New Hampshire Primaries Follow-Up Analysis 315
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:doesn't matter (Score:1, Interesting)
Diebold Effect Persists (Score:3, Interesting)
Romney. (Score:3, Interesting)
Correlation and Causation (Score:5, Interesting)
Are we going to start banning ice cream to lower the murder rate next??
New Hampshire primary is about media coverage (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:what about the fraud with Ron Paul votes? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Correlation and Causation (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:doesn't matter (Score:4, Interesting)
Regards,
Why do you always have this vote counting issues? (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Correlation != causation (Score:3, Interesting)
Example: What if the precincts with higher proportions of Obama supporters happen to be those with hand counted ballots? This is well within the realm of possibility, and from a statistical standpoint, just as likely a hypothesis as wrongdoing.
So, what's the answer? Regression. Regression not only gives you the correlation (which everyone knows is high), but also explains the significance of that correlation - how much it matters.
The result? I ran regressions of Clinton/Obama total vote percentage against hand/machine counted from the first 150 or so precincts (alphabetically) from the list of results and there were two important figures:
p-value of less than .05 (the relationship between method of vote counting and the final vote breakdown was significant).
Adj R-Squared less than 0.10 (the method in vote counting explained less than 10% of the variation in vote totals).
In plain English: 90% of the variation in results across precincts CANNOT be explained by the counting method.
Furthermore, the even with significance, the model may merely pick up variables related to the ones being used. Perhaps precincts with machine counting are wealthier, and wealthier precints trended Clinton. In that way, machine-counted precincts would skew Clinton but with no sinister activity.
My look wasn't by any means fully rigorous or conclusive, and I can't claim to be expert enough to be certain. And there are probably a few Slashdotters with greater stats skills to puncture my amateur analysis. But I think this is overblown. Let's focus on the real enemy, vote machines with no paper trail.
The scary part about the New Hampshire results? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:what about the fraud with Ron Paul votes? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Why do you always have this vote counting issue (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:what about the fraud with Ron Paul votes? (Score:4, Interesting)
I also try to live my principles, but being human, I am not 100% on that.
Wake up... (Score:3, Interesting)
Just like it was clear (and proven conclusively) that there was fraud that altered the outcome of the 2004 presidential election, and 2000 as well.
The mainstream media is completely compromised. Anybody who is waiting to hear this proclaimed on NBC wil be waiting forever (stupidly).
Many people just don't understand that this isn't a right/left dem/rep issue - The powers that be have a vested interest in ensuring that if it's democrat it is Hillary - if it is a republican it is MCCain or Giuliani.
They also want to limit mainstream exposure of Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich...They certainly couldn't have straight shooters like these guys on a live TV major network debate speaking truth right next to a bunch of controlled corporatists who want to talk about the crap the mainstream media has been forcefeeding the public without making media darlings look like the cardboard kleptogarchs they are.
Re:You sure you don't have that backwards? (Score:5, Interesting)
We have simple human errors in the South too (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:doesn't matter (Score:3, Interesting)
No there is not but if you want to talk about bad for representative government. Can you imagine I run on a platform that would destroy the economy of a hand full of states and people of those states have to watch their electors vote for me because I won the popular vote?
I like the Nebraska system. EC's are awarder per congressional district with the final two going to the 'popular' vote winner of that state.
Here's why hiding his votes is a big issue: (Score:4, Interesting)
And I presume that, as someone across the Atlantic, you got that understanding primarily from his coverage (mainly, his lack of coverage) on old-media outlets, right?
In case you hadn't noticed, Ron Paul has a very large following among those who have actually HEARD his political positions and voting record. And it is growing, doubling about every two months.
His meet-up groups alone - people actively getting together to plan and execute activities to promote him - now number over 1,500 with members totaling over 108,000 members (about 9% waiting for a group to form), more than 2/3 the US troop strength in Iraq.
In the fourth quarter he raised nearly twenty million dollars. Volunteers unconnected with the campaign staged two "money bomb" donation days, with the first breaking the previous one-day fundraising record for a Republican candidate with over four million, the second shattering that (and the Democrats' record, too) with over six million. And all this from hundreds of thousands of individual contributors and an average donation of about $100 - no PACs, corporate contributions, etc.
Meanwhile, separately, his fans raised about another half-million to rent a blimp and fly it around the US. His signs are hung and posted all over - many handmade. Banners on overpasses. Signs in yards. Clusters of people on streetcorners waving them. And so on. He wins most straw polls. He dominates online call-in polls (such as the "who won the debate" polls - which, counter to claims, allow one vote per cell phone number.) Make a post critical of him and see how many people respond to defend him. B-)
The problem, though, is that virtually all this support comes from people whose primary news source is the Internet. On the old media his name is virtually never mentioned - to the point that people have been cracking jokes about "He who Must Not be Named". The popularity of both Ron Paul and his message crosses party, age, education, race, and income distinctions. So if he got anywhere near as much exposure as the "annointed" candidates get, one could expect him to be a leader in the nomination process and the probable landslide winner in the election if he got the nomination.
But his programs, if adopted, would amount to a major defeat for both major factions currently in power. So he gets major opposition from them.
As for the US (old)media, you need to understand that they are partisans as well. "Freedom of the Press" doesn't mean that the press is unbiased. It means the government must keep hands off while the operators can bias it any way they want. The hope is that all significant opinions will be represented. In current practice not all of them are.
To oversimplify: The (formerly) mainstream media (MSM) are in virtual lockstep, carrying the "progressive" (big-government left-wing) viewpoint while talk radio carries conservative stuff but mainly the Neocon (big-government interventionist) faction. Newscorp (especially Fox News) was thought to cover the conservative side of things but has come out of the closet as being strictly Neocon and blatantly partisan. The other conservative factions (such as the libertarian and paleoconservative, to name two) are still under the cone of silence when they aren't being directly attacked or ridiculed.
Ron Paul is primarily a libertarian with paleoconservative leanings. His candadacy, and the progressively more blatant attempts of the media to squash it, is what shone the spotlight on Fox News' partisanship - especially during the debates. (Turning off his monitor earphone, and the way he exposed that, was particularly ludicrous. See the link in my current sigline for where they cut one of his best comebacks from the west-coast delayed version of last Friday's debate.) But Fox News is not alone in this unintentional humor. For instance: The New York Times real-time election result page had the othe