‘No Problems’ in NH Hand Count Says Local Media (Who Apparently Didn’t Bother to Check First with Anybody but the SoS)

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Also meanwhile…Out there in MSM world, where reality creates its own definition, WMUR is reporting that all is fine in New Hampshire:

CONCORD, N.H. — The continuing Democratic primary recount in New Hampshire has not found any voting problems.

Well, they’re sort of correct. “Voting” problems aren’t the concern. As we frequently point out, the voters are still doing fine. Leave them alone. The election problems, and the horrible administration thereof, are another matter entirely. And on that front, loads of problems have been “found.” But only if you bother to look at them, of course.

Given WMUR’s following quote from NH Sec. of State Bill Gardner, which is demonstrably wrong in 3 seconds time if you bother to look at the SoS’s very own web page for hand count results, it’s not a surprise that WMUR thinks everything is just rosy:

“We did nine of the 12 wards in Manchester, and a lot of the votes were exactly the same,” Gardner said. “Some went up by a vote or two.”

That is what we in the business of actual reporting would call: a lie. Check the numbers for yourself. Yeah, it’s technical true that “a lot of the votes were exactly the same,” as Gardner says, in the same way that a lot of the troops who go to Iraq don’t get killed.

But many more vote counts were not at all the same, ranging anywhere from 5 to 8 votes off in regular cases, across almost all candidates.

And before you say that’s no big deal, we’ll remind you that in 2004, had just 6 votes per precinct been registered in Ohio for John Kerry instead of George W. Bush, we’d have a different person sitting in the White House right now.

Other than that, and the fact that Gardner has no idea where the memory cards are for his Diebold machines, and all other matter of horrible election oversight, yeah, everything’s just fine in New Hampshire.

…CONTACT…
WMUR Newsroom contact page

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Reader Comments on

‘No Problems’ in NH Hand Count Says Local Media (Who Apparently Didn’t Bother to Check First with Anybody but the SoS)

18 Comments

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18 Responses

  1. 1)
    drummer55 said on 1/17/2008 @ 6:21pm PT: [Permalink]

    so whats the odds of this? edwards, clinton and obama are each down exactly -12 votes in NH

    Check my math…. they each lose and gain votes in different places but so far their all
    at -12 weird

    http://www.sos.nh.gov/recountresults.htm

    Obama
    1309 1308
    1614 1616
    370 373
    792 795
    503 502
    908 908
    637 636
    458 459
    519 524
    404 365
    587 590
    421 421
    588 587
    488 485
    509 511
    435 438
    487 492
    1954 1960
    1052 1052
    416 417
    14451 14439 -12

    Clinton
    970 963
    1630 1630
    342 343
    683 683
    674 677
    1026 1030
    930 935
    551 558
    696 702
    683 619
    875 880
    753 755
    950 951
    899 902
    867 877
    622 622
    732 737
    2325 2328
    1092 1094
    683 685
    17983 17971 -12

    Edwards
    424 427
    529 530
    158 161
    327 327
    295 297
    324 327
    322 324
    165 165
    237 237
    255 217
    348 350
    270 272
    354 354
    335 335
    299 303
    173 173
    244 244
    853 856
    496 497
    164 164
    6572 6560 -12

  2. 3)
    MrBill123 said on 1/17/2008 @ 7:12pm PT: [Permalink]

    If the numbers here are a representative sample of the recount of the machine counted votes, this is amazing. One would expect 1-2% of the totals to not match up – not 90%!!! What are these machines – slot machines?

  3. 4)
    Anonymouse said on 1/17/2008 @ 7:13pm PT: [Permalink]

    There’s something very odd in Manchester Ward 5:

    Clinton
    683  619

    Edwards
    255  217

    Kucinich
     23   20

    Obama
    404  365

    Richardson
     46   39

    These candidates lost a total of 1411-1260 = 151 votes in the recount. None of the other candidates gained more than a few votes. So…where did the remaining ~151 votes go?

    Also Bedford shows 184 votes for Richardson in the official tally, and “-” votes for him in the recount. This is odd, considering that they appear to have recounted the Bedford votes for all the other major candidates.

  4. 5)
    Snicker said on 1/17/2008 @ 7:16pm PT: [Permalink]

    Somebody should let Markos and DHinMI over at DailyKOS know that they are proven complete fucking idiots on this one.

    Hopefully they’ll shut the hell up now on recounts. I’m sure they’ll just claim all those miscounted votes don’t matter. True utilitarians.

  5. 6)
    karen said on 1/17/2008 @ 7:32pm PT: [Permalink]

    mouse,
    i noticed same on manchester 5
    good catch on richardson in bedford
    manchester/hillsbourgh have some strange coincidences too on the repub side(before recount even) hucklebee/guiliani tie exactly 3 dif times(precincts) on that countys report
    the sos STILL doesnt have how many peops voted total posted not alone by precinct
    it would be interesting to know the actual number of ballots before the machine stops bouncing round

  6. 10)
    Reader said on 1/17/2008 @ 8:30pm PT: [Permalink]

    What’s that sound you hear? The media groaning as they are forced to wake up to this story (I hope).

