No tinfoil hat necessary here, though. This is pretty obvious. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
The county-level data are quite noisy when it comes to vote percentages, but somehow magically the statewide vote percentages match to 5 significant figures.
I have a really cheap bridge right here under my bed that you might want to buy... We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
The optical counters 4 hours behind the complete hand count? That staggers the imagination.
The flip-flop in voting percentages to 5 frickin' digits over the total population!?! That smells like a calculatory artifact. Getting a .99999 correlation is exceeding rare in the Social Sciences. Anyone who can get a .97 is ecstatic and the conclusion is considered bullet proof.
Somebody in those counties need to get off their ass and file a class action lawsuit to force the SecState to a hand powered recount.
Optical Scan Clinton 91,717 52.9507% Obama 81,495 47.0493% Total 173,212 Hand Counted Clinton 20,889 47.0494% Obama 23,509 52.9506% Total 44,398
Optical Scan Clinton 91,717 52.9507% Obama 81,495 47.0493% Total 173,212
Hand Counted Clinton 20,889 47.0494% Obama 23,509 52.9506% Total 44,398
Smoking gun. Or the coincidence of the millennium.
Has anyone posted any of this to the Obama and Clinton campaigns?
However, it is possible that the actual ballots were tampered with and that a recount will confirm the results. We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
Maybe this was planted by Republicans in order to "discover" it after she gets the nomination.
That is very possible. But why make the numbers so bizarre, as if whoever did this thought something like that wouldn't be noticed until several months from now (unless they were incompetent)? Wouldn't they want something that they could disguise for a few months? I'm just thinking/typing out loud.
The scenarios are: estimate the probabilities from the machine counts and assume the hand counts are a random sample, or vice versa. We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
The easiest way to steal the election is to just reverse the Obama/Clinton counts on a precinct basis. If you do it in every precinct it even gives you plausible deniability - sorry, computer bug! A human error programming the mappings to the database.
But maybe they thought that's easy to reverse and they really want Clinton to win. So they say okay, let's just tamper with the largest county in the state. They could just have reversed the counts and, given statistical noise, the vote percentages would have been similar but to less than 95% confidence. Being a single county, you'd have to go down to precinct level to show all the precincts are switched.
But maybe they thought they needed to eliminate the discrepancy. In statistical parlance, they worried about a one-tailed chi-square test (misfit) but not about a two-tailed chi-square test (misfit or too-good-to-be-true fit).
I mean, it just takes a pocket calculator to get the "correct" vote counts.
Tampering with the count would mean that a recount would give the win to Obama. Tampering with the ballots would confirm the results, possibly with a 200-vote difference from the initial ones. We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
This is actually quite important. I want to pull it out and emphasis it.
How are the ballots secured after an election? Black Box Voting seems to have some serious concerns over this.
"We have no control over the ballot chain of custody and we have learned the pain from the 2004 Nader recount, in which only 11 districts were counted, chosen by a highly questionable person, and then nothing showed up. Now all we hear is how the Nader recount validated the machines."
aspiring to genteel poverty
Kicking myself for not tediously taking screen shots of every friggin' municipality in the dumb Googlemap thing. Why can't they just add a table below it? One noticeable thing on the 59 screen shots I grabbed between 10:45 pm NH time and midnight NH time, is that the ones that had late results (not submitted as of 4 hours after poll closing) -- well, you'd expect them to be hand count locations, right? Nope. Mostly Diebold locations. That's a major red flag to me. How the heck can you not push "print" for four hours??? It normally takes only 30 minutes to wrap things up and print the poll tape when the polls close. My method was grabbing the municipalities left to right, right to left, starting at the south end of the state and working up. I only got about three rows up. Anyone who has additional time slice information documenting late reporters I'd like to see it. Late reporters from the first 59 locations I grabbed: BRENTWOOD - Diebold location - had the Dem results, but no Republican results as of 11:53 pm (polls closed at 7) CHESTERFIELD - Hand count location - no results as of 11:00 pm DERRY - Diebold location - no results in as of 11:42 pm FREMONT - Diebold location - no results in as of 11:48 pm GREENFIELD - Hand count location - no results in as of 11:52 pm HAMPTON - Diebold location - results in on time, but I flagged this because every Dem candidate had a result divisible by 5 and for Republicans, Huckabee 217, McCain 1217, Romney 1217, it just looked weird. So much for my statistical capabilities. HOLLIS - Diebold location - results not in as of 11:54 pm NEW IPSWICH - Diebold location - results not in as of 10:52 pm NEWTON - Diebold location - results not in as of 10:58 pm PELHAM - Diebold location - results not in as of 10:56 pm TEMPLE - Hand count location - results not in as of 11:26 pm WINCHESTER - Diebold location - results not in as of 10:46 pm
How the heck can you not push "print" for four hours???
Weren't these votes machine-counted, by optically scanning paper ballots, rather than machine-voted?
On the othe hand, I see no correlation with number of tallied votes and late reporting:
Brentwood - 838 Chesterfield - 952 Derry - 5230 Fremont - 742 Greenfield - 368 Hampton - 3974 Hollis - 1923 New Ipswich - 717 Newton - 888 Pelham - 2484 Temple - 395 Winchester - 826 *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Rockingham: Brentwood Derry Fremont Hampton Newton
Hillsborough: Greenfield Hollis New Ipswich Pelham Temple
Cheshire: Chesterfield Winchester Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
Brentwood - 39.62%, 36.16% Chesterfield - 39.46%, 38.52% Derry - 45.64%, 31.20% Fremont - 41.78%, 30.73% Greenfield - 27.45%, 42.93% Hampton - 42.78%, 32.59% Hollis - 35.52%, 41.19% New Ipswich - 38.63%, 29.43% Newton - 48.42%, 29.17% Pelham - 50.72%, 29.03% Temple - 24.56%, 50.38% Winchester - 48.79%, 28.57%
Not much of a trend. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
No, you have to make a more complex hypothesis. Clinton led throughout the evening as we watched results coming in, so at least the Clinton/Obama swapping had to have been done before. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Sorry.
What I want to know now is: Why was it rigged? We know who might benefit. You could say it was the Clinton campaign, or you could argue that it was the Republicans wanting to run in a race they likely perceive to be easier. We need to find out the political connections, if any exist, of the higher-ups at LHS, the firm responsible for the machines, and a firm whose leadership has a criminal past and (in some states) present.
Now we need to figure out which of those parties was responsible. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
You guys would come up with this at 10:15PM!
Let me do a quick hit on Google and see what I can come up with.
I'm too old for this shit
In last week's program LHS President John Silvestro admitted his staff violated Connecticut security protocols during the 2006 election. Memory cards were swapped by LHS staff members who saw protocols from the State indicating they were not to touch machines.
From here
So you can establish a previous whatchamacallit.
These guys are definitely shady. Black Box Voting has been all over them. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
Vote fraud expert Bev Harris has warned that New Hampshire's electronic voting machines are wide open to fraud and that even modestly skilled computer programmers were able to identify key vulnerabilities within ten minutes of assessing them as key Democrat and Republican primaries unfold today. Harris points out that LHS is a private company that will count over four fifths of the New Hampshire vote with no oversight whatsoever. LHS is not subject to public records requirements, as the government is, at least, not in New Hampshire. The control over memory card contents is absolute; when cards malfunction or get lost, LHS brings the replacements. Since LHS maintains the machines, repairs the machines, and replaces the machines -- often on Election Day -- when they malfunction, they have intimate access to the chips, sockets, ports, communications devices and other electronic components. A recent CNN report featured on Lou Dobbs' show highlights just how easy it is to hack a voting machine and change how votes are tallied with just rudimentary programming skills. Experts warn that it takes only a minute for an unsupervised machine to be inserted with a virus and hacked.
Harris points out that LHS is a private company that will count over four fifths of the New Hampshire vote with no oversight whatsoever.
LHS is not subject to public records requirements, as the government is, at least, not in New Hampshire. The control over memory card contents is absolute; when cards malfunction or get lost, LHS brings the replacements.
Since LHS maintains the machines, repairs the machines, and replaces the machines -- often on Election Day -- when they malfunction, they have intimate access to the chips, sockets, ports, communications devices and other electronic components.
A recent CNN report featured on Lou Dobbs' show highlights just how easy it is to hack a voting machine and change how votes are tallied with just rudimentary programming skills. Experts warn that it takes only a minute for an unsupervised machine to be inserted with a virus and hacked.
