Phantom votes in Orange County Florida?

[lostnfound]

Perhaps this has already been addressed, but just in case, I'm sharing it now.

I wanted to look at precinct-level data for Orange County, and I found this link which shows voter turnout by precinct for this election:

http://www.ocfelections.com/Public%20Records/2004%20Primary%20and%20General%20Turnout/2004_General_Election_Precinct_Turnout.htm">Orange County website Turnout data:
For all precincts, a total of 388929 people voted.

The official results for Orange County add up to 390706 votes (includes 'undervotes' and 'overvotes').

There were 1777 more votes than voters.


What am I missing?

[Lil]

1. Is a precinct for absentee &/or overseas votes disignated in precinct data

I get a can't find server message - double check your link. :-)

If not, this might explain it. If there is . . .

[59sunburst]

4. Here's the Page

http://www.ocfelections.com/Public%20Records/2004%20Results/2004%20Results.htm

[iamjoy]

2. Curious

Orange County uses optical scan.

[nytemare]

3. Dang, I am from Orange County and I only got to vote once.

Phooey!

[spoogly]

5. Orange County Florida Irregularities

There was a thread some time back about Orange County and inconsistencies in their posted spreadsheets which showed a last minute jump for Bush of 8400 votes. I have no idea whether anyone ever provided an explanation for it. Below is some of the material from the earlier research on this. It goes chronologically. I later found that the jump towards Bush came from absentee ballots. I still have not seen an explanation for this though. Maye someone can tell me whether this was ever explained or whether these is still an issue.

PAST THREAD MATERIAL

FIRST POST – THE 8400 VOTE BUSH JUMP

Orange County Florida Results Appear Incorrect

The Florida Division of Elections official tally has John Kerry winning in that county by a vote of 193,217 for Kerry 192,390 for Bush. This gives Kerry a very tight 827 vote margin in that county. These figures are also found on the CNN voting results web site. (Links below)

These results are inconsistent with the Orange County elections web site. That site contains a precinct by precinct breakdown of the vote in Orange County. The totals are not included on that page, but it is very easy to import the figures into an Excel spreadsheet. When I did this, the totals for Orange County add up to 183,990 for Bush and 193,217 for Kerry. This gives Kerry a 9,227 vote margin of victory in Orange County.

There is certainly an inconsistency in these results which needs some explanation. Somehow, between the County and the State Elections Division, the numbers changed drastically in Bush’s' favor by exactly 8,400 votes. (It seems a little bit odd that the number is exactly 8,400)

To summarize the results:

County Web Site: 193,217 for Kerry 183,990 for Bush (9,227 vote margin)
State Election Total: 193,217 for Kerry 192,390 for Bush (827 vote margin)

Links:


Orange County Unofficial Results:
http://www.ocfelections.com/Public%20Records/2004_Media_Kit/Page.htm

State of Florida Results:

(State Site)
http://enight.dos.state.fl.us/

(Good Summary When 98% in) http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm

SECOND POST – IDENTIFIED JUMP CAME FROM ABSENTEE BALLOTS

8400 Vote Orange County Bush Jump – Absentee Ballots

A final spreadsheet of the precinct by precinct breakdown has been posted for Orange County which pinpoints where the 8400 vote jump for Bush likely came from. It appears that it came from absentee ballots. This still begs for explanation why there was a huge last minute jump in absentee votes for Bush (and for some other Republican candidates)

The new spreadsheet is at:

http://www.ocfelections.com/Public%20Records/2004_Media_Kit/2004%20General%20Official%20Results.htm

There was a huge jump in absentee votes going to Bush between the first posted spreadsheet and the final posted spreadsheet. (Kerry only got 1.5% of them) There could be a reasonable explanation for this, but here are the numbers:

FIRST SPREADSHEET NUMBERS FOR ABSENTEE PRESCINCT
28,568 (BUSH) 28,975 (KERRY)

FINAL SPREADSHEET NUMBERS FOR ABSENTEE PRESCINCT
37,568 (BUSH) 29,091 (KERRY)

ABSENTEE VOTES ADDED FOR EACH CANDIDATE BETWEEN THE FIRST AND FINAL SPREADSHEETS
8,549 (BUSH) 137 (KERRY)

So between the time that the first spreadsheet was posted and the final spreadsheet was posted, Bush tallied 8,549 Absentee Votes and Kerry only tallied 137 Absentee votes. Perhaps there is a difference in the order that they counted absentee ballots; i.e. more that favored Kerry were counted early on and of the remaining 8686 absentee ballots to be counted and added to the tally, Kerry only got 1.5% of them.

This is just playing with numbers, but if you subtract the 8400 votes (described below and in past thread) from the Bush total additional Absentee votes that were added between the first and last spreadsheet results, you get the following additional absentee votes for each candidate:

149 (Bush) 137 (Kerry)

Somehow that balance seems more reasonable to me. But like I said, there is probably some reasonable explanation for this.

