Recount will cost about $55,600, says N.H. official

I don't know about the other guy.

obama could have asked for a recount at a considerable discount (or i have heard free) on here. But instead he lets kucinich pay a fortune(comparitivly in campaign funds) to do the recount. This is a time for Obama to shine and he would be the only one who would gain from a recount.

If he did, I'd all sorts of lose respect for him.

you dont find it a little odd that the outcome was different then the pre polling results? I mean just for safety's sake you don't think we should actually "hand count" the votes then leave it to a machine?

You're getting your recount and all, so get back to me and let me know how it works out for ya, k?

but I do know alot of people think their might have been funny buisness. Personally can you really put a price tag on peoples confidance in the election process. I look at it like this, kucinich is verifying the votes for the benifit of the people who do not feel that it was completly correct.

Putting aside the notion of fraud, machines make mistakes. I'm all in favor of automatic audits of random precincts as a safety check.

However, after the recount verifies the results within, say, a +/- 1 margin of error, I'm expecting a slew of posts about how the ballots weren't secure, the recount was rigged, etc. I hope I'm wrong.

They probably had to because so many ballots were stolen.

This issue will become a "classic" discussion and will linger for 10-20 years minimum, maybe longer...

when they're programmed correctly.

Been to Vegas lately?

> However, after the recount verifies the results within,
> say, a +/- 1 margin of error, I'm expecting a slew of posts
> about how the ballots weren't secure, the recount was rigged,
> etc. I hope I'm wrong.

The backup rant is already in place; people have already
been posting here about how the "Chain of Custody" of our
NH Primary ballots has been compromised. No evidence, of
course, just "concerns".

Tesha

the real fairytale:

--All polls had Obama winning big - avg 8 %
--Zogby poll into Monday afternoon - still had Obama ahead
--Pollsters had Obama on target - as well as other candidates - Just Clinton wrong.
--Clinton campaign stopped Obama supporters from entering polling in NH big cities where Clinton won AND where there was Diebold scanners.
--Clinton's own internals had her losing - from Penn, the poll genius.
--MSNBC's own exits had Obama winning.
--She had to come up with 27k (8% of total votes (275k) of UNPOLLED, UNLIKELY voters that even her own polling didn't know about.
--People did not switch from Obama - he got the votes he thought he would get.
--Despite Obama crowds that dwarfed Hillary crowds he didn't share in the windfall of
unpolled, unlikely voters?
--Exit polls showed a relative split between O & H in last minute deciders.
--Polls showing O leading did not include cell-phone-only voters, predominately younger, who
are O supporters - meaning he probably led by even more than shown.
--The myth about people running to her aid over the crying jag -- the people who were actually there
at the time voted for Obama. Don't buy it.


ON the other hand. If you are going to rig an election, you are probably going to
have a plan to cover it up in a recount.

I applaud the recount and if their is foul play i hope it is found out.

People lie to pollsters.

New Hampshire has a long tradition of lying to pollsters
prior to the primary.

But people especially lie to pollsters when the question
essentially boils down to "Would you vote for the black guy?"
but the vote then takes place as a secret ballot and not a
public caucus.

Tesha

AND only lie that they voted for Obama and not Clinton AMD simultaneously lied that they weren't going to vote? All other voters, including Obama's told the truth?

It was almost like they were intentionally making it seem like Obama had a big lead, so that they could spin the story of the "huge comeback" for Hillary. I always thought that New Hampshire was going to be close, even after Iowa. I didn't believe the polls that had a humongous swing towards Obama.

on the line, who "had it spot on" for the other candidates, purposely
manipulated their polls, all of them the same, just to give the media
something to talk about?

Pre-election polls are not as accurate as exit polls. It's a case of asking somebody what they're going to have for lunch on Thursday as opposed to asking what they just ate for lunch today.

I am one of many Obama donors who will be more than glad to donate to Kucinich if he asks for funds for the recount. As a matter of fact, I'm going down through this thread to see if such a request has been made.

It should be a verification that the scanners work properly. We need to know for ALL candidates and our system.

but obama could easily just go "hay kucinich, I like you and respect what your doing, let me request the recount so you dont have to use alot of your already depleted small funds"

I think that would be more fodder for the media as opposed to being seen as a patriotic thing to do.

