ensuring that there was a significant investment in FQHCs in the healthcare reform legislation passed in 2010. But with 47 million people living in areas where it’s still difficult to access dental care, 17 million low-income children not seeing a dentist every year and one-fourth of U.S. adults over age 65 missing all of their teeth, Sanders says there is still a long way to go to address this crisis.” Kaufmann interviewed him a few days before the hearing.

Kaufmann: Dental disease has been called “the silent epidemic” or “the hidden healthcare crisis.” Is that how you would characterize it?

Bernie: Absolutely. We have a real crisis both in terms of access to affordable dental care-- and not only for lower-income Americans but for many in the middle-class as well-- and the consequences of a lack of treatment.

Let’s be clear. There are nearly 50 million Americans living in places where it’s difficult to access dental care, and 130 million Americans do not have dental insurance coverage. As a nation, I think it’s a pretty sad state of affairs when one-fourth of US adults over 65 have lost all of their teeth. What that means for that generation is that they didn’t get proper dental care and their teeth were yanked, rather than being treated. And it’s a sad state of affairs that we have only 45 percent of Americans age 2 and older who saw a dentist in the last twelve months.

If you are one of the people who go to a dentist on a regular basis, who can afford the high cost of dental care, you may not be aware of how serious this crisis is. But the reality is there are tens and tens of millions of Americans who do not have access to a dentist, or who cannot afford dental care even if they have access to it, and this impacts a lot of kids, a lot of seniors, and working people in general.

When we talk about the healthcare crisis in America we’ve got to also be talking about the dental crisis and how to address it.

Kaufmann: Given that so many people are impacted by a lack of access to care, why do you think the issue doesn’t get more attention?

Bernie: I think the American Dental Association has been aggressive in trying to prevent real dental reform. And except in rare cases when people are dying-- there’s some attention then-- but if you’re talking about toothaches being the major cause of student absenteeism, or increasing risk for diabetes, heart disease, poor birth outcomes, it’s just not going to get the same kind of attention. And I also think because low-income people bear the brunt of this crisis-- the needs of low-income people never get a whole lot of attention.

Kaufmann: In preparation for the hearing, you’ve asked people to share their stories about finding quality dental care. What kind of response have you gotten?

Bernie: An unbelievable response. We’ve now received over 1,000 testimonials. Many of them are from the state of Vermont, but many are from other parts of the country too. And it just tells me that people who are suffering with dental disease and problems with access have never had a chance to express themselves so they’re taking advantage of this opportunity to do it. Time and again, we’re hearing from adults who say they’ve been living with rotting teeth, or for years haven’t been able to afford a dentist, or they are struggling to find a dentist who will treat their kids.

Kaufmann: Can you talk more about how the dental crisis is impacting both lower-income people as well as the middle-class?

Bernie: Let’s be honest, dental care in America is extremely expensive, period. If you walk down the street and trip, and knock out a couple teeth, you’re talking thousands of dollars to get those teeth replaced and plenty of people can’t afford that. We have many dentists throughout this country who do not treat Medicaid patients-- only about 20 percent of the nation’s practicing dentists accept people on Medicaid-- and parts of the country where there is no Medicaid available for dental care at all. We’ve got many dentists now who are primarily into cosmetic dentistry, they’ve moved away from basic dentistry. We also have a graying dentist population, with more dentists retiring each year than students graduating from dental schools to replace them. So, we don’t have enough dentists, and we certainly don’t have enough dentists in the communities where the crisis is the greatest and people are in most desperate need of one. Low-income people, racial or ethnic minorities, pregnant women, seniors, people with special needs, people in rural areas-- they all have a much harder time accessing a dentist than other groups of Americans.

Kaufmann: You have made a big push for community health center funding over the years-- certainly during the healthcare reform debate but even long before then in the House. Dental care was an important part of that push. Have you seen any impact from the funding you and your allies were able to steer towards that effort?

