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

[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.

Adding Fuel to the Fire

[wezeldog]

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

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.

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.