READER COMMENTS ON

"'No Problems' in NH Hand Count Says Local Media (Who Apparently Didn't Bother to Check First with Anybody but the SoS)"

(18 Responses so far...)





COMMENT #1 [Permalink]

... drummer55 said on 1/17/2008 @ 5:21 pm PT...





so whats the odds of this? edwards, clinton and obama are each down exactly -12 votes in NH Check my math.... they each lose and gain votes in different places but so far their all

at -12 weird http://www.sos.nh.gov/recountresults.htm Obama

1309 1308

1614 1616

370 373

792 795

503 502

908 908

637 636

458 459

519 524

404 365

587 590

421 421

588 587

488 485

509 511

435 438

487 492

1954 1960

1052 1052

416 417

14451 14439 -12 Clinton

970 963

1630 1630

342 343

683 683

674 677

1026 1030

930 935

551 558

696 702

683 619

875 880

753 755

950 951

899 902

867 877

622 622

732 737

2325 2328

1092 1094

683 685

17983 17971 -12 Edwards

424 427

529 530

158 161

327 327

295 297

324 327

322 324

165 165

237 237

255 217

348 350

270 272

354 354

335 335

299 303

173 173

244 244

853 856

496 497

164 164

6572 6560 -12

COMMENT #2 [Permalink]

... Linda said on 1/17/2008 @ 6:06 pm PT...





Have you guys seen this yet? http://bravenewfilms.org...o-s-voting-system?play=1

COMMENT #3 [Permalink]

... MrBill123 said on 1/17/2008 @ 6:12 pm PT...





If the numbers here are a representative sample of the recount of the machine counted votes, this is amazing. One would expect 1-2% of the totals to not match up - not 90%!!! What are these machines - slot machines?

COMMENT #4 [Permalink]

... Anonymouse said on 1/17/2008 @ 6:13 pm PT...





There's something very odd in Manchester Ward 5: Clinton

683 619 Edwards

255 217 Kucinich

23 20 Obama

404 365 Richardson

46 39 These candidates lost a total of 1411-1260 = 151 votes in the recount. None of the other candidates gained more than a few votes. So...where did the remaining ~151 votes go? Also Bedford shows 184 votes for Richardson in the official tally, and "-" votes for him in the recount. This is odd, considering that they appear to have recounted the Bedford votes for all the other major candidates.

COMMENT #5 [Permalink]

... Snicker said on 1/17/2008 @ 6:16 pm PT...





Somebody should let Markos and DHinMI over at DailyKOS know that they are proven complete fucking idiots on this one. Hopefully they'll shut the hell up now on recounts. I'm sure they'll just claim all those miscounted votes don't matter. True utilitarians.

COMMENT #6 [Permalink]

... karen said on 1/17/2008 @ 6:32 pm PT...





mouse,

i noticed same on manchester 5

good catch on richardson in bedford

manchester/hillsbourgh have some strange coincidences too on the repub side(before recount even) hucklebee/guiliani tie exactly 3 dif times(precincts) on that countys report

the sos STILL doesnt have how many peops voted total posted not alone by precinct

it would be interesting to know the actual number of ballots before the machine stops bouncing round

COMMENT #7 [Permalink]

... Bluebear2 said on 1/17/2008 @ 6:34 pm PT...





Anonymouse You did a "Diebold" :0 {Woops, BB2, I fixed the math for Anonymouse, so as to minimize confusion, before I saw yer cool comment... --99}

COMMENT #8 [Permalink]

... telepethetic said on 1/17/2008 @ 6:34 pm PT...





just put this on digg:

http://digg.com/politics...ound_any_voting_problems

COMMENT #9 [Permalink]

... Big Dan said on 1/17/2008 @ 6:36 pm PT...





Comment #2, the BraveNewFilms video: WHAT THE.............????????????????????????????

COMMENT #10 [Permalink]

... Reader said on 1/17/2008 @ 7:30 pm PT...





What's that sound you hear? The media groaning as they are forced to wake up to this story (I hope).

COMMENT #11 [Permalink]

... carl weiler said on 1/17/2008 @ 8:12 pm PT...





Hi,

I am re-sending because I don't recall for sure what I already sent and this is important.

