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Recount Proves No Fraud In NH Primary

Posted by kdawson on Fri Jan 25, 2008 11:48 AM
from the nothing-to-see-here dept.
Government Politics
murdocj writes "You can take off those tinfoil hats, because the recount results of the NH Primary are in, and the hand count matches the machine count. Everyone can now move on to the conspiracy around the Texas flying saucer. In fact, only 40% of the vote was recounted (that's all that Dennis Kucinich was willing to pay for), but that 40% shows that the machine and hand counts match up nicely. As was pointed out when this 'story' broke, areas that have machine counting tend to have different demographics than hand-counted areas, and thus a difference in voting patterns."
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[+] News: Diebold Voter Fraud Rumors in New Hampshire Primaries 861 comments
Westech writes "Multiple indications of vote fraud are beginning to pop up regarding the New Hampshire primary elections. Roughly 80% of New Hampshire precincts use Diebold machines, while the remaining 20% are hand counted. A Black Box Voting contributor has compiled a chart of results from hand counted precincts vs. results from machine counted precincts. In machine counted precincts, Clinton beat Obama by almost 5%. In hand counted precincts, Obama beat Clinton by over 4%, which closely matches the scientific polls that were conducted leading up to the election. Another issue is the Republican results from Sutton precinct. The final results showed Ron Paul with 0 votes in Sutton. The next day a Ron Paul supporter came forward claiming that both she and several of her family members had voted for Ron Paul in Sutton. Black Box Voting reports that after being asked about the discrepancy Sutton officials decided that Ron Paul actually received 31 votes in Sutton, but they were left off of the tally sheet due to 'human error.'"
Submission: Recount proves no fraud in NH Primary by murdocj (543661)
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  • When your security procedures are this lax [bbvforums.org], anything can happen.
    • Quite. I think the elections for student's union posts at the university I'm at now have better tamper-proofing and chain of custody than that.

  • Sure.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by 4D6963 (933028) on Friday January 25 2008, @12:21PM (#22183328)

    Recount Proves No Fraud

    Sure, or maybe everybody frauded in a self canceling way.

    </double tinfoil hat>

    • Its probably not fraud, but it defiantly did self cancel.
      On http://www.sos.nh.gov/recounthills.htm [nh.gov]
      In Nashua Ward 5 Clinton gained 71 votes (out of a about a thousand, a 7% difference)
      In Manchester Ward 10 Clinton lost 10 votes (of out about a 900)
      Anyways in total of all precients in which she gained votes she gained 163 votes (this is just one county in the state)
      In total of all precient in which she lost votes she lost 103.
      Leading to a net change of 59 votes.
    • The original article is just blatant b.s. Here's what the Kucinich campaign sent to the NH SoS: Image Link. [bradblog.com] The guy who paid for the recount thinks it proves that NH can't be trusted to count votes.

  • Pay for a recount? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pembo13 (770295) on Friday January 25 2008, @12:21PM (#22183352) Homepage
    If there is uncertainty, why does anyone (voters or the candidates) have to (directly) pay for the recount?

    • If there is uncertainty, why does anyone (voters or the candidates) have to (directly) pay for the recount?
      "Uncertainty" according to whose standard?

      Some people will refuse to accept reality no matter how many facts you shove in their faces.

      • Re:Pay for a recount? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Original Replica (908688) on Friday January 25 2008, @01:35PM (#22184598) Journal
        "Uncertainty" according to whose standard?

        It's pretty easy when you look at the vote tallies for your county and see that the candidate you voted for is showing zero votes. [rense.com] That makes it obvious that the original count is wrong. It's difficult to spot shifting vote numbers once the numbers get higher, which is why we need UN election oversight. [house.gov] This is a measure we insist on in other countries but yet refuse in our own. Uncertainty is when you vote is being counted by black box machines made by a company that employs know felons in key management areas. [wired.com] Strangely the people put in power by this voting system, don't want the system to change, funny that. True election reform which would break us out of our dysfunctional two party system, such as approval voting [wikipedia.org] or instant runoff voting [wikipedia.org] will never pass through a legislature put in power by a strong two party system. Uncertainty is when 56% of the population doesn't even show up to vote, because they do not feel represented by either of the two available choices. [hnn.us]

        • Re:Pay for a recount? (Score:4, Informative)

          by TheGreek (2403) on Friday January 25 2008, @02:22PM (#22185284)
          Well, let's go in order, shall we?

          It's pretty easy when you look at the vote tallies for your county and see that the candidate you voted for is showing zero votes [rense.com]. That makes it obvious that the original count is wrong.
          The recount the Slashbots were talking about in the original story is the one Gollum [dennis4president.com] asked for. The missing votes for Rep. Paul were neither germane to the Democratic primary nor anything more than a rounding error.

