Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Election concerns
There are a bunch of concerns being raised in the comments on this post. I think many are just artifacts of the way the vote system works, as they have existed in the past, too. The voter turnout number of 10459 comes from a file I trust, which came directly from the voting program, as confirmed by the referendum vote file. That is, there were 10459 votes cast either "Yes," "No," or "Abstain" for the referendum, and all voters had to make one of those choices.
I've contacted the Elections Council for the original vote file, but haven't heard back.
The number of lines in the vote file may not need to line up with the number of votes cast if some folks only cast a vote for the referendum. A cursory glance doesn't notice any blank rows, but I don't have my usual computer with me to check that. If there aren't any blank rows, than it's likely that those voters who voted for no candidate offices don't have rows in the voter file. This lines up with last year's data dump file (a different file that isn't available on the website right now, but is similar to the referendum file available) that had one line for every ranking for every candidate by each voter. If a voter didn't rank any candidates, they'd have no lines in that file, and the voter file wouldn't include them.
Voter number 99999 certainly raises eyebrows. It voted CalSERVE, if you're interested.
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