No fraud in New Hampshire

by Winger, Tue Dec 07, 2004 at 01:16:03 PM EST

Here's a tidbit to help emphasize that we ought to remain rational and coolheaded about the fraud issue.  Not everything that might look like fraud at first sight actually is fraud.

Personally I believe it's very important to audit everything, particularly Ohio and Florida.  We clearly need to revamp the entire election system.  But if we want to gain any traction, and get things fixed by 2006, we must avoid "Boy who cried wolf" accusations.

New Hampshire is a possible wolf.  The Nashua Telegraph in New Hampshire reports (Dec 5):

A recount of key towns and wards requested by Ralph Nader has ended without any major problems being encountered.
More:
The recount of ballots cast in Litchfield, Pelham, Salem, Newton, Sandown, Danville, one ward in Somersworth and four in Manchester ended Tuesday.

Nader folks won't proceed with checking ballots in other New Hampshire municipalities because they are satisfied with the results.

I can't find any specific tables/data on how close the hand recount was to the optical scan. Perhaps if someone finds them, they can post them as a comment.

Conclusion: Be careful about screaming "FRAUD!" at the top of your voice at everything you see coming down the wire. Take time to sort the wheat from the chaff. Otherwise the media will ignore us, and we'll be in the same sad place in 2006 and 2008 as we are today.

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Shadow_head_small
I live in New Hampshire....
...and while I thought Kerry's win was closer than the exit polls supposedly predicted, I didn't think there was fraud.

New Hampshire does not have a central tabulating system. Each precinct that uses optical-scan machines puts the ballots into the machine on-site to be read and then phones in the results to the Secretary of State's office. (Or so I've been told by people who should know.) So to really fix a race in New Hampshire, you'd have to fix each machine, or at least enough of them.

There was at least one race this year that was overturned in the recount, but that was for a town that did manual counting, not machine counting. New Hampshire has a "vote for all candidates of this party" oval at the top of the ballot (straight-ticket voting for those who want to do it), which vote can be overridden in individual races. If those manual ballots with the overrides aren't counted correctly, a close race can be incorrectly decided.

Also this year, one town temporarily lost some ballots, but the ballots were found inside the machine.

New Hampshire is a model for the rest of the country. Granted, it's a small state and it's easy to do the right thing here. (However, because of our large state legislature, some of the ballots can be long. There were 20 candidates for state rep this year on the ballot in my ward.) Other states should, I think, use our non-networked optical-scan system with a paper trail for every vote.

Also, our longtime Secretary of State is known for being nonpartisan. He's the complete opposite of the Katherine Harris/Ken Blackwell types.

by Vicki Meagher 2004-12-07 02:19PM | 0 recs
Shadow_head_small
200 votes changed out of 50,000 supposedly
From www.politicsnh.com:

Nader recount finishes with little attention...

The recount of 11 precincts of the presidential race was completed Tuesday afternoon with less than 200 votes changing of the 50,000 counted.

The Nader campaign, which asked and paid the $14,000 to conduct the recount, said the results show New Hampshire has a reliable system of counting votes.

Since a statewide recount was not requested the recount numbers will not be reflected in the official results.

(11/30/04)

by Vicki Meagher 2004-12-07 02:29PM | 0 recs

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