Diebold Voter Fraud Rumors in New Hampshire Primaries

Westech writes "Multiple indications of vote fraud are beginning to pop up regarding the New Hampshire primary elections. Roughly 80% of New Hampshire precincts use Diebold machines, while the remaining 20% are hand counted. A Black Box Voting contributor has compiled a chart of results from hand counted precincts vs. results from machine counted precincts. In machine counted precincts, Clinton beat Obama by almost 5%. In hand counted precincts, Obama beat Clinton by over 4%, which closely matches the scientific polls that were conducted leading up to the election. Another issue is the Republican results from Sutton precinct. The final results showed Ron Paul with 0 votes in Sutton. The next day a Ron Paul supporter came forward claiming that both she and several of her family members had voted for Ron Paul in Sutton. Black Box Voting reports that after being asked about the discrepancy Sutton officials decided that Ron Paul actually received 31 votes in Sutton, but they were left off of the tally sheet due to 'human error.'"

Comments

These things happen

[jamie]

These things happen in primaries. Often a lot of independents swing the same way, or last-minute campaigning changes people's minds.

As Bob Somerby points out, the polling for the New Hampshire primary was wrong, by a larger margin, the last time we had a two-party primary:

On January 31 [2000], Broder reported that Bush and McCain were "deadlocked in the latest surveys." The next day, McCain won the race -- by 18 points!

Re:These things happen

[wytcld]

The machines in question, as I understand it, are not touch screen, but rather Diebold tabulators into which are fed paper ballots (which somewhat resemble SAT sheets - fill-in-the-bubble things). At least that's how it works across the river here in Vermont. So there are paper ballots which can be hand counted. These tabulators are famously hackable. I don't know who has authority to require a hand recount in NH.

Re:These things happen

[kabloom]

Even if you reverse the percentages of Obama and Clinton, they still get the same number of delegates from the state, and Clinton still did significantly better than expected. FWIW, when I saw 36% to 39%, I said in my mind that they basically tied. Others read a lot more into the 3 point margin.

But this is troubling, because we've had elections turn on less.

Re:These things happen

[isdnip]

If you knew New Hampshire, you wouldn't ask about blacker voters... the equivalent cultural divide, what's left of it, is more like French vs. English.

But I do not think that in this case Diebold is responsible. I am rather familiar with the state and could pretty much predict the outcome, once the pattern was seen. Clinton did best in cities with a conservative cultural heritage -- white-ethnic mill towns and places where working-class Massachusetts white voters have moved to. Manchester, Nashua, and Salem are good examples. Think Dunkin' Donuts places. Obama did best in places with more of a Starbucks cultural bent, including white-collar cities like Concord, Keene and Portsmouth and the western side of the state. Hand counting is done in the smaller towns, which are mostly Obama places. Actually, a lot of those towns are mainly Republican (McCain) places, but the Democrats there are more Obama fans.

Re:These things happen

[NorthWestFLNative]

Now, if Obama really did win in NH, that would be two victories, which would inspire those in SC, and if he were to win that one as well, Florida voters would be more inclined to vote for him.

It really doesn't matter who wins the Florida Democratic Primary. Because the state moved the primary election date up to before Super Tuesday, the national parties decided to punish the state by decreasing the number of delegates to the convention. The Republican party cut our number of delegates in half. The Democratic party took all our delegates away. So a Florida Democrat's primary election vote doesn't count at all.

Re:These things happen

[Sen.NullProcPntr]

It violates 5 USC 2302(b), which applies to all employers, government or not (emphasis mine)

No, Title 5 applies only to "Government Organization and Employees".

If your (private) business is in the US federal law does not explicitly block you from discriminating based on political affiliation. Your local (state, county, city) may have restrictions though.

More info atFindlaw.

Adding Fuel to the Fire

[wezeldog]

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/1/10/02623/2264/85/434176/

Re:Thank God this is finally being reported

[Surt]

Note that the results don't deviate from the exit polls, they deviate from the pre-election polls. The exit polls were as accurate as usual.

Re:Finally!

[KlomDark]

Yah, I used to beleive that. Now it's more like "Send in your subscriptions, and waste your time."

