I'm Researching Cuyahoga County - Question on Reg. Voters

[mikelewis]

This is just a general question.

Why would the Sec. of State website list a different voter registration total from that of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections?

In the official canvass report from the Cuyahoga County BOE there is a total of 1005,807 registered voters.

Listed for Cuyahoga County in the Sec of States website there is a total of 1,007,187 registered voters.

The Sec of state changed this number just recently. It matched the county though I am unsure of when and why the change was made.

Here are the sites if you need to verify.
Cuyahoga County BOE
http://boe.cuyahogacounty.us/BOE/results/history/2004/EL52.txt

Sec of State BOE
http://serform2.sos.state.oh.us/sos/results/index.html
Then go to genral election voter turnout 2004 totals.

I am trying to gain accurate totals but it's hard when they keep switching them on me.

Sincerely,
Michael Lewis

[mikelewis]

1. Also the number of precincts are different

The Cuyahoga County BOE lists 1458 precincts

The sec of State lists 1,436 precincts.

Which one's right? Anyone know?

[KaliTracy]

4. is there a date?

One of the things Blackwell did in the 6-12 months prior to the election is to "merge" precicts in anticipation of using Electronic Voting machines, (reasoning is that voters would not take so long at an e-machine) and then, decided *not* to go to the electronic machines but KEPT the precincts merged.

but that might not be what you are seeing.. just wanted to throw it out for you, though.

[mikelewis]

10. That's true but in 2003 there were 1640 precincts

Now there's 1458 listed in Cuyahoga County but the SOS who actually determined the new districts says there are 1436.

Am I missing something? The good news is that the recount should cost a few hundred bucks less. LOL

[mikelewis]

2. The Cuy. BOE lists a diff. total of reg voters on thier summary

as compared to thier official canvass report. Why is that?

This is where the SOS got the data but it differs from the canvass report released on 11/30 and on 11/3

Also the precinct totals match on the summary and the canvass but not on the SOS, I am not suggesting this is fraudulent just poor bookkeeping. Do we elect these people? Sheesh.

Sincerely,
Michael Lewis

[bj2110]

3. I wish I did. But what you're doing is important. Please stay with it! n/t

[mikelewis]

5. I'm not sure what to make of it, that's why I'm posting.

The registered voters should have been locked in stone a month before the election. It can't be the provisionals because the provisional ballots only apply to those who are registered but are voting in the wrong precinct or the right precinct but thier name is not in the poll book.

I wonder if any other counties have screwed up totals.

I'll check and post.

[KaliTracy]

6. I was working with numbers

posted by the State Department the first week after the election. Didn't think to match them to each county....

Was comparing primary information to November information in some ways --- you may want to look at the following counties... (for various reasons)

Allen
Clermont
Delaware
Hamilton
Greene
Summit
Wyandot

[mikelewis]

9. The primaries would be off since the massive voter drive over the summer

They also have no idea how many people are actually registered.

Would it suprise you that according to thier numbers 93.5% of the people of voting age are registered to vote? The reason is that a computer glitch lost the data that would allow them to purge the voter rolls and Blackwell made the decision in 1999 to allow these people to be removed if they haven't voted in the past general election. That's why they're so high but then if this is true then the voter turnout numbers are way off too.

If Blackwell wants to be Gov. of my state, he better get his shit together or at least rig his election better than this one.

[KaliTracy]

11. yes... i was looking at the "dixicrat" angle

but since it wasn't a true number of registered voters (just the number who voted Dem or Republican in the primary) I knew my numbers didn't mean much. Was going to compare 2000 Primary/Election to 2004 -- looking at various things. Did get 2004 finished with uncertified numbers.... would just be a matter of updating with the new results....

[mikelewis]

12. actually, that's not a bad idea

The people who vote in primaries are generally die-hard voters and usually vote party in the general election. If you could compare the number of democrats who voted in the primaries to the number who voted in the counties, I think a discrepancy would be quickly spotted. It might give us something to go by anyway.

