jimrtex
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« Reply #27 on: December 03, 2004, 05:47:31 AM » |
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I've looked at the results some more and have identified a two cases where Kerry votes were credited to Bush and "Nader". But I also looked at some down-ballot races to see whether ballot rotation combined with ballot mixup would indicate that the problem was whole ballots punched on devices set up for another precinct.
Note: the guide booklets used for the punching devices are made page by page, with each page attached to a separate spindle. The spindles are separated by the distance between rows on the punch card. When the pages are opened flat, the left (even) page has the candidate names, the space between the spindles exposes the hole guides for punching the row of holes for the races on the left page, and the right (odd) page is typically blank or has an instruction to turn the page for more races (Palm BeachCounty, Florida in 2000 was exceptional when the right page was used for listing candidate names as well for the butterfly ballot).
If the guide booklet for one of the voting devices included a single erroneous page, then only some of the races would be messed up (it would be like if the voter went to a punching device for the wrong precinct, punched his presidential choice, and was then told to switch over to the correct device for his race, and used that device to punch out the rest of the ballot).
This does not appear to be case in Cuyahoga County. The mixup is also detectable on down ballot races.
3B Kerry is 1st, 3I Peroutka is 1st. 3B Badnarik is 4th, 3I Kerry is 45h.
3I Peroutka 70 votes. 3B Badnarik 41 votes.
The ballot order for the Senate race between Voinovich and Fingerhut is reversed between these two precincts. The effect is that some votes for Fingerhut in 3I would be punched for Voinovich (corresponding to the 3I Peroutka votes, but with some reduction due to fewer people voting in the Senate race - falloff was around 10 to 15%). But it would also mean that some votes for Voinovich would be recorded for Fingerhut.
But the same thing would happen in 3B (votes being swapped between the two). Let's say that that the voters intended to split 70-30 between the two candidates in both precincts, but that 10% of the voters used the wrong voting device. The effect would be to convert 7% of all votes from the leader to trailer, while also switching 3% of all votes the other way. The net result would switch the 70-30 margin to a 66-34 margin. In addition, both precincts would be affect by a similar amount (unless the wrong voting device was used disproportionately by voters in one precinct rather than the other. The Peroutka vote in 3I was 13% of the total, while the Badnarik vote in 3B was 9% of the total).
Given that Voinovich had reasonable support even in a highly Democrat area (he is from Cleveland, and was Governor before becoming Senator), it would be almost impossible to detect a ballot mixup. There is little net effect between the two precincts - the pro-Voinovich effect would be only visible comparing against other precincts, and would still be small.
The result in 3B: Fingerhut 303, Voinovich 156. In 3I Fingerhut 304, Voinovich 163.
But there was another down-ballot race where the effect is visible. There was a non-partisan election for the State Board of Education that attracted 3 candidates, Brown, Corrigan, and Lesnick. Brown was a relatively easy winner, with Corrigan following and Lesnick finishing 3rd.
Based on the ballot order you would expect the 3B results to show Brown -> Lesnick (largest effect, Brown had most votes to start) Corrigan -> Brown (medium effect) Lesnick -> Corrigan (smallest effect)
Based on the ballot order you would expect the 3I results to show Brown -> Corrigan (largest effect, Brown had most votes to start) Corrigan -> Lesnick (medium effect) Lesnick -> Brown (smallest effect)
Because Peroutka received more votes in 3I than Badnarik in 3B, the effect in 3I should somewhat larger.
The results: 3B: Brown 296, Corrigan 79, Lesnick 68 3I: Brown 344, Corrigan 101, Lesnick 32
These are neighboring precincts, which had 30 votes for Bush between them, and had very similar results in the Senate race, yet voted dramatically different in a SBOE race.
4F Kerry is 1st, 4N Badnarik is 1st. 4F Peroutka is 3rd, 4N Kerry is 3rd.
4N Bandarik 163 votes. 4F Peroutka 215 votes.
In these two precincts, the order of the Senate candidates was the same, so that mixing up the punching devices would have no effect. The results were:
4F Fingerhut 338, Voinovich 154 4N Fingerhut 331, Voinovich 122
But in the SBOE race, the ballot order was different.
Based on the ballot order you would expect the 4F results to show Brown -> Corrigan (largest effect, Brown had most votes to start) Corrigan -> Lesnick (medium effect) Lesnick -> Brown (smallest effect)
Based on the ballot order you would expect the 4N results to show Brown -> Lesnick (largest effect, Brown had most votes to start) Corrigan -> Brown (medium effect) Lesnick -> Corrigan (smallest effect)
The results: 4F: Brown 228, Corrigan 183, Lesnick 54 4N: Brown 227, Corrigan 59, Lesnick 123
Peroutka received 41% of the 4F vote, while Badnarik received 33% of the Peroutka 4N vote, so you would expect a dramatic effect here, and you do. Corrigan nearly catches Brown in 4F, while in 4N they badly lag.
6L and 6M. This is an example of where Bush and "Nader" benefited from mispunched Kerry votes. I detected it by looking for precincts where it appeared that Lesnick had received a relatively high share of the vote in the SBOE race.
Of the 15 or so precincts that I checked, this is the only one that I was able to find that had an effect in other races. Some of the precincts I checked were in the western, white ethnic, part of Cleveland, where Lesnick's name may have been helpful (this is the area represented by Dennis Kucinich). In these areas, higher support for Lesnick could represent actual voter support.
Ralph Nader had originally qualified for the presidential ballot in Ohio, but was then ordered off the ballot. His space appeared on the ballot as "Disqualified Candidate". In the alphabetical ballot order used in Ohio, "Disqualified Candidate" appeared after Kerry and before Peroutka, just where you would expect Nader to appear. In the canvass, the vote for "Disqualified Candidate" is shown as 0.
If voters in 6L had used a 6M punching device, Kerry votes would be punched for Bush. If voters in 6M had used a 6L punching device, Kerry votes would be punched for "Disqualified Candidate". The results:
6L: Badnarik 1, Bush 82, Kerry 325, DQ 0, Peroutka 0 6M: Badnarik 0, Bush 9, Kerry 367, DQ 0, Peroutka 1.
While this might not look too odd, in this area the 20% vote for Bush in 6L was extremely high.
In addition, in 6M, 467 votes were cast, but only 377 were counted for any of the 5 candidates. In other words, an undervote of 90 or 19.2%. While I suspect that a few people did abstain, and others failed to successful dislodge a chad, and others may have voted for "Disqualified Candidate" as a protest vote, in other precincts the undervote appears to be only a few percent.
Further evidence of a problem here is the presidential vote. As in 3B/3I the two candidates are swapped between the two precincts. And as in 3B/3I we would expect the difference to be masked. The results:
6L Fingerhut 203, Voinovich 133 6M Fingerhut 235, Voinovich 143
This is not too unusual other than in 6L where Voinovich ran 20% ahead of Bush (40% vs. 20%), and in 6M where Voinovich ran 36% ahead of Bush (38% vs 2%) indicating how anomalous the Bush vote was in 6L.
In addition if we look at the votes cast, vs. the votes counted for each race:
6L: 425 cast, 408 for President, 336 for Senate. 6M: 467 cast, 377 for President, 378 for Senate.
That is, in 6M the undervote for senate was one less than it had been in president, while in 6L the undercount increased from 4% to 21%. This indicates that about 20% of the 6M voters used a 6L voting device to vote, with Kerry votes being redirected to "Disqualified Candidate", which were not counted.
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