Down below the fold is what I found before. I just found the explanation.
OK, here's the precincts in question:
Precinct | Badnarik | Bush | Kerry | Peroutka |
Cleveland 4F | 0 | 20 | 299 | 215 |
Cleveland 4N | 164 | 12 | 334 | 10 |
So, we go to the Cuyahoga County BOE website, and find the ballots for these precincts.
4F: Kerry, Disqualified, Peroutka, Badnarik, Bush
4N: Badnarik, Bush, Kerry, Disqualified, Peroutka
We also find that they both voted at the same polling place:
Benedictine High School
2900 MLK Jr. Drive
Cleveland, OH 44104
It looks like a lot of voters voted using the other precinct's order. 215 Kerry votes lost in 4F, 164 Kerry votes lost in 4N, and 10 Bush votes lost in 4N. That's a net loss of 369 votes for Kerry, all at one polling place.
Cleveland 4F ballot order | Cleveland 4F results | Cleveland 4N results | Cleveland 4N ballot order |
Kerry | 299 | 164 | Badnarik |
Disqualified | 0 | 12 | Bush |
Peroutka | 215 | 334 | Kerry |
Badnarik | 0 | 0 | Disqualified |
Bush | 20 | 10 | Peroutka |
534 of 4F's 563 votes had a valid vote for President
520 of 4N's 532 votes had a valid vote for President
Looking Cleveland 3B & 3I, which voted together, it was not an isolated problem
Cleveland 3B ballot order | Cleveland 3B results | Cleveland 3I results | Cleveland 3I ballot order |
Kerry | 471 | 72 | Peroutka |
Disqualified | 0 | 1 | Badnarik |
Peroutka | 1 | 13 | Bush |
Badnarik | 44 | 467 | Kerry |
Bush | 18 | 0 | Disqualified |
A net loss of 115 votes for Kerry at this polling place
In addition to other glaring 3rd party problems, this may have introduced more complicated problems. Precincts Cleveland 11- C,D, and P vote together. C has a lot of Bush votes, Kerry did best in P
C: Bush 180 Kerry 322
D: Bush 125 Kerry 331
P: Bush 116 Kerry 369
Well, wouldn't you know it, Bush was #1 on the C ballot, and Kerry was #1 on the P ballot. We can't really quantify what effect if any there was here, but if there was an effect, it would have most likely hurt Kerry more than Bush.
Old stuff:
Precincts with the most 3rd party votes. There are other suspicious precincts.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/12/1/52932/8333
Source of the precinct level data:
http://boe.cuyahogacounty.us/boe/results/history/2004/E...
Graph showing how most of the precincts with high levels 3rd party votes had Kerry doing much better than Bush:
http://onfinite.com/libraries/205251/c8a.jpg