into it??
"Here are some more details regarding the recount being performed in Osceola County for Commission Seat 5. Between the original counts and recounts performed on Thursday & Friday there is a discrepancy of almost 2000 votes. These occurred mostly in the absentee ballots and the early voting. There is an issue of misplaced and overlooked ballots in several machines. A memory card in a machine located in the elections office used for early voting failed and votes may have been lost.
Today there are performing a manual recount again due to the efforts of a democratic viewer. Even without a good explanation of the large difference in ballots cast, the mostly republican canvassing committee were ready to bail out and certify the results."
What is being reported that I do find HIGHTLY odd is this:
Votes CAST
President 71,240
Sheriff 78,584
Election sup 77,352
District 5 Comm 75,421
District 1 Comm 75,244
For President it says 100% pct . For the rest, 98/99 . Commmissioners are voted county wide. All 5 races are county wide
Another oddity. My own pct is about 4,500 reg voters. about 50% Dem, 25% Rep, 35% "other." It's an extreamly high growth area. Lots of NYers have moved here. Lots of PR Hispanics here. Very democratic leaning. Hour long lines, etc.. With that kind of pct make up, one would think Kerry would have came away with a ton more votes then Bush. He got about 167 more votes. ????
My data isn't firm because we haven't been able to get more diffenent data from the SOE yet. As my friend noted, they are still crunching the numbers at the SOE. My guess is that they are trying to wait until it's to late.
Also, from the local paper:
"Among the ballots counted Thursday afternoon were those rejected by scanning machines in various precincts, provisional ballots cast when a voter’s registration was questioned and three groups of early ballots that had been placed in emergency compartments of ballot storage boxes and then overlooked."
"Osceola County Supervisor of Elections Donna Bryant said that the three groups of overlooked early ballots were found Thursday morning but she insisted the integrity of the voting system had not been compromised. The number of overlooked and provisional ballots was not available."
http://www.oscnewsgazette.com/index.php?option=news&task=viewarticle&sid=9518What isn't covered AT ALL in the newspaper is what my friend reported. That votes were lost during early voting at the SOE office.
This is a weekly paper, so I dont' expect anything until next week. Our "big" paper, the Orlando Sentinal isn't covering this issue at all. It is covering how the Republicans won Osceola. I don't recall hearing anyone reporting this "gotv" effort by the republicans on election day. Also, they are saying the figured out how many votes they would need ahead of time, etc..
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/elections/orl-locmgop07110704nov07,1,4470392.story?coll=orl-home-promo&ctrack=1&cset=trueOsecola stands out as one of 4 counties wuth 60%+ Bush vote growth
Oddities in Osceola vote
The first is that Osceola county's turnout and Presidential votes are exactly the same. Osceola had 0 nonvotes. I thought perhaps that Osceola was a smaller county, as that could be a possible explanation for not even one person not casting a vote for President on their ballot, but it's not. Osceola county, in which 82,204 ballots were cast, accounted for 1.08% of Florida's total turnout. This is not a small number - the average (median) county in Florida accounted for only 0.55% of Florida's total turnout.
Osceola was the sole county whose turnout figures were updated on November 8 that still had a a turnout that was lower than the number of votes it reported cast for President. On that update, 82,178 votes were cast and 81,917 voters were reported to have turned out. 261 more votes were cast than voters were reported to have turned out. Osceola used Diebold Accuvote machines for its elections.
(optical scan) something is wrong.
Like other urban Florida counties the vote data from election day is very strange. This is a surburban county with 10,000 more Dems than Repubs and a much larger number of new Dems registered than Repubs and active get out the Dem vote campaign. Yet though exit polls show most Dems voted for Kerry and most independents voted for Kerry, there was a big swing to Bush and Bush got more votes than Kerry(Gore won Osceola in 2000). Where did those votes come from?
Two Dem County Commission candidates appeared to have won the election in this county that has lots more Dems than Repubs when they went to bed. But the next day the S.O.E. said they had found 3000 more absentee ballots that were turned in election day and they were virtually all Repub so Repubs won the 2 seats. Apparently the election isn't over until enough votes are found to have the election turn out properly.