Can't get through to Bev. Bev can't make Kucinich do 100% count. Just know that I did a student t test with a 72 degrees of freedom that demonstrates the machine set of data has promoted Clinton over Obama with a probability error of less than a tenth of a percent. Do the 100% count for democrats and you will prove votes were taken from Obama by the machines. Don't lose focus that one extra vote in each precinct would throw a close election to the other candidate. There were 46 extra votes for the Manchester precinct (12 machines) alone. There are over 200 wards (257 units?). More of the recount must be completed to prove vote flipping, but my student t analysis with a sample size 37 showed the effect for machine counts over hand counts exists and this has a probability of 99.9 percent.

.

Mark Crispin Miller says the same idea here:

http://www.opednews.com/...what_to_expect_from_.htm &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Sunday's work:

The New Hampshire presidential primary is a watershed for the Election Integrity community, Pre-election polling is often fairly accurate. Exit polling is very accurate. Worldwide, exit polling is accurate to a tenth of one percent of elections everywhere except the United States.

An aggregate of pollsters gave Obama 38.3 % of the vote and Clinton 30.0%. over the period of January 5-6. See Table 1. Zogby gave Obama 42% and Clinton 29% on January 7, 2008.

In case you missed it, exit polling for the Tuesday, January 8, 2008 presidential primary in New Hampshire reported on TV projected 42% of the vote for Obama and 29% to Clinton as late in the day as 4 pm.

By 10 pm or so, the AP network was the first to project Clinton the winner with 39% of the vote and Obama second with 36% of the vote. In other words, the exit poles appear to have been wrong.

There are other possible scenarios. Lets wait for the facts to come in. Both A Democrat and a Republican candidate have called for recounts by the Friday, January 11 deadline. New Hampshire specifies a hand recount of the ballots which will begin on Monday, January 16. The costs will be based on recount costs including State Highway patrol transport of the ballots from clerk's offices to the recount location.

It is true that about half of the wards (precincts), representing about 20% of the ballots, were hand counted initially and the remainder, or about 80 % of the ballots, were counted by the Diebold Accuvote machine which is of an optical scan design.

My analysis of the Secretary of State's posting of election results follows. A student t analysis was conducted to compare two samples to test whether hand count results differed from machine count results by chance alone. If the resulting probability of the test is small, then one can assume that the difference is not due to chance alone. For my study I chose the ratio of Clinton to Obama votes as the parameter to measure. If the ratio is greater than one, then a Clinton win is favored and if the ratio is less than one, Obama is favored.

For the first sample (hand counts) 37 wards were posted to be compared to a sample of 37 wards which were machine counted. The results appear as figure 3.

The mean of the hand count was 0.882 (favoring Obama) and had a standard deviation of 0.254.

The mean of the machine count was 1.15 (favoring Clinton) and had a standard deviation of 0.387.

The probability result was 0.0012 that the student t test was in error. Clearly the difference between the hand count sample and the machine count sample was not due to chance alone. The reason for the difference remains to be satisfactorily explained. (can forward attachments if you wish)

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Thursday's work:

ere are early results for the hand recount of the New Hampshire Presidential Election The 2008 New Hampshire Presidential Election contains an unexplained story. Early media projections predicted an Obama win (42%) over Clinton (29%). As late as 4 pm media were reporting that the election race was reflected by the pole projections.

The truth is that media paid for exit pole data which was available only to the press and academic insitutions. While election projections are usually a good indicator of outcome, exit poles are accurate to within a tenth of a percent. That is, everywhere in the world, excpt the United Sttes. It is now known that exit poles actually showed a very close race between Clinton and Obama all day .

Both a Democrat (Kucinich) and a Republican (Albert Howard) requestd recounts. The hand recount of all ballots cast has been undertaken in Concord, New Hampshire state capitol, in the Archival building. State police will bring ballots from local Clerks' offices.

The projected cost of the recount has been set at 24 cents per ballot, but cost overage will be billed back to the requestors. Six teams operate in parallel and the procedure is video taped. Just like in the movie "Hacking Democracy."

Manchester is a 12- ward unit comprised of 12 Diebold optical scanners. Statewide, the scanners count about 80% of the ballots and the remainder are hand counted. All of the machines used in the State are of the same Accuvote version and are serviced by a single Company (LHS). Data is collected by phone calls for the Secretary of State's office and hand tabulated into a spread sheet.

Not all the data collected in the first day is shown here: nor is all the data recounted for the two candidates reported here. Some data for the 5th and 7th wards has not yet been recounted. Turn to the attached table.

Column C shows the reported count for Clinton followed by recount Column E. One expects the numbers to match exactly, but they differ by 46 votes. Clearly the Accuvote machine performs this task poorly.

