2020 SC Democratic Primary results
Mar. 2nd, 2020 12:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
djinncoyoteWith the new voting machines we have here in SC this year, one machine prints out the ballot with your selections and another machine scans your ballot.
One thing that slightly bothered me was the lack of privacy partitions around the machines in my polling location. It would be easy for anyone looking over your shoulder to see what you had voted. I wonder if they will add partitions for the presidential election.
Another thing that seemed odd was that the scanner was on the far side of the room (a large school gym) from the other machines, near the exit doors. That placement might not work well during the presidential election, when the room may be full of people waiting in lines.
I have some uncertainties about the scanner. After scanning my ballot, its screen showed a message that the ballot had been successfully scanned. But it didn't show what had been scanned, so you can't be sure that your vote was read correctly. That might be for privacy reasons. A poll-worker by the scanner told me how to use the machine, but I don't recall if the ballot had to be fed in face-up or face-down. So I wonder what happens if someone feeds their ballot into the scanner wrong-side-up? Would they get an error message? Would the machine not even accept the ballot if it were turned the wrong way?
I've looked at some of the election result report files from scvotes.org. I was curious if there was any mismatch between number of ballots cast, and number of votes for all the candidates.
So I downloaded the XML results for my county, and wrote XSL to filter the data. It shows that a total of 57930 ballots were cast in Richland County, but the sum of votes for all candidates was 57870. That is a discrepancy of 60. Those 60 are spread over several precincts. The largest per-precinct discrepancy is 4.
I haven't checked the other counties.
There is one precinct in the county that hasn't reported their numbers yet (Hopkins 2) - I wonder why their numbers aren't in yet. The overall state results are still unofficial. So I suppose I will wait until the results are official and then see if the discrepancies still remain.
I wonder if it is possible with these new machines, to cast a ballot without having made a selection. It ought to be possible to skip a question when there are multiple things being voted on, as not everyone may care to vote on each item. That might explain some of the discrepancy. But I can't imagine why anyone would bother to vote in a primary without making any selection, when there's only a single thing to vote on.
The first machine didn't have an option for doing a write-in vote that I noticed, but I wasn't really looking for it. The above link indicates that the machines do have that option. So that might also explain some of the discrepancy, if the downloadable reports don't include any write-ins.
Update, 2020/11/11: The final results reported 67555 ballots cast in the county and 67490 total votes (these numbers include the absentee ballots, which the initial results did not). That's a discrepancy of 65. The results don't mention write-ins, so I think that must be the explanation.
One thing that slightly bothered me was the lack of privacy partitions around the machines in my polling location. It would be easy for anyone looking over your shoulder to see what you had voted. I wonder if they will add partitions for the presidential election.
Another thing that seemed odd was that the scanner was on the far side of the room (a large school gym) from the other machines, near the exit doors. That placement might not work well during the presidential election, when the room may be full of people waiting in lines.
I have some uncertainties about the scanner. After scanning my ballot, its screen showed a message that the ballot had been successfully scanned. But it didn't show what had been scanned, so you can't be sure that your vote was read correctly. That might be for privacy reasons. A poll-worker by the scanner told me how to use the machine, but I don't recall if the ballot had to be fed in face-up or face-down. So I wonder what happens if someone feeds their ballot into the scanner wrong-side-up? Would they get an error message? Would the machine not even accept the ballot if it were turned the wrong way?
I've looked at some of the election result report files from scvotes.org. I was curious if there was any mismatch between number of ballots cast, and number of votes for all the candidates.
So I downloaded the XML results for my county, and wrote XSL to filter the data. It shows that a total of 57930 ballots were cast in Richland County, but the sum of votes for all candidates was 57870. That is a discrepancy of 60. Those 60 are spread over several precincts. The largest per-precinct discrepancy is 4.
I haven't checked the other counties.
There is one precinct in the county that hasn't reported their numbers yet (Hopkins 2) - I wonder why their numbers aren't in yet. The overall state results are still unofficial. So I suppose I will wait until the results are official and then see if the discrepancies still remain.
I wonder if it is possible with these new machines, to cast a ballot without having made a selection. It ought to be possible to skip a question when there are multiple things being voted on, as not everyone may care to vote on each item. That might explain some of the discrepancy. But I can't imagine why anyone would bother to vote in a primary without making any selection, when there's only a single thing to vote on.
The first machine didn't have an option for doing a write-in vote that I noticed, but I wasn't really looking for it. The above link indicates that the machines do have that option. So that might also explain some of the discrepancy, if the downloadable reports don't include any write-ins.
Update, 2020/11/11: The final results reported 67555 ballots cast in the county and 67490 total votes (these numbers include the absentee ballots, which the initial results did not). That's a discrepancy of 65. The results don't mention write-ins, so I think that must be the explanation.