The exit polls were dismissed as being innaccurate. But their accuracy depended on the type of voting machine that was used, implying that the machines, not the polls, were inaccurate.
The counties that used optical scanner machines to record votes showed a consistent pattern of far more votes for Bush and far less votes for Kerry than projected, based on the number of registered republicans and democrats. (Data for this and the next chart from http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm.) (click to enlarge)
The counties in Florida that used touchscreen voting had a relatively normal distribution of final votes for Bush and Kerry compared to the amount of registered democrats and republicans and the projected turnout. (click to enlarge)
Compare just the counties that had from 80,000-500,000 voters.
Early Thursday, as Broward County elections officials wrapped up after a long day of canvassing votes, something unusual caught their eye. Tallies should go up as more votes are counted. That's simple math. But in some races, the numbers had gone . . . down.
Officials found the software used in Broward can handle only 32,000 votes per precinct. After that, the system starts counting backward. Why a voting system would be designed to count backward was a mystery to Broward County Mayor Ilene Lieberman. She was on the phone late Wednesday with Omaha-based Elections Systems and Software.
Voter Turnout was 127,409. 128,352 votes were cast for president.
Voter Turnout was 379,257. 379,614 votes were cast for president.
Voter Turnout was 3,446. 4,188 votes were cast for president.
Voter Turnout was 33,996. 41,491 votes were cast for president.
Voter Turnout was 123,751. 123,938 votes were cast for president.
Voter Turnout was 716,574. 768,553 votes were cast for president.
Voter Turnout was 89,485. 89,707 votes were cast for president.
Voter Turnout was 386,104. 387,752 votes were cast for president.
Voter Turnout was 63,589. 82,178 votes were cast for president.
Voter Turnout was 136229. 136,314 votes were cast for president.
Voter Turnout was 452,061. 542,835 votes were cast for president.
Voter Turnout was 209,052. 228,358 votes were cast for president.
The day after a two-and-a-half-hour delay in counting ballots due to a glitch in a computer program, LaPorte County election officials are still trying to figure out what happened. "Maybe there was a power surge," LaPorte County Clerk Lynne Spevak said. "Something zapped it." At about 7 p.m. Tuesday, it was noticed that the first two or three printouts from individual precinct reports all listed an identical number of voters. Each precinct was listed as having 300 registered voters. That means the total number of voters for the county would be 22,200, although there are actually more than 79,000 registered voters.
Questions started arising Wednesday when Republicans pointed out a significant discrepancy in the original unofficial results: more early votes than early voters. Elections officials immediately moved to audit the early vote totals and released new numbers Thursday. In response to Observer questions Friday, Dickerson said some vote totals were typed in by hand election night rather than electronically downloaded because of a computer glitch. ...Dickerson said he believes the county's voting machines functioned properly.
...The audited vote totals issued Thursday derailed a Democratic sweep of the three at-large county commissioner seats -- for now, at least. It left the second, third and fourth vote-getters within fewer than 100 votes of each other.
More than 4,000 early votes were lost because the electronic voting system could not store the volume of votes it received. The county was told by the manufacturer of the voting system that its units could store up to 10,500 votes, but the limit was actually 3,005 votes.
Chowan County
Elections board officials were busy tallying corrections Wednesday to results in Guilford, Yadkin and Chowan counties, Bartlett said.
A systems software glitch in Craven County's electronic voting equipment is being blamed for a vote miscount that, when corrected, changed the outcome of at least one race in Tuesday's election.
Then, in the rush to make right the miscalculation that swelled the number of votes for president here by 11,283 more votes than the total number cast, a human mistake further delayed accurate totals for the 40,534 who voted.
Cuyahoga County has an inverse relationship between voter turnout and support for Kerry. Raw data compiled by Joe Knapp.
In Parma, precint 6450 the turnout was 94%. 40% of the voters left the presidential candidate blank, according to county records.
Franklin County's unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry's 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct.
An electronic voting machine added 3,893 votes to President Bush's tally in a suburban Columbus precinct, even though there are just 800 voters there.
Citing concerns about potential terrorism, Warren County officials locked down the county administration building on election night and blocked anyone from observing the vote count as the nation awaited Ohio's returns.
County officials say they took the action Tuesday night for homeland security, although state elections officials said they didn't know of any other Ohio county that closed off its elections board. Media organizations protested, saying it violated the law and the public's rights. The Warren results, delayed for hours because of long lines that extended voting past the scheduled close of polls, were part of the last tallies that helped clinch President Bush's re-election. Bush actually received 365 votes in the precinct, Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, told The Columbus Dispatch.
Lark charged that a number of voters may have been disenfranchised by the problems that shut down voting machines for all or most of the day. Some precincts didn't have enough paper ballots for people to fill out, and Lark said he suspects some people didn't bother coming back when a new supply of paper ballots arrived. He had no estimate on how many people may have missed a chance to vote, but he did have some questions Friday about the accuracy of the count coming out of the electronic machines that were working.
Lark cited statistics collected by a poll worker at the Farrell municipal building poll, which showed the voting machine recorded that 289 people cast ballots. The machine, however, recorded a total of 48 votes for U.S. Sen. John Kerry and three votes for George W. Bush in the presidential race. Lark said he finds it difficult to believe that only 51 people out of the 289 who voted actually cast a ballot in the presidential race.