          Uncertainty is when you vote is being counted by black box machines made by a company that employs know felons in key management areas.
          The Diebold machines in NH are optical scan machines that count paper ballots. A hand recount of these machine-counted ballots appears to have resulted in highly similar results [nh.gov], well within Sen. Clinton's margin of victory.

          Uncertainty is when 56% of the population doesn't even show up to vote, because they do not feel represented by either of the two available choices.
          Then those 56% of the people are complacent retards who aren't even trying to improve the process. There can be no uncertainty over ballots not even cast. Nice strawman.

        • It's difficult to spot shifting vote numbers once the numbers get higher, which is why we need UN election oversight. This is a measure we insist on in other countries but yet refuse in our own.

          I realize ragging on the election system in the US, any part of it really, is popular, but this argument - in and of itself - is completely ludicrous.

          "we insist on in other countries.."

          Not in any WESTERN country. I can't think of a single Western, "1st world", country that has UN oversight of its elections....

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by fyrie (604735)
      It varies from state-to-state, but typically it works like this: If an election is very close (within the margin of error of the vote tallying method), an automatic recount is done, and is payed for by the state. Any candidate can request a recount for any reason if they are willing to pay for it in the case the election did not fall into the automatic recount scenario.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by fyrie (604735)
        I left out why recounts are costly: The State Employees who do the recounting have to skip out on their regular job duties until the recount is done. In highly contested cases where lawyers and party representatives are bickering over every ballot, it can become a huge time sink.
      • Fair enough. I didn't understand that part of it.
        • I didn't understand that part of it.

          How could you not understand that it takes LOTS of time to recount ballots (are you too young to remember the Florida recount?), and that it must be done by existing state elections employees, and that people who are doing Job B can't also be simultaneously be doing their normal Job A, and so the backlog of Job A piles up?

      • It varies from state-to-state, but typically it works like this: If an election is very close (within the margin of error of the vote tallying method), an automatic recount is done, and is payed for by the state. Any candidate can request a recount for any reason if they are willing to pay for it in the case the election did not fall into the automatic recount scenario.

        Also, if the recount proves that original result was wrong, the candidate will not be charged with a timeout.

    • The opposing argument is that if a candidate simply doesn't like the result, he could keep demanding a recount until it turns out the "right" way.
    • There is always uncertainty, so the vote should be recounted every time. I say, do the first count by hand, the second by computer, and the third again by hand. $3000 per state recount is peanuts. This is the most important democratic action a democracy can have. Isn't it worth double- and triple-checking?
      • Yeah, when I used to work in cash control, we'd have to count every stack of money twice - once by hand and once per machine. If the counts didn't match, we did another hand count. It seems silly that there's no sort of double-checking built in to a system that's the blood and marrow of our democracy, where companies require double and triple checks on things that are done every day.
    • Uncertainty can be a figment of your imagination, a sign of a sore loser and a complexed reality all at once. It used to be that recounts were demanded by the loosing party and paid for by the state/city. This got expensive as the population grew and it had a side effect. The loser always wanted a recount and if it changed the outcome, the new loser would demand one also.(think florida 2000 on a much larger scale)

      Now the recounts are only paid for by the state/city when the margin of victory is less then th

  • Proof? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PseudoThink (576121) on Friday January 25 2008, @12:21PM (#22183354)
    I think it only proves there's no fraud detectable by recount. </tinfoil>
    • Unit tests cannot prove there are no bugs, rather, proves the existance of a subset of possible bugs. I'd imagine a recount to be akin to those.

      "Prove" is such a strong word. How about Proofiness?
  • Given the discrepancy, it was a good idea to check.

    • Re:Great (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Stanistani (808333) on Friday January 25 2008, @12:39PM (#22183692) Homepage Journal
      Given the level of mistrust about the previous two presidential elections, I think it would be only prudent to have recounts randomly throughout the process, however they are initiated.

      Legitimacy of the power wielded by the Chief Executive should be widely accepted.

      • Re:Great (Score:5, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2008, @01:13PM (#22184296)

        Legitimacy of the power wielded by the Chief Executive should be widely accepted.

        I'll never accept it! I'm an anarchist! The only Chief Executive who tells me what to do is me!

        <To self>: I'll never accept you as my master! I'm an anarchist! The only Chief Executive who tells me what to do is me!

        <To self>: <To self>: I'll never accept you as my master! I'm an anarchist! The only Chief Executive who tells me what to do is me!

