Lake County 101: explained in detail

[hokies4ever]

Hanky-panky? Election fraud? Not quite, and allow me to explain what most likely happened in Lake County, Indiana, as to why it took so long to make its vote count public.

They had 11,000 absentee ballots. Some people might wonder why they didn't just release all of the machine votes ASAP and then release the absentee ballots later. Well, if you notice, counties always report their results as 'precincts reporting'. In other words, ALL of the votes from a single precinct must be counted in order for that precinct to report its results. So you can't release the machine votes in a precinct until you know the absentee ballot votes in that precinct.

Now, which precinct do you count first? As an Obama supporter, I would say count the Gary precinct first and those southern rural precincts last, so that it appears that Obama is leading when the vote is mid-way. As a Hillary supporter, I would say count the southern rural precincts first and the Gary precinct votes last, so that it appears that Clinton will handily win Indiana when the vote is mid-way. Keep in mind that Hillary's speech would most likely come in the middle of the absentee vote counting, so depending on which precincts you count first, the TV audience may think that Hillary will definitely win Indiana or that Hillary and Obama are essentially tied in Indiana.

So which precincts do you count first to be fair? It looks like Lake County decided to start counting ALL precincts at the same time. Perhaps they had an Obama supporter and a Hillary supporter disagreeing over which precincts to count first, so the compromise was to count them all at the same time. This way, there is no perceived advantage for either candidate by the order of precinct counting, especially since people might be going to bed in the middle of the count.

So to recap you have 3 choices:
1. Count all precincts at the same time
2. Count Hillary-favored precincts first
3. Count Obama-favored precincts first

Even if you try to count the precincts in a fair order, it won't be fair. Everybody knew that Gary would go heavily to Obama and the southern rural areas to Hillary, so these are the 3 choices you're left with. It looks like Lake County chose option #1, to count all the precincts at the same time. Overall, this looks like the fairest way to count the vote so that one candidate doesn't get a perceived bias in the midpoint reporting of the vote, which might affect political pundit spin on the networks right before people go to bed.

[hokies4ever]

1. Feel free to post any comments or questions

that you have with this logic. I think it's an interesting thing to talk about to soothe away any election fraud allegations from either camp.

[truedelphi]

2. I sat in the chair right in front of the window outside the Registrar of Voters

Election Night Nov 2004.

The Registrar of Voters for my county, he seemed quite happy with the idea that the absentee ballots would be counted up with in seventy two hours of the election.

I have heard RW talking heads talking about the importance of We the People being able to have a speedy and instantaneously counted vote.

One talking head said, "We want to know the result of our votes the same as we want to know the result of our football games Instantly."

No.We. Don't.

I want my votes counted accurately and if it means I go to bed without knowing who won, that's fine.

I do not want to ever again have the President's Chief of Staff announcing how he and the Secretary of State in some one of the states have figured it all out.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

3. Right there with ya.

We passed a law in Arizona that says that the Secretary of State cannot announce election results officially until EVERY vote has been counted.

Best law we've passed in a long time.

[truedelphi]

6. I loves me that law.

What did it take to get it passed??

[mrreowwr_kittty]

7. A bunch of activists, screaming at the top of their lungs.

From both parties, ideally. Luckily for us in AZ, there were some Republican legislators who were alarmed by some appalling electoral irregularities. Enough to join forces with progressive activists and get the Governor to sign the bill.

[Ytzak]

4. 4. Each precinct counts at the same time...

Precincts with the fewest votes in rural areas will get theirs done and turned in first. Large precincts, and those with a ton of absentee ballots come in last because it takes longer.

[hokies4ever]

5. But ALL of the absentee ballots were counted in the same place

that's the one fact you're overlooking. Those rural precincts bused over their absentee ballots to be counted in the same place. They didn't start counting them until the polls closed. So now you have the question (in my original post) over which precinct's absentee ballots to count first.

[McCamy Taylor]

8. Except they reported Gary first and then the Clinton areas last.

We saw them send in numbers for Gary at around 11 and more Gary numbers at 1130. Then the mayor of Hammond had to get on the phone on national TV to talk to the mayor of Gary before they would release any of the other numbers.

The effect they created at 11 pm cst by releasing 25% of the Lake County vote with it showing 65-70% Obama was that unscrupulous TV news pundits (like I am betting the ones at MSNBC which I was not watching) could seize upon it to declare that Obama was now going to win in Indiana when the other 75% came in. Did anyone watching MSNBC hear any of the pundits over there say Obama was going to in Indiana? Some one posted that Pat Buchanan said it. If the rest of the vote was Gary he would.

I was watching CNN and they got out the map and explained that the rest of the county was rural and therefore Hillary country and that the rest of the vote might not favor Obama, so they did not call it for Obama. Instead, they started calling the county asking for the rest of the vote. And polling the mayors of the little towns in the county to see how their vote turned out. Except for Gary, the vote went for Hillary.

