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Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 7383
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 9 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, January 7, 2008 - 2:16 pm: | 
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UPDATE JAN 9 9am PST: TOWN OF SUTTON CONFIRMS RON PAUL TOTALS WERE 31, NOT ZERO.
I just got off the phone with Jennifer Call, Town Clerk for Sutton. She confirmed that the Ron Paul totals in Sutton were actually 31, and said that they were "left off the tally sheet" and it was human error.
This is not an acceptable answer, especially because one of the most common forms of fraud in a hand count system is to alter or omit results on the reporting sheet. Hand count is lovely, transparent. They then fill out another reconciliation sheet, often in front of witnesses, and it looks fine. Then they provide a summary or media sheet with the incorrect results.
A Web site here: http://www.wheresthepaper.org has more on fraud techniques with hand counted paper ballots. You'll have to dig for it -- or Google, and the excellent research on this is Theresa Hommel from the state of New York.
* * * *
Comma delimited database: NH municipalities hand count vs use Diebold machines: http://www.bbvdocs.org/NH/state/Jan-08-votingsystems-NH.txt
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
John Silvestro and his small private business, LHS Associates, has the exclusive programming contracts for all New Hampshire voting machines, which combined will count about 81 percent of the vote tomorrow.
Silvestro IS the New Hampshire chain of custody
Or at least a very large component in it.
Last fall, with the help of some New Hampshire citizens, Black Box Voting began working on a "New Hampshire Chain of Custody" project, in which we identified some of the areas of concern that might affect many jurisdictions at once. First on the list is LHS Associates, a vendor with inside access to every memory card in New Hampshire, as well as to the chips containing the "brain" of the Diebold optical scan machines.
LHS Associates programs all the memory cards in New Hampshire and Connecticut; about all of Vermont's voting machines, and has a lock on almost all of Massachusetts as well.
RARE VIDEO FOOTAGE
In an unusual confluence of available video, we obtained footage of Silvestro grappling with Harri Hursti, the master hacker who had his way with the Diebold optical scans in Leon County, Florida in the famous exploit that was showcased in the film Hacking Democracy.
The exact same make, model and version hacked in the Black Box Voting project in Leon County is used throughout New Hampshire, where about 45 percent of elections administrators hand count paper ballots at the polling place, with the remaining locations all using the Diebold version 1.94w optical scan machine. Because the voting machine locations tend to be urban, this represents about 81 percent of the New Hampshire voters.
The video shows Harri Hursti testifying on Sept. 19 before the New Hampshire legislature, attempting to explain significant vulnerabilities requiring urgent mitigations; throughout his testimony, Silvestro inserted his own comments, opinions, misstatements and speculations.
VOTING MACHINE CHECKUP
One area of disagreement between Hursti and Silvestro was the amount of expertise needed to exploit the Diebold 1.94w optical scan system. Silvestro claimed (in a strange contortion of reasoning) that he doesn't hire very skilled programmers, implying that this makes New Hampshire elections more secure.
Hursti pointed out that hiring programmers with a lack of knowledge is generally not considered a security feature, and also that an average high schooler can learn to exploit the system in two days to two weeks.
WE THINK IT DOESN'T TAKE THAT LONG
Black Box Voting purchased a Diebold optical scan with 1.94w firmware, and chose a computer repair shop out of the phone book, took it in, grabbed the first available technician. It took him less than 10 minutes to zero in on the memory card as a point of critical vulnerability -- and oh my, did he point out some other intersting things!
NEW HAMPSHIRE HASN'T UPGRADED SYSTEM SECURITY
Silvestro tries to claim that the security problems have been fixed in newer editions. Whether or not they have been, it's a moot point in New Hampshire where the upgrade is not made unless the Ballot Law Commission meets, and they have not met for ages.
Silvestro then points to extraordinary measures taken by other states to enact special procedural safeguards, but of course none of those were implemented in New Hampshire either, because the Ballot Law Commission has not bothered to meet since March 2006.
IN FACT, NEW HAMPSHIRE HAS NOT IMPLEMENTED MITIGATIONS FOR KNOWN RISKS
Not only that, they have turned all the programming over to a sole source private company, taking vote counting for 81 percent of New Hampshire citizens out of the public domain.
LHS is not subject to public records requirements, as the government is, at least, not in New Hampshire. The control over memory card contents is absolute; when cards malfunction or get lost, LHS brings the replacements.
Here is the YouTube video containing various footage taken by Black Box Voting and New Hampshire citizens:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiiaBqwqkXs
CONTROL OVER THE "BRAINS" OF THE MACHINE: ACCESS TO THE CHIP
Since LHS maintains the machines, repairs the machines, and replaces the machines -- often on Election Day -- when they malfunction, they have intimate access to the chips, sockets, ports, communications devices and other electronic components.
Silvestro stated that the chip has "read only memory" and cannot be reprogrammed without frying it under ultraviolet light overnight.
Hursti never had a chance to examine the hardware, nor have most of the recent university studies had access. But our friendly neighborhood computer repair guy differed with Silvestro on the point of plug & play reprogramming of the guts of the machine.
After I push the button to send this message out to the media and the citizenry, I'll work on getting a short YouTube video of the Accuvote checkup by our local computer repairman. And before you say, "But wait! He's not a world class expert!" -- That's just the point.
He may hit or miss on some of his analyses. You'll all be able to try your hand at second guessing him as soon as the video is up. But if he hits even one of his ideas for how to exploit the machine to steal votes, that's all it takes. From someone who is not, certainly, a world class hacker or even a hacker at all.
I'll post the link to that in a follow up here, and welcome any of you techs to weigh in.
Please feel free to distribute, reprint or excerpt, with link to Black Box Voting and the video link above. |
Russell Novkov
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Rnovkov
Post Number: 233
Registered: 2-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, January 7, 2008 - 3:30 pm: |
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They either need to upgrade security or switch to voter-verified paper ballots.
Russell J. Novkov
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Mike LaBonte
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mike_labonte
Post Number: 52
Registered: 12-2005
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, January 7, 2008 - 3:42 pm: |
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I think you have to be clear when you talk about "the chip", which is not the same as the memory card. As far as I know there is some kind of PROM chip in there that gives the machine it's 1.94w BIOS. Except in fairly rare circumstances that chip is programmed once, while the memory cards are programmed for each election.
If it is claimed that UV light has to erase "the chip" to prepare it for re-programming, yeah, I can believe that. My city uses the same machines. The circuit board design looks like it dates back to the GES days, late 80's or early 90's. Programmable chips where relatively crude back then. Any reprogramming will probably be done by the manufacturer, and the local technician will simply unplug the old chip and pop in the new one. But this would be to upgrade to 1.96, or whatever, and it may never happen.
In the video there is a chip with a white label just left of the memory card bay. I could be wrong, but that might be the BIOS chip. The white label looks like a copyright label, found on almost all programmable chips.
The memory card, on the other hand, is programmed right inside any AV-OS machine. A laptop is hooked up to the AV-OS serial port. The software used is probably GEMS or some side utility.
Has anyone verified Harri Hursti's claim that a corrupt memory card can pass testing by date triggering? Even assuming that AccuBasic is still used to program the cards, I have no idea if the language supports date testing. It's hard to believe that a voting machine would support that. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 7384
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, January 7, 2008 - 4:01 pm: |
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I'll post a much more detailed video soon and will welcome your insights.
Understand that New Hampshire has no upgrades since the Leon County hack and, because it doesn't upload to GEMS, Hursti's much simpler hack of May 26, the poll tape only hack, will work in New Hampshire. |
Fran Fleming
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Iwontbackdown
Post Number: 9
Registered: 12-2007
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, January 7, 2008 - 4:27 pm: |
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This report makes me sick to my stomach. The NH Primary is tomorrow! I thought that only paper ballots were to be used in caucus/primaries? Is anyone familiar with NCEL? I thought this law suit was suppose to stop the use of electronic voting machines until a court ruling.
http://www.wethepeoplefoundation.org/PROJECTS/NCEL/NCEL.htm |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 7385
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, January 7, 2008 - 4:53 pm: |
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Fran,
I, and many others have been alerting both personally and in general, and the kind and gentle state of New Hampshire's approach has basically been to stall out the process.
I suppose you don't make enemies that way, but you can stall yourself straight to tyranny.
As late as yesterday I was trying to achieve at least some workarounds.
New Hampshire is unusual, in that the hand count locations -- and there are many -- have good electoral integrity, but the machine situation is such that quite literally the entire state could be Hursti-hacked, or worse, Berkeley-hacked, and if done skillfully there would be no telltale signs.
I strongly recommend recording CSPAN and CNN tomorrow night, examining the results for anomalies, but this is not a reliable way to catch anything.
I also recommend all of our statistical types get as much detail data as possible for each location -- remember, New Hampshire is municipality-based, not county-based. We should do a tight analysis on any differences between hand count and machine locations, and you can identify those in the New Hampshire forum.
Unfortunately, even the demographics can be tainted. New Hampshire has had problematic results going back to 1992, according to Steve Freeman, who has done very good statistical work in this area.
Regarding NCEL, if they were seeking an injunction the scheduled day has to have passed. I don't have up to date information on this, but I've sought injunctions on voting machine issues in the past, and it's an uphill battle to survive dismissal. |
Fran Fleming
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Iwontbackdown
Post Number: 10
Registered: 12-2007
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 2 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, January 7, 2008 - 5:26 pm: |
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Hi Bev,
Here is the filing in all 50 states. I volunteered to be a back up plaintiff. The suit was filed in plenty of time(?)
http://www.wethepeoplefoundation.org/UPDATE/Update2007-11-06.htm
November 6, 2007
50 States Sued to Block Computerized Vote Counting
Federal Court to be Asked to Delay Primaries
On October 2nd we posted an article in which we announced that the Clean Election Lawsuit was being expanded to all fifty states. We said we were in the process of filing an amended complaint to name all of the nation’s chief election officials as defendants.
We also announced that we were looking for up to three volunteers from each state to become plaintiffs and/or friends of the lawsuit. The response was very strong. We thank each and every one of the 610 people who responded to this call for action.
Plaintiffs from every state brought the suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York and maintain that current election practices, including the widespread use of computerized voting machines, are unconstitutional because they are ripe for fraud and error and effectively hide the physical vote counting process from the public, effectively denying citizens their legally protected Right to cast an effective vote.
The lawsuit seeks an Order from the Court prohibiting the use of all voting machines and to force election officials to instead utilize paper ballots and to count and total all votes by hand, always in full view of the public.
The lawsuit, called the NCEL, National Clean Elections Lawsuit, follows documented vote machine failures during August's Iowa Straw Poll, persisting claims questioning the integrity of the 2004 presidential election, and the official de-certification in August of virtually every major electronic voting system by the California Secretary of State based upon several comprehensive academic studies documenting the systems' significant vulnerabilities to software "hacking" and vote fraud.
Since October 2, 2007, here is what we have accomplished:
We have divided the country into eleven Circuits, matching the geographic boundaries of the eleven federal Circuit Courts. Eleven citizen “Circuit Leaders” were chosen. They interviewed many of the volunteers, coming up with a list of three or four potential plaintiffs from each state. Fifty citizen “State Leaders” were chosen as lead plaintiffs.
Numerous conference calls were held among the state and Circuit leaders and, at times, with all plaintiffs. A draft of the amended complaint was emailed to all potential plaintiffs for their review and comment.
