Yet the New Hampshire Union Leader indicated that on 1/6 "Roughly 20 percent of those expecting to vote in the Democratic primary still hadn’t yet made up their minds on Sunday, according to the latest tracking poll by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center."
http://www.unionleader.c...cideds%20are%20the%20key

Note those who supported Clinton; Also note how the media is portraying Clinton's 'victory' as an 'upset'; and just so someone might think I'm an Obama supporter whining, no, I'm a Kucinich/Gravel supporter on the Dem side and a Ron Paul supporter on the Repub side.

I love that these polls were sooo wrong. I think polls have a place but not when it comes to elections. I think they can be manipulated easily , in a number of ways for a variety of motives --- they can be wrong entirely --- they can give voters a 'whats the point' outlook and discourage voter participation --- they may produce an indirect but still effective peer pressure scenario --- or --- create an unfair 'jump on the bandwagon' effect for the weak-minded who just want to say they were on the side of the winner ( who , as it may be , isn't truly the winner , at all).

I think polling should be removed (or somehow , fairly regulated) as a pre-election tool --- I see it as a medium that carries too much harmful potential and may unfairly influence elections. But then , thats just what "I" think -----

They don't use voting machines in Iowa?...

The results tonight defy all logic and reason. Not even the Clinton campaign was prepared for this. Not even for one second did they give themselves in any scenario a chance to win. They were expecting a 5-10% loss. Something is rotten in Denmark.

Note that as soon as the polls closed, CNN looked at its own exit polls and decided it was too close to call. That suggests to me the results are genuine.

So much for Obama saying he wouldn't put up with stolen elections. I don't know why he conceded so fast until he knew at least knew what the percentage of undecideds were on Monday. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. I don't think Edwards would have conceded if he'd had such a big lead over Clinton going into the vote.

I wonder if the NH Union Leader tracked it beyond Sunday and into Monday?

Does MSNBC's Olbermann know that these machines were the same as the one Hurtsi hacked? He seems the most likely to look into it (if they let him look into it).

The whose thing is theater.
The media together with their pollsters and opscan vote shredders play us like a fiddle every election.
And every election, we struggle to catch them with the goods.
Even when Bev catches them red-handed, no courts mete out justice.
Someone please shoot me.

Brad
I don't see it on cnn - but I heard Wolf say
that voters who made up their minds at the polls
split evenly between Obama and Clinton. Thus,
there is no explanation. Other than Democrats, and not all, just Obama and Clinton Democrats, all lied to pollsters. Republicans did not lie. Give me a break ! Some at DU on to this. Heaven help us again. Deja Vu - FL 04. Kerry up 3 night before - Bush "wins" by 6 - Variance 9 points. But even more telling than tonight - the people who decided at the polls broke to Kerry. Keep up the fight ! Laura PackYourBags at democraticunderground.com

Brad, I love the way you keep us informed. Minor typo, since I'm telling my friends to read this, change "Kerry should have one" to "Kerry should have won."

What Patginsd at 9:51 said. Especially that last line. I don't think I can stand another round of this bs.

Thanks Brad, for getting all this info out to us.

non-male won - - - so it must be election theft?

- besides if Clinton "won" there is an error

Any proof or exit poll suggestion of error- say even a 3rd hand report of funny stuff - nah - not needed if we are just implying vote theft and not actually stating that there was theft. Did we check if exit polls do not reflect result? - or is it no point checking - wrong person won?

Nice to see the National Review folks here (they linked up). Sad to see they are so naive, however.

DMcD - Polls are your only independent source to determine whether election results are accurate. If you want to do away with them, you are doing away with your democracy. Entirely. If you have any evidence that ALL of those polls were ALL wrong, please let me know what it is.

Karen - Heard the same thing reported on MSNBC, and noted in an update in the original post above.

SKA-T - Typo fixed. Thanks. Seat of our pants on this one tonight...Sorry.

presidential election ~ liars olympics

Obama came in much higher than Iowa polls..was that vote rigged too?

