turnout - active vs registered voters vs population....

[Neal McBurnett <neal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> >BTW - looks like we had an 87% plus turn out of the 176,140 registered
> >voters. Pretty cool, if it is real.

Argh.  These numbers are all hopelessly misleading.  You need to know
that registered voters that haven't voted recently become "inactive",
but remain eligible to vote for several more years.  (I can't find
the official rules on that right now - can someone help?)

The number that appears on the Boulder County results page
 http://www.co.boulder.co.us/clerk/elect/2004%20General/Frame.htm

that says "Total Registered Voters" is nothing of the kind.
It is really "active registered voters".  The county says they
report this because it is required by law.

 1-10-105. Official abstract of votes cast - certification by
 secretary of state

 ...  The abstract shall contain the following information: ...

 (c) The reconciled total number of active, registered voters in each
 county on election day, as determined by the county clerk and
 recorders no later than forty-five days after the election;

 (d) Based on the total number of active, registered voters, the
 percent of voter turnout in each county; and

 (e) Any other information that the secretary of state determines
 would be interesting or useful to the electorate or other elected
 officials.

That is why a turnout larger than 100% can happen, if lots of
inactive voters actually turn out.

They clarify that there are so many inactive registered voters
(typically folks that have moved - including tons of students in
Boulder) that using that number would be misleading.

But they don't explain why they mislabel it as "registered voters".
Nor why they don't include information on the turnout of registered
voters.  Nor what I think would be most informative - the turnout of
the eligible voting age population.

If you process the data at 

 http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html

you'll find that from 1964 to 2000, the turnout of registered voters
in the US dropped from 96% to 68%.  But since the proportion of the
voting-age population that is registered has risen from 65% to 76%,
the turnout of voting-age population has only dropped from 62% to 51%.

The turnout was higher this year, so in the US, more than half of
eligible voters voted.  I still want to know what fraction voted in
Boulder County.

Neal McBurnett                 http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/
Signed and/or sealed mail encouraged.  GPG/PGP Keyid: 2C9EBA60

On Mon, Nov 08, 2004 at 03:15:19PM -0700, Ralph Shnelvar wrote:
> >BTW - looks like we had an 87% plus turn out of the 176,140 registered
> >voters. Pretty cool, if it is real.
> 
> That's not cool.  It's beyond suspicious.
> 
> The national average was just under 60%.
> 
> To me this indicates near certainty of massive ballot box stuffing.