Unexplained Undervote in Mecklenburg County
In the November 2, 2006 election, Mecklenburg County, had several very close results in both national and state races, including a 329 vote squeaker in the Kissell-Hayes Congressional election. Scrutiny of the vote totals has revealed an unexplained undervote: a significantly higher percentage of voters than in the past declined to vote for the most prominent races such as those for US House of Representatives. Never in past years had the Congressional races been "outperformed" by downballot races such as for sheriff, county commissioner etc.... but it did happen in 2006. Mecklenburg County includes parts of three Congressional districts. ALL three districts had a significantly higher undervote in Mecklenburg than they did in other counties, and all three races had a significantly higher undervote than they did past years for the same race.
For a look at the data, analysis, and an account of the problems that arose during the recount, please read on...
Our site details the undervote through downloadable data and graphs, describes problems that arose during the Mecklenburg manual recount, examines some of the possible explanations, and looks at what is needed to determine what happened in November.
Many of you will realize that this undervote has implications in NC-08 because of the closeness of the Kissell-Hayes race, but it is also relevant to the undervote in FL-13 (Christine Jennings race) because that election also used the ES&S iVotronic. However, unlike in Florida, the iVotronics used in Mecklenburg do have a paper trail that could provide evidence that the ES&S voting machines are not as infallible as some would suppose.
Please visit the site for more detail...
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Your data and analysis are flawed
I'm going into more detail later, but don't want my fellow BlueNCers to be concerned about an overall undervote that really isn't that shocking. Thanks for bringing this here, though. It makes my upcoming diary all the more pertinent.
Robin Hayes lied. Nobody died, but thousands of folks lost their jobs.
please examine the data
I would welcome any substantive criticism of the data here, but would also ask that it not be dismissed out of hand without consideration.
I do know that a previous analysis was made by others of the NC-08 election and that a premature diagnosis was made of an unexplained undervote based upon inclusion of county-wide absentee ballots. We have taken the time to factor in only precinct-specific votes to make absolutely sure that we were arriving at verifiable numbers, we have compared those numbers to other county results and other off-year election data, and we have compared county-wide aggregate data in the Congressional race to county-wide data on the Sheriff's race.
Please take a look at the 'undervote' page of the site for a detailed presentation of the data.
Blueheel
Why haven't we heard about this from Larry Kissell?
Who are you, and who is helping you with your site about the alleged undervote?
Why wait a month a half to bring it up?
More information, please.
why and who
I am the author of the undervote site and I was a former full-time volunteer for the Kissell campaign this fall, having moved my family close to Biscoe. I have received help with compiling the data and graphs from a full-time staffer with the campaign who was present during the Mecklenburg manual recount.
During a meeting last week with the Mecklenburg Board of Elections, they admitted that there was an unexplained undervote based on this data. However, they do not believe that it is possible that machine error could have played any role in the undervote, and they did not want to allow scrutiny of precinct-specific machine tapes because they claimed that we could determine individual voter identity from the tapes because they are serial records that could be matched to voter order, a far-fetched defense that presupposes our knowing on which machine each voter voted and memorization of the voter log.
We are conducting this investigation into a county-wide voting problem, not an NC-08 specific issue. We do so as independent North Carolinians concerned about fair voting in Mecklenburg County. Larry has not been involved in this effort as we have wished to ensure that it was an independent inquiry.
It has taken so long to get this out here because we wanted to make sure that the analysis was thorough and that the data was presented clearly, because I had to make a return trip to the UK after the election, and because I am a very busy father to a 1 year old. I am not a regular blogger because I am so busy, but I have enjoyed visiting this site when I can.
I know the "staffer"
you are referring to and I'm happy to know that you aren't him. As promised, I will give another and what other heavily involved Mecklenburg volunteers for the Kissell campaign feel is a more accurate accounting of the data in Mecklenburg.
We are glad you are here and I really didn't mean to jump out of the gate being rude, but I did think you were this other "staffer" you are referring to.
The one thing that was truly a problem with the eye-hand recount in Mecklenburg was the method used to verify the votes. They reconciled them to the machine instead of human to human.
The real reason for conceding.
What I don't understand is why we haven't made a bigger deal about the real reason for conceding the race.
Most people seem to think we conceded because we were sure that we couldn't pick up the necessary votes in the manual recount.
The fact is that we conceded the race because of a decision by the State Board of Elections.
We will never know 100% sure if we didn't have the necessary votes because the manual recount got halted halfway through the process, after we conceded.
Everyone (even the Hayes camp from what I've been told) believed that we had to show a significant difference in the total sampling of manually recounted precincts.
But on the first day of the manual recount the State Board of Elections ruled that we needed to show a significant difference in every single recounted precinct. On the first day of manual recounts we only picked up votes in one of the manually recounted precincts (In Stanly County, where I was an observer), so after that ruling by the SBOE it was end of story.
From what I heard this was the first time they had this close of a race and the SBOE had to rule on how to interpret the state law. I thought we had a Democratic state legislature though, so it's hard for me to understand why they ruled this way knowing all to well that the ruling they made handed Hayes his victory.
Of course this is all water under the bridge now and I personally don't think we would have picked up the necessary votes even if all the precincts got manually recounted, but the fact is that we will never be 100% sure.
Cabarrus Democrats
Larry Kissell
They do not know the meaning of the word extrapolated
This would have been grounds for a law suit if Larry had the desire and money to fight it. I understand there is a first time for everything, but nowhere in the law does it say the votes must come from every precinct or county. It simply says that an amount that when extrapolated out to the entire district would change the outcome of the race. They could all come from one county if there was a problem in one county, but not the way the SBOE interpreted the law.
You're right. It won't change things for this race, but we need to get that fixed before 2008. How?
Robin Hayes lied. Nobody died, but thousands of folks lost their jobs.
By sending..
everyone on the State Board of Elections a copy of this? ;-)
Cabarrus Democrats
Larry Kissell