Eventually, the amended complaint was finalized and approved by 150 named plaintiffs. In total, 84 state officers and election officials are named as defendants, many in their private, as well as official capacity.
On November 1st the Amended Summons and Amended Complaint, signed by 150 plaintiffs, were filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York.
Click here to read the Amended Complaint.
On Saturday, November 3rd, 50 cartons containing the requisite number of sets of legal documents were rushed to the state leaders for service on all defendants. All 50 Governors, all 50 Attorneys General and all 84 chief election officials in the 50 states are currently in the process of being served with the National Clean Election Lawsuit. Those in Alaska, Missouri and a few other states were served yesterday. Many are being served today. By tomorrow evening, service should have been completed.
Press Releases are being distributed regarding this important lawsuit involving the election practices of every state in the Union.
Click here to view the New York press release.
Click here to view the general national press release.
We will post another update once we confirm all defendants in the lawsuit have been served. Reactions by those being served has been interesting to say the least.
Finally, as noted, we intend to file a motion in a few days, asking the Court to delay the 2008 primaries and caucuses until the important constitutional issues raised by this lawsuit are finally determined. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 7387
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, January 7, 2008 - 5:36 pm: |
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Thanks for the update, Fran. |
Mugsy
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mugsy
Post Number: 5
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, January 7, 2008 - 6:51 pm: |
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I may not have a complete grasp of the details, but my first reaction is that the fact the Read Only Memory (ROM... actually a EPROM if it is erasable) is irrelevant, because you don't have to change the firmware to "hack" an election. The vote count is stored to a database on a memory card. If you preload that database with opposite values (+10,000 for candidate X and -10,000 for candidate Y) so that the net total number of votes is still exactly the same, you can still manipulate the outcome. Flashing the firmware is irrelevant, but the fact they are using EPROM's at all is something else to be concerned about (very easy to "disable" a machine on demand so you can replace it with a pre-hacked replacement.)
-*- Mugsy -*-
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Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 7389
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, January 7, 2008 - 7:09 pm: |
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Hi, "Mugsy" -- you'll need to go in and edit your profile - link in left column -- to put your real first and last name in. That's a requirement we've had since mid-2005; I realize you may have registered earlier than that.
If you can control the programming of the chips you can create a machine that has backdoors which persist -- in other words, even if the memory card situation was cleaned up, could override the memory cards.
But best to look at the upcoming video before doing too much speculation. |
Tom D'Ambrosio
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mugsy
Post Number: 6
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, January 7, 2008 - 8:09 pm: |
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I just watched the video, but could not tell much about the hardware due to the low quality except that it is quite old (I'd say circa 1987) judging by the amount of space between the IC's (older machines didn't have as much circuitry and needed more space between components for cooling. The lack of a fan (from what I can tell) pretty much ensures this is a pre 1990's piece of hardware.
I did not see a "UV Flashable EPROM" chip in the video. It would be in a socket and have a circle with exposed "chip" in the center that the UV light can shine on. It must be in a socket because you must remove the chip to place it in a high intensity UV box for a minimum of several minutes. EEPROM's ("Electronically Erasable Programmable ROM's") don't have an exposed chip, but they too must be in a socket (but can be easily destroyed with static electricity). The "labeled" chip is probably the BIOS, which is typically not erasable.
From the video, while I have no idea how sophisticated the software is, if someone wanted to hack an election, they could write the firmware to report a 0/0 pre count any time a value in the database contains a negative pre-count. If either vote total is negative, then the card has not been voted on yet.
If the programmer is dumb, he'd have the system report 0/0 EVERY time you ran a pre-test no matter what the card says. But if someone KNOWINGLY inserts a pre-hacked card just to test the machine, and it reports 0/0, that's evidence of fraud. If they are clever, they might make it more difficult to detect if the "hack" only ran the FIRST time you test the machine after a power-on, but there after, report correctly. You can check this by running multiple pre tests. There are an almost infinite number of ways to make the test even more undetectable (reading serial numbers, checking user ID numbers, etc).
If just one company, LHS has full chain of custody over the machines and cards, then they can alter the firmware or data on the cards at any time. And with an EEPROM, even disable an unhacked machine with an electric shock and replace it with a hacked unit with modified firmware/card.
-*- Mugsy -*-
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Fran Fleming
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Iwontbackdown
Post Number: 12
Registered: 12-2007
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, January 7, 2008 - 8:14 pm: |
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Ok, not sure if this is somewhere on this thread but it looks like libertybroadcastnetwork.org has a detailed plan for those dreaded machines.
More info here:
http://www.libertybroadcastnetwork.org/
COMPUTER COUNTED POLLING PLACES IN NH: In the 175 computer counted polling places in NH, observers need to ask any computerized city, on Monday or Tuesday if possible, if they will pull the ballots out of the computer at closing time, and count them AGAIN by hand, to double-check the computer count. (In NH each town has the right to do this under NH law, but is not required to do it.) IF they will or will not pull out the ballots at closing time for a hand count, please ask them why, and record their answer, either in your notes or (preferably) on video camera. In either case, a grocery store-like receipt will be spit out of the computer at closing time. Mark down what the count is for each candidate, and also ask if you can take a picture of the ticker tape-like receipt, either on a video camera or with a snapshot camera, if you are able to do either one. (Then, of course, if they count the ballots again by hand at closing time, stay around for that count, and then call it into your contact at Liberty Broadcast Network, or as a last resort to our 4 PM to midnight conference call line at: 641-715-3200; 1064662# ) |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 7390
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, January 7, 2008 - 8:17 pm: |
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Okay, I'm going to get you hungry people some better video of the examination.
In order to make it easy on myself I'm just going to put it up in 3-4 "dumps" without editing except to remove stuff like getting a phone call and stopping work. The whole thing isn't even 30 minute I don't think.
Trotting off to get you guys better video of the chips... |
John Dean
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Bozosforbush
Post Number: 932
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, January 7, 2008 - 8:38 pm: |
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Fran, my apologies. I don't want to change the focus of this thread though, so it is ok if you don't respond. I'm just very protective of Bev and her work, and the poster prior to you was heading down a road that inevitably leads to junk. Often, those types of posters create clones with other screennames in order to spread their handicraft, but sometimes people are just people as well. So my apologies, and sincere thanks for getting involved here.
John
Deserter, brain is fried, no WMDs, yada yada yada. No wonder we clowns laugh.
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Jamie Dyer
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jamie
Post Number: 1
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, January 7, 2008 - 9:11 pm: |
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Hi Bev and Co.-
This is my first post here. I'm glad this forum exists.
I saw a comment from Ken Hajjar once in which he stated that questions about companies like LHS were "an indication of just how dangerous the Internet has become". I suppose it's only dangerous if one's market might be threatened.
Thank you for all of your efforts. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 7392
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, January 7, 2008 - 9:50 pm: |
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Jamie, welcome to Black Box Voting. For those who didn't know, Ken Hajjar is an employee of LHS.
And for those of you who work in the elections industry, the issue is not whether LHS employees are good or bad. The issue is that the government has an obligation to protect and secure our voting rights, and turning critical points of custody over to a single source for a whole state allows the entire state's democracy to collapse if one card in that house of cards goes bad. That kind of "Trust me" model does not protect our rights.
John Silvestro stated that he divides the work into testing, programming, etc. and one doesn't know what the other is doing. That may be a good idea, but of course, one or more people have keys to the building -- like Silvestro, for example. One person could come in after hours, take something home, let a friend in ...
All it takes is one.
I'd like to get more insights on whether the chips can be reprogrammed or not ... I am uploading links to the YouTube video of more detailed look inside here:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/73/71201.html
This is where to discuss the chips, modems, ports, etc. There will be 4-5 clips, each around 5 minutes.
It is delightful to have you all here.
John, Fran:  joining you both in a group hug. |
Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 1701
Registered: 1-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 5:17 am: |
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The part that is labelled just ROM is the one that contains ROM, this is a socketed EPROM. EPROM stands for (E)rasable (P)rogrammable (R)ead (O)nly (M)emory. It looks to be made by SGS Thomson (the logo is recognizable, I've burned hundreds of these). It is erasable by a UV light. There is a glass window under that sticker that tells you the version and usually a checksum. Since it's socketed, you could take it out, copy it, edit/patch/replace its firmware and replace the chip with the original, or remove the label and put it on another chip and install it. The time taken to read the chip would be under 3 minutes (under 1 if you came ready). Time to install another chip (just install the chip if you had the machine apart) 30 seconds, if you're clumsy.
It's going to have a number on it 27, followed by possibly C followed by a number, if you can forward me the number, I can tell you its capacity. SO 27'XXXXX' where we don't know what the rest of it is, is a run of the mill, UV erasable EPROM. I can't quite read the number. It can't be reprogrammed in the machine, but it wouldn't take long to put in its replacement in a few minutes, even with taking apart the machine.
He's on the money; just the physical protections are infantile. |
Fran Fleming
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Iwontbackdown
Post Number: 13
Registered: 12-2007
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 5:33 am: |
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It's all cool, John, glad we're on the same team:>) |
Jamie Dyer
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jamie
Post Number: 2
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 7:19 am: |
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Hi Bev-
I'm sorry for the confusion. My intention wasn't to make 'good' or 'bad' judgments about LHS employees. I was trying, poorly, to make the point that voting shouldn't be treated as a business.
I'm very curious to hear your opinions after the NH vote today. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 7396
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 9:53 am: |
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Jamie,
Your post was fine. I decided to clarify and set the tone for focus on the issues because many people here remember Ken Hajjar's aggressive posts (there were many). He tended to get people a little riled up, which in turn took the focus off of the issue and onto personalities.
You made good points, and yes, it will be interesting to see what happens today. I expect this to be a late night, because for Black Box Voting, the biggest amount of work always happens in the days and weeks AFTER the election as we collect information and piece it back together. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 7401
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 12:38 pm: |
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Hi, have moved a couple posts containing incoming tips on dirty tricks etc by campaigns into the 'talk politics' forum here -- and Ricardo, welcome to Black Box Voting, your post was one of the ones I moved.
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/47395/71203.html |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 7404
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 5:18 pm: |
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I do not have access to a VCR tonight. I hope someone has been recording CNN. The pie chart and the numbers have Ron Paul and Giuliani essentially in a tie. The pie chart reports Giuliani but leaves the large, equal slice for Ron Paul blank. In other words, CNN is omitting Ron Paul from the graphic, representing him only as a gray spot.
The numbers at the time were about 1812 for Paul and 1868 for Giuliani. Both were listed as "9 percent" on the numbers. The pie slice graphic showed them tied, but omitted Ron Paul's name, and the announcer announced his percentage as "8 percent" though from my view, it was 9%.
Okay, so maybe CNN would explain they have a policy only to label the top four on the pie chart?
That' won't fly, because the raw numbers just showed Ron Paul ahead of Giuliani by about 30, but his pie slice was still gray (as opposed to all the other slices, shades of red) and his pie slice was still unlabeled. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 7405
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 5:30 pm: |
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Another observation: At this stage of the game, and this may not be relevant statistically due to demographic differences in reporting locations (which are nowhere identified as far as I can tell)...
The voting machine results coming in for the Democratic candidates do not match the exit polls for the top two. Obama was the clear winner, according to reports I heard based on the exit polls. Hillary has a commanding lead from the incoming voting machine reports.