Should get in touch with Harri Hursti who has been warning about the fraud potential of Diebold machines and LHS. He has a company in Finland (!) so maybe somebody 'round here knows someone who knows him. If he holds a press conference and presents the information you've got instant credibility AND it will get picked-up.
Anyway, this establishes:
Hursti has been warning about the Diebold machines but the LHS part is unconfirmed.
When I went to the UK Lib Dem conference in September I attended a Lunch "fringe" session on electronic voting organised by the Open Rights Group. I must have the guy's business card somewhere! We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
Drew wrote in part:
You could say it was the Clinton campaign, or you could argue that it was the Republicans wanting to run in a race they likely perceive to be easier.
This is actually a nice situation for potential Republican fraudsters: as the more conservative candidate and the candidate less liked by independent voters, Clinton should be both easier to beat and preferable if she actually wins. These two effects tend to oppose one another, giving such a potential fraudster pause; but not this time. Not that I trust Hillary, but given this point and the Republicans' connections to Diebold, I'd expect Republicans as by far the most likely perpetrators.
But the simple truth is that we just don't know the answer yet. We can speculate, and some arguments seems tronger than others, but it needs further investigation. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
Clinton should be both easier to beat and preferable if she actually wins
Until now, I didn't believe the first part, but I definitely agreed with the second. But that's no longer the case. One reason I used to think that Clinton would not be easy to defeat was that all of the scandals that could be found, or could be invented, to use against her have already been tried, while we've no idea what they could invent against the others candidates.
But that is no longer the case. There is a new scandal, and that's the New Hampshire election. If people like those at the Election Defense Alliance hadn't done their work, this scandal might well have surfaced after the Democratic convention, and dogged her all the way to the general election, if not beyond (once she had a reputation for election fraud, I can see the Supreme Court inventing yet another law, this time to allow recounts that might work against her).
For that reason, it's essential that she clear this up as soon as possible, and I can see only one way to do this. Clinton should call for a recount herself, and then try to turn it against the Republicans if it turns out to be true. If not, it's critical that she not win the nomination, to then go on and lose the general election. Until today, I was certain that I would vote in February for Edwards, but now I'm seriously thinking of switching to Obama, to help make sure that she does not win the nomination.
Whether or not Clinton had anything to do with election fraud (or would ever do so at all) is inconsequential, once Fox and the rest get the scent of a spectacular story --even one with an indeterminate conclusion. This is just the sort of smart tactic that has emerged from the Rove machine for a long time. Because it relies on an astute instinct for voter psychology and media weaknesses, it's powerful.
Assume for a moment that the statistical case that got Mig's attention and pushed him and Drew into action can be made solid, and explained in a way that the media can sell.
How to get them to do it?
I think this is the great obstacle, and an almost insurmountable one perhaps.
I suggest that, rather than changing your vote, a far better tactic would be to get on the phone, get on the net, get in your car and show up at the door of EVERY SIGNIFICANT PLAYER IN THE GAME.
The media are going to decide this.
They can and will ignore Harry Hursti. God knows they did before, for the most part.
drive them crazy. Capitalism searches out the darkest corners of human potential, and mainlines them.
On second thoughts, the statistical case may not be that relevant to the point I was making. By the standards of Love Story, Swiftboats, or Saddam's WMDs, the fact that the polls showed Obama winning, while Clinton won in the end is already strong evidence of fraud. That's what we're up against. Like the rest of you, I made the mistake of assuming that facts are what matter here.
On the other hand, I do vaguely remember similar claims being made about her NY Senate victory, so it's just possible that this is yet another made-up scandal that has already been captured by current opinion polls. I would still feel more comfortable, though, if her campaign was doing something to respond to it.
I definitely would like to contact her campaign, but I'm trying to think of the best way to do so without being immediately dismissed as yet another person complaining about fraud. Anybody got suggestions for the best way to go about it?
I meant to introduce myself at the end of my previous, first, post, but hit the "Post" button prematurely. As usual, I've been lurking for quite a while, etc.etc. There was no way for you to know, but I live in Italy now, making showing up at doors and so on rather difficult (I know that "get in your car" is meant metaphorically, but I can't resist the opportunity of bragging that I haven't owned, or even driven, a car for over a decade).
The primary that I'll be voting in will be for delegates for Democrats Abroad. I just learnt that the Italian vote will be on Super Tuesday, so I won't be able to vote in person, and will have to chose between voting by absentee ballot, or over the internet. I'm considering the latter just for the experience, but I am rather dubious about how it will work in practice.
For me, the point is that computers are not the appropriate technology to count votes. There is a reason why right after the election has closed, the ballot box is emptied in front of witnesses from all competing (as well as other interested parties) factions and counted. The system is designed to eliminate the need for trust.
A computer makes the entire process one of trust - after we have so carefully eliminated the need for trust originally. Why bother watching the election if you can't watch the designing of the computer program that counts the ballots?
Walden O'Dell, then-CEO of Ohio-based Diebold, wrote an invitation to a Bush re-election fundraiser in 2003 stating that he intended to help "Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president." Ohio did get counted in the red column the following year, with its result providing the decisive margin of victory for the Republican incumbent. The uproar over O'Dell's comments, compounded by allegations of voting irregularities in some Ohio precincts in 2004, culminated with his resignation two months ago. Company officials privately acknowledged the impropriety of such partisan remarks by O'Dell, who was also a major donor to Bush's re-election bid. But Diebold's new CEO, Thomas Swidarski, is also a Republican stalwart. Swidarski was one of about a dozen Diebold executives who helped fund the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004, with Swidarski himself making the maximum individual contribution of $2000. Diebold has since barred its top administrators from making political donations. But the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported recently that three Diebold executives not covered by the ban have continued to contribute to GOP candidates in Ohio. Two groups of investors are meanwhile suing Diebold in federal court on the grounds that the company gave misleading assurances about the security of its voting machines. Those allegedly false claims led to artificial inflation of Diebold's share prices, the lawsuits charge. The disgruntled investors complain that Diebold is "unable to assure the quality and working order of its voting machine products." Taking note of these developments, The New York Times criticized Diebold's "flawed approach to its business" in a December editorial. "The counting of votes is a public trust," the Times declared. "Diebold, whose machines count many votes, has never acted as if it understood this."
The uproar over O'Dell's comments, compounded by allegations of voting irregularities in some Ohio precincts in 2004, culminated with his resignation two months ago. Company officials privately acknowledged the impropriety of such partisan remarks by O'Dell, who was also a major donor to Bush's re-election bid.
But Diebold's new CEO, Thomas Swidarski, is also a Republican stalwart. Swidarski was one of about a dozen Diebold executives who helped fund the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004, with Swidarski himself making the maximum individual contribution of $2000.
Diebold has since barred its top administrators from making political donations. But the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported recently that three Diebold executives not covered by the ban have continued to contribute to GOP candidates in Ohio.
Two groups of investors are meanwhile suing Diebold in federal court on the grounds that the company gave misleading assurances about the security of its voting machines. Those allegedly false claims led to artificial inflation of Diebold's share prices, the lawsuits charge. The disgruntled investors complain that Diebold is "unable to assure the quality and working order of its voting machine products."
Taking note of these developments, The New York Times criticized Diebold's "flawed approach to its business" in a December editorial. "The counting of votes is a public trust," the Times declared. "Diebold, whose machines count many votes, has never acted as if it understood this."
LHS Associates removed their personnel information from their website so I can't do cross-checking.
BTW, we're already on the first page of Google using the search term ["Silvestro" + "Republican"]. That was pretty quick, huh?
(Except it doesn't seem to be working.)
A Lexis/Nexus search - which I can't do - needs to be run, tho' I don't expect much to happen with that, either.
Irregardless of the statistical analysis preliminary evidence indicates LHS Associates and John Silvestro shouldn't be in charge of counting votes to elect the officers of the local Gardening Club.
More often than not, however, even tertiary sources link back to BBV. A common trail is:
BBV <- BradBlog <- 3rd Source
so the search results need to be manually verified and qualified. On a dial-up ISP that takes a while.
The 3rd Source is a serious problem as some of those Information Sources are not of the highest intellectual quality -- shall I say. (The phrase "stark raving bonkers" leaps to mind.)
and yet you hang around here... ;-) Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
That vote percentage swap is crazy! It's certainly indicative that something is amiss, although I'm not sure how indicative it is of fraud, simply because it's hard to imagine why a fraudster would do it that way. (Much more sensible to simply swap the individual votes in the Diebold districts, not bothering to calculate percentages or create a suspicious coincidence.) But what other explanation is there?
