Aside from chain of custody problems, Kathy Dopp notes that ...

for NH quite a few more precincts would have to be recounted to be sure of the result. That's assuming that the paper being recounted isn't counterfeit, a distinct possibility I think

Her words:

The correct amount of a New Hampshire vote count audit to achieve 95%
confidence level is from 35% to 45% of New Hampshire's precincts -
from 82 to 106 of randomly-selected New Hampshire precincts out of a
total of 236 precincts.

snip. . .

The reason that
this New Hampshire race requires such a large audit is due to the
small race margin and the extreme variation in precinct sizes in New
Hampshire - from 5,542 votes to 1 vote cast in each precinct. See the
worksheet "95%Confidence-Level-Amt" in
http://electionarchive.org/ucvData/NH/Primary2008/NH2008Primary.xls

going along with the no discrepancies reported by the Obama or Edwards campaigns, poll workers, pretty much everyone, in hindsight. Can we move on, now?

Not that Kathy Dopp is the person I would choose to do it.

NO discrepancies? Did you read the other threads?
And don't give me the 'won't change the results' story, it doesn't matter.

so far no statistically relevant discrepancies have been uncovered, and with no chance of altering the results and nothing statistically relevant found, at some point you are just wasting Money. With a secret ballot, you can never have a fully accountable recount, at some point you have to trust that the ballots haven't been monkeyed with.

the powers-that-be in an election system run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations...until "chain of custody" on ballots, machines and code is pristine, and 100% of the ballots are counted in public view, as a check on machine error/fraud.

I'm sorry, but your view that "at some point you have to trust" these fuckers is upside-down, inside-out and backward, like Alice's Wonderland. Powers-that-be who are "counting" votes with "trade secret" code are guilty until proven innocent. In fact, that is the general rule for ALL elections in a real democracy. The burden is NOT on ordinary voters to prove who won; the burden is on election officials to prove, upfront, that it wasn't stolen--and that is even more true in a "trade secret" system. You seem to side with the "Red Queen," who orders all the white roses to be painted red, and yells "Off with their heads!" when her minions do it too slowly. Upside-down, inside-out, backward. Why should the white roses be painted red AT ALL? Why are the ballots not counted UPFRONT, everywhere, as an essential check on a highly riggable system? And why are the powers-that-be resisting this with all their might? They want to KEEP the power to paint the white roses red.

Power, Northzax. Power, money, greed, war. Climb out of the "rabbit hole" and back into the real, objective, rational world. Power is never to be trusted. Never! And IF we can restore integrity to our vote counting system, and recover vote counting that everyone can see and understand, THEN we have a boatload of OTHER kinds of corruption to correct, concerning which we should never trust any public official ever again. Trust = money, greed, massive looting and mass death. Distrust = good government, justice and peace - or at least the chance at those things.

Never ever use the word "trust" in regard to elections.

Don't know why - maybe money.

Why the hell don't we count ALL. THE. BALLOTS?!

There needn't be--and there shouldn't be--ANY uncertainty. And with a 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY code system - with the code owned and controlled by rightwing Bushites corporations - there is built-in severe uncertainty that cannot be dispelled, in my opinion, except by a full handcount of the ballots.

Why create anxiety in the citizenry? Why is there ANY doubt? Why does NH have NO audit - ZERO audit (automatic % recounted) - of a private, partisan-run, corporate system? Why do even the best of states do only a 1% audit, way below the threshold for detecting errors or fraud?

By comparison, Venezuela does a whopping 55% automatic handcount, to check for machine fraud - and they have an "open source" code system (anyone may review the code by which the votes are tabulated).

Why do we have far less verification of our elections than Venezuela?

Yet, back to the wall and pockets that don't jingle, he has put himself on the line for the integrity of the voting process.

We owe him for that. Respect, if nothing else.

Even if it's literally just a buck or two.

per conversations with is campaign staff, both yesterday and today, there is to be a FULL recount.

The cost to the campaign is about $65,000 plus about $200,000 in legal fees. Obama or Clinton could have had a full recount for $2000, due to the small margin of victory.

