What is difference in cards cast and times counted on Diebold Accuvote machines? Clint Curtis ABs?

[philb]

Brevard County
CD24 Feeney Curtis

Absentee OS cards cast 27,909 times counted 6,683

Total cards cast 67,869 times counted 46,643 total votes 45,339


What is going on with the big difference in "cards cast" and "times" counted in Brevard county (and others).
cards cast is 20,000 higher than total votes?

what is it?

http://www.brevardelections.org/g126abst.pdf

A similar large difference occurs in other counties such as Volusia


These counties vote on Diebold Accuvote systems

[OnTheOtherHand]

1. sort of like Meck, actually...

(the following is non-authoritative but seems OK)

Times Counted means the number of times that the race in question was read
by an Accu-Vote (whether it had a valid vote or not). If the race is
jurisdiction-wide (on all ballots), then the times counted for the race
should match the Ballots Cast. If the race is not jurisdiction wide and
does not appear on all ballots/cards, then the Times Counted could be
different from Ballots Cast.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~matth/lists/support.w3archive/200011/msg00054.html

See on p. 6 it gives 27909 as the cards cast absentee under the turnout report? And then if you search the PDF for 27909, you'll see that it shows up each time (AFAICS) for absentee, but the times counted varies for races that aren't county-wide. Or so it seems to me.

(edit to fix typo)

Oops, forgot to mention: the link also talks about the difference between "ballots cast" and "cards cast," although that doesn't seem crucial here.

[philb]

2. So the missing absentees were cast in other Congressiona races in the County?

and together should match the absentee votes cast county wide in the Governors race?

[OnTheOtherHand]

3. it's a hypothesis, anyway... looks right

Let's look....

on edit: 21,226 in CD 15, 6,683 in CD 24. Yes?

[philb]

4. Seems to be a difference of 143 in cards cast numbers on summary page versus princt total

what would explain that?

I can't find a breakout with voting by election day, early voting, absentees, on their web page.

Can you?

What was total number of absentees?

[OnTheOtherHand]

6. well, the PDF is from the following day

so my guess would be provisional ballots. No, I don't see a breakout of election day / early voting / absentees / provisionals.

I assume the PDF # of absentees is at least close, but I can't be sure.

[philb]

5. Is the only way to find out absentee and early election results to do FOI request of SOE?

Doesn't someone compile that?
Most counties have a split on their web sites?

Are there any laws or regulations regarding availability of such information?


Historically there has been a lot of manipulation of absentees in Florida

It appears that at least 20,000 Dem absentees are missing in Broward and they vote on ES&S touch screens
and this isn't about difference of cards cast and times counted

In 2004, over 50,000 Dem absentees were "lost" by the Broward SOE, as reported widely in the Media

but they were never found and nothing was ever done about it

They appear to have been lost by a "contractor" they were turned over to for sendout
the contractor had ties to the Florida admin. and right wing groups

[OnTheOtherHand]

7. I don't know that you actually have to FOI it

You can get a lot of info by asking, in my experience. But I'm no expert on FL, although I have gotten info from them on occasion. Actually I recently got a large dataset from another FL county after sending them a $5 check. As I understand it, FL sunshine laws are very favorable.

Whether "most" FL counties break these out on their website is more than I know. Splitting every precinct into early / election day / total makes the reports much bigger, so I can see why they might not do it by default. but I imagine they have to give you totals if you ask.

[philb]

9. Some of the SOEs in the challenge counties are being extremely uncooperative

such as Broward, Volusia, and others- so I hear from those directly involved and asking for data

apparently the SOEs say they have 75 days to respond, which makes virtually everything meaningless by that time
as all have moved on to other issues

[philb]

8. It appears that 6683 ABs were cast in CD24(Curtis race) and 21226 in CD15(Bowman's)

for a total of 27,909 which is the total in the statewide Governors race

early votes and absentees aren't split out by precinct but it looks like the total of ABs is at least there

Shouldn't the web site define cards cast and times counted somewhere?


Thanks for the help!

[OnTheOtherHand]

10. yes, 27909 absentees looks good

I may be confused about what I've seen where, but my guess is that early voters are folded into precinct returns -- which, I imagine, would be fairly easy if they are all voting on touch screen. The mail-in absentee ballots are lumped together, as we see. (Somewhere I was looking at a county that had both touch-screen and op-scan early voting; the touch-screen early votes were folded in with precincts, and the op-scan early votes were lumped together.)

Could there be some late absentees? I suppose military ballots postmarked by election day are supposed to count in FL?

My impression is that at even the really good BoEs, the websites are lagging -- the good ones are doing a pretty good job of making stuff available, but that stuff is ragged and subject to misinterpretation. Not that I've done a survey, but I don't think I personally have seen a BoE anywhere in the country that provided a glossary of all the terms you would need to understand in order to decipher all their reports! Most BoEs probably aren't set up with a major institutional commitment to effective Internet communication -- it's just one more mission they are trying to shoehorn in.