Experts Question Clinton's New Hampshire Primary Win (Diebold op-scan)

[IndianaGreen]

Experts Question Clinton's New Hampshire Primary Win

By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet. Posted January 11, 2008.

http://www.alternet.org/story/73551/

The activists, led by the Election Defense Alliance, a nonprofit formed after the 2004 election when exit polls also predicted a victory by a candidate other then the eventual winner, point to a series of discrepancies when comparing the official results from hand-counted and machine-counted paper ballots. Computer scanners, much like a standardized test, counted 80 percent of the ballots.

They begin by noting that Barack Obama won in hand-counted precincts, which tend to be more rural with fewer voters. In contrast, Clinton won in the precincts where computers tallied results, which are larger towns, cities and Boston suburbs. That discrepancy suggested that had the computer-counted ballots been tallied by hand, Clinton might not have won a victory defying pre-election polls, the activists said.

Anthony Stevens, New Hampshire's assistant secretary of state, said on Thursday that the hand count-computer count discrepancy was not unusual. He noted that in 2004 Democrat Howard Dean largely carried the hand-count precincts while John Kerry won most of the computer-count locales.

However, later on Thursday, Bruce O'Dell, an information technology consultant who is coordinating Election Defense Alliance's analysis, found the percentages of the vote given to Obama and Clinton, according to which counting method was used, were mirror images "down to the sixth decimal place."

"There is a remarkable relationship between Obama and Clinton votes, when you look at votes tabulated by op-scan (computers) versus votes tabulated by hand:

Clinton optical scan: 91,717 (52.95%)

Obama optican scan: 81,495 (47.05%)

Clinton hand-counted: 20,889 (47.05%)

Obama hand-counted: 23,509 (52.95%)

New Hampshire 2008 Primary Analysis

This page is an evolving compilation of outstanding citizen investigation of the highly suspicious New Hampshire primary voting results. We are borrowing and synthesizing from many sources cited and credited here.

Thursday 1/10: Bruce O'Dell writes:

Theron Horton and I have confirmed that based on the official results on the New Hampshire Secretary of State web site, there is a remarkable relationship between Obama and Clinton votes, when you look at votes tabulated by op-scan versus votes tabulated by hand:

Clinton Optical scan 91,717 52.95%
Obama Optical scan 81,495 47.05%

Clinton Hand-counted 20,889 47.05%
Obama Hand-counted 23,509 52.95%

The percentages appear to be swapped. This seems highly unusual.

Recall that the specific model of Diebold op-scan (1.94w) and central tabulator in use in New Hampshire are proven by demonstration (Hursti Hack) to be vulnerable to insider manipulation.

Theron Horton and I are proceeding with the intra-county and demographic analysis.

More to come.

Bruce O'Dell
Co-Coordinator for Data Analysis
Election Defense Alliance
BodellElectionDefenseAllianceorg

http://www.electiondefensealliance.org/

[mod mom]

1. More info over at DU's Election Reform forum!

[Essene]

2. so now activist = experts? wrong forum (until there's real evidence)

I take this issue very seriously, but sloppy insinuation and lack of evidence doesnt help.

[IndianaGreen]

3. Exit polls showed Kerry won Ohio in 2004

and subsequent events have given credence that there was massive fraud to keep Ohio in Bush's column.

Exit polls showed Obama won NH handily.

[DJ13]

5. Exit polls showed Obama won NH handily.

Exit polls are considered so reliable that both the US (Bush)government and the UN used them to protest the results in Yugoslavia's presidential election right after the stolen 2004 election here.

The potential that fraud happened again in NH puts the Hillary supporters into a bad position.

Do they express the same outrage that most Democrats felt after Ohio in 2004, leading to the possibility that an accurate recount might invalidate Hillary's "win" ?

(Leading to her shameful exit from running, whether she or her campaign was behind it or not)


Or do they adopt the GOP's playbook after 2004 by excusing the fraud because its their candidate?

(The old, the important thing is winning)

[OnTheOtherHand]

24. fact check

Surely you mean the result in Ukraine's presidential election? Actually, neither the US nor the UN used them to protest the results. Lugar mentioned them during a Q&A, and that was it as far as I know. Election observers had direct evidence of malfeasance -- no need to gild the lily. (Oh, and an undersecretary talked about the exit polls after the crisis had passed; he was asking for more money for exit polls.)

Since no one has presented credible evidence (never mind "proof") of miscount in NH, I don't think Clinton or her supporters should consider themselves in a bad position. As far as I know, there is no fraud to excuse. Assuming the recount goes forward, we will all find out soon enough.