BACKGROUND - SOURCE OF THE ORIGINAL 8400 VOTE APPARENT DISCRPENCY

Here is the history from an Internet onlooker’s perspective. There may be a logical explanation of what is actually going on in Orange County, so I don’t want to put the tin-foil hat on until we get some reasonable explanation which might certainly exist.

The first thing that I saw online was a spreadsheet showing the precinct by precinct results from Orange County. There was no addition of the total votes for each candidate. When I downloaded the spreadsheet and summed the columns for Bush and for Kerry, I got the following totals for each:

183,990 (Bush) 193,217 (Kerry) (9227 Vote Difference)

That spreadsheet is still online if anyone wants to go and download it. Someone in the last thread confirmed the numbers. The file is an onscreen spreadsheet and it takes forever to load even on broadband. But here is the link to the spreadsheet:

http://www.ocfelections.com/Public%20Records/2004_Media_Kit/Page.htm

The next thing that I found was the first state rollup of the votes from Orange County that appeared on the Florida Board of Elections Web Site. Those totals showed the following:

192,390 (Bush) 193,217 (Kerry) (827 Vote Difference)

It appeared odd to me that the Kerry total remained the same as the total that I got from the spreadsheet (193,217). The difference between the spreadsheet total found on the Orange County web site is exactly 8400 votes added ONLY TO THE BUSH TOTALS.

How can it be that 8400 votes got added only to Bush on the rollup?

Someone in the last thread on this mentioned that it could be absentee ballots or provisional ballots. But that begs the question of why the addition of votes was added only to the Bush column. Even if Kerry would have lost each badly, I would think that he would at least have gotten some votes from these sources. Additionally, the spreadsheet contains at the bottom a separate precinct (902) for absentee ballots and shows 29,731 for Bush and 28,643 for Kerry.

So to me at least, absentee and provisional ballots do not account for the difference.

Subsequent to the spreadsheet numbers and the FBOE numbers that appeared from the first rollup, Orange County posted the totals in PDF form that indicated the following numbers:

191389 (Bush) 192030 (Kerry) (641 Vote Difference)

Now the numbers have been updated on the state site and currently are as follows:

192,539 (Bush) 193,354 (Kerry) (815 Vote Difference)

I would expect the minor deviations that appear between the initial state results, the initial county (pdf) results and the final numbers. That doesn’t concern me. But where did the 8400 vote jump all in Bush’s favor come from between the initial spreadsheet and the initial results posted on the FBOE site?

(With the latest updated spreadsheet that has been posted, there is now an answer to this question. The huge Bush jump is attributable to absentee ballots. But it is still not explained why the jump occured)

THESE JUMPS ALSO HAPPENED IN FAVOR OF OTHER REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES EXCEPT FOR THE COUTY PUBLIC DEFENDER

TOTAL ABSENTEE BALLOTS CAST
Comparison Between 1st and final spreadsheet data

Presidential Race – Orange County
1st Spreadsheet Total Absentee Ballots
57,543
2nd Spreadsheet Total Absentee Ballots
66,190

# of New Absentee Ballots
8,686
Bush – 8,549
Kerry – 137


US Senate Race – Orange County
1st Spreadsheet Total Absentee Ballots
58,374
2nd Spreadsheet Total Absentee Ballots
64,570

# New Absentees – 6,196
Of The New Absentees -
Castor – 55
Martinez – 6141


County Public Defender – Orange County
1st Spreadsheet Total Absentee Ballots
59,796
2nd Spreadsheet Total Absentee Ballots
59,801

# New Absentees – 5
Of The New Absentees -
Gillespie (Rep) – 0
Wesley (Dem) - 5


Clerk of Courts – Orange County
1st Spreadsheet Total Absentee Ballots
54,158
2nd Spreadsheet Total Absentee Ballots
61,080

# New Absentees – 6,922
Of The New Absentees -
Gardner Lydia REP – 6,917
Johnson Mary I. DEM- 5


Sheriff – Orange County
1st Spreadsheet Total Absentee Ballots
55,840
2nd Spreadsheet Total Absentee Ballots
62,850

# New Absentees – 7,010
Of The New Absentees -
Beary Kevin REP– 7,005
Staly Rick DEM - 5

[phillipw]

6. I couln't get the link to work for me: interesting in how to access

Orange County website Turnout data:

[lostnfound]

8. Sorry here's the link:

http://www.ocfelections.com/Public%20Records/2004%20Primary%20and%20General%20Turnout/2004_General_Election_Precinct_Turnout.htm

[phillipw]

7. Another thing you can do to help

Check your area precincts for phantom votes;
more presidential votes than voter turnout

(note that undervotes can obsure this; try to look for this also as well as the default to Bush pattern)

check official turnout data and presidential vote data for these and also the EIRS data at www.voteprotect.org for you county and precincts

[phillipw]

9. There is a limited recount in some precincts of Orange county

see www.recount.org or recount.com

and Common Cause is planning an audit/recount in some Florida counties
704 W.Madison St.
Tallahassee, Florida 32304
phone - [phone]
fax - [phone]
e-mail - [e-mail]