Bernie: Absolutely, and here’s the good news: any newly established-- and there are many-- federally qualified community health center must provide dental care. In Vermont, we now have the highest percentage of people in the country per capita who are visiting community health centers-- 18 percent of Vermonters use them for their primary care. We’ve seen a huge expansion of dental clinics in the state—beautiful state-of-the-art clinics in a number of the community health centers. And wherever these clinics arise there are waiting lines to get in there, and the reason for that is that the community health centers are there to treat people whether they are on Medicaid or any other program and have no health insurance. So the need is extraordinary and people are coming in big time. We still have a long way to go in Vermont but we’ve made some real progress, and I suspect that’s happening around the country as we expand the number of community health centers. There are now over 3.5 million people who receive dental services at 1,100 community health centers across the country. But I want to emphasize, we still have a very, very long way to go.

Kaufmann: At Wednesday’s hearing, what aspects of the crisis will you be exploring?

Bernie: We want to hear first of all about the crisis of access. We know that, for example, there are hundreds of thousands of visits to emergency rooms in the US every year to deal with preventable dental conditions. We also want to hear about the ideas out there in terms of how we can expand the dental workforce-- and not just in terms of dentists but an expansion of workers who may not have a dental degree but do have training in dental care. In Minnesota, they are called “dental therapists,” and it’s similar to a nurse practitioner in the medical field. The Kellogg Foundation estimated that 25 to 30 percent of routine dental services could be performed by a dental therapist. There are also fifty countries around the world that use these kinds of dental care providers, including Great Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand-- so why can’t we do it here? We also have to make sure that we continue to expand the dental clinics within the community health centers. Also, one of the areas I personally think has extraordinary potential and is very cost-effective is literally having a dental office in schools. We’ve done that now in three locations in Vermont and in every instance it is working very, very well-- and we know it’s important. The US Surgeon General’s Report in 2000 noted that students miss 50 million-- 50 million!-- hours of school in a year due to dental problems.

Kaufmann: Any new legislation to expand dental access will face significant opposition from Republicans and conservative Democrats based on cost. Can you talk a little bit more about this issue of cost-effectiveness?

Bernie: Look, if you have somebody who doesn’t have health insurance, who doesn’t have a doctor or dentist, and in order to deal with their cold or flu or dental problem, they go to an emergency room-- in general, that visit will cost ten times more than walking into a community health center. Expect to hear testimony about the exorbitant costs states are incurring that could be avoided if people had basic, preventive care.

So when you build a community health center or a dental clinic you are getting people away from the emergency room and you are saving substantial sums of money. You are also saving money with regular cleanings and care by not having to do more expensive dental procedures down the road. And again, dental disease and poor teeth can lead to other very significant health problems-- digestive problems, diabetes, heart disease, infections-- people have died as a result of brain infections related to dental decay.

But it’s not just a question of money, it’s a question of pain, it’s a question of time missed at work or school. So I think you can make a strong case that an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure.

Kaufmann: You’ve long been passionate about this issue and you’ve kept pushing it over many years. Where does that passion comes from?

Bernie: In 1969, two days after my son was born, I moved up to an area of Vermont in the northeast part of the state, which is called the Northeast Kingdom-- it’s the most rural part of the state and the poorest part of the state. And I will never forget this young boy, 10 or 11 years old-- here’s a kid whose teeth were rotting in his mouth, I’d not seen anything like that ever. It just blew me away and I found out how severe the problem is. I’ve never forgotten that.

Two years ago or so I was visiting a brand new dental clinic in Hardwick, Vermont, about two miles away from where that kid had lived. An older guy brought in his granddaughter who was in high school. The granddaughter was going to this dental clinic for her routine cleaning, her teeth were in beautiful shape. The old man had no teeth in his mouth at all. He said he’d have teeth if there had been a clinic. But we still have such a long way to go.

If you walk down the street today, and you see somebody who has two front teeth missing, you know that that person is poor. And the truth is that when that person goes in to apply for a job it will be far more difficult to get that job. It’s a badge of poverty and it impacts people’s ability to get ahead.

