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"Recount the election!" is the 4th most popular petition at whitehouse.gov. It has 69,588 signatures (as of Jan 30, 2012).

As justification for the petition, the creator writes:

In one county alone in Ohio, which was a battleground state, President Obama received 106,258 votes...but there were only 98,213 eligible voters. It's not humanly possible to get 108% of the vote!

Is this claim true?

samthebrand
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    Related: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/13628/was-there-100-turn-out-and-100-obama-support-in-cuyahoga-county-in-2012-presid – Oddthinking Jan 30 '13 at 12:25

1 Answers1

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Politifact Ohio claims that the 106,258 was the amount of registered voters

The posting's count of registered voters, 106,258, matches a Plain Dealer tally of Sept. 17. The latest number of registered voters in Wood County is 108,014, Board of Elections director Terry Burton told PolitiFact Ohio.

Of those, only 80,433 are active voters, he said -- "and the difference between those numbers is the inactive voters."

Whereas the Obama votes were much lower:

Wood County's total on Nov. 6 was 62,338 votes, he said, for a turnout of about 57 percent of registered voters.

Obama's total in Wood County -- 31,596 votes, or about 51 percent of those cast -- was lower than his 2008 tally, according election night totals from the secretary of state. Mitt Romney received 28,997 votes, or about 47 percent -- less than John McCain's 2008 total.

I didn't double check their #s from primary sources, caveat emptor.

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user5341
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  • Even if the claim were true, one would need to be aware of voting regulations. If a county recently did a voter roll "purge," and same-day registration was legal, a vote count could easily exceed the count of registered voters going into the election. – PoloHoleSet Sep 30 '16 at 16:04