Thread by @BatesLine, PENNSYLVANIA thread for voter file analysis : I just purchased ($20) and [...]

PENNSYLVANIA thread for voter file analysis

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I just purchased ($20) and downloaded the voter file for the entire state in order to investigate the claim that 200K more ballots were counted statewide than the number of voters who cast ballots. https://www.pavoterservices.pa.gov/Pages/PurchasePAFULLVoterExport.aspx

4 tables for each county: Voters (one row per voter), Zone Types (alphanumeric codes for types of zones, e.g. school districts, precincts, legislative districts, municipalities), Zone Codes (for the zones themselves), Election Map (which field represents which election date).

There's a separate statewide table of party codes, which is hilarious. Apparently you can invent any party affiliation you please when you register, and the Pennsylvania Department of State will make a code for it. There are 518 party names in this table.

Among the parties in the Pennsylvania list: ALL CROOKS, ANTI OBAMA, AMERICA - SEMPER FI, AIN'T NO PARTY LIKE A POLITICAL PARTY, and AQUARIAN ZIONIST. That's just a sampling of the ones that start with A.

Many voters wanted to make it known that they are not partisan, registering as BEST PERSON AT THE TIME, BEST PERSON FOR THE JOB, BETWEEN MIDDLE, I VOTE FOR A BETTER PERSON, VOTE FOR WHO I LIKE @ THE TIME, and FUGIFINO.

Still more determined swing voters belong to these Pennsylvania parties: WHOMEVER I CHOOSE, WHATEVER I LIKE, WHO I THINK IS BEST, REPUBLICAN DEMOCRATIC NO AFFILIATION, WHOEVER WILL BE THE BEST CANID (30 char limit, apparently), and WHAT JESUS WANTS.

Other Pennsylvania voters register for the candidate, not the party: WHEN ITS OBAMA, BARACK OBAMA, OBAMA, ANTI-OBAMA, OPRAH, TRUMP, MR TRUMP, NOT TRUMP, RON PAUL, PEROT, HILARY, HILLARY, HILLERY CLINTON, BERNIE SANDERS, and HITLER. (No Biden registrants, however.)

But this is a (fun!) distraction. On to deciphering the Pennsylvania voter file and finding out how many voters voted....

Each county has a different mapping of election dates to columns, so it's going to be a pain to count all the voters for the 20201103 election. Here's a little brute-force analysis with one small county, using Excel and auto-filter.

Juniata is a small county near the center of Pennsylvania. According to state election board totals, there were 12,043 votes cast for president:
Trump 9,649
Biden 2,253
Jorgensen 141
https://www.electionreturns.pa.gov/ReportCenter/Reports

These 12,043 votes for president in Juniata Co. were split by voting method as follows:

Election day presidential votes 9,592
Mail presidential votes 2,353
Provisional presidential votes 98

Trump won all three methods, but won the vote by mail only by 1,211 to 1,112.

So 12,043 is the number of votes counted in Juniata Co., Pennsylvania for the presidential race. But how many registered voters in Juniata Co cast a ballot?

The Juniata Co. Election Map indicates that the 2020 General Election on 2020/11/03 is Election 6. The Voter Export Word document from the state says that the Election 6 vote method is in column 81, and the Election 6 party is in column 82. In Excel, that's column CC and CD.

Juniata Co. Voter file credits 12,061 out of 14,459 registered voters with voting in the 2020/11/03 election, broken down by method:

AP 9,596 (At polls)
MB 1,928 (Mail-in ballot)
AB 439 (Absentee)
P 98 (Provisional)

Add MB+AB to get the total early vote: 2,367

As a reminder, here's how the presidential votes broke down by method: https://twitter.com/BatesLine/status/1343786682622091265

https://twitter.com/BatesLine/status/1343786682622091265

That's pretty close: 18 more Juniata County voters who cast a ballot in the 2020/11/03 election than votes counted in the presidential race. 4 more election day voters than votes and 14 more early/by-mail voters than votes. 0.1% of voters didn't vote for president.

I would expect to see the number of voters >= the number of votes cast in any race. The situation being spotlighted by the Pennsylvania legislators is the opposite: Way more votes cast than people who voted. http://www.repdiamond.com/News/18754/Latest-News/PA-Lawmakers-Numbers-Don%E2%80%99t-Add-Up,-Certification-of-Presidential-Results-Premature-and-In-Error

Let's take a slightly larger county. Adams is in south central Pennsylvania, and Gettysburg is the county seat. 72,397 registered voters as of today. The 2020 General Election is mapped to Election 16 in this county, and that means column 101 is the one we want. CW in Excel.