I've been here for years, have a four digit ID, and have NEVER had one of my stories posted. Sure, let's say most of them are crap, boring, stupid, lame, but I'd think at least ONE of them would have gotten thru in the last decade. I've seen a lot worse ideas actually get posted.

I'm not angry, I just don't give a crap any more. The other day, after years of not submitting anything, I tried another one, it was about Jack Thompson suing the Omaha Police Chief to get the video game records of the mall shooter. Seemed perfect for Slashdot. Bounced, rejected, nobody got their version posted either.

Just reaffirmed my belief that Slashdot is ran by tin-foil-hat wearing lizard conspiracy overlords trying to turn us slashdotters into mindless consumers. :)

one of the values of transparency

[circletimessquare]

is not that it verifies the results, but that it squelches the bullshit. say, for the sake of argument, that this story is 100% made up. with paper ballots, with enough pressure, you could force a recount. but with electornic voting, no one knows what is real, and what is not. the process is opaque. it's electronic, it's quicksilver

you need an army of conspirators working hard and long to mess with paper ballots to a large degree. you need one asshole in the right spot for 3 seconds to completely alter the results in any way you can imagine, including recreating plausible degrees of randomness, and you can cover your tracks completely

the order of magnitude increase in number of attack vectors that are introduced with electronic voting is one thing, and the radically increased potential for doing massive damage quickly is another. but the real threat electronic voting poses to democracy is that it is opaque. it can't be trusted, because nothing can be truly verified. any "verification" is comparing one piece of easily altered quicksilver to another

i am not in any way joking when i say the greatest threat to democracy in the 21st century is electronic voting. it erodes trust, faith, and confidence. strictly because when stories like this one spreads, and they always do, after every election, in every country, there is no way to dispel them. sour grapes or a genuine issue, no can tell for sure with electornic voting

paper voting should NEVER be replaced, and in fact mecahnical voting should be retired as well

i'll say it again: the greatest threat to democracy in the 21st century is electronic voting

i firmly believe that. it is a menace

when the next bush versus gore extremely close imbroglio occurs in another election, there won't be any hanging chadsto look at. just some assholes in suits form some private company with questionable political connections telling us over and over everything is ok and everything is verified and everything is squeaky clean. oh really? what you get after that is instant chaos, instant zero legitimacy in the government in the eyes of the public. out of the woodwork come all of the demagogues, spreading all of their lies, and public trust gets placed in the worng hands

give me hanging chads over electronic voting any day

Re:Very easy solution

[OhPlz]

I don't know what the rest of the state uses for vote counting, but in my town we fill in bubbles on a paper sheet. That sheet is then fed to the counting machine (Diebold?) and keeps the paper sheet. So there should be paper ballots to count.

I haven't heard from anyone else I know in the state that they're using electronic only voting.

Re:Very easy solution

[arb phd slp]

New Hampshire law requires a human-readable paper record. The machines in question were optical scanners and the ballots in NH are fill-in-the-bubble sheets.

Election fraud, not voter fraud

[kherr]

The headline really needs to be corrected. It's a question of election fraud, not voter fraud. This is a very important distinction: election fraud occurs when the vote counts are tampered with, voter fraud is when people vote multiple times. The Indiana voter ID requirement is currently being argued before the Supreme Court and the state is unable to document any voter fraud in Indiana's history.

As for what's going on in NH, the paper trail means nothing if it's not used for counting. I've read that 80% of the Diebold paper ballots have not been counted. Since there are some serious questions about the results, why wouldn't everyone say, "Hey yeah, that's what the paper is for! Let's count the ballots?"

This is all poisoned fruit from the electronic voting tree. Nobody believes election results anymore because of companies like Diebold who have taken an open process and made it closed, hiding away what's really happening. Mix in crap technology and you've got a crisis in confidence.

There are no "electronic voting" machines in NH

[xtheunknown]

Every person in NH casts a paper ballot. Some are counted by electronic tabulating machines, but the paper ballots are still available for a recount. There is a big difference between an electronic voting machine (which typically don't have paper trails) and electronic tabulating machines. See this http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/1/10/02623/2264/85/434176 for a good discussion of why there was probably no fraud in the NH primary. The Ron Paul votes not being initially counted is another matter. Most likely just an incidence of human error.