NH Recount finds missing votes!

Posted on January 17, 2008

disparities between the original counts from the Diebold optical-scan machine and the hand inspections seem to be occurring in many wards, and for many candidates.

Shocking - the NH Dem recount found that the Diebold machines missed counting some votes. Is it a massive conspiracy? Does it prove fraud? Does it indict the whole system?

Hardly!

Having been part of NH recount efforts over the years - I expected exactly the results that have been seen. Not much change and mostly a few extra votes added to each candidate.

The optical readers look for properly marked ballots - they expect the oval or box or whatever to be filled with a dark black mark. If the mark is not dark enough, or not complete, the machine cannot read it as a vote. Look at the illustration:

The law in NH says in a recount, if a person looking at the ballot can clearly determine the voter’s intent, the vote counts. Even though the machine might have kicked out anything except the completely filled oval, all the others would get counted.

The recount is done with two or more observers, usually one for each candidate involved, who do not get to touch the ballots. A third (and sometimes fourth) person, who is working for the Sec of State, takes the ballots one at a time holds it up for all to see, states what he reads - a vote for whom or no vote. If any of the observers protest the call that ballot is set aside for further review and not tallied. Each uncontested vote is tallied - often by more than one person.

At the end of each batch of ballots, the observers agree on the count of votes and the tally and the Sec of State decides the contested ballots - any that are still contested are further set aside and are considered later - only if the number of unresolved contested ballots at the end of the recount is greater than the difference between the final results for the candidates involved - in other words, if there are 5 ballots that are contested and the difference between the uncontested votes is six the contested ballots are irrelevant to the final outcome and are packed up with the other ballots and all are re-sealed in boxes and returned to the State Archives storage facility.

So in the recount of Manchester, they found Hillary got 46 votes that the machines did not count in her favor while Obama got only 14.

As a percentage - that is less than a one percent change, leading me to the conclusion that the Diebold machines counted with an accuracy rate of over 99% and it is not the machines fault but the voter’s not following the instructions.

So fraud? No - none so far. Vote swapping by the machines? No both candidates gained a small number of votes. A problem with the NH use of Diebold machines? Certainly none to be seen yet.

Update: I just noticed that the Democracy for NH site has this incorrect statement:

Numbers are now being posted from both the Democratic and Republican hand-counts in the NH Primary Election contest.

The Republican recount has not started, the GOP votes on the recount report from the SOS office are the write-in votes on Democrat ballots and the biggest percentage gains are there but then that has nothing to do with the machines since all write-in votes are hand counted. These picked up votes are mostly due to poll workers being unable to make out the name written in. It is all irrelevant since neither 143 nor 167 votes for McCain on the DEM ballots will not get him ahead of Hillary in thr DEM primary race.

» Filed Under dirty tricks, voter fraud, Democrats, general nonsense, New Hampshire, Media Bias, NH Politics