I would personally give money if I hear of someone trying to help pay for it, and I'm sure thousands of others would too.

because people from outside the state aren't happy?

of NH that paid?

if you are within two percentage points (maybe three) of the lead, you can request a recount for a pro-forma fee of $2,500. otherwise, you pay the entire amount. Of course, if you win the race, based on the recount, you do get your money back.

and, if Obama requested the recount, it would be to determine who the people of New Hampshire actually voted for, not to fulfill some wet dream for PR.

in many places, if the margin of victory is small enough (I don't know the NH rules) recounts are automatic.

and is it really a wet dream if alot of americans are actually questioning it?

I think three, but maybe two, then there is a flat fee of $2,500 to request a recount. (wait a minute, seems like I said this already) if there is a recount, we have learned it will cost about $55,000 to recount the votes in the GOP primary, and there are 20% more ballots to count in the Democratic primary (233k to 284k, approx) you can anticipate that it will cost about 20% more than $55,000, or roughly $70,000. so someone is paying for the rest of the recount, right? or do you think all those people should work for free? So who's paying, do you figure? if it's not the candidate, and it's not the party, it's the taxpayers. right?

since you put it so condecendingly is, is that your conclusion or is that how it is? I know someone has to pay for it and is that how it would work or how you think it would work.

that is my reading of New Hampshire law, and extrapolation from other numbers given.

so if the recount shows that an automatic recount was in order, you don't pay. seems reasonable.

Do you know what Diebold's brethren corporation said, in the FL-13 case? This was an 06 Congressional election in which ES&S voting machines 'disappeared' 18,000 votes for Congress in Democratic areas, in an election 'won' by the Bushite by only about 350 votes. When the lawyers for the Democrat (Christine Jennings) took the matter to court, and requested to review ES&S's 'trade secret' code--to try to find out what happened to those 18,000 votes--ES&S refused and argued that their "right" to profit from our elections with their "trade secret" code trumps the right of the voters to know how their votes are counted--even in a major stinker of a vote count as in FL-13! And the Jeb judged agreed!

There are many dates that one could assign as the death of our democracy. I tend to favor October 2002, the passage of the "Help American Vote Act" (the $3.9 billion e-voting boondoggle that most Democrats voted FOR), in the same month as the Iraq War Resolution (and closely related to it). That WAS the fascist coup, in my opinion. But any American judge agreeing that a private corporation's profits override the public's right to an accurate, transparent vote count, is at least another nail in the coffin. What have we become, that this ruling did not provoke outrage throughout the land, and among our Democratic Party leaders in Congress, who have the power to right this wrong, and have done NOTHING?

Diebold and ES&S have made billions of dollars from U.S. taxpayers, for these crapass, extremely insecure and insider riggable electronic voting systems. They can pay to count the goddamned votes! And, in a just country, they would be paying. And they would also be in jail. This is the most incredible corporate fraud in our history. This is a FRAUDULENT voting system, on its face. No matter the 18,000 "disappeared" votes in Florida, or the "x" number of 'disappeared' Obama (and other?) votes in New Hampshire, or the 4 million 'disappeared' votes on November 2, 2004. The system is a crock, a fraud, a scam, a boondoggle, and an assault upon our democracy like no other we have ever seen.

should Diebold still pay, for delivering the service they were hired to provide within the statistically allowed margin of error?

to be in debates, he can afford to pay for an unnecessary recount.

I'm waiting 'til November to have my cake.

God, when I think of all the good that money could do elsewhere, instead of being thrown away for zealotry.

and welcome back OMC!

There is literally ZERO reason to warrant a recount here, and the only reason it is requested is due to the zealotry of some who cry foul no matter what. I can appreciate the seriousness of our election flaws and irregularities, and firmly believe we need election reform. But I DO NOT respect those who cry foul or fraud every chance they get, when there is no rational nor legitimate reason to do so. That's just zealotry and alarmism, and makes us look like fools. It also weakens the argument for serious election reform in my opinion, since it turns off society as a whole to the concept, since it then becomes a case of 'cried wolf' instead of something legitimate. This recount, in my opinion, is even more distasteful than the charges of fraud and rigging that flew around when Cynthia Mckinney legitimately lost her bid for re-election.

This NH recount is a waste of time and resources, and I ABSOLUTELY find it to be a huge waste of money that could be such better spent elsewhere.