There are two stages to the projections: Exit polling, which is what people said they voted for, and voting machine results, which is what the computers report. Early projections come from exit polls, and as the evening progresses, what's coming in comes from voting machines.
We saw exit polls award the race to Gore in 2000, and then voting machines award it to Bush (and then, when the minus 16,022 votes were pulled out of the Diebold optical scan -- the same make, model and version as New Hampshire's machines), they put the candidates at a tie. A statewide hand count later showed Gore won.
In 2002, the same pattern appeared, but was more pronounced: The exit polls went one way, but when the voting machine results came in it flipped.
Watch the Dem race very carefully to see if the front runners remain flipped from the exit polls as the machine results come in.
The two areas identified as most likely to be dirty in NH are Manchester and Nashua, according to my sources on the ground there.
In New Hampshire, I expect to see the first hour's results to be mostly machine results, with some machine results withheld for the very end. The hand counts will take a little longer to come in, but since I like to make bets, I'm betting that some voting machine locations will be withheld until after the hand count places.
New Hampshire is not identifying which locations are in, unless I'm missing something at the Sec. State web site. |
Fran Fleming
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Iwontbackdown
Post Number: 15
Registered: 12-2007
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 5:48 pm: |
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Obama and Paul poll workers kicked out of some precincts
Campaign volunteers for the Barack Obama and Ron Paul have been kicked out of precincts from Concord to Swanzey for not having the proper credentials, several unrelated sources have witnessed.
In general elections it is standard practice to have poll workers sitting behind the registration table and scratching off names as people sign in. Periodically they take those lists and the campaign gets in contact with those who have voted yet.
But, that is for general elections and everyone who does this a) has to live reasonably nearby (read: state residents) and b.) have letters from the state party to be an "observer".
Apparently many of these Obama and Paul observers did not have this letter. These same sources say that it is the Clinton campaign that has called foul
New Hampshire Senate President Sylvia Larsen, a Concord Democrat who supports Hillary Clinton, said she saw the Obama observers.
"I knew who they were and what they were doing," Larsen said.
Neither the Clinton nor Obama campaigns would comment.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/politics/primarysource/2008/01/obama_and_paul.h tml |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 7406
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 5:55 pm: |
|
The pie slice on CNN just had Giuliani trailing unmarked gray by a large margin.
That umarked gray guy's pie slice doesn't match the Ron Paul guy's numeric results. They must not be coming from the same data source. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 7407
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 6:04 pm: |
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The specific locations need to be identified and names need to be affixed to the unidentified observers on the observer reports.
If the observers or witnesses are really patriots, they will identify themselves by name and state which precincts this took place in and about what time of day. If they fail to come forward, or no one follows up with specifics, the story will not be taken as credible. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 7408
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 6:10 pm: |
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Watch the pie chart as it refreshes.
Sure hope someone is recording this.
They kept the pie chart off the screen for quite a while, and now have placed it at an oblique camera angle where it is harder to see Unmarked Gray vs. Rudy Giuliani. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 7410
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 6:30 pm: |
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The hand count towns are beginning to come in. Watch the trends very carefully right now. |
Fran Fleming
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Iwontbackdown
Post Number: 16
Registered: 12-2007
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 7:14 pm: |
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Well, I'm hoping for accountability. Maybe someone will be prompted by the Boston Globe article and give eye witness account?
This "pie chart" nonsense is just a complete mystery to me. Hope people are following through with hard evidence (photos of the count totals). But if observers have been booted out of the room, then I guess out of luck? |
Zachary Napolillo
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Zachn
Post Number: 1
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 8:00 pm: |
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Groton county had votes posted - now they are all cleared on both politico and CNN. Just this one county so far, this could just be an error.
update: Winchester had votes and are now cleared.
Politico has every state darkened in as if they have reported votes so can
t distinguish between those reported and not yet reported.
(Message edited by ZachN on January 8, 2008) |
Mary Riley
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Ditzi
Post Number: 3
Registered: 5-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 8:17 pm: |
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I could shoot myself!
I watched updates on the C-SPAN page.
Dennis lost about 700 votes between 5:59 and 6;10 p.m.PST. No, I didn't take a screen shot. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 7411
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 8:21 pm: |
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Thanks Mary. I have email from a colleague who told me he has recorded CNN tonight, but doesn't know how to get it off his TIVO. We WILL track down copies of the coverage, so keep reporting anomalies so they can be checked against the recorded footage. |
Michael Polsinelli
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jankdc
Post Number: 13
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 8:33 pm: |
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Bev, my mom knows how to get stuff off of her TIVO. I'm sure that if someone else more technically savvy hasn't recorded it, someone can walk your friend through getting it. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 7412
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 8:37 pm: |
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Michael, thanks! I didn't mention who my colleague is, but many of you know the wonderful patriot of whom I am speaking -- it's Tom Courbat. So, those of you who have his email already, if you know how to walk him through getting a copy of the TV coverage off his TIVO, shoot him an email - or shoot me one, and I'll forward it.
Now that I know it's possible. |
Mary Riley
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Ditzi
Post Number: 4
Registered: 5-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 9:03 pm: |
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Thank God!
And THANK YOU BEV, for this site! |
Howard Randall Smith
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Tidalcreek
Post Number: 31
Registered: 2-2007
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 9:03 pm: |
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"Big upset," "pundits totally got it wrong." This sounds sooooo darn familiar. Will we ever know whether errors counting votes were the real cause of the "suprising" results, and whether the exit polls and pundits really were correct? Hmmm. I hope lots of people are keeping lots of records... And Manchester and Nashua appear to be where Clinton benefited the most. We gotta "count the votes". Yeah.
(Message edited by tidalcreek on January 8, 2008)
Randy
|
Zachary Napolillo
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Zachn
Post Number: 2
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 9:05 pm: |
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I'm placing all recorded votes from CNN into an Excel Spreadsheet which will compare 'hand count' to 'machine count' counties. |
Michael Polsinelli
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jankdc
Post Number: 14
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 9:06 pm: |
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I just talked to her and she has a dvd burner attached to her tivo, they can be bought for relatively cheap. The DVD can then be transferred to the computer.
In the onscreen menue there is a "save to vcr" option. You can then save it to your vcr or dvd recorder. If you record it to dvd, you can then transfer it to your computer.
BTW she has MSNBCnewslive recording from 2-5 eastern. She is willing to record it if you want. |
Jason Reed
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jasonr54
Post Number: 12
Registered: 10-2007
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 9:21 pm: |
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Cross post:
Check this out. The Paul gang is awakening to election fraud!!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by jasonuher < Not me!
Are you listening?
"My mom, aunt, and dad all voted for RP today in my hometown, My mom and aunt both work passing out ballots, and checking them off. I just looked at the politico map and it says their town has ZERO votes for Ron."
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=82599&page=18
I have been posting on these sites in hopes of this sort of thing. I knew the Paulites would want to know. Looks like they're fired up! |
Matt Larrabee
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Userid5678
Post Number: 1
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 9:22 pm: |
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I was watching a feed on c-span.org and took frequent screenshots (continuously refreshing) until my computer crashed. I've identified numerous cases of the vote total changing, even though the # of precincts reporting remained constant. Why, at 12:15 am EST, are only 90% of precincts reporting?? Didn't the polls all close at the same time. And how can the winner be called with less than 40% of the precincts reporting and only a 3% marginal difference between #1 and #2? I find it shocking that Hillary was only polling at 29%, yet received 39% of the vote. |
Cindy
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Pinkieclc
Post Number: 1
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 9:27 pm: |
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What I find perplexing is that Hillary appears to have won by the same numbers, that the polls showed Obama had prior to the vote. What keeps going through my head is Black Box's experiment where the Diebold machine inaccurately showed an increase in the yes vote. Secondly, I remember on the Black Box video that the female candidate pushed her name on the Diebold machine, and the vote would go to her opponent instead of her. It seems like this may have been the case with the Clinton, Obama vote. Also, can someone explain to me how a winner can be announced with only 14% of the votes in? That's what NBC did with McCain, that does not compute with me. Even the News casters are perplexed by the Clinton win. They are trying to explain it and seem to fall short of any real explanations. |
William Reese
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: William_reese
Post Number: 1
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 9:19 pm: |
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I just went briefly through the results from wards that went for clinton and obama. It's more than strange that 90% of the Optical scan wards went to Hillary and the Hand ballots were split 60-40 in favor of obama. I need to really hone in on the stats but most of the hand counts went 40-50 per cent for Obama and the Optical scan vots were consistently in the 20's to low 30's. This thing smells to high heaven especially given the polling pre-primary |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 7413
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 9:47 pm: |
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When alterations need to be large, "explaining factors" are prepared ahead of time and often the way is prepared by focusing attention on a situation that will prop up the explanation. |
Bill Bowen
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Bbowen8
Post Number: 5
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 10:36 pm: |
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William,
I emailed your early findings to several major networks, political blogs and magazines. Someone other than Keith Olbermann has to pick up and cover this story this time. I heard Tom Brokaw say tonight that we should just essentially do away with exit polling since it hasn't done us much good lately. No Tom, the exit polls are right. It's our votes that are not.
Thanks for everyone's hard work and research. This is really upsetting to learn.
Bill B |
michael d. betts
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Nonnod
Post Number: 1
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 10:52 pm: |
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I examined the voting in New Hampshire tonight using the totals as they were available and a chart I found on the web indicating whether the vote was counted by hand or Diebold Accuvote o.s.
There's definitely something fishy here. Obama wins most hand counted town sometime by nearly double the Clinton vote, Other towns (diebold) they are very close in totals, then the largest town (all diebold) Clinton picks up large wins, totally contrary to the voting pattern in all other area of the state. I suppose some sort of urban mentality, or urban machine politics could account for this, but the last polls and exit polls contradict this. What's going on? |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 7416
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 11:10 pm: |
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What we need next is a spreadsheet containing each township's totals. It will be a very quick process to then match 100% of the locations up with the voting system and do a real analysis, with real data and graphics to communicate this.
All the data has to be put in, though. This is not the kind of project that works with spot checking or cherry picking. |
Zachary Napolillo
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Zachn
Post Number: 3
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - 11:28 pm: |
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After tabulating the results for the republican votes in counties with hand counted ballots, the results are:
Giuliani: 3825, 8.33%
Huckabee: 6283, 13.68%
Hunter: 278, 0.61%
McCain: 18524, 40.32%
Paul: 4321, 9.41%
Thompson: 664, 1.45%
Romney: 12047, 26.22%
I have started a spreadsheet but only has republican hand-counted county votes so far.
(Message edited by ZachN on January 8, 2008) |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 7417
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 12:24 am: |
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The formal detailed hand count vs opscam count info is in:
http://ronrox.com/paulstats.php
Whoever did this did an excellent job. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 7418
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 1:05 am: |
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More than 500 "other" votes in the Democratic race in Manchester. Wonder who those were for. |
Tom Courbat
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Leftisbest
Post Number: 78
Registered: 6-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 1:44 am: |
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So Obama won by 38.7% to 34.8% for Clinton (~4% spread) when counting only the hand-counted votes – those that can actually be verified. The spread is actually about a 7% shift if you take the % of votes Clinton picked up in the machine counts (+4.9%) and the % of votes taken away from Obama (-2.3%).
