Math for Liberal Arts

Andy Long

Sally Stewart

11/3/10

Voting project

Today I went to vote at my local precinct, and I also was able to take a survey of who voted for whom using the information from the voters. Since I live in Ohio, we had different candidates, but I used a different method than the box. I would ask someone if they were democrat or republican, and check them off on the list for the candidate for each party. Republicans were listed as voting for Rand Paul, and Democrats were listed as voting for Jack Conway.

My voting precinct was at the First Baptist Church, (1034 Old State Route 74 Batavia, OH 45103-2342) up the street from my house. I was there from 1:20PM-2:15PM. After I voted, I stood in the blustery cold with my box, and sheets labeled “Democrat” and “Republican” for the voters to drop anonymously into the box. I asked an elderly couple (after reciting the script) if they could help me, and each of them dropped a paper into the box. I was able to get 19 votes total. 8 for “Conway”, and 11 for “Paul”. The people were mostly friendly, though most of them didn’t want to answer. There was even a line out of the polling place, but even the steady stream of people weren’t friendly enough to stop and share their votes. It was sort of discouraging, but I stayed there as long as I could, because I had to work later that day.

The place I voted in was in Clermont County. The website for this precinct is: http://www.clermontelections.org/Results.aspx. The winner of my poll was the Republican candidate, and the winner of our election was Republican too.