New Hampshire Primaries Follow-Up Analysis

Dr. Eggman writes "Ars Technica has posted a lengthy follow up analysis of the 2008 New Hampshire Primaries outcome. The article deals with the O'Dell machine/hand-count table that has been circulating through emails. It also points out the combination of factors that resulted in such an odd symmetry of numbers, although the article notes that these numbers have been corrected. The corrections still indicate a discrepancy among the tallies. The article also goes on to talk about the nature of the communities that arrived at these numbers and what/how the handcounts proceeds. This process has been inconclusive; something that does not bode well for the rest of the primaries and indeed the election itself, as only 16 states currently mandate both a voter-verified paper trail (VVPT) and a random manual audit of election results."

doesn't matter

[192939495969798999 (58312)]

It doesn't matter which way the popular vote goes, the electoral college elects the president... if you really wanted to screw with the election in this country, it would be WAY cheaper just to buy some electoral votes than to try to manipulate tons of ballots which won't have any effect on the actual election outcome.

Re:doesn't matter

[enjahova (812395)]

Your candidate of choice would still need to get on the ballot.

Re:doesn't matter

[spun (1352)]

That's not insightful. You need to convince the citizens that the outcome is legitimate or there will be rioting in the streets. Tampering with ballots preserves the illusion of legitimacy. Buying electoral college votes puts the fraud right out in the open, it's basically a big "fuck you!" to the American people. That's the last thing anyone in power wants, the entire electorate questioning their legitimacy.

Re:doesn't matter

[SuperBanana (662181)]

That's not insightful. You need to convince the citizens that the outcome is legitimate or there will be rioting in the streets. Tampering with ballots preserves the illusion of legitimacy. Buying electoral college votes puts the fraud right out in the open, it's basically a big "fuck you!" to the American people.

You forgot that when you're caught committing fraud (or caught for being completely incompetent), you haul the court system into it. Then, no matter how pissed people are, you can blow them off by saying, "sorry, the courts say *I* won."

Re:doesn't matter

[644bd346996 (1012333)]

All of human history (particularly nations like France) would seem to contradict that. There definitely is a point beyond which courts are powerless against the pissed-off citizenry.

Re:doesn't matter

[SeanAD (743296)]

I disagree that the message was flamebait. When you have Al Gore receiving -16,000 votes in an area where there are only a few hundred voters and when you have signed off numbers that have Al Gore having thousands votes more than Bush (this is in another district) but the NON signed off tallies have Bush ahead of Gore, and have many, many more examples of such fraud, the people of the U.S. did, indeed, roll over and take it. I'm sure most people here have seen the plethora of examples that suggest, quite loudly, that vote fraud did occur. There are a number of credible documentaries done on the subject.

Regards,

Re:You sure you don't have that backwards?

[AndersOSU (873247)]

It's a problem waiting to happen again. Currently pollsters don't call cell phones. I, and many other young people don't own land-lines.

Re:doesn't matter

[timster (32400)]

The GDP is GROSS domestic product. Someone who "owned" the US wouldn't be able to pull a profit anywhere close to $13 trillion per year. The slaves have to eat something.

Re:doesn't matter

[schnikies79 (788746)]

Most states give all electoral votes to whoever won the popular vote in that state. You can't just "buy" a few votes.

Faithless electors aren't so common, or always leg

[stomv (80392)]

Faithless electors [wikipedia.org] can be punished in 24 states. Furthermore, most electoral college voters are established party faithful -- it'd cost an awful lot of money to start swinging their votes since their political career would be destroyed.

At $1 million each, buying enough would cost $270 million. For that kind of money, why not just run for president and sink it in your campaign like Mitt Romney. How many politically connected folks would throw away their career, their connections, and their source of future income for less than a mil?

Re:doesn't matter

[Obfuscant (592200)]

Can we PLEASE stop this nonsense about a "popular vote" for US President? There simply IS NO popular vote, at least not on a national level.