[KaliTracy]

15. ok.. I'll finish up

What I started.... and put the certified numbers in for 2004.

and that's what I was thinking, too.... that primary voters usually are the "hard core" -- and usually vote for general/presidental candidates...

[kk897]

7. KICK!

[mikelewis]

18. Could this discrepancy result from Military voters?

It's my understanding that the military does not need to be registered to vote. Is this correct? I find it hard to believe that this would result in less voters but it could explain the instances where there were more voters.

Hell, I don't know. This stuff is making my eyes bleed.

[mikelewis]

8. List of Counties with Different Voter Registration Totals

This is a list of counties where the registration totals differ from the unofficial totals.

Again, the registration deadline is 1 month prior to election. It seems odd that so many counties would be adding new registered voters to thier tallies between the time that the unofficial count came in on Nov. 3rd and the certification date of Dec. 6th.

I don't know, here's the data. Maybe someone who knows the secret world of adding registration cards can illuminate the reason for the discrepancy.

Sincerely,
Michael Lewis

The format is County
Unofficial
Official
Change


Allen
68,174
68,151
-23


Belmont
44,452
44,231
-221

Butler
238,117
238,022
-95


Clark
89,683
89,721
38


Cuyahoga
1,005,807
1,007,187
1,380


Defiance
25,847
25,849
2


Fayette
16,093
16,094
1

Gallia
23,567
23,568
1


Geauga
65,393
65,396
3


Guernsey
27,129
26,889
-240


Hancock
49,607
49,617
10

Harrison
11,769
11,475
-294

Hocking
18,378
18,209
-169

Holmes
18,089
17,870
-219

Huron
37,436
39,352
1,916

Jackson
23,997
23,998
1

Jefferson
49,655
49,656
1


Knox
36,971
36,972
1


Lake
160,165
160,196
31


Lawrence
41,424
41,524
100

Lucas
302,136
300,137
-1,999

Madison
23,477
23,183
-294

Mahoning
194,673
195,480
807


Medina
118,330
118,268
-62

Monroe
10,350
10,250
-100

Morrow
24,249
24,248
-1

Ottawa
30,251
30,334
83

Pike
19,661
19,655
-6


Richland
95,359
91,311
-4,048

Sandusky
39,408
39,407
-1

Scioto
48,012
48,005
-7


Trumbull
142,548
142,436
-112


Warren
125,919
125,165
-754

Washington
40,881
40,889
8


Wayne
69,672
69,797
125


Williams
26,772
26,722
-50


Wood
91,492
90,688
-804


TOTAL
7,979,639
7,974,670
-4,969

[BR_Parkway]

20. Even if the smallest numbers represent corrections of addresses

and deceased or something innocent - what in the hell happened in Huron?

Huron
37,436
39,352
1,916

5.11% change?!?

[garybeck]

13. that's not the only time they changed the numbers

here is a spreadsheet from approximately 11/18.

http://www.solarbus.org/stealyourelection/articles/CuyahogaCounty-OhioVotingResults.pdf


all the overvotes (more than 97,489 of them) have been removed at some point since then, with no real explanation.

I would like to know if the county total for Cuyahoga county also went down by 97,489 votes and if not where did they go?

"final" results, with extras taken out:

http://boe.cuyahogacounty.us/BOE/results/currentresults1.htm

If you look in the first link and select one of the rows with extra votes (highlighted) then look up the same precinct in the final results, and the extras have vanished.

My question on all this is, on election night, we were told Bush's margin of victory was 135,000 votes. If they took out those 97,489 extra votes from Cuyahoga county, shouldn't it have affected the margin of victory in some way? They can't take out the votes without affecting the County total and/or the Bush margin of victory.

So, here is the final totals for each candidate in cuhahoga cnty:
673729 (see current results, add the 4 candidates)

And here is the total of the spreadsheet from approx. 11/18:
665334 (see pdf at top of message)

that is only a difference of 8,395 votes. So again I say, where did those 97,489 votes go?

the only possible explanation other than fraud is that the extra votes in some precincts were moved to other precincts.

this begs the question, how and why did that happen? Why did some precincts end up with extra votes and others didn't? Who decided where to send the extra votes.