And thanks, it's good to be back a little. :) I just gotta make sure I don't go toooo too far this time hehe.

go educate yourself at www.bradblog.com

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and if crying foul is the only way to get ballots 100% handcounted I don't see an issue. Oh and btw I do not consider it a waste of resources to insure peoples confidance in every facet of the election process.

tally the votes are ALL EXTREMELy different than the counties which hand counted the votes. The machines used have failed every single test. They should not have been sued. But once they were, a hand recount is absolutely necessary. The discrepancy is large. It should not be. Nor should exit polls ever be different than actual votes. Whenever they are, a hand count is necessary. Exit polls are pretty much infallible. They take all variances into account. They really can't be off by more than 3%. When they are, you assume the vote count was wrong, not the exit polls.
In Ohio, in 2004, the counties which hand counted varied enormously from those machine counted. In the same way as in New Hampshire. as if the percentages were simply reversed.
And clint Curtis, in his sworn congressional testimony, (and after passing 3 lie detector tests)told us that he was hired in Florida to write software which would exactly flip the votes. It took Gore's votes and gave them to Bush, and vice versa. the software was undetectable, in the hands of the republican party (Tom Feeney), may have been used, and the software code destroys itself after use, so detection is absolutely impossible. He said it takes about ten minutes to write such a simple computer code.
so why would you not want the votes counted by hand?

It's true that the results in op-scan municipalities (not "counties") differ from the results in hand-count munis -- as they usually do in New Hampshire. No one has offered a serious reason to attribute that to fraud in past elections, so it's kind of weird to start right now.


When I coined the term "exit poll fundamentalism," some folks thought I was being gratuitously snarky. But here it is.

There is No Such Thing as a "pretty much infallible" poll, including an exit poll.


Say whaaa? Which counties were those?


No, Clint Curtis said that his employer asked him to write a prototype of such software, for a graphical user interface; there is no way in hell that that prototype was used. Curtis also said that he was asked to do this in such a way that the change was undetectable in the source code, but he replied that that was impossible.

If you want to talk about how scanners can be hacked, there are much better talking points.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/1/11/91642/8304/344/434942

I haven't had time to run the analysis for every primary, but I glimpse similar divergences as far back as 1992.

I know it's considered sort of hip around here (ETA: by some!) to accuse Democratic candidates of fraud at the drop of a hat, but it really doesn't work for me.

We're supposed to have our knickers in a twist because the 2008 result is so different from pre-election polls. But in 2004, it wasn't. (Also in 2004, there was over a week between Iowa and New Hampshire.) You can choose to believe that Dean had a late surge and Kerry somehow canceled it out, but you've offered no reason why the rest of us should.

You didn't even mention the 2000 result.

So, basically, your point of view seems to be that the op-scan results ought to match the hand-count results because... well, because. And if they don't, then some Democrat must have stolen votes. :shrug:

before Diebold et all came along.

You can choose your own reality, but you can't make the rest of us live there with you. In your reality, election results have always reflected the polls, until some unspecified time when the machines took over. In our reality, survey researchers spend much of their time thinking about all the ways that polls can and do go wrong.

Pretty famously, Bob Dole was beating George Bush in the 1988 New Hampshire Republican primary, until the actual primary. But hey, that was probably rigged for Bush. How about the 2000 primary, where the polls showed a close race between John McCain and W., and McCain won by 18 points? Did the Bushites rig that just to add to the drama?

In 1984, NCPP records six national presidential polls, with projected margins ranging from 10 to 27 points. At the time, which one did you think was right?

here's a link to the correct information:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8112825559202389150

he wrote it, gave it to his boss who was hired to write it by the then head of the republican house, Tom Feeney.
It was written so that it would "eat itself", and be undetectable after the election.

His testimony is very clear and precise. You didn't listen.

For correct info re exit polling, read Dr. Steven Freeman. That is his specialty. no time to look it up right now.
I'm sure he has a website. The introduction to one of his books probably covers it. it is always the first thing he points out as a speaker.

Ohio info is available by googling.

That could be a serious charge. You might want to double-check it.

Nothing there about the code eating itself. Somewhere around the 53-minute mark of Uncounted, he says something to the effect that it couldn't be hidden in the source code. If he said something else in his congressional testimony, well, someone else will have to sort it out. Maybe you are confusing the compiled code with self-eating source code?