[creeksneakers2]

19. Exit polls did not show Obama won NH handily

They had him up by 1 point. The final result was well within the margin of error.

[OnTheOtherHand]

23. fact check

The 2004 exit poll in Ohio gave Kerry a 6.5-point lead, which was within the margin of error, too close to call. Many of the forms of fraud alleged in Ohio probably would not have influenced the exit polls.

It's really not clear what Tuesday's exit poll showed, but presumably the race was again too close to call, since no one called it when the polls closed.

[JMDEM]

16. Evidence...

We can't have "evidence" until an investigation is done. Investigations are started by suspicious numnbers. Technically, you are right, there is no "evidence" yet, only suspicious numbers.

But under the logic I think you are proposing, there could never be an investigation because there is never evidence, but evidence is gathered through investigation. Catch 22.

[mod mom]

21. how do you get evidence w/o inquiry/investigation? In this case, you start

with the premise that the machines are unreliable, and you demand hand counting to verify the vote. Why just allow trust when the machines are being de-certified elsewhere due to inaccuracy?

[IndianaGreen]

4. NH: "First in the nation" (with corporate controlled secret vote counting)

Another related article that actually predates the primary:

NH: "First in the nation" (with corporate controlled secret vote counting)

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. People like to say "but we use paper ballots! They can always be counted by hand!"

But they're not. They're counted by Diebold. Only a candidate can request a hand recount, and most never do so. And a rigged election can easily become a rigged recount, as we learned in Ohio 2004, where two election officials were convicted of rigging their recount. (Is it just a funny coincidence that Diebold spokesman is named Mr. Riggall?)

We need to get the count right on election night. Right now, nobody in New Hampshire, except the programmers at LHS Associates and Diebold Election Systems, knows if we are getting it right or wrong. Our state officials and representatives know this. They learned all about it when computer security specialists Harri Hursti and Bruce Odell testified before the legislative subcommittee on e-voting in September 2007 (Hursti's testimony is shown in this video). Scientific reports about the vulnerabilities and risks with Diebold optical scanners have been available since 2003.

We love our state. It takes courage and strength to admit where we are going wrong and to fix it. May our state officials and representatives find that courage and strength soon. Before we lose the other 19% of our votes.

http://www.democracyfornewhampshire.com/node/view/5307

[dailykoff]

6. It looks llike the machines simply swapped Obama and Clinton votes.

Beautiful in its simplicity, and they could only know it would work after seeing how voters actually voted in Iowa.

[IndianaGreen]

7. If NH was stolen, they can easily steal the November election (again!)

The ruling class wants to hang on to power and they are suspicious of anyone that they cannot control. They also fear any unorthodox messages from candidates, which explains why Gravel and Kucinich have been kept out of debates. No TV exposure will lower their poll numbers, low poll numbers then can be use to justify keeping them out of debates.

[Maven]

11. *sigh*

Again, this is not vote flipping. All these "percentages" express is the ratio of Clinton/Obama votes in machine-counted and hand-counted aggregates. It's a deceptive way to present the data to make it *look* like the same phenomenon we saw in OH and FL.

[IndianaGreen]

8. Is this like the I/P forum, any controversial topic that upsets orthodox thinking

gets buried in the basement?

[dailykoff]

9. Looks like the alert squad is on the job.

Always the same crowd.

[IndianaGreen]

10. I wonder if they have their own chatrooms to plot strategy

which includes organized mass use of alert button, like our friends at that other forum are so fond of doing.

[EFerrari]

12. I love the ER. forum. The decor, the thoughtful exchanges, even

the geekiness. :loveya:

[TwilightZone]

13. Perhaps you missed the memo.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=4021441

Pretty much everything NH recount related is ending up here.

[IndianaGreen]

14. I did miss the memo, but the same argument was made about Ohio

remember Andy?

[TwilightZone]

15. Understood.

Similar argument, perhaps, though one was a primary and one was a general election. If fraud exists, I doubt the sources are the same.

[JMDEM]

17. This is one downside to this forum

When things get pushed here from GD or GDP, they lose attention. Is this intentional? I don't know. You'd have to ask the high-high-high ups about that.

But there is an upside that we are more civil here than in GD or GDP, it appears.

[IndianaGreen]

20. The whole idea of the basement is to lower the profile of a topic of discussion

How many DUers are ignorant of the complexities of the issues regarding the Israel/Palestine problem? They are not going to get it from the MSM. One has to go to the I/P forum to get a broad range of information from all kind of sources. The information one finds in I/P, regardless of your point of view, is not readily available to the general public which is part of the reason polls shows so many Americans still believing that Iraq was involved on 9-11.

