Political Geography 21 (2002) 91–98 www.politicalgeography.com Florida’s residual votes, voting technology, and the 2000 election Jonathan I. Leib * , Jason Dittmer Department of Geography, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-2190, USA Abstract This essay examines the county-level pattern of Florida’s residual votes in the 2000 presi- dential election, focusing on voting problems in optical scan ballot counties. Differing methods for counting optical scan ballots had a considerable impact on county-level residual vote rates. Differences in residual vote rates were also associated with race and poverty  2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Residual votes; Voting technology; Optical scan ballot In the 2000 general election in Florida, 175,655 votes out of 6,138,765 cast (2.9%) were recorded as containing no vote for president, or 327 times George W. Bush’s certified victory margin (Florida Division of Elections, 2000). These residual votes were classified as “undervotes” or “overvotes”. Undervotes included those ballots cast by voters who intentionally did not vote for any candidate, as well as those ballots counted as containing no vote for president due to voter or counting error. In contrast, overvotes included those ballots which were marked for two or more candidates, or mistakenly interpreted by machines or people as containing multiple votes. An estimated 110,000 of Florida’s 176,000 residual votes were overvotes. Of the remaining 65,000 residual votes, 28,000 were “true” undervotes on which there was no evidence of an attempt to cast a ballot for president (Lebowitz & Dougherty, * Corresponding author. E-mail address: jleib@coss.fsu.edu (J.I. Leib). 0962-6298/01/$ - see front matter  2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII:S0962-6298(01)00064-6