November 3, 2004: Over 25 Percent of Voters in Two Ohio Counties Apparently Do Not Vote for President

In Montgomery County, two precincts—one in Kettering and another in Washington Twp.—report extraordinarily high numbers of ballots cast with no presidential vote. The two precincts, both of which used punch-card ballots, had undercounts of more than 25 percent, far exceeding the county’s overall undercount of 2 percent. Undercount rates were 75 percent higher in the precincts that voted for John Kerry. Of the 231 precincts that went to Kerry, 2.8 percent of the ballots cast lacked a vote for the president. In the 354 precincts that supported President Bush, the figure was 1.6 percent. (But there were some exceptions. In fact, seven of the 10 precincts with the highest rate of undercounted presidential ballots went to Bush. For example, the highest undercount rate in Montgomery County occurred in precinct Washington X, a Bush stronghold, with 27.5 percent of the 611 ballots cast lacking a vote for president.) Larry J. Sabato, a political scientist from the University of Virginia, tells the Dayton Daily News that the extremely high rate of undercounts indicates that something went wrong. “It is very difficult to believe that a quarter of the people would not vote for president, especially in a year like this,” he says. “If I were the election officers in those areas I would be doing some very extensive checks of those machines.” But the presiding judge of Washington X, Shirley Wightman, tells the Dayton Daily News that her precinct reported no problems. [Dayton Daily News, 11/18/2004]