Final Results - - 37.5 29.4 29.7 0.9 2.1 Obama +7.8

RCP Average 12/26 - 01/02 - 30.8 29.2 26.0 5.4 5.2 Obama +1.6

InsiderAdvantage 01/02 - 01/02 415 LV 34 32 33 --- -- Obama +1.0

American Res. Group 12/31 - 01/02 600 LV 25 34 21 8 6 Clinton +9.0

Reuters/CSpan/Zogby 12/30 - 01/02 905 LV 31 24 27 5 7 Obama +4.0

Strategic Vision (R) 12/28 - 12/30 600 LV 32 27 29 5 2 Obama +3.0

Des Moines Register 12/27 - 12/30 800 LV 32 25 24 4 6 Obama +7.0

CNN 12/26 - 12/30 482 LV 31 33 22 5 5 Clinton +2.0

he came in higher than predicted, so was that rigged too, or is it just the Hillary results that are disturbing some of you, Brad?

FYI
http://www.cnn.com/ELECT.../epolls/index.html#NHDEM EXIT POLL- CLINTON 39% OBAMA 37%

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I think it will be interesting to see if those precincts which tallied the vote by hand differed considerably and followed more of what the pre-election polls showed.

On the other hand, I'd like you to take a look at these exit polls done by the company which all the media outlets use:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21225995/
If you take the results from the male/female results (the first set of data) and then calculate the total vote the exit polls read:

Obama 18.06 + 19.38 = 37.44

Clinton 12.9 + 26.79 = 39.69

Which I think you will agree looks a lot like the final vote count.

All of this doesn't matter, though, as Obama and all of us are going to carry on the fight and win this.

If they are optical scan machines, that means paper ballots. You should be able to count them again, by hand or with another machine. A sample count should tell you how accurate the previous count was. That's the beauty of paper ballots!

Papau --- are you trying to imply that this whole discussion is only because the "wrong" person --- Clinton --- won tonight?

I can answer that for you --- NO.

Pre-election polls can be wrong, but it's out of the ordinary for EVERYONE to be this surprised by it --- even the internal polling numbers in the Obama camp and the Clinton camp reflected an Obama win, on top of every single other pre-election poll out there.

It doesn't add up. And here we pay attention to ANYTHING that doesn't add up, without favor or regard to whether they are left or right, dem or repub.

The raw exit poll data are never released (and no longer leaked), so there is no way to compare. The exit poll data is "weighted" and re-adjusted to more closely align with the results.

There is no rumor, no suggestion, no hint at this time of any nefarious activity, as Brad makes crystal clear in his article.

The past seven years, however, of hinky exit polls and "surprise" upset election results has made most of us here suspicious of easy answers, especially when the data doesn't match.

We're concerned strictly with accurate, honest elections, no matter who ends up winning in the end.

epiphanylou said, "They don't use voting machines in Iowa?"

The answer is that we don't use them for caucuses. Some Republican caucuses may have, but the ones I heard about just used index cards. (Yes, actual paper ballots, of a sort.) Democrats do a body count; it's not a secret election, and there's a lot of cajoling to steal support and to pick up proponents of candidates who don't meet the 15% viability threshold. But enough of our arcane practices.

Brad, here's the issue with the "chicanery" idea, as I see it: this was a primary, not an all-or-nothing election. Even if it had gone according to the polls, the outcome would've shifted maybe one delegate. The Clintons may be political cut-throats, but stealing this one is about like a driver burning his secret rocket engines to beat traffic on the way to the track.

I think an important thing to watch for is actually none of the above issues... it's this: Will it now be considered "alright" to even question and investigate unexpected election results?

If not... ask (pointedly) why not.

Jon in Iowa,

you said

"Brad, here's the issue with the "chicanery" idea, as I see it: this was a primary, not an all-or-nothing election. Even if it had gone according to the polls, the outcome would've shifted maybe one delegate. The Clintons may be political cut-throats, but stealing this one is about like a driver burning his secret rocket engines to beat traffic on the way to the track."

Its not about 1 delegate. It can be many things.

1. A test to see if they can pull it off.
(New Hampshire being a nice small state to do it)
2. A total shift in the story line and momentum.
3. The Republicans dont want to run against Obama because they would have no chance.
4. It's Fraud!
5. WTF!

It was a 14% swing from CLINTONS own #'s! From the MASTER MARK PENN!

Thats not normal!

Jon in Iowa,
You wrote,

...this was a primary, not an all-or-nothing election. Even if it had gone according to the polls, the outcome would've shifted maybe one delegate. The Clintons may be political cut-throats, but stealing this one is about like a driver burning his secret rocket engines to beat traffic on the way to the track.