I get most of my news analysis from Counterpunch (not because it's the best but because I'm not motivated to spend the time looking for something better); here are a couple of interesting articles from there:
Still, I understand Obama's hesitation, but it deserved more attention than his staff gave it (which was none by the sound of it). In the big picture, this is a little bigger than a candidate, after all. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
In the big picture, this is a little bigger than a candidate, after all.
Now, when have you ever known a campaign to put the big picture ahead of the individual candidate? (Well, except for the Kucinich campaign, of course.) ^_^
That vote percentage swap is crazy! It's certainly indicative that something is amiss, although I'm not sure how indicative it is of fraud, simply because it's hard to imagine why a fraudster would do it that way. (Much more sensible to simply swap the individual votes in the Diebold districts, not bothering to calculate percentages or create a suspicious coincidence.)
Just as an aside, if I may (I get the feeling what I'm about to write has been written several times already, but I barely survived college statistics and pretty much shut down when I see the phrase "statistically significant," so, apologies to anyone who's said this before). If this turns out to be fraud, whoever did it wanted it to be discovered. It's too perfect. Those numbers in the quotes from Brad Blog and Election Defense Alliance, the hand-counted and machine-counted ballots are mirror images?
That's too perfect and if you want to commit fraud, you don't make it so tidy like that unless you're either stupid or you want people to take notice. "Bait" comes to mind. I agree there could have been fraud on the part of people who want HRC to win because they think she'd lose to an R, but it also could have been someone who wanted to make her look like a fool or someone who wanted to see Dems run around, just to see us react and possibly create more discord between the various candidate camps. I don't think I'm adding any great revelation and the numbers could turn out to have a perfectly logical, non-fraud explanation-- but maybe instead of election manipulation, someone's trying to get a rise out of us.
There is also the distant possibility that it could be someone trying to show how optical scan can be manipulated, although this was a really bad time to do it.
This is the only one of these options that makes sense. Every time you do something like this you provide more data to prove that something has happened, and once this is proved then the whole scheme goes out of the window, (Plus it ends up with past results being looked at more closely). If this is happening surely this is the last thing you'd want to happen. Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
If this is happening surely this is the last thing you'd want to happen.
Huh? I'm not quite sure how to interpret that. :)
In terms of what makes sense, reasons for fraud don't necessarily have to be logical. It's quite possible (again, if it's fraud) that someone did this just to mess with the Dems.
You know, as I think more and more about it, I keep coming back to how glaring this is-- really, if someone's going to commit fraud, they'd want to hide it well, not have numbers that make others stop and stare, unless they want people to stop and stare. This may be one of those "agree to disagree" things. :)
Maybe New Hampshire just won the lottery, or something.
The probability of the hand count being exactly the most likely value assuming the vote percentages of the machine count are "correct" is smaller than 1 in 250 given the sample size. Now, if you run 50 primary contests, what is the likelihood that at least one will be this "lucky"? Actually 1 in 6.
So something of this sort should be expected to happen ever 24 years :-)
[there are several assumptions in this which overestimate the probability of occurrence. For example: assuming the "correct" probabilities are the hand-counted ones and the machine-counted ones are the ones drawn randomly from the distribution, this is less likely than 1 in 500 and assuming 50 primaries every 4 years it would be a 44-year event]. We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
I do want to thank to TBG -- and, by extension, soros -- for bringing this to our attention, as well as Mig for really working his ass off and shining a ton of much-needed light on all of this for me. You're both Godsends. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
The published exit polls are normalized to match the official tallies, so they are not generally valid for checking those tallies, those if micro discrepancies survive macro adjustment, that would be interesting. However, both Chris Matthews and Bill Maher have stated that the unaltered polls showed Obama strongly ahead. Deeply suspicious in itself, independent of other factors. Like I said in the other thread, if we could just get the media to release raw exit poll data by precinct, we could correlate with counting method ourselves. But I doubt we could do that outside of court, and whether it is possible in court is beyond my knowledge.
Gardner is preparing an estimate of the recount's cost. Under state law, if a candidate who asks for a recount finished more than 3 percentage points behind the winner, the candidate must pay the cost of a recount. The cost is refunded if the recount finds that the requester won or finished within 1 percentage point of the winner. Kucinich sent a letter to Gardner Thursday asking for the recount, citing "serious and credible reports, allegations and rumors" about the integrity of the primary results.
Gardner is preparing an estimate of the recount's cost.
Under state law, if a candidate who asks for a recount finished more than 3 percentage points behind the winner, the candidate must pay the cost of a recount. The cost is refunded if the recount finds that the requester won or finished within 1 percentage point of the winner.
Kucinich sent a letter to Gardner Thursday asking for the recount, citing "serious and credible reports, allegations and rumors" about the integrity of the primary results.
The Republican Recount is being called by Albert Howard. We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
Apparently there's a $2,000 application fee to get the SoS to consider a recount. Then they have to estimate the cost of the recount and it would have to be paid by Kucinich. We're probably talking of the order of $100k. We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
Apparently there's a $2,000 application fee to get the SoS to consider a recount.
can he say no? Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
My initial suggestion was to compare the actual vote counts by hand vs. by machine against the exit polls, if an exit poll could be found that aggregated the data according to the vote counting method used in the precinct where the voter was interviewed. Of course this variable was not in the published exit polls. In my enthusiasm I imagined someone in the blogosphere knowing someone in one of the companies that do exit polls, so they could try to get the raw data from election night re-analysed. But see below.
Don't the candidates have private polling? Might Kuchinch have the data thatis needed? or might he have the connections with people in Obamas campaign to get this taken seriously and so get their polling data released to us? OK there might be contractual reasons why this can't be done, but it's worth an ask. Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
There's too much of a gamble for the Obama people to get involved. Kucinich may not have private polling, because that's very expensive and, I think, typically only done by the top-tier candidates (in this case, Edwards, Clinton, Obama and maybe then Richardson). Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
As to exit poll credibility I remember seeing a 49% approval rating for Bush.
Media also dutifully featured only their mainstream candidates in their election coverage.
National Election Archive Project
A draft analysis of New Hampshire Democratic Primary Raw Data shows that Clinton received a higher percentage of votes when ballots were counted electronically by Diebold, and Obama received a higher percentage of votes when ballots were counted by hand. The pattern is consistent with outcome-determinative vote miscount.
Well, gotta run! A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
These are the differences between the Zogby poll data and the reported votes, sorted on hand counted and Diebold counted:
(click for larger)
Clintons votes in Diebold counted has a quite larger difference then anything else.
National Election Archive Project also checked pairs of likesized precincts in the same county, and looked at differences in Diebold and hand counted votes for Obama and Clinton. Choosing pairs of two likesized precincts in the same county, you get pairs where the demograpic differences should not be that large. Within the pair that is.
Blue is Diebolds effect on Clinton - mostly positive - and red is on Obama - mostly negative.
Last, but not least:
Two-Tailed Difference of Means Tests by Ron Baiman This analysis is of a sample of randomly selected 36 comparably-sized machine and hand count precincts from the "middle of the size distribution" obtained by lopping off the smallest and largest precincts respectively until equal size samples (36 precincts each) with almost identical average size (762.2 votes cast for machine, 764.9 votes cast for hand counted precincts) remained in the sample. The results of a two-tailed difference of means tests (machine count versus hand count for same candidate) for Obama, Clinton, and Edwards are striking. In the standard test (assuming both machine and hand counts precincts are randomly selected from the precinct population): Odds for the results for Obama, are one out of 437 Odds for the results for Clinton are one out of 1,965 Odds for the results for Edwards are one out of 12 Both the Obama and Clinton differences between their machine and hand counts are highly significant at well above 99% level. Edwards' result is significant at the 90% level.
This analysis is of a sample of randomly selected 36 comparably-sized machine and hand count precincts from the "middle of the size distribution" obtained by lopping off the smallest and largest precincts respectively until equal size samples (36 precincts each) with almost identical average size (762.2 votes cast for machine, 764.9 votes cast for hand counted precincts) remained in the sample.
The results of a two-tailed difference of means tests (machine count versus hand count for same candidate) for Obama, Clinton, and Edwards are striking.
In the standard test (assuming both machine and hand counts precincts are randomly selected from the precinct population):
Odds for the results for Obama, are one out of 437 Odds for the results for Clinton are one out of 1,965 Odds for the results for Edwards are one out of 12
Both the Obama and Clinton differences between their machine and hand counts are highly significant at well above 99% level. Edwards' result is significant at the 90% level.
