Jake!
01-10-2008, 06:17 PM
http://dhinmi.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/1/10/02623/2264/85/434176
Enough with the "Diebold Hacked the NH Primary" Lunacy
by DHinMI
Wed Jan 09, 2008 at 09:34:37 PM PST
New Hampshire has no touchscreen voting. None.
Every ballot cast in New Hampshire except those few cast by the handicapped is written on a piece of paper. It's redundant to say this after the previous comment about touchscreen voting, but let's make it clear: in New Hampshire there is a paper trail.
The Diebold Accuvote-TS has been shown to be a piece of crap. The Diebold Accuvote-OS, the machine used in New Hampshire, has much of the same hardware and runs much of the same tabulation software, so these machines could conceivably be hacked. However, the incentive for hacking them is not very great, because unlike with the paperless voting, again, there's the paper trail. So if there were ever a recount—and there was after the 2004 election, when a survey of New Hampshire voting districts chosen by the Nader campaign showed there was virtually no difference between the scanned tabulation and the hand recount—the malfeasance would be easily discovered.
Many folks immediately suspect that any election results they found surprising—and whether they know enough about local and statewide voting patterns to be surprised is always a good question—are most easily explained by malfeasance by the Diebold corporation or exploitation of its machines. There are many problems for these folks who look for the most exotic (and maybe reassuring) explanation for an election result they don't like, but in this case, let's start out with a fairly basic one: voters in every town in New Hampshire cast their vote on a paper ballot, and in more than half of the towns in New Hampshire, the paper ballots are counted by hand.
Fewer than half the towns in New Hampshire tabulate votes with optical scanners. More than half the votes cast are counted by optical scanners, as most of the bigger cities and towns—including Manchester, Nashua, Portsmouth, Concord, Claremont, Hanover, Keene and Plymouth—use the scanners. But more municipalities count by hand. And as someone relatively well-versed in the voting patterns of New Hampshire, let me tell you there appear to be no discrepancies in the Clinton/Obama/Edwards votes between the towns that tabulate votes by scanning and those that count by hand. Obama won many of the larger towns—Keene, Hanover, Concord, Portsmouth, Lebanon, Plymouth, Durham. Clinton won others—Manchester, Nashua, Berlin, Gorham, Claremont.
There are reasons this makes sense, as I explained in an analysis of the town-by-town results here. And where there was a strong regional pattern to the results—as in the Monadnock region and the Connecticut River Valley, where Obama did well, or in the bedroom communities of Boston, where Clinton did well—the pattern extended geographically, regardless of whether an individual town used electronic or hand tabulation.
But ultimately, there's tremendous arrogance and/or ignorance at play when people assume that Hillary Clinton's victory in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary is or might be explained by election fraud. Has it not occurred to those people who know little or nothing about voting patterns in New Hampshire that the hundreds of staffers on the Obama and Edwards campaigns, who've immersed themselves in past voting data and models of expected vote turnouts for Tuesday, wouldn't these staffers have noticed discrepancies that might warrant a recount? If Tuesday's results really were the likely result of malfeasance, the Obama and Edwards campaigns would be raising holy hell. They would be seeking a recount, and investigation of the voting, and they would be doing it because they saw the irregularities in the vote results.
But there aren't any serious irregularities in the results of Tuesday's Democratic primary. Clinton won with the same kind of voters that Kerry won with in 2004, in she did it by running strongly in the same exact areas of the state. Diebold machines don't count the votes cast in many of the towns of New Hampshire, and all votes are cast on a paper ballot. The 2004 recount showed no problems with the tabulation. New Hampshire has an excellent reputation for running clean elections. Election administration is done on a town-by-town basis, so rigging the election would require not just a few well-placed individuals, but a vast conspiracy involving hundreds of people, probably more. And if there were strange voting patterns, that showed up in discrepancies between towns that tabulated by hand vs those that tabulated the paper ballots with scanners, the rival campaigns would certainly have noticed it and would be protesting the results.
Hillary Clinton won on Tuesday. She led just about every poll every taken for 360 of the 365 days leading up to the election. And even when she won, it was only by three percentage points. This election wasn't rigged. So please, ignore the "Diebold stole the election" garbage.
