Florida: election turnout vs. presidential votes

[Update 11/9/04: The Florida Department of State Division of Elections modified the data on their website on 11/8/04; I've posted about the new data here. I haven't found an explanation for the changes.]

The number of votes cast in a county for a specific race should never exceed the number of voters who voted. However, in comparing the numbers published on the Florida Department of State's website, it appears that in some counties there were more votes cast for president than there were voters voting (I first saw this mentioned here).

My SO and I obtained data for the 2004 election in Florida from the "1st set of unofficial returns" on the Florida Department of State Division of Elections election results page (accessed today ~6pm). The results pages report that

• For the presidential election, the "% report" is 100.0% for all counties
  
• For the turnout data "Y" (presumably "yes") for all counties in the "Final Report" and "Absentees" column.

Based on these data, there are 13 counties (out of 67 total; 19.4%) in Florida where there were more votes recorded for the presidential election than there were voters voting. These 13 counties have a total of 268,159 excess votes cast for president within them. One county (Hernando) reported 0 voter turnout, which seems obviously wrong. However, even excluding Hernando there were 192,327 excess votes cast for president across the remaining 12 counties.

But are these just normal election day hiccups? One way to test this is to look at another state and see if it has the same trend in its numbers. We first attempted to look at California, but its data was formatted inconveniently for copying to Excel, so we switched to looking at Oregon. We obtained data from the Oregon Secretary of State's Elections Division website today at ~6:30 pm (specific pages here and here). We chose these states haphazardly (CA because we live here, OR because it's next door).

We analyzed Oregon's data in exactly the same way as we did for Florida, and none of Oregon's 36 counties reported more votes for president than there were voters voting.

[Update: We've now analyzed data from Texas, Ohio, and Michigan - see this post for the analysis.]

Here are the data tables:

Table 1: Tabulated data of total voter turnout and total votes cast for president, in all Florida counties in the November 2, 2004 election. Note that a negative number in the "turnout minus votes" column indicates that there were more votes cast for president than voters voting in the county.

County	Turnout	Presidential votes cast	Turnout minus votes	(T-v)/T	Excess votes
Alachua	111,287	111,022	265	0.2%
Baker	10,059	9,955	104	1.0%
Bay	75,100	74,998	102	0.1%
Bradford	10,913	10,851	62	0.6%
Brevard	265,764	265,075	689	0.3%
Broward	705,766	704,376	1,390	0.2%
Calhoun	6,006	5,961	45	0.7%
Charlotte	80,140	79,730	410	0.5%
Citrus	69,691	69,462	229	0.3%
Clay	81,387	81,230	157	0.2%
Collier	127,409	128,352	-943	-0.7%	943
Columbia	25,075	24,984	91	0.4%
DeSoto	9,532	9,495	37	0.4%
Dixie	6,472	6,440	32	0.5%
Duval	379,257	379,614	-357	-0.1%	357
Escambia	161,183	142,990	18,193	11.3%
Flagler	38,532	38,475	57	0.1%
Franklin	5,973	5,930	43	0.7%
Gadsden	21,094	20,984	110	0.5%
Gilchrist	7,042	7,012	30	0.4%
Glades	3,446	4,188	-742	-21.5%	742
Gulf	7,299	7,256	43	0.6%
Hamilton	5,116	5,079	37	0.7%
Hardee	7,285	7,246	39	0.5%
Hendry	9,810	9,774	36	0.4%
Hernando	0	75,832	-75,832		75832
Highlands	33,996	41,491	-7,495	-22.0%	7495
Hillsborough	461,772	461,520	252	0.1%
Holmes	8,349	8,298	51	0.6%
Indian River	61,321	61,321	0	0.0%
Jackson	19,850	19,797	53	0.3%
Jefferson	7,501	7,477	24	0.3%
Lafayette	3,352	3,325	27	0.8%
Lake	123,751	123,938	-187	-0.2%	187
Lee	242,434	241,433	1,001	0.4%
Leon	136,229	136,314	-85	-0.1%	85
Levy	16,742	16,649	93	0.6%
Liberty	3,051	3,021	30	1.0%
Madison	8,342	8,307	35	0.4%
Manatee	143,830	143,539	291	0.2%
Marion	140,321	139,644	677	0.5%
Martin	72,709	72,430	279	0.4%
Miami-Dade	716,574	768,553	-51,979	-7.3%	51979
Monroe	39,629	39,525	104	0.3%
Nassau	32,740	32,664	76	0.2%
Okaloosa	89,485	89,707	-222	-0.2%	222
Okeechobee	12,243	12,197	46	0.4%
Orange	386,104	387,752	-1,648	-0.4%	1648
Osceola	63,589	82,178	-18,589	-29.2%	18589
Palm Beach	452,061	542,835	-90,774	-20.1%	90774
Pasco	191,854	190,866	988	0.5%
Pinellas	457,213	455,203	2,010	0.4%
Polk	211,200	210,777	423	0.2%
Putnam	31,059	30,964	95	0.3%
Santa Rosa	67,329	67,213	116	0.2%
Sarasota	195,942	195,530	412	0.2%
Seminole	186,178	186,115	63	0.0%
St. Johns	86,603	86,262	341	0.4%
St. Lucie	100,374	99,913	461	0.5%
Sumter	31,998	31,837	161	0.5%
Suwannee	15,861	15,801	60	0.4%
Taylor	8,613	8,580	33	0.4%
Union	4,714	4,675	39	0.8%
Volusia	209,052	228,358	-19,306	-9.2%	19306
Wakulla	11,820	11,763	57	0.5%
Walton	24,027	23,974	53	0.2%
Washington	10,450	10,365	85	0.8%
Sum	7,350,900	7,588,422	-237,522		268,159

