CA Results: 3-5% Kerry uptick in absentees (Riverside, San Bernadino, etc)

[mountebank]

I was saving the results of CA county-by-county ballots coming in after Nov. 2 in an Excel file. While I didn't think ahead to save all the various stages at which ballots were added, I do have an interesting comparison of the vote totals before and after Nov. 17. I am assuming that the added ballots represent absentee ballots.

Statewide, there was not a large difference in percentages, but there was a slight uptick in Kerry support. This might be viewed as odd considering the common wisdom that absentee votes trend Republican.

Before Nov. 17 (# ballots = 11,691,201)
Kerry: 53.46%
Bush: 43.75%

After Nov. 17 (# ballots = 819,659 or 7% of total ballots)
Kerry: 55.02%
Bush: 43.71%

In the county-by-county results, a few anomalies stuck out. I list these counties separately because they use e-voting. I am not trying to indicate that discrepancies are only found in e-voting counties, as one can see from the lists at the bottom of this post.

Riverside Co. showed an uptick of 3.2% in support for Kerry, with a corresponding downtick for Bush. They use Sequoia AVC-Edge.

Before Nov. 17 (# ballots = 538,516)
Kerry: 40.5%
Bush: 57.5%

After Nov. 17 (# ballots = 23982, or 4.4% of total ballots)
Kerry: 43.7%
Bush: 53.9%

A slightly greater (4.5%) trend is seen in the San Bernadino Co. results. Note the larger sample size. They use Sequoia AVC-Edge.

Before Nov. 17 (# ballots = 475,672)
Kerry: 42.7%
Bush: 55.4%

After Nov. 17 (# ballots = 52715, or 11% of total ballots)
Kerry: 47.2%
Bush: 49.3%

Alameda Co. shows a 6% uptick for Kerry. They use Diebold AccuVote-TS.

Before Nov. 17 (# ballots = 540,780)
Kerry: 74.1%
Bush: 23.4%

After Nov. 17 (# ballots = 27135, or 5% of total ballots)
Kerry: 80.2%
Bush: 16.8%

Other counties with larger than 3% discrepancy between votes before and after Nov. 17. All of these counties had a corresponding decrease for the other candidate. The type of voting is listed as well.

Calaveras: Bush +5%, 1722 (8% of total ballots), punch card
Fresno: Kerry +7%, 14993 (6% of total), optical scan (precinct)
Kern: Kerry +7%, 7572 (3.5% of total), optical scan (precinct)
Los Angeles: Kerry +5%, 139875 (4.7% of total), optical scan (precinct)
Nevada: Kerry +7%, 1492 (3% of total), optical scan (central)
San Diego: Kerry +5%, 66180 (6% of total), optical scan (precinct)
San Joaquin: Kerry +5%, 11338 (6% of total), optical scan (precinct)
Santa Barbara: Kerry +5%, 9933 (6% of total), optical scan (precinct)
Tulare: Kerry +3.5%, 4859 (5% of total), optical scan (precinct)
Ventura: Kerry +6%, 8794 (3% of total), punch card

************************************

Counties in which the votes before and after Nov. 17 were very similar:

Contra Costa, optical scan (precinct)
Humboldt, optical scan (precinct)
Marin, optical scan (precinct)
Mariposa, optical scan (precinct)
Napa, e-voting (touchscreen), Sequoia, AVC Edge 1
Orange, e-voting (other)
Placer, optical scan (precinct)
San Francisco, optical scan (central)
San Luis Obispo, optical scan (precinct)
San Mateo, optical scan (precinct)
Santa Cruz, optical scan (central)
Shasta, e-voting (touchscreen), Sequoia, AVC Edge
Siskiyou, optical scan (precinct)
Solano, optical scan (precinct)
Sonoma, optical scan (precinct)
Stanislaus, optical scan (precinct)
Sutter, optical scan (precinct)
Tehama, e-voting (touchscreen), Sequoia, AVC Edge
Yolo, punch card
Yuba, punch card


Granted, these are not always large sample sizes and are "polluted" by absentee and early ballots added before Nov. 17. Still, there is an interesting trend: an uptick of Kerry support in a subset of absentee ballots, despite common wisdom which says that these ballots should trend Republican.

Also, as I've mentioned elsewhere, Merced county not only did not add ballots during this time, but reduced their totals ballots cast by 9,994. These ballots had not been allocated to any candidates yet, so the totals for each candidate remained unchanged. I don't know if this was a county problem or a SoS type-o. They use e-voting, the ES&S iVotronic system.

This is a very rough analysis and should be taken with a grain of salt. A more thorough analysis would compare exact totals (obtained from the registrars of each county) for absentee/early ballots and ballots cast at the polls on election day. I hope with this analysis to motivate people to work on these, more thorough analyses. I think San Bernadino, Riverside, and Alameda counties are good places to start.