Enough with the "Diebold Hacked the NH Primary" Lunacy
by DHinMI
Wed Jan 09, 2008 at 09:34:37 PM PST
New Hampshire has no touchscreen voting. None.
Every ballot cast in New Hampshire except those few cast by the handicapped is written on a piece of paper. It's redundant to say this after the previous comment about touchscreen voting, but let's make it clear: in New Hampshire there is a paper trail.
The Diebold Accuvote-TS has been shown to be a piece of crap. The Diebold Accuvote-OS, the machine used in New Hampshire, has much of the same hardware and runs much of the same tabulation software, so these machines could conceivably be hacked. However, the incentive for hacking them is not very great, because unlike with the paperless voting, again, there's the paper trail. So if there were ever a recount—and there was after the 2004 election, when a survey of New Hampshire voting districts chosen by the Nader campaign showed there was virtually no difference between the scanned tabulation and the hand recount—the malfeasance would be easily discovered.
Many folks immediately suspect that any election results they found surprising—and whether they know enough about local and statewide voting patterns to be surprised is always a good question—are most easily explained by malfeasance by the Diebold corporation or exploitation of its machines. There are many problems for these folks who look for the most exotic (and maybe reassuring) explanation for an election result they don't like, but in this case, let's start out with a fairly basic one: voters in every town in New Hampshire cast their vote on a paper ballot, and in more than half of the towns in New Hampshire, the paper ballots are counted by hand.
Fewer than half the towns in New Hampshire tabulate votes with optical scanners. More than half the votes cast are counted by optical scanners, as most of the bigger cities and towns—including Manchester, Nashua, Portsmouth, Concord, Claremont, Hanover, Keene and Plymouth—use the scanners. But more municipalities count by hand. And as someone relatively well-versed in the voting patterns of New Hampshire, let me tell you there appear to be no discrepancies in the Clinton/Obama/Edwards votes between the towns that tabulate votes by scanning and those that count by hand. Obama won many of the larger towns—Keene, Hanover, Concord, Portsmouth, Lebanon, Plymouth, Durham. Clinton won others—Manchester, Nashua, Berlin, Gorham, Claremont.
There are reasons this makes sense, as I explained in an analysis of the town-by-town results here. And where there was a strong regional pattern to the results—as in the Monadnock region and the Connecticut River Valley, where Obama did well, or in the bedroom communities of Boston, where Clinton did well—the pattern extended geographically, regardless of whether an individual town used electronic or hand tabulation.
But ultimately, there's tremendous arrogance and/or ignorance at play when people assume that Hillary Clinton's victory in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary is or might be explained by election fraud. Has it not occurred to those people who know little or nothing about voting patterns in New Hampshire that the hundreds of staffers on the Obama and Edwards campaigns, who've immersed themselves in past voting data and models of expected vote turnouts for Tuesday, wouldn't these staffers have noticed discrepancies that might warrant a recount? If Tuesday's results really were the likely result of malfeasance, the Obama and Edwards campaigns would be raising holy hell. They would be seeking a recount, and investigation of the voting, and they would be doing it because they saw the irregularities in the vote results.
But there aren't any serious irregularities in the results of Tuesday's Democratic primary. Clinton won with the same kind of voters that Kerry won with in 2004, in she did it by running strongly in the same exact areas of the state. Diebold machines don't count the votes cast in many of the towns of New Hampshire, and all votes are cast on a paper ballot. The 2004 recount showed no problems with the tabulation. New Hampshire has an excellent reputation for running clean elections. Election administration is done on a town-by-town basis, so rigging the election would require not just a few well-placed individuals, but a vast conspiracy involving hundreds of people, probably more. And if there were strange voting patterns, that showed up in discrepancies between towns that tabulated by hand vs those that tabulated the paper ballots with scanners, the rival campaigns would certainly have noticed it and would be protesting the results.
Hillary Clinton won on Tuesday. She led just about every poll every taken for 360 of the 365 days leading up to the election. And even when she won, it was only by three percentage points. This election wasn't rigged. So please, ignore the "Diebold stole the election" garbage.