Election Day 2013 – a relatively quiet one on the state-wide level.  The Atlas will be posting preliminary results of the Gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia.

The Atlas now has a twitter account @uselectionatlas – track site updates and information about elections through the link on the Home Page or via the widget in the blog sidebar at right.

Today, January 24, 2009 is exactly one decade since the counter on the home page was added – and since then, 4,131,137 visitors have viewed the page (the counter was set up not to count duplicate visits in the same day).  Certainly a lot has changed – many more features and much more information have been added to the site in those years.  May there be many more years (and decades) to come! 

Today is election day. If you are reading this, you are most likely an election enthusiast and will likely vote – but in the off chance that you are considering not voting, here is my encouragement to do so. Exercise your right to choose the people who govern us. Don’t like the candidates running? write someone in. Turned off by the negativity and lack of civil debate? No one will ever know if you stay home. Most states have several choices on the ballot – Politics1 highlights many of the candidates running for state and federal offices.

I cast my ballot this morning – a fill-in-the-oval paper ballot to be read by an optical scanner. This is a fast, relatively accurate system with full independent audit capability. Here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, there are unfortunately not a lot of contested races – my Representative in Congress in the 4th district, Barney Frank (D), is unopposed. The Senate race (Edward Kennedy (D)) has not been competitive, Secretary of State, Treasurer, and Auditor have no Republican challenger (they do however, have either Green-Rainbow or Working Families party challengers). The Governor’s race has been, by far, the most interesting and productive public debate (although the campaign was too negative in my opinion). There are three interesting ballot initiatives, however, and I cast my support for Question 2, allowing candidates to run on multiple ballot lines, more commonly referred to as fusion.

The Atlas will be posting updates throughout the evening for Senatorial and Gubernatorial races across the nation.

Happy President’s Day! In honor of the past-serving presidents, there was a proposal put forth in 2004 by Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE) and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) that would place images of the Presidents on the obverse side of the $1 coins with the image of the Statue of Liberty on the reverse side. There would be four per year in order of service (not including those Presidents who are still alive).

The bill (H.R. 902) passed the House on April 27, 2005, passed the Senate in November of 2005, and was signed into law by President Bush on December 15, 2005. The US Mint will present the new 2007 $1 coin design candidates at a public meeting on February 28, 2006. Expect the new George Washington coin early next year. A new coin will enter circulation every three months depicting each successive President (and yes, Grover Cleveland will have two!) – (see the chronological list of Presidents).

Today is election day 2005. Although an off-year for most (meaning that there are not many high-profile positions up for election), there are a number of important local offices to be filled as well as initiatives around the country to be voted on. Two of the bigger elections are the Gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey. The results of these elections will be availalbe in the special Gubernatorial section following the release of the returns (see NJ and VA).

The home page site counter has passed two million visitors. Thanks to all the visitors who have made this site such a great success!

With the few small updates today (amended Ohio results, two changes in West Virginia, and reallocation of write-ins in New Hampshire and Virginia), the popular vote results of the 2004 Presidential Election are complete (note that some data are likely to be amended in the future based on analysis of precincts or county-level canvasses). The final tally is: Bush 62,041,268 (or 50.73%) vs. Kerry 59,028,908 (48.27%). Nader came in a distant third with 463,635 (0.38%) just above Badnarik at 397,157 (0.32%). Other candidates received 365,170 (0.30%). The 2004 election is the first to have a winner with a majority of the popular vote since George HW Bush defeated Michael Dukakis in 1988.

I have come across a rather significant error in the certified “Total Votes Reported by County for 2004 General Election President and Vice President” as published by the Mississippi Secretary of State. The data reported from Lowndes County has Bush with 1,369 votes, Kerry with 10,408, and other candidates with 170 votes for a total of 11,947 votes cast. These data suggest that Kerry won Lowndes County with 87% of the vote – a margin of 9,039 votes. A quick look as past results for Lowndes County shows that no Democrat has won the county since 1956 (George Wallace won as an Independent in 1968). In addition, no Democratic Candidate has won more than 40% of the vote in Lowndes County since 1946. Also looking at the total votes cast, the 11,947 votes is 7,283 fewer than cast in 2000 (a drop of 38%).

This data discrepancy is explained by an error in the tallying of the votes. The trailing zero was dropped from the county total for Bush. Instead of 1,369 votes, Bush actually received 13,690 votes. This figures is confirmed by adding the precinct results from the Official Recapitulation sheet for Lowndes County. I have contacted the Mississippi Secretary of State about this error and have corrected the figure in the data tabulation on this site.

“Electoral College holds key to election, again”

from Zogby’s Sound Bites or the original at Centre Daily Times

Simultaneously amusing and sad.