Guess they were not interested... Glad Kucinich, with no possible chance of overturning the results in his favor,cared enough about the integrity of the process to file.

No matter what he decides is possible, I'm very grateful to him.

Add in document copying costs, transportation, P.R., care and feeding of volunteers, and god knows what else, and it will certainly reach $300,000, if not more. This is obscene!

And all these election systems in our country, which have (or are now adding) a paper ballot, but are routinely NOT COUNTING THE BALLOTS (New Hampshire and many others), or (the better states) are counting only 1% as an automatic audit (woefully inadequate), are destroying our democracy--with uncertainty, doubt and chaos. Where are all our tax dollars going? Into vastly expensive electronic systems designed for election theft (run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY code, owned and controlled by Bushites), and WE are forced to PAY FOR any effort to verify the results of these goddamned machines?

I can't believe how much effort has gone into just re-establishing the principle of having a ballot TO count. Then they don't count them! Jeez.

New Hampshire may not reveal fraud, even if it has occurred. "Chain of custody" was broken, on ballots and other components of the system. And, given the stakes involved, as to corporate profit--both from our election system itself, and from who it (s)elects for office--and we're talking trillions and trillions of dollars over time--the incentive to commit fraud, and to hide it well--and to go to great lengths to do so--is very great.

And the problem could be entirely solved, by, a) banning paperless voting (still going on, in many states), and b) COUNTING ALL THE BALLOTS, upfront.

The resistance to this OBVIOUS NECESSITY is a measure of just how corrupt our election system and our political office holders have become. You want to know how fucked we are--and how much work we have yet to do to get unfucked by these fascists and corporatists? Just take a gander at our entirely fucked over vote counting system! It says it all.

They profit in every conceivable way--selling us billions of dollars in crapass technology, getting paid again to fix it or replace it when it breaks down, getting paid again to add ballots or other safety factors to assuage citizen outrage, getting paid on a continual basis for "maintenance" and emergency repairs, for a vote counting system that nobody but technical experts CAN understand or fix, then having us poor people pay to have the ballots actually counted, and then having their war stocks and their slave labor stocks improve, as the war/corporate office holders that they (s)elect do their thing. They profit on multiple fronts, and WE pay, and pay, and pay.

Well, I'll say one thing for the disaster known as the "Help America Vote Act." It is an eye-opener.

And one of things it opens eyes to, is the collusion of our own Democratic Party leadership. Really, I thought I was unshockable, until I learned that every Democrat in the U.S. Senate voted FOR it, except two. And it's rather a surprise who they were--Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer. Long story--and much thinking by me as to why. But basically I have concluded that it was to prevent NY voters--who live at the center of the nation's news media, and who are an ornery lot--from becoming alarmed, early on, and alerting the nation--by, for instance, pressuring the NY Times to expose it. The feds have been slow to pressure NY to switch from their old, reliable, and virtually unriggable lever voting machines to electronic voting. Now they're pressuring them--and New Yorkers are fighting it tooth and nail. But back during the 2002 to 2004 period, when it was entrenched nationwide, NY was kept out of the big push, and Clinton's and Schumer's votes against HAVA--in the confidence that everyone else was voting for it, and it would pass--were part of that strategy. The alternative is to believe that Clinton and Schumer have some special, high-minded love for democracy and for the "rabble" (ordinary voters, the poor, etc.), and that is demonstrably untrue.

They passed HAVA in the same month as the Iraq War Resolution. October 2002. You want a date for the end of our democracy? That's it.

I didn't expect DK to be able to win the nomination, but I hoped he would represent the ideas that I believe in and do it well. You couldn't ask for a better spokesman. He's much better this year than he was last year, and he along with Edwards has been responsible for keeping certain issues front and center, even when the candidates and the MSM would have buried them, and the voting mess is just one of those issues.

WE HAVE TO HAVE PAPER BALLOTS AND AUDITED ELECTIONS OR WE DON'T HAVE A DEMOCRACY, PERIOD.