Nomological Net

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faults in the clouds of delusion

Saturday, January 12, 2008

When Diebold appeals, you call for the Third Umpire

Here's an interesting new twist to the New Hampshire story:

Could someone have messed with the vote in New Hampshire?

That is what some people are wondering, after looking closely at the totals in the votes for surprise Democratic primary victor Hillary Clinton, and for Barack Obama, who placed instead of winning as all the polls had predicted he would. And thanks to candidate Dennis Kucinich, we are likely to find out. Kucinich today filed a request, and a required $2000 fee, to order up a manual recount of the machine ballots cast in the state.

Polls taken as late as the day before the Tuesday vote showed Obama up by 10 to 15 points over Clinton, whom he had just beaten the week before in Iowa, but when the votes were counted, Clinton ended up beating Obama in New Hampshire 39.4 per cent to 36.8 per cent. In a replay of what happened in Ohio in 2004, exit polling reportedly also showed Obama to be winning the New Hampshire primary.

(Kucinich for President, man. He's the only one who's left of center.)

What has had eyebrows raised is a significant discrepancy between the vote counts done by voting machine, and the ones done by hand.

The machine tally was Clinton 39.6 per cent, Obama 36.3 per cent - fairly close to the final outcome. But the hand-counted ballot count broke significantly differently: Clinton 34.9 per cent, Obama 38.6 per cent.

It really isn't rocket science.

"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."

Watch for this story to sink without a trace.

14 Comments:

Blogger km said...

Watch for this story to sink without a trace.

What story?

1/12/2008 4:03 AM  
Blogger Tabula Rasa said...

glub.

1/12/2008 10:38 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh, he is waaaaaaayyyyyyy left, ofcourse - to hillary (that smirking bitch - yes, i love to rile Your feminist side) and obama (that sweet-talking, candy pie riding on "Oh, I did not vote for the Iraq war, but I would love go to war in Pakistan")

Sigh.

Oh, bartender! Yes please, the usual.

1/13/2008 2:23 AM  
Blogger Tabula Rasa said...

i'm curious - what's the usual?

agree about sweet-talking candy pie, but you'll need to try harder to rile my feminist side. come to think of it i can't say i recall seeing hrc ever smirk.

1/13/2008 8:03 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

:)

The usual for me is the Diabolique! Sam, across the table, likes Kamikaze and keeps yelling "We seek You, You, and You for the...usual!"

smirk's hidden in the media's coverage over her lipstick, behind those hating the media coverage, behind the backs of those who support her only for being a woman.

1/13/2008 1:46 PM  
Blogger Tabula Rasa said...

you're conjuring up acrobatic mental images of lips all sticked up around people's backs.

1/15/2008 12:18 AM  
Blogger thalassa_mikra said...

How did Counter Punch get the manual count figures? Given that it's reported in an earlier paragraph that Kucinich has barely filed a request for a manual re-count? They don't even provide a source for it.

1/15/2008 9:18 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Did you read this? http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/magazine/06Vote-t.html

Apparently, voting machines can flip an Obama vote into a Clinton vote.

I hate to admit this, but Kucinich-the-UFO-watcher may actually have a point. But is he also planning to ask for manual recounts whenever Obama wins too? (And why is he doing this anyway? Does he want to be Obama's running-mate?)

1/16/2008 7:19 AM  
Blogger Szerelem said...

Photo tag- please check blog. And please share nice phots :D

1/17/2008 12:31 AM  
Blogger Tabula Rasa said...

tm:
the kucinich request was for a full recount; the manual count was an audit on a random sample.

lekhni:
yes, i saw that. some people, such as harvey wasserman (see, e.g., this), have been going on and on about the frauds being conducted with these voting machines for *years* now. but no one was listening. even now, it's barely a murmur, and there's a bill in congress but i'm sure it won't make it through. this is symptomatic of a bigger problem -- the oligopolization of the mass media in this country.

szerelem:
*sigh*! :-)

1/17/2008 3:10 AM  
Blogger gaddeswarup said...

Did you see this?
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20080119/mathtrek.asp

1/19/2008 10:13 AM  
Blogger Tabula Rasa said...

interesting - thanks!

1/22/2008 9:11 AM  
Blogger ajanabi said...

Ah. C'mon. Republicans rig the vote against democrats and now democrats rig it against democrats - It's never fair when your candidate loses! The explanation in NH is, most likely, the David Dinkins effect. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/opinion/10kohut.html?scp=2&sq=Andrew+Kohut&st=nyt

2/07/2008 7:33 AM  
Blogger Tabula Rasa said...

umm sorry, i didn't have a dog in this fight.

i agree it might have been the dinkins effect, but (a) that doesn't seem to have shown up anywhere else subsequently, and (b) doesn't take away from my prediction that the story would sink without a trace. which it has. (a quick search reveals that the count was stopped when 40% through due to lack of funds, but still swathed in controversy because on one side the numbers don't appear to have changed very much at all, but there are all sorts of questions about the safekeeping of the ballots.)

2/07/2008 9:22 AM  

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