Early, provisional and absentee votes are not associated with a precinct

[esagara]

So I've been working with 2012 general election raw data. I've noticed that absentee, provisional and early (one stop) votes are not associated with a precinct in this dataset. The data sets located at http://dl.ncsbe.gov/index.html?prefix=ENRS/ (see https://s3.amazonaws.com/dl.ncsbe.gov/ENRS/priprecinct11xx06xx2012.zip for specific example) break these categories out by precinct.

[dwillis]

Hey @esagara: So I'm looking at the 2012 general file and there are columns for election_day, absentee_mail, one_stop and provisional in the file for each precinct-level result. Is that what you mean?

[esagara]

It turns out there is something going on with how early voting occurs in NC - known there as "one stop." Every county will break out "one stop" as a separate precinct and some counties will tally that by precinct - but those numbers don't match up. Voters allowed to stop at any one stop in their registered county to vote - https://www.ncsbe.gov/Voting/One-Stop-Early-Voting.

Some examples:

Beaufort County has no recorded "one stop" votes for any of its precincts except for the precinct labelled "one stop." beaufort.xlsx

Cumberland County reports "one stop" as part of the precinct level data and then again as a separate precinct. However, if you look at results for Cumberland in 2012 you will see 2,204 votes for Obama in the "one stop" precinct. If you add up the "one stop" votes in each individual precinct for that county you will see an additional 49,338 votes cumberland.xlsx

So it appears that while voting results are accurate, precinct level analysis will be problematic. I've attached files for Beaufort and Cumberland - filtered to show only votes cast for Obama to make it easier to read.

[dwillis]

Ah, that makes sense. I think we'll need to figure out how to convey that information to users.

[lephead]

I believe One Stop is the same as early in other states. Another thing I wish could be standardized nationally, the names for ballot types.

[kflanagan]

One stop in NC is register and vote, all at once. Early voting is technically absentee, you vote in a handful of locations (even smaller now with the leg being in the hands of a super majority).

[lephead]

North Carolina also has a 60-day (?) sort where practically all the non-precinct ballots are put into precincts.

On Sat, Jul 22, 2017 at 10:10 AM, Kevin Flanagan notifications@github.com wrote:

One stop in NC is register and vote, all at once. Early voting is technically absentee, you vote in a handful of locations (even smaller now with the leg being in the hands of a super majority).

— You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/openelections/openelections-results-nc/issues/2#issuecomment-317197237, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AJkjUs3LPZHktyxH02NfrYzzUA3wpNs1ks5sQi0XgaJpZM4KqGu6 .

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[migurski]

Sorted results for 2016 can be found in https://s3.amazonaws.com/dl.ncsbe.gov/ENRS/2016_11_08/results_sort_20161108.zip, linked from https://dl.ncsbe.gov/?prefix=ENRS/2016_11_08/

The results_sort_YYYYMMDD.zip filename pattern seems to be common under ENRS.

[migurski]

/cc @gjherschlag