The first numbers are up from the Democratic recount in New Hampshire, and I did some fast calculations on it (you can download the Excel file here).
Basic results:
With 74.7% of the total vote counted (107,906 of 144,362), a total of 922 votes were changed (.85%). With 75.9% of Hillary’s vote recounted (45,912 of 60,503), a total of 305 votes changed for a net change of +25 votes. With 73.0% of Obama’s vote recounted (36,566 of 50,081), a total of 152 votes changed for a net change of +10 votes.
At this point, I don’t see a way – absent massive swings in very few districts – for this to change the result, and what isn’t apparent is the widespread shallow difference that would be suggested by the ‘Diebold Effect’ we talked about in the polls.
My email bulletin from Brad yesterday was headlined:
Yes, one precinct in Nashua (Row 80) did show a 7.4% swing for Hillary. But like the NY Times, outside the context of all the numbers, the number is meaningless.Note that in one district in Manchester, there was a 10% increase in votes for Hillary (row 64) – matched by a 10% increase for Obama. At this point, it’s an academically interesting project to analyze the errors and look at the outlier districts. But we’re talking about 130 votes out of 144,000.
That won’t stop the hysterics from claiming that the election was illegitimate or stolen. But it does explain why I was angry enough to use invective, and why I remain angry at people who devalue the hard work to do to secure elections.
I’ll do a longer post on why calm certainty matters soon.
Note: If someone has time to cross-reference the precincts in the spreadsheet with this list of precincts that used Diebold machines, it’d be fun…
Update: Added link to SoS results…
Update 2: After running through the two counties above, Kucinich has pulled the plug and isn’t going to fund any more counting. If more data is posted, I’ll add it to the table.
When you hold an election you need to account for and secure all the used, unused, spoiled, and absentee ballots immediately afterwards from each precinct or polling place. You need to put those ballots in boxes that are securely sealed so that any tampering can be easily deduced. You need to secure the memory cards preferably in or with the same boxes so they can’t be tampered with. You need to secure the voter sign in sheets, again so they can’t be tampered with.
These secure sealed boxes have to be signed out by both parties with date and time when they leave the polling place to be delivered for a recount or any other purpose.
They should be stored in a real vault with real security until the time comes for a recount or in lieu of one they are destroyed.
When you do a recount you have to compare the voter sign in sheet counts with the memory card counts and the paper ballot counts for each polling place. If the sign in sheets say X number of people came to vote and the machine says Y number voted you have a problem. If all three have different totals then you’re really screwed.
To date the SoS as I understand it has refused to let anyone use the sign in sheets for any comparisons and the memory cards in many precincts are nowhere to be found. He refuses to count blank ballots.
The containers used to send ballots back in NH are a motley assortment of the boxes they came in, old moving boxes, and god knows what they found laying around. These things are haphazardly retaped together and a “seal” is slapped on top that is little more than a label. The “seals” have glue akin to a post it note. One van piloted by a couple guys who identify themselves by the nicknames “Butch and Hoppy” followed by a single state trooper travels around the state picking up these ballot boxes.
The NH primary may not have been hacked but what is clear so far is it was run with little thought to ballot integrity. Now the SoS’s office seems determined to cover up the incompetence and make the recount a joke. That’s too bad. If someone wants to steal a NH election there’s no reason to believe they can’t succeed.
I generally supported the recount, but with very little enthusiasm. Why? Because its pretty clear from reading the Bradblog that the recount could never resolve any farflung “conspiracy”:http://machinist.salon.com/feature/2008/01/11/new_hampshire_vote/index.html that cannot be disproved.
My respect for Kucinich has probably never been higher; he put his money (or at least some of it) for pure principle. Note: “THE KUCINICH RECOUNT STOPPED THIS MORNING (JAN. 23, 2008) BECAUSE FUNDS RAN OUT”
Marc wrote:
“That won’t stop the hysterics from claiming that the election was illegitimate or stolen. But it does explain why I was angry enough to use invective, and why I remain angry at people who devalue the hard work to do to secure elections.”