As an exit poll expert, "Dr. Steven Freeman" makes a great organizational dynamics scholar. I've seen no sign that he knew anything about exit polls before the 2004 election, and I can't say that I think he knows much now. Something you might want to ask yourself: if Freeman is right about the exit polls, why aren't survey researchers saying so? Are they all in on the plot? When these folks said that the exit poll discrepancies "do not constitute prima facie evidence for fraud in the current election," were they blowing smoke, or did they know something Freeman doesn't? All those political scientists who write about Bush's victory in 2004, are they liars, are they afraid to face the truth , or do they actually have some clue what they are talking about?

!!!!!!!!!!!!! Watch his testimony!
He explains it best.
It is not self-eating source code. Watch him explain it. It is as clear as day.
It is a code that you add by activating a key on a keyboard, or any other way, which later eats itself so it cannot be detected. That is what he did and what any hacker would do.


He is saying in your quote that they way to protect yourself from election fraud is to check the source code before the computer is used.
As you know, Diebold has legally amintained the right to its source code being a "trade secret".
Open source code is one way to prevent fraud.
We do not have open source code in the United States.

What I was tlaking about is that when a hacker hacks computer software, any decent hacket makes the hack undetectable. The hack, or alteration in the computer code, disappears Clint says he amkes it "eat itself", sot hat it can not be detected AFTER the election, which is now. Which menas you can not prove the computer (and the code) was hacked into.

I sat through the whole video again, just to make sure. Curtis does say in the Q&A (around the 7:10 mark) that if election-stealing code is running in modules, "you can make the code actually eat itself." But that isn't what you said. You wrote:

He never testified (or said anywhere else, as far as I know) that his prototype was written so that it would "eat itself." You're offering a freehand hash, which gives the completely inaccurate impression that Curtis was hired by Yang specifically to write a program that would steal the 2000 election (right down to the mention of "Gore's votes," which I've never seen Curtis say), and may have been used to do that -- and it took him ten minutes. It's hard to sort out which parts of your statement were misleading and which parts were flat-out wrong, but the whole thing is sloppy.

Do you understand that a little Visual Basic routine that demonstrates the concept of a hacked touchscreen interface is nowhere near what would be done to steal an election by writing vote-switching code in modules that eat themselves? It's a pretty bizarre confusion. We already know on other grounds that the machines can be hacked; Curtis's little VB routine is mostly a distraction.

I corrected you on three points, and I stand by what I wrote about all three. I'm looking forward to your support for exit poll pretty-much-infallibility, Ohio hand counting, and/or Curtis's self-destroying Gore-robbing prototype -- or, perhaps, an admission that maybe some of that wasn't quite right.

The practice with Diebold optiscans is to drop the actual ballot into a box, where it gathers dust and is never seen again--except for, in the best of states, a 1% audit--and the "votes" are turned into electrons which are conveyed via Diebold memory cards to a Diebold central electronic tabulator, which is also run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by a known a partisan Republican corporation. And then these extremely manipulable electrons tell us who won.

I was unable to find out if NH does any audit at all, but, from comments here at DU, I gather that they do not. So, NONE of the votes have been counted--except for the handcounted paper ballots in the rural areas and a few pockets of handcounting in urban areas (about 20% of the state), which show an Obama win.

There are four indications of a wrong outcome.

1. The system is inherently non-transparent and not to be trusted.
2. All pre-election polls--including Clinton's own internal polls--showed Obama way ahead.
3. The real exit polls data (not the adjusted data) showed an Obama win.
4. The handcount (real) vs. the machine count (non-existent--based on secret code) showed an Obama win.

Show me a photograph of the optiscan ballots being counted, OperationMindCrime. Show me anecdotes of NH election monitors who SAW optiscan votes being counted. They were NOT counted--or, at best (if I'm wrong about an audit)--only 1% were counted (wholly inadequate in a 'TRADE SECRET" system, in which a minimum of 5% to 10% audit is needed to detect fraud).

But you said "the votes"--presumably meaning all the votes. All the votes were NOT counted. At best, 99% of the optiscan votes (80% of the total, and those favoring Hillary Clinton) were NOT counted.

And, as far as I'm concerned, until 100% of the actual ballots are counted, there is uncertainty. And there needn't be, and shouldn't be, ANY uncertainty about who won.

counted. Noone knows (except for one very republican corporation) what the software does. We only know that every hacking test succeeded. Every single test.

the hand-counted votes show a completely different result than the machine-counted votes, and then you decide to count the rest of the votes by hand to make sure that this statistical anomaly is indeed possible? Something like that?

an Obama win, just as the machine-counted ballots in the agregate] show a HRC win.

