Inside the Nevada Numbers: Christmas Comes Early for the Republicans

[ignatzmouse]

Okay, I've completed a look at the Nevada election as best I could with the limited numbers I had at my disposal. Two things really limit a more revealing view -- 1) the entire state uses the same Sequoia e-voting system and makes a comparative analysis of vendors and types impossible 2) I don't have a breakdown of the early/absentee vote by candidate.

The voter registration rate seems to be the strangest thing. In January, the Democrats began behind the number of registered Republican voters by 13,227. By July, the Democrats had nearly caught them, adding 36,598 Democratic registrations to the Republicans only 24,871 in the same period -- the Democrats were exactly 1500 registered voters behind the Republican totals. By the end of the registrations for the primaries, Democrats had PASSED the number of Republican registered voters 383,651 to 382,630.

Suddenly, though, there was a dramatic shift. The Democratic numbers continued to increase, rising another 46,157 voters until the end of registration for the General Election, but the Republicans went haywire adding 51,609 to end up 4,431 ahead of Democratic registrations. To put that in perspective, of the Democrats' 90,305 registrations since January, 51% came after the end of the Primary registration deadline, but of the Republicans' 81,509 registrations since January, 63% came after the deadline. Too add to that, seventy percent of the Republicans' post primary deadline registrations, 36,181, came from Las Vegas' Clark County, not exactly the values capitol of the world, where they beat the final Democratic registrations. It must have been realized that if the Democrats continued to push their lead in the Democratic stronghold of Clark County that it would swamp the rest of the lightly populated state. It must be noted that Bush won Nevada 50% to Kerry's 48% via a difference 21,500 votes, and the only county that Kerry won was Clark, 52% to 47%. One percent of Clark's votes is roughly 6,000 votes (or 12,000 in differential).

I've always wandered about the Republican efforts to undermine the Democrats' GOTV campaign -- how they registered Mickey Mouse as a Democrat and fed the story to the media to try to paint the high Democratic registrations as fraudulent -- and the mass mailings of campaign literature to newly registered Democratic voters in an effort to get people with returned mail removed from the rolls. Could this have been just a smokescreen to avoid having their own new registrants examined? Has anyone taken the steps to look at new Republican registrations not only in Nevada but everywhere else? Has anyone tried their little mailing trick to see how many get returned? Or conversely, if they were using an alias at a valid address, how many of the new registrants voted absentee? Absentees counted for 11% of the total Nevada vote. Subtracting 21,500 votes would only change the absentee rate 2% to 9% -- nearly invisible.

The strange registration trail brought me to White Pine County where in January the registrations ran 55% Democratic but declined by the end of the general election period while the Republican registrations increased by 8%. White Pine is fairly small with just over 4700 total registered voters. They also seemed to have voted for Bush 68% to 28%, similar in percentage to the most heavily Republican counties. But in the Senate Democrat race, White Pine reversed itself and voted for the Democrat 57% to 36%, nearly along party lines. Comparing how other counties voted in the Senate race, it is closest in margin to Washoe (58% to 38%) which incidentally gave Bush only a slim victory 51% to 47%. So why is White Pine, with a much higher percentage of registered Democrats going for Bush by 68% to 28% and more Republican counties reflecting a tighter Presidential race? The answer may be that in smaller counties, funny numbers may have a more dramatic implication. Indeed, White Pine had the highest absentee rate in the state (as a percentage of their total turnout) at 21%. The state absentee average was 11%.

All of which led me to likely the most telling funny turnout numbers. Washoe County, home of Reno and the second most populated county in the state, had outside of tiny Esmeralda (with just 736 registered voters) the lowest turnout of any county in state. Washoe had a turnout of 68% compared to the state average of 78% and Clark's 80% turnout. The low number between election day, the early vote, and the absentee vote is their glaringly small early vote. Just 21% of their total voters cast ballots in the early vote compared to the state average of 42% and Clark's 50%. And yet Washoe had a relatively high 16% absentee rate. What might this be saying? Isn't Washoe more of a Republican county, 43% of the registrations to 36% for the Democrats? Perhaps it's telling us that Republicans were less interested in voting. No, that can't be. How could Bush have won the state otherwise. Or perhaps it's telling us that there was something about the early vote in Washoe that needed to be suppressed? The Democratic early GOTV campaign? It certainly is odd to see that 21% early vote in Washoe against the state average of 42%. It's even more odd considering that Bush won Washoe by 51% to 47%. Perhaps with a normal early vote turnout that would have been smartly reversed. Additionally, the Democratic senator took 58% of the vote in Washoe compared to just 38% for the Republican. By the Senate race, Washoe seemed to be trending heavily Democratic. Hmmmm. Let's think about this. The difference between 21% early vote and 42% in real votes is roughly 33,000 votes. 33,000 votes would have brought Washoe's turnout up to 82%, from almost dead last to right in the middle of the pack in county turnout. Bush won the state by 21,500 votes.

Good luck trying to recount the Sequoia e-voting ballots...

[LisaLynne]

1. Wow! Great work!

It just seems that the more people dig, the more questions pop up! :thumbsup:

[tinfoil_beret]

2. Do the Glibs know about this?

With the Glibs battling this out for us in court, I assume they have a lot of evidence, especially since they have filed suit to block Nevada's electoral votes. Then again, I don't know what evidence they have.

Great analysis, by the way.

[bmoney07]

3. Please email work

to the GLIBS so that they can use it for the cause!

