Errors confirmed in vote counting in New Hamsphire

[flavio]

With errors in transposing votes and dubious results from the Diebold machines it's starting to look like the results are at least questionable. This should be heavily investigated.

If you care about your vote being counted maybe start by Digging this story.

Allegations of vote fraud in New Hampshire?s primary are growing. In what was advertised as a fair and open election in the Live Free or Die state, it appears that concerns of the fraud and data manipulation are viable.

The data from Diebold Accuvote optical scanner electronic voting machines is up to 5% points different than the hand-written ballots that were cast. Sutton Town has now reported an error in transposing votes and an employee of LHS Associates, whom counted 81% of the vote, has a criminal record.

Township clerk Jennifer Call of Sutton, New Hampshire has confirmed that ?31' votes were in fact cast for Ron Paul in Sutton when ?0' votes were initially reported. They claim that it was an error in transposing the data during transfer to the summary sheet. These 31 residents from Sutton can rest assured that their votes are NOW being counted. But what about the rest of the townships?

The results from the Diebold machines, easily hacked in the HBO documentary Hacking Democracy, don?t add up. They claim that Ron Paul had over 2% fewer votes than the hand ballots suggest, and gave Giuliani a .5% boost for 4th place instead. The same ballot machines also show that Hillary faired 5% better than with the hand ballots, taking 1st away from Obama. See this site for more detailed analysis.

In another developing story, Bev Harris of Black Box Voting.org has confirmed that a key employee of LHS Associates, John Elder is a convicted felon with cocaine trafficking charges and election related complaints. LHS Associates holds the contract for programming all of the New Hampshire?s Diebold voting machines, which combined count 81 per cent of the vote.

?They are counting everything in public real nice, they fill out a form in public real nice and then they transfer it to another form and they call that a summary sheet and then that is the one they send in,? explained Harris.

Bev Harris said in reference to the Sutton fiasco:

?What happened is she said they did not transfer the number correctly and put zero instead of 31 - that is unacceptable as an answer.?

The cost of a hand re-count is estimated at $67,000. It is not known at this time whether the Paul or Obama campaigns will consider a re-count.

 

[Pabster]

Very interesting.

 

[blackangst1]

Here we go again...

But it doesnt matter anyway. Electors dont use voting machines.

 

[NoStateofMind]

I didn't see anything on fox about it, so it must not be true.

 

[bamacre]

Uh oh, put on your tinfoil hat.

 

[techs]

Consider the source: truthseeds.org

 

[NoStateofMind]

Wait. Does anyone have the results from hand counted counties and then the diebold counted counties? If there is a discrepancy consistency as in:

hand counted-

Obama 40%

Clinton 30%

then in diebold counted:

clinton 40%

Obama 30%

Maybe this will show inaccuracies?

 

[fskimospy]

This seems strange. In order to manipulate a statewide election on the order of several percentage points you would have to either have a few people very high up, or some sort of statewide conspiracy. In addition the two separate primaries are two totally different elections. If someone is manipulating both of these elections, who? I mean I guess I can see a motivation for the Democratic side as it certainly changed the election some, but what sort of person would manipulate to take away 2 percentage points from a marginal candidate like Ron Paul, and who would even care to give half a percentage point boost to give 4th place to a candidate that wasn't even contesting the election there? I just can't see the point.

The actual electoral results might have been different then the polling for NH, but the result was still within the margin of error for most of the polls taken. This means that the result of the election was not particularly improbable the way it actually happened for both sides of the race.

 

[TheSlamma]

I think it's funny Diebold makes many ATM's and I have never heard of anyone being given more money on accident from one of those machines.

My friend worked for an armored car outfit while he was going to school. I asked him when he refilled the machines if they came up with bad numbers. He said he had never seen one in his time working there. Now thats thousands of dollars a day per machine.. millions across the US and the mistakes are probably low if not nil.. but they can't handle some simple votes?