But if you look at them precinct by precinct, you see a fair number of precincts where HRC won hands down and a fair number where Obama won. This is true for hand-counted precincts and for machine-counted precincts: To be clear, HRC won, by a wide margin, some hand-counted precincts, and Obama won, by a wide margin, some machine-counted precincts.

But the frequency varied. Machine-counted precincts tended to give the win to HRC; hand-counted precincts tended to give the win to Obama. In other words, given a precinct's results, you can't say with a great degree of accuracy which counting method was used, but you can say it's more likely to have been one method or the other: 15% for HRC, 48% for Obama, and it's probably a hand-counted precinct, but there's stilla good chance it's a machine-counted precinct. This is just a long-winded way of saying that hand-counted precincts did *not* show a completely different result, taken individually.

What somebody should do is post a map of NH showing which precincts 'went for' either Obama or HRC, the vote-counting method used in each precinct, and something about the demographics--income and/or education, for example. I've heard folk from NH say that the distribution makes sense, that (crucially only) most pro-Obama precincts had a given demographic, were in certain areas, and used hand-counting. But I'd like to see it for myself.

:bounce:

Oh how I've missed them... :rofl:

But the rofl guy is the centerpiece of your reality-based community.

Hey, here's an idea; educate yourself:

http://www.pollster.com/blogs/new_hampshire_so_what_happened.php

Me, I like my vote to be counted accurately. One quality control check is not too much to ask.

:eyes:

But this ain't no '04 national election we're talking about here.

Otherwise it's ALL a sham, which it pretty much is, but at least we can try and expose those crooked bastards who own the voting machines!

Some zealots will ALWAYS have questions. That doesn't make the concept legitimate.

Now as I wrote earlier, I really have said what I need to say here and don't want to take this issue further than necessary. When I do, it makes it seem that I'm far more passionate about my position then in reality I really am. I did want to respond to your initial reply though, since it was dealing with 04 and I wanted to make my position clear on that.

Maybe you should stop listening to Faux news. Because that is obviously their kind of spin.

ballots to be counted. And they are not counted, in this system generally. Even in systems with a recountable ballot, 99% to 100% of the ballots are never counted, and we are told who won by machines run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing, partisan corporations, with CEO's who are Bush/Cheney campaign chairs, or funder who also fund extremist 'christian' causes. And about one third of the country doesn't even have a ballot TO count (or recount). True of South Carolina. True of Nevada. Upcoming primaries. No paper trail whatsoever. One third of the country is completely non-transparent. The rest is only slightly visible, but nobody bothers much with the actual ballots.

How can we trust the outcome of our Democratic primary to overtly partisan Bushite corporations? It's bad enough for people to have blind faith in election officials, but to have blind faith in Diebold and ES&S is just plain nuts.

But instead of descrying this state of affairs--that poor people have to donate money just to get some votes counted, and are even then cheated of a full recount--you ridicule those making the effort.

How can you tolerate this grave violation of the most basic principle of democracy, transparent vote counting? And why are you opposing those who want some light shed on our elections?

It should be the rule that all ballots are counted, not the exception. Do you agree with this? Or do you trust Diebold and ES&S to tell us who won, with virtually no actual counting of our ballots? And if you trust them, could you explain the basis for your trust?

And this fundamental principle of democracy--transparent vote counting--seems to me to have special urgency in a situation of an unexpected outcome. I don't support Obama--not thus far anyway--but I certainly would like the know--and we all have a right to know--if he actually won. His failure to ask for a recount is not an argument that a recount is not needed. A recount--a full 100% count--is ALWAYS needed, in non-transparent, secretly coded, private, corporate-run vote tabulation. And it is no surprise to me that a Democratic politician doesn't challenge the people who can make or break him with "trade secret" code. I've too often seen the ravages of this corporate control affect the courage, and even the sanity, of our Democrats. (Really, it is literally nuts for Democrats to trust Diebold and ES&S, unless they are in their pockets in some way.)

You treat this as a triumph for your point of view--in favor of non-transparent vote counting. But it is no triumph that Obama has not challenged it, nor most other Democrats. It is a tragedy--an immensely disturbing and saddening tragedy. How can you gloat over it? I don't understand.

