NO CHANGE in recount of NH PAPER and DIEBOLD Votes

[spooked]

http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041117/NEWS02/111170049/-1/news

No shift in recount

Published: Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2004

CONCORD - The recount of ballots from the race to elect four House members in District 3 ended Tuesday without any change in the outcome.

Peterborough Democrat John Friede had asked for the recount of the Nov. 2 election after finishing fifth, 55 votes behind Peterborough Republican Larry Ross. After the recount, Ross edged Friede for fourth place by 40 votes, 3,003 to 2,963.

The district includes Greenville, New Ipswich, Sharon and Peterborough.

Peterborough Democratic newcomer Anne-Marie Irwin topped the ticket with 3,858 votes, followed by Peterborough Republican Rep. Mark Carter, with 3,507, and New Ipswich Republican Rep. Donald Carlson, with 3,056.

*****
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE NADER RECOUNT

New Ipswitch and Peterborough both use Diebold's ACCUVOTE machine.
Greenville and Sharon use paper ballots counted by HAND. Both methods showed no shift or irregularities in voting.

This means that Nader's recount will most likely NOT find any changes in the votes for Bush and Kerry in the Wards where Accuvote is used: Litchfield, Newton, Somersworth, and Manchester.
Let's keep an eye on how the Optical Scan recounts differ!

Litchfield: Diebold Accuvote
Sandown: Optech Optical Scan
Newton: Diebold Accuvote
Danville: Optech Optical Scan
Salem: Optech Optical Scan
Pelham: Optech Optical Scan
Somersworth: Diebold Accuvote
Manchester: Diebold Accuvote






http://www.sos.nh.gov/voting%20machines.htm

[trotsky]

1. That's why a recount of paperless voting is pointless.

What, don't they just take the memory cartridge and double-check on the reported vote totals? There is no "recounting" involved whatsoever. It's like looking at the vote tally sheet again, no verification.

[Jersey Devil]

2. NH uses optical scan - they can be manually recounted

I don't know if this was a manual recount and the story just doesn't say. My guess is that they just turned on the machines and rechecked the totals. That also would say nothing about the Presidential vote since they weren't checking that.

[spooked]

3. My guess is that the voting was rigged via the optical scan

That's why it will be interesting to see.

[Freddie Stubbs]

32. Rigged so that Kerry would win?

:shrug:

[shraby]

4. If any totals were messed with, it would have been

the president/vice president ones and possible the senate. The rest wouldn't have been bothered with.

[Jersey Devil]

6. yes, sure, and they were recounting a local race

so that particular "recount" means nothing. So what if the results came out the same? Without checking the presidential ballots to see if they matched the machine totals you'd see nothing.

[FightinNewDem]

29. Wrong

Your guess would be wrong.

The recount procedure in New Hampshire involves a manual recount. The ballots are removed from the sealed boxes in which they are sent to the Secretary of State. The ballots are then individually counted, with the counter displaying the ballot to the candidate's observers. The ballot is then placed in a pile for the candidate for whom the vote was cast. Once all ballots have been observed and sorted, the piles are sorted. Now, when there is a multi candidate district, the tally is generally kept on a running basis by a recount official during the counting process, so this is probably how the count was kept in this particular race.

In the Manchester recount, don't be surprised if things blow up in the Democrats face. One of the precincts being recounted is Ward 8, which is home to a number of shady Dem politicos and is notorious for election day antics.

[tbuddha]

9. Don't let this bother you...

RECOUNTS FOR HOUSE MEMBERS ARE JUST THAT, RECOUNTS FOR HOUSE MEMBERS. THEY DIDN'T COUNT PRESIDENTIAL VOTES. IF YOU KEEP TRCK OF THIS STUFF AT ALL YOU'D KNOW THAT IT WASN'T TRICKY MACHINES COUNTING WRONG, IT WAS THE "COUNTING" OF THE VOTES. NOBODY CHANGED TOTALS FOR THESE LOCAL RACES SURE, BUT YOU CAN BET THE PRES NUMBERS DON'T COME NEAR TO ADDING UP.

[Eloriel]

5. IMO, it means nothing of the sort

This recount was for what, candidates for state level House? Not very many of us (if ANY) who are concerned about vote fraud are thinking state level races are being affected. In fact, the disparity in some areas betwen down-ballot races going Dem while top of the ticket goes Repug is one indicator of potential problems.

As for Diebold, sigh. Yes, a recount of Diebold peperless DREs is basically meaningless, I'm afraid.

HWOEVER, if any discrepancies are found in the Nader recout, it seems to me that if it could be shown (and this is a big if which I'll get to in a minute) that the DRE systems use software which was built on their optiscan systems, then we might have a case. This will be difficult to show, however, since the software is "proprietary trade secret" and no one can look at it. Perhaps lawyers could force some discovery of internal memos or other to show it -- we know it's true, but SHOWING it could be the rub.