Kaufmann: Do you anticipate offering legislation coming off of this hearing?

Bernie: Yes. It will include many of the ideas we’ve talked about and that we’ll discuss at the hearing. It deals with the absolute need to make sure that we have access for all Americans to decent quality dental care. Raising Medicaid reimbursement rates to dental care may be part of the solution but ultimately we have to make sure that there are providers who are prepared to treat lower-income and working class people who today cannot afford care. It’s a question of getting dentists and healthcare professionals into areas where they will treat people who need treatment.

Liam O’Mara, a Riverside County history professor and progressive activist is running to represent the Southern California congressional district held by untreated  sex-fiend and corrupt Trumpist Ken Calvert. Calvert doesn’t believe in supporting public health in any way so, is an opponent of not just Medicare-for-All, not for plain ole Medicare as well. O’Mara brings an entirely different perspective to the debate. "I know a great many people without dental or vision insurance, which means far higher costs when things inevitably go wrong,” he told us yesterday. "In fact, I am among them, as one of the many academics who slip between the cracks of good coverage because of the way the field has pushed us into part-time contractors. I know people in my circle who've not seen a dentist in a decade or more. Is it any surprise that billboards for tooth implants are proliferating along freeways in poorer areas? The lack of coverage pushes people into expensive catastrophic care, despite regular check-ups being far cheaper and more healthful. Dentistry is one of countless areas where we could save money if we just made insurance available to everyone. Bernie's plan does that, and we need to elect enough progressives to see it become law."

Heidi Sloan, is a progressive Democrat competing with anti-healthcare Trumpist Roger Williams for a gerrymandered seat in central Texas (TX-25)."Medicare For All," Heidi, who sent us this tweet (above) from a few days back, told us, "is about providing care to all people and to our whole bodies. That means vision, reproductive health, mental health, and dental. Our teeth are not somehow separate from the rest of our bodies, and it is absurd that the insurance industry has convinced us to think of our dental health as something different from our health in general-- as though receiving care for these bones were a treat instead of a necessary component of well-being. When I chew food, I don't think I'm experiencing a luxury. If you've ever had wisdom teeth come in, you know that alleviating that pain should not be regarded as a nice bonus that you get if you can afford it. In demanding Medicare For All, we are demanding the working class have real healthcare for our bodies, and we're not buying that our teeth are somehow exempt from that demand anymore."

Morgan Harper is running for a seat in Columbus, Ohio held by a do-nothing Democratic backbencher, Joyce Beatty. Morgan will never be accused of being a do-nothing-- and passing Medicare-for-All is one of the planks in her progressive platform. "The dentistry crisis in this country," she said, "is largely overshadowed by the broader healthcare crisis; it cannot be ignored. Millions of Americans do not have easy access to quality dental care, millions more are uninsured, and for those who are fortunate to have dental insurance, the quality of that coverage often does little to offset the costs of needed procedures. We must do better." 

New Frank Zappa Documentary Affirms Lifelong Advocacy For Freedom of Speech

Pennsylvania state trooper Chuck Ash and Frank Zappa, circa early '80s

-by Denise Sullivan

"A country that doesn't sustain its culture… maybe it shouldn't exist," Frank Zappa once said of his beloved USA. "They don't make it easy for you to be a musician…"Esthetic enrichment-- this is not a major consideration in the United States," he said. Zappa was asserting these inalienable truths over 30 years ago, at a time when he was already well into his under-appreciated and misunderstood career, and before he'd turned his attention to advocating for other artists at risk of erasure and censorship. Contrary to his media image as a drug-crazed hippie, Zappa was a serious composer, performer, and freedom of expression advocate who was also drug-free and generally politically and personally conservative. As he worked tirelessly through art and activism to shine a light on our culture's inconsistencies and shortcomings, his music became more exalted outside the U.S., culminating in awards and an appointment by Czech president, Václav Havel. Bolstered by an accumulated and vast worldwide media archive underscoring the artist's international stature, director Thorsten Schütte has compiled a trove of largely unseen footage and cut it into Eat That Question: Frank Zappa In His Own Words, a new documentary highlighting the complexities of the artist's public persona and its relationship to the media.

