7 Point Swing for Clinton Over Obama in NH's Diebold Precincts

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5540

BLOGGED BY Brad Friedman ON 1/10/2008 1:47AM
7 Point Swing for Clinton Over Obama in NH's Diebold Precincts
Analaysis Shows Candidates 'Positions Swapped' Where Ballots Counted by Hand Versus 'Counted' by Machine...

It's been an exhausting day, as a few folks in the world are finally beginning to open their eyes, and realize that not counting ballots, and trusting instead, in error-prone, hackable machines for "faith-based results" doesn't make a lot of sense. Particularly in an election for which nobody --- and I mean nobody --- has come up with a legitimate explanation for the surprising results. Oh, there's been plenty of speculation, but no actual facts. So why it's so difficult for folks to realize that the biggest unknown here --- what the ballots actually said on them --- has gone wholly unexamined in 80% of NH, continues to allude me.

That point alludes Tribune Media Services columnist Bob Koehler too. So I hope you read his eye-opening take on that for Thursday's corporate mainstream papers.

As promised, in my long, and much-updated original piece from last night, first expressing concerns and asking questions about the NH results, folks today have been looking at the precinct numbers to compare the difference between those which "counted" ballots on Diebold op-scan systems (for about 80% of NH's voters), versus those that still hand-count ballots in the Granite State (about 20% of the votes).

Ben Moseley of The Contrarian, most succinctly covers what other folks have found as well today. Namely, a 7 point overall bump for Clinton over Obama where the machines were used instead of hand-counts...

I just spent the last two hours putting together a spreadsheet of the Democratic results of the NH primary for each town with almost all but a few towns reporting, and the results were somewhat surprising.
...
I say "somewhat" because some people will say this entirely foreseeable. What the informal statistics show is that Hillary Clinton received a 4.5% boost in towns using Diebold voting machines compared to towns that didn't. Meanwhile, Obama was hurt in these towns showing a 2.5% decrease in the Diebold towns.

Moseley responsibly notes, however, that there could well be other reasons for Clinton's popularity in areas where Diebold's machines are used, in lieu of actually counting ballots. For example, hand-counting in NH is generally done in the more rural areas and smaller precincts. Perhaps Obama is more popular, or Clinton less, in such areas for any number of reasons.

The comparisons are only anecdotally useful for that reason. However, had the hand-counted results matched up similarly to those in Diebold areas, it might well have been a sign that there was little to worry about. (Even if I personally think not counting ballots is always something to worry about. But that's just me, one of those whacky pro-Democracy fellers, I guess.)

Moseley a blogger and political science student from American University, writes about Clinton's Diebold bump: "Does this show election fraud? Right now I'm not sure, but the possibility definitely remains and must not be taken off the table."

Then, in two updates, he offers a coupla more eye-brow raisers...


Update: Some more statistics from the data shows that Obama in non-Diebold towns garnering 38.7% of the vote to Clinton's 36.2%. The results in Diebold towns show the exact opposite: Clinton with 40.7% of the vote and Obama with 36.2%. Not only are the positions swapped but the informal statistics have the second place candidate holding 36.2% in both cases, which could easily be a pure coincidence. What doesn't make a lot of sense to me right now and this could be a mathematical mistake on my part is where Clinton got the extra 2% of votes in Diebold towns. All the other numbers almost exact for every candidate, even Edwards who recieved 17% of the vote in Diebold towns compared to 17.6% in non-Diebold towns. That still doesn't make up for the extra 2% vote Clinton is receiving when she leads in certain towns compared to when Obama has the lead.

Update II: Another thing to keep in mind when looking at these statistics is that the Diebold machines create a 7 point difference (+4.5 for Clinton, -2.5 for Obama) which is exactly what the polls had been predicting. Again, I'm not explicitly stating there has been fraud, but in a supposed democracy such as ours, skepticism is a virtue and necessity.

"In a supposed democracy such as ours, skepticism is a virtue and necessity."

Bless you, Mr. Moseley. For that, and for your good work on the numbers, you win the BRAD BLOG Patriot of the Week Award (if we had one.)

