Sharkey County explained?

[jimrtex]

Heavily black areas always get the sh**tty ballots. In Ohio, in certain precincts, the pollworkers must have given half of the voters the wrong ballot. Jim Crow is still alive and well.

More likely a case of heavily black Democratic areas intimidating independent poll watchers who might point out that the ballots from two precincts were getting mixed together.

[jimrtex]

This is the state sample ballot for the election in 2004: http://www.sos.state.ms.us/elections/2004/2004SampleBallot.pdf

Notice how Cobb and Harris are the top candidates on right side of this ballot?

The state sample ballot says specifically that the ballot order is independently set in each county.  Also I wouldn't give much credence to format of a sample ballot that shows all the congressional races.

[jimrtex]

This is the state sample ballot for the election in 2004: http://www.sos.state.ms.us/elections/2004/2004SampleBallot.pdf

Notice how Cobb and Harris are the top candidates on right side of this ballot?

The precincts that are heavy for Cobb and Harris also have pretty heavy voting for Badnarik, Nader, and Peroutka.  The falloff in voting between the Presidential and Congressional election in Cary Town Hall is over 20%, and in Anguilla Town hall it is over 15%.   But in Roaring Fork 3rd, the total dropoff is not that much, but Thompson ran way ahead of Kerry.

So I would suspect some double voting in the presidential race, with a possiblity that a different correction was applied for different precincts.  In some precincts, ballots for Kerry and another candidate were counted twice (resulting in little difference between Kerry and Thompson) but a big difference between presidential and congressional totals.  While in other precincts, the presidential vote was counted for the minor party candidate.  This resulted in similar number of votes cast in the two races, but a big loss for Kerry vs. Thompson.