July Absentee Issue

Who is affected?

  • Anyone running AB reports on July 26th between 3pm and 9pm likely missed 5% to 30% of AB records, depending on the county and precincts selected.
  • Prior to 3pm on July 26th back to July 15th
    • Any Senate distict pulling AB data for the precincts listed in the Senate Report.
    • Any Congressional distict pulling AB data for the precincts listed in the Congressional Report (much smaller list).

Why did it occur?

The initial problem was caused from a combination of
  • errant precinct and district info in the June 30th state voter registration data caused by incomplete redistricting updates by a few county SOEs which created duplicate precincts with conflicting district info
  • webElect's updating of AB data after a new voter registration file update NOT accounting for duplicate errant precincts
When webElect updated the AB records' districts after the monthly registration update, it sometimes used the errant duplicate precinct.

The secondary problem, occuring on July 26th from 3pm - 9pm, was a side effect of our initial attempt to correct the primary problem.

Resolution

We reporocessed all AB records using a more comprehensive check on precinct and district info and reran all analysis reports to verify the two issues had been corrected. However, we continue to urge all campaigns to spot check and cross reference record counts with other data sources to validate reports.

Last updated by Doug Homan, created July 28, 2016