election data’s new frontier maurice tamman herald tribune, sarasota [email protected]
TRANSCRIPT
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?