An examination of statistical disclosure issues related to publication of aggregate statistics in the presence of a known subset of the dataset using Baseball Hall of Fame ballots

Abstract

Each year the members of the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) vote for eligible former players to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. The BBWAA tabulates and releases vote totals, but individual ballots remain private. However, many voters forgo their ballot privacy to publish their ballots through various media channels. These publicly available ballots can be aggregated to create a subset of the true ballots. Using these released ballots and the totals released by the BBWAA, this research assesses what can be learned about the group of voters who chose to not disclose their ballot. Attributes of the known and unknown ballot groups are studied by looking at differences in voting preference for individual players as well as voting differences between classes of voters that are defined using latent class analysis (LCA).