Maybe there could be a recount of all the ballots that were put thru the scanners. Wouldn’t it be a hoot if that was done and Obama actually won! Problem is, who would call for such a recount? Certainly if Obama did, it would look like sour grapes and why would Clinton ask?
Very strange that when corruptible machines are involved, Obama looses but without the machines counting, he wins. A lot more analysis needs to be done, but something smells pretty bad here. |
Gerald Destremps
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jdestremps
Post Number: 1
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 1:58 am: |
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Analysis I performed of New Hampshire Primary Results:
I got the raw data from here: http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/nh/nh_primary_dem_results_by_town/
and from the page you posted at http://www.bbvdocs.org/NH/state/Jan-08-votingsystems-NH.txt
I put the two together to get the attached spreadsheet and charts. Please look at the chart (image) first and publish it if you think it's correct. Stunning results. I hope it's by chance, but I don't like the looks of it.
 Excel file of NH 2008 Primary Analysis
votes2.xls (160.3 k) |
|
Eric Westfall
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Rewind
Post Number: 5
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 2:51 am: |
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Bev, I assume you have seen this? (Bottom chart on page)
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/nh/nh_primary_gop_results_by_town/
I don't know what to think of it - it is just bizarre.
I took screen shots of the entire page & will save them. |
Steve Sobel
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Voteanalysis
Post Number: 1
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 3:02 am: |
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I've been up late putting this together. I got roughly the same thing as Gerald above, but I also tallied total number of votes and broke that out. I'm tired and need to go to sleep, but please feel free to use my very, very messy Excel sheet and do your own analysis. I pulled the data from the AP's site.
I did a bit more digging than just number of counties, because who knows if that's really a fair way to do the analysis. I know absolutely nothing about the demographics of new hampshire, so I'm just trying to be as objective as possible.
Link to excel sheet |
Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 1704
Registered: 1-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 5:27 am: |
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I've got to say, this is really spooky. |
Bob Fleischer
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Rjf7r
Post Number: 132
Registered: 9-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 5:36 am: |
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Watching Democracy Now this morning right now, and other analyses such as in the guardian.co.uk -- every possible explanation is considered -- even the Clinton campaign getting up earlier in the morning! -- but fraud NEVER even mentioned as a possibility, even remotely.
Now I understand why the Dem establishment has NO interest in election fraud.
Bob
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/video/2008/jan/09/arnie.arnesen.hillary.clinton |
Gerald Destremps
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jdestremps
Post Number: 2
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 3 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 2:04 am: |
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I got the raw data from here: http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/nh/nh_primary_dem_results_by_town/
and from the page you posted at http://www.bbvdocs.org/NH/state/Jan-08-votingsystems-NH.txt
I put the two together to get the attached spreadsheet and charts. Please look at the chart (image) first. Stunning results. Is this normal? I hope it's by chance, but I don't like the looks of it.
Excel file of NH 2008 Primary Analysis
votes2.xls (160.3 k) |
|
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 7419
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 5:56 am: |
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Kicking myself for not tediously taking screen shots of every friggin' municipality in the dumb Googlemap thing. Why can't they just add a table below it?
One noticeable thing on the 59 screen shots I grabbed between 10:45 pm NH time and midnight NH time, is that the ones that had late results (not submitted as of 4 hours after poll closing) -- well, you'd expect them to be hand count locations, right? Nope. Mostly Diebold locations. That's a major red flag to me. How the heck can you not push "print" for four hours??? It normally takes only 30 minutes to wrap things up and print the poll tape when the polls close.
My method was grabbing the municipalities left to right, right to left, starting at the south end of the state and working up. I only got about three rows up. Anyone who has additional time slice information documenting late reporters I'd like to see it.
Late reporters from the first 59 locations I grabbed:
BRENTWOOD - Diebold location - had the Dem results, but no Republican results as of 11:53 pm (polls closed at 7)
CHESTERFIELD - Hand count location - no results as of 11:00 pm
DERRY - Diebold location - no results in as of 11:42 pm
FREMONT - Diebold location - no results in as of 11:48 pm
GREENFIELD - Hand count location - no results in as of 11:52 pm
HAMPTON - Diebold location - results in on time, but I flagged this because every Dem candidate had a result divisible by 5 and for Republicans, Huckabee 217, McCain 1217, Romney 1217, it just looked weird. So much for my statistical capabilities.
HOLLIS - Diebold location - results not in as of 11:54 pm
NEW IPSWICH - Diebold location - results not in as of 10:52 pm
NEWTON - Diebold location - results not in as of 10:58 pm
PELHAM - Diebold location - results not in as of 10:56 pm
TEMPLE - Hand count location - results not in as of 11:26 pm
WINCHESTER - Diebold location - results not in as of 10:46 pm |
matt youmans
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Schoolsout
Post Number: 1
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 7:05 am: |
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RE: http://ronrox.com/paulstats.php
I was looking at the difference in hand count vs. machine count and when you add up the negatives, they equal the positives (off by one vote). Is that strange? Or am I looking for something that is not really there?
I am new here, but I sense something funny happening again in the primaries. I am a Ron Paul supporter, but also blown away that Hillary came out on top to everybody's surprise. I don't get it.
I have people telling me they didn't have to present an ID to vote in NH and that parking lots were also loaded with Massachusettes license plates. Not sure of the voting laws up there, but I just find that odd. |
Mike LaBonte
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mike_labonte
Post Number: 54
Registered: 12-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 7:51 am: |
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I have uploaded here a bunch of CSV files capturing NH primary results reported by the Boston Globe at intervals. A PERL script would download the page every minute, and discard if it was identical to the previous download. The file names have date and time encoded. For example, globe_gop_20080108234100.csv is from 11:41 pm on the 8th.
Unfortunately I didn't think of doing this until after 11:00 pm, and it didn't occur to me until well after midnight that I was capturing only GOP results. There are 31 GOP files and 2 DEM files.
If the Globe uses a similar format for Feb 5 I may be able to capture all races that day, every minute. The caveat is that I will not be home at all, to deal with any problems.
|
clark brooks
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Czark
Post Number: 7
Registered: 1-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 8:14 am: |
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Thanks Millions to Gerald for pulling together the info! Looks like the correlation between size of town and hand vs. diebold swamps any other result. Of the top Obama voting towns, you have to go down to Plymouth (#37) to find one that Obama won on paper ballots. Obama's advantage in total paper towns was just a couple thousand votes. |
Howard Randall Smith
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Tidalcreek
Post Number: 32
Registered: 2-2007
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 8:21 am: |
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Fraud vs. Error. Either one sucks. I just wanted to note that the Dem vote "flip" does seem to mirror the experiments where the Diebold or Diebold like machine flipped the "Yes-No" votes. It could be random, non directed error. In sorting through the data on this page I don't know how to tell whether any of the data points toward fraud, rather than error.
Randy
|
Bob Fleischer
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Rjf7r
Post Number: 134
Registered: 9-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 8:24 am: |
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My understanding is that NH machine count jurisdictions have the option of doing a hand count to check the results. Did ANY of them do a hand count?
Bob |
Stuart Schy
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Stuschy
Post Number: 1
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 7:35 am: |
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Listening and watching the pundits the morning after the NH primary, revealed the same punditry heard after the 2004 Ohio fiasco: "The pollsters must have all been wrong." Not one, including those on Democracy Now mentioned the possibility that the vote counting may have been gamed. Are individual results from the Diebold and Hand-Counted towns available for comparison?}} |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 4290
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 8:06 am: |
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Hi Stuart,
quote:Are individual results from the Diebold and Hand-Counted towns available for comparison?
Yes. The difference between them is shocking.
See the thread here:
http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/show.cgi?tpc=1954&post=39448#POST39448
Maybe it's not fraud but it sure "walks like a duck".
Perhaps someone will find some reasonable explanation for the discrepancy that doesn't include fraud. I'm waiting. . . |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 7422
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 8:33 am: |
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Bob,
I spoke with Wally Fries, the elections official from the town of Danville on Monday. He's got a Diebold location. He told me he was going to do a hand count at the precinct in addition. Also, that Debra Bowen (Calif. Sec. State) was scheduled to attend and watch his hand count. |
Joel Morine
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Erased
Post Number: 9
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 9:17 am: |
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Thanks to everyone who spent the night working on this. |
Bob Fleischer
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Rjf7r
Post Number: 135
Registered: 9-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 10:00 am: |
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I've been hearing that the privately released (no URL) exit poll numbers matched the reported election results. Has anyone seen exit polling numbers? |
matt youmans
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Schoolsout
Post Number: 2
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 10:01 am: |
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I don't know much about this place and this is my first day here, but I was reading that you all had some problems with a guy that calls himself School's Out.
That isn't me, even though my username is schoolsout. It is the name of our boat and what I use on fishing forums. Hope nobody is offended.
On another note, I read on another board that Bev Harris has been in contact with Sutton County and they claim human error on their part for putting "0" instead of "31" for votes for Ron Paul. Is this true? I've tried to find info, to no avail.
Hope I'm not hijacking the thread. Just a concerned citizen. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 7423
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 10:04 am: |
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The town last night reported zero votes and today says it was 31 votes. |
matt youmans
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Schoolsout
Post Number: 3
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 10:08 am: |
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is there anything we can do about that? |
Gentry Lange
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Gentrylange
Post Number: 34
Registered: 9-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 10:11 am: |
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Hey, you folks are rocking in the "free" world on this. Keep it up. I have been linking to this discussion to help spread the word. I realize the MSM isn't going to touch it. But I'd like to know if anyone other than Brad at the Bradblog is coveering it? For instance can Greg Palast still get anything on the BBC news? Is Scoop News interested? This correlation is pretty, well, exact.
Also, I see some mention of recounted some of the Diebold counted results... is this happening?
Finally, is there any collective action in terms of publicity we should take? I'll be posting linkks on The No Vote By Mail Project's website, but should we cross post links widely? Or are we waiting for a final report? |
Bill Bowen
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Bbowen8
Post Number: 6
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 10:39 am: |
|
I have been emailing numerous papers, editors and reporters this morning with a link to this page and specifically Gerald's Excel graph and spreadsheet:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/71200.html?1199902315
I have also been emailing the link to the raw data from the primary results by town:
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/nh/nh_primary_dem_results_by_town/
and the link to the voting systems used by precinct in NH:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/71200.html?1199902315
Here is also a link to about 25 New Hampshire newspapers. They usually have a "Contact Us" button, or "Email the Editor" link. I suggest as many of us as possible contact these papers and try to get the local NH newspapers to start covering the discrepencies between voting systems. If the people of New Hampshire don't care, then it's hard to get anything started.
http://www.usnpl.com/nhnews.php
On another topic... How can the public go after the polling companies? This business of releasing the exit poll results after the election has been declared defeats the purpose doesn't it? I know why this process started, but how do we stop it, or at least get some polling companies that aren't trying to cover their asses and that we can trust again?
