Post Ohio County Data Here for analysis

[kk897]

Following Michael Lewis' lead in this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x65226

Post whatever data about Ohio Counties you think is relevant. Please include a link to your sources if you can, and please put the county name in the subject line of the post. (Maybe people can make their own threads for counties in other states if this one gets too big?)

This forum would just post info, questions about that info, and questions about obtaining it, as I see it, but both Michael Lewis and I are pretty new to DU, so please, someone correct me if this isn't a good idea or a good way to do this. The idea is to kind of centralize this info. Maybe we should do this in the "Ohio" forum? Maybe we should make a forum for each county? Help us out here, if you can, and take pity on the newbies.

Here are some guidelines, per Lewis in the other thread:

"How many people voted in this election as a percent of the population?

How did this number deviate from previous elections?

Which political parties were voted for during this and past elections and are there any dramitic deviations?

What effect did the absentee ballots have on this and previos elections?

How do we rate the potential for fraud in this and previous elections?

Can we identify areas where fraud might exist and are there any safeguards that are in place to guard against these areas of fraud."

More from that thread:

"The census can give you all sorts of credible data on pop estimates and county demographics. Also, many research papers exist that document a lot of this stuff already. Look into jury duty articles and migration papers. Look into news stories about poverty and standard of living. Look at the new business openings and closing. Look at the number of vacancies for commercial and industrial property.

All of these sources should be good for information to bring the picture of the county into focus. Choose a small one like Holmes county or Union county and start digging. How hard is it to find the information on a population of 20,000? I don't believe that the Board of Elections in these counties are corrupt. That would be too hard. It's possible but very hard. We need to find articles that relate to policy changes and papers that relate to the Help America Vote Act that affect this policy. The Sec. of State website has some great info from past elections, dating back 50 years or so. There isn't much on absentee voting which is a little concerning as this should be highlighted as much as the provisional votes were highlighted. Look for stories and op/eds but stay focused on one county. Post your information so others can correct your findings and add additional information.

But stay focused on only one, become the Union County expert. Find out who the director of the Board of Elections is and any information you can find about any of the people who run the BOE. Find out the budget information if you can. Find it all. Dig dig dig until you are sick to death of Union County. And post everything. When we spot irregularities we can bring those into focus and pass this information on to the other DUers and who knows. This information will be important later on as well as the groups who are out there fighting voter fraud can use this data to identify suspect areas and can help to take steps to limit future fraud. Since a large amount of people believe that fraud took place in 2000, then it is only fair to say that this is a long standing campaign to disenfranchise our votes. This is a war on democracy and we need to fight this battle and we need to keep fighting this battle."

What do ya'll think?

[elias7]

1. 2 cents

for what it's worth, a micro approach might be necessary. Kerry lost Ohio by 136,000 votes, and if you spread this number over the 11360 precincts in the state...that margin could be doubled or it could be decimated by flipping 6 votes/precinct one way or the other...

[kk897]

2. exactly, which is why I think Michael Lewis is suggesting

to become an "expert" on a particular county. If we scrutinize *everything*, it's less likely stuff will get past us.

[truehawk]

10. Kick and please keep kicked

[kk897]

3. Union County

I'm going to become a Union County "expert."

Here's a link to their (now official) results:

http://www.electionsonthe.net/oh/union/

Here's a link to the census on Union County:

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/39/39159.html

I'll post some of my findings in a bit.

[mikelewis]

4. Athens County Ohio - More info needed

Athens County Ohio

No Website available for the Board of elections for Athens County

Information was pulled from

http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/results/index.html
County Name Athens
Total Precincts 69
Total Registered Voters 45,100
Total Votes Cast 27,960
Percentage of Votes Cast 62.00
Provisional Ballots Issued 2,504


According to the Census Bureau the estimated population of Athens County Ohio is 64,380 as of 2003

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/39/39009.html

The number of persons under 18 is 18.3% which equates to 11,782 persons below voting age

This means that there are 52,598 eligible voters in Athens County

According to the above information the number of registered voters is 45,100

The percent of registered voters versus eligible voters is 85.7%.

[O.M.B.inOhio]

12. I got Athens data today

Precinct-level results in print format. Officials said they're still counting provisionals and expect to do so until Dec 2/3 or so. What do you need?