[mikelewis]

14. It's hard to explain but the explaination does make sense

The problem was that the 94,000 votes were actually the absentee ballots that were added to those precincts by house district and then computated as a function of voter trunout. This was a huge issue but the explaination makes sense but, the question of why this computer "Glitch" happened in the first place has never been adequately addressed.

See, the Cuy. County BOE had new tabulation computers installed in 2002 and the system operated perfectly for 2002 general elections -2004 primaries. Unfortunately, something happened to glitch the computer to cause these erroneous totals for the 2004 general. I wonder what caused such a strange reaction in the programming. It's not like these computers are doing calculus. They're adding in a database. I'm not a programmer but I could write the code to tabulate the votes. Believe me, something is fishy with this story but it's not the erroneous vote totals, it what caused the tabulation computer to glitch, that's what doesn't make sense.

[liberal43110]

16. The county BOE should be the official source, right?

I live in Columbus, so I'm familiar with Ohio politics. I know this doesn't help clarify the root cause of the discrepancy, but shouldn't the county BOE be the source of record? Since the county BOE is the body directly responsible for registering voters and holding elections.

Also, I love your idea about looking at primary data vis-a-vis the Dixiecrat theory!!

[mikelewis]

17. I decided to take my own advice in response to the "dixiecrat" post

Here's what I did.

I know that people who vote in the primaries usually vote party so I tablulated the totals from the primary election.

This yeilds

1,221,014 democrat voters
1,144,955 republican voters


Kerry Recieved 2,739,952 votes
Let's say all 1,221,014 primary voters voted for him
That makes a 1,518,938 difference


Bush recieved 2,858,727 votes
Let's say all 1,144,955 primary voters voted for him
That makes a 1,713,772 difference

The total number of people who voted for both candidates was 5,598,679

The total number who voted in the primaries for either candidate was 2,365,969

The difference is 3,232,710 voters who did not vote in the primaries or were not registered.

In order for the election totals to come out the way they did,
53.1% or 1,713,772 of these people had to vote for Bush
47.0% or 1,518,938 had to have voted for Kerry

Furthermore, there was a difference of 769,814 registered voters from the primaries to the general election. Now right after the last day of registration Chris Abbruzzese, the spokesman for Blackwell came out in a Washington Post article stating that Ohio had recieved over 500,000 new registrants. He seems to have been a bit off in his estimate, wouldn't you think?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43202-2004Oct18?language=printer

Excerpt
"Interest is intense, however. State voting chief Chris Abbruzzese said more than 500,000 voters have joined the Ohio rolls since the March primary, pushing the statewide total above 7.7 million. The Bush-Cheney campaign said it has added 200,000 names, while ACT and a partner consortium called America Votes said they have registered 300,000. "

Now Act claims that they have registered 150% more people than the Republicans. I know the democrat get out the vote effort was in full swing. Three seperate groups stopped by my house in the week before the election. My whole family which lives all over Cuyahoga County told me the same thing. I had not seen one Republican group canvassing for votes and in my job I go all over 3 counties. I noticed the Democrats but not one Republican group. I'm not saying they weren't there, they just weren't out in the numbers that the Democrat groups put out.


So the question remains, where did the extra 269,000 registrants come from that weren't reported in the rough estimate by State voting chief Chris Abbruzzese? How did the Republicans swing such a large majority of the vote without having the base to justify such a large voter turnout?

[mikelewis]

19. I'm Kicking my own post, because I ROCK!

Just kidding. I put these numbers together last night and finished about 3 when most civilized people have gone to bed. I was hoping for some input on why there is a discrepancy in the precinct totals between the SOS and the BOE of Cuyahoga and why the BOE of Cuyahoga has a different number of registered voters in thier summary report as compared to the canvass report.

Any input would be appreciated.

Sincerely,
Michael Lewis