[Karmadillo]

7. This is misleading. No one was claiming ALL races were impacted.

Easy enough to simply hack the Presidential results without touching anything else.

[Jersey Devil]

10. and most likely, if there was a fix, that's all they'd do

Why in the world would they get involved with local offices where recounts are quite common and would raise suspicions?

Also, this story does not mention the nature of the "recount". Unless I am wrong, with optical scan you can actually produce the ballot and then compare them against the machine count. But a more simple "recount" may have consisted of simply checking machine totals against centralized computer totals that did not involve actual ballots on any level.

[tbuddha]

8. IRRESPONSIBLE POST...YOU'RE WAY OFF!!

RECOUNTS FOR HOUSE MEMBERS ARE JUST THAT, RECOUNTS FOR HOUSE MEMBERS. THEY DIDN'T COUNT PRESIDENTIAL VOTES. IF YOU KEEP TRCK OF THIS STUFF AT ALL YOU'D KNOW THAT IT WASN'T TRICKY MACHINES COUNTING WRONG, IT WAS THE "COUNTING" OF THE VOTES. NOBODY CHANGED TOTALS FOR THESE LOCAL RACES SURE, BUT YOU CAN BET THE PRES NUMBERS DON'T COME NEAR TO ADDING UP.

[Jersey Devil]

11. Umm, is it necessary to YELL?

It's tough on the eyes and sometimes they will zap your posts for it.

Welcome to DU

[henslee]

18. CANT HEAR YOU !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SPEAK LOUDER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[John Q. Citizen]

12. The vote totals changed, even though the outcome didn't

Before the recount (and we don't know if it was hand counted or if they ran the optical scan cards through again)Friede was trailing by 55 votes, after the recount he was trailing by 40 votes.

This shows that the original count was wrong 9or the recount was wrong) but we don't have enough data to say how wrong. They also don't give us the original and the recount totals on all the candidtes.


snip
Peterborough Democrat John Friede had asked for the recount of the Nov. 2 election after finishing fifth, 55 votes behind Peterborough Republican Larry Ross. After the recount, Ross edged Friede for fourth place by 40 votes, 3,003 to 2,963.
snip

[RealityCheck04]

13. This is what I'm trying to tell you guys...

It's fine to be cautiously optimistic, but the NH recount shows that there isn't likely to be any change in Ohio either, which, I believe, uses a similar mix of paper ballots and machine voting.

The reason people think recounts change things is because we all remember Florida 2000, where the total kept changing each time they counted. But that was a 500 vote race, and a small change of 50 votes or so seemed like a big deal. In Ohio, a change of a couple hundred votes will seem like nothing.

[bullimiami]

17. realitycheck listen up.

this will be a hand count of optically scanned ballots. it will be compared with the machine counts they have now. the machine counts are subject to tampering all along the way. the scanner, the memory cards, the tabulators.

it is worth the effort. if we are wrong, we are wrong. we have to try though.
if we are right, well then we start to really bark it up.

[spooked]

33. RIGHT ON! The hand count will show "irregularities" in Optical Scanning

We KNOW that Kerry WON OHIO. The recounts should help us figure out HOW they did it. My guess is it was stolen with the Optical Scanning machines rather than with the Diebold machines.


More proof of that theory:


http://thesquanderer.com/votingmachines.html#Florida

"E-Touch" Voters in Florida

Approx. 3.86 million total voters
in these counties

Kerry's Base: about 1.57 million votes*

Bush's Base: about 1.44 million votes*

Kerry's final tally: about 1.98 million votes
26.5% more than his given base

Bush's final tally: about 1.85 million votes
28.6% more than his given base

Summary:
Close race, as expected,
unaffiliated voters appear nearly evenly split
between the two candidates



"Optical Scan" Voters

Approx. 3.42 million total voters
in these counties

Kerry's Base: about 1.43 million votes*

Bush's Base: about 1.34 million votes*

Kerry's final tally: about 1.45 million votes
Less than 1% more than his given base

Bush's final tally: about 1.95 million votes
45.8% more than his given base

Summary:
Virtually every unaffilated voter
appears to have gone for Bush

[txindy]

27. I really wish you had read the posts ahead of yours

Then you'd understand just how far off you are in that judgment without people having to repeat it all.

[pointsoflight]

14. Doesn't mean that at all

If someone wanted to tamper with the presidential race, why would they change the results of all races? That would take more time, lead to greater likelihood of an error, and increase the likelihood that someone would detect the change.

Looking at it through the eyes of a hacker, you would AVOID tampering with any election results beyond those you're interested in.