"Zappa is a very eloquent person in comparison to a great many pop stars. It's rewarding to listen to him," explained Schütte during an interview in San Francisco last week. His film's unusual format-- no exposition, no captioning-- is a fresh approach to music documentary. The wealth of unseen performance and interview footage delivered by his riveting subject makes for exciting viewing, though at the outset of the filmmaking process the director had his doubts if the approach would add up to anything in the end. "My goodness, will you be able to really listen to him for 90 minutes, would it be fatiguing? He's a difficult character; he has an attitude, very spiky," he said. Luckily, early cuts of the film revealed Zappa's ability to cut through the screen and deliver a deep message on freedom of thought and expression, his lifelong passions, and concerns no less relevant now than they were in the artist's own life and times. With his brand of commentary and social satire still raging, Eat That Question is a testament to Zappa's prescience of vision with valuable tools for the here and now.



Born and raised in Baltimore in 1940 by parents who were of Italian immigrant stock mixed with French, Greek and Middle Eastern origins, the Zappa family relocated to California and moved around a bit, eventually settling in the Inland Empire. In the film, an early television appearance on The Steve Allen Show depicts Zappa as a young composer who "plays" the bicycle, and that takes care of the youth portion of Zappa's life. The film begins in earnest with the 1966 release of the Mothers of Invention debut album Freak Out. As  Zappa is thrust into the spotlight, he largely disavows hippie culture and asserts his embrace of more experimental, classical composers like Varèse, Stravinsky, and Anton Webern. Though facts were Zappa had a rock 'n' roll background, he preferred to be perceived as a composer, and it's an identity he stuck with for the remainder of his musical life as a meticulous bandleader and auteur, as inventive as he was dedicated to entertaining and enlightening.

One of the more obscure and interesting clips Schütte unearthed was an interview with Pennsylvania state trooper Chuck Ash, conceived as a children's educational television piece on the dangers of drugs. The wild juxtaposition is right in line with Zappa's more-than-meets-the eye positions on art and life. "We avoided captioning," says Schütte. "We wanted the footage to speak for itself. We figured the audience was informed enough that when we are talking about the Ho Chi Minh Riots in Berlin that we're talking about 1968." I didn't have the heart to tell Schütte that he likely overestimated the intelligence of the American viewing public, but there is no doubt the artful approach leaves questions open and opportunities for further exploration.

Schütte worked closely with Zappa's widow, Gail Zappa who screened a cut of the film before she passed away in October of 2015. "She approved and liked the project, I think, because I'd promised her I would set forth around the world and continue to access things she hasn't seen and didn't have. For the sake of curating their own archive accurately, we had a mutual interest and she said, go ahead." Schütte finished the film with the cooperation of Ahmet Zappa, the second to youngest of the four Zappa children and executor of the Zappa Family Trust.

Like Lenny Bruce, Don Rickles and other social satirists, Zappa was an equal opportunity offender, taking no mercy on women, homosexuals, the disabled, people of color, and white males. Though the work could be polarizing, he was ultimately less concerned about protecting his own right to free speech than he was that of others when he elected to get involved in rock's most famous fight against censorship: In the mid-'80s, Zappa stood up against the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), the Washington wives committee spearheaded by Tipper Gore that aimed to warn parents of the evils lurking within the lyrics of their children's record collections by affixing labels to them.

"You have to understand he wasn't under attack; it was about Sheena Easton, Prince, Ozzy Osbourne… but he stood his ground under fire from the beginning of his time with those issues," explained Schütte. Indeed the PMRC hearings provided hours of potential material for the film, though in the end, much of it was left out with Schütte noting most of the hearings are available online as are the transcripts. "You could have a whole film about it with John Denver and Dee Snider," he says, though his compressed narration by Zappa provides "a link between the first two thirds of the film and the last third," in which Zappa largely shuns the spotlight and returns to creative work.

