Citing “significant percentage variances in four voting districts in Hillsborough County,” Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) is requesting that New Hampshire’s Secretary of State, William Gardner, “order a complete and accurate recount of all ballots in the New Hamsphire Democratic Presidential Primary election,” according to a letter sent this morning, as obtained by The BRAD BLOG.
The letter (posted in full at end of this article) details a number of the discrepancies revealed by the recent post-election hand count in Concord, as paid for by the Democratic Presidential candidate’s campaign.
The count was suspended this morning, when “funds ran out,” according to the NH SoS website, making way for a Republican hand count challenge by candidate Albert Howard to begin tomorrow, as The BRAD BLOG reported earlier today.
“The magnitude of the variances in the four voting locations raise questions about the integrity of the internal vote accounting procedures in use in Hillsborough County,” wrote Kucinich. “A reconciliation of the records of votes cast to voters who signed in and received ballots should have detected these problems; why multiple locations with large over-voting discrepancies went undetected in Hillsborough remains unexplained.”
Kucinich’s references, detailed in the two-page letter, refer to counts in Nashua Ward 5 where there were variances discovered in the counting as high as 4.9%; in Manchester Ward 5 where tallies varied 10.6%; and in New Ipswich, which saw 7.5% differences in the hand count totals from the original count for one candidate. Those districts were all tabulated on Election Day solely by error-prone, hackable Diebold optical-scan voting systems.
As well, the hand counts revealed 100 fewer votes actually existed for Barack Obama, in the town of Wilton, than were actually recorded for him on the night of the election…
80% of New Hampshire’s paper ballots are counted on the same Diebold optical-scan system used to hack a mock election, as seen in HBO’s documentary, Hacking Democracy (watch the hack live here). New Hampshire has no human verification procedures for the machine-counted ballots. The rest of the state’s paper ballots are counted by hand at the polling places on Election Night.
It has been reported that the explanation for the large variances in Manchester 5 and Nashua 5 were due to clerical errors when Vice-Presidential write-in votes were mixed up with Presidential votes, though Kucinich questions the explanation offered by local news affiliate WMUR, in his letter to SoS Gardner.
Yesterday, Wired’s Kim Zetter tried to clear up some of the confusion about those numbers, as they were explained to her by Nashua’s Town Clerk Paul Bergeron. The clerk from Manchester had yet to return her call before she filed her article. We’ll refer you over there for Bergeron’s explanation.
Whether the explanation for those errors is accurate or not — we’ve not confirmed them one way or another — what’s clear is that the many variances in the vote counts discovered in just the single county to be counted so far would not likely have come to light were in not for the Kucinich-funded hand count.
Despite disparities from the original Diebold machine counts found across virtually all candidates, and in all wards counted so far, the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s office has been downplaying the miscounts.
“None of the results, as far as where the candidates finished, changed,” Assistant Secretary of State David Scanlan is quoted telling AP today. “There were minimal changes in the different voting precincts. Where there were differences beyond one or two votes, we were able to explain them” as human error, he reportedly said.
Aside from the large errors referenced, there were many wards where tallies were discovered to be beyond “one or two votes,” as seen on the NH SoS own “Recount Results” web page. We’ve posted a graphic snap-shot at the bottom of the article, of the mistabulations discovered for the three leading candidates, as of late last week.
Kucinich concludes his letter by writing that the “narrow margins of the statewide outcome” warrant a “manual verification of the remainder of the votes” before alluding to Gardner’s earlier refusal to allow for the counting of the unvoted ballots. The campaign had requested such a reconciliation count before the process even began.
“Whenever there are indications of over-voting, an accounting of spoiled and unused blank ballots is also justified,” penned Kucinich in closing, before requesting “thoughtful consideration and determination” on these points from Gardner.
As well, the SoS has failed to supply copies of the Election Day poll books. Counting the signatures in those books would allow the hand count observers to reconcile whether or not there are the same number of ballots as voters in each jurisdiction.