[jsamuel]

15. I know, were they really goning to bother with a state congress???

[spotbird]

16. They didn't recount the top of the ticket.

It will be a few votes here and a few votes there.

[mcg]

19. False conclusion

"This means that Nader's recount will most likely NOT find any changes in the votes for Bush and Kerry in the Wards where Accuvote is used: Litchfield, Newton, Somersworth, and Manchester."

No, it doesn't mean that. The presidential votes could have been tampered with without affecting these much less important votes.

[rfrrfrrfr]

21. Yup

you could count every single local race and issue by hand in New Hampshire and find them all to be 100% accurate and still find that the Presidential vote was messed with.

I can't think of anyone who thinks the local races were messed with heavily, if at all. Not enough votes to hide your changes in and the likelyhood of manual recounts is very high.

[FightinNewDem]

30. Look...

The Democratic observers in the NH recounts have all heard the Diebold rumors. They have been watching the ballots to see if there was any indication that the presidential vote was significantly out of whack, and thus far, I have yet to hear from a single person who has noticed anything weird. This tinfoil foolishness is starting to make the entire Democratic Party look like a collection of folks who missed their meds.

[PATRICK]

20. Should be interesting

Any optiscan tampering would call into disrepute all the elections using that system for the past twenty years.

if you can punce of that machine, go all the way.

[rfrrfrrfr]

22. Your making some bad assumptions

It would depend on the nature of the error. Possible sources of error that would not bring past elections into question.

1. was the software updated recently? If so a bug could have been introduced to cause the anomoly.

2. The error is the result of a hacker changing totals

3. simple clerical error

and thats without even trying to think hard.

[mirandapriestly]

24. Can anybody tell me if there is a way for someone to cover their tracks

or conceal what they had done, if they altered results with the optical scanner?

[swati]

23. New Hampshire Recount

Why is anybody expection the New Hamshire Numbers to vary? It seems as though the Bush/Rove/Diebold/ESS team only messed with states that opted out of the Paper-Trail......something they ofcourse pushed for at all levels of Republican leadership and the Companies. New Hampshire has a paper trail....I wonder if Nader is still doing Bush's bidding afterall. He picked a paper trail state where the paper and machine numbers are going to be the same and then THAT is going to be publicized as redeeming ALL the machine states and counties.......thereby ending the fraud discussion once and for all......HOpe I'm wrong about all this.

[TexasChick]

25. No, Nader is not doing Bush's bidding. Some of DU's members asked

him to do the recount. The exit polls showed Kerry to have a double digit lead in the exit polls and he barely won NH by the seat of his pants. The optic scanner ballots leave a paper trail. So, if someone fudged the totals for election night through the tabulators, the hand recount will show the discrepencies. The hand recount is final also. So, if discrepencies are shown, then the hand recount will in affect, be the final total, not the one on election night.

However, if discrepencies aren't show, then I guess we can all feel better that the election was not rigged in NH; that I guess, for the first time in years, the exit polls didn't match with election night. I guess that is all we will be able to surmise. A lot of us Dems find it weird that in all the years of using exit polls, they were never that way off. That's, of course, til 2000.

[newyawker99]

34. Hi swati!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[nmoliver]

26. House races and Presidential race aren't the same thing

Most of the allegations that the presidential race was fraudulently manipulated actually point to the reliability of congressional races within their reasoning.

They point out that the congressional races match the exit polls, but the presidential race does not. Hackers perhaps didn't bother with the congressional races.

So let's wait and see what happens with Nader's recount before we jump to conclusions.

[txindy]

28. Whoever believes those 'implications' is in for a surprise

For all of the reasons listed in the earlier posts. I seriously doubt that the local races would be hacked, not only because there is less interest there, but mostly because those races have the greatest chance of being recounted. Indeed, that is exactly what happened and the results produced these false assumptions. However, if a local race is recounted and a discrepancy is discovered, that would lead to a reevaluation of other races on that ballot. The national races. That's precisely the result these hackers were trying to avoid, IMO.

Too much risk with not enough reward.

The presidential race in NH is where the discrepancies will be found.

[Zan_of_Texas]

31. There isn't one election in the US. There aren't 51 elections.

One of the international observers said there are 13,000 different elections. Many of them have different equipment. They all have different personnel. Lots of them have different rules about registration, provisional voting. I think it's safe to say, there are many different security weaknesses in chain of custody of ballots or machines.

So, counting ballots in one state for a few down ballot contests may be interesting, but it signifies nothing.

In Florida, there are 67 counties. By my own calculator, you could have 60 counties that counted each vote absolutely correctly -- BUT, if 7 other counties (Clay Okaloosa Alachua Escambia Polk Duval Hillsborough) flipped 13% of their votes from Kerry to Bush, that would be the margin Bush seems to have. 7 counties. 13% flip. Worth 27 electoral votes and the election.