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I was saving the results of CA county-by-county ballots coming in after Nov. 2 in an Excel file. While I didn't think ahead to save all the various stages at which ballots were added, I do have an interesting comparison of the vote totals before and after Nov. 17. I am assuming that the added ballots represent absentee ballots.
Statewide, there was not a large difference in percentages, but there was a slight uptick in Kerry support. This might be viewed as odd considering the common wisdom that absentee votes trend Republican.
Before Nov. 17 (# ballots = 11,691,201) Kerry: 53.46% Bush: 43.75%
After Nov. 17 (# ballots = 819,659 or 7% of total ballots) Kerry: 55.02% Bush: 43.71%
In the county-by-county results, a few anomalies stuck out. I list these counties separately because they use e-voting. I am not trying to indicate that discrepancies are only found in e-voting counties, as one can see from the lists at the bottom of this post.
Riverside Co. showed an uptick of 3.2% in support for Kerry, with a corresponding downtick for Bush. They use Sequoia AVC-Edge.
Before Nov. 17 (# ballots = 538,516) Kerry: 40.5% Bush: 57.5%
After Nov. 17 (# ballots = 23982, or 4.4% of total ballots) Kerry: 43.7% Bush: 53.9%
A slightly greater (4.5%) trend is seen in the San Bernadino Co. results. Note the larger sample size. They use Sequoia AVC-Edge.
Before Nov. 17 (# ballots = 475,672) Kerry: 42.7% Bush: 55.4%
After Nov. 17 (# ballots = 52715, or 11% of total ballots) Kerry: 47.2% Bush: 49.3%
Alameda Co. shows a 6% uptick for Kerry. They use Diebold AccuVote-TS.
Before Nov. 17 (# ballots = 540,780) Kerry: 74.1% Bush: 23.4%
After Nov. 17 (# ballots = 27135, or 5% of total ballots) Kerry: 80.2% Bush: 16.8%
Other counties with larger than 3% discrepancy between votes before and after Nov. 17. All of these counties had a corresponding decrease for the other candidate. The type of voting is listed as well.
Calaveras: Bush +5%, 1722 (8% of total ballots), punch card Fresno: Kerry +7%, 14993 (6% of total), optical scan (precinct) Kern: Kerry +7%, 7572 (3.5% of total), optical scan (precinct) Los Angeles: Kerry +5%, 139875 (4.7% of total), optical scan (precinct) Nevada: Kerry +7%, 1492 (3% of total), optical scan (central) San Diego: Kerry +5%, 66180 (6% of total), optical scan (precinct) San Joaquin: Kerry +5%, 11338 (6% of total), optical scan (precinct) Santa Barbara: Kerry +5%, 9933 (6% of total), optical scan (precinct) Tulare: Kerry +3.5%, 4859 (5% of total), optical scan (precinct) Ventura: Kerry +6%, 8794 (3% of total), punch card
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Counties in which the votes before and after Nov. 17 were very similar:
Contra Costa, optical scan (precinct) Humboldt, optical scan (precinct) Marin, optical scan (precinct) Mariposa, optical scan (precinct) Napa, e-voting (touchscreen), Sequoia, AVC Edge 1 Orange, e-voting (other) Placer, optical scan (precinct) San Francisco, optical scan (central) San Luis Obispo, optical scan (precinct) San Mateo, optical scan (precinct) Santa Cruz, optical scan (central) Shasta, e-voting (touchscreen), Sequoia, AVC Edge Siskiyou, optical scan (precinct) Solano, optical scan (precinct) Sonoma, optical scan (precinct) Stanislaus, optical scan (precinct) Sutter, optical scan (precinct) Tehama, e-voting (touchscreen), Sequoia, AVC Edge Yolo, punch card Yuba, punch card
Granted, these are not always large sample sizes and are "polluted" by absentee and early ballots added before Nov. 17. Still, there is an interesting trend: an uptick of Kerry support in a subset of absentee ballots, despite common wisdom which says that these ballots should trend Republican.
Also, as I've mentioned elsewhere, Merced county not only did not add ballots during this time, but reduced their totals ballots cast by 9,994. These ballots had not been allocated to any candidates yet, so the totals for each candidate remained unchanged. I don't know if this was a county problem or a SoS type-o. They use e-voting, the ES&S iVotronic system.
This is a very rough analysis and should be taken with a grain of salt. A more thorough analysis would compare exact totals (obtained from the registrars of each county) for absentee/early ballots and ballots cast at the polls on election day. I hope with this analysis to motivate people to work on these, more thorough analyses. I think San Bernadino, Riverside, and Alameda counties are good places to start.
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