It's hard to know just how close his international media encounters got to the "real" Zappa but while viewing Eat That Question, one gets the sense that what he gave to the camera was pretty close to his authentic self.

"I hate to see anybody with a closed mind, on any topic," he once said. A lifelong learner, "always a freak, but never a hippie," Zappa kept busy and evolving until he died in 1993 at the age of 52 of prostate cancer. Rock music has not yet seen his likes in the 21st Century, though it could certainly use a friend and advocate as publicly committed as he was to artistic rights and freedoms.

Eat That Question: Frank Zappa In His Own Words opened June 24, last night, in New York and Los Angeles and goes into wider theatrical release July 1.



Denise Sullivan is the author of Keep on Pushing: Black Power Music From Blues to Hip Hop. She writes from San Francisco on gentrification and the arts.

The Word "Progressive" Means Something-- And It Shouldn't Be Re-Defined By Conservatives And Corporate Whores

The phrase Große Lüge-- Big Lie (a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously")-- comes right from Hitler's autobiography, Mein Kampf, although it was his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, who really put the phrase on the map.

If Boehner wanted to make a clumsy attempt to lure some self-identifying progressives into supporting the TPP he might start a front organization and call it the Progressive Coalition For American Jobs. But Boehner didn't distort the truth so infamously this time. It was the White House that started this front organization and called it the Progressive Coalition For American Jobs. Grassroots progressives and Beltway progressives, progressives in the House and progressives in the Senate, all oppose the job-destroying, toxic TPP-- except for the progressives in the Progressive Coalition For American Jobs. After all, their thrown-together website claims the group is made up of “progressives and Democrats committed to leveling the playing field for American workers" and goes on to state that "it's critical that we give the president trade promotion authority and establish the Trans-Pacific Partnership."

There’s something weird about the group, though: No one in the Washington, D.C., progressive community seems to have ever heard of them before.

“Who are they? Are they getting paid? And this group will convince anybody of what?” asked Sen. Sherrod Brown. “There is zero progressive interest in this [trade promotion authority].”

The group’s website provides few details about when the coalition was launched or who’s working for the group. But the team behind the Progressive Coalition for American Jobs includes some of the most senior members of Obama’s campaign team. Lefty site Daily Kos reported Mitch Stewart, the former aide the president tapped to run Organizing For America, and Lynda Tran, the former OFA press secretary are involved. A press release earlier in the week announcing the group came from 270 Strategies, the campaign firm started by Stewart and Obama’s former field director, Jeremy Bird.

Tran told BuzzFeed News the purpose of the group was to boost liberal voices who support the Obama trade agenda.

While there is Democratic support for increasing free trade and the White House has made an effort to placate progressives, arguing any deal will include tough language supporting labor rights and environmental protections, that message hasn’t landed with the left. The Progressive Caucus in the House has released their own set of trade principles arguing that they believe it’s “possible to negotiate a trade agreement that doesn’t replicate the mistakes of the past.” But as it currently stands, House progressives remain diametrically opposed to Obama’s trade agenda.

“If you look at the progressives-- labor unions, activists, online organizations-- who are lined up against the TPP, there are no credible groups left to build a ‘coalition,’” said an aide to a progressive House member, who wasn’t authorized to speak on the record. “The creation of a front group like PCAJ is a sign people pushing for a bad trade deal don’t have the votes to jam the [trade deal] through Congress.”

...With the emergence of the Progressive Coalition For American Jobs, some progressives got the feeling Obama’s allies were trying to flip the script.

“It’s insulting,” said Candice Johnson, spokesperson for the Communications Workers of America, one of the many unions organized against TPP. “You put progressive in your name and that’s going to convince people?”

She called the group “fake,” noting that it includes none of the biggest names in progressive politics in its coalition. Johnson wasn’t alone in that characterization.

“As far as I know, the only thing ‘progressive’ about this so called ‘Progressive Coalition for American Jobs’ is the first word of the group’s name,” said Becky Bond, president of CREDO, the San Francisco-based progressive activist known to tangle publicly with the White House.