  7. 11)
    carl weiler said on 1/17/2008 @ 9:12pm PT: [Permalink]

    Hi,
    I am re-sending because I don’t recall for sure what I already sent and this is important.
    Can’t get through to Bev. Bev can’t make Kucinich do 100% count. Just know that I did a student t test with a 72 degrees of freedom that demonstrates the machine set of data has promoted Clinton over Obama with a probability error of less than a tenth of a percent. Do the 100% count for democrats and you will prove votes were taken from Obama by the machines.

    Don’t lose focus that one extra vote in each precinct would throw a close election to the other candidate.

    There were 46 extra votes for the Manchester precinct (12 machines) alone. There are over 200 wards (257 units?). More of the recount must be completed to prove vote flipping, but my student t analysis with a sample size 37 showed the effect for machine counts over hand counts exists and this has a probability of 99.9 percent.
    .
    Mark Crispin Miller says the same idea here:
    http://www.opednews.com/article...pect_from_.htm

    &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
    Sunday’s work:
    The New Hampshire presidential primary is a watershed for the Election Integrity community, Pre-election polling is often fairly accurate. Exit polling is very accurate. Worldwide, exit polling is accurate to a tenth of one percent of elections everywhere except the United States.
    An aggregate of pollsters gave Obama 38.3 % of the vote and Clinton 30.0%. over the period of January 5-6. See Table 1. Zogby gave Obama 42% and Clinton 29% on January 7, 2008.
    In case you missed it, exit polling for the Tuesday, January 8, 2008 presidential primary in New Hampshire reported on TV projected 42% of the vote for Obama and 29% to Clinton as late in the day as 4 pm.
    By 10 pm or so, the AP network was the first to project Clinton the winner with 39% of the vote and Obama second with 36% of the vote. In other words, the exit poles appear to have been wrong.
    There are other possible scenarios. Lets wait for the facts to come in. Both A Democrat and a Republican candidate have called for recounts by the Friday, January 11 deadline. New Hampshire specifies a hand recount of the ballots which will begin on Monday, January 16. The costs will be based on recount costs including State Highway patrol transport of the ballots from clerk’s offices to the recount location.
    It is true that about half of the wards (precincts), representing about 20% of the ballots, were hand counted initially and the remainder, or about 80 % of the ballots, were counted by the Diebold Accuvote machine which is of an optical scan design.
    My analysis of the Secretary of State’s posting of election results follows. A student t analysis was conducted to compare two samples to test whether hand count results differed from machine count results by chance alone. If the resulting probability of the test is small, then one can assume that the difference is not due to chance alone.

    For my study I chose the ratio of Clinton to Obama votes as the parameter to measure. If the ratio is greater than one, then a Clinton win is favored and if the ratio is less than one, Obama is favored.
    For the first sample (hand counts) 37 wards were posted to be compared to a sample of 37 wards which were machine counted. The results appear as figure 3.
    The mean of the hand count was 0.882 (favoring Obama) and had a standard deviation of 0.254.
    The mean of the machine count was 1.15 (favoring Clinton) and had a standard deviation of 0.387.
    The probability result was 0.0012 that the student t test was in error. Clearly the difference between the hand count sample and the machine count sample was not due to chance alone. The reason for the difference remains to be satisfactorily explained.

    (can forward attachments if you wish)
    &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
    Thursday’s work:
    ere are early results for the hand recount of the New Hampshire Presidential Election

    The 2008 New Hampshire Presidential Election contains an unexplained story. Early media projections predicted an Obama win (42%) over Clinton (29%). As late as 4 pm media were reporting that the election race was reflected by the pole projections.
    The truth is that media paid for exit pole data which was available only to the press and academic insitutions. While election projections are usually a good indicator of outcome, exit poles are accurate to within a tenth of a percent. That is, everywhere in the world, excpt the United Sttes. It is now known that exit poles actually showed a very close race between Clinton and Obama all day .
    Both a Democrat (Kucinich) and a Republican (Albert Howard) requestd recounts. The hand recount of all ballots cast has been undertaken in Concord, New Hampshire state capitol, in the Archival building. State police will bring ballots from local Clerks’ offices.
    The projected cost of the recount has been set at 24 cents per ballot, but cost overage will be billed back to the requestors. Six teams operate in parallel and the procedure is video taped. Just like in the movie “Hacking Democracy.”
    Manchester is a 12- ward unit comprised of 12 Diebold optical scanners. Statewide, the scanners count about 80% of the ballots and the remainder are hand counted. All of the machines used in the State are of the same Accuvote version and are serviced by a single Company (LHS). Data is collected by phone calls for the Secretary of State’s office and hand tabulated into a spread sheet.
    Not all the data collected in the first day is shown here: nor is all the data recounted for the two candidates reported here. Some data for the 5th and 7th wards has not yet been recounted. Turn to the attached table.
    Column C shows the reported count for Clinton followed by recount Column E. One expects the numbers to match exactly, but they differ by 46 votes. Clearly the Accuvote machine performs this task poorly.
    Column G shows the reported count for Obama followed by recount column I. Again one expects the numbers to match exactly, but they differ by 4 ballots. This is not an acceptable performance level for counting ballots in any elecion. And this is only the first peak at incomplete data on day one of the recount.
    The electronic voting machines appear to be inadequate for the job but any assessment should be whthheld until the completion of the recount. The ward level (precinct) hand count of ballots is necessary to assure transpareny when electronic machines are used to count ballots.
    (Graphic attachment if you want it)
    %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
    The evidence is just what you would expect for a stolen election.