I don't think we should throw 70,000 dollars away for a primary election in which there is zero reason to believe rigging took place.

We can agree to disagree on that, but I do personally find the 'cry wolf' attitude some have towards every single election result, to be quite alarmist and damaging to the concept of fraud to elections that REALLY may have had such.

They should request a recount whenever there is any doubt. Otherwise, why are we working so hard for them? Who does the party represent, if not we the people, who want every vote correctly counted.
btw, I sent a donation to kucinich for the recount.

I love kooch and respect what he is doing. He is not doing a recount in hopes of getting higher numbers, he does not believe that their was something going on. He knows their was a huge differance in the before and after numbers and wants america to feel that we did everything we could to verify that we did elect and go through the election process as openly and as transparently as possible.

crying shame that we have to pay 24 cents per ballot to get these corrupt, Dieobld-lobbied election officials to DO THEIR GODDAMNED JOB!

And I'm not sure of the specific rules in NH, but generally a recount does not mean a recount--it means a check of 3% of the ballots in selected precincts.

------------

I also want to comment on another thread by BuyingThyme, a poll asking, did I think that that Hillary's crying was a plausible context for the vote flip in NH?

No, I don't. I think it has a Rovian smell--that is, a narrative written for the war profiteering corporate news monopolies to "explain" a pre-determined election outcome.

It may be that these systems of corporate news manipulation operate on auto-pilot by now, to serve corporate interests--or it could be that it was specifically designed and launched, by some of the ethics-challenged people who work for Hillary (such as Penn & Schoen), or even entities outside the campaign who have an interest in the kind of Democrat who gets the nomination. All I know, at this point, is that it smells. It reminds me of Cheney's or Rove's statement, after the 2004 election, when asked how they won, that it was their "invisible get-out-the-vote campaign in the churches." No evidence to support this; and of course the corporate news monopolies didn't ask for any--and there was overwhelming evidence to contradict it. But there had to be an explanation--which may have been written months if not years before, possibly way back as far as the passage of the "Help America Vote Act" (October 2002 - same month as the Iraq War Resolution), when they knew they had secured outright control of election results--with the fast-tracking of electronic voting systems, all over the country, run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations.

The fascist/corporate control of election results is still in place. The election reform movement - a very uphill battle against a very quickly entrenched, entirely non-transparent, and very corrupt, vote counting system - has succeeded in educating the public and getting a few lights turned on, here and there, but the system is basically still in tact. There is not a single primary election that can or will be verified. Even those with paper ballot backups that can be recounted, won't be counted. 99% to 100% of the ballots are never counted. Reliance is placed on the riggable electronic totals. And even in a recount situation, 97% of the ballots are not counted--3%, in selected precincts, is the general rule for recounts.

So, what is this non-transparent, riggable, secret vote counting system FOR? Hm? Besides keeping the war going, with 70% of the American people opposed to it? It is for the continuance of corporate rule--the unfettered, unregulated looting of the American people in every sphere.

Why don't they just count all the votes in public view, as of old? Oh, dear, no, that would be too expensive ($3.9 billion for e-voting systems!). Too time-consuming. Too...umn, radical.

Har-har. Joke's on us.

Did Hillary's boo-hoo "win" New Hampshire? Dunno, really. But the answer lay in only one place--the ballots, which are not going to be fully counted, even in a recount. So your guess is as good as mine.

Should elections be a matter of guessing, and "soft" corporate news narratives?

I promised myself if I allowed myself to get back in the swing of things here, that I wouldn't allow myself to get caught up in endless flamewars that devolve quickly and get nowhere, that end up being complete wastes of time and do nothing more than foster animosity. I've already said what I wanted to say in this thread, so I really have no desire to go round and round.

Have a good day!

ain't 'nuthin more merikan then that.

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I see you're as closed minded, laughable and reactionary as ever, Lars.

be sure to let me know. Bye now!

:nuke:

Open, transparent and in front of media and community leaders.

Should be interesting to see what the recount mechanism is used here, how open it is and what the results will be.

But only until we can get rid of them.

One quality control check is not too much to ask.

After all, they expect and want the American people to believe that the election results are legitimate and accurate, so one would think that they would jump at the chance to prove to everyone they are.

black hole of doom, and, with their boots on your fingers as you are clinging to the rocks, they say, "Oh, okay, you can have a 1% audit."