As The BRAD BLOG has reported in great detail over the past week, serious, related chain of custody issues have emerged since the counting began in New Hampshire.
In addition to the decision to disallow the counting of unvoted and spoiled ballots, photographs and video taken by Election Integrity experts on the ground in New Hampshire have detailed the horrendous, unsecured shape in which boxes of ballots are being transported back to Concord for counting. Photographs detail unsealed boxes, in very poor condition, with openings large enough to easily reach in for the removal or addition of ballots.
It’s also been shown that so-called “security seals” used on the boxes, as well as to secure the count room where ballots were stored last Thursday night, can be easily peeled away, removed and then restored without detection.
Also, as we reported when the count began, despite a federal law which requires the retention of all related media for 22 months after an election, Gardner has admitted that he has no idea what has become of the sensitive Diebold memory cards which are used in each machine to read ballots and store vote tabulation. Such a card was used to hack the mock election seen in Hacking Democracy. And the totals printed out from data on those cards, at the end of polling, are used to determine the official state tallies.
The BRAD BLOG has spoken to a number of Kucinich representatives throughout the day, in trying to determine whether or not they will pay for counting to resume at a later date. While we’ve received different answers from the different people we have spoken to, the answer to that question may lie in Gardner’s response to Kucinich’s letter.
We will continue to bring you more information, as soon as we can offer any definitive, on the record, statements from the campaign.
The 1/23/08 letter from Rep. Dennis Kucinich to New Hampshire Secretary of State William Gardner follows in full below…
See below for a quick snapshot of just some of the errors found, as of last week, in the Democratic hand count so far in Hillsborough County, for just the three leading candidates. (Graphic courtesy of Bill W. of Crooks & Liars)…
Come on now Edwards and Obama, step up to the plate!
The other top candidate won’t bother I don’t imagine.
Our Federal elections are so sloppy and they’re worth billions to the victor, as we can see by the pillage of our Government over the past few years.
There has to be standards set up, and I don’t mean like that phony HAVA either.
Maybe like Canada does it would be a good start ?
Shit, if the world seen this mess here it would shock them as bad as Katrina did.
Not a Democracy that’s for sure.
Weren’t the number of unvoted ballots indicated on the outside of the box, along with other information? As posted elsewhere, that appears to be the law:
659:95 Sealing and Certifying Ballots. I. Immediately after the ballots cast at a state election have been tabulated and the result has been announced and the return has been made, the moderator or the moderator’s designee, in the presence of the selectmen or their designee, shall place the cast, cancelled and uncast ballots, including such ballots from any additional polling places, and further including the successfully challenged absentee ballots still contained in their envelopes, in the containers provided by the secretary of state as required by RSA 659:97 and shall seal such container with the sealer provided by the secretary of state as required by RSA 659:97.The moderator or the moderator’s designee SHALL THEN ENTER IN THE APPROPRIATE BLANKS ON SUCH SEALER ON EACH CONTAINER THE NUMBER OF CAST, CANCELLED AND UNCAST BALLOTS in such container and shall endorse in the appropriate place on such sealer a certificate in substance as follows: Enclosed are the ballots from the state election in the town of (or in ward____ in the city of ) held on ________,19 required by law to be preserved. The moderator and the selectmen or their designees shall sign their names in the appropriate blanks on the sealer.
Kucinich shouldn’t have to ask for those other ballots- they should have been in the boxes and accounted for.
How can news organizations even imply that the New Hampshire primary went OK when the state law was disregarded so many ways? Oh, I forgot, they don’t read the law themselves, just ask the parties involved if everything was hunky dory. That’s not reporting, that’s passing on hearsay- and hearsay is not evidence.
{ED NOTE: Don’t know if they were on the outside of the box or not. But if they were, and if the unvoted ballots were inside, SoS Bill Gardner did not allow them to be counted. — BF}
Keep up the great reporting your a true patriot. Now if only the MSM would report the truth. Make sure to digg this one everyone it needs to be heard.
#2 Floridiot You will laugh at what we are allowed to contribute…January of 07 Elections Canada came out with new rules…
Corporations, trade unions, associations and groups may not make political contributions.
