Interesting statistical example of flaws in a voter impact index

The following came in the email the other day: I’m reaching out to introduce the Voter Impact Index, a new data tool from PowerMoves that assigns every U.S. zip code a voter impact score based on the recent competitiveness of six federal and state elections tied to that location. The Index may be useful in your teaching or research in a few concrete ways: — Classroom discussions on political geography, voter mobilization, and the relationship between where people live and how much their votes matter — Research applications exploring electoral competitiveness, voter sorting, and the civic behavior of movers (we estimate 15 million registered voters relocate annually) — Student projects analyzing zip-code-level electoral data across districts The underlying data, code, and methodology are fully open and accessible via GitHub through our website at PowerMoves.Vote — making it straightforward to build on or replicate. PowerMoves is a nonpartisan project. The Index draws from trusted…