  8. 12)
    pete s said on 1/18/2008 @ 5:44am PT: [Permalink]

    you guys are going overboard. from today’s union leader:

    The widest variations so far were in Manchester’s Ward 5. Vote counters there mistakenly transposed write-in votes for vice president as votes for presidential candidate. As a result, all major candidates lost votes. Kucinich lost three in the ward and has a total of 20 votes there. Hillary Clinton lost 64 with a new total of 619; John Edwards lost 38 and has 217 votes; Barack Obama lost 39 and has 365, and Bill Richardson lost seven, leaving him 39.

    so, it wasn’t machine error but tabulation error on the part of the ward 5 poll checkers who on election night added the votes of the vp choices to the presidential choices. i really think you should tone it down a notch and wait until everything is recounted … and then say something. otherwise, you are just getting everyone into a tizzy, wrongly, i might add.

  9. 14)
    Phil said on 1/18/2008 @ 9:29am PT: [Permalink]

    COMMENT #13 None said on 1/18/2008 @ 7:15 am PT

    NOTICE TO ALL IDIOTS:
    (snipped for brevity)

    http://www.sos.nh.gov/recountresults.htm

    Nearly every machine counted vote compared to a hand counted vote is different. I don’t care if it’s ONE VOTE, it’s wrong. Electronic vote tabulation devices have FAILED AGAIN, and why shouldn’t folks voice their opinion.

    We are all free to ignore your opinion to “SHUT IT.”

    Only an idiot would *not care* about failed unverifiable electronic vote tabulation devices!

  10. 15)
    mannapat said on 1/18/2008 @ 11:37am PT: [Permalink]

    New Hampshire is a small state with great pride and tradition that it goes first in the primaries. This gives it an enormous amount of power in culling out candidates…unjustly? If they can’t do a better job than this, then they don’t deserve to go first. Maybe it’s time to start thinking about how to apportion the 2012 primaries. Let the states compete with each other to provide the most open, secure, fair, registration and voting. Those who get it right, and on time, get to go first, or be in a lottery to go first. I’m tired of this.

  11. 16)
    M. L. Cook said on 1/18/2008 @ 9:44pm PT: [Permalink]

    Phil #14,

    “Nearly every machine counted vote compared to a hand counted vote is different. I don’t care if it’s ONE VOTE, it’s wrong. Electronic vote tabulation devices have FAILED AGAIN, and why shouldn’t folks voice their opinion.”

    Sorry Phil, but you argument fails.

    First, your claim that “nearly every machine” count is different is bogus. IF you actually look at the totals, it is the other way around. The majority of the counts are the same.

    Second, your argument is based on two false assumptions.

    1) You have seem to forgotten that ballots that “spoiled” by VOTER ERROR have been added back into the totals. That alone will change a number of votes.

    2) You have ignored the fact that hand counts also have a margin of error. As an Accountant, who has been a part of conducting several store inventories, I have seen first hand how several groups of counters can come back with several different totals for the same item. As the number of items go up, the more likely they will the numbers will not agree.

    Further, there is NO SUCH THING as a prefect election. It will NEVER happen. The best that we can hope for is a paper trail that we can double check.

    In this case, the process is working just as it should. There was a vote WITH PAPER BALLOTS, there were questions on why was the vote so different from the exit polls. The hand count shows the same winner as did the machine count. No “vote swapping”, no “hacking” of the counting machines to change the outcome of the election.

  12. 18)
    J. Reiter said on 1/20/2008 @ 7:41pm PT: [Permalink]

    Even 1 irregularity should be looked at as extremely suspicious. I do not understand how people can be content with the results of this election. I have been taking tests in school on bubble sheets and scan trons for over a decade and have never had a problem with false positives.

    Why are optical scanners that are used for voting purposes more problematic than non official use optical scanners?

    I also do not understand how the vote total actually decreased. Were people allowed to handle their ballot after scanning? In Minnesota, our system sends the scanned document directly into a ballot safe, unless there is a problem with the ballot. In our elections, there are also volunteer election officials present for both sides to prevent fraud.

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