The winners of the primary election were the Democrat who would be weakest in the general election and the Republican who, in my view, would be strongest. The conflict (on the Dem side) between all of the final polling and the result is quite troubling. Josh Marshall certainly seems surprised.
Brad Friedman makes a tentative case for the vote-rigging thesis, here and here. He notes that the ballots were counted on Diebold optical scan machines...
Those Diebold op-scan machines are the exact same ones that were hacked in the HBO documentary, Hacking Democracy.
While I have no evidence at this time --- let me repeat, no evidence at this time --- of chicanery, what we do know is that chicanery, with this particular voting system, is not particularly difficult. Particularly when one private company --- and a less-than-respectable one at that, as I detailed in the previous post --- runs the entire process.Moroever, the pre-election polls were accurate on the Republican side but wildly off the mark when it came to the Dems. Why?
I should also note that some 40% of New Hampshire's precincts are hand-counted, which equals about 25% of the votes. All the rest are counted on hackable Diebold op-scan systems, with completely hackable memory cards, all programmed and managed by LHS Associates. As Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org who seems to share my concern, says, LHS is the "chain of custody" in New Hampshire elections.
On the other hand: The exit polls (not the pre-election polls) do match the final results. So any theory about rigging the vote must also posit rigging the exit polls. Carry the argument to that point, and most folks will say "You've gone too far."
Even so, I think it is fair to ask whether the exits were modified at the last minute to conform with the actuals, as occurred in Ohio in November of 2004.
Brad punctures a couple of disinformation tales spread (in large part) via right-wing sites. No, it is not true that in the small town of Dixville Notch, 17 votes were tallied despite the presence of only 16 registered voters. No, it is not true that any precinct ran out of paper ballots.
If you're looking for a non-paranoid explanation for Hillary's win, I would suggest that she got the better of Edwards and Obama in that widely-replayed pre-election debate exchange. I prefer both Edwards and Obama (in that order), but both men are starting to piss me off by repeating the word "change" incessantly and mindlessly, as though it were a mantra. That trick worked for Bill Clinton in 1992, but this year the Dems are not running against an incumbent.
Hillary argued that "change" is just a chant unless coupled with real-world actions. By making that point with passion, she simultaneously shed her ice-queen persona and made her opponents look like mere talk-talk-talkers.
23 comments:
When I saw the difference in the polls/votes, I had the same thought about the machines.
I think the distinctions in an Obama/McCain matchup would favor Obama. If I was doing ads for Obama, I'd simply show a continuous loop of McCain hugging Bush, with no voiceover.
Devastating.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the election day exit polls matched the outcome fairly well.
I'm not a supporter of Hillary Clinton, but I disagree that she would be the "weakest in the general election". I think Edwards would have an edge (Male, Southerner, culturally "centrist") but Obama would have some huge hurtles, and it was reflected - to me, atleast - last night. Obviously, for the wrong reasons, but I think we saw a microcosm of his biggest "problem" in this primary. I think most Americans will say publicly that they would vote for Obama but I believe that when the chips are down they'll fold. The trump is race. Is it wrong? Absolutely. Whether we like it or not, there are still HUGE barriers with race. It isn't nearly as overt, but it's still there. It's bullshit. But it exists.
The internal polling for both camps showed an Obama victory. Does that prove vote fraud? No. Is it in the realm of possibility? I would have to say yes.
The mainstream media will now come up with all sorts of explanations to account for the result--except the possibility of vote fraud. I'm not sure how citizens can be blamed (ie...called unpatriotic conspiracy theorists) for questioning the validity of the election results. How can one not be cynical after watching the political BS of the past few years?
"Chelsea Clinton is interviewing a man on the street and she asks him: what are the three things that scare you the most? And the man answers: 'Osama, Obama, and yo' mamma!'"