The amount an individual may contribute to a registered political party has been reduced to $1,100 a calendar year. Also an annual limit of $1,100 on the total an individual may contribute to registered associations, the nomination contestants and the candidates of a registered political party. A party leadership contestant may make an additional $1000 contribution in total per contest to his or her own campaign.
Cash contributions of more than $20 to registered political entities have been banned…
Unfortunately Elections Canada has adopted (2007) Voter ID… if the voter doesn’t have ID with picture they must show two pieces of identification to establish identity and residence and if they don’t have that, be sworn in by someone who does. I am not sure who’s idea that was but Frank Luntz has coached Harper so maybe that’s where it came from. 🙂
Yeah, I saw this headline: “Partial Primary Recount Ends After Finding Few Errors: Results Don’t Change Significantly For Candidates” on NH’s WMUR Channel 9, and thought to myself “No Way!” and came straight over here. I’ve just donated some more to Kucinich to help with continuing the recount. Maybe we should all bug each other plus the other Dem candidates to pitch in, too.
It bothers me that the counting done so far has been so little and so slow. I feel it is highly embarrassing for the SOS office and they may be trying everything they can think of to slow down or avoid the Democratic race discrepancies just to get the heat off them.
They would LOVE to count the Republican ballots first I imagine as they tallied up well with the exit polls. They are hoping I think that we will all forget about NH by the time the Dems are finally counted, if they ever even allow that to happen. NH voters should be outraged.
The issue is not whether the winner changes, it is that ALL THE VOTES ARE COUNTED AND COUNTED CORRECTLY!!!!!
I just had to say that.
Thank you, 72Dawg. It can’t be said enough.
Off-topic, but very important:
Today is FISA D-Day.
Senate Majority Capitulator Harry Reid is once again ready to give away the rights of U.S. citizens in return for giving the telcos retroactive immunity… retroactive immunity for crimes undisclosed and unconfessed, but known to include the selling to the Bush administration of the access, personnel and equipment it needed for its warrantless surveillance of American citizens.
Retroactive immunity for the telcos and, perforce, retroactive immunity for Bush and company for these crimes.
Retroactive immunity… and a green light for future claims of unlimited presidential power.
Once again Senator Chris Dodd has vowed to fight this nightmare in the making, promising to filibuster any bill with telco immunity until he drops… and once again Harry Reid has been busy stacking the deck in the Republicans’ favor.
The administration figures that it has already won this battle and has already moved on to the next step… as was obvious in recent Administration statements urging the need for total surveillance of all internet activity.
Understand this: the Bush regime has stated, repeatedly, that they won’t stop any of this b>unless they’re made to stop.
Let your senators know how you feel, and let Dodd know if you support his efforts on your behalf.
http://dodd.senate.gov/
Thank you for your great reporting. I was so glad to hear that Kucinich camp is pursuing the further recount.
One thing I noticed in your report:
This mistake was a simple transcription error for the recount number (the number on the night of election was correct) and corrected at the NH recount site within a few days. Wilton has a great system of hand counting, and the people there will not be happy to see that you are indicating some big issue with their counting. I hope you correct your report.
The economic Katrina will preclude many if not most cities and states from improving the catastrophic status quo of electioneering:
(NY Times, emphasis added).
The promiscuous overbuilding which the bushies touted as a “booming economy” gave new meaning to “boom”. The “boom” was the economic explosion caused by bushie madness.
I don’t expect the Kucinich approach to work in the current economic crisis.
Brad, how come those massive error% haven’t kicked in a statewide recount of the evote totals, including all uncounted,spoiled ballots, and pollbook numbers? An error is an error is an error, no matter what excuse you give! And the fact that the memory cards are still unaccounted for is beyond belief. It just goes to show the general public does not understand how easy it is to rig evoting. With these % error rates exposed it seems to me the burden of proof is now on the state, not Kucinich. I don’t care what the reason for the error, an ERROR over the acceptable error rate has occured. New Englanders are suppose to be down to earth common sense people, well here’s their chance to do the down to earth common sense thing. GET ALL THE FACTS, AS IN UNCOUNTED AND SPOILED BALLOTS PLUS POLLBOOK NUMBERS! The alternative is just have faith your vote was counted in the next presidential election!
