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In an email from Mark Crispin Miller, an expert on the vote stealing nightmare...
The NH recount is going forward after all, as many of you have pointed out
to me.
However, Kucinich is settling for a partial recount---which, as Nancy Tobi
argues here, is likelier to cover up the fraud (if any) than expose it.
MCM
I understand that Howard is going ahead with the Repub recount after Gardner
backed off a challenge to his interpretation of the law that all the cash
had to be paid up front. I also understand there are operatives working on
Howard to only do a partial recount. The Kucinich team has already decided
to only do a partial recount. Below is a little piece I wrote to explain why
a partial recount, just like a random audit, does not have any statistical
merit in detecting fraud. Again, this recount does not solve our problem. We
need a full investigation to reveal the truth behind decisions that were
made that resulted in NH handing over 81% of our votes to a private
corporation, which counts them in secret, whose second line of business is
data mining, and whose executive management includes a convicted felon - a
drug trafficker. The recount is a good campaign PR for Kucinich maybe, but
does little for the cause of election integrity. You are free to distribute
this. I have also attached a small file that explains more about LHS
Associates.
--------------------------------------------------------
HOW DOES NEW HAMPSHIRE'S RECOUNT CULTURE FACILITATE RATHER THAN DETER
ELECTION RIGGING?
New Hampshire officials like to point to our accessible recounts as both a
deterrent to fraud and as "proof" that our machines are functioning just
dandy. But let's look at some of the characteristics of the NH culture, and
we see that it actually is a great cover for election rigging.
NH recount characteristics:
1) generally done for state rep races (low stakes)
2) almost never done for high stakes federal or gubernatorial or primary
races
3) candidates usually discouraged by their party from pursuing recounts
(sore loser factor)
4) candidates choose areas to begin recount, and often stop the recount
before it is completed if they find no reason to believe the recount will
result in a change of outcome
So with this in mind, let's look at a scenario for hacking NH:
We now understand that there is a confluence of the data mining and voting
industries. ChoicePoint, for instance, helped rig Florida 2000 by removing
undesirable voters from the Florida voting rolls (94,000 Black voters who it
was believed would have voted Democrat).
In New Hampshire (and all of New England, in fact), LHS Associates is the
Diebold vendor. LHS programs our voting machines for every election: 81% of
NH ballots are controlled by LHS-Diebold programs.
Now here's what most people don't know: LHS has a secondary line of
business. They collect demographic, census-style data. They are a DATA
MINING company.
So here is how it works:
Election rigging is never a wholesale swath of rigged machines across the
country. It is Florida 2000: identifying the demographic risks to your
candidate and then "taking care" of them. In Florida, it was taken care of
via the voting rolls - they removed 94,000 eligible voters (identified
demographically as leaning Democratic) from the rolls. Other methods include
programming the machines to flip votes from one candidate to the other.
NH Senate Race 2002
If you know, for instance, that certain wards in Manchester have the
demographic profile of giving their vote for Shaheen, then you rig those
machines to tweak Sununu enough votes to overcome the Shaheen demographic
risk. Polls have shown that it is going to be a close race and indeed, the
results proved this out.
But strangely, the election results exactly flipped the poll projections and
gave Sununu the win rather than Shaheen.
It's a little surprising in some typically Democratic leaning areas, but
there was, after all, that VERY EFFECTIVE anti-Shaheen smear campaign the
weekend just before the election, wasn't there? And voters are so obviously
easily swayed by those last minute smear campaigns, as evidenced in these
vote flips going from Shaheen to Sununu so unexpectedly.
So let's say Shaheen decides to ask for a recount under NH law and
tradition. (She didn't, unfortunately.) But let's say she begins with
Manchester. She finds that the hand counted paper ballots in most of the
wards give Sununu a few more votes, maintaining his lead.
It's a known fact that every hand count gives each candidate votes, because
there are always some votes that the machines don't count (write ins, or
mismarked, or whatever).
Shaheen does find that a couple of the wards in the recount give her those
votes and in fact make HER the winner in those wards, and not Sununu. But
not by much, and the differential between the hand and machine count is very
small, practically statistically insignificant in and of itself. And even
so, the differential uncovered in a hand count is easily explained away
(write-ins, folded ballots that were miscounted, etc. etc.).
No reason to suspect tampering at all, especially when the other Manchester
wards reveal no change in the outcome.
When she sees this small and seemingly inconsequential differential is found
in one or two areas, Shaheen, per NH tradition and culture, calls off the
recount, not wanting to appear a "sore loser" or to "waste the Secretary of
State's time" or to "waste" money when "clearly" - although the race was
tight, Sununu had the edge.
What she hasn't figured on, is that this is how vote-rigging is done: by
shaving small percentages off the unfavored candidate in lots of different
districts. She hasn't thought through that all those small shifts add up,
and in fact, she WAS the winner, but never knew because she called off the
recount, per NH tradition, and the full number of ballots were never counted
to get the real result.
So let's say I am an election rigger. In the case of Diebold management, I
have learned the bizness at the feet of the best: Watergate burglars and
embezzlers alike. Given our NH traditions, and since it is well known that
NH almost NEVER conducts full recounts for these high stakes federal races
anyway, rigging the machine count is a risk worth taking for anyone smarmy
enough to undertake such a clumsy enterprise as the phone jamming crime of
that same election.
Especially since all you need to do is flip a small percentage of votes from
Shaheen to Sununu in several targeted demographically risky areas. It's a
matter of taking your demographic maps, then overlaying them with your
election programming maps. Line it up, and presto, you've got the vote flips
shifting the race from Shaheen to Sununu.
So this is what we are facing. Lots of little ChoicePoints all over the
nation. And we have our own right here in NH: LHS Associates. This is not a
good thing for NH, and not for our democracy.
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