On Tuesday afternoon I checked into the MSNBC or CNBC to see what was happening in NH. It was being reported how exit poll tabulating personnel were being kept in a “secure room" until the polls closed to prevent contamination or leaks of data to public and press…
John Edwards lost my vote as the result of his performance during the pre-election debate. His handlers told him to say "change" and he surely did--ad nauseum. What a letdown.
Digging a little deeper into TPM, a discussion reveals several hypotheses for what happened, any or all of which seem reasonable and able to explain these results' differing from the polling projections, without resorting to the conspiracy theories I usually favor.
1) 17% undecideds! Somehow, in the rush to bury HRC's campaign and exalt that of BHO, the trumpeting of BHO's new NH double digit lead left this critical number unmentioned or underplayed. HRC may have won simply by garnering the majority of the late deciders, and perhaps for reasons detailed below.
2) Independents split between McCain and BHO. As I understand it, HRC beat BHO in Iowa, AMONG DEMOCRATS. His margin in Iowa was attained by crossover independents voting for him. A problem for BHO in NH was that it was also an open primary, allowing crossover voting, and in the case of NH, there was a viable alternative, the past favorite of independents in the person of John McCain. Some independents who might have gone for BHO may have thought his double digit lead had already secured the win for him, freeing them to vote for McCain. Or NH independents may have more GOP leanings than those in Iowa.
3) With everybody now mimicking BHO's 'change' message, Edwards split his 'change' voters.
4) The female backlash. HRC did far better in the female cohort in NH than she did in Iowa. Perhaps the anti-HRC forces went just too far in denigrating her along sexist lines, or Edwards' remarks about her tearing up, or her tearing up itself, activated women's solidarity with one of their own.
5) For that matter, what was the possible smallest preference difference that double digit lead polling indicated, given the margins of error? If the gap were 10%, but the MOE on the HRC and BHO numbers about the 3% we typically see, the 10 point lead might have been about 4. Few would find overcoming a 4 point lead miraculous or suspicious.
So there are a number of hypotheses that do not require election counting fraud, which would be adequate to explain this discrepancy.
...sofla
Would all the media coverage concerning the Obama family in Africa the last couple of days have an effect on a certain percentage of voters??
jz
Re: Hillary’s “amazing comeback” in the New Hampshire primary election; was it her tears? I don’t think so. Was it “hordes of women voters?“ I don’t think so. Was it the “Bradley effect?” I don’t think so. It was plain old electronic election theft and fraud.
Senator Obama was robbed of his election victory in New Hampshire by electronic election rigging in favor of Hillary. The most corporate candidates almost always seem to “win” when private corporations “count” the votes. I would suggest that Obama was robbed of victory in the New Hampshire Democratic Primary Election on 8 January 2008 by the criminal electronic flipping of several thousand votes from Obama to Hillary. The so-called “amazing comeback” of Hillary was based on computerized electronic election fraud.
This is just like the Bush/GOP electronic theft of Presidential Election in November 2004 when about seven million Kerry votes were electronically flipped into Bush votes on Election night.
Hillary "won" with the help of Republican corporations "counting" the votes. Certainly the pre-election polls did not indicate that her victory was even remotely possible... Could the right-wing neocon corporatists still be rigging elections in 2008? Hillary is corporate America's best good chance to continue Bush wars and unchallenged corporate greed...
I have zero faith in any election that does not employ the hand-counting of paper ballots. Anything with a “electronic” computerized voting system can be very easily and undetectably rigged…
Most of the “unexpected” and “amazing” Republican election “victories” in the 21st century were the direct result of GOP operatives hacking, rigging and stealing elections electronically…
Below are Brisa’s comments to www.theleftcoaster.com on 8 January 2008 re: electronic vote “counting” by Diebold in New Hampshire:
“Repost from earlier thread...sorry, but I feel very strongly about this issue...largely ignored by both parties.
