The Case of Extra Votes

In trying to determine what the historical voter turnout for the Ontario elections, the closest number I could get was, '% of Total Valid Ballots Cast' over the past 5 previous elections. The information is not readily available and so my analysis was done using a table provided by Elections Ontario. (http://results.elections.on.ca/results/history/sum_vb_default.jsp?flag=E&layout=G)

Part of my analysis consisted of adding up columns of voter turnout. In doing so I came across an irregularity for the year of 1999, whereby the percent of total valid ballots casted totaled 100.1% compared to all other years listed which totaled 100%.


This 0.1% equates to an extra 4390 ballots (1999 total of 4,390,207) which could amount to upwards of $23,486.50 extra funding sent to the major political parties based on using the Ontario subsidy per-vote.

• Parties get $0.05 per elector for each electoral district (107 Ontario Districts) where they get 15 per cent of the popular vote

It makes me question who audits these figures, and if this is an acceptable anomaly, then why was it just for this one stated year and why is there no disclaimer? Or perhaps they just thought no one would take the time to look at the numbers on some obscure site and do some calculations. Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself, but I'm anxious to see how yesterdays numbers for percent of total valid ballots casted turned out as last night in Ontario the provincial election was held.