Column G shows the reported count for Obama followed by recount column I. Again one expects the numbers to match exactly, but they differ by 4 ballots. This is not an acceptable performance level for counting ballots in any elecion. And this is only the first peak at incomplete data on day one of the recount.

The electronic voting machines appear to be inadequate for the job but any assessment should be whthheld until the completion of the recount. The ward level (precinct) hand count of ballots is necessary to assure transpareny when electronic machines are used to count ballots.

(Graphic attachment if you want it)

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

The evidence is just what you would expect for a stolen election.

COMMENT #12 [Permalink]

... pete s said on 1/18/2008 @ 4:44 am PT...





you guys are going overboard. from today's union leader: The widest variations so far were in Manchester's Ward 5. Vote counters there mistakenly transposed write-in votes for vice president as votes for presidential candidate. As a result, all major candidates lost votes. Kucinich lost three in the ward and has a total of 20 votes there. Hillary Clinton lost 64 with a new total of 619; John Edwards lost 38 and has 217 votes; Barack Obama lost 39 and has 365, and Bill Richardson lost seven, leaving him 39. so, it wasn't machine error but tabulation error on the part of the ward 5 poll checkers who on election night added the votes of the vp choices to the presidential choices. i really think you should tone it down a notch and wait until everything is recounted ... and then say something. otherwise, you are just getting everyone into a tizzy, wrongly, i might add.

COMMENT #13 [Permalink]

... None said on 1/18/2008 @ 7:15 am PT...





{EdNote: Notice to "None"... Please read the commenting rules. --99}

COMMENT #14 [Permalink]

... Phil said on 1/18/2008 @ 8:29 am PT...





COMMENT #13 None said on 1/18/2008 @ 7:15 am PT NOTICE TO ALL IDIOTS:

(snipped for brevity)

http://www.sos.nh.gov/recountresults.htm Nearly every machine counted vote compared to a hand counted vote is different. I don't care if it's ONE VOTE, it's wrong. Electronic vote tabulation devices have FAILED AGAIN, and why shouldn't folks voice their opinion. We are all free to ignore your opinion to "SHUT IT." Only an idiot would *not care* about failed unverifiable electronic vote tabulation devices!

COMMENT #15 [Permalink]

... mannapat said on 1/18/2008 @ 10:37 am PT...





New Hampshire is a small state with great pride and tradition that it goes first in the primaries. This gives it an enormous amount of power in culling out candidates...unjustly? If they can't do a better job than this, then they don't deserve to go first. Maybe it's time to start thinking about how to apportion the 2012 primaries. Let the states compete with each other to provide the most open, secure, fair, registration and voting. Those who get it right, and on time, get to go first, or be in a lottery to go first. I'm tired of this.

COMMENT #16 [Permalink]

... M. L. Cook said on 1/18/2008 @ 8:44 pm PT...





Phil #14, "Nearly every machine counted vote compared to a hand counted vote is different. I don't care if it's ONE VOTE, it's wrong. Electronic vote tabulation devices have FAILED AGAIN, and why shouldn't folks voice their opinion." Sorry Phil, but you argument fails. First, your claim that "nearly every machine" count is different is bogus. IF you actually look at the totals, it is the other way around. The majority of the counts are the same. Second, your argument is based on two false assumptions. 1) You have seem to forgotten that ballots that "spoiled" by VOTER ERROR have been added back into the totals. That alone will change a number of votes. 2) You have ignored the fact that hand counts also have a margin of error. As an Accountant, who has been a part of conducting several store inventories, I have seen first hand how several groups of counters can come back with several different totals for the same item. As the number of items go up, the more likely they will the numbers will not agree. Further, there is NO SUCH THING as a prefect election. It will NEVER happen. The best that we can hope for is a paper trail that we can double check. In this case, the process is working just as it should. There was a vote WITH PAPER BALLOTS, there were questions on why was the vote so different from the exit polls. The hand count shows the same winner as did the machine count. No "vote swapping", no "hacking" of the counting machines to change the outcome of the election.

COMMENT #17 [Permalink]

... Adam Fulford said on 1/19/2008 @ 12:20 am PT...





ML Cook, If you read Phil's post carefully, I think you'll see that he's in your camp and that you're addressing the wrong person.

COMMENT #18 [Permalink]

... J. Reiter said on 1/20/2008 @ 6:41 pm PT...