 

[NoStateofMind]

Here is the republican results by county, but I'm unsure which counties were hand counted:

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/20.../results/county/#NHREP

 

[NoStateofMind]

I don't know what to make of this, I'll let you decide:

Obama and Paul poll workers kicked out of some precincts

 

[Pabster]

Originally posted by: TheSlamma
I think it's funny Diebold makes many ATM's and I have never heard of anyone being given more money on accident from one of those machines.

My friend worked for an armored car outfit while he was going to school. I asked him when he refilled the machines if they came up with bad numbers. He said he had never seen one in his time working there. Now thats thousands of dollars a day per machine.. millions across the US and the mistakes are probably low if not nil.. but they can't handle some simple votes?

Makes one wonder, doesn't it. If they can secure an ATM, why not a voting terminal?

I'm the last one here to believe in conspiracy theories. I think a certain number of votes disappear or are incorrectly tabulated purely of malfunction or human error. But certainly the integrity of the vote must be protected.

It's shameful that even an issue like this quickly becomes partisan, depending on who was on the "short end of the stick" so to speak. EVERY American should be concerned with, and be able to have complete faith in, the integrity of the vote.

 

[Appledrop]

for the repub... (taken from http://ronrox.com/paulstats.php data sourced from politico.com)

Romney percent Diebold machines: 33.044% percent Hand voted: 25.536%
Paul percent Diebold machines: 7.233% percent Hand voted: 9.235%

for the dems... (taken from http://www.democraticundergrou...09174&mesg_id=4009174)

Percentage of Machine Counted Votes:

40.28% Clinton 90,571
35.85% Obama 80,614
16.78% Edwards 37,743
04.45% Richardson 9,781
01.37% Other 3,082
01.23% Kucinich 2,773
00.14% Gravel 317

Percentage of Hand Counted Votes:

38.73% Obama 22,151
34.81% Clinton 19,907
17.51% Edwards 10,012
05.59% Richardson 3,196
01.84% Kucinich 1,053
01.37% Other 785
00.14% Gravel 80


big discrepancies - whether they are caused by demographics - voting machines more likely to be used in different areas than hand voting should be considered.. but myself i think definately something fishy here

 

[Pabster]

QuaziK, where is DU getting those numbers from?

 

[NoStateofMind]

Just an FYI. The town of Sutton, NH, was a hand count (from what I understand). This means the 31 votes for Paul that was counted as zero, for some reason or another, between the time they were counted and handed to media, was changed. Not sure if this is true. But if it is, this is very scary

 

[Pabster]

Originally posted by: PC Surgeon
Just an FYI. The town of Sutton, NH, was a hand count (from what I understand). This means the 31 votes for Paul that was counted as zero, for some reason or another, between the time they were counted and handed to media, was changed. Not sure if this is true. But if it is, this is very scary

That's the problem with these reports. There has to be something solid, not a rumor posted somewhere or some figures off a heavily partisan blog.

 

[flavio]

Originally posted by: Pabster

Originally posted by: PC Surgeon
Just an FYI. The town of Sutton, NH, was a hand count (from what I understand). This means the 31 votes for Paul that was counted as zero, for some reason or another, between the time they were counted and handed to media, was changed. Not sure if this is true. But if it is, this is very scary

That's the problem with these reports. There has to be something solid, not a rumor posted somewhere or some figures off a heavily partisan blog.

I'll agree with that.

However it certainly screams for some more investigation. The machines have been proven to be easily hacked.

We deserve to have a full explanation.

 

[bamacre]

Well something surely seems wrong considering all the polls showed Obama winning NH.

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: blackangst1
Here we go again...

But it doesnt matter anyway. Electors dont use voting machines.

I'm not sure I understand what you are typing. Why wouldn't it matter?

If you're talking about the Electorial College, they "usually" cast their choice based on the popular vote of the state. If the popular vote were swayed falsely by something like the "accusations" above....it would indeed sway the Elector vote.

(and for the record, I'm not stating that the machines are right or wrong, just pointing out that it DOES matter).