CC could use donations to carry out this effort;
they are checking in counties with documented widespread vote machine fraud Palm Beach, Broward, Dade, Hillsboro, Pinellas, Sarasota, Lee
touchscreen vote machine fraud appears more widespread in Florida than in Ohio due to many more voters using touchscreen machines

but fraud can occur on other types of systems also

[vpro]

10. Orange County's explanation

Here is a summary I prepared some time ago that might help explain things:

"Anomalies in Orange County (optical scan machines):

A. Backward counting absentee tabulator

On election night this page was showing the latest results for Orange County. It was being updated about every 10 minutes in real time:

http://www.ocfelections.com/results/11022004/PRES.ASP

On election night, with all but one precinct reporting, Kerry was ahead on this screen by some 9,000 votes. I saw it myself.

The next morning, with the last precinct reporting, Kerry's lead had evaporated to 641 votes on this screen.

The next day I found the following "summary report":

http://www.ocfelections.com/Public%20Records/2004_Media_Kit/Summary_Unofficial.pdf

It showed Kerry won Orange County by 641 votes.

But here are the unofficial precinct-by-precinct results in Excel (it takes a long time to load):

http://www.ocfelections.com/Public%20Records/2004_Media_Kit/Page.htm

Total each column by clicking in a box at the bottom of each column (Row 271) and pressing the "autosum" (the Greek "E") button at the top of the page and then press enter. It shows that Kerry won by 9,227 votes.

But CNN showed the 641 figure:
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/FL/P/00/county.001.html#12095
If you perform the same analysis for the Castor/Martinez senate race, the summary results had Martinez winning Orange County by 639 votes. But the precinct results had Castor actually winning by 5,414 votes.

The SOE’s office has explained this as resulting from a backward-counting absentee tabulator:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/orl-locvotetotals12111204nov12,1,2450210.story

B. Anomalies in results

The attached Excel sheets are derived from the 2004 precinct results, as well as:

--2004 book closing stats:

http://www.ocfelections.com/Public%20Records/2004%20Book%20Closing/2004%20Countywide%20Book%20Closing.htm

--2004 turnout stats:

http://www.ocfelections.com/Public%20Records/2004%20Primary%20and%20General%20Turnout/2004_General_Election_Precinct_Turnout.htm

--2000 results:

http://www.ocfelections.com/Public%20Records/Results/nov72000/general.zip

I used the 2004 precinct results and 2004 book closing statistics as my base documents, and added the red columns and figures.

I am not a statistician, but I noticed the following oddities:

1. Kerry won about 59% of the early voting

2. However, at the polling places Kerry received only 49% of the vote, and some 5,400 votes less than Gore did in 2000, despite massive turnout (although some of this is no doubt attributable to early voting). Gore received about 52% of the polling place vote.

3. Even excluding absentee ballots, Kerry’s percentage was slightly worse than Gore’s.

4. Bush’s greatest margins came in the absentee ballots. Although Kerry and Gore received almost the same exact percentage of the absentee votes, Absentee ballots constituted 17% of the total ballots cast in 2004, but only 14% of the ballots cast in 2000.

5. The six polling places that show the largest increase in percentage for Bush in 2004 compared to his percentage in 2000 (101, 105, 118, 225A and B, and 434--orange colored rows) (I have left out 445 as it is a very small precinct with only 23 people registered) show the following average turnout among Dem voters:

a. Total: 76.75%
b. Black: 78.13
c. White: 79.05

The average ratio of Rep registered voters to Dem registered voters in these precincts is 1.5:1

6. The six precincts that show the largest increase in percentage for Kerry in 2004 compared to Gore’s percentage in 2000 (211, 214, 410, 419, 420, 621—blue colored rows) show the following average turnout among Dem voters:

a. Total: 70.21%
b. Black: 75.50
c. White: 72.13

The average ratio of Rep registered voters to Dem registered voters in these precincts is 0.43:1

7. There is a similar turnout discrepancy for Rep turnout in these precincts.

8. Precinct 101, which shows one of the highest increases for Bush, and which is a rather large precinct, shows a 100% Rep turnout.


This suggests that turnout in predominantly Dem precincts may have been suppressed. This affects even white voters, so it seems that it cannot be blamed on the concept that black voters have a lower turnout rate. It seems to me that it could be the result of insufficient numbers of voting machines at these precincts, manipulating the vote counts, or other unknown factors. Anecdotally, I note that I was an Election Protection hotline volunteer on Election Day, and I received calls indicating that lines were 3 to 6 hours long in some precincts, that machines were broken down in others, and that many people were leaving without voting.

It also suggests that there may have been manipulation of the absentee ballots.

A statistician may want to look into this further."

[shraby]

11. Whatever happened to the 58,000 absentee ballots

that disappeared after being mailed?

[newyawker99]

12. Hi vpro!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[bmoney07]

13. Fuck Florida - everyone left us about a month and half ago

signed

Angry Floridian from Tampa 2000, and 2004


Just move along nothing to see - no fraud in the Bush Republic