You know, I’m really getting sick and tired of this, Marc, as you continue to try to backwards engineer reasons for your inaccurate and inappropriate attacks, by name, on me.
I have NEVER claimed the election was either “illegitimate or stolen”. To continue to make that inference is as dishonest as it is a disservice to both your readers, and the cause of Election Integrity. It also continues to undermine your OWN integrity.
I’ll not bother to correct you on how your analysis misrepresents the many problems found in NH (thanks to the hand count, that the state should have paid for and done in the first place!) because clearly, you’re not interested in accuracy, only in serving to save your own reputation through these series of posts.
For readers who are actually interested, I’ll simply refer you to some of BRAD BLOG’s notable coverage, indexed at:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5538
Along with a strong recommendation to read one of our most latest notable items here:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5586
Please read that, and then get back to me with your lectures about who is, and isn’t, serving the cause of Election Integrity in this country.
Brad – did I imagine the reference on your blog that Obama should have held off on conceding?
Or in the comments here that democracy itself was at stake?
Look, you are – obviously – free to be a passionate advocate. But as I’ve told you from our very first meeting, when you do everything in operatic terms, you leave a lot of room for those who doubt the – very real – problems to paint the whole issue as one led by people who see the world in operatic terms.
The issue has tipped in the right direction, but we’re not nearly home yet. You and I agree – strongly – about what need to be done. We disagree – equally strongly – over how best to make it happen.
A.L.
I’m reporting you both to the Canadian Human Rights Commission. You’re holding each other up to likely scorn (hopefully we’re not up to hatred).
bq. But as I’ve told you from our very first meeting, when you do everything in operatic terms, you leave a lot of room for those who doubt the – very real – problems to paint the whole issue as one led by people who see the world in operatic terms.
Or…when you interpret everything in hyperbolic and distorted terms, you might also have the same effect on people who otherwise might agree with your view….
bq. We disagree – equally strongly – over how best to make it happen.
Now, really, is there anyone who truly thinks that playing the role of the pesky little fly is a defensible or worthwhile effort toward making anything happen?
Wave your hand, Brad, and make it fly somewhere else…
Alan, adolescent irony and affect isn’t something I’m a stranger to. When you accomplish anything meaningful, let us all know, OK? Meanwhile you’re just being dull.
A.L.
Well, good. There were enough questions, that a recount was called for, and the result, a clean one, is reassuring for us all.
Trust but verify, and we have verified.
What was verified, hr? That there were few discrepancies between the machine tallies and the reported numbers, arguing against a systematic and directed effort to manipulate the voting results? Without being able to independently and reliably verify that a voters intent was accurately recorded to begin with (i.e., a “paper trail”), a recount of the 1’s and 0’s in a computer’s memory is virtually (pun intended) meaningless.
If the system allows for wide-scale voting manipulation, then it will be used for those purposes, guaranteed, even if it didn’t happen in this one case.
There is no trust in such a system, no ifs ands or buts.
Weren’t even the Diebold machines used in this instance using optically-scanned paper ballots? (Think Scantron test slips.) If there’s a paper saying “bubble in here for Clinton” and “bubble in here for Obama”, and someone bubbles in one of those, you should prooooobably allow that they accurately recorded their vote, huh?
(On the flip side, if someone’s not bright enough to accurately fill out a simple ballot, am I really worried about their vote? That’s a feature, not a bug!)
Alan, go do some homework before posting, OK? In this case – as I noted – they are not DRV machines, but as above, optical scan counters. So the NH SoS has been hand-counting paper ballots prepared by real voters.
Nice conceptual problem, but no relevance to reality. Play again?
A.L.
Yep, will do.
Just want to make sure that no one gets too complacent about e-voting in the cases where there is little or no paper trail, like, say, Ohio and Florida.