The Constitution defines how we elect the pres and VP. It says nothing about a nationwide popular vote. The STATES pick their allocated number of electors, and it is those electors who vote for specific people to be pres and VP. It is not even specified in the Constitution that the electors must vote for the people that the state picked them to. Some states don't even mandate that.

It is emotional hyperbole to pretend that someone is "screwed out" of winning a vote that doesn't exist. It makes no more sense to say that someone won the "popular vote" for US president than to claim that someone was elected president of north america because he got more votes for president of his country than others got to be president of theirs.

Whoever it was that started adding up the state-by-state vote counts and calling it the "popular vote" should be shot. Any school that teaches it should by decertified.

Not only is the "popular vote" undefined, it is not a true representation of popularity. People vote not just for who they prefer, but for who they think can win. If you prefer A over B and B over C, but you know that A cannot win, you'll probably vote for B to prevent C from winning. B's good showing in the "popular vote" is biased; no, rather A's low "popularity" is biased based on expected failure. A self-fulfilling prophecy. In any case, in the US, there IS NO popular vote, so wasting time talking about it is just wasting time.

Re:doesn't matter

[susano_otter (123650)]

The Electoral College mitigates the effects of mob rule, which is exactly what it's supposed to do. It gives the least-populous states slightly more power than they would otherwise have, and gives the most-populous states stlightly less power than they would otherwise have. I don't see it as "screwing" anybody out of the Presidency at all. The issue only arises in closely-contested elections where one or both candidates are having difficulty appealing to a broad majority of different regional voter blocs. North Dakota's Electors rarely matter, but when they do, and you fail to sway a majority of North Dakotans...

Re:doesn't matter

[TimTheFoolMan (656432)]

The effect of the Electoral College is that smaller jurisdictions MUST be considered when campaigning. Otherwise, a candidate would just hit a dozen major metro areas and they'd have the numerical advantage sewed up.

Instead, they have to take into consideration (somewhat) what happens in KY, WY, and MT, even though these states don't have enough numerical population to make a significant diff without the EC.

Elections are one of the most visible embodiments of state's rights. As long as my state doesn't violate federally guaranteed rights, we can make all the weirdo election laws we want, or choose our reps for the EC by flipping a coin. It's up to my state to determine these things, and the other states can't say (or do) squat about it. - Tim

Re:doesn't matter

[N3WBI3 (595976)]

Should a person in the middle of a sparse state such as Montana naturally have more say (admittedly only more to a very small degree) than a person in Los Angeles?

Given the fact we are a federation of states... YES

Correlation and Causation

[thermostat42 (112272)]

So, I like a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy. But has anyone who has gotten excited about this even bothered looking for unobserved variables. I don't know say, the affluence of a community and the likelihood that they have expensive voting machines. And that affluent communities might have different voting preferences that poorer communities?

Are we going to start banning ice cream to lower the murder rate next??

Re:Correlation and Causation

[buswolley (591500)]

http://scienceblogs.com/developingintelligence/2008/01/the_diebold_effect_hillarys_vo.php [scienceblogs.com] [scienceblogs.com] --I mentioned it above.

Re:Correlation and Causation

[neuronomy (1221224)]

RTFA. We controlled for % holding bachelor's degrees, median household income, and population density - that's why this is newsworthy. The diebold effect is still significant.

what about the fraud with Ron Paul votes?

[SuperBanana (662181)]

Forget the "skew", there was clear evidence of fraud in certain towns where they reported zero votes for Ron Paul, and a couple of supporters who lived in that town came forward and said "uh, I don't think so, I KNOW I voted for him, as did several friends"?

The town did a re-count and magically those votes re-appeared. This wasn't a case of "oops, we were off by a few"- every single vote for a particular candidate was GONE. What's fascinating is that all of the news stories I've read about the NH primary concerns have neglected to mention this, and far as I can tell, nobody has done jack shit to figure out why it happened.