We need to go a-a-a-all the way back up the cliff, onto safe ground, and put the fucking murderers of one million Iraqis, and slayers of our democracy, in jail, and evict their enablers from our election offices and legislatures, and START OVER...by counting EVERY vote in PUBLIC VIEW.

It is so damn simple, isn't it? So why are "Democrats" on DU so goddamn resistant to it?

"Oh, it costs money". (Yeah. Like four trillion so far since 2000, asshole.)

even hand-counting should be verified by an independent second set of counters. That can spot erasures.

Vote early, vote often, and vote in pencil so we can correct your mistakes. Said at a time when electronic vote counting wasn't at issue.

You are so right. We know that republicans have no regard for the law or the truth, and will steal elections by any means necessary.

and they have an OPEN SOURCE CODE system (anyone may review the code by which the votes are tabulated). In the U.S., we hand-count ZERO to 1% of the votes--in a TRADE SECRET CODE system, owned and controlled by righting Bushite corporations!

They are laughing at us throughout South America (or mourning with us, if they are compassionate--and many are), where they have learned, by tough thinking and hard civic work, that TRANSPARENT elections = good, leftist (majorityist) government that acts in the interests of the people, and NON-TRANSPARENT elections = rightwing dictatorship, as we have here.

Thus, while our democracy founders, assaulted by Diebold, ES&S and the office holders they have (s)elected, virtually the entire continent of South America has gone "blue," with good leftist governments elected in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile and Nicaragua (and probably Paraguay this year)--governments that are using their countries' natural resource revenues to help the poor majority, that are building schools and medical centers and ballparks in poor areas never before served by government, that are helping small business, that are building infrastructure (bridges, roads, pipelines) that foreign corporations, the World Bank and local fascist elites did not permit, that are encouraging LOCAL manufacturing with good labor laws and environmental protections, and land reform for LOCAL food production, that are cooperating with neighbor governments on these projects, creating regional (locally controlled) trade groups, infrastructure and financial institutions to help LOCAL people, and that are doing all the things necessary to create regional prosperity and self-determination.

All or mostly the result of TRANSPARENT elections. You wonder why our Dark Lords took direct control of our vote counts? THIS. IS. WHY. TRANSPARENT vote counting benefits the majority. NON-TRANSPARENT vote counting benefits big corporations and the super-rich!

Most of the people in the democratic world have figured this out. We, once the leaders of the democratic world, have LOST OUR WAY--or rather, we have suffered a fascist coup that we can hardly see, it has been so careful to keep itself out of the corporate news. Non-transparent vote counting IS the coup.

And in no other democratic country on earth are the exit polls "adjusted" to force them to fit the results of private corporations' TRADE SECRET code. Other countries use exit polls as a check AGAINST the official totals, to detect fraud--not as a way to endorse official totals and hide fraud when it occurs. Here, we have yet another private, secret, corporate process "verifying" the vote--telling us it's all okay--by DOCTORING the exit polls to FIT the results of Diebold/ES&S's secret formulae--a perfect loop of corporate secrecy. The culprit is Edison-Mitofksy, and those who hired them--a consortium of corporate news monopolies.

And ultimately the culprit is our own party leaders, on whom we have relied to alert us to danger in the election system, and who have utterly failed us in this century--who are collusive, corrupt or--in some cases--scared witless. How could Democrats approve "trade secret" vote counting by rightwing Bushite corporations? How could they be silent about it? Therein lies the story of the end of American democracy in the northern hemisphere.

We could have expected such an outrage from Bushite fascists. What of our own Senators and House members who voted FOR it (along with the Iraq War Resolution--same month, Oct 2002)? What of our DNC that supported it? What of our legislators and secretaries of state throughout the land, through whose fingers the $3.9 billion electronic voting boondoggle was filtered? What of the fascists and war profiteers in our own party who did this to us IN COLLUSION WITH THE BUSHITES?

