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I give my heartfelt thanks to Brian Julin for producing the spreadsheets and the tables of data that made it possible for me to write this report in a timely manner.
This is the fourth in a series of reports on uncounted votes in urban counties of Ohio. These are ballots cast but not counted because they were regarded as “undervotes” and “overvotes,” or “blank” and “void,” as they are known in New York State. The true number of such votes can be easily determined by subtracting votes counted from total ballots cast.
Shortly after the election I obtained from the website of the Ohio Secretary of State the data I needed to make a statewide compilation on a county by county basis of the uncounted votes, exclusive of provisional ballots. These data have since been taken down from said website. I present them here.
John F. Kerry 433,262
George W. Bush 215,624
Other candidates 3,495
Thus, according to the Ohio Secretary of State’s own data, the countywide percentage of uncounted votes, exclusive of provisional ballots, was 1.95%.
The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections has posted its official precinct canvass records dated November 30, 2004. The official results are presented here:
John F. Kerry 448,486
George W. Bush 221,606
Other candidates 3,637
There are still 13,531 uncounted votes in Cuyahoga County. Presumably 578 are provisional ballots, and the other 12,953 are the regular ballots that went uncounted on Election Day.
From the Cuyahoga County canvass records I have compiled the following table, presenting separate data for the vote totals, counted and uncounted, for Cleveland, the suburbs, regular ballots, and absentee ballots:
As shown in the table above, 34.79% of the uncounted votes are in Cleveland, which Kerry won with 83.36% of the vote to 15.79% for Bush. The percentage of uncounted votes in Cleveland, 2.73%, is much higher than the county wide percentage of 1.97%, but lower than the surprisingly high percentage of uncounted absentee ballots, 3.32%.
I had Brian Julin prepare a table of precincts sorted according to their percentage of uncounted ballots. Here are the results for the City of Cleveland:
In Cleveland there are 12 precincts with more than
6% of the ballots uncounted. These account for 380 uncounted votes, 8.07% of the city wide total, and 9.19% of the total ballots cast in these 12 precincts. John Kerry won them all overwhelmingly,
by a margin of 12 to 1 in the aggregate. There are 29 precincts with 5% or more of the ballots uncounted. These account for 743 uncounted votes, 15.78% of the city wide total, and 6.84% of the total ballots cast in these 29 precincts. John Kerry won them all overwhelmingly, by a margin of 12 to 1 in the aggregate. There are 65 precincts with 4% or more of the ballots uncounted. These account for 1,366 uncounted votes, 29.01% of the city wide total, and 5.43% of the total ballots cast in these 65 precincts. John Kerry won them all overwhelmingly, by a margin of 12 to 1 in the aggregate.
Elsewhere in Cuyahoga County there are 19 precincts with more than 4% of the ballots uncounted. These account for 383 uncounted votes, or 5.63% of the total ballots cast in these precincts. John Kerry won 17 of these precincts, 16 of them by overwhelming margins, 8 to 1 in the aggregate, and he ran nearly even with Bush, 585 to 589, in the other three.
Brian Julin provides this analysis: “Without considering ballot order (rotation) problems, which are obvious in several precincts as there are aberrant third party votes, and which may be less than obvious in collocated precincts where Bush and Kerry votes were swapped, if all undervotes were allocated in proportion to votes that were validly counted, Kerry would pick up approximately 7935 votes and Bush would pick up approximately 2675."