There are more folks pouring over the numbers, and we'll shout if we find anything else interesting. Though having ballots that were actually counted by someone, would be the most interesting thing of all.

I have seen/heard so many contradictory views of the data. Of course, I don't have a lot of time to dig in and research this more thoroughly. I disturbs me greatly that the question can even be legitimately raised ... but you have legitmately raised it. While obviously I would like my preferred candidate to win, it is far more vital that we all have confidence in the integrity of the process, and that the confidence be well founded.

This is why Edwards supports open source voting systems.

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=142&Itemid=962

Not sure anyone else has come out for this, but I hope they all do. Soon.

First of all, every vote in New Hampshire is cast on paper ballots. There are NO "electronic voting machines."

Some precincts count the paper ballots by hand. Those tend to be in the rural north and west, which is also where "anti-establishment" Howard Dean did better than "establishment" John Kerry in 2004. The precincts that count the paper ballots using an optical scanner tend to be in the more urban south and east. They also happen to be where "establishment" John Kerry did better than "anti-establishment" Howard Dean.

There's no conspiracy here, just some nut on the Internet trying to cook up a story and keep his blog relevant.

Every vote is cast on paper, New Hampshire voters don't like being told whom to vote for, polling stopped about two and three days before the election, and the places that tend to support the anti-establishment candidate tended to do so again.

Election reform is a serious issue, but this particular discrepancy, which can be adequately explained by differing demographics, actually does a disservice to the otherwise extremely compelling argument for election reform.

Can you explain how differing demographics would explain this particular discrepancy? Is the voting preference (Clinton vs. Obama) of precincts correlated with their vote counting methodology?

Courtesy of DUer BlueDogDemocratNH

questions and guessed pretty much what was a possible explanation.

What you ar left with is an enduring possibility of fraud. "We would not have been worried if". But in THAT case, there might have been fraud with no one raising alarms. What is it? We want to lay out a an area where we won't look for fraud? The entire point is that we must be prepared to audit election results NOT verify theories after the fact. The either or is very alarming. Either make things look even and safe or someone will raise a stink regardless of proof of fraud or not. There is a danger to exit polls and anything else.

Now we move into many states no campaign has resources to police and remember the point. Our elections are insecure. Why get screwed by useless attitudes? Do something to verify which would challenge them at least with the danger of discovery or trust the vote. The balance sheet shows we can have the pie in the face and eat it too and simply signal we have been had, or we wouldn't have said anything if we had been had in a nicer way.

I don't know about internet conspiracies or fraud cabals but there is specific subtext which does not concern many of the parties to this debate. Barack's team may be trying to get his base mad just as Hillary roused hers. I for one see nothing so politically terrible about that unless people keep at it too long and too far. Reno's case in Florida was a lot more clear and she was utterly snookered. Even in defeat this game is still in play. A hell of a way to run a democracy.

NH uses Diebold optiscans, so there is paper. Also I think about 40% of the vote is hand counted. It's the other 60% (Some claim 80%) that's the problem.

BUT (and this has been said a thousand times on DU I'm sure)

IT IS JUST AS EASY TO HACK THE OPTISCANS AS IT IS THE TOUCHSCREENS!!!!!!!!!

If you have paper AND YOU DO A GOOD AUDIT, I'd agree with you.

In this case, who knows what the actual results are? Unless there's an audit, nobody can be sure. And that's the whole point. If you can't be assured that somebody like Ken Hajjar is not rigging the election, it's not possible to have a democracy. It takes the CONSENT of the governed. When the votes are counted in secrecy WITHOUT VERIFICATION YOU CAN'T HAVE A DEMOCRACY.

It's as simple as that. 2 + 2 = 4. It has nothing to do with Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or John Edwards or any other candidate. It's a TOTALLY NON-PARTISAN ISSUE.

See my post about Ken Hajjar:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x489137

contention that the hand counted municipalities are more anti-establishment than the machine counted municipalities. In doing so, you make the implicit assumption that 2004's machine count was accurate. That's just more circular reasoning.

:kick:

Merits a closer look, because there's no reason that hand-counted ballots (counted by many hands) should diverge so much from those counted by machine.