This all leading to their conclusion:
We can therefore state that the pattern of hand and machine counts is consistent with switching votes cast for Obama to votes counted for Clinton by the machines.
Do read the whole thing, it is just 4 pages. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
However, several others are off by more than the statistical significance even in the hand-counted districts, including Clinton.
Choosing pairs of two likesized precincts in the same county, you get pairs where the demograpic differences should not be that large.
That's a definitely false assumption. Almost all counties include urban, suburban, smalltown and rural precints.
As for the linear fits: the odds of the result are less interesting than the odds of the linear part of the result, and they don't even give an R-squared. (It seems to me a superposition of a ringing-off sinusoid and a linear would be amuch better fit for Clinton.) I should again re-state the point that there is no control for systematic errors. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Should have started with a disclaimer of statistics not being my best subject... A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
A bunch of random thoughts and links in no particular order. (Sorry for the incoherence, I'm still pretty sick and my head is kinda fuzzy.)
My main problem is that few of the sites you link to cite where they got their data, and at least one of those that does cite a source (but doesn't link to it) uses numbers that don't match the source.
Examples: The guy from Election Defense Alliance says he got his data from the NH Secretary of State web site. He doesn't link to it, but the data is here.
He says Clinton had 91,717 optical-scan votes and 20,889 hand-counted votes, for a total of 112,606 votes. But the NH Secretary of State says Clinton got a total of 112,610 votes. He says Obama got 81,495 optical-scan votes and hand-counted votes for a total of 105,004 votes, but the NH SOS says he got a total of 105,007 votes.
He also doesn't say how he determined which votes were machine-counted and which were hand-counted. Here's the official list of machine-counted municipalities, fyi.
The statistical exploration post you were so impressed with says he got his data from this post at Reddit. But the very first comment on his post points out that he got the machine/hand count towns wrong, so those data and calculations are useless until he gets those right.
An interesting post that I don't think you linked to gets different numbers and breaks it all down county-by-county. I will note that he (I assume it's a he) says he got his data from politico.com, which is a commercial political journalism site, not an official source. I haven't had time to poke around politico to see where their data came from, but if they're not idiots (and they're not) then it probably comes from the secretary of state. But still, I wonder why the guy would rely on a middle-person rather than go directly to the source.
Also just FYI, this might be interesting to play around with.
Next, here's the AP's take on the matter, citing "experts" (whatever those are) who are skeptical about the claims of fraud. I link to it because I do think it makes a couple of points.
First, the AP's own numbers don't show this weird percentage-switching either:
An analysis by The Associated Press' Election Research and Quality Control service found that Clinton led Obama by about 6 percentage points in machine-counted towns, where she earned 53 percent of the vote and Obama earned 47 percent. Obama led Clinton by about 8 percentage points in hand-counted towns, where he earned 54 percent of the vote and Clinton earned 46 percent.
I will note that the AP is very good at elections. They did not call Florida for Bush in 2000. They have screwed some stuff up in the past, but they take this stuff seriously and have some solid people working on it.
Second, they offer this explanation of the patterns we see, and note that it is not new.
Joe Lenski, executive vice president of Edison Media Research, one of two firms that conduct election exit polling for The AP and television networks, said those numbers fit the pattern.
"If you do a little more statistical digging, you find out that this isn't proving what they think it's proving. It's a pattern that's been around for years," he said. In 2008, 2004 and 2000, towns and cities using ballot-counting machines skewed toward Democratic primary winners Clinton, John Kerry and Al Gore, while those where ballots are hand-counted went to second-place finishers Obama, Howard Dean and Bill Bradley. Lenski said it's all of a piece: Education, income and age -- factors that influence voters' candidate choices, also play into where they choose to live. "We see those patterns in the vote, we see those patterns in the exit poll. It's not surprising we'd see those patterns when we looked at the types of equipment used because it's not randomly assigned, there are reasons why certain towns use paper ballots and certain cities use machines," Lenski said. Manchester, for example, New Hampshire's most populous city, is largely working class and uses machines at its 12 polling stations. Clinton won there Tuesday, just as previous winners Kerry and Gore did. The small White Mountains towns of Franconia, Sugar Hill and Bethlehem, which hand-count ballots, all went to Obama as they did for Dean in 2004 and Bradley in 2000. "Clinton, Kerry and Gore all seem to have a similar profile in New Hampshire. Their voters in New Hampshire were older, less likely to be college-educated and had on average lower incomes. For Dean and Obama and Bradley, they're most likely to have college degrees or postgraduate education, they're most likely to be younger and they're most likely to be higher income and higher educated," Lenski said. "Also in terms of issues, the divide this time was pretty much experience versus change, and that's not too dissimilar from the divide between Kerry and Dean four years ago and the divide between Gore and Bradley eight years ago."
In 2008, 2004 and 2000, towns and cities using ballot-counting machines skewed toward Democratic primary winners Clinton, John Kerry and Al Gore, while those where ballots are hand-counted went to second-place finishers Obama, Howard Dean and Bill Bradley.
Lenski said it's all of a piece: Education, income and age -- factors that influence voters' candidate choices, also play into where they choose to live.
"We see those patterns in the vote, we see those patterns in the exit poll. It's not surprising we'd see those patterns when we looked at the types of equipment used because it's not randomly assigned, there are reasons why certain towns use paper ballots and certain cities use machines," Lenski said.
Manchester, for example, New Hampshire's most populous city, is largely working class and uses machines at its 12 polling stations. Clinton won there Tuesday, just as previous winners Kerry and Gore did. The small White Mountains towns of Franconia, Sugar Hill and Bethlehem, which hand-count ballots, all went to Obama as they did for Dean in 2004 and Bradley in 2000.
"Clinton, Kerry and Gore all seem to have a similar profile in New Hampshire. Their voters in New Hampshire were older, less likely to be college-educated and had on average lower incomes. For Dean and Obama and Bradley, they're most likely to have college degrees or postgraduate education, they're most likely to be younger and they're most likely to be higher income and higher educated," Lenski said.
"Also in terms of issues, the divide this time was pretty much experience versus change, and that's not too dissimilar from the divide between Kerry and Dean four years ago and the divide between Gore and Bradley eight years ago."
Also, as the AP story noted, there was a recount in the 2004 general election at the behest of Ralph Nader based on similar inconsistencies between machine-counted and hand-counted precincts. It found no serious discrepancies.
Finally, this NYTimes Magazine piece on voting machines in general is very interesting. It's not about NH specifically, just the issue of machines.
I have personally got serious reservations about the use of voting machines that don't leave a reliable, verifiable paper trail, and I think their use needs to be discontinued. I have said this since 2000.
A friend of mine volunteered to staff a voting precinct in the 2004 election, in a suburban county in central Virginia. He and the other election officers concluded that, despite the fact that they took their jobs seriously and made every effort to ensure that the voting was conducted fairly, they could not in fact guarantee that the results from their precinct reflected the voters' intentions because they couldn't vouch for the machines and there was no way to verify that the results the machines spit out were not tampered with. He wrote a bunch of letters to the editor, but it got zero attention. FWIW.
I personally think Kucinich is right to have called for a recount on principle, but maybe $100k or more is too much money for his campaign and I would have for him to make a fool of himself if the recount finds no irregularities (as in the Nader recount in 2004).
the stormy present:
I definitely intend to run a regression on education, income, age, race, gender and town size if I can get my hands on census data. The idea is that after all these effects are taken out there should be no correlation between vote counting method and Clinton/Obama spread.
Examples: The guy from Election Defense Alliance says he got his data from the NH Secretary of State web site. He doesn't link to it, but the data is here. He says Clinton had 91,717 optical-scan votes and 20,889 hand-counted votes, for a total of 112,606 votes. But the NH Secretary of State says Clinton got a total of 112,610 votes. He says Obama got 81,495 optical-scan votes and hand-counted votes for a total of 105,004 votes, but the NH SOS says he got a total of 105,007 votes. He also doesn't say how he determined which votes were machine-counted and which were hand-counted. Here's the official list of machine-counted municipalities, fyi.
Again, thanks for this. Scepticism is what we need. I think Georg Polya said the steps in proving something are to convince yourself, then convince a friend, then convince an enemy. Right now we're in the "convince a friend" stage. We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
I think in this case we're talking about optical scan of physical ballots with colour-in ballots like the ones people use for multiple-choice tests. So there is a possibility of a recount, which is not there with touch-screen voting. So NH has a good system as far as that goes. Let's not sssume ballot-tampering just yet.