Bill |
Donna Brown
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Threesons
Post Number: 1
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 10:45 am: |
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We the people of South Carolina would like to have our votes counted by paper ballots. We will even invest our time to count them. We the people are skeptical about the tally of votes by the voting machines used in New Hampshire last night. We hope you, the people elsewhere understand. Good Luck to all the Presidential Candidates! |
Kevin Esvelt
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Kesvelt
Post Number: 1
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 2 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 11:41 am: |
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It looks like it could be entirely explained by population size. I took Gerald's spreadsheet and broke it down according to margin of Clinton victory for towns of a given voting size for both towns where paper ballots were counted by hand and Diebold-counted towns. Came up with the following:
|
Zachary Napolillo
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Zachn
Post Number: 4
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 11:54 am: |
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Groton County, NH is a possible area of fraud. I did not take a screen capture but I wrote down the percentage of Groton county. Ron Paul had 21.88% of the vote there. Next, Groton County's totals were cleared and now Paul only has 12.5% (14 votes). |
Chuck Davis
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Watchman08
Post Number: 2
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 12:11 pm: |
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i've already done this.go to www.ronpaul2008.com
and look for the word (CONTACT)at the bottom of the page.write a comment and encourage them to demand a recount.the campaine is confirming the fraud right now.this may be our only chance to stop the fraud.take action now |
Joel Morine
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Erased
Post Number: 11
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 1:44 pm: |
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If the folk feasting on federal frauds are going to throw an election, it seems to me:
Unlikely they’d do so in every election
Unlikely they’d do so before it is clear there is likely to be a need for it
Likely they’d first love to see (and want to prompt) mistaken accusations of fraud
That are then publicly proven false before the real deal arrives
The folk pulling this kind of stuff have generations of expertise and experience at doing so (and are, as we’ve seen, still remarkably clumsy -- or perhaps arrogantly confident they needn’t be subtle about it -- sometimes).
Conspiracy HAS been a Standard Operating Procedure of a few key bizgroups that have directed parties/policies in US, since the Civil War. And some have had much exposure, denial, disinformation confusion, and controversy in past several decades. For this, and many other reasons, US citizens are very jaded about such matters. One of the reasons is a constant undercurrent of derision, that pops up in all kinds of media contexts, attaching all sorts of cause for instant auto-dismissal to anyone seeking, developing, delivering evidence of any addition to the list of what are in fact, by legal definition, conspiracies … by concerted effort an odium has been attached to the word, and it fits a need many folk feel for many reasons to not be drawn in to looking closer at real evidence of such matters.
Because of which,
It is extremely important, when developing and delivering any evidence of such:
To make no mistakes
To not jump to quick conclusions or make any accusations w/o a clearly evident pattern or problem
To not say or do anything that is regardable as hasty, sloppy, over-eager, by folk who wish cause to dismiss you
To show one’s own eagerness to criticize those who are being any of above (be they real or provoca-prompter)
To be calmly soberly skeptically conservative (non-political sense) about interpreting/judging fraud occurred
To err, publicly, on side of caution, even (?especially?) when past events give cause to expect fraud (as they do)
Having read and shared past seamier sides of history extensively, I’ve long experience feeling (and witnessing in other) how frustration with trying to invite folk to look at evidence that is really there (much more demonstrably so with history than with current events IMO) feeds an urge to see what one is looking for, or to pounce on especially bold or outrageous evidence of same, and emotion exhaustion adrenalin overwork (and talking to deaf ears) all feed this urge … making it easier to stumble in any of the ways mentioned in prior paragraph.
It is very easy, when delivering news folk don’t want to feel responsible for looking and working at, to be judged wrong while being right, by making any of the above over-hasty missteps.
This site, so far as I have seen checking in here every few months, has done a truly marvelous job of policing itself on all of the above potential pitfalls. This is a big reason so many competent professional people invest so much excellent energy.
It will grow easier to fumble that ball -- to make, be prodded toward making -- false steps now that: the stakes are higher, the moment is now. On these election nights, overwork eagerness adrenalin haste & button-pushing trolls feeding us slippery pits will all be at maximum levels.
Keep up the great work. |
Jody Hoelle
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Chandidevi
Post Number: 1
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 2:04 pm: |
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Where is Karl Rove these days? Who is behind this massive fraud on both the Democrats and Republican sides? |
Gentry Lange
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Gentrylange
Post Number: 39
Registered: 9-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 2:13 pm: |
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I agree with you Joel, as do many who work on this issue. Rushing to conclusions is not a good idea. Hence why I was asking earlier if the plan was going to be a full court press on dissemenating the issue, or what?
Anyway, the other issue coming on the heals of this is that South Carolina looks to be all Touchscreen all the time:
http://www.bleedingheartland.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=802
Can anyone confirm this? |
Joel Morine
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Erased
Post Number: 12
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 2:21 pm: |
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Along the lines of above post (and I offer this with no sense of judgment or criticism -- you do great work here -- but I hope it is constructive food for thought, protective of collective credibility of this site:
Making too much of the 31 votes for Ron Paul initially delivered as a 0, then exposed, is the sort of thing that feeds -->
" I was recently told by one citizen activist in Missouri that each time election officials were challenged by citizens requesting that they allow them more access and participation in the elections process, the election officials became angry and indignant that a citizen should even suggest such a thing! They also would state "we are professionals, this is our job and we know what we are doing, and you don't... " (KathleenWynne in Iowa caucus thread)
The above attitude is of course inappropriate and inexcusable, all the moreso in the context of Kathleen's larger post that I've removed it from.
I agree with Kathleen's outrage, I agree with Bev re: the unacceptability of the zeroed Ron Paul vote report even as an innocent mistake, I'm in full accord with the 'shoulds' expressed by both ...
and 'should' is vital, the prize to keep eyes on ...
and yet in some real (?utilitarian?) sense it may be a more critical point in terms of longterm goals to not feed what election folk, whether guilty or misplaced-faithfully obedient or just mistaken, excuses they may want for attitudes eager to dismiss 'ignorant amateurs'.
A lot of folk working in misdirected, or even dangerous aggressively misapplied institutions, do not like what they have found themselves to be part of once they get into it, or grow disgusted with the extremity of what they were once willing to be part of. If they get disgusted enough to want to do something, they only get one shot at it -- when they take that shot they are out of that system, so they want that shot to matter.
I expect you want to be someplace they feel they can go to? ... in terms of both comfort and confidence.
I'm exhausted, so maybe I've made too much of this ...
P.S. For those looking for useful replies to the media-fed magic of the word 'conspiracy' as an instant magic dismissal derision button, I absolutely recommend the two essays on the subject ('Conspiracy...', Parts I & II) in Michael Parenti's book ...
Dirty Truths: Reflections on Politics, Media, Ideology, Conspiracy, Ethnic Life and Class Power, (SF, City Lights Books, 1996)
...which contains several other interesting essays as well. |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 4293
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 2:25 pm: |
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Joel, absolutely.
One challenge is that simultaneously one has to encourage people to look closely enough that one can see what is and isn't going on. Right now most people are refusing to look, or are refusing to even talk about looking.
It's as if the prospect of considering--or protecting against the possibility of--some form of fraud or even common error is not acceptable in polite company. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 7426
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 2:31 pm: |
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Can anyone get me a screen shot of the CNN graphic showing Ron Paul as a nameless gray wedge? Especially one of the time slices when he was ahead of Giuliani?
I'm about to break another significant story on NH... |
Michael Doran
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Michael_doran
Post Number: 1
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 3:05 pm: |
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Bev, I can't wait to help. I just found this forum and I have been trying to organize people to do something like this. Thank you for all you do. |
Eric Westfall
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Rewind
Post Number: 6
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 3:26 pm: |
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Bev, I took screen shots of the Boston Globe NH Republican Primary results. If you have been following this, the web-page shows a google map near the top which can be moused-over to show precinct totals (which correspond to the official results), and a CHART in the lower portion of the page that is sourced to the Associated Press. Up until yesterday the lower chart showed Ron Paul winning everywhere, however his final Total jived with the official results.
THAT PORTION of the page was changed, and the numbers from the various columns have now been switched around to match the official numbers.
Some candidate's Associated Press numbers were switched and swapped with other candidates' columns, and some were not (and reflected the official count from the start). The TOTALS under the columns did not match the numbers above them in the originally published webpage, so it does not appear to be a simple case of having the names mixed up at the top of the chart.
I have screen shots of the original version of the page, before it was "corrected", which I have uploaded HERE:
http://www.chaban.ripside.com/forum/index.php?topic=18.msg45#msg45
In the following post there, I have uploaded each "google-map" precinct total, which I also took screen shots of. I didn't have enough webspace to upload them all, but I have them in my computer and will do so soon.
I also have screen shots of the Associated Press chart AFTER it was changed, but that is identical to the current Boston Globe web page (which is active and which I linked to), and I didn't upload those. I have them though in case the whole page goes 404.
Hope this is useful.
On a personal note, I cannot believe that Ron Paul could have won 10% in Iowa and yet only recieved 8% in New Hampshire. I thought he would win it easily, given a fair shake. His final numbers weren't even as high as he had been polling in NH, despite all of the independent, new, and recusitated voters who were not polled that supported him there. Sure looks to me like they simply switched Paul's numbers with McCain's.
Video already out on Youtube about this, DailyPaul is going nutz. :-)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=qV6qAGigGYY |
Zachary Napolillo
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Zachn
Post Number: 5
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 3:46 pm: |
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Eric, this is interesting but I think it is just a mistake. Remember Dixville? It was the first county polled. The numbers are messed up here as well. Paul has a 4, which was what McCain got. If those 4 people really voted for Paul, there would already have been some attention due to the publicity here. |
joseph tucker
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Ratebeer
Post Number: 1
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 4:58 pm: |
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Bev I got this that shows Paul as the nameless gray wedge. It doesn't show Paul with a greater percentage than Rudy though.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2026/2179243919_6deccaf180_o.png |
joseph tucker
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Ratebeer
Post Number: 2
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 5:13 pm: |
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The voting machine results coming in for the Democratic candidates do not match the exit polls for the top two. Obama was the clear winner, according to reports I heard based on the exit polls. Hillary has a commanding lead from the incoming voting machine reports.
Bev, do you have any info here? I can't find any exit poll data broken down by township. |
Mike LaBonte
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mike_labonte
Post Number: 57
Registered: 12-2005
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 2 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 5:22 pm: |
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Eric, that table on the Boston Globe's Republican race page mistakenly had a column for Alan Keyes in the middle. At 16 minutes past midnight they took that out, but apparently messed up the data arrangement in the process.
We are dealing with human error here. In a regular election, the rushed results on election night are an approximation, and simply are not the official results that come out 10 days or so later, depending on state law. Presidential primaries are conducted as services to the parties, and have different laws. For example, in Massachusetts the municipal clerks have 4 days to report the official counts.
Any unofficial results reported before the official results may be wrong. It is very important that what happens in the meantime is public and transparent, mistakes and all. One of the problems with these maps and tables of entire states is that they leave out important information like why a number changed.
The real results from each precinct are posted on a wall somewhere. It should be verified by everyone who worked at the precinct, plus any citizens willing to be observers. When the higher level tallies are published, those people should find their precinct in the list and verify the counts. Then they must add up the columns to verify the tally. And someone needs to make sure all precincts are tallied. Lastly we must hold the state officials and media accountable for reporting the correct results.
