Election results

On December 13, 2004 the official voting took place by members of the Electoral College. Democratic Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones and Senator Barbara Boxer made an official protest against the counting of Ohio's electoral votes on January 6, 2005. As a result, the House and Senate disjointedly debated for the inclusion of Ohio's votes. After 4 hours of protest, the election results ended, when the Senate voted 74–1 & the House voted 267–31 to dismiss the challenge to Ohio's votes.

After the result was declared, Bush emerged as winner with 286 votes, while Kerry managed 251 votes and John Edwards received just 1 vote. For Vice President, Dick Cheney Bush's running mate also emerged victorious with 286 votes, while Kerry’s running mate John Edwards received 252 votes.

There would have been no change in results even if the 20 electoral votes of Ohio were rejected. Out of 518 valid votes cast (instead of 538), Bush and Cheney would have emerged victorious, each with 266 votes. If Ohio's votes had been deemed to have been cast, but not counted, so that no candidate had a majority, Bush and Cheney would have almost certainly been chosen by the House and Senate, respectively, under the Twelfth Amendment's procedures.

(a) In New York, Bush received 2,806,993 votes on the Republican ticket and 155,574 on the Conservative ticket.
(b) In New York, Kerry received 4,180,755 votes on the Democratic ticket and 133,525 votes on the Working Families ticket.

“Faithless elector” in Minnesota

One strange thing happened in the election. In Minnesota one elector voted for John Edwards for the presidential post. The officials of Electoral College declared this vote for John Edwards for the post of president. While other nine electors voted for John Kerry. All ten electors in the state voted for John Edwards for Vice President. This was the first time in U.S. history that an elector had cast both of his or her votes for the same person.

Voting in Minnesota was performed by a secret ballot, and no one came forward to admit the mistake for voting in favor of Edwards for President, so it’s the mystery that who was the “faithless elector”. No one knows that it was intentional or unintentional, the Republican Secretary of State and Democratic electors termed it as an accident.

Electoral vote error in New York

Initial electoral vote certificate of New York indicated that all of its 31 votes for president were cast for “John L. Kerry of Massachusetts” instead of John F. Kerry, who won the popular vote in the state. It seemed that this was a result of a typographical error, and a changed electoral vote certificate with the correct middle name was submitted to the President of the Senate prior to the formal counting of votes.