Yes, they are optical-scan machines, and NH officials have made it clear that every vote in the state is made on a paper ballot that can be re-counted and manually verified if necessary. This system is far more reliable and tamper-resistant than some of the other Diebold machines. If someone were going to intentionally mess with the results, it wouldn't really make sense to do it in a place where the votes can be re-counted.
Yes, it all does need to be examined, and I am looking forward very much toward seeing what you come up with.
I would havehate for him to make a fool of himself
He says Obama got 81,495 optical-scan votes and 23,509 hand-counted votes for a total of 105,004 votes
Sorry for the omission.
So, no weird numbers. Fun while it lasted, though. The numbers for Machine vs. Hand are completely different as well, compared to the strange ones.
Strange numbers, for comparison: (Clinton Optical scan 91,717 52.95% Obama Optical scan 81,495 47.05%
Clinton Hand-counted 20,889 47.05% Obama Hand-counted 23,509 52.95%)
National Election Archive Project - Home
Our statisticians analyzed Edison/Mitofsky's own explanation of their exit poll discrepancies, and found serious flaws in their argument. Exit polls have been used for years to detect corruption of official vote tallies - most recently in Ukraine.
If you do not want to read through the back and forth, Edison/Mitofsky's explanation is pretty much the shy republican voter (who does not want to admit their Bush preference). National Election Archive Project analysis shatters that assumption. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
The position taken by the Edison/Mitofsky group is consistent with professional norms and practices. Election survey analysts ordinarily assume that official election results are the objective standard against which their own findings must be weighed, and perhaps found wanting. We admire Edison/Mitofsky's willingness to find fault with their methods and interview results. However, nothing in their report demonstrates that such errors could account for the gap between the exit polls and the election results.
Furthermore, I read into NEAP's actual arguments against the Edison/Mitofsky hypothesis for the exit poll - election result discrepancy. The hypothesis is, basically, that 56% of Kerry voters but only 50% of Bush voters were willing to respond to exit pollsters. There is no data to test this hypothesis directly. What NEAP did was to check the overall (e.g. Bush+Kerry+Other) rate of exit poll response as a function of the actual vote for Bush. The result was this graph:
However, note: (1) NEAP commits the sin of not conducting a trend significance analysis themselves, (2) something that should have been conducted by taking the different number of precints in the different bins into account, (3) there are a lot of possibilities for unaccounted-for systematic errors (a systematic error is a non-random bias, say correlation with race or settlement type), that is, factors that make people in general and Republicans especially more paranoid of pollsters in less red or blue areas. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Scanlan said that New Hampshire's use of electronic voting machines is different than states like Ohio or Florida. The electronic machines are not linked, and all the electronic votes are backed by paper ballots.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/news/2008/01/kucinich_calls_for_recount_in_1.html Hey, Grandma Moses started late!
What needs to be done?
Should you have sex on the first date?
(Answer the last, first.)
;-)
(1) Always. (I'm reminded of a college buddy of mine who's quote on Facebook read, "I fuck on the first date." Hilarious guy. Those were the days.)
(2) I'm not sure where we stand. Upthread it's noted that we have different totals from the SoS. However, these could very well be the result of that last 4% of precincts in rural areas that hadn't reported by the end of the night on Tuesday, in addition perhaps to absentees. The fraud took place in high-population counties, Hillsborough -- Manchester and Nashua (!) -- and Rockingham -- Exeter. I don't buy that the bit on the percentages not being flipped, because those were verified by many, many watchdog sites and only changed later.
We need this all in a short, succinct message that I can pass on to K for him to give to the Secretary of State tomorrow. I'm taking a stab at it, but having trouble getting my thoughts together, so it might be a good idea for someone with a bit less adrenaline pumping.
It can be posted at EuroTrib or emailed to me at jones(dot)drewj(at)gmail(dot)com
I'm very glad to hear John Zogby released his raw exit poll data. Analysis has already been done on that by a third party, comparing it with the results, and it serves as more evidence of something funny going on. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
Corrections, criticism, brickbats, & etc requested.
====================
=
The shocking results of the New Hampshire primaries (both Republican and Democratic) have raised grave doubt as to the results. Investigation has uncovered:
-------------------------------------------------------- Support for Claims:
Source here
3. Vote fraud expert Bev Harris has warned that New Hampshire's electronic voting machines are wide open to fraud and that even modestly skilled computer programmers were able to identify key vulnerabilities within ten minutes of assessing them as key Democrat and Republican primaries unfold today.
Source: here
4.
5. In last week's program LHS President John Silvestro admitted his staff violated Connecticut security protocols during the 2006 election. Memory cards were swapped by LHS staff members who saw protocols from the State indicating they were not to touch machines.
Hajjar [see #6, below] doesn't limit his involvement in the voting machine business to sales. According to an interview conducted by Dori Smith, Hajjar totes memory cards around in the trunk of his car and defends the boggling concept of swapping out memory cards during the middle of elections.
Other LHS staff members we spoke with, including Mike Carlson and Tom Burge, provided similar comments. They said they would open machines up during an election and swap memory cards as needed. This is illegal under Connecticut law and Deputy Secretary Mara told us she has since informed LHS that such actions were in violation of Connecticut election laws.
6. LHS Marketing and Sales Director Ken Hajjar grew up with owner John Silvestro in Lawrence, Massachusetts. They both moved to Londonderry, New Hampshire, where Ken Hajjar was arrested, indicted, and pleaded guilty to "sale / CND" and sentenced to 12 months in the Rockingham County Correctional facility, and fined $2000. As things go for the politically connected, he was then given a deferred sentence and $1000 of his fine was suspended.
7. This needs to be nailed down. there is exiting polling data here that needs to be qualified and verified
8.
9.
9A. This comes from Ron Paul people here we need to nail this down AS THIS IS OUR SECOND SMOKING GUN
10.
11. NOTE: This is our 'smoking gun' and Migeru or another qualified person needs to write this section.
------------END-----------------------------
Observation: the Ron Paul people are really pissed and some were on the scene and witnessed voter count tampering. These reports need to be verified.
As we reported earlier today, an entire family voted for Ron Paul in Sutton, yet when the voting map on the Politico website was posted, the total votes for Ron Paul were zero.
Vote fraud expert Bev Harris contacted the head clerk in Sutton, Jennifer Call, who was forced to admit that the 31 votes Ron Paul received were completely omitted from the final report sheet, claiming "human error" was responsible for the mistake.
source here
It's more logical (and powerful) to start by mentioning what caught our attention first. "Dieu se rit des hommes qui se plaignent des conséquences alors qu'ils en chérissent les causes" Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet
You're the one with the contacts into the K campaign, so the final edit should - must - be yours.
Not defending, explaining.
May be, but I repeat: given that we observed Clinton in the lead throughout in the evening, the likely effect of this is limited. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
What this hiatus means, if it means anything, is beyond me but it was noted in real time.
However, LHS people were given unauthorized access to the machines, reportedly: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5553
CheckTheVotes.com has results by city/town, seemingly showing a statistically significant relationship between results and machine-counting on the Dem side: http://checkthevotes.com/index.php?party=DEMOCRATS Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
That article also links to a Lou Dobbs report covering the same issue. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
(Before you know it you'll all get a friendly invitation to join a lodge...)
Example from Republicans Primary:
http://www.sos.nh.gov/presprim2008/rpresbelk.htm Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
The NH SoS site has sample ballots. We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
Anyway, upthread the stormy present says:
My main problem is that few of the sites you link to cite where they got their data, and at least one of those that does cite a source (but doesn't link to it) uses numbers that don't match the source. Examples: The guy from Election Defense Alliance says he got his data from the NH Secretary of State web site. He doesn't link to it, but the data is here. He says Clinton had 91,717 optical-scan votes and 20,889 hand-counted votes, for a total of 112,606 votes. But the NH Secretary of State says Clinton got a total of 112,610 votes. He says Obama got 81,495 optical-scan votes and hand-counted votes for a total of 105,004 votes, but the NH SOS says he got a total of 105,007 votes.
However, there is also a "summary of Republican Primary by county" data set, and in it, as Drew says, there is a moderate amount of votes for the Democratic candidates. For instance, Obama gets 1800 votes. Looking at the sample Republican ballot available on the SoS site, it is apparent that these votes are write-ins.
