MAJOR CORRECTION (2022-07-17): The below analysis incorrectly computed the CSV totals for each of the 3 counties. I had an indexing error into my CSV file list and erroneously computed the 2020 totals from the CSV’s. I have since updated and recomputed all of the VHL and CSV results, and have additionally added a check against the Turnout report numbers as reported by ELECT. These new results will be forthcoming in an upcoming blog post. While there are still discrepancies between the VHL and CSV, their magnitude is not as large as was originally presented here. My apologies for the error. Corrected numbers for the 2020 CSV totals are shown in red below with my original estimates in strikethrough font.
(Edited 2022-07-10 17:31 EST to add better explanation of VHL and CSV files to first paragraph.)
Per Request – Prince William, Fairfax and Loudoun County
According to the CSV file hosted on the ELECT servers and downloaded on 11-30-2020, the number of votes cast in Prince William County in 2020 Presidential race was 228,267 (corrected) 137,874, which is significantly different than the number of Voters that cast ballots (223,404) in 2020 as generated from the Voter History List (VHL). The 2021 CSV file, downloaded from ELECT on 12-11-2021, gives 153,218 voters as compared to 152,166 given by the VHL data. Why the discrepancies? Note that the VHL is counting people, and the CSV is counting votes cast in the races for President(2020)/Gov(2021), but the numbers should still be roughly similar between the two sources. Also the CSV “Total Vote” field should be including overvotes, write-ins, etc so that is not the source of the discrepancies. Furthermore, the 11-06-2021 VHL data file is identical to the VHL datafile downloaded on 12-14-2021, so there is no missing data from the VHL file for the 2021 election. Finally, note that by definition the Voter History List information will undercount the number of voters that participated in the 2020 election, because voters that have been removed from the registered voter list in between the end of the 2020 election period and when the file was downloaded (11-6-2021) will have had their corresponding records deleted from the VHL.
According to the CSV file hosted on the ELECT servers and downloaded on 11-30-2020, the number of votes cast in Fairfax County was 601,243 (corrected) 487232, which is significantly different than the number (589282) generated from the VHL. The 2021 CSV file, downloaded from ELECT on 12-11-2021, give 441262 voters as compared to 439344 given by the VHL data. Why the discrepancies?
According to the CSV file hosted on the ELECT servers and downloaded on 11-30-2020, the number of votes cast in Loudoun County was 224,976 (corrected) 111655, which is significantly different than the number (220758) generated from the VHL. The 2021 CSV file, downloaded from ELECT on 12-11-2021, give 161793 voters as compared to 161449 given by the VHL data. Why the discrepancies?