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| NH: Recount Report from We the People |
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| Author |
Message |
    
christine c reid
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Ctwatcher
Post Number: 261
Registered: 12-2007
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, February 27, 2008 - 8:51 am: | 
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Extensive document that may provide useful insight into the recount.
I haven't yet reviewed, but am posting and inviting people to read, think, and comment.
Link: http://www.wethepeoplefoundation.org/MISC/NH-Recount/NH-RecountRpt-Feb-2008.htm |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 4687
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, February 27, 2008 - 11:48 am: |
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Well this is a fascinating document. I've read it but didn't looked at the detailed tables.
Among other things,
* Optical scanners' accuracy was so poor that the machines are illegal to use in federal elections.
* Hand counting was many times more accurate than the optical scanners.
Here's the introductory summary paragraph [my bold]:
quote:New Hampshire’s vote counting machines violate federal accuracy standards. New Hampshire’s machines experienced an error rate approximately 163 times greater than the error rate allowed under federal Election Law. In addition, the number of machine counts that were in error by more than 2 votes was 9.81 times greater than the number of hand counts that were off by more than 2 votes. The number of machine counts that were in error by more than 1 vote was 3.37 times greater than the number of hand counts that were off by more than 1 vote.
When you read the report--which I encourage everyone to do, it is succinct and very readable--you'll discover that the several clear attempted fraud cases using hand counted ballots involved not "voter fraud" but "insider vote-counting fraud".
The point is also made that it is unfortunately impossible to know anything about fraud with the optical scanners, but that it could have occurred and in far greater numbers:
quote:We found we did not have enough information about any of the machine discrepancies to specifically attribute those discrepancies to unintentional or intentional (fraudulent) error. The machines, themselves, failed to count properly or election officials erred in handling and reporting the results of the machine counts. The source of the error and whether or not the error was intentional is not clear from the information at hand. Regardless, as the data indicate, machine counted precincts were far more likely to experience errors, and the magnitude of those machine errors was far greater than that observed for hand-counted precincts.
Reading the voting machine service reports raised more concerns. In a number of cases it would be interesting to find out more detail from the person who completed the form. |
christine c reid
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Ctwatcher
Post Number: 282
Registered: 12-2007
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, March 2, 2008 - 12:31 pm: |
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Catherine, I just read through the service reports and clarified some information about Stratham (the 550 blank/unreadable ballots attributed to "wrong pens"). The service call came in at 9 something PM, not AM. Due to the high number of "blank" ballots, they hand counted.
A wrong pen here or there might have led to a low number of blank ballots -- would the interest have been as high in isolating the problem? Hope so, but don't know. Ifsomeone can figure out a way to establish when Stratham got its machine and what kind of light reader it should have (or pens it normally uses), then it would be possible to surmise whether the issue was wrong pens or inadvertent Or deliberate wrong machine/light reader and narrow choice of pen types not realized by the voting officials.
However, it would appear to me that what was not said is that the machine was set up to accept blank ballots, because it was the Tape printout that tipped them off to the issue.
Thus, whether or not all was handled properly, one hsa to raise the point that situationally, the wrong pens plus machine setup for accepting blank ballots together formed a situation for ballot substitution if chain of custody was not impeccable all day long and at the time of counting and reporting the results.
(Message edited by ctwatcher on March 2, 2008) |
christine c reid
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Ctwatcher
Post Number: 284
Registered: 12-2007
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, March 2, 2008 - 5:10 pm: |
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Additional questions: Why didn't the test deck pick up a setup issue of blank ballots not being rejected? Why weren't the pens used on election day used to mark the test ballots? Did they run an audit report (doubt it but it would have identified setup at start of election unless somehow compromised)?
Wonder how many pens a polling place goes through on election day? |
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