Yeah, they're laughing at us--or weeping over us--throughout the civilized world. And the bad guys are having a chuckle as well--the sultans of Saudi Arabia, the Chinese fascists--who are laughing all the way to the bank, at the giant that let itself be felled by fascist vote counting. It's more than an embarrassment. What non-transparent vote counting has done to us is catastrophic, in every sphere. We could have started correcting our government's course in 2004. The "trade secret" vote counting passed by the Anthrax Congress in 2002 prevented it, and then installed a pro-war Congress (with a "D" in front of its name) in 2006. And now? Some say it's too late. But I don't. Never, never, NEVER give up on your right to vote! NEVER! Fight to get it back! Fight to expose fascist vote counting! Show what it is to be an American--the heirs of Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, and Tom Paine, and Abraham Lincoln, and Susan B. Anthony, and Martin Luther King!

Never, never, NEVER give up on your right to vote! Throw Diebold, ES&S and all election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' now!

If the recount proves the vote count was wrong, then the state should pay for it.

they have to pay for it upfront and then it'll be refunded if there are problems. :shrug:

whether or not the call stands. I say that's fair. :)

(with exception, of course, if there are certain criteria that are met such as close margins, in which it should be free from the get-go.)

Disclaimer: I haven't been following this particular situation very closely.

If I fed my family by providing accurate polling data to news organizations and campaigns and I was waaay off on an election, I would be scrambling to figure out what happened. I would go over everything internally with a fine tooth comb, compare and contrast the data from other polling companies, and if the numbers still don't add up, I would want a recount as fast as possible out of fear of losing future business. Just sayin'....

"results" are being demeaned for a reason..

We all know how sketchy "00 and '04 elections were, and how the results of exit polls differed wildly from the "outcome", so a third time being wildly "off", might just set the stage for "pre-ordained" elections for the long term.

They need to form a pollsters' union and demand proof that they were wrong.. Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia machines only do what they are programmed to do..and we all knwo how unreliable they can be,


Shame on US for not demanding that for the first 2 or 3 eletions, those machines would be used to "PROVE" the hand count..

After a two-time "dry-run", people might actually have had confidence in them..but to just throw out hand counts, cold-turkey..and replace them with machines that delivered the opposite of what was expected, only made thigs worse:grr:

They need to do something to gain their credibility back (assuming they had much to begin with). The whole "New Hampshire voters lied to us!" meme is absolutely ridiculous.

Ultimately, if there are unanswered questions in the Primary, then the problem will probably we worse in the General IMO.

Until they can prove statistically that they've got their *#&$ together.

To clarify one point I was making above, NH did ZERO hand-counting of Diebold's optiscan ballots, which means that 80% of the NH vote was completely unverified.

See http://www.bradblog.com/ today (1/15/08):

"Election Integrity Experts Converge and Join Both Republican and Democratic Candidates in Quest for Transparency
"New Hampshire Secretary of State Questioned About Documentation, Poll Records and Diebold Memory Cards..."

By Brad Friedman

-----

He says there was NO audit--not even the meager and inadequate 1% audit that some states have.

"The battle for transparency and accountability on the ground, where some 80% of the state's ballots were tallied only by error-prone, hackable Diebold optical-scan voting machines, without human audit or spot-check of any kind, in last week's first-in-the-nation Primary, is already growing heated on both sides of the aisle, and even inside the statehouse as of Monday." --Brad

-----

It's a good story about the sheer complications of our way over-complicated election system, and the convergence of election reform experts and activists to NH, to try to sort it out.

Now we have to find out if all things were equal.

Of course, all things are never equal, but New Hampshire, of all places, seems to be the perfect place to identify the reason for the discrepancy.

Bradblog provides this updated contact phone number for donations to Kucinich's challenge:

Donations to Kucinich's count can be made by calling (877) 413 3664 (updated info).--BradBlog

Brad says Kucinich has to produce $69,600 immediately. Kucinich has challenged the need for immediate full payment, but he has pledged to write the check, so the recount can go forward.

I donated directly via Kucinich's web site the other day, when I learned of his request for a recount. I know he is using campaign funds for this challenge. It doesn't matter to me how he uses my donation--directly for the recount, or to reimburse his campaign. Past experience shows, too, that there are MANY OTHER COSTS--for lawyers, for copies of documents, for transportation, for volunteer support, for media work, and on and on. This small campaign chest will be bearing the heavy burden of our democracy, and may well save it --if this recount can help change our vote counting procedures and move them into the light.

Kucinich for President 2008, 11808 Lorain Ave, Cleveland, OH 44111 - Phone: 1 (877) 41-DENNIS.

http://www.dennis4president.com/home/

Donate on line at the web site, or call (877) 413-3664

millions for saudi sheiks though...