So these cross-party votes (either registered Republicans who wrote in a Democrat, or Democrats who picked up the wrong ballot) might provide a useful control, especially in precinct-level comparisons. However, just for fun, here's the statewide percentages:
Obama Clinton Edwards Richardson Kucinich Crow Gravel Hunter 40.39 39.12 15.62 4.29 0.29 0.16 0.07 0.07
Just signed up. It's nice to see this issue being seriously debated!
Anyway I re-did the analysis using more reliable data. Same results. I then added various combinations of available socio-demographic data (household income, age, education) and so on.
I have found one factor - the percent of the population holding bachelor's degrees - very significantly linked with Clinton's results. However, it is weaker than the Diebold which effect still remains with about the same strength.
PS. Thanks to all the persons who cared to post election data. Nice forum BTW.
I have to get an answer to Kucinich tonight, so any help you can offer is greatly appreciated. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
I just wanted to alert you to ANOTHER factor (other than social-economic data) which is probably the main reason why some townships have Diebold machines and other do not: their location in the state.
Here is a graph showing where the machines are used:
And, here is a blog post I made to discuss the results: http://electionstats.wordpress.com/2008/01/14/vote-counting-methods-drawn-on-a-nh-map/
Basically, it kind of looks like there is no fraud, since the machine usage is so biased in terms of location. BUT, if you only look at townships with 500-800 democrat votes, their usage of machines is close to even split with the hand-counters, AND their distribution in the state is more random.
So, I think we should somehow encourage the NH SOS to only do recounts for these medium sized towns, since the bias still exists, and there are not as many votes to count so it would be a lot cheaper.
Did that (thanks to brfox), doesn't cut the mustard.
I also hand-merged the data, correcting town names, and using official data on voting machine usage.
The percentage of population holding bachelor's degrees is now extremely well correlated with Clinton's score (maybe too well in fact...); the Diebold still has an important effect...
You can get a .tar.gz with R scripts and data from the link on the blog entry:
http://call-with-current-continuation.blogspot.com/2008/01/diebold-effect-sticks-around-need.html
Now this is about the limit of my statistical knowledge so I'll let experts talk.
> summary(model4) Call: lm(formula = nh$delta ~ nh$totalpopulation * nh$total * nh$machine + nh$unemploymentrate + nh$percentholdingbachelorsdegree + nh$lat * nh$long) Residuals: Min 1Q Median 3Q Max -0.30281 -0.07168 -0.00144 0.07717 0.40634 Coefficients: Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|) (Intercept) 5.929e+01 1.290e+02 0.459 0.6464 nh$totalpopulation 5.890e-06 7.438e-06 0.792 0.4293 nh$total -4.993e-06 7.575e-05 -0.066 0.9475 nh$machine 8.760e-02 3.521e-02 2.488 0.0136 nh$unemploymentrate -4.817e-04 2.334e-04 -2.064 0.0403 nh$percentholdingbachelorsdegree -4.559e-03 6.477e-04 -7.038 2.74e-11 nh$lat -1.197e+00 2.982e+00 -0.401 0.6886 nh$long 8.176e-01 1.805e+00 0.453 0.6510 nh$totalpopulation:nh$total 7.043e-09 1.727e-08 0.408 0.6838 nh$totalpopulation:nh$machine -9.572e-06 7.865e-06 -1.217 0.2249 nh$total:nh$machine 1.604e-05 7.627e-05 0.210 0.8337 nh$lat:nh$long -1.649e-02 4.171e-02 -0.395 0.6929 nh$totalpopulation:nh$total:nh$machine -6.929e-09 1.727e-08 -0.401 0.6887 (Intercept) nh$totalpopulation nh$total nh$machine * nh$unemploymentrate * nh$percentholdingbachelorsdegree * * * nh$lat nh$long nh$totalpopulation:nh$total nh$totalpopulation:nh$machine nh$total:nh$machine nh$lat:nh$long nh$totalpopulation:nh$total:nh$machine --- Signif. codes: 0 `* * *' 0.001 `* *' 0.01 `*' 0.05 `.' 0.1 ` ' 1 Residual standard error: 0.1159 on 209 degrees of freedom (37 observations deleted due to missingness) Multiple R-Squared: 0.3802, Adjusted R-squared: 0.3446 F-statistic: 10.68 on 12 and 209 DF, p-value: <2.2e-16>anova(model4) > anova(model4) Analysis of Variance Table Response: nh$delta Df Sum Sq Mean Sq F value Pr(>F) nh$totalpopulation 1 0.11603 0.11603 8.6443 0.003650 nh$total 1 0.00695 0.00695 0.5177 0.472632 nh$machine 1 0.36967 0.36967 27.5398 3.769e-07 nh$unemploymentrate 1 0.14791 0.14791 11.0191 0.001064 nh$percentholdingbachelorsdegree 1 0.62402 0.62402 46.4883 9.718e-11 nh$lat 1 0.00133 0.00133 0.0992 0.753048 nh$long 1 0.37698 0.37698 28.0843 2.940e-07 nh$totalpopulation:nh$total 1 0.00209 0.00209 0.1559 0.693390 nh$totalpopulation:nh$machine 1 0.07083 0.07083 5.2769 0.022601 nh$total:nh$machine 1 0.00024 0.00024 0.0182 0.892720 nh$lat:nh$long 1 0.00241 0.00241 0.1795 0.672213 nh$totalpopulation:nh$total:nh$machine 1 0.00216 0.00216 0.1610 0.688670 Residuals 209 2.80545 0.01342 nh$totalpopulation * * nh$total nh$machine * * * nh$unemploymentrate * * nh$percentholdingbachelorsdegree * * * nh$lat nh$long * * * nh$totalpopulation:nh$total nh$totalpopulation:nh$machine * nh$total:nh$machine nh$lat:nh$long nh$totalpopulation:nh$total:nh$machine Residuals --- Signif. codes: 0 `***' 0.001 `**' 0.01 `*' 0.05 `.' 0.1 ` ' 1
Race may not be a huge factor in NH because my anecdotal impression (I've never been there) is that it's pretty darn overwhelmingly white.
That won't necessarily show up on census data, will it? Though it is worth getting the data just in case a 1% shift in the gender ratio from town to town actually explains something. We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
Can you do a correlation matrix of the predictor variables? We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
Oh no please don't call me like that. You'll be really disappointed at my credentials. I was trying to word my findings carefully to avoid this, but let me put here a full disclaimer:
That being said...
> Is the Diebold affect still showing about 4.6% on Clinton's tally?
Slightly less. With a coefficient of 3.18 percentage points, Diebold is still the non-political variable having the highest coefficient in the model.
http://www.eurotrib.com/files/825/NHDemVote.csv [38 Kb] We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
That was our smoking gun, and without it everything is circumstantial. So the question arises, how come the early figures did show an exact reversal (and hence a smoking gun) and then this vanished.?
However there are other flaws in the fraud argument which became clear when it was noted that the votes were optically scanned using electronically stand-alone machines. This prevents a mass reversal of votes across all machines unless all machines where physically interfered with before and after the count(to hide the trail)
However the last (political) point remains valid:
"It is in Hilary Clinton's best interests to ask for a re-count. If it finds nothing is wrong she is a double winner. If fraud is detected she has absolved herself from blame."
checklist of main points I made going through thread most of which were invalidated later 1. The fact that the TOTAL Machine and hand counts EXACTLY reverse each other to 5 decimal places cannot be a coincidence by any normal statistical measure. 2. Even if the Obama/Clinton votes hadn't reversed each other (I.e the results for machine and hand counted precincts EXACTLY MATCHED each other) this would have been surprising - unless the distribution of Diebold machines was exactly random across all socio-economic types and sizes of precincts. This is demonstrably not the case. 3. If the machine counts were manipulated/falsified - to exactly reverse the hand-counted totals - this could only have been done AFTER the hand counted totals had been calculated. This would explain why machine counts were declared after the hand-counts. 4. It would have been simpler to reverse the % for each candidate on a precinct by precinct basis - but that could have led to the "wrong result" if Hilary had actually won. Thus they had to be sure that Obama was the "real" winner before reversing the votes - hence they had to wait until the hand counts were declared. Given that there was an 80:20 split between machine and hand counts, any potential fraudster would know well in advance that an exact reversal of results would be sufficient to overturn the overall result - even after variation between the demographics of machine and hand counting precincts had been taken into account. (Only in the case of an almost exact 50:50 vote split between the two leading candidates would this strategy run the risk of not actually reversing the result) 5. Any fraud on this scale would have required a simultaneous change to the programming on every Diebold machine - which in turn would have required an implementation on and communication from a central server. Was that central server and its communications under any independent audit or monitoring? 6. If there was fraud, it is unclear how a recount could detect it, given that any programming change made to distort the result could be reversed/erased after the count by the same server. 7. All of the above does not depend in the slightest on any discrepancy between actual and exit polling results - where all sorts of other hypotheses - the Bradley effect, late swing by women voters angry at media coverage of Hilary's breakdown etc - could indeed come into play. However these are irrelevant to points 1 to 6 above which rely solely on a statistical and technical analysis of the strange fact that the machine and hand counted percentages exactly reversed each other to 5 decimal places. 8. If the machine and hand-counted percentages for Edwards and the minor candidate exactly matches each other, it would make the exact Obama/Clinton reversal even more inconceivable. [it appears that here are also machine/hand discrepancies for other candidates - including on the republican side where these appear to favour McCain and Huckabee at the expense of Romney - do the same socio-economic factors explain this apparent bias?] 9. Given that votes are machine counted but paper based makes it possible to do a reliable recount provided there has been secure custody of the ballots. 10. The fact that vote counting (OPTICAL SCAN) are not linked makes a systematic fraud much more difficult to conduct and reverse (to cover all tracks) as all machines would have to be accessed individually at least twice. 11. It is in Hilary Clinton's best interests to ask for a re-count. If it finds nothing is wrong she is a double winner. If fraud is detected she has absolved herself from blame.