[Jack_Dawson]

1. So does Kerry win the Popular Vote?

Those numbers add up.

[mountebank]

3. Which numbers are you talking about?

Really, I'm not saying anything about how many votes should have gone to Kerry or even that votes should have gone to Kerry. I'm only pointing out some inconsistencies between vote totals before a certain date and a vote totals coming in after that date that are probably absentee ballots.

If you wanted to make the MAJOR leap and say that the subset of votes coming in after Nov. 17 is accurate and that somehow those before were manipulated, then you would reason that Kerry got 55% of the vote in CA as opposed to 53%. That nets about 200,000 votes.

But I'm not saying that at all. I'm only pointing out some interesting trends in my limited data set and hoping others will follow up.

[mrdmk]

2. There was a trend to vote absentee to leave a paper trail.

That is the reason for the uptick in the vote for Mr. Kerry. Here in the very conservative Orange County there where people going from door to door back during the special election for Governor saying to vote absentee to have a paper trail. These people were Democrats.

[mountebank]

4. That could explain it. It's one hypothesis. n/t

[mountebank]

11. But what about Santa Cruz Co., among others?

Why didn't you see this trend across the board? For instance, Santa Cruz is pretty liberal and educated and therefore you'd expect to see the same pattern: Dems voting absentee because they don't trust e-voting. It didn't happen, at least you don't see it in my subset of the data.....

[mrdmk]

12. You need to look into what kind voting equipment is available in the

different counties. The scanning machines do have a paper trial. The DRE's do not. In Orange County we have DRE's so the wifey and I signed up for absentee voting, hence some sort paper trail, that is if our letters made it out of the post office to their destination!

[mountebank]

18. Yet there was no trend for Kerry in the absentees in Orange Co.

My question is, Why not? If people knew DREs were unreliable and voted absentee in Riverside just like in Orange Co., why is there a trend in Riverside and not in Orange Co.? And were that many people really up on the black box voting issue pre Nov 2? Don't get me wrong, I think the hypothesis you pose is a pretty good one, but I don't see why certain counties would be affected and others not.

Btw, I did included the type of voting machine for each county in the original post. But I didn't do a statistical analysis to check for significant differences between e-voting and non.

[mrdmk]

25. Orange County tends to be Republican to begin with

If Orange County, California had a overwhelming votes for Mr. Kerry I say the Democrats messed with the voting. It does not surprise me that Orange County did not fit your model like the other counties.

To give you an idea what Orange County is like, we have some of the riches to the poorest areas in the country. The top three nationalities are, White, Hispanic and Asian. Most of the people are middle class or better.

Here is break down by cities

http://www.southland1.com/demogrph/orange.htm

[BlueOhio]

32. Orange County -R eom

[mountebank]

33. A reply to both: yes, OC is Republican - I'm talking about a trend.

So in Republican Riverside and San Bernadino Cos. the votes post-Nov. 17 "trended" toward Kerry. He still lost in terms of total votes, but they shifted toward him by 4-5%. No such shift was seen in Orange County. That requires an explanation beyond Dems voting absentee to have a paper trail unless you can explain why they'd do that in Riverside and San Bernadino and not in Orange County.

Anyway, see post #23. This may be moot as it might have been provisionals that were being added post-Nov. 17.....

[senseandsensibility]

5. OMG

Look at those numbers from Alameda County, the county I grew up in. I AM SO PROUD!!! I am soooooo (choke) proud.....:toast: Shout out to my homies in Alameda!!!!

[rumpel]

6. LA County Absentee are posted

albeit over 400 "groups".

can be viewed at http://lavote.net/svc/posttally0024/bigframe.htm
under Precinct Bulletins

[rumpel]

7. PS. Do you know what this means?

Absentee group 32

3,955 BALLOTS CAST
4 REGISTERED VOTERS

JOHN F KERRY DEM 1,398
GEORGE W BUSH REP 2,467

BARBARA BOXER DEM 1,604
BILL JONES REP 2,038

[mountebank]

10. I'm not sure what that means.....

It would appear to mean that 3,955 voters cast ballots even though only 4 were registered. But I'm not sure how L.A. county divides up the absentees that come in. I heard somewhere that Ohio, for instance, sort of evenly divides them up and distributes them around the precincts. This led to some accusations of fraud that were later debunked. Am I right on this?

EDIT: type-o.

[IndyOp]

8. Check out Miller's article on fraud in California Diebold counties in 2003

If you are going to compare counties, I suggest that you compare Diebold vs Non-Diebold counties -- here is Mark Crispin Miller's article on irregularities in California Diebold counties in 2003 election.

CALIFORNIA (2003): Mark Crispin Miller, Professor at New York University, has described irregularities in California in the 2003 recall election
< http://www.opednews.com/miller1003_CA_Voting.htm >.