Table 2: Tabulated data of total voter turnout and total votes cast for president in all Oregon counties in the November 2, 2004 election.

County	Turnout	Presidential votes cast	Turnout - votes	(T-v)/T	Excess Votes
Baker	8,990	8,904	86	1.0%
Benton	46,135	45,842	293	0.6%
Clackamas	183,139	181,768	1,371	0.7%
Clatsop	19,329	19,188	141	0.7%
Columbia	24,978	24,795	183	0.7%
Coos	33,501	33,276	225	0.7%
Crook	10,106	10,028	78	0.8%
Curry	11,423	11,336	87	0.8%
Deschutes	74,295	73,809	486	0.7%
Douglas	54,945	54,358	587	1.1%
Gilliam	1,160	1,136	24	2.1%
Grant	4,234	3,157	1,077	25.4%
Harney	3,735	3,702	33	0.9%
Hood River	9,823	9,760	63	0.6%
Jackson	96,611	95,824	787	0.8%
Jefferson	8,124	8,034	90	1.1%
Josephine	42,017	41,631	386	0.9%
Klamath	31,314	31,078	236	0.8%
Lake	3,989	3,881	108	2.7%
Lane	180,353	174,856	5,497	3.0%
Lincoln	24,555	24,317	238	1.0%
Linn	51,153	50,657	496	1.0%
Malheur	10,893	10,773	120	1.1%
Marion	116,702	115,929	773	0.7%
Morrow	4,173	4,110	63	1.5%
Multnomah	345,957	343,290	2,667	0.8%
Polk	35,118	34,802	316	0.9%
Sherman	1,122	1,099	23	2.0%
Tillamook	13,746	13,605	141	1.0%
Umatilla	26,145	25,890	255	1.0%
Union	13,442	13,284	158	1.2%
Wallowa	4,569	4,500	69	1.5%
Wasco	11,866	11,685	181	1.5%
Washington	224,850	223,276	1,574	0.7%
Wheeler	913	876	37	4.1%
Yamhill	40,794	40,417	377	0.9%
Sum	1,774,199	1,754,873	19,326		0