Sunday, December 05, 2004
Everyone Votes In Warren County, Ohio
For some bizarre reason, there was a lock down in Warren County, Ohio (http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/11/10/loc_warrenvote10.html). According to Commissioner Pat South, he received word from an FBI agent "that Warren County ranked a "10" on a terrorism scale."
"It wasn't international terrorism that we were in fear of; it was more domestic terrorism," South said [November 9th]. "I much prefer sitting here today telling you why we did implement security rather than why we didn't."
I'm not going to speculate - at this particular moment - why the lock down might have taken place. All I'm going to do is throw out some electoral numbers.
As of the 200 census, there are 158,383 people residing in the county (Wikipedia). There is no doubt that Warren County is staunchly Republican, so much so, that no Democrats even ran for office in the last eight county races over the last eight years. But that's not my point.
In 1996 Dole beat Clinton 33,210 to 17,089, and in 2000, Bush beat Gore 48,318 to 19,142. There were only 78,393 people registered to vote in 1996, 56,669 turned out to vote. That number leapfrogged to 96,536 registered voters in 2000, with a turn out of 69.078.
Then there's 2004. According to the soon-to-be-certified official election results (Election.sos.state.oh.us), out of a total of 125,919 registered voters, 94,419 voters turned out for this election, and Bush beat Kerry 68,035 to 26,043.
Wow. Is it really possible that 80 percent of the population in Warren County are registered to vote? In 2000, 27.70 of the population were under the age of 18. These numbers make it seem like there isn't a single resident in the county, of age, who isn't registered to vote.
As you can see, Bush received more votes in Warren County this past election than the amount of people who voted for either candidate in 1996. What's changed? For one, J. Kenneth Blackwell was elected in 1998. Also, this blog - Nixguy.com - mentions a 14 percent increase in the population, but I can't verify that number at this time.
An additional 29,383 people were registered to vote for this election. That's an increase of nearly 31 percent.
Remember when I mentioned that Warren County voted staunchly Republican. Try this on for size: 38,467 residents are registered as Republicans, 12,370 as Democrats, and a whopping 74,316 residents have no party affiliation listed for their registration (Co.Warren.oh.us). But they sure like Dubya, don't they. Or at least, that's what the results suggest.
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