Disclaimer: I did not allege fraud took place, just the possibility it can, which in a sane world should be enough to get laws corrected.
An “error rate” in voting is unacceptable. It does not matter if it didn’t change THIS election- it darn well could change another. And how about who gets how many delegates?
There is no reason for anyone to trust an election in New Hampshire again. You don’t get trust by never looking into something- you get trust by checking it out and correcting the problems.
Every time anti-election integrity people carry on about damage to trust in elections, they really mean don’t reveal the system for what it actually is- disfunctional. Don’t worry your little heads but do trust us. They never, never want the facade lifted so that problems can be corrected and real trust instilled.
Mandatory recounts, by law, gee, just happen to fall UNDER the most commonly admitted error rate. How convenient is that?
New Hampshire, you need a new SOS pronto. Might I suggest a Libertarian or Green party person?
If anything, the amount of error found, whether machine or human, the ways the laws were not followed, only serve as vindication that vigorous hand counting of ballots to audit the process is critical along with a complete trail of chain of custody for all materials. There can be no reconciliation between number of ballots printed and number voted when the SOS won’t give out the necessary information, the information required by law.
You can’t tell if the process is working if you never check on it. It doesn’t matter if the problem is error or fraud- if there is a problem it has to be found and dealt with.
And I do NOT mean paperless voting systems, the most offered “solution”- because paperless does away with evidence ergo, “no problem.”
By the way, and I don’t know if it is appropriate to mention here (if not, then please remove this comment, Kucinich is in trouble back in his home district. I got na email from his campaign asking for donations for that race. He’s being targeted in the primaries by a corporate dem. The reasson I think it is appropriate to mention is that he has been such a friend to election integrity.
If any can help him out there, he would appreciate it. You can find out more (I think) through his for president website.
Thank you. By the way, I don’t work for his campaign, and am just an ordinary citizen sick to death about where my country seems headed.
Currently at the top of the front page of the self-proclaimed “reality-based community” of Daily Kos:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/24/1913/12089/248/442157
Following up on comment #3 by BADGER quoting section 659:95 of the NH statutes, besides listing the votes on the outside of the box, the boxes themselves are by statute to have been provided by the SOS in advance of the elections, per the Section quoted below. What is a “state election”? a statewide federal primary, e.g.?
Section 659:97
659:97 Secretary of State to Prepare Containers, Sealers. – The secretary of state shall, before any state election, prepare and distribute to each town and ward clerk containers to be used for preserving ballots and sealers to seal each such container. He shall prepare special containers and sealers to be used for preserving any special and separate ballots for questions to voters. The secretary of state shall prescribe the size and form of such containers and sealers and shall prescribe the form of any endorsement blank printed upon the sealers, provided that the blank is in substance consistent with the provisions of RSA 659:95.
Source. 1979, 436:1, eff. July 1, 1979.
Upthread ..seems like Kos is getting as desperate as bushco to fudge the facts to the point that nobody can believe anything stated on that website.
Hold on! Am I to believe that Dailykos thinks the issue is closed? What? And if you look at the comments, there are people saying hings that sound like, “Well, since Clinton won, it had to ahve been right.” They sound like a bucnch of Bushivicks. Kos, please, say it ain’ so. Please say you haven’t gone over to the establishment dark side. Is Kos only about electing Democrats at any cost?
Has anyone told them about DK’s letter yet?
Bradblog still working on this vital issue.
I’m amazed at how few people know how easy it is to corrupt our voting system through Diebold, as another poster brought up.
The MSM facade shields the wrongdoers. By minumizing exposure, accountability can be forestalled at least until the next rigged election is allowed to conclude.
Help America Vote Act was simply part of the political side of the facade, with the added benefit to Diebold of demanding access for vote hacking machines throughout the nation.