 

[Pabster]

They almost always stay faithful electors. There have been exceptions. Al Gore attempted in 2000 to persuade several electors to switch their votes.

That said, the correlation is pretty much correct. An inaccurate popular vote will lead to an inaccurate electoral vote as well.

 

[Sinsear]

There will never be integrity of a vote unless we start asking for photo identification to first place the vote.

 

[flavio]

2008 New Hampshire Democratic Primary Results --Total Democratic Votes: 286,139 - Machine vs Hand (RonRox.com) 09 Jan 2008
Hillary Clinton, Diebold Accuvote optical scan: 39.618%
Clinton, Hand Counted Paper Ballots: 34.908%
Barack Obama, Diebold Accuvote optical scan: 36.309%
Obama, Hand Counted Paper Ballots: 38.617%
Machine vs Hand:
Clinton: 4.709% (13,475 votes)
Obama: -2.308% (-6,604 votes)

2008 New Hampshire Republican Primary Results --Total Republican Votes: 236,378 Machine vs Hand (RonRox.com) 09 Jan 2008
Mitt Romney, Diebold Accuvote optical scan: 33.075%
Romney, Hand Counted Paper Ballots: 25.483%
Ron Paul, Diebold Accuvote optical scan: 7.109%
Paul, Hand Counted Paper Ballots: 9.221%
Machine vs Hand:
Romney: 7.592% (17,946 votes)
Paul: -2.112% (-4,991 votes)

The numbers you report in "Where Paper Prevailed, Different Results" (1/9/08) certainly merit further investigation. The next step would be to get standard deviations and do a simple difference of means test. This would tell the probability that these results could have occurred by chance. --CLG reader Brian D'Agostino, Ph.D., New York, NY

*****

NH: "First in the nation" (with corporate controlled secret vote counting) By Nancy Tobi 07 Jan 2008 81% of New Hampshire ballots are counted in secret by a private corporation named Diebold Election Systems (now known as "Premier"). The elections run on these machines are programmed by one company, LHS Associates, based in Methuen, MA. We know nothing about the people programming these machines, and we know even less about LHS Associates. We know even less about the secret vote counting software used to tabulate 81% of our ballots.

Text

 

[randym431]

Obama won in iOwa, but thats only because the caucus system sooooo is screwed up.
The caucus system is worse than any rigged voting machine diebold could design.

I also noted ONLY Hillary mentioned the caucus flaw, today on the news rounds. She said NH, night workers could vote in the mornings. They did, she won.

iOwa only does the caucus so they can get some attention. Thats all.
A lot of those iOwa Hillary supporters were middle aged people, the ones
clerking nights at walmart, firemen on duty and police on the streets.

NONE of them could take part in a "caucus".
That explains the so called high turnout of young people.
Working people for a large part, were locked out.
I knew Hillary would win in a truly "fair" election process.
In an actual voting machine.

The fact she was the only one that noted the caucus un fairness and mentioned it,
just re enforces my belief that she is truly the one we want in the white house.
She's on top of it, and notices everything. A smart cookie!

 

[Nitemare]

this surprises anyone?

 

[fskimospy]

Originally posted by: Sinsear
There will never be integrity of a vote unless we start asking for photo identification to first place the vote.

That's not true in the slightest. Here's a good piece to read on why.

In short, voter fraud is incredibly difficult and ineffective to do by impersonating someone at a polling place. Not only do you have to worry about being arrested if the person you are impersonating actually comes into vote, but you're only casting one fraudulent vote in that case. Sure you can impersonate a whole load of people, but that takes a lot of manpower... and conspiracies that large aren't really practical. In short, it's a solution to a problem that the states themselves admit doesn't exist.

The far better way to commit voter fraud is with absentee and mail in ballots (which obviously cannot require any photo ID). In those cases just a few people can put out LOADS of fraudulant ballots... a far preferable method.

Shockingly enough the 10% or so of voters that don't have photo ID vote extremely heavily Democratic, and these laws are being passed on party line votes by Republican legislatures. Gee, I wonder why.