My point is that checking media reports is only the last step. But the people most interested in checking on elections for the most part ONLY have media reports to go by, because we are spread across the nation/globe. Like Bev has been saying, pictures of the posted results in every precinct would be a great step forward. Then we would have something real to chew on. The observations from inside the precincts are important too. |
Eric Westfall
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Rewind
Post Number: 7
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 - 6:15 pm: |
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Thanks for the explanation.  |
John Dean
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Bozosforbush
Post Number: 936
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 12:13 am: |
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I left off one very important factor - Hillary's ground operation vs Obama's. Hillary's team brought in the best (just read some articles!) Democratic ground-operation guy in the nation to run her GOTV efforts yesterday. They knew exactly where to work hard, same areas that Kerry took basically in 2004, and it worked.
Deserter, brain is fried, no WMDs, yada yada yada. No wonder we clowns laugh.
|
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 4295
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 2:28 am: |
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At this stage there is no way to know whether anything untoward happened or not.
However to argue that a primary election is a "less likely" place to expect fraud because it might not be necessary is not a valid argument.
Primary elections and caucuses are where some of the most significant decisions are made regarding candidate selection. Perceived trends in the early stages define what happens next. E.g., a candidate might drop out. Or there might be a perceived momentum.
Early primaries are crucial for shaping--and determining--perception. Decisions are made early on that cannot be undone. (E.g., a candidate drops out early based on what turn out to be inaccurate results.)
Opportunity is also higher at primaries and caucuses because there is considerably less scrutiny. Rewards are potentially greater, and risks lower, as a vehicle for influencing election outcome.
Note that the determination of who the final candidates will be (from both main parties) may be more important to vested interests than the final choice between the eventual Dem & Rep candidate. |
Bob Fleischer
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Rjf7r
Post Number: 137
Registered: 9-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 4:45 am: |
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I am amused, but not in a laughing way, by a message that MoveOn.org has been sending to its members:
Subject: New Hampshire results
From: "Noah T. Winer, MoveOn.org Political Action"
Date: Wed, 09 Jan 2008 19:00:10 -0800
To: <recipient>
Dear <recipient>,
Imagine if yesterday's New Hampshire primary had been decided by insecure electronic voting machines instead of paper ballots. With polls saying one thing and ballots another—and a thin margin deciding the winner—the results could have been forever in doubt....
It is clear that Mr. Winer has a serious misconception of how the majority of New Hampshire ballots are counted. Is there anything we can do to inform him, and also inform his now similarly seriously misinformed members? |
Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 1718
Registered: 1-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 5:31 am: |
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quote:However to argue that a primary election is a "less likely" place to expect fraud because it might not be necessary is not a valid argument.
The idea that it's less likely because it's "not necessary" has a couple of prolems:
How, in fact does anybody KNOW it's not necessary? A 3% margin here, as it turned out.
And fraud is likely to happen where one has access, motive and the ability to do the deed. Every inch of margin that you get on an opponent is of advantage in the primary media battles. Every delegate you get helps forward your platform toward the national convention, even if it doesn't help the candidate, particularly. |
Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 1719
Registered: 1-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 5:35 am: |
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quote:Dear <recipient>,
Imagine if yesterday's New Hampshire primary had been decided by insecure electronic voting machines instead of paper ballots. With polls saying one thing and ballots another—and a thin margin deciding the winner—the results could have been forever in doubt....
It is clear that Mr. Winer has a serious misconception of how the majority of New Hampshire ballots are counted. Is there anything we can do to inform him, and also inform his now similarly seriously misinformed members?
What misconception, Bob? Where does he say that the majority of votes were counted by one method, or the other? I fail to see that, so I fail to see that your point, one way or the other (which is unclear, since you seem to be disagreeing with him on an issue he hasn't taken a stand on), is valid. Are you saying that there weren't enough ballots on the machine counted side to make a 3% margin? |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 4297
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 5:45 am: |
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I thought Bob's point was:
Winer's comment to the MoveOn membership is inappropriate because it suggests the results should be believed just because paper ballots were used (mostly optical scan). But the fact that paper ballots were used with optical scanners is irrelevant, since those ballots--the vast majority--are not being hand-counted and the electronic counting devices in the scanners and tabulators can be easily hacked.
IOW, just getting rid of DREs doesn't solve the security & accuracy problems, but Winer is telling MoveOn mombers that it does. Winer is participating in disinformation or misinformation. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 7430
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 6:16 am: |
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For Mike LaBonte,
Thanks very much for posting the info about why the Boston.com data was posted incorrectly. Those of us who work with databases a lot could see that they had an extra field in there.
Because they cited the AP as a source, and there were a lot of other AP data postings on other sites, it was easy to see that it was an error by whoever configured the table.
You asked about the date function -- I will have to review the video in closer detail, because there were two discussions about this. I think I clipped this from the section where Hursti was talking about it in the context of the battery or a clock chip that is in the memory card.
On my to-do list when the dust settles is to post the whole unedited video for those of us who live, eat and breathe this stuff. YouTube now only allows 10 minute max, but I think GoogleVideo allows longer ones. |
Bob Fleischer
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Rjf7r
Post Number: 140
Registered: 9-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 6:28 am: |
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Bev,
Can you re-title this string? I think the phrase "Silvestro the Cat" will turn off some people who would otherwise read this most important information. |
Trenton Brodie
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Doubledown
Post Number: 1
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 7:26 am: |
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Hi Everyone!
Longtime (2000 election or so?) follower of your work, first-time poster. Bev, you and all your VOLUNTEERS are true PATRIOTS and SAINTS for all the tireless work that you do. It gives new meaning to the word DUTY, because it is our DUTY to uphold the Constitution as citizens of this once-great nation. (Interesting to see who the candidate of choice is for those brave souls who are overseas doing the real DUTY, isn't it? If you REALLY support the troops, support their choice for Commander-in-Chief! Somehow, I think that would mean more to them than another yellow ribbon on your car antenna.)
But I digress...
My 2 cents on all this "vote by computer" nonsense (Thank GOD, and Debra Bowen, I live in California!). I tested software and hardware for 6 years to verify for quality assurance. I dabbled in programming too. But I was a much better tester. I loved to break things and find the vulnerabilites. It was my job and I was VERY good at it. The programmers HATED me because I was constantly finding bugs and making them fix their source code. That was one reason I never pursued programming...because of testers like me. I would have NEVER wanted to fix all the holes in the software and hardware I tested. It takes FOREVER to make true quality software and we all know that there are deadlines to get the product out the door and that there is plenty of dubious rubberstamping going on.
Also, there is NO SUCH THING as a FOOLPROOF electronic system. And that is why we cannot entrust our most important democratic PUBLIC right to one. Especially one made by a PRIVATELY OWNED company with secret "proprietary" source code!!! It absolutely baffles me and makes my head want to explode that the vote was allowed to be PRIVATIZED. This is just as important, if not more, than the fact that the system can be compromised.
For pete's sake people...it's more difficult to hack DirectTV and Dish Network then these voting machines and there are thousands and thousands of much less tech-savvy people than me out there doing it right now with publicly available software and $50 smartcard memory card reader/writers anyone can buy off the internet and get discreetly shipped to their house from out of the country. The fact is that it's pretty low level programming, actually. Too bad people care more about porn and NFL Sunday Ticket than the future and integrity of their democracy, eh?
BTW...I've given a copy of "Hacking Democracy" to everyone I know that has a brainstem and is capable of higher thought. And instructed them to do the same after they watch it. So it's going viral. I tried to squeeze "Zeitgeist" and "Hacking Democracy" on the same DVD, but no dice...that's probably too much truth for one person in a day anyway, I guess. Oh well, on to South Carolina...where I'm sure all the machines will behave, right?
"Trust us"...hahahaha! |
Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 1723
Registered: 1-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 8:20 am: |
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quote:Dear <recipient>,
Imagine if yesterday's New Hampshire primary had been decided by insecure electronic voting machines instead of paper ballots. With polls saying one thing and ballots another—and a thin margin deciding the winner—the results could have been forever in doubt....
Catherine said:
quote:I thought Bob's point was:
Winer's comment to the MoveOn membership is inappropriate because it suggests the results should be believed just because paper ballots were used (mostly optical scan). But the fact that paper ballots were used with optical scanners is irrelevant, since those ballots--the vast majority--are not being hand-counted and the electronic counting devices in the scanners and tabulators can be easily hacked.
IOW, just getting rid of DREs doesn't solve the security & accuracy problems, but Winer is telling MoveOn mombers that it does. Winer is participating in disinformation or misinformation.
It certainly isn't clear from this quote that what you say he meant is what he meant, to me. This snip could just as easily have been posted on Brad blog as snark, from what I've read so far. This needs more context. |
Bob Fleischer
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Rjf7r
Post Number: 141
Registered: 9-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 9:23 am: |
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The entire context -- you decide:
Subject:
> New Hampshire results
> From:
> "Noah T. Winer, MoveOn.org Political Action" <moveon-help@list.moveon.org>
> Date:
> Wed, 09 Jan 2008 19:00:10 -0800
>
>
> Dear XXX,
>
> Imagine if yesterday's New Hampshire primary had been decided by
> insecure electronic voting machines instead of paper ballots. With polls
> saying one thing and ballots another—and a thin margin deciding the
> winner—the results could have been forever in doubt.
>
> And that could still happen in dozens of key states in November unless
> we act quickly. More than 180,000 of us have signed already.
>
> Can you forward the electronic voting machine petition below to 3 more
> friends and family today? We'll deliver the signatures to local election
> officials as well as Congress, so every signature from your neighborhood
> makes a big difference.
>
> Your friends can sign by clicking here:
>
> http://pol.moveon.org/paper2008/?id=11877-1610845-YNzj7I&t=1
> <http://pol.moveon.org/paper2008/?id=11877-1610845-ynzj7i&t=1>
>
> Thanks for all you do.
>
> –Noah, Jennifer, Laura, Carrie, and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team
> Wednesday, January 9th, 2008
>
> P.S. Below is the original e-mail you can forward along.
>
> Click here to add your name:
> "We must act quickly to secure our elections with paper ballots and
> audits before November."
> <http://pol.moveon.org/paper2008/o.pl?id=11877-1610845-ynzj7i&t=2>
>
>
>
> Sign the Petition
> <http://pol.moveon.org/paper2008/o.pl?id=11877-1610845-ynzj7i&t=3>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Dear MoveOn member,
>
> This Sunday's cover story in The New York Times Magazine makes plain the
> threat: The winner of the 2008 presidential election could be decided by
> flawed, insecure, and hackable electronic voting machines.^1
>
> This is the most prominent news coverage this issue has ever gotten, so
> it could be our one last chance to get this right before the election in
> November.
>
> Congress is poised to consider a new emergency paper ballots bill next
> week—but we'll have to convince them to act right away.^2
>
> Can you sign this urgent petition asking local, state, and federal
> officials to require paper ballots for our votes? Clicking here will add
> your name:
>
> http://pol.moveon.org/paper2008/o.pl?id=11877-1610845-YNzj7I&t=4
> <http://pol.moveon.org/paper2008/o.pl?id=11877-1610845-ynzj7i&t=4>
>
> The petition says: "We must act quickly to secure our elections with
> paper ballots and audits before November."
>
> Elections are run at the state level, so we'll deliver your signature
> and comments to local election officials in addition to members of
> Congress.