Furthermore, if they lost ALL of the Ron Paul votes- how many other votes did they lose?

Re:what about the fraud with Ron Paul votes?

[UbuntuDupe (970646)]

This was on the news, and was attributed to 'human error'. Meaning some nonagenarian didn't bother to report those because there was literally a handful (or less).

In absolute terms, it was a handful: 31. In absolute terms, it was VERY relevant: that number is 7% of the total for that precinct. I know because I checked up on that on one of the vote-watch sites that listed by precinct. I apologize, however, for not knowing how to quickly get back to that so I can post a link; I'm sure you will discover the same, however.

I don't have to tell you what adding 7% of the voters to Ron Paul's *aggregate* NH total would be, do I?

And supporting Ron Paul is great and idealistic and all, but a complete waste. He has 0% chance of winning anything, especially after those racist newsletters came out with his name on them, regardless if he wrote them.

You think this is just about making Ron Paul president? No. This is a long-term fight to move the nation in a more libertarian direction. This surge in grassroots support (compared to what libertarian-minded candidates used to get) is a culmination of all the "internet-only" support the libertarian movement built up beginning in the late 90s, as those younger voters aged, and it's only getting bigger.

The more publicity we can get for libertarian ideas, the better, even and especially of Ron Paul doesn't win. I would know. I'm a local organizer.

The news about the racist remarks worries me, of course, but I think Paul is still at the stage where "any publicity is good" esp. as he gets endorsements from those minorities who have worked with him.

Re:what about the fraud with Ron Paul votes?

[Shotgun (30919)]

That's strange. He seems to be beating Thompson and Guilliani in nearly every primary. Yet, I continue to see both those candidate receiving significant news coverage. Lots of face time, and constant reports that Guilliani is going to win in Florida (as if that one state can get him nominated). What's more, neither of those two seem to have anything significant to say. Voting for Paul is a least a call for doing things that are significantly different than the status quo.

I can only say that the major media have gone out of their way to actively ignore Ron Paul. When they have provided any modicum of coverage to his campaign, it has been in the form of slander or ridicule. Why did Paul get a derisive question about "electability", instead of the policy issue everyone else was sidestepping, when he had won more of the vote than the proclaimed 'winner' of the debate?

If they'd forgotten Thompson and Guilliani, I might agree, but given the evidence, there seems to be a concerted effort to keep Paul from running at all.

Why do you always have this vote counting issues?

[galoise (977950)]

I have always found it incredibly curious how, of all countries, the United States has such big problems for vote counting. I know that problems like these are everywhere to be found, and that the US hava a very atypical election machinery (with each state presenting votes as they see fit, and other decissions based on a per-county basis, etc etc), but all in all, it should be pretty obvious that you have some serious election problem.

Down in my country (i'm form Chile), the electoral system is incredible clean and efficient. Every vote is hand counted, and the aggregated results of the election are official one or two hours after the last table closes, with a certainty of about 99.9%... and it's not a technological wonder: just ordered hand counting, and coordinated recollection of results. i know, we are a small country, but the voting population is about 4 mill people... more than NH in any case.

And in the event that there's a problem (i don't remember any in the last 20 years), we can track each ballot to the specific table where it was counted and check it all the way down to the ballot.

And Chile is a country with a reputation for chaos and disorder. Should i be amazed for our electoral system, or be amazed for how crappy the united states' system is?

in other words... with all due respect (and i mean it, it's an honet question...), why do you have such a crappy system? wouldn't it be cheaper to implement a low-tech, efficient and accountable sytem rather than risking every election with a thrillion different systems for each district and all this eternal debate about who probably got more votes?

Re:Why do you always have this vote counting issue

[Shotgun (30919)]

How is graft and corruption ever the have chance in this country if we make it so simple? What would the talking heads talk about if there was a Obviosly, your oblivious to the complication of the American electorate and our diverse needs. Jeesh, dude. Would you think of the CHILDREN?

