Printer-friendly versionSt. Lawrence County
Impossible Numbers in NY-23
Source: Gouverneurtimes.com
This article was based upon unofficial results provided to the author by the St. Lawrence County Board of Elections in a .pdf file on the same day that the election results were certified. These were not the certified results, and the author deeply regrets having said that they were.
Five days after the publication of this article, the Board of Elections provided an .xls spreadsheet of the certified results, district by district, in which only the numbers for ballots cast and blank ballots had been changed; and a .pdf file, dated Monday, November 30th, with numbers for blank ballots inserted, district by district. The changes in the numbers for ballots cast are duly noted in this revised article.
The Board of Elections has stated that only the numbers for “blank ballots” were computer generated in the original .pdf file, and that the “whole number” of ballots cast for each election district was entered manually. The data entry program then automatically subtracted the vote counts for each of the candidates and the remainder would appear in the final column as “blank ballots.” In these six election districts (and perhaps others), data entry errors were made in the first column, for “whole number” of ballots cast, which resulted in the erroneous numbers in the final column, for “blank ballots."
Impossible Numbers in NY-23
Northern NY Newsby Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D.
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
CANTON, NY – The election results certified by the St. Lawrence County Board of Elections for New York’s 23rd Congressional District did not contain the mathematically impossible numbers reported here last week. Those were not the certified results, and the author deeply regrets having said that they were.
For six election districts in St. Lawrence County (the 2nd, 4th, 6th and 7th districts in Canton, the 14th district in Massena, and the 2nd district in Oswegatchie) negative numbers had appeared in the unofficial results, in the column for “blank” ballots, known in other states as “undervotes.”
Blank vote counts are ballots in which the voter did not choose any candidate in a given election and are determined by subtracting the total number of votes cast for the candidates from the number of voters who completed ballots. The remaining number would be those voters who didn’t cast a vote for that election.
In Canton’s 7th district, the unofficial results showed a total of 148 ballots cast. The results of those votes were counted as 88 votes for Owens, 11 votes for Scozzafava, and 80 votes for Hoffman. The problem was that these numbers add up to 179 votes counted for the candidates, and the unofficial results reported only 148 ballots cast; so the number of ‘blank’ ballots appeared as -31.
Election analysts refer to this phenomenon as “phantom voters,” because they are apparitions. They do not actually exist. There can never be more votes counted for any office than the number of actual voters who cast ballots. There could be one or two, if on occasion an actual voter forgot to sign the poll book, but never 31.
“Phantom votes” can be introduced into the system.
The computer can be programmed to add votes to one candidate’s total,
and the unsuspecting Board of Elections
will dutifully subtract all the candidates’ vote counts from the total ballots cast,
report the remainder as “blank votes,” all the numbers will add up perfectly,
and no one will be the wiser –
except, of course, if negative numbers turn up in the column for “blank votes.”
A “phantom vote,” which is a vote counted with no ballot cast, is the opposite of a “blank vote” or “undervote,” which is a ballot cast with no vote counted. They cancel each other out. Thus, if “phantom votes” are allowed into a vote counting system, they can be masked if there are fewer of them than the number of “blank votes” or “undervotes.”