Hate to be the skunk at the garden party but...quoting Nancy Tobi of the Democracy for New Hampshire website, "81% of New Hampshire ballots are counted in secret by a private corporation named Diebold Election Systems (now known as "Premier"). The elections run on these machines are programmed by one company, LHS Associates, based in Methuen, MA. We know nothing about the people programming these machines, and we know even less about LHS Associates. We know even less about the secret vote counting software used to tabulate 81% of our ballots."
These are the same machines that were tested in the HBO documentary "Hacking Democracy" in which a computer programmer was able to alter vote totals by introducing computer code through the memory cards. Using an optical scanning machine from a county in Florida, they demonstrated how these machines first attempt to read instructions from the memory card before accepting any votes. The audit log can then be wiped clean to remove any evidence of tampering.
Has this obvious security flaw been changed? There is no way of knowing as the source code is proprietary and not reviewable by anyone outside of the manufacturer.
How can anyone have confidence that the total reported actually represent the votes cast? No random audits are done to verify them. Even when recounts are done, as in the Ohio 2004 presidential election, hanky panky has been practiced as revealed by the recent conviction of two election workers who rigged the recount.
And if the vote totals were accurate in '04...why cheat on the recount?
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4266.
Posted by brisa at January 8, 2008 09:00 PM.
Cheers.
James K. Sayre
Some interesting NH primary number up here: http://ronrox.com/paulstats.php?party=DEMOCRATS Of interest is how precincts in larger towns, which correspond to higher use of machine counting of ballots, broke for Clinton. Obama did better in what would appear to be more rural areas. What is most strange is how precints where the counting method is not known, broke wildly for Clinton.
Joseph said, "Moroever, the pre-election polls were...wildly off the mark when it came to the Dems." Important to note that the polls were only off for Obama and Clinton on the Dem side, otherwise they were dead on.
Joe, caught this over at Americablog. It's from ABC News:
Ballot Changes Cited in Vote's Discrepancy With Polls
Clinton's Favorable Placement on Ballots May Account for Part of Poll Mistakes.
Considering the fact that there were problems with exit polls in the 2000 race that were so bad they decided to eliminate them from the next sham election, and I think it would be fair conjecture to say they might have spent the last four years coming up with a more sophisticated method of dealing with the problem.
Frankly, any poll should be published with full technical data describing methods of data collection and statistical analysis, and those reports should be validated legally.
If and when that is the case, then any poll can be examined by people skilled at those typse of things (actuaries, epidemiologists, etc.) and meaninful analysis of any anomalies can be performed independently.
I find the fact that the mismatch between polling results and vote tally/exit polling results is isolated to the Clinton/Obama couplet to be at least interesting. I would thing some kind of statistical analysis of that anomaly could be done to produce a reliable indication as to whether this type of anomaly has any chance of being legitimate.
In medicine, a confidence interval of 95% is required before a finding parallel to this could be considered significant. I suspect that if these results are the product of manipulation, such an analysis would produce a confidence level in the range of 99.9999%.
The President will be Hillary Clinton or Huckabee... the powers that be have to put someone in they can blackmail that is tied in with all that shady Arkansas CIA drug and gun running stuff. ie. Barry Seal, Iran/Contra, Elohim City on the border of Arkansas, Tim McVeigh, Gun nut conventions, Midwest Bank Robbers. The criminals in high places have to keep the lid on things.
Wow! What a difference counting paper ballots by hand makes!
http://www.legitgov.org/nh_machine_vs_paper.htm
57,837 votes were counted by hand, and 207,251 votes were counted by machine in the NH democractic primary.
For those votes counted by hand, which comprised nearly 25% of the total vote, Obama led by nearly 3.5% above Hilary.
here's the table of the votes tallied by paper vs by machine from this webpage http://ronrox.com/paulstats.php?party=DEMOCRATS
A campaign wouldn't need to rig the exit polls; these days, exit polls are regularly "adjusted" to match the reported totals.
