Nevada Votes Don't Add Up
Wed Nov 03, 2004 at 02:46:47 AM PDT
Hi, all - Went to Nevada today to GOTV with MoveOn, heard all was going well, pollworkers reported 80%+ turnout, and then... Bush won?
I came back to school and talked to some seriously freaking out friends, and when I checked some of the Nevada voting data...
(http://nvresults.nv.gov/)
...there were some strange things going on in Clark county, home of Las Vegas and the great majority of voters in the state.
1: ZERO ABSENTEES IN CLARK
Absentee voting accounted for 15.7% of votes cast in other NV counties, but in the
Voter Turnout Report, Clark has no absentees listed. The next county of comparable size to Clark (Washoe county) had 13.9% absentee turnout. This alone (if the absentee votes / "paper ballots" do not represent a different proportion of Democratic voters) would net Kerry roughly +5000 votes in the state. If ACT or other GOTV group encouraged voters to use paper ballots, this could be very significant.
2: ABSENTEE + EARLY VOTES DON'T ADD UP
The Nevada Appeal reported that as of Friday, Clark County had over 300,000 absentee and early votes logged. From the "voter turnout" link above, this means at least 30,000 votes are still uncounted, and absentee ballots were accepted until voting day, so the 300,000 figure is almost certain to be lower than the final tally.
3: UNDERVOTES
According to the Nevada Election Summary, Clark County had 63% of the statewide turnout, but 99.5% of the "undervotes" for the presidential election.
Clark is using touchscreen and push-button voting machines, while the rest of the state is using all-touchscreen machines. The difference? The touchscreen machines have printers to verify your vote, while the push-button machines do not. It seems that votes for president in Clark were discarded at a hugely disproportionate rate compared to the rest of the state. (Also, "none of these" was an option, so disaffected voters were unlikely to "leave it blank").
WHAT SHOULD BE DONE:
-Compare voter sign-ins to actual numbers of votes recorded in Clark County and elsewhere. According to this article, Clark was expected to cast OVER 70% of the votes in the state. According to current listings, it cast roughly 63%. Did the same problems that caused "undervotes" completely disenfranchise some number of voters? Were these on paper-printing machines, or paperless machines? Pollworkers were estimating 80% turnout, but Clark is listed as having one of NV's lowest turnouts (~71%), despite being heavily canvassed. What's up?
-Recount, recount, recount the paper ballots.
-Learn what happened to Clark County's absentee votes, and the 30,000+ votes which the county had logged by Friday of last week, but are missing on Tuesday.
And of course, the theme of the day here:
-DO NOT CONCEDE!
Tips, names to contact, etc in the comments. Thanks for your help.