Within polling places, does the scarcity of voting machines causelonger lines and thereby dissuade some people from voting? Arevoting machines scarce in some areas because turnout would be low,irrespective of the availability of voting machines? In Ohio in theaftermath of the 2004 presidential election, the answers to thesequestions carried very real and significant political stakes.Consider the following from Franklin County, the second mostpopulous county in the state. In precincts where voting machineswere plentiful (i.e., where there were fewer registrants peravailable voting machine), turnout was especially high and JohnKerry's share of the presidential vote was low. In contrast, inareas of machine scarcity (i.e., precincts with many registrants peravailable voting machine), turnout was lower and Kerry's vote sharewas higher. These relationships are shown in Figures 1A and 1B.Given the strong association between machine availability and theKerry vote, if machine (un)availability was a cause of (low)turnout, then Kerry may very well have received fewer votes than hewould have had more machines been available or had the distributionof available machines been less skewed toward precincts that weremore supportive of George W. Bush.Iappreciate input from SSRC Commission members Henry Brady,Martha Kropf, Walter R. Mebane, Jr., and Michael Traugott withwhom I collaborated on the SSRC's “Interim Report on AllegedIrregularities in the United States Presidential Election of 2November 2004” (Brady et al. 2004). Ialso thank Benjamin Bishin for comments on the paper. The SocialScience Research Council and its staff, including JasonMcNichol, Dashiell Flynn, and Sarah Alexander, provided generoussupport for this work. The views expressed in this paper are notnecessarily shared by other SSRC Commission members or theSocial Science Research Council.