      • Re:Great (Score:4, Interesting)

        by quacking duck (607555) on Friday January 25 2008, @01:19PM (#22184376)
        Further, given the metric crapload of money candidates already spend/waste on campaigning, you'd think there would be a system in place to skim off a percentage towards recounts. Election insurance, as it were.

        Why the hell not? You're voting to give these clowns the right to skim money off *your* income for their pork barrel projects...
        • Some would say the better route would be that no skimming would happen at all...
        • Other than filing fees, none of the money that candidates spend on campaigning goes to the governments of the states that the elections are held in. If you're advocating some type of "election fee", wouldn't that disproportionately affect campaigns with a smaller war chest, like lesser-known and third party candidates?
          • Taxes are on a sliding scale, no? Candidates would pay nothing if their campaign spending is below a certain limit, while those that spend millions get hit. The thinking being that if they're already spending that much money trying to convince us to elect them, they must have a vested interest in making sure their vote counts are accurate.

            Of course, this'll never happen because those who actually hold power (or have a shot at getting it) would never do anything to take money away from themselves.

  • Did Diebold write this? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by megamerican (1073936) on Friday January 25 2008, @12:49PM (#22183920)
    First of all, the Republican ballots haven't been counted yet. Secondly, Kucinich ran out of money so not all of the ballots on the Democratic side were counted. Not only that, but the chain of custody for the ballots was severely lacking. It would be alomst impossible to prove fraud when you can't fully account for where the ballots were and everyone who had custody of them. There were lots of discrepencies in the diebold counted places. Simply check out http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ [blackboxvoting.org] and http://www.bradblog.com/ [bradblog.com] and you'll see how incredibly bad NH was.

    The Republican ballots won't even have started to be counted for a few days. More money was donated to the 3rd party candidate to make the recount (mostly Ron Paul supporters through the Granny Warriors). There were at least two cities in NH that reported 0 votes for Ron Paul, then magically found them the next day when it was pointed out to them that people voted for him there (all by accident, of course).

    The fact that the diebold ballots were so far off is very troubling, considering they make ATM's which don't miss a penny and are virtually fraud proof (not to mention there is a paper trail). LHS Associates, who counted 81% of the votes in NH also have an executive who was convicted of narcotics trafficking. It was also LHS Associates who handled a lot of the ballots after the voting was done. They can't use the Fry defense "Don't blame me, I'm a non-voting felon." They're vote counting felons.

    Anyone who gets their votes counted through a Diebold machine should get stickers saying "I think I voted."

    • They can't use the Fry defense "Don't blame me, I'm a non-voting felon." They're vote counting felons.
      That's Bender.

    • I forgot to add.. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by megamerican (1073936) on Friday January 25 2008, @01:29PM (#22184522)
      I also forgot to add that the so called seals on the boxes were more like post it notes. You could take them off and put them back on and no one would ever notice.
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKQEQ7qHvgM [youtube.com]
      This video demonstrates how great the chain of custody was in NH. This basically proves that fraud could have easily happened and been undetectable.

    • Are you just flat-out ignoring the demographic differences here? Diebolds were mostly in urban areas, where voters tend to vote differently than those in rural areas where the Diebold machines were few and far between.

    • The fact that the diebold ballots were so far off is very troubling, considering they make ATM's which don't miss a penny and are virtually fraud proof (not to mention there is a paper trail).

      I'm not a lawyer or a banker, but if an ATM malfunctions due to a software or hardware error, I'd bet that Diebold would be held financial responsible under the terms of the sales agreements they had with the bank. [Given how much is at stake for the bank, they'd be foolish not to have their lawyers include something

    • Here [bbvforums.org] is one of the more incredible accounts.

      I guess maybe punchscan [punchscan.org] has it right...
      • This isn't about a particular candidate.

        This is about a voting system with little security or oversight.

        To firmly believe there couldn't have been fraud is as irrational as believing firmly that there was fraud.

      • Gadfly, Nut, and Weirdo (Score:4, Insightful)

        by bill_mcgonigle (4333) * on Friday January 25 2008, @07:57PM (#22189204) Homepage Journal
        Get over it. Ron Paul lost. He will continue to lose, because his ideas don't appeal to the majority of Americans.

        Seriously? I'll bet you five dollars a majority of Americans have no clue what Ron Paul's ideas are.

        Political activists, maybe, but even then > 50% is hard to believe. At least among the people I talk to, 10% have even looked at his website or heard about his policy ideas. Most of them know he's a gadfly, a nut, and a weirdo, though.