In the 2003 election, thirteen counties used Diebold voting systems: Touchscreens wre used in Alameda and Plumas; and Optiscans were used in Fresno, Humboldt, Kern, Lassen, Marin, Placer, San Joaquin, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Trinity, and Tulare. These counties are spread geographically over the whole of California and do not appear to differ systematically from the state as a whole in socioeconomic status or other population characteristics that we might expect would impact candidate choice.

There were a total of 7,842,630 votes cast in the election state-wide, and 1,403,375 of these were cast in the thirteen Diebold counties. Thus 17.89% of all votes cast in the state were cast/counted on Diebold equipment. We would, therefore, expect that each candidate would receive about 18% of all of the votes they received in these counties. Twelve out of nineteen candidates show only a slight variance from an even statewide distribution. Schwarzenegger received 16.36% of all votes cast for him on Diebold systems, Bustamonte (18.78%), McLintock (19.08%), Camejo (18.9%), Huffington (17.79%), Ueberoth (15.74%), Flynt (15.88%), Coleman (15.02%), Simon (17.66%), Louie (18.7%), Roscoe (16.7%), Grosse (14.3%).

Seven of the 'lower ticket' candidates, however, have vote totals that are 2-5 times expected! Martorana received 39.28% of all votes cast for him on Diebold systems, Macaluso (39.36%), Price (47.18%), Quinn (50.8%), Sprague (65.10%), Palmieri (68.3%), Kunzman (97.5%).

Implication: Diebold affects the election outcome by moving votes from high ranked candidates to low ranked candidates (keeping the total number of votes cast constant but robbing some candidate of their votes).

[mountebank]

9. Interesting. An analysis of this kind would have to wait....

Until someone has compiled the data on absentee vs. poll votes for each county. The total data set, not just my subset. Still, it's worth investigating.....

[mapman2]

13. I checked your numbers for Alameda Co.

and I don't think it's possible (at least when I do it) to change the Kerry percentage from 74.1 to 80.2 with only 27,135 votes added to the original tally.

[mountebank]

16. The 80% is only of the around 27,135 ballots added after Nov. 17.

Not the total. I was comparing two groups of ballots that together add up to the total. A limitation of the analysis is definitely that sample sizes in the one group are smallish, but still substantial.

So the final percentage in Alameda is:

Kerry 75.4%
Bush 23.4%

[mapman2]

20. That makes sense! Thanks for clarifying. n/t

[newyawker99]

22. Hi mapman2!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[skids]

14. How much "undo" information is in the file?

Can you go back and get your old totals from each stage by using
the "undo" feature?

[mountebank]

17. I'll give it a whirl. But I changed the file many, many times.

And saved it many many times, too. I just didn't realize early on how interesting it would be to have JUST the Nov. 2 results and then compare to the totals that came in later. Damn....

[OnionPatch]

15. I'm in Riverside County

We told everyone to vote absentee. Everyone I know did.

[mountebank]

19. Signing off for the night - I can answer additional questions tomorrow.

Thanks!

[Peace Patriot]

21. Thank you so much for this work so far!

It is definitely worth pursuing, based on the working hypothesis that the Bush election fraud plan would likely have several goals, probably the first being securing the Electoral Vote, and, second but also important, manufacturing and padding a popular majority, which could well have involved grabbing %'s here and there all over the map. The latter could have occurred in big Kerry states, as well as big Kerry counties (as the Berkely study showed in FLA).

Although the Berkeley study showed big numbers of phantom Bush votes (or votes stolen from Kerry) in big Dem FLA counties, they may have been more careful in places like CA where there is less Bush Inc. control over the voting machinery. 1% of the CA vote is still a lot of votes.

I agree that there was a significant word of mouth campaign to vote by absentee ballot. I helped spread the word myself! (And, boy, am I glad I did! I remember some people pooh-poohing this idea because it didn't solve the problem of central vote tabulation, or some other problem, but it DID act as a temporary solution for a "paper trail," and was in fact critically important to uncovering the election fraud in NC, is being so used in other places, and may do so also in CA. In NC, it provided a very significant sample of the vote--30%--that was verifiable.)

Anyway, I think this may account for SOME of the higher %'s for Kerry in the CA absentee balloting, but not all. I would think it would end up about the same--if you start with ab voting being a Republican habit, producing results that weigh toward Republicans, and now ADD IN some Dems who are suspicious of e-voting, it would likely just get evened out--unless the phenomenon of Dems using ab voting was huge (big enough to go beyond evening it out).

It obviously needs study--but why would the traditionally Republican habit of voting by absentee ballot produce such a LARGE discrepancy for Kerry?

