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Making History:
The Life of Charles H. Backstrom
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From Warren Motifsky
I remember Charles during the Karl Rolvaag recount following the 1962 Governor's
election. Rolvaag eventually won that election by 91 votes. During the court
proceedings where they recounted the votes Charles would show up with the latest
story about how they decided every last contested ballot. That proceeding went
on for months before Rolvaag was given the victory. Charles's book, Recount, was
a classic about recounting elections.
After Minnesota I went to CBS News where I started
their election unit. We did the national and 50-state projections. I also did
the first exit polls ever while at CBS. I had something to do with the sampling
of precincts for the State of Minnesota that Charles used for his election
projections. It was easier for me to do as we had computer files of all recent
past elections from which to draw the samples. The implementation and analysis
were all Charles.
On the few occasions when I made it back to Minnesota I
always stopped to see Charles and Barbara. They were my fondest memory of my
days at the University. I never took one of Charles's classes. Nonetheless, I
learned a lot about the love of poking around in data from Charles. I also
learned a lot about being a fine human being from watching him and the way he
went about his research and his other interactions with his fellow teachers. I
started to say "peers," but the rest of them were not in Charles's class. He was
head and shoulders above them in every way I thought important. |
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