>
> Electronic voting machines are so unreliable and insecure, we might
> elect the wrong person president in 2008. As The New York Times Magazine
> reports:
>
> [Voting machines] fail unpredictably, and in extremely strange ways;
> voters report that their choices "flip" from one candidate to another
> before their eyes; machines crash or begin to count backward; votes
> simply vanish. (In the 80-person town of Waldenburg, Ark., touch-screen
> machines tallied zero votes for one mayoral candidate in 2006—even
> though he's pretty sure he voted for himself.) Most famously, in the
> November 2006 Congressional election in Sarasota, Fla., touch-screen
> machines recorded an 18,000-person "undervote" for a race decided by
> fewer than 400 votes.^3
>
> You can read more from this scary report at the end of this email—and
> forward it along to your friends and family. It's really compelling.
>
> Congress hasn't been able to solve this problem yet, but there's one
> more chance next week. Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey is expected to
> introduce an emergency bill to offer funding to states who switch from
> unreliable electronic voting machines to paper ballots and audits.^4
> We'll ultimately need a mandate for these things, but this bill would be
> a crucial first step to prevent some of the most dire threats to the
> 2008 election.
>
> But to pass the bill in time, we'll need to light a fire under Congress.
> At the same time, we'll have to urge local election officials to read
> The New York Times Magazine story—and replace electronic voting machines
> with paper ballots and audits before November.
>
> Sign this emergency petition to stop the threat from electronic voting
> machines right away. Click here to add your name:
>
> http://pol.moveon.org/paper2008/o.pl?id=11877-1610845-YNzj7I&t=5
> <http://pol.moveon.org/paper2008/o.pl?id=11877-1610845-ynzj7i&t=5>
>
> Thank you for all you do.
>
> –Noah, Jennifer, Laura, Carrie, and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team
> Tuesday, January 8th, 2008
>
> P.S. Here's more from this week's disturbing New York Times Magazine
> story. Please forward this along to all your friends and family.
>
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/magazine/06vote-t.html>
>
>
> Can You Count on Voting Machines?
>
> By CLIVE THOMPSON, The New York Times Magazine, January 6, 2008
>
> *J*ane Platten gestured, bleary-eyed, into the secure room filled with
> voting machines. It was 3 a.m. on Nov. 7, and she had been working for
> 22 hours straight. "I guess we've seen how technology can affect an
> election," she said. The electronic voting machines in Cleveland were
> causing trouble again.
>
> For a while, it had looked as if things would go smoothly for the Board
> of Elections office in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. About 200,000 voters had
> trooped out on the first Tuesday in November for the lightly attended
> local elections, tapping their choices onto the county's 5,729
> touch-screen voting machines. The elections staff had collected
> electronic copies of the votes on memory cards and taken them to the
> main office, where dozens of workers inside a secure, glass-encased room
> fed them into the "GEMS server," a gleaming silver Dell desktop computer
> that tallies the votes.
>
> Then at 10 p.m., the server suddenly froze up and stopped counting
> votes. Cuyahoga County technicians clustered around the computer,
> debating what to do. A young, business-suited employee from Diebold—the
> company that makes the voting machines used in Cuyahoga—peered into the
> screen and pecked at the keyboard. No one could figure out what was
> wrong. So, like anyone faced with a misbehaving computer, they simply
> turned it off and on again. Voilŕ: It started working—until an hour
> later, when it crashed a second time. Again, they rebooted. By the wee
> hours, the server mystery still hadn't been solved.
>
> Worse was yet to come. When the votes were finally tallied the next day,
> 10 races were so close that they needed to be recounted. But when
> Platten went to retrieve paper copies of each vote—generated by the
> Diebold machines as they worked—she discovered that so many printers had
> jammed that 20 percent of the machines involved in the recounted races
> lacked paper copies of some of the votes. They weren't lost, technically
> speaking; Platten could hit "print" and a machine would generate a
> replacement copy. But she had no way of proving that these replacements
> were, indeed, what the voters had voted. She could only hope the
> machines had worked correctly.
>
> Click here to keep reading:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/magazine/06Vote-t.html
>
> Then sign our urgent petition for paper ballots before the November
> election. Just click here to add your name:
>
> http://pol.moveon.org/paper2008/o.pl?id=11877-1610845-YNzj7I&t=6
> <http://pol.moveon.org/paper2008/o.pl?id=11877-1610845-ynzj7i&t=6>
>
> Sources:
> 1. "Can You Count on Voting Machines?," The New York Times Magazine,
> January 6, 2008
> http://www.nytimes.com/magazine/
>
> 2. "Rep. Holt To Offer New Election Reform Proposal," National Journal
> Tech Daily, December 10, 2007
> http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3310&id=&id=11877-1610845-YNzj7I&t=7
> <http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3310&id=&id=11877-1610845-ynzj7i&t=7>
>
> 3. "Can You Count on Voting Machines?," The New York Times Magazine,
> January 6, 2008
> http://www.nytimes.com/magazine/
>
> 4. "Rep. Rush Holt to Push for Paper Ballots and Vote Count Audits for
> 2008," AlterNet, December 27, 2007
> http://www.alternet.org/democracy/71608/
>
> *Support our member-driven organization:* MoveOn.org Political Action is
> entirely funded by our 3.2 million members. We have no corporate
> contributors, no foundation grants, no money from unions. Our tiny staff
> ensures that small contributions go a long way. If you'd like to support
> our work, you can give now at:
>
> http://political.moveon.org/donate/email.html?id=11877-1610845-YNzj7I&t=8
> <http://political.moveon.org/donate/email.html?id=11877-1610845-ynzj7i&t=8>
>
> PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://pol.moveon.org/
> Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
> |
Michael Polsinelli
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jankdc
Post Number: 15
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 9:43 am: |
|
Looking back, I found a news item that Kerry was trailing in the polls to Dean by double digits before winning New Hampshire in 2004. What we are seeing now may just be business as usual.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/27/elec04.prez.main/index.html |
Joel Morine
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Erased
Post Number: 17
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 9:51 am: |
|
"However to argue that a primary election is a "less likely" place to expect fraud because it might not be necessary is not a valid argument."
Catherine & Brant,
I stand corrected. I felt very tentative in making that statement, and should maybe wait for another day when 'running on fumes', as I often am right now.
I fully agree with the points you made about importance of primaries, and especially of early primaries.
Thank you both.
I hope it didn't affect the aptness of more important points I was leading up to about caution and wariness re: 'set-ups'. |
joseph tucker
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Ratebeer
Post Number: 4
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 10:10 am: |
|
Can I get a status?
1. Are there any localized exit poll data to compare to township vote tallies?
2. Are there any townships involved in recounting ballots for the purposes of comparison to hand versus optical tallies with results available or pending?
3. Are there any other verification methods completed or underway? |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 4301
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 10:32 am: |
|
Joel,
quote:I hope it didn't affect the aptness of more important points I was leading up to about caution and wariness re: 'set-ups'.
Not at all. I understand your point.
Joseph,
I think on this thread or another NH-topic thread someone mentioned that there were some requests for recounts in some places but it's not clear yet what will happen. |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 4302
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 10:42 am: |
|
Michael,
That is quite possible.
Bev and others have often remarked that primary elections have been full of strange surprises. There was no way of double-checking anything since there was so little awareness then of the importance of transparency and public observation. And with all the attention being focused on the general elections, no one was paying attention to the primaries.
It takes a long time and a lot of work to figure out what the problems are, figure out what to do about it, educate enough people in enough places, and then provide enough support for those who decide to observe or investigate.
You are absolutely right in thinking that maybe we all should have been paying more attention to the primaries in the past. |
Howard Randall Smith
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Tidalcreek
Post Number: 36
Registered: 2-2007
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 10:56 am: |
|
MoveOn petition - Winer did, at least, say "paper ballots with audits". WE just must chime in on the definition of "audit", as Bev has done elsewhere in these forums.
For what it's worth, here is my ROUGH DRAFT (many details to be filled in!) MODEL ELECTION:
1) Controlling Authority (Citizens/Transparent)
2) Staffing (including counsel)
3) Compliance with State & Local Election Law (including challenges to same)
4) Liaison with Public, Government and Press
5) BALLOT DESIGN (including recommendations, but also working with what's available)
6) CHAIN OF CUSTODY, Checks and Balances
7) Pre Election Preparation
8) Polling Place Selection
9) ELECTION DAY
10) Polling Place Set Up [Chain of Custody Monitoring Starts Here???]
11) CASTING OF PAPER BALLOTS (CHAIN OF CUSTODY MONITORED THROUGH TO THE LAST STEP BELOW)
12) BALLOTS (NOT VOTES) TALLIED BY HAND
a) Two Counting Teams
b) Count and Display Independent Results (team agreement on team results is essential)
c) Exact Match - proceed to next step
d) Not Exact Match - switch teams and count again until exact match is reached
13) COUNT VOTES BY HAND
a) Two Counting Teams
b) Count and Display Independent Results (team agreement on team results is essential)
c) Exact Match - proceed to next step
d) Not Exact Match - switch teams and count again until exact match reached
14) REPORTING THE RESULTS
(Message edited by tidalcreek on January 10, 2008)
Randy
|
Tim Jowers
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Timjowers
Post Number: 1
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 11:15 am: |
|
Very, very, very good work. In my mind the votes must be recounted for New Hampshire. In fact, anyone involved in counting votes in Sutton should never be allowed to work election polls again. Absolutely disgusting. |
Richard H Beeson
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Rhb
Post Number: 2
Registered: 3-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 11:36 am: |
|
State of New Hampshire, Rockingham County, Superior Court, Court Document. [Hajjar]
http://independentrebellion.com/images/hajjar.png |
Jon
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Scbomber
Post Number: 1
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 11:57 am: |
|
FYI: The New Hampshire Democratic party allocates its delegates proportionally. Thus, the difference between Clinton and Obama's totals makes NO DIFFERENCE in the number of delegates they earned - each won nine.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jDkQnMmIo_xXUF1vV_6VqxNpsLKgD8U24L802 |
Michael Polsinelli
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jankdc
Post Number: 16
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 12:42 pm: |
|
Jon,
For me it is not about the amount of delegates, it is about control and manipulation. The winners get a lot of publicity around the New Hampshire vote. |
John Tsouris
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jtnc
Post Number: 1
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 1:04 pm: |
|
Here is the Republican vote broken down by paper vs. Diebold. Big Shocker: Ron Paul is the ONLY candidate to get screwed. No huge difference like Clinton vs Obama, though.
Paper Ballots McCain 19155 40.3
Romney 12414 26.1
Huckabee 6489 13.7
Paul 4488 9.5
Giuliani 3977 8.4
Thompson 647 1.4
Hunter 288 0.6
Tancredo 22 0
Diebold McCain 68577 37.4
Romney 62023 33.8
Huckabee 19867 10.8
Giuliani 16277 8.9
Paul 13501 7.4
Thompson 2202 1.2
Hunter 923 0.5
Tancredo 44 0
|
mari barada
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Erichazann
Post Number: 1
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 4:36 pm: |
|
Hi All, this is my first post. I have discovered that the way the AP is reporting the results, they are not giving candidates on both sides the credit for their write-in votes that they received on the opposite party's ballot. The official results from AP list
Dem:
Write-in: 2103
Rep:
Write-in: 4294
2103 votes is exactly the number of "scatter" or random person write-in votes, PLUS the sum of all votes received for Republican candidates on the Democratic ballot. The breakdown is this:
McCain: 788
Romney: 510
Paul: 229
Huckabee: 209
Guiliani: 134
Thompson: 14
Howard:1
Duncan Hunter: 5
Keyes: 4
Marchuk: 5
=1899
+204 scatter votes = 2103
Dem Breakdown (Republican Ballot):
Obama: 1665
Clinton: 1593
Edwards: 633
Richardson: 179
Crow: 7
Gravel: 5
DR Hunter: 3
Kucinich: 12
LaMagna: 1
Biden: 5
=4103
+191 scatter votes = 4294
This does not change the official results, these figures are from the NH SOS site. But it is the way the AP is reporting it that is wrong.
