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 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.
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.
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
