I am startled over the official detailed vote tally per county precinct published in the Feb. 14 edition of the Transcript-Bulletin. The county claims an official tally of 8,390 votes cast. Yet the actual tally shows 8,660 votes cast. Stockton's tally is spectacularly strange. Two tiny precincts can't manage to get 192 votes correctly logged? Precinct No. 1 issued 125 ballots, yet 162 ballots were cast. Precinct No. 2 issued 67 ballots, yet 42 ballots were cast. As these were mail-in ballots, that leads me to believe one precinct stuffed the ballot box by 22.8 percent and precinct two lost 37.3 percent of their mail. However, every district had errors. In the "votes per candidate" column, candidates Giuliani, Keyes, Biden, Gravel, Kucinich, Lynch, and Richardson show accurate totals. When adding the totals for everyone else, however, all show less actual counted votes than were attributed to the final vote count. Candidates Hunter and Thompson saw vote gains at the rate of 14.29 percent and 11.76 percent, respectively. Obama, Clinton, McCain, Romney, McCain, Edwards and Paul saw 4.92 percent, 4.38 percent, 3.98 percent, 3.87 percent, 3.54 percent and 1.96 percent gains, respectively. Perhaps absentee ballots are included in those totals and the county just failed to note that fact? Also, potentially hundreds of votes most certainly cast in the Stansbury No. 4 district weren't reported. The county clerk should account some of the gross errors I've described.

Bobi Fox

Tooele