Please excuse the plain text. I'm trying to keep the columns
lined up.
The way I see how things have shaken out, the Arnebeck suit
represents the last, best hope for a change in the election
results. As such, I'm trying to understand the
Arnebeck/Phillips position. As I understand it, Phillips
asserts that three counties are very suspect based on a number
of factors. Arnebeck zeros in on theses counties because of
the pattern differences between the votes for president and
supreme court justice (Connally). Arnebeck believes that
65,000 votes were switched from Kerry to Bush in these three
counties, that, if corrected, would actually result in Kerry
winning Ohio by some 12,000 votes. Good enough.
The three counties in question are all solid Republican
counties (Warren, Butler, and Clermont). The theory is
Democrats will focus on vote suppression problems in Democrat
counties and "miss" the vote swapping in the
Republican counties. OK, I can buy that as well.
Here's where my question, though, because I seem to be missing
something. I've listed the three counties in question below,
including the vote totals for Bush, Kerry, and Gore for 2000
and 2004. The third column in each list is the percent of the
vote Bush received from those counties. I summed the total
votes and averaged the percentage for each:
2004 2000
Bush Kerry Bush% Bush Gore Bush%
Butler 109,866 56,234 66.14% 86,587 46,390 65.11%
Warren 68,035 26,043 72.32% 48,318 19,142 71.62%
Clermont 62,946 25,885 70.86% 47,129 20,927 69.25%
======= ====== ====== ====== ====== ======
240,847 108,162 69.01% 182,034 86,459 67.80%
At first glance it looks as if the numbers for Bush are only
slightly higher (percentage wise) from 2000. But if you
consider an increase for Bush results in a corresponding
decrease for Kerry, you see the percentage "spread"
goes to 2.06%, 2.80%, and 3.22%. OK, I can see how those
changes could be suspicious.
But, I run into a snag when I adjust the three county totals
to re-flip the 65,000 votes from Bush back to Kerry. To do
that, here are the results necessary (for the three counties
totaled together). I also include the totals for 2000 as a
comparison:
2004 (Adjusted) 2000
Bush Kerry Bush% Bush Gore Bush%
175,847 173,162 50.38% 182,034 86,459 67.80%
That means that in these three heavily Republican counties
Bush would have to have received 6187 LESS votes than in 2000,
and Kerry would have had to receive 86,703 MORE votes than
Gore did in 2000. Bush's percentage of the vote would have to
drop from 67.8% to 50.38% in these counties.
I sure hope Arnebeck has more than this. I don't see how this
will convince a member of the Ohio SC to go out on a limb and
set aside the results of the election. Can anybody point out
what I may be missing? I have not seen any allegations (by
Arnebeck or Phillips) that the fraud was spread outside these
three counties.