...“I have been in the trenches working on TPP from the beginning, and as far as I can tell there is no one in favor of it except big corporations,” Mike Lux, a top progressive consultant in Washington, wrote in an email. “Every progressive group and sector that works on economic issues-- labor, consumer groups, enviros, the online groups, civil rights groups, human rights groups, you name it-- is vehemently against TPP, so I don’t know what progressives are in this group’s coalition.”

So they recruited Massachusetts' ex-Governor, Deval Patrick , who is sometimes considered a progressive, to join up. "Patrick’s involvement," explained the Boston Globe, "is part of the group's recruitment of well-known national Democratic leaders that include former Washington governor Christine Gregoire and former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk. The three will head the group's advisory committee... Part of the Obama administration's strategy is to woo members of the Congressional Black Caucus to get behind the trade deal in hopes of gaining votes for its support when the issue comes before the House. Patrick and Kirk are among the most prominent African-American political figures in the country." And then, yesterday, Politico reported that Bain Capital also recruited the ex-governor. "Bain is as progressive as the Progressive Coalition for American Jobs," one congressmember told me last night. "Governor Patrick might as well be part of both of them!"

Zappa... On The Final Arbiters Of Taste For The Entire Population

I used to be on the committee of the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame that chose the nominees every year. It always seemed like a pretty Stalinist procedure but the part that was especially distasteful was that it was a roomful of older white men-- a couple actually drooling and nodding off-- and almost no women, no young people, and fewer people of color. This represents the music business? Well... my friend Gina sent me an old Zappa interview in which he explains that it could have been worse. (And for those who don't know what Frank Zappa's music sounded like, here's a video from a BBC session in 1968 in which they allowed his band, the Mothers of Inventionto... let their freak flag fly.)

Saturday Night Musing: Minnesota

WHOOOO COULD IMAGINE?
 
By NOAH

Back in my long, dearly departed youth, there was a song by Frank Zappa's Mothers Of Invention, that contained an extended dada-ist section featuring the words "Who could imagine (pause) that they would freakout (another pause) in Minnesota. The word 'who' was extensively drawn out while the words 'imagine' and 'Minnesota' received a kind of menacingly derisive emphasis. Now, on a night 42 years later, I am compelled by events to imagine the citizens of a state, where the pro football team wears purple yet calls themselves Vikings, freaking out big time. Forget about what real Vikings would do to anyone caught wearing purple, let alone do to a little guy in a loincloth singing about purple rain... what are Minnesotans going to do with each other when the voting in the Franken-Coleman Senate race is finally decided.

As I write this tonight, the Franken camp is claiming it is up by a mere 4 votes! This recount started out as a statistical tie. Now, by the Franken camp's figuring, it's down to 4 votes. Coleman's camp has come up with a figure that puts them a few hundred votes ahead, but that's more of a PR move designed around a desire to manipulate the public perception of who was always ahead and therefore is probably the winner. That kind of thing always makes it harder for the other guy to claim victory. The difference in the figures of the two camps centers around challenged votes which may or may not be resolved. The recount was supposed to be over by now, but things may be grinding to a stalemate, a stalemate which may end up in the U.S. Senate. So, what should they do in the land of 10,000 lakes and 10 to the 10th trillion power mosquitoes? Flip a coin? Draw straws?
 
Other possible solutions:

1. Poker game?
2. Run off?
3. Wrestling match?
4. Hot dog eating contest?
 
Personally, I kinda like #3. Tickets could be sold to raise money to repair that bridge that collapsed due to lack of tax revenue or to raise money for the education of children affected by the collapse. Also, I like the absurdity of the spectacle. Well, what are we supposed to expect from a state that elected a wrestler, Jesse Ventura, as its Governor. But, the whole thing will come down to who has the cleverest legal team and who can pocket the most ballots. Now if only there were a way to figure the number of people who stayed home because they thought their vote wouldn't count and if they were right or not.