Ok so this Salon writer, Farhad Manjoo, admits Hillary Clinton did much better in Diebold-counted areas than she did in hand-counted areas.
It's simple! He says, areas counted by hand do not have machines because they can't afford them. Those are poor areas, and since Obama does better among low-income people, it's understandable that he won there.
Officials in charge of small counties are more likely to choose to manually count their ballots. But if you've got 10,000 or 20,000 voters in your county -- like in Manchester or Concord -- you'll use machines. Money is also a factor; poorer places are less likely to have the resources for machines. Governmental efficiency might also matter -- some elections officials may not have gotten around, yet, to adopting machines -- as might local infrastructure, or any number of other factors.
But, of course, the same demographics would also affect voting results. It's likely, for example, that people in small places or poor places would vote very differently from people in large places or rich places -- and, therefore, variances in the result that look like they were caused by voting-machine fraud might actually only be the product of normal regional differences.
Indeed, there's plenty of evidence showing that Obama did well in hand-count areas because those places were Obama strongholds. Consult the second table on this page, the one that shows hand-count vs. machine-count results in counties with fewer than 750 votes.
There, you see Obama got a blowout in hand-count areas -- 39.59 percent to Clinton's 33.64 percent. Clinton did better than Obama in machine-count places, but her margin is smaller than in other places in the state: just 37.37 percent to Obama's 35.04 percent.
Even more interesting is the third table on this page, which s
But there is a HUGE PROBLEM with this analysis.
There is no evidence that low-income people were pro-Obama.
From the
CNN exit poll in New Hampshire:
People earning $15,000 or less: Clinton 49%, Obama 37%
$15,000-$30,000: Clinton 50%, Obama 39%
$30,000-$50,000: Clinton 44%, Obama 32%
$50,000-$75,000: Obama 37%, Clinton 32%
$75,000-$100,000: Obama 42%, Clinton 36%
$100,000-$150,000: Obama 43%, Clinton 33%
As you can see, Clinton dominated among lower income voters. Salon's weird piece does nothing but strengthen doubts about the differences of the scanner-counted results vs. hand-counted ones.
Oh yeah and by the way, Bush really beat Kerry in OH, the writer says.
Was there fraud? i don't know. But if you are trying to settle the issue don't use twisted poor vs. rich claim as an excuse.
http://machinist.salon.com/feature/2008/01/11/new_hampshire_vote/index.html