New Hampshire Primaries Follow-Up Analysis

Dr. Eggman writes "Ars Technica has posted a lengthy follow up analysis of the 2008 New Hampshire Primaries outcome. The article deals with the O'Dell machine/hand-count table that has been circulating through emails. It also points out the combination of factors that resulted in such an odd symmetry of numbers, although the article notes that these numbers have been corrected. The corrections still indicate a discrepancy among the tallies. The article also goes on to talk about the nature of the communities that arrived at these numbers and what/how the handcounts proceeds. This process has been inconclusive; something that does not bode well for the rest of the primaries and indeed the election itself, as only 16 states currently mandate both a voter-verified paper trail (VVPT) and a random manual audit of election results."

Comments

what about the fraud with Ron Paul votes?

[SuperBanana]

Forget the "skew", there was clear evidence of fraud in certain towns where they reported zero votes for Ron Paul, and a couple of supporters who lived in that town came forward and said "uh, I don't think so, I KNOW I voted for him, as did several friends"?

The town did a re-count and magically those votes re-appeared. This wasn't a case of "oops, we were off by a few"- every single vote for a particular candidate was GONE. What's fascinating is that all of the news stories I've read about the NH primary concerns have neglected to mention this, and far as I can tell, nobody has done jack shit to figure out why it happened.

Furthermore, if they lost ALL of the Ron Paul votes- how many other votes did they lose?

Re:what about the fraud with Ron Paul votes?

[UbuntuDupe]

This was on the news, and was attributed to 'human error'. Meaning some nonagenarian didn't bother to report those because there was literally a handful (or less).

In absolute terms, it was a handful: 31. In absolute terms, it was VERY relevant: that number is 7% of the total for that precinct. I know because I checked up on that on one of the vote-watch sites that listed by precinct. I apologize, however, for not knowing how to quickly get back to that so I can post a link; I'm sure you will discover the same, however.

I don't have to tell you what adding 7% of the voters to Ron Paul's *aggregate* NH total would be, do I?

And supporting Ron Paul is great and idealistic and all, but a complete waste. He has 0% chance of winning anything, especially after those racist newsletters came out with his name on them, regardless if he wrote them.

You think this is just about making Ron Paul president? No. This is a long-term fight to move the nation in a more libertarian direction. This surge in grassroots support (compared to what libertarian-minded candidates used to get) is a culmination of all the "internet-only" support the libertarian movement built up beginning in the late 90s, as those younger voters aged, and it's only getting bigger.

The more publicity we can get for libertarian ideas, the better, even and especially of Ron Paul doesn't win. I would know. I'm a local organizer.

The news about the racist remarks worries me, of course, but I think Paul is still at the stage where "any publicity is good" esp. as he gets endorsements from those minorities who have worked with him.

Re:Correlation and Causation

[neuronomy]

RTFA. We controlled for % holding bachelor's degrees, median household income, and population density - that's why this is newsworthy. The diebold effect is still significant.

Re:Face Facts

[damienl451]

"UN observers won't certify them". UN observers are usually sent to third-world nations and "flawed democracy", not countries like the US or any other Western country for the matter. So, as a matter of mact, UN observers won't certify US elections because nobody asked them to, not because they were there and refused to do it in light of widespread fraud, as your message implied.

Re:doesn't matter

[Obfuscant]

Can we PLEASE stop this nonsense about a "popular vote" for US President? There simply IS NO popular vote, at least not on a national level.

The Constitution defines how we elect the pres and VP. It says nothing about a nationwide popular vote. The STATES pick their allocated number of electors, and it is those electors who vote for specific people to be pres and VP. It is not even specified in the Constitution that the electors must vote for the people that the state picked them to. Some states don't even mandate that.

It is emotional hyperbole to pretend that someone is "screwed out" of winning a vote that doesn't exist. It makes no more sense to say that someone won the "popular vote" for US president than to claim that someone was elected president of north america because he got more votes for president of his country than others got to be president of theirs.

Whoever it was that started adding up the state-by-state vote counts and calling it the "popular vote" should be shot. Any school that teaches it should by decertified.

Not only is the "popular vote" undefined, it is not a true representation of popularity. People vote not just for who they prefer, but for who they think can win. If you prefer A over B and B over C, but you know that A cannot win, you'll probably vote for B to prevent C from winning. B's good showing in the "popular vote" is biased; no, rather A's low "popularity" is biased based on expected failure. A self-fulfilling prophecy. In any case, in the US, there IS NO popular vote, so wasting time talking about it is just wasting time.