[Patsy Stone]

5. Miami County

Not sure if these were included, or if they have been explained away, but I didn't see anything about. It could be nothing, or absentee ballots, or bad info. I just haven't heard anything else about them. Have you? Thanks.

http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1003&mod e=thread&order=0&thold=0

"The Free Press, in its November 7 article "None dare call it voter suppression or fraud," pointed to possible voting anomalies in Miami County, Ohio where nearly 19,000 new ballots appear to have been added after 100% of the precincts had reported. The additional votes were at virtually the exact same ratio as earlier Bush votes, 65.8% for earlier votes and 65.77% for the latter. Kerry's vote percentage was identical, despite the nearly 19,000 new votes at 33.92%.

Roger Kearney of Rhombus Technologies, Ltd. told the Free Press, "The report you saw the following morning at 9 a.m. was probably either the 60 or 80 percent report." Kearney's company is the reporting company for vote results for Miami County; he claims that the problem was not with his reporting and that the additional 19,000 votes came before 100% of the precincts were in.

As for the statistical anomaly that showed virtually identical ratios after the final 20-40% of the vote came in, Kearney offered no explanation and said he merely reports the results given to him."

[dewaldd]

6. Here is my spreadsheet http://www.geocities.com/boycott_sinclair/Ohio-data

http://www.geocities.com/boycott_sinclair/Ohio-datasheets.htm

Numerous worksheets--use tabs on the bottom to switch around

Includes 2004 and 2000 prez results, party affiliation, census and registration data, turnout data, primary results, type of voting machine and company info, and Kathy Dopp-style analyses (which show little or no correlation to voting machine type).

[kk897]

7. Holy cow!!

Wow!!! What a resource! Thanks so much for posting this! I'm not usually prone to using so many exclamation points but WOW!

[mikelewis]

8. Here's some of the stuff I have, Claudia from Kucinich's office posted

http://www.dakotatechnics.com/downloads/

It's all over the place but there is a lot that I am going to repost here

[mikelewis]

9. Also ignore the post about applying the over votes, it's simply wrong

Ignore the hypothetical application of over votes, it's completely wrong. The reason for the ballot totals in Cuyahoga has been explained

[kk897]

11. Cuyahoga County Issue One Chart

Here's a link to another DU thread with this chart, with demographic analysis.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x74708

[stella2cat]

13. can someone help me post a link?

I have an issue that I haven't really seen addressed yet, I posted it in the voting issues forum. how do I put a link to it here?

[kk897]

15. you could just copy the link from your browser

then paste it into a reply.

[stella2cat]

17. thanks, like this?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=201x5241#5302

[kk897]

19. yep, that worked just dandy

And it's an interesting question... and I have utterly no answer, personally. Computer people?

[stella2cat]

20. I've been crunching numbers forever it seems like

and I have to say I haven't found anything that jumps out at me. I started looking in other directions and cam across this. Like most things about this election, it isn't really clear to me what the implications are if they didn't use correct versions of hardware/software

[kk897]

14. Union County---281 votes missing?

Here's a little oddity from my perusal of Union County figures.

UNOFFICIAL TOTAL BALLOTS CAST: 22,515
UNOFFICIAL TOTAL VOTES FOR PRESIDENT: 22,234

Meaning, 281 people voted but did not vote for president.

I thought at this point that maybe some of these were provisionals or absentee ballots, but then found that, according to the SoS's list of provisionals, there were 436 provisionals. Haven't found out yet how many were absentee.

OK, so when the official totals came out...

OFFICIAL TOTAL BALLOTS CAST: 22,911 (396 more than Unofficial)
OFFICIAL TOTAL VOTES FOR PRESIDENT: 22,630 (also 396 more than Unofficial)

So again, we have 281 people who voted but did not vote for president.

Looking at the provisionals, 436, and the difference between Unofficial and Official counts, 396, is it reasonable to say that 40 provisionals were tossed?

And where does the 281 come in? Isn't it odd to have that many? And wouldn't you expect that number to change at least by a vote or two from Unofficial to Official?

I am so not a math/stats person, but it seems like 281 votes are missing, or at least upwards of 281. You'd expect a few people wouldn't vote for Pres, I guess...

Oh, wait...they did use punch cards. Could those 281 be what Greg Palast calls "spoiled" ballots?