The scary part about the New Hampshire results?

[GodfatherofSoul (174979)]

Americans have been conditioned to accept the narrative that exit polls can be wildly askew from actual results and suspicious results (like Ron Paul's disappearing votes) can be ignored. Properly administered exit polls are highly accurate. Now, I'm not saying that New Hampshire was rigged, but I want to know EXACTLY what happened to change the outcome from a near certain expectation. Only two explanations that I see as viable.

• Exit polls conducted by amateurs (I heard ONE comment that this might have happened from a witness).
• High number of undecided or uncommitted voters swayed one way. Problem here is that Hillary would have had to have taken an enormous share of these voters.

Re:Face Facts

[damienl451 (841528)]

"UN observers won't certify them". UN observers are usually sent to third-world nations and "flawed democracy", not countries like the US or any other Western country for the matter. So, as a matter of mact, UN observers won't certify US elections because nobody asked them to, not because they were there and refused to do it in light of widespread fraud, as your message implied.

Re:Face Facts

[rahvin112 (446269)]

One thing I always find interesting about those who say the elections aren't fair is they are either not old enough to vote or they don't vote. This always concludes with some wild exagerations, half-truths and outright lies along with a typical statement of either "everyone knows it's true" or "go find the evidence".

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/08/08/international.observers/index.html [cnn.com]

The story above predates the 2004 election, interesting quotes from the article are:

"OSCE-participating [nations] agreed in 1990 to observe elections in one another's countries. The OSCE routinely monitors elections within its 55-state membership, including Europe, Eurasia, Canada and the United States," a State Department spokesman said.

In November 2002, OSCE sent 10 observers on a weeklong mission to monitor the U.S. midterm elections. OSCE also sent observers to monitor the California gubernatorial recall election last year.

A quick trip over to the OSCE office of democratic Institutions and human rights reveals the following page on the monitoring of the last three elections in the US: http://www.osce.org/odihr-elections/14680.html [osce.org]

The 2 November elections in the United States mostly met the commitments agreed to by the 55 OSCE participating States in the Copenhagen Document of 1990 - see Annex I. They were conducted in an environment that reflects a long democratic tradition, including institutions governed by rule of law, free and professional media and civil society involved in all aspects of the election process. The presidential elections took place in a highly competitive environment. In what was perceived to be a very close race, the leading presidential candidates enjoyed the full benefits of free and vigorous media coverage throughout the campaign. There was exceptional public interest not only in the two main presidential candidates and respective campaign issues but also in the election process itself. Civil society contributed substantially towards greater awareness of election issues and promoting voter participation. However, a number of significant issues were brought to the attention of the EOM as set out below.

It should be noted that only the UN certifies elections, and generally doesn't send observers to countries such as those in western Europe, the US and Japan as these countries have a long tradition of democracy. OSCE found the US elections to have only some minor problems, mostly to do with laws that restrict felons from voting, no national system or nation requirements (voting is at the state level), some districts having problems with provisional ballots and the presence of party election observers in the polling place being possibly to close to the voting booths. The 2006 observers drew issue with electronic voting where there was no paper trail as their single largest issue, but also discussed were provisional ballot differences, absentee voting by fax (allowed in a few states), voter identification (requirement to show ID), better training for poll workers, absence of non-partisan observers, felon voting and district boundaries (a concern with gerrymandering).

I see nothing in the reports that tells me fraud is widespread. Actually in my experience voting judges and poll workers (all volunteers) are quite ethical and upstanding. Some aren't trained as well, the best poll workers are the ones who have done it for many elections but in general the system is incredibly fair. With both parties observing not only the voting but the counting and all tasks being handled mostly by volunteers the system actually seems to be very difficult to tamper with. Although voter fraud has occurred in every election in this country (name a single election where dead people didn't vote) I've never seen a situation where ther