I am working on a spreadsheet of each municipality, but does anyone know of a site that is reporting in tabular format like boston.com and also reporting separately "others" (candidates actually on the ballot) and write-ins?
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/nh/nh_primary_gop_results_by_town/ has the Sutton correction, but no correction for Greenville yet.. so I don't know how up to date it is. |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 1801
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 5:10 pm: |
|
Mari,
Write-ins from the "other" party are completely irrelevant for any official purpose. They are not additive. Why would you want to add them in? Only Democratic ballots with votes for Democrats matter, and the same for Republicans. Cross-over write-ins are interesting for guaging protest votes, but they do not count for anything.
AP is reporting what actually matters.
I'm not sure what point you're making. Can you expand on it? |
mari barada
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Erichazann
Post Number: 2
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 6:11 pm: |
|
I had asked that question to the elections person - whoever answers the email - but did not get a response yet. I thought I had read that a write-in vote was counted as long the candidate was registered. I'm not finished with my analysis, but I thought I would post it here for feedback. Thank you.
Many people are wondering what votes were in the "black hole" of "Other". (Other than the ballot candidates that were lesser known.) My point is there is a very clean itemization of what was classified as "other". I don't understand why they (NH SOS site) took the time to do that tho, if those votes don't count?
Some of the AP results still are wrong. Is there an updated itemized listing? I'd like to compare still. There were not 614 write-in votes in Londonderry. Only the aggregate matchings the NH SOS results. |
Brian
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brian
Post Number: 1
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 6:24 pm: |
|
Can someone begin typing some of the data from http://www.nh.gov/nhes/elmi/communpro.htm into a spreadsheet? I don't know what the best way to organize something like this would be, but if we had the data we can begin looking for / eliminating other demographic correlates that could explain the voting discrepancy. |
Mike LaBonte
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mike_labonte
Post Number: 62
Registered: 12-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 7:06 pm: |
|
Massachusetts has the same policy of not transferring write-ins across parties.
(Message edited by Mike_LaBonte on January 10, 2008) |
Mike LaBonte
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mike_labonte
Post Number: 63
Registered: 12-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 7:32 pm: |
|
I am attaching the latest spreadsheets extracted from the Boston Globe, which uses AP data. Only Windsor is not reported at this point. The Ron Paul count for Sutton is now correct. (2nd attempt: the links were messed up the first time). |
mari barada
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Erichazann
Post Number: 3
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 - 7:51 pm: |
|
Thanks for your help Mike. So the Boston Globe is as good as it gets? Londonderry is still whacked, but everything must have been corrected in the aggregate listing here:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2008/01/10/official_resu lts
because those #s match the NH SOS site.
I wondered if someone could have reported 614 votes because there were 46+1 (Dem. write-ins + scatter) votes.. and they transposed some numbers while doing the tally. 614 does not make any sense. I know picking at the details will not change the outcome, but it's the perception. People are looking at the politico.com results on ronrox.com and BG results and wondering what's up with all the whack numbers, even tho most that we know of have been corrected so far in the official state results. |
Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 1726
Registered: 1-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, January 11, 2008 - 7:31 am: |
|
quote:6) CHAIN OF CUSTODY, Checks and Balances
7) Pre Election Preparation
8) Polling Place Selection
9) ELECTION DAY
10) Polling Place Set Up [Chain of Custody Monitoring Starts Here???]
11) CASTING OF PAPER BALLOTS (CHAIN OF CUSTODY MONITORED THROUGH TO THE LAST STEP BELOW)
12) BALLOTS (NOT VOTES) TALLIED BY HAND
a) Two Counting Teams
b) Count and Display Independent Results (team agreement on team results is essential)
c) Exact Match - proceed to next step
d) Not Exact Match - switch teams and count again until exact match is reached
13) COUNT VOTES BY HAND
a) Two Counting Teams
b) Count and Display Independent Results (team agreement on team results is essential)
c) Exact Match - proceed to next step
d) Not Exact Match - switch teams and count again until exact match reached
14) REPORTING THE RESULTS
Somehow there must be a citizens' group co-ownership of the ballots in an election. There has to be reasonable oversite of any part of the process that accumulates, registers and stores ballots, so that the actual value (unique choices made) on each and every ballot are recorded and kept free of corruption, unwarranted addition or contamination ASAP. It's brutally critical that this happen in a secret ballot situation.
And ideally, there should be more than 2 teams. |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 1804
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, January 11, 2008 - 8:44 am: |
|
I am unaware of ANY state that transfers write-ins across party lines. Yet people still do it.
When you write-in a Republican on a Democratic ballot in a primary or vice versa, you are exercizing a protest vote only. It does NO good for your candidate, because primaries are separate. There is never ANY addition of the votes across parties. Yet in every primary I've ever seen, people do this in rather large numbers.
If they're doing it in the assumption that those write-ins are added to that candidate's totals in THEIR party, the voters are sadly mistaken. |
Mike LaBonte
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mike_labonte
Post Number: 65
Registered: 12-2005
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 2 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, January 11, 2008 - 9:11 am: |
|
I am originally from NH, and would like to share an insight. A fair number of NH people consider themselves "independent", and will cross party lines from election to election. They register "unenrolled" to be able to do that.
In NH, the act of selecting a ballot in a primary automatically enrolls you in that party. There are forms that can be filled out at the polling places to immediately unenroll again, and most do that. Massachusetts used to have the same rules, but automatic party enrollment has been discontinued here.
What happens is that some people do not not yet know about automatic enrollment, or they just forget to unenroll on the way out. Then they get a big surprise in the next primary when they have no choice of ballot. They have to vote within the party in which they are now enrolled. I think that is where many protest votes come from in NH. It happened to me when I was younger. |
Jeremy Trudell
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Tbuddha
Post Number: 2
Registered: 9-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, January 11, 2008 - 9:12 am: |
|
Thank god we're having a caucus here in Denver. If you want to know who rigs the elections every time, start at your local Masonic Temple. |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 4321
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, January 11, 2008 - 10:10 am: |
|
Mike--
So if you register as "unenrolled" then you can write in a name from either party, or for someone not in any party? Is that correct? |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 1806
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, January 11, 2008 - 10:20 am: |
|
Catherine,
When one votes in a primary, any primary, in any state, your votes in that primary apply ONLY to that party's results. If you vote, by write-in or whatever, the name of a Democratic candidate in a Republican Primary, that vote NEVER gets added in with the Democratic candidate's vote total, ever.
The same applies if the parties above are reversed.
Some people apparently don't know this. In primaries, each party is COMPLETELY SEPARATE. No votes ever are cross-added from both sides.
In "open states" the "unenrolled" may pick ONE party, and then vote as if they were always in that party. Mike is saying they have the right to again revert back to "unenrolled" on their way out the door. There is NO SUCH THING as being able to cross parties and mix and match in primaries.
The last state to have that was California, and it was declared unconstitutional in California Democratic Party v. Jones.
The option to have a Republican party's voter's votes counted in a Democratic Primary (or vice versa) is gone. |
Mike LaBonte
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mike_labonte
Post Number: 66
Registered: 12-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, January 11, 2008 - 10:21 am: |
|
In a primary there are separate ballots for Democrat, Republican, etc. A person registered unenrolled will be asked which one they want.
Once they have a ballot, anyone is free to write in anyone they want, regardless of the candidate's party affiliation. The voters should, but probably often do not, understand that writing in a candidate from another party has no effect in the end.
(Message edited by mike_labonte on January 11, 2008) |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 1809
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, January 11, 2008 - 10:48 am: |
|
Just to put specifics on it, if a person writes in, say, Barack Obama on a Republican ballot, he is voting for some fictitious Republican delegate candidate who will support Barack Obama at the REPUBLICAN National Convention.
There is no mechanism for an Obama vote on a Republican ballot to in any way add a vote to Obama's Democratic vote total. |
Brian
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brian
Post Number: 2
Registered: 1-2008
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, January 11, 2008 - 10:51 am: |
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I wanted to do a quick statistical analysis of the results. This is far from complete, but the results thus far do not contradict our initial suspicions.
First a very basic statistics primer. We assume that our samples are subject to "noise" (random variation). Obviously the percent vote counts are not going to be the same in every precinct, so when we see what we think is a trend (like Obama doing better in hand-counted precincts) we ask, "what is the probability (p) of this apparent trend arising by chance?" If the probability is less than 5% (p < 0.05) we say that the result is "statistically significant."
Ok, now the results.
First I ran a chi-squared contingency table tests with Yates correction. for both the democrat and republican results.
--- Republican Results ---
> r
[,1] [,2]
[1,] 16327 4057
[2,] 20124 6622
[3,] 930 290
[4,] 68833 19573
[5,] 13671 4600
[6,] 62455 12720
[7,] 2213 671
> chisq.test(r)
Pearson's Chi-squared test
data: r
X-squared = 1276.122, df = 6, p-value < 2.2e-16
--- Democrat Results ---
> d
[,1] [,2]
[1,] 91600 20529
[2,] 38210 10402
[3,] 317 85
[4,] 2801 1090
[5,] 81633 22944
[6,] 9936 3290
> chisq.test(d)
Pearson's Chi-squared test
data: d
X-squared = 771.4541, df = 5, p-value < 2.2e-16
Thus we can say with a high degree of certainty that there is a relationship between the counting method and the election results. The probability of the aforementioned discrepancies occurring by chance is less than 1 in 100 billion.
This does not mean however that counting method causes different voting percentages, just that they are correlated. It could be that something else (e.g., size of town) causes both. As a quick control I did the same chi-squared analysis, but looking at just whether people voted democrat or republican. Below, the columns are machine counted, hand counted and the rows are republican, democrat.
> all
[,1] [,2]
[1,] 184553 48533
[2,] 224497 58340
> chisq.test(all)
Pearson's Chi-squared test with Yates' continuity correction
data: all
X-squared = 2.9528, df = 1, p-value = 0.08573
That is, while the machine counted precincts tended to vote slightly more republican (54.9% vs. 54.6%) this result was not significant (p > 0.05).
If one was cheating by vote substitution one would not want to change republican ballots to democratic or vice versa for obvious reasons. It is interesting that the machine/hand counted precincts have such different results within each election, but are almost identical between the two elections.
The next question is whether other factors can explain the discrepancy. This is very much a work in progress. Preliminary results indicate that neither Obama's nor Clinton's percentages have a significant correlation with precinct size. They both fit a line with slope zero. This would suggest (very preliminary) that the trend of smaller precincts tending to use hand counts cannot explain the discrepancy. |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 4323
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, January 11, 2008 - 11:35 am: |
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Brian,
Of more interest (to me) would be indications of the vote counts for any candidate from either party showing a significant discrepancy in one, several or overall locations between their hand-counted and machine-counted votes. |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 1812
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, January 11, 2008 - 11:45 am: |
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Boston Globe NH primary results 08-JAN-2008
Excel NH Republican Paper vs Diebold