by billg » Fri 11 Jan 2008, 16:01:27
Good article here which explores reasons why Hillary may have done so much better in the towns using Accuvote voting machines. Also, a word from David Scanlan, NH's deputy secretary of state for elections.
http://baltimorechronicle.com/2008/011108Lindorff.shtml
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')here are, to be sure, alternative quite innocent possible explanations for the discrepancy between the machine and hand votes for Clinton and Obama. All the state's larger towns and cities, like Nashua, Concord and Portsmouth, have gone to voting machines. While there are many small communities that have also opted for machines, it is almost exclusively the smaller towns and villages across the state that have stayed with hand counts-most of them in the more rural northern part of the state. So if Obama did better than Clinton in the small towns, and Clinton did better in the large ones, that could be the answer.
But that explanation flies in the face of logic, historic voting patterns, and most of the post election prognosticating.
If it is true that there was "behind the curtain" racism involved in people saying to pollsters that they were for Obama, while privately voting against him, surely it would be more likely that this would happen in the isolated towns of northern New Hampshire where black people are rarely to be seen. Clinton was also said to have fared better among people with lower incomes-again a demographic that is more prominent in the rural parts of the Granite State. Finally, Obama, in New Hampshire as in Iowa, did better among younger voters, and that is the demographic group that is typically in shorter supply in small towns, where job opportunities are limited. Furthermore, in Iowa, it was in the larger municipalities that Obama fared best, not in the rural towns, so how likely is it that his geographic appeal would be reversed in New Hampshire?
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')avid Scanlan, New Hampshire's deputy secretary of state for elections, whom I contacted Thursday, said that while town election officials are required to do test runs of the Diebold machines in the days before an election, "to make sure that they are reading the ballot markings accurately," and that at that point the machines and the memory cards are sealed until the actual election day, there is no way for his office to independently conduct a post balloting test. The ballot boxes are sealed and the only way they can be opened if for a candidate to request (and pay for) a manual recount, or for a court to order one." Scanlan says that the same is true for the voting machines and the memory cards. While the sealed ballots are retained "for years," however, the memory cards will be back in the hands of the contractor, LHS Associates, in "a few months," to be erased and prepared for use in the general election next November.
Scanlan says that the state legislature is currently considering legislation to provide for routine audits of machines after elections, but that won't help this election cycle.
Scanlan said that because the machines are freestanding, there is no chance of their being hacked from the outside, but critics note that the hacking can be done in advance to the memory cards, which can pass changes to each other like a virus as each is programmed for a particular election.
Jonathan Simon, an attorney and co-founder of the group Election Defense Alliance, says that the vote discrepancies between machine and hand counts in New Hampshire's Democratic primary are troubling, and defy easy explanation.
"The trouble is, whenever you have a surprise result in an election, and it runs counter to the polls, the media always say the problem is the polling, not the counting." But he adds, "The thing is, these things always work in one direction—in favor of the more conservative candidate, and that defies the law of quantum mechanics."