The total votes counted in the above table is 54,530 and is significantly lower than the 81,577 votes counted for President, 80,582 votes counted for U.S. House of Representatives, and 82,784 ballots cast. The drop-off is 33% relative to the Presidential Vote. The reason for this drop-off is because the figures for U.S. Senate as published by the Kansas Secretary of State are incorrect. The vote totals as published in the Statement of Votes Cast by the Shawnee County Election Office show the correct figures, repeated below:
Candidate
Party
Vote
Percentage
Samuel Brownback
Republican
53,491
67.2%
Lee Jones
Democratic
23,773
29.9%
Steven Rosile
Libertarian
1,396
1.8%
George Cook
Reform
980
1.2%
The total error is 25,110 votes. The missing votes are actually very similar percentage wise to the counted votes and do not impact the results of the contest. The Atlas database has been updated with these corrected results and can be seen here:
The Atlas database has been updated to include additional Write-in Votes for President for the 2004 General Election in New York and Delaware. The state of Delaware publishes a “results book” after each election cycle. This paper publication (more recently provided as a more convenient pdf) includes more complete results, including official write-in votes that are not presented on the official election results posted on Delaware Commissioner of Elections 2004 Election Results web page. The Delaware 2004 Election Results book includes a total of 80 write-in votes for President (three are for Róger Calero the Socialist Workers candidate, the remaining are not cast for any of the other national candidates).
New York also printed a more recent (and unlabeled) version of the the 2004 Election Results for President and Vice President that includes more votes for qualified write-in candidates. This document has a creation date of May 9, 2005, but is not labeled as an amended version. It includes write-in votes for David Cobb, Michael A. Peroutka, and Bill Van Auken in a number of counties that were left blank in the December 2004 version of the document. The Peroutka vote increases from 207 to 363, Cobb from 87 to 138, and Van Auken from 2 to 4. This newer report, however, does not include any qualified write-in votes from the five New York City boroughs.
A second example of double-counted votes was discovered this week – this time its Lake County, TN in the 2004 General Election. This discovery is an outcome of viewing the new statistics tables described in the previous entry. When examining the table for top percentage change in total votes cast for President relative to the previous election, Lake County, Tennessee popped up as #3 on the increasing column with 113.13% in 2004 followed by a precipitous decrease of 52.78% in 2008 – a sign of a high-probability error. Official results obtained by the Lake County Election Commission confirms the correct data as follows:
As Reported from the Lake County Election Commission
Marilyn Bose, Julie Hosch, Belma Huebner, Don Kass, Don Racheter, Dorothy Schlitter, Wanda Sears… these names don’t ring a bell? They won the election for Presidential Electors in the state of Iowa in 2004. These are the candidates the citizens of Iowa actually voted for when they cast their ballot for George W. Bush for President in the 2004 General Election. As stated in Article II Section I of the United States Constitution that Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress. Today, all states except two (Nebraska and Maine) appoint an entire electoral slate through the use of a state-wide popular vote. The aforementioned exceptions in Maine and Nebraska vary only slightly from this model, choosing electors based on the Congressional District Method.
Some 3,400 Presidential Electors nation-wide have been added to the Atlas database and the election results for Presidential Electors is accessible via the link on any state summary page (Example: Iowa Electors 2004). Electors included are all those pledged to a candidate that was ballot-qualified in at least one state (electors for qualified write-in candidates that had no ballot access are not included).
In March of 2005, the Secretary of State of Mississippi signed an Amended Certification of the “whole number of votes given in each county for Presidential Electors for each candidate in the November 2, 2004, General Election for the offices of President and Vice-President of the United States of America”. This amended certification corrected the well-documented error in Lowndes County (the total shown on the County Recapitulation sheet for Bush truncated the final zero giving Bush 1,369 votes instead of actual sum of 13,690 votes). The amended certification also corrected a data shift error in the DeSoto Official Recapitulation sheet that occured in Bridgetown Precinct. This error gave 331 votes to Harris, 3 to Kerry, 1 to Nader and 0 to Peroutka. Shifting the data to the correct figures gives 0 to Harris, 331 to Kerry, 3 to Nader, and 1 to Peroutka. The state-wide totals are adjusted accordingly and may be seen on the Mississippi Summary Results for 2004.
The 2004 election spreadsheet data file has been released to version 1.0. The file includes vote data for the 2004 election at the National, State, County, and Township (New England States) levels. Also included are statistics, charts, voter turnout by state, candidates, and ballot status for each candidate. The file lacks the November 2004 voter registration figure for Maine (they do not have a scheduled release date for the data). The January 2004 datum is used in its place. The spreadsheet is available for purchase on the Store page (the file is available for free to those who have purchased the preliminary file.)
The 2004 official results are starting to come in. Eight states now have official results posted (ID, GA, LA, ND, SC, SD, VT, WY). The site data is being updated gradually as the results from more states become available. Precinct and Congressional District Results are also being added to the site for some of these states (available to full site members). A full tally of official results is expected by mid-December.
The first votes counted in the Presidential Election are those in Dixville Notch and Hart’s Location, NH. The results this year are as follows:
Bush
Kerry
Nader
Dixville Notch
19
7
0
Hart’s Location
16
14
1
From four years ago, Hart’s Location had Bush 17, Gore 13. Hart’s location voted Republican in 1996 as well, giving Dole 13, Clinton 12, Perot 4, and Browne 2. Perot won Hart’s Location in 1992 with 15 votes to Bush Sr. 9 to Clinton 6.
In Dixville Notch in 2000, Bush received 21 votes, Gore 5, and Nader 1. In 1996, it voted for Bob Dole with 18 votes to Clinton’s 8. Perot’s and Browne each received 1. In 1992, Bush Sr. received 15 votes, Perot 8, Marrou (Libertarian) 5, and Clinton placed fourth with 2 votes.
I performed my civic duty this morning, casting my ballot at my local precinct. In a non-battleground state, at 7:30 in the morning, the line was only about six people long, with perhaps 20 voters in the actual room. We use AccuVote optical scanning machines that read paper ballots in which voters fill out ovals. In my opinion, this is a good system – they are relatively accurate and the method has preserves a paper trail in the event that there is a machine malfunction or some other desire for a recount.
The ballot itself did not have many offices up for election – and most of those that were did not have competition. There was only one candidate for each Sheriff, Representative in General Court, and Councillor (all Democrats). Our Representative in Congress, Barney Frank (D-MA), did not have a Republican opponent, although there is one Unenrolled (i.e. MA term for Independent) candidate also for Representative in Congress representing the fourth district.