When we got the final vote from the county it changed the margin but could not give Obama the win. The impression that the county gave by handing out the initial 25% of their vote which seemed to have been cherry picked for being extremely high in favor of Obama was that he was going to win.

I noticed a lot of posts at DU when that 25% came out that were proclaiming that Obama had won Indiana. I am guessing you guys got it from MSNBC. That no one there paid any attention to the demographics within the county.

If the TV pundits declared that Hillary had lost Indiana and then it turned out she had won, this would cause confusion and upset among Democrats. It could be a GOP dirty trick. Republicans and Democrats count those votes, Or it could be an effort to keep people from donating money to Hillary tonight. Or maybe the election people in that county are just plain weird. Everywhere else in the state was sending out partial returns all night.

[hokies4ever]

9. They might have reported Gary first

but it came VERY late and there was more time between the poll closing time and the Gary precinct reporting than between the Gary precinct reporting and the other precinct reporting. They could have counted those rural county absentee ballots first and reported those precincts first as well, but decided not to take the pro-Hillary approach. Some of those rural counties had like a thousand votes or so, and I guarantee that they had much fewer absentee ballots from those precincts. They probably had a team of volunteers split up into different groups to count the absentee ballots from the various precincts and the Gary counters finished a little bit earlier.

Good point about it hurting Hillary's fundraising (probably not by too much though).

[truedelphi]

10. From what I have seen of election workers in this country,

The election workers are often very conservative.

They may declare themselves to be Dems, but they seem to not care as much as they should about electronic voting machinery etc.

I don't see that MSNBC did aything more awful than be tilted towards their candidate, Obama.

You don't seem to upset over CNN always being tilted towards Hillary.

I have been upset over the partiality of the talking heads, but since being upset over a concept no one in the media cares about any more (ie impartiality) I have learned to temper my upsetness and just watch the media that helps my candiedate.

After all, the Bum f%$k$ at CNN who now support Hillary once greased the skids for Bush's 2000 electoral grab and then twice, the theft in 2004.

.

[truedelphi]

12. BTW the bosses at MSNBC are pro war and pro Hillary

It is only the pundits like Matthews and Olbermann that are pro Obama

See story
http://tinyurl.com/3ofgyl

[LisaM]

14. Did you hear the mayor of Gary on CNN at all?

Even though we are in a divided household right now, we both started laughing. He either couldn't or wouldn't understand the question the anchors were asking him (which was why he couldn't release the non-absentee numbers before the absentee votes were counted). They asked him six ways to Sunday and he still couldn't understand that they wanted to know why the machine-counted ballot results couldn't have been released as soon as he had them. Either that, or (and this is my guess) he was deliberately pretending to misunderstand. He kept yapping on about the absentee ballots and how they had four times as many as they ever had and absentee balloting ended Monday at noon and they didn't want to enfranchise anyone.

CNN: We're not talking about disenfranchisement. We're asking why we couldn't get the machine counts earlier.

Mayor Clay: Absentee balloting ended Monday. We had 11,000 ballots.

CNN: So why couldn't you release any of your results earlier?

Mayor Clay: We had 11,000 absentee ballots. That's four times as many as we had any other time.

CNN: So why didn't you release the non-absentee ballots earlier?

Mayor Clay: Absentee balloting ended at noon on Monday.

Of course that's not an exact transcript, but I swear that's the way the conversation went. The mayor of Hammond started getting kind of testy. The anchors were getting visibly annoyed.

[truedelphi]

16. Iheard it and I didn't get what they were asking until just now

It was two hours earlier here than in Gary but it had been a long evening just for someone at home watching the election. It's possible that someone like this mayor was just tired.

Unless you have been in the situation of hitting the ground running Election Day at 6 AM in the morning and running around all day and then in the wee hours of the morning having to deal with the press, maybe it's a hard thing to comprehend.

I can't help but wonder why the incredible Bum F$%Ks that are the talking heads on CNN were perfectly content in Nov 2004 with Andy Card announcing that Blackwell had convinced him that the Bush lead in Ohio signalled an undeniable Bush vicotry for a second term - but this one hapless mayor in Gary was to be questioned repeatedly.

Where were their questions then??

[Texas Hill Country]

11. the mayor of Hammond even said it was shady... he called out Clay live on CNN!!!

[kmsarvis]

13. That guy was an obnoxious shit head........

He was also nervous fuck !! It was funny to watch.

[LisaM]

15. Which one? Clay?

I kept thinking he couldn't be as dumb as he sounded, or he never would have been elected, unless everyone in Gary is suffering so much from industrial poisoning that they are all that way (I have taken the train between Michigan and Chicago a number of times, and the Gary area is really toxic).