1. The fact that the TOTAL Machine and hand counts EXACTLY reverse each other to 5 decimal places cannot be a coincidence by any normal statistical measure.
2. Even if the Obama/Clinton votes hadn't reversed each other (I.e the results for machine and hand counted precincts EXACTLY MATCHED each other) this would have been surprising - unless the distribution of Diebold machines was exactly random across all socio-economic types and sizes of precincts. This is demonstrably not the case.
3. If the machine counts were manipulated/falsified - to exactly reverse the hand-counted totals - this could only have been done AFTER the hand counted totals had been calculated. This would explain why machine counts were declared after the hand-counts.
4. It would have been simpler to reverse the % for each candidate on a precinct by precinct basis - but that could have led to the "wrong result" if Hilary had actually won. Thus they had to be sure that Obama was the "real" winner before reversing the votes - hence they had to wait until the hand counts were declared. Given that there was an 80:20 split between machine and hand counts, any potential fraudster would know well in advance that an exact reversal of results would be sufficient to overturn the overall result - even after variation between the demographics of machine and hand counting precincts had been taken into account. (Only in the case of an almost exact 50:50 vote split between the two leading candidates would this strategy run the risk of not actually reversing the result)
5. Any fraud on this scale would have required a simultaneous change to the programming on every Diebold machine - which in turn would have required an implementation on and communication from a central server. Was that central server and its communications under any independent audit or monitoring?
6. If there was fraud, it is unclear how a recount could detect it, given that any programming change made to distort the result could be reversed/erased after the count by the same server.
7. All of the above does not depend in the slightest on any discrepancy between actual and exit polling results - where all sorts of other hypotheses - the Bradley effect, late swing by women voters angry at media coverage of Hilary's breakdown etc - could indeed come into play. However these are irrelevant to points 1 to 6 above which rely solely on a statistical and technical analysis of the strange fact that the machine and hand counted percentages exactly reversed each other to 5 decimal places.
8. If the machine and hand-counted percentages for Edwards and the minor candidate exactly matches each other, it would make the exact Obama/Clinton reversal even more inconceivable. [it appears that here are also machine/hand discrepancies for other candidates - including on the republican side where these appear to favour McCain and Huckabee at the expense of Romney - do the same socio-economic factors explain this apparent bias?]
9. Given that votes are machine counted but paper based makes it possible to do a reliable recount provided there has been secure custody of the ballots.
10. The fact that vote counting (OPTICAL SCAN) are not linked makes a systematic fraud much more difficult to conduct and reverse (to cover all tracks) as all machines would have to be accessed individually at least twice.
11. It is in Hilary Clinton's best interests to ask for a re-count. If it finds nothing is wrong she is a double winner. If fraud is detected she has absolved herself from blame.
This is the plot of the number of votes received by Clinton and Obama by precinct And this is the plot of the same data on a log/log scale I think it is immediately apparent that the log/log plot is better. The line is the result of the following regression:
Call: lm(formula = log(Obama..d) ~ log(Clinton..d), data = NHDemVote, subset = Obama..d * Clinton..d > 0) Residuals: Min 1Q Median 3Q Max -1.898487 -0.252916 -0.003111 0.249842 1.066195 Coefficients: Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|) (Intercept) 0.69014 0.10753 6.418 5.41e-10 * log(Clinton..d) 0.87164 0.01939 44.955 < 2e-16 * --- Signif. codes: 0 `*' 0.001 `*' 0.01 `' 0.05 `.' 0.1 ` ' 1 Residual standard error: 0.3756 on 298 degrees of freedom Multiple R-Squared: 0.8715, Adjusted R-squared: 0.8711 F-statistic: 2021 on 1 and 298 DF, p-value: < 2.2e-16
Residuals: Min 1Q Median 3Q Max -1.898487 -0.252916 -0.003111 0.249842 1.066195
Coefficients: Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|) (Intercept) 0.69014 0.10753 6.418 5.41e-10 * log(Clinton..d) 0.87164 0.01939 44.955 < 2e-16 * --- Signif. codes: 0 `*' 0.001 `*' 0.01 `' 0.05 `.' 0.1 ` ' 1
Residual standard error: 0.3756 on 298 degrees of freedom Multiple R-Squared: 0.8715, Adjusted R-squared: 0.8711 F-statistic: 2021 on 1 and 298 DF, p-value: < 2.2e-16
If so this would blow the urban vs. rural hypothesis for explaining Clinton's better performance in machine counted votes. Index of Frank's Diaries
I believe some of the other models attempted to address it, showing precinct size did not explain things. And think about it: What black candidate has ever done better in rural precincts compared with urban ones (with the possible exception of Alan Keyes in his loss to Obama in 2004)?
And why, knowing the demographics Clinton and Obama play well with, would we bet that bigger, wealthier precincts (thought to have machines) would support Clinton? Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
If you use Obama's vote percentage as a predictor of Clinton's vote percentage you get a regression line that's much closer to 1:1 - this is because it is different to minimize the variation in Clinton's vote given Obama's than Obama's given Clinton. The correlation is 93% (explained to be that high because precinct size correlates with both vote counts) and that should be the geometric mean of the two regression slopes.
In fact, linear regression is not the proper tool here as we're not really trying to use one of them as predictor for the other but rather find a relationship between the two that treats them on an equal footing. Principal component analysis would be much better.
In any case, there seems to be a very slight slope here, favouring Clinton in large precincts.
I think I'm going to replace that chart with one in which Machine vs. Hand counting is represented by different colours. We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
Here's a chart of vote percentages:
We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
Diebold's mere existence is a smoking gun, of course. E-voting machines are banned in California for the right reasons. With that precedent, I think a standard political campaign to get them banned everywhere else is feasible. We're going to be stuck in this state of paranoia for as long as this non-transparent system exists.
you are the media you consume.
The SLLN says that the average of a sample of a population becomes an increasingly good predictor of the true average of the population as the sample size increases, eventually reaching the true mean.
If we assume that the voting population of NH Dems is homogenous, regardless of voting method then the proportion of Obama voters should stay the same across hand counted and machine counted ballots, or that is what you would expect in a fair contest.
So the fact that the proportions exactly flip flopped is suspicious.
From the programming perspective it should be noted that flipping the candidate names is the easiest and least traceable method of stealing the election in the machine. It could be as easy doing a table or alteration.
Not making a judgment, just curious. ;)
It won't please the conspiracy theorists but perhaps we should take the lead and do a new Diary summarising our conclusions - and also explaining the basis 0f Kucinich's successful appeal.
Hint hint - Migaru, Drew, DoDo, ATinNM etc. Index of Frank's Diaries
Hey, I've sworn off conspiracy theories after my previous run-ins ;-)
I'm sticking with factoids... You can't be me, I'm taken
However, looking at the percentages and the sizes of the counties, we see that the largest county, Hillsborough, shows a very large near reversal of the percentages. Therefore, EDA has suggested that fraud might have tafen place only in Hillsborough.
