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Most 'undervotes' cast in counties won by Obama
An analysis of ballots that had a vote for president but no vote for U.S. senator could have recount implications.
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An Associated Press analysis of the nearly 25,000-vote difference in Minnesota presidential and U.S. Senate race tallies shows that most ballots lacking a recorded Senate vote were cast in counties won by Democrat Barack Obama.
The finding could have implications for Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and DFLer Al Franken, who are headed for a recount separated by the thinnest of margins -- 221 votes as of Friday, or about 0.01 percent.
Though some voters may have intentionally bypassed the race, others may have mismarked their ballot or optical scanning machines may have misread them. A recount to begin Nov. 19 will use manual inspection to detect such ballots.
Three counties -- Hennepin, Ramsey and St. Louis -- account for 10,540 votes in the dropoff. Each saw Obama win with 63 percent or more.
Ballots that showed a presidential vote but no Senate vote are called the "undervote." Statewide, more than 18,000 of those ballots came from counties won by Obama with more than half the vote. About 6,100 were in counties won by Republican John McCain with at least 50 percent.
In 13 counties, the two ran about even; in all, those counties combined for 707 ballots without a Senate preference.
The largest of the pro-McCain counties were Anoka, where 1,189 ballots didn't choose a Senate candidate, and Stearns, where 681 did not.
There's one more critical statistic: About 8,900 people weren't recorded as voting for president, according to county-by-county turnout estimates kept by the Secretary of State's Office.
That nearly 9,000 people would skip the closely watched race is questionable, raising the possibility that as many as 33,700 ballots might be subject to change in a hand recount.
What recount teams will be looking for is whether stray or light marks on ballots signaled a voter's preference.
Michael Shamos, a Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor who studies election systems, said the dropoff didn't strike him as suspiciously large.
"All that means to me is they consider the presidential race more important than the Senate race," he said. "They either didn't make up their mind. They didn't care. They didn't make a mark in that race."
To be sure, similar dropoffs have happened in the past. In 2000, the last year with both races on Minnesota's ballot, about 19,000 presidential voters were not recorded as casting a Senate vote. Fewer people voted that year, making the dropoff rate similar to this year's.
Because Democrat Mark Dayton won clearly that year, there was no review of ballots.
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