Leon County, Florida’s Ion Sanchez deserves mega credit for his role in standing up to the Feds, who’d threatened to take hundreds of thousands in HAVA money for not certifying Diebold machines.
The fight is more with politicians and the MSM who are knowingly ignoring the problem. We see this reactionary cadre controlling so much of the national media and political narratives today. Confrontation is avoided at all costs–hence the Reid/Pelosi sell-out on Iraq and other vital issues like vote integrity.
Rockingham County has few big dicrepancies as well, with only 18 of 34 precincts counted.
Clinton +0.9% Salem -0.9% Brentwood
Edwards +1.3% Candia and Fremont -0.7% in Brentwood +0.9% in Raymond
Obama -2.6% in Brentwood +6.7% in Sandown
Richardson +2.0% in Candia -1.9% in Hampstead -4.9% in Sandown
They definitely need to finish the count.
Also – Kucinich -3.3% in Salem
I haven’t read all the comments, but I tend to be skeptical of these kinds of suggestions. I would think that if you wanted to change the outcome of a vote there would be easier, less problematic ways to do it, ie, voter disenfranchisment, smear campaigns, corporate-interest control of the media. You know, basically all the things that are legal or practically legal that wouldn’t implicate any one, specific person if a legal investigation were to take place. But let’s hear what the experts have to say:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~wmebane/NH2008HMW.pdf
Is there anything we can do to keep the Democratic NH Recount going?
How do we help keep this going?
We are on the verge of exposing a huge fraud, perhaps enough to even flip the Hillary/Obama ranking.
We cannot stop now and let the U.S. Media spin this into a “clean Election“!
Add Crooks & Liars to the Kos sell out list. Nicolle Belle just put up a post with a link to
WMUR’s report and this quote,
“On a related note–not that it will assuage those who want to believe otherwise–NH’s Democratic primary recount has ended and they’ve found very few errors and the results remained basically the same. “
… Sena blathered…
“I haven’t read all the comments…”
Hell, it’s obvious that you haven’t even been reading the articles.
“… but I tend to be skeptical of these kinds of suggestions.”
What, that Brad was correct in that most of the votes were never checked by anything other than a set of demonstrably unreliable machines?
Or do you have trouble accepting that, even with the burden of a totally botched chain of custody, the aborted recount uncovered unexplained error rates in excess of what is allowed by law?
You want to flog your paper here and seek out “conspiracy theorists” to decry … but I don’t think you’ll be allowed to distort the facts here about what’s happening in New Hampshire.
I’d like to point out, zap, that accusing someone of blathering is a personal attack, even when couched cleverly. Even if you find it best characterized in such a manner, I know you can make your points without attacking people. You can take exception to something, disagree with something, even point out where something someone said is totally wrong, without attacking them personally.
It’s time for the State of New Hampshire to hear from YOU. Call the Secretary of State TODAY. Here is the number: 603-271-3242. I just called them myself. I told them to stop whining and making up lame excuses and just count the FU_ _ ING votes. They need to hear from you,too. Right now! This nonsense has got to stop.
Don’t be afraid. Just pick up the phone right now. It will make you feel much better, I promise.
… Agent 99 warned…
“I’d like to point out, zap, that accusing someone of blathering is a personal attack,”
Ack! busted… 🙂
It’s not crouched cleverly, it just depends on what the meaning of “is” is!
Hi,
1. It is our hope that if the Kucinich team
comes up with the full $70,000, the NH SoS
can complete the recount. (As of this pass
weekend the team came up with $27,000 so far.)
2. The Republican recount is now in the hopper.
Let’s hope we get a full recount….
Frank
Once again: Let’s remember that because of advances in statistical methodology (and the technology to accomplish it quickly), a national election could be stolen efficiently: Pinpoint just a few precincts (machines?) in a couple (swing) states, and only tamper with those. Remember how close 2000 was, just in Florida, in one county in Florida… They knew ahead of time that the illegal butterfly ballot there would throw those local results, and that this would be enough to throw the whole national election.
