election data’s new frontier maurice tamman herald tribune, sarasota mo.tamman@heraldtribune.com

Election Data’s New Frontier

Maurice TammanHerald Tribune, Sarasota

mo.tamman@heraldtribune.com

Latest Florida Election mess

District 13 race to replace Katherine Harris

Dem Christine Jennings lost to Republican Vern Buchanan by 369 votes

18,000 (about 15%) of Sarasota County voters did not cast a ballot in the race.

What we looked for

Collected reports from voters Machine/bug/ failure or hack Early voting vs. Election day Other high undervote races in the rest

of the state Undervotes in other elections Systems used since in locations with

high under votes

So what happened?

No one know for sure but … Many voters complained that the

system unchecked their votes. Or the race was somehow split over

two pages. Everything anecdotal pointed to some

kind of software glitch, or worse. A part of me wanted to believe that.

Following the butterfly ballot today

Sarasota County Charlotte CountySame District, different treatment

13 percent missed this

race

<2 percent missed it

here

Lump in the eye …

Sarasota County Charlotte County5 percent undervote

here

21 percent undervote

here

Remember Ballot Design in 2000? The

frontier’s not so new and neither are the issues.

The two county claw What about the county discrepancies? What about the undervote in the AGs

race? We looked at the “ballot image log”

files from every electronic machine. These files contained all affirmative

votes but not skipped races. So we filled in the missing races for

each ballots.

The Raw DataiVotronic Vote Image Report GENERAL ELECTION SUMTER COUNTY, FLORIDA NOVEMBER 7, 2006

REPORT-EL155 PAGE 001RUN DATE:12/01/06 11:03 AM PRECINCT 101 - 101 VRMC/OUTPATIENT CTR

ELECTION ID: 06GENVOTR. B/I CANDIDATES RECEIVING A VOTE 100405 2 * 2 Bill Nelson UNITED STATES SENATOR CNTY 100405 2 10 John Russell REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS CON005 100405 2 13 Jim Davis GOVERNOR AND LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR CNTY 100405 2 24 Alex Sink CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER CNTY 100405 2 27 Eric Copeland COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE CNTY 100405 2 30 Robert Thompson STATE REPRESENTATIVE HSE0042 100405 2 33 Ronald B. Allen COUNTY COMMISSION DISTRICT 2 CNTY 100405 2 37 Miranda L. Skipper COUNTY COMMISSION DISTRICT 4 CNTY 100405 2 40 YES SUPREME COURT JUSTICE LEWIS CNTY 100405 2 43 YES SUPREME COURT JUSTICE PARIENTE CNTY 100405 2 46 YES SUPREME COURT JUSTICE QUINCE CNTY 100405 2 61 YES CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT 3 CNTY 100405 2 64 YES CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT 4 CNTY 100405 2 67 YES CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT 6 CNTY 100405 2 70 YES CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT 7 CNTY 100405 2 73 YES CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT 8 CNTY 100405 2 * 2 Bill Nelson UNITED STATES SENATOR CNTY 100405 2 10 John Russell REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS CON005 100405 2 13 Jim Davis GOVERNOR AND LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR CNTY 100405 2 24 Alex Sink CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER CNTY 100405 2 27 Eric Copeland COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE CNTY

•Indicated a new ballot

Precinct info

Missing AG’s Race

Missing AG’s Race

Cleaned up

A sequential ballot id for each county

Filled in the gaps to make it easy

to identify undervotes

Loyalist most responsible

Sarasota vs. Charlotte

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

-3)StraightticketDEM

-2)StrongDEM

-1)Leaning

DEM

0) Middle 1)Leaning

GOP

2) StrongGOP

3)StraightticketGOP

Charlotte House

Sarasota House

So who were these people who missed the race?