[kk897]

16. Union County registered voters

I posted this on the other thread, but in the effort to centralize the data, I'll post it here:

Key

A: Total Population

B: Number of Minors

C: Number of Adults (A minus B)

D: Number of Registered Voters (From the County Election Results, Nov. 2)

E: Percentage of Adults Registered to Vote (C divided by D)


From OSU Website
http://www.osuedc.org/profiles/population/population_divisions.php?&fips=39159&PHPSESSID=12142a5557517e7d398e7e49465f8218

A: 40, 909

B: 12, 213 (this is under the age of 19)

C: 28696

D: 30,200

E: 95 percent



Using US Census QuickFacts:

A: 43,750 (2003 estimate)

B: 12075 (Persons under 18 years old, percent, 2000: 27.6%)

C: 31675

D: 30,200

E: 95 percent


Using only 2000 US Census numbers:

A: 40, 909

B: 11,291 (Calculated from the percentage quoted in QuickFacts)

C: 29, 618

D: 30,200

E: 98 percent

[kk897]

18. Union County registered voters trend from previous elections

November 2004 registered voter total: 30,200
(46 precincts)

August 2004 registered voters: 27,926
(this local issue election had a record low 17.4 percent turnout)

March 2004 registered voters: 27,146
(primaries; Kerry carried the Dems with 1296, with Edwards close behind with 1156; the election had a 36.56 turnout)

November 2003 registered voters: 26,459
(local positions and issues; turnout was 40.35; at this time there were 48 precincts, so obviously there was some redistricting between 2003 and 2004)

November 2002 registered voters: 25,880
(state positions and local issues; 48.67 turnout; at this time there were 47 precincts)

November 2000 Registered Voters: 25,981
(47 precincts; 1,774 id'ed as Democrats and 7845 as Republican; 66.5 percent turnout)

November 2000 Results:
Bush 11,502; Gore 5040; Nader 336

It appears that 87 percent of Union County adults were registered at this time.

I don't understand how it is I keep getting these high registered percentages. I know people move, there are duplicates, etc., and a number of them aren't valid any more, but can there be *that* many of them?

[senegal1]

21. kick

[kk897]

22. Cuyahoga County Voting Machine Distribution

You'll find detailed figures at

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1380992

[stella2cat]

27. I'm looking for dem/repug registration stats for Cuyahoga County

does anyone know where I can find them? I'd like 2000 and 2004 by precinct if possible
thanks

[kk897]

28. hi stella

If you look at the link in post 6, above, you'll find an excellently detailed spread sheet. Be sure to click around on the tabs at the bottom of the page to see what all's there.

The problem with the party affiliation is that, as I understand it, people registering this year didn't have to proclaim a party. You might be able to draw some conclusions from the primary election figures, but I don't think you'll get anything exact.

[stella2cat]

29. hi and Happy Thanksgiving!

I'll take another look at it, maybe I missed what I'm looking for. I find it quite odd that the change in precincts in Cuyahoga caused such a big loss for dems. It's the biggest one I've seen so far (other than Florida, no doubt)

I'm still trying to get info about software/hardware versions as I do think it's very possible that some didn't bother to upgrade. I know in my work arena, many of the people at our remote sites are 'non-computer' types and don't realize the importance of upgrading software until it blows up on them. I need to look more at what the ramifications are if they are a version or 2 behind.

thanks again

[kk897]

23. Cuyahoga Spoiled Ballots Data

Here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x76020

[stella2cat]

24. Cuyahoga lost precincts?

My preliminary analysis shows:

82 precincts that existed in 2000 are gone in 2004 resulting in:

15,012 less votes for democrats
7,221 less votes for repugs

193 precincts that existed in 2000 & 2004 resulting in:

11,304 less votes for democrats
1,017 less votes for repugs

I'm not sure what this means yet, Ill keep looking at it

[shaggy briard]

25. I have a spreadsheet

Showing census summary by county, registered voters and votes cast for 2000 and 2004 from the Ohio Sec of State's office -- anyone can crunch to their hearrt's content if I knew how to post a spreadsheet to a blog

Newbie and wannabe:tinfoilhat:

[kk897]

26. I wish I knew...

Do you have it posted on your own website somewhere and we could link to it? There's an example from someone else with that kind of site up above in this thread.