Saturday, March 07, 2009

Breaking Down Ohio Provisional Ballots Reveals Interesting Facts

In Ohio, voters cast about 207,000 provisional ballots, roughly 3.6% of all ballots cast. About 167,000 were counted. That means 80% (80.6% to be more precise) of the provisional ballots were eventually counted in the 2008 elections in Ohio.

What happened to the other 20% (19.4%)?

That's 40,000 provisional ballots that were disqualified.

47% of the disqualified ballots were because the person was not registered to vote in Ohio.

That runs to 18,800 people who were not registered to vote who proffered provisional ballots hoping to affect the outcome of the election.

Another 36% were ballots rejected because they voted in the wrong district or county (14,400 ballots rejected).

In a close election, those are significant figures. To claim that voter fraud is not an issue or that it is a minor one takes away from the objective fact that people are trying to engage in voter fraud and hope they aren't caught. Ohio can claim that the process worked and that these ballots were not counted because the provisional ballots were checked against their records.

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