The difference in the results between the hand count precincts and the machine count precincts in the New Hampshire primary is worth looking at. I emphasize worth looking at. On the various blogs, people are assuming that because someone is pointing out discrepancies or asking for a recount they are claiming that the vote count was manipulated. There are actually 2 problems.
1) The actual possibility that the count has been tampered with. That is a serious and real problem, because the machines have been demonstrated to be vulnerable by a variety of computer scientists.
2) The appearance that the vote has been tampered with combined with the possibility that it could have been tampered with undermines people's confidence in the process. Fewer people participate, and the winner of the election ultimately has less legitimacy because there is the suspicion that the count was not accurate. That in itself is a serious problem.
Here is a post on the bradblog that illustrates that:
"Honestly though it really makes little to no difference whom steals what anymore as they are ALL crooked & corrupt plus the Congress is utterly worthless and clearly in the pocket of that top 2% so not a damn thing is ever going to change until we change EVERYTHING."
Here are the specifics about the hand count/machine count discrepancies:
Clinton and Romney went up in the machine count. All other candidates went down, or stayed approx the same. Why isn't it more random? Some up, some down?
Clinton by machine: 39.618%
Clinton by hand: 34.908%
Obama by machine: 36.309%
Obama by hand: 38.617%
Edwards by machine: 16.853%
Edwards by hand: 17.584%
Richardson by machine: 4.330%
Richardson by hand: 5.548%
Romney by machine: 33.075%
Romney by hand: 25.483%
Huckabee by machine: 10.560%
Huckabee by hand: 13.318%
McCain by machine: 36.766%
McCain by hand: 39.322%
Ron Paul by machine: 7.109%
Ron Paul by hand: 9.221%
The breakdown here makes it look worse.
Here is a possible demographic explanation, from about 1/2 way down the page:
Wed, 01/09/2008 - 10:11 — Anonymous (not verified)
Bullshit from a New Hampshirite
"No, no, and no. I'm a born and bred New Hampshire, one who is interested in both candidates, and I'll tell you right now: this doesn't fit the political profile of New Hampshire. We're genuinely one of the squeakiest-clean states when it comes to corruption. The big-city-rural-debate makes much more sense here. Look at the map at the NY Times on where Obama was popular--out in the western part of the state by Keene--VERY rural besides Keene--and right up the river to Canada--VERY rural, excluding Hanover, which is not really a city either. Lots of hand counting.
Take your conspiracy theories elsewhere, bub"
But other comments point out that it seems implausible that Obama did worse in the cities.
Here is a map, with the breakdown of the vote by region.
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The Diebold machines that were tested and de-certified in California were the Diebold GEMS/1.18.24/AccuVote, including the AV-OS (AccuVote Optical Scan), Central Count AV-OS, AccuFeed and Smart Cards.
In New Hampshire they list there machines simply as "ACCUVOTE" and don't say what model. Diebold has a long history of saying that they were going to fix problems, and then not fixing them.
On this page you can find out more about how the machines were approved. The clip called - Diebold Vendor John Silvestro Admits Product is Defective (3.4 MB) is worth looking at.
Here is a list of the various studies showing the vulnerabilities of the Diebold systems.
Photo courtesy of Midnight Research which has this to say about hacking Diebold:
The Open voting Foundation released information on alternate booting configurations for the Diebold voting system. This includes hi-resolution picutres of the internals of the system and also show the exact jumpers to configure. According to them, a “completely legal and certified set of files can be instantly overridden and illegal uncertified code be made dominant in the system, and then this situation can be reversed leaving the legal code dominant again in a matter of minutes” — which is pretty scary. The worst part is that they say the flash could be read from a “field-added” piece of flash memory, which implies that one could run whatever they wanted on the system.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Hand Counts vs. Machine Counts
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Don't Look at the Man Behind the Curtain
If you watched TV coverage you heard the commentators, trying to grapple with how the polls could have been so wrong in the Clinton/Obama race. It certainly does seem improbable that 8 well-known polls would be accurate in all races, but miss the mark on that one race by double digits in some cases. Hmmmmmmmmmmn.
About 81% of New Hampshire votes are counted by Diebold Optical Scan machines. These are the same machines that have been de-certified by California.
The Red Team is the team of expert computer scientists that was hired to hack the voting machines in California. You can read the Red Team report here to see all the ways they were able to compromise the machines. Here are a few:
(p. 10 & 11) They were able to hack the Windows platform that it runs on and access the system as an administrator. Once they had administrator access they used it to corrupt and manipulate the database, which could lead to manipulated vote totals. They were able to take these actions without being traced.
(p. 12) They were able to gain "sufficient access for an attacker to manipulate every setting on the networking devices and on the server." And then establish remote access through a wireless device.
(p. 12) "The Red Team was able ...to alter vote totals in order to change the vote results on [the] machine."
(p.17) They summarize by saying that they were able to, "...alter vote totals, violate the privacy of individual voters, make systems unavailable, and delete audit trails.
You will find concerns about the New Hampshire vote totals at Bradblog.com, and at Blackboxvoting.org, which also has an older post about how the same Diebold Optical Scan machines were hacked in 2000 in Volusia County Florida. That hack was well-documented in the media.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Debate links
This is a pretty fascinating CNN/YouTube debate question on abortion becoming illegal at the Republican Debate Nov. 28th 2007.
This is useful information about the dems positions on healthcare from a September 20th 2007 debate. For some reason Obama didn't come to this one.
And here are the final debates before the Iowa Caucuses. Dec. 12th (Republican) & 13th (Democratic) 2007 held by Iowa Public Television.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Reform
A clip courtesy of Bradblog.
John Edwards in the Why Tuesday? candidate challenge discusses almost every reform I mention in the film, including problems with electronic voting equipment, lobbyists, voting on a work day, the need for public financing of elections and same day registration.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Lies, Gospel and Money - the Joys of the Campaign
Catch up with the Republican debate on fox news if you missed it. Sam Brownback has dropped out of the race and is being courted by the front runners for an endorsement. Mitt Romney won the poll after the debate - but Ron Paul came in second. OHH! If only the actual election could be decided by Anarchist text messaging! It would be so much more fun.
According to factcheck.org Romney and Giuliani are both stretching the truth, but Fred Thompson seems to be sticking to the facts so far.
Logo online has some interesting angles that you don't always get from the mainstream coverage. The LGBT site reports that the Human Rights Campaign is upset with Obama for including a homophobic preacher in his South Carolina gospel tour.
And Brian Lehrer at WNYC is doing an interesting crowdsourcing exercise - getting listeners to rummage through the Federal Election Commission report. You can also go to opensecrets.org if you want someone else to do the digging for you.
