By Warner Todd Huston ——Bio and Archives--October 28, 2008
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The Cleveland Plain Dealer is touting triumphantly that Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is predicting an 80% voter turnout in the 2008 election. This would be an amazing statistic if true.
“Every day people from across Ohio are expressing their confidence in our bipartisan election system by taking part in the absentee voting process,” Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said in a statement. “We will continue to prepare for anticipated 80 percent voter turnout, ensuring a successful November general election.”
Cuyahoga County led in the request of absentee ballots by mail, with more than 228,000 followed by Franklin with just over 208,000 requests. Brunner has predicted nearly 6.5 million Ohioans - about 80 percent of the state’s registered voters - will vote in this year’s presidential election and that one-third of those ballots could be absentee.
There is no doubt that Cuyahoga County is “leading” in this year’s vote situation. But, unfortunately, that “leading” seems to be in fraud, not legal, proper votes.
According to a graph from the Columbus Dispatch, Cuyahoga County has just over one million registered voters (1,096,449). The number just in January stood at 973,831, so Cuyahoga County saw a 13% increase in registrations in the last 10 months. Brunner noted that 228,000 absentee ballots were mailed out to registered voters in Cuyahoga County. Another 6,951 already voted early as of Oct 8.
Looks like the democratic spirit has hit Cuyahoga hard, eh? Isn’t it wonderful to see all these patriotic folks registering and voting, doing their civic duty?
Well, it would be if only all the numbers matched. According to the U.S. Census Bureau there are only 1,314,241 people in all of Cuyahoga County of which 24% is under 18 and ineligible to vote. Yet they are showing a registration of 1,096,449 million voters? It turns out there are more voters registered in Cuyahoga County than actually exist.
But, let’s also get to Brunner’s claim that there will be an 80% turnout. This would be an amazing number if it were to be true. But, there is reason to be suspicious of the claim. The last two general elections would tend to make one disbelieve as large a turnout as 80% is in the offing.
According to a voting statistics website created by Dr. Michael McDonald, an Associate Professor at George Mason University, the last two generals saw a 57% (2004) and 66% (2006) turnout of all registered voters in Ohio. So, to expect voter turnout to suddenly jump from 66% in 2006 to 80% this year seems an absurd over estimate.
But, here is the thing. If Brunner is expecting her ACORN pals to stuff that ballot boxes with hundreds of thousands of illegal votes, it would make sense for her to wildly over estimate the final percentage of votes cast. After all, if she were to be successful in convincing everyone that 80% will cast votes in 2008, then unusually high numbers of voters in areas that simply cannot possibly have that many might not seem so strange.The high turnout will just seem like a fulfillment of the estimate instead of something to raise suspicions.
We will be closely watching this situation in Ohio during this election here on the blog and we have assembled a great team of Ohio bloggers to do just that.
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Warner Todd Huston’s thoughtful commentary, sometimes irreverent often historically based, is featured on many websites such as Breitbart.com, among many, many others. He has also written for several history magazines, has appeared on numerous TV and radio shows.
He is also the owner and operator of Publius’ Forum.