Another possibility: moderate/liberal Republicans who VOTED for Kerry might be a factor. Note: Cliff Arnebeck, lead attorney for the Alliance for Democracy lawsuit in OH, has stats showing theft of REPUBLICAN votes for Kerry--which would obviously be the most detection-proof form of vote theft for Bush Inc. to do. So, then, is a portion of this higher CA absentee ballot vote for Kerry possibly pointing to a similar Bush Inc. vote theft here from Republican voters for Kerry?

We most certainly need a breakdown of Dem/Repub absentee voting, and well as hard numbers on absentee vs. e-voting.

(Wouldn't it be fascinating if the absentee boost to Kerry--or a good part of it--came from Republican voters, and shows a significant difference from the Republican e-vote? It wouldn't surprise me at all it a lot of CA Republicans voted for Kerry.)

You should post an inquiry here at DU for anyone who may have downloaded CA data. Perhaps someone else kept it segmented by date of SOS posting.

Why is it so hard to find out what portion of the vote is absentee? Shouldn't that be standard info that the counties send to the SOS? I would think that it is, and so why isn't it posted at SOS or accessible by request? (Why on earth would a researcher have to dig into each county's records for that?)

I'm available for Internet research, and whatever else I can do at home--but cannot travel to do county records research (or whatever). I'm a native Californian with good knowledge of CA geography and people. I will check back here.

[mountebank]

23. Some new analyses with summary - contradicts earlier results.

So I found that Riverside, San Bernadino, and Alameda counties have all now posted Statements of the Vote, which are detailed descriptions of the vote count divided by city, precinct, absentee, etc. They can be found here:

Riverside
http://www.election.co.riverside.ca.us/default.htm
(click on Consolidated Election and then Statement of Vote)

San Bernadino
http://www.co.san-bernardino.ca.us/rov/current_elections/

Alameda
http://www.co.alameda.ca.us/rov/sov.htm

I looked at the breakdown of precinct vs. absentee voting and it totally contradicts my earlier analysis, leading me to believe that a key assumption was violated, that being that the votes added after Nov. 17 were absentee votes. It seems likely that those votes from the original analysis were either a) provisional ballots, or b) a non-representative sample of absentees somehow favoring Kerry. Of course, it could also mean that the absentee vote count in these counties was manipulated, but I find that harder to believe. Why manipulate the absentees when you have touchscreen voting without a paper trail?

For example, here is the data for Riverside.

RIVERSIDE
Total votes - 562498
Precinct - 369563 (65.7%)
Absentee - 192935 (34.3%)

Kerry (precinct) - 153961 (41.7%)
Kerry (absentee) - 74845 (38.8%)
Bush (precinct) - 208818 (56.5%)
Bush (absentee) - 113655 (58.9%)

Alameda and San Bernadino followed similar trends, though the trend was smaller in Alameda.

SUMMARY: The precinct v. absentee voting in Riverside, San Bernadino, and Alameda counties (as taken from registrar web sites) followed common wisdom in the sense that Bush picked up 1-3 percentage points in absentee ballots compared to voting at polling places. The original data I presented comparing votes added to the CA SoS web site before and after Nov. 17 shows a different trend, with Kerry picking up percentage points in these counties. The discrepancy can be explained by: a) the original analysis used provisional ballots instead of a subset of absentee ballots; b) the original analysis used a subset of absentee ballots that for some reason favored Kerry; or C) data from one of the two sources was manipulated.

[Emillereid]

24. I worked in a democratic office in Thousand Oaks, CA and we made a real

effort to get people to vote absentee and to obtain permanent absentee status. Could the increase in absentee Kerry votes be the result of such encouragement to vote absentee from their local democratic party?

[mountebank]

26. See especially post #23 (for new analysis) and then #2.

Maybe the ballots from the original analysis were provisional. I assumed they were a subset of the absentees - but maybe not....

[Igel]

27. OT question for Californians in Southland

The LA Times used to do its own exit polling, at least up until the mid-90s. Did they for this election?

Ex-LAer

[mountebank]

28. Yes, they did.

You can find it here:
http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/timespoll/

If you do the math, you find the disappointing result that their national exit poll predicted Bush with a 51/48 margin.

[Igel]

29. Yikes and tx. n/t

[delphine]

30. Obviously what happened is that

some of these repuke counties (like Riverside) were padded, which was easy to do because they use voting machines.

Except you can't bullshit the absentee ballots the same way - so when reality hits, Kerry surges ahead.

And 4 and 5% of some of these counties is a huge number of people. It could narrow the repuke gap a lot (unless of course the rest of the red states are padded . . .)

[mountebank]

31. Well, check out the new data in post #23.

It's possible that I analyzed provisional ballots in the original post, since I didn't know exactly what was being added after Nov 17. Don't get me wrong, manipulation is still a possibility - but the totals from the registrar web sites of these counties (see post #23) conform to "common wisdom" vis-a-vis absentee ballots and do not show the pro-Kerry trend from the original post.