Reply #12: rigel99, can you clarify? [View All]

[eomer]

You say a couple of times that 5979 voters voted exactly the same. If I understand your table, it's not that they voted the same, it's just that they voted. Is that correct? In other words, these are turnout figures for all parties and all candidates summed together and don't tell us who anyone voted for or which party anyone is registered to - it just tells us how many voted in each race.

So what's funny about these numbers is that the expected drop-off in down ticket races doesn't show up. Every voter (except for 2) who voted for President, Senate and House also voted in all of the state and local races.

This result can't be produced by adding 6% phantom votes on top of a 72% typical turnout because the 72% portion would still have to have this weird characteristic of no down ticket drop-off and therefore wouldn't be typical.

Also, the 78% turnout by itself doesn't seem like much of an argument that phantom votes occurred. You would expect some variation up and down from county to county with an average at the state level of 72%. You wouldn't expect every county to be 72%.

I agree that this data looks very strange and suggests that either someone cooked it or there was some serious error in the equipment. But I don't see anything here that suggests there were phantom votes for President. It actually is more suggestive of phantom votes for state and local races. Maybe someone wanted to rig the local races? Or maybe the whole data set is fictitious and was created by someone who didn't know there's supposed to be a down ticket drop-off?

By the way, I am a believer that the exit poll is correct and that the difference between the exit poll and the official count is due to rigging of the official count for President. I just don't see how this particular turnout data by itself gives much support for that belief.