Adams Co., Pennsylvania:

56,540 presidential votes:

BIDEN, JOSEPH ROBINETTE JR18,207
TRUMP, DONALD J.37,523
JORGENSEN, JO810

Hm. Twitter doesn't like tabs. I copied-and-pasted straight out of Excel. Try again. Adams Co., Pennsylvania:

56,540 presidential votes:

BIDEN 18,207
TRUMP 37,523
JORGENSEN, JO 810

Adams Co., Pennsylvania, presidential vote breakdown by voting method:

Election Day 37,097 (Trump won, 29,942 to 6,611)
Mail Voting 18,840 (Biden won, 11,436 to 7,148)
Provisional 603 (Trump won, 433 to 160)

Now from the voter export file.

Adams Co., Pennsylvania, voters in the 2020 General Election:

56,766 of 72,396 registered voters
37,153 AP (at polls)
16,281 MB (mail ballot)
2,726 AB (absentee)
604 P (provisional)

MB+AB = 19,007 early voters

So in Adams Co., Pennsylvania, 56 election day voters didn't vote for president, 167 early voters didn't vote for president, and 1 provisional voter didn't vote for president. As in Juniata County, this is what I would expect to see.

Moving up the population ladder, here's Lackawanna County, Joe Biden's birthplace, which went slightly for its native son. Here are the presidential totals:

BIDEN 61,991
TRUMP 52,334
JORGENSEN 1,085

115,410 votes cast in the presidential race.

Lackawanna Co., Pennsylvania, presidential votes by voting method:

Election Day 72,439 (Trump by 42,265 to 29,016)
Mail Votes 41,226 (Biden by 32,119 to 8,794)
Provisional 1,745 (Trump by 875 to 856)

Lackawanna Co.'s election map has the 2020 General Election as Election 9, which is column 87, CI in Excel. (These files do not have column headings.)

116,232 of 144,303 registered voters in Lackawanna County are credited with voting in the 2020 General Election.

72,387 AP (At the polls)
36,137 MB (Mail-in ballot)
5,922 AB (Absentee ballot)
1,786 P (Provisional)

Total early Lackawanna Co. voters = MB+AB = 42,059.

Unless I've slipped up, there's a problem with Lackawanna Co. 52 more election day votes for president than election day voters, but 833 fewer mail-in votes for president than mail-in voters. 41 fewer provisional votes for president than provisional voters.

That's an early-voting undervote for president of 2%, which seems high, but still reasonable. It's more troublesome that there are more election-day votes in Lackawanna Co. than there voters.

I can think of some explanations for the discrepancy, but I would need to know Pennsylvania election procedures to know if they're reasonable. Do election-day voters check in electronically, or do they sign a paper book? How often are movers and deaths processed?

Lancaster was the biggest Pennsylvania county that Trump won. 280,239 presidential votes counted:

BIDEN 115,847
TRUMP 160,209
JORGENSEN 4,183

Lancaster Co., Pennsylvania, presidential votes by method:

Election day 186,153 (Trump by 132,043 to 51,178)
Mail votes 89,184 (Biden by 62,503 to 25,509)
Provisional 4,902 (Trump by 2,657 to 2,166)

Now looking at the Lancaster Co., Pennsylvania, voter file. It too has the 2020 General as Election No. 9, so column CI again. 280,913 voters in the 2020 General out of 354,109 registered voters.

Lancaster Co., Pennsylvania, 2020 General Election voters by method:

185,764 AP (At the polls)
76,758 MB (Mail-in ballot)
13,392 AB (Absentee ballot)
4,999 P (Provisional)

MB+AB = 90,150 early voters

As in Lackawanna Co., Lancaster Co. has more presidential election-day votes than voters credited with election-day voting -- 389 more, or about 0.2%. For the other categories there are more voters than presidential votes.

It would be interesting to take this comparison down to the township or precinct level to see if the errors are evenly spread or mainly in one place. Does anyone know if results by precinct are available anywhere?

Let's go to Pittsburgh, Allegheny Co., Pennsylvania. 719,733 votes counted for president.

BIDEN 429,065
TRUMP 282,324
JORGENSEN 8,344

Election day 362,715 (Trump by 209,459 to 148,171)
Mail 342,731 (Biden by 273,080 to 66,575)
Provisional 14,287 (Biden by 7,814 to 6,290)

The Election Map for Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, does not yet include the 2020 General Election. The most recent election in the file is the June primary.

Ditto for the Philadelphia voter file election map -- no entry for the 2020 General Election, most recent election is June primary, which means we can't compare the number of voters to the number of votes for the two biggest counties in Pennsylvania.

In all, four Pennsylvania Counties do not have voter credit for the 2020 General Election in their voter files: Allegheny, Butler, Cambria, and Philadelphia.

It may be that these four counties have created a voter credit file, but they haven't been folded in to the state's database yet. Maybe the Pennsylvania legislators have access to those counts. I will send a few emails in the morning and let you know what I learn.

It's late and all this Pennsylvania tweeting is making me thirsty for a @yuenglingbeer, so I'm going to put this thread on pause until tomorrow. Stay tuned!

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