[ignatzmouse]

5. Yes, it has been sent... (n/t)

[sabra]

4. You work continues to amaze me!

As you indicated there may have been some issues with the absentee ballots. In your opinion should the recount/investigation concentrate on these ballots?

[ignatzmouse]

6. The Early and the New

I think the sudden rise in Republican registrations needs a thorough look over -- not just in Nevada but anywhere it mattered. Their efforts to discredit the big Democratic push signals that this is an area that consumed them. How could they make up so much ground so quickly after being totally outpaced by the Democrats for months? Their efforts to mail newly registered Democratic voters to get returned mail tells me that they had to have conceived of registration fraud in order to think about the mailings. I think it's a tip that off-the-charts late Republican registrations should be closely looked at in any swing state, and you won't find it by recounting.

But in Nevada, I would also look very closely at Washoe County. That low early vote turnout doesn't fit with anything in the rest of the state, and I think the idea may have been to suppress the early vote there because it likely wasn't as watched as Las Vegas -- especially in the early voting as opposed to election day. That alone could have swung the election.

[NVMojo]

7. good analysis!!!

One thing that jumps out at me is the Washoe County info. I agree with you, that is all fishy! There was a huge GOTV effort there. My own son tried to register to vote there and I need to clarify his story but he was practically talked out of registering Dem (Repub). I don't know what he actually did and I suspect it was people like the Sproul team as it was at a shopping center.

Also, what bothered me is just somewhat of a personal issue. I drove almost 4 hours with another one of my sons to go see Michael Moore in Reno. There was almost 10,000 people in attendance and this was after a very public power struggle with a rich local businessman who tried to keep Moore from appearing and finally wanted to challenge him to a debate on stage and finally offered to pay the UNR student body a wad of money to make Moore go away, or those things in a different order. Las Vegas, UNLV, where you have a decided Democrat base only pulled around 3-4 thousand for Moore.

I got the feeling there was a lot of Dem support in the REno area so what happened?

Please see my link here and there is an article from Buzzflash on here that talks about the Sequoia machines that Sequoia basically didn't charge Washoe County for to get them on board to use them.

Also, there were to different types of Sequoias used, 10-yr old Sequoias that had no printers and couldn't be retrofited ---about 2,000 in the LV area and about 2,000 brand new Sequoias with printers, an entirely different model. I don't have the two different model names handy but they are different which made me wonder about how they all would work together for accuracy when finally tabulation was done ...that's if they didn't end up using a calculater by hand at the SOS office ....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x91982

[ignatzmouse]

8. Free Sequoia's for Washoe if you just sign over your soul...

Thanks for the great collection of material in your post. The BuzzFlash article http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/04/11/con04490.html really makes Washoe's numbers all the more suspicious. Sequoia wanted Washoe so badly, they gave away the machines free?

[NVMojo]

9. yeah, wasn't that something!?

Really makes the emachine revolution in Nevada stink to high heaven!!!

I figure it is because Sequoia or someone in Sequoia guaranteed appropriate coding ....why were they so adamant to switch the entire state over to these machines that had always been questionable in LV for the past ten years??

[Chi]

10. Turnout % for newly registered Republicans....

Would be a very telling number, I believe.

[ignatzmouse]

11. Clark County Registration Fraud Reported in July

A local TV report gave evidence that Clark County was the target of registration fraud beginning in July of this year. Incidentally, the state's numbers show a consistent rise in Democratic registrations in Clark from January through the end of general election registration. The big jump in Republican registrations began in July...

http://www.kvbc.com/Global/story.asp?S=2018890

Officials Say Clark County A Target For Election Fraud

July 9th, 2004
While most identity crimes involve stolen lives, there's another trend that creates phony lives to win elections. The Clark County Board of Elections says Nevada is a big target for fraud this year, and out-of-state money is being used to buy votes. Last week, 75 hundred voter registration forms were turned in to the elections department, up from the average of about a thousand a week. As News 3's Kim Capozzo shows us, it's a big jump some are blaming on big money.

It's obvious. Big stars spell big money when it comes to fundraising, but behind the scenes, some say the almighty dollar is driving voter registration. "These aren't brain surgeons doing this. The handwriting is obviously the same person."

Larry Lomax is fired up over what he calls fraudulent forms. Because Nevada is a swing state, both Republicans and Democrats want as many people registered to vote as possible, so groups from both sides have been known to pay people a flat hourly rate to register voters, which is perfectly legal. But Lomax says some people are not only twisting the rules, they're breaking the law.

"People are being paid by the form. That's illegal in the State of Nevada, and that is motivating a small group of individuals, but it doesn't take many to submit fraudulent forms, which are then processed with the good forms and then put into the system."

He thinks the people involved in the election fraud are simply pulling lists from phone books. But when they do that, they could affect legitimate voters' registrations by changing their parties or misspelling names. In November, people could be showing up to vote only to find out that their form has been changed.

It's a felony to give false information on voter registration forms, so if you spot anything suspicious, please call 455-VOTE and help them solve this problem.

[ignatzmouse]

12. Absentee Fraud Report

And another report showing that absentee fraud was actively used in Clark County in 2000.


http://www.votefraud.org/News/2000/5/052100.html

[truehawk]

13. I think that NV has a papertrail everywhere but in Los Vegas

It was posted here that Clark county was the only county that they did not install machines with paper trails in.

So we may have a chance.

Also I have found the voted absentee while dead vote before.

[Hobbes199]

14. Very nice!

Thanks for the hard work. So much registration fraud went on, it's unbelievable. This is going to be a good week, if we keep uncovering new things along with the recount efforts moving forward.