If you can find it, take a look again at Bush (W) sitting near his father that night. See him claiming that counter to what the exit polls were saying, he had not lost Florida… The MSM (tv) were already saying he HAD lost Florida, so how did he know that, hmmm? Then take another look and see how his father, at that moment, rolls his eyes at the stupidity of W giving it away like that.
My point, again, is that they only need to tamper with just a few machines — and it is relatively simple to know which ones — to fix the national election. Or primaries. Budget for recounts wherever it might be necessary. Count every vote, accurately!
The_Zapkitty, I am sorry if you take personal offense to anything I said. I certainly didn’t mean to personally attack you. If you would like to read more about where I found that article from, you can go here, a blog for scientists in every field from all over the country.
I can only say that since I took statistics a million years ago, I can’t even pretend to understand it now. And, as I remember, population statistics are exceedingly complicated (I worked in conservation biology for more than two years and am now pursuing a PhD in medicine). So when someone with a much better grasp of it tells me that there may be no significant anomalies attributable to the Diebold machines, depending on how the data is analyzed of course, I tend to have doubts about whether or not these differences we see here were intentionally done or whether or not we are just looking at bad statistics. Am I wrong about “intentional manipulation” being the theme suggestion here? If I’m wrong, I sincerely apologize.
I am all for vote recounting if acceptable levels of error have been exceeded, and I don’t think that they should have to be paid out of pocket by anyone’s campaign fund, but, again, I’m just skeptical of the idea that it’s because it was necessarily intentional.
I thought other people in this blog might be interested in seeing what the statisticians were saying about this as well. And, of course, I’m not necessarily standing by their credentials either.
Lastly, I was not trying to distort any facts here (and I don’t really see how I did). It is precisely why I linked to the original article, with the original statistics, and not the one I just linked to above. I’m all for people drawing their own conclusions, and as this blog allows comments, I thought I’d state my own POV.
But I’m disappointed in your comments, which appear to be close-minded to me, so this will likely be the last time I comment again here as I am now really turned off by this exchange.
And I’m sorry to the rest of you for the long comments.
Sena ( and interested parties) I have read all these sources and bradblog, dailykos, Bluehampshire, and several other competing sources, and the bottom line is that there are several non-intersecting interests stating things which have been inadequately challenged.
On one side, the statisticians couch their findings in terms of probabilities, and some miss/ exclude the possibility that unused factors actually influence the error rates. Certainly in this thread, people correctly quote error deviances, but misuse them in arguments – eg. a single ballot error cannot adequately be construing as attributable to any particular candidate, so quoting an error rate for Richardson in one precinct is relatively meaningless. In fact arguing error rates across precincts would also be meaningless without controls.
On the other side, you have individuals who are not so much concerned with the competitive outcomes, but rather question the accuracy of the technology. The fact is that simple recounts can neither solve this question nor dissuade them from the possibility. The only solution here is to do truly double-blind tests on both methods (hand counting and machine counting) and test under severely controlled conditions. That having been done, use only proven technology under guidelines that must always be enforced.
I believe BradBlog correctly questions validity of the machines, partly because, absent any Proof otherwise, it appears a fair assumption. But I do not derive any of this from the New Hampshire Primaries. I derive this opinion because of inadequate responses by state, local and federal agencies to provide a substantial study otherwise.
Finally, this is not a criticism but rather an observation. When you have a political system that is heavily driven by money, and the election system involving private companies, suspicion about validity will always crop up. That is simply the nature of the beast. Even with strong controls, you will not eliminate conspiracy theorists. The current problem is that the conspiracy theorists are mixing in with the reasonable questioners.
Frankly I’ve seen more transparency at a blackjack table in Vegas.
The election process is clearly flawed, perhaps even rigged. Now I know what it must have felt like to live in Iraq and watch Sadam win the Iraqi elections year after year.
Obama is a coward–he could have financed a full recount of the state for $2,000 but didn’t do itm despite much pressure to do so.