Comments on that. The behaviour of the 10 counties is all over the place. Grafton went for Obama more strongly on machine-counted precincts than it dit on hand-counted precincts. Clinton won Coos more strongly on machine than on hand-counted precincts. In Stafford, both of them gote a higher vote share on machines than they did on hand counts.and so on. Now, given that the behaviour of the 10 counties is all over the place, the requirements for statistical significance for having a single county with a reversal are multiplied by 10. That is, the reversal needs to be very much closer to exact than otherwise. Especially because Hillsborough has been identified from looking at the the data. When you test a hypothesis formulated after looking at the data, the requirements for accepting it are stronger. I suppose the next step here is to do the same plot by municipality/ward within Hillsborough county. We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
But this suggests repeting the calculation at the ward/municipality level, where there are 300 pairs and the statistical test will be much sharper. We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
So, I did a similar ward-level chart for Hillsborough county. Is there anything in it that jumps out at you?
I read the above two charts as saying in chart 1) that clinton's lead is positively correlated both with ward size and count method (machine).
Flipping count method virtually eliminates any correlation between Clinton's lead and ward size.
Ergo - Clinton's lead is actually correlated with ward size, but because that also correlates with count method, it has been confused with the correlation with count method.
Therefore there is no count method fraud.
But why is there such a strong correlation between ward size and clintons's lead? Can it be explained by demographics, or is it easier to stuff (and hide the stuffing) of a ballot box with extra ballots in a larger ward?
However, for the correlation between Clinton's lead and count size to be so "smooth", the amount of stuffing would also have to be proportionate to ward size. Do we really think that a fraudster would be that resourceful and clever?
I vote demographic factors...as the more likely explanation, but which ones? Gender, education, income, race, class.....??? Do we have enough demographic data to come to a conclusion? Index of Frank's Diaries
Flipping count method virtually eliminates any correlation between Clinton's lead and ward size. Ergo - Clinton's lead is actually correlated with ward size, but because that also correlates with count method, it has been confused with the correlation with count method.
Above Below Total Black 3 11 14 Red 6 30 36 Total 9 41 50
Above Below Total Black 2.52 11.48 14 Red 6.48 29.52 36 Total 9 41 50
Above Below Total Black 0.09 0.02 0.11 Red 0.04 0.01 0.05 Total 0.13 0.03 0.16
Bottom chart shows clinton doing worse in predominantly Democratic wards - as one would not expect
therefore the vote switch hypothesis is not supported? Index of Frank's Diaries
Undeclared voters -- those not registered with any party -- can vote in either party primary....Additionally, as of 2002, 25.6% of New Hampshire residents are registered Democrats and 36.7% are Republicans, with 37.7% of New Hampshire voters registered as "undeclared" independents. This plurality of independents is a major reason why New Hampshire is considered a swing state in general U.S. presidential elections.
Wilcoxon rank sum test data: (Clinton..d - Obama..d)[machines] and (Obama..d - Clinton..d)[!machines] W = 234, p-value = 0.7086 alternative hypothesis: true mu is not equal to 0 95 percent confidence interval: -0.10751315 0.07106908 sample estimates: difference in location -0.0175131
data: (Clinton..d - Obama..d)[machines] and (Obama..d - Clinton..d)[!machines] W = 234, p-value = 0.7086 alternative hypothesis: true mu is not equal to 0 95 percent confidence interval: -0.10751315 0.07106908 sample estimates: difference in location -0.0175131
Wilcoxon rank sum test data: (Clinton..d - Obama..d)[machines] and (Clinton..d - Obama..d)[!machines] W = 422, p-value = 0.0001150 alternative hypothesis: true mu is not equal to 0 95 percent confidence interval: 0.1186801 0.2903706 sample estimates: difference in location 0.2027052
data: (Clinton..d - Obama..d)[machines] and (Clinton..d - Obama..d)[!machines] W = 422, p-value = 0.0001150 alternative hypothesis: true mu is not equal to 0 95 percent confidence interval: 0.1186801 0.2903706 sample estimates: difference in location 0.2027052
It doesn't tell us where the effect came from. We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
80542 : total votes in Hillsborough
Adjust for the 7007 difference in the total vote tally - and they flip as well 112000 - 105000 ! And the undoctored handcount percentages - 39.3% for BO and 36.6% for HRC - reappear for the whole state!
Hillsborough has 3 handcounted precincts (Atrim, New Boston, Wilton) reported in the last yellow table, Appendix E of the Paired Precinct study.
Those 3 handcounted precincts have 30% for HRC and 42% for BO. It must be highly unlikely that Diebold precincts within the same county diametrically differ from handcounted precincts.
Hillsboroug as an urban area would tilt even more towards BO looking at demographics. Rural areas would be less black, less young and more conservative. A female bias in urban areas cannot be that pronounced to override this. Indeed BO's advance is even more pronounced in urban areas.
I bet that the recount will show that the Hillsborough county total was flipped.
One single operation performed by a remote hacker on the biggest county. Couldn't resist the Freudian temptation to leave a clue by taking on Hillsborough for Hillary.. A simple and workable method that could be started at the beginning of the poll evening. The tactic would survive a first hand recount check that the individual Diebold precincts were correctly reported to the total tally before the additions.
Not elaborate and subtle doctoring precinct by precinct which would have meant a bigger conspiracy, a considerably higher risk and an uncertain outcome. Creating votes out of thin air could probably be detected by uncorrelated turnout documented elsewhere. The flip can also be denied by to be the whim of a computer or a software. Unfortunately, the Hillsborough flip also flipped the statewise total ! Now, I can't imagine that the flipper would have the nerve to swap the candidates at the TOP LEVEL presentation after the additions, but why not ? Elling
However, that the result in the largest county is flipped is equally significant regardless of the number of counties. Unless, of course, you have formulated the hypothesis after looking at the data, in which case the bar rises again. We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
Clinton Obama 112610 105007
Clinton Obama 31928 25525
Clinton Obama 106207 111410
Now , maybe the irregularitites extnds to wards outside Hillsborough. The table contains other 40-34 pairs seeminglynext to each other that are reversed from hand to Diebold.
Also, the exit polls estimated a double digit Obama win. So the fraudster may have have had to flip more than Hillsborough : Changing 40-34 for Obama into 39-36 for Clinton would rather mean flipping the WHOLE Diebold count. Is that feasible ? Elling
The total number of Democratic votes was 288055. The preliminary counts gave Clinton 39.1% to Obama's 36.5%. Flipping the Hillsborough machine counts gives Obama 38.7% to Clinton's 36.9%. This also looks like a near reversal, just because of the size of Hillsborough relative to the whole state.
It has been argued that the order of the candidates on the ballot can explain up to a 3% difference between pre-election polls and actual results. Going from 40:34 to 39:37 for Obama due to this ballot placement effect and then to 36:39 due to a Hillsborough flip is not so far-fetched. We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
Who gets to design the ballots anyway ? Elling
Though I have read somewhere (no link, sorry) that it used to be that each precinct had a different randomly generated ordering so this effect was minimised, except that procedure wasn't used this time around. We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
Yes, they are recounting the machine ballots in Hillsborough and Rockingham counties, I believe. We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
Black Box Voting : 1-17-08: Ballot boxes found slit; NH stops putting ballots in vault;
No worries, say New Hampshire officials when cuts up to eight inches long are spotted in newly delivered ballot boxes. "The only seal that counts is the one on top." Except the seal on top can be peeled off without leaving a trace, then reaffixed. Black Box Voting has been doing a chain of custody exam for the New Hampshire Primary's recount. On Wednesday night, Election Defense Alliance's Sally Castleman mentioned a troubling observation: After following the ballots back to the ballot vault following Wednesday's recount, she had the opportunity to enter the ballot vault, and noticed what looked like cuts, or slits, in the side of many ballot boxes. New Hampshire officials assured us that these cuts, which slice through the tape and seals do not permit access to the uncounted ballots, pointing to a label on the boxtop which they call a seal.
I confirmed this morning that many if not most of the boxes scheduled to be counted today had slits in them. I went out when a vanload of ballots arrived, and saw that they were slit at the time they arrived by van. Susan Pynchon and I drove to two nearby towns and watched as they handed over their ballot boxes to "Butch and Hoppy", the two men who drive around in the state in a van picking the ballots up. We observed as they loaded boxes of ballots into the van with no slits at all in them. We videotaped each of these up close. They arrived at the destination without slits. The label on the top was affixed, but in some cases was crumpled, or also damaged.
The New Hampshire Primary recount started yesterday. Paid for by the Dennis Kucinich campaign, the recount may or may not show a change of the winner of the event. Even so, after one day, we've found enough out to be able to say that the recount is worth every penny!