If there is a discrepancy with exit polls, I think you might have a smoking gun. But it's my understanding the exit polls agreed with the tallies.
I hasten to say Diebold must go.
Joseph
I am an Edwards supporter myself.
I think all electronic machines should should be banned.
Those things said, I think Hillary actually won this round.
How's your friend on your couch doin' these days?
Evidently, I was wrong to say HRC beat BHO among registered Democratic voters in Iowa-- in fact, he won them narrowly by a nose, at 32% to her 31%. But that is a far closer contest than the final votes suggested. HRC is far from unacceptable to Democratic voters, and until the Iowa aftermath, she enjoyed her own double digit lead there.
One plausible scenario is that after Iowa, lukewarm and not especially likely voters were willing to tell pollsters they'd go for BHO, but either didn't get out, having exaggerated their commitment to turn out, or changed their peripatetic minds.... again.
...sofla
This is all very confusing, this vote-rigging reportage. Before this reportage, we had to hear about the debate contestant match-ups being rigged by whoever hosted the debates. Before that reportage we heard that the primary calendar is rigged. Before that we heard that the candidates' chances for any media exposure was rigged by the MSM. Before that, we heard that the entire primary campaign process was rigged by the DNC and the RNC. In general, we hear that all important elections are rigged to favor only the wealthy and best-connected people. And yes, Virginia, even professional tennis is rigged just like oil prices are. Apparently the only things not rigged are the jet chemtrails whose only purpose is to prevent us from capturing clear videos of the UFOs they obscure.
From Kevin Drum, at his site Washington Monthly:
"For what it's worth, Time's Jay Carney, via "a social scientist friend of a colleague" who did some comparisons of polls vs. actual turnout, seems to have the most plausible explanation:
What he found...is that a certain percentage of Democratic voters in the last days of polling presumed Biden (especially) and (to a lesser degree) Dodd hadn't dropped out. By and large, come election day, those Biden and Dodd supporters ended up casting ballots for Hillary. Also, of the 5 percent or so who were still undecideds in the last polls, almost all broke for Hillary.
This makes sense to me. None of the "big" explanations seem to pan out, so it's most likely a collection of little explanations: a few points from Biden supporters, a few points from Dodd supporters, a few points from undecideds, a little bit better turnout from women, and perhaps a bit of polling error in the post-Iowa polls. Add it all up and you get a 10-12 point swing. It's not a sexy explanation, but it seems like it's probably the right one."
Indeed. Seems about right. Plus, one should not forget that the independent vote factor blew out a 'neck and neck' pre-election polled situation between W and McCain last time, to a fully 18% margin for McCain at the end.
So, NH has a past history of its vote being far off from the last polling, just two presidential cycles ago, and far MORE out of line with the polling than this situation.
Dear readers, would it make sense for the voting machines to be fixed... for McCain?!?!... against W and the Bush machine? I'd argue no.
As Bob Sommerby mentions, this discrepancy this time looks a lot worse if one doesn't remember this recent history. Once one does, this mini-reprise of such a discrepancy, a considerably lower discrepancy than in 2000, looks more and more like something driven by the independents. (In 2000, it was Bill Bradley's chances and polls that were left in the dust as the independents broke for McCain instead of Dollar Bill.)
...sofla
Anon 10:52 you oughta rhyme when you say stuff like that
About exit polls, Fox News had an Obama win and Chris Matthews mentioned that the MSNBC exit polling also had an Obama win. I need to wait for a transcript to provide the corroborating evidence. The link above has this curious update: "A network insider tells TVNewser the [Fox News] exit polls actually were right on. Here are the final exit poll numbers for the Democratic primary:
• Clinton — 39%, Obama — 37%, Edwards — 18%."
An AP exit poll is closer with Obama 39%, Clinton 38%.
Zogby says that according to the exit polls 18% of the voters made up their mind on election day. Not sure how many of those went for Hillary but apparently enough.
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