The same can be said about what happened in 2004. Mention Ohio and one can see peoples' eyes rolling. They don't want to hear anything that will threatens the safe universe they reside in. Gods forbid we tell them America is neither free nor democratic!

If we all depend it on the corporate media for information, we would become those "low info" voters we complain so much about.

[Junkdrawer]

28. In a word, "Yes"...

At one time, DU was "Where it was at" when it came to election reform.

Now, all election reform posts are sent to the dungeon.

[HughMoran]

18. Look at the data yourself and decide

7.3% of all Democratic hand-count votes were for Hillary
8.2% of all Democratic hand-count votes were for Obama
32.2% of all Democratic machine-count votes were for Hillary
28.6% of all Democratic machine-count votes were for Obama

But, when you take the ratio of each type of voting (hand vs. machine) they come out opposite? What exactly does that prove? The hand-count group is much smaller and a different demographic than the machine count group - they cannot meaningfully be compared that way!

Here is the town-by-town data - see if you can see an anomaly between small towns and large towns -> http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x492701

Posting this same little statistical "anomaly" (it's not even that - it's simply a coincidence) over and over and over again doesn't make it any more significant.

[jbnow]

22. It might be a coincidence but the pattern

of machine or hand count is also there in the small and medium towns.

This site isn't as pretty as the graph but it does break it down into town size and machine or hand count

http://checkthevotes.com/index.php?party=DEMOCRATS
For the Dems you can see overall Obama won by 4% in hand count but lost by 4% in machine counts. Maybe rural voters who usually have hand counts just liked Obama better. That's unusual as common wisdom would have the young, black upstart candidate do better in urban areas.
But when you break it down further:

small town machine count Clinton beats Obama 2%
medium town machine count Clinton beats Obama 5+%
small town hand count Obama beats Clinton 6%
medium town hand count Obama beats Clinton 4+

There was a small number of hand counted votes in large towns and Obama did get a lower percentage. It is too small a sample (2%), probably 1 town, but it might turn out that a lot more urban voters did like Clinton a lot more.

It could be coincidence or anomaly or it could be machines are a little racist or like women.

[OnTheOtherHand]

25. "unusual" if one ignores the last two NH primaries

where the upstart candidate (admittedly not young or black) also did better in rural areas (Dean vs. Kerry, and Bradley vs. Gore).

Dean v. Kerry is a strong predictor of Obama v. Clinton, and op-scan completely washes out when you control for Dean/Kerry.

So, maybe Kerry stole New Hampshire on the scanners -- except that his margin was within spitting distance of the pre-election polls.

But you're right that just controlling for town size won't make the gap go away -- at least no way that I've seen.

[HughMoran]

26. We don't have real "urban" areas like many more populated states

We have "suburban" and "rural" areas. Some parts of of the larger cities may be considered "urban", but it is not the kind of urban voter you might see in a more mixed population state (for instance, there are only 1% blacks in NH.) I don't know whether the areas with the colleges are hand or machine vote, but if you look at the college towns, Obama won those handily - this could easily have skewed the vote. Clinton won the more "red" areas in So. NH. This doesn't surprise me one bit since I am quite familiar with the blue/red mix since 2006 when us Dems took over NH. My town was the most "red" town in NH & it went strongly for Hillary :shrug:

[jbnow]

27. New Hampshire must be unusual. I'm not

talking about Diebold here.

But in most states I know if a guy like Obama had won small towns he'd have won really big in larger towns. Small town and rural would be the lowest support for him.

But not so much the suburbs.

So this makes sense to people from New Hampshire? Maybe I will feel better about it if I can I find old pre-Diebold results and the red/blue split.

I wish we had a uniform nationwide system of voting with double checks built into the system. I remember in 2994 reading about a fail proof machine built and used in India maybe? It cost about $500 and I felt so jealous.

I care who wins less than I do knowing who is voted for gets the vote.I'm not saying they didn't in NH but it would be so nice if our systems didn't leave room for doubt!

[David Zephyr]

29. K&R.

It seems to be much more of a mess there than I really thought.

I now support a recount. It has to happen. If not, the whole process will be questioned. This is not going away.

[jazzjunkysue]

30. I sent my letter and my petition. Thanks. This is why DU is great. n/t.

[Imagevision]

31. This bullsh*t about NOT being able to get a straight election pisses me off!