  • "Recount Proves NH Election Fraud Undetectable" (Score:5, Funny)

    by R2.0 (532027) on Friday January 25 2008, @01:07PM (#22184172)
    Fixed that for ya'.

    Logic says that one can never prove a negative, and here in conspiracy land we OBEY the laws of logic.
  • Where do you get that from? Looking at the actual results, I see numerous instances where the initial count differs from the recount. More often than not it's just a 1 or 2 vote discrepancy, but it is pervasive. During the early stages of the recount it was being reported that getting on for 1% of the votes hadn't been counted; either the machines would ignore every 100th ballot or so, or they'd ignore a whole batch because pens with the wrong kind of ink had been used. Most of the batched errors were caught on the day of the count, but it took a recount to show up the sporadic individual errors.

    Why is this important? One reason is because there is a demographic difference between hand-counted and machine-counted areas, so if you're going to disenfranchise 1% of the population in machine-counted areas, even if it's done entirely at random, that reduces the elective power of the demographic in those areas, which can tip a close election. Besides, isn't every vote supposed to be counted? Isn't that why you go and vote, because you believe that your vote will be counted? How many voters wouldn't bother if they knew it was some sort of lottery?

    Another point: a partial recount will never disclose a fraud if the people choosing the areas to be recounted are also the people behind the fraud. They will simply leave the areas where the fraud took place until last, secure in the knowledge that the recount sponsor's finances or resolve will run out before the recount gets that far. And it certainly was the case that Kucinich couldn't specify exactly what was recounted. His requests for a tally of the uncast ballot papers, for instance, fell on deaf ears. So what happened to those uncast ballots? Did they get cast after all?

  • Proof against fraud (Score:3, Insightful)

    by HalAtWork (926717) on Friday January 25 2008, @03:03PM (#22185886)
    Good, now we found a way to show that an election hasn't been rigged. Shouldn't we be doing this everywhere? That way if the machine is rigged, the hand count will show it. If the hand count is rigged, the machine count will show it. It's better than having a single point of failure.
  • As many other people have noted, this recount, for a wide variety of reasons, doesn't "prove no fraud" here. I'd like to add one other factor that can't be covered by any recount: people voting in precincts where they aren't eligible to vote.

    Failing to count one person's vote disenfranchises that one person completely. Allowing someone to vote where/when they aren't legally supposed to disenfranchises all of us by a little bit each.

    • That all the people who immediately claim "voter fraud" when they don't like the outcome of the election are delusional?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Mr. Slippery (47854)

      Naturally, the recounts also "proved" there was no fraud in Florida 2000...

      Until a media consortium hired independent assessors to evaluate the ballots, and found that the Gore got more than Bush votes in Florida in 2000 [unreasonable.org].

      As for Ohio, people went to jail for rigging the recount [cbsnews.com].

      Which demonstrates that official recounts of a limited number of ballots may not tell the whole story.

      The U.S. electoral system is no more reliable than that of the Ukraine [wikipedia.org] or Kenya [slashdot.org]. But Americans are much more complacent ab

      • Until a media consortium hired independent assessors to evaluate the ballots, and found that the Gore got more than Bush votes in Florida in 2000.

        Interesting charactarization of thier results, especially considering that they made no concrete statements like this themselves.

        Their recount tested the results under 9 different scenarios of how overvotes and undervotes should be counted. In 4 of the scenarios (including the scenario most consistent with contemporary FL law), Bush prevailed with more votes (woo

      • "Mr. Slippery", indeed.

        Until a media consortium hired independent assessors to evaluate the ballots, and found that the Gore got more than Bush votes in Florida in 2000.

        Cheesedog clearly addresses the Media Consortium examination of 175,101 ballots against 9 scenarios (Bush won 4, Gore 5). Better known are the Miami Herald and USA Today recounts, which concluded "...that Bush would have won in all legally requested recount scenarios, and in all other scenarios." Quote is from here [wikipedia.org]. While you might hate t

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Straif (172656)
      Worse yet, I don't even believe New Hampshire requires you to be a resident to vote in their primaries, only that you "intend" to move there sometime in the future.

      As for any type of voter verification, that will never happen in a Democratic primary; for some reason I can never find a legitimate rationalization for, the Democrats seems to think voter verification is equal to voter suppression.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Prien715 (251944)
        As for any type of voter verification, that will never happen in a Democratic primary; for some reason I can never find a legitimate rationalization for, the Democrats seems to think voter verification is equal to voter suppression.

        Well, there was a recent bipartisan panel on the manner and it found that there's little actual incentive for individuals to cause voter fraud -- as one risks jail time for even voting twice -- which is unlikely to change the outcome of any election. There's also very little evi

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