Consider, please, that perceived "momentum" weighs heavily in these things, and it's been ages since a Dem who won in both Iowa and NH didn't get the Dem. nomination.

Consider also that there's been at least one study that predicts that Hillary would be the easiest Dem for the top GOP candidates to beat. If it should turn out (and now we're just asking questions, not yet answering them) that there was any foul play in this election, it doesn't necessarily mean it was done by or on behalf of Hillary Clinton's campaign.

I hate to break it to you folks, but 10% of the Democrats in the rural state of New Hampshire are white, traditional, middle-class, working people who are also BIGOTS.

They will tell a poll watcher that they are going to vote for Obama, but when they get into a secret polling station, they won't actually make the vote. Please, remember, in Iowa the caucuses required people to stand up and actually MAKE their vote in public --- not a secret ballot.

So there are some bigots out there. No biggie.

Jon in Iowa suggests that Clinton had little to gain in NH by election fraud. First, IF there were election fraud I don't think Brad is suggesting that the Clinton's had anything to do with it. The corporations that control vote counting, however, may think she is the most corporate friendly of the Democrats. Second, the importance of winning NH is momentum for the next primaries AND the influx of donations from the bandwagon effect. That IS substantial.

Peter,

You and I are apparently thinking not only along the same lines, but at the same time!

Brad

I'm surprised by your somewhat confusing response. All I can surmise is that you misunderstood my intent. I thought your whole thing was about keeping the election process "fair and honest" to all. My comment was in keeping with that premise. It now seems apparent that we think in vastely differing wave lenghts --- Oh , nevermind ------ Goodbye.

P.S. Please delete my e-mail & cookie ID from your system. Thx

My brain has gone blank from dumping the wrath building up from watching these not-good-enough front-runners speaking in spin-bytes and performing as though their acting coaches are just off camera. This "result" is WAY, WAY, WAY into the ultra-suspicious zone, and we need armies of Constitution defenders standing over every last bit of every last election, and every last poll, in every last precinct in America.

I don't think the vast majority of Americans have the first part of a clue HOW bad this really is.

http://www.itszone.co.uk...e0/viewtopic.php?t=83295

Look for the story, Israel companies count our ballots in Iowa. Vox.

Brad,

Your last comments kind of change the equation since Obama's numbers didn't change (assume no switching).

The only LEGITIMATE explanation is that Clinton - (not Obama, nor any other Dem or any Republican )miraculously "found" thousands of unlikely voters (unpolled)to get to the polls and vote for her. We are talking in the neighborhood of 20,000? Obama was ahead by 8 plus her 2 pt win - 10% of 200k (not sure final total).

Now, how the people were "found" is the question.

Laura PackYourBags
DU

Wow, the GOP voting machinery really wants Hillary as the contender. More than that, it extends the horse race in our commercialized democracy. Politics: the ultimate (rigged) craps-shoot.

First off, as EmLev says above, THIS IS ONLY ABOUT ASKING THE QUESTIONS. Whenever there is a surprise election result, we look into it. That's what we do here.

Wildly differing polls vs. results is a pertinent question to the readers of this site, because we are concerned with ACCURATE ELECTIONS and not the name of the person/party that wins.

Matt, published exit polling does not reflect the raw data from the voters --- Mitofsky said in 2004 that they re-weight and re-adjust the exit polls to align with the results.

Papau, this is not about whomever it was you wanted to win. Besides, Zogby was dead-on in his predictions for Obama to win in Iowa, but he was wildly off in NH --- that is just plain weird.

CharlieL, the Pew Research Center concluded that race doesn't seem to be a factor anymore. Like you say, it can't be completely discounted, tho.

DmcD, apparently I misunderstood what you were trying to say, too. It seemed that you were advocating abolishing exit polls. I would have to disagree with that, too, because that information can't be obtained anywhere else in any other way. Not sure what you mean.

It'll be interesting to see what the conventional wisdom is tomorrow in explaining how they could be so wrong.

Check out blackboxvoting.org for the scoop on New Hampshires optical scanning machines. They are the same ones hacked and outlawed in Leon County.
One man, a private contractor has access to every memory and chip in the state.
You may be right about Obama's concession being inappropriate. He's a player and if his betters say wait till next time then he'd take a fall.

RE: The Bradley Effect. I am a native Californian and voted in the Bradley vs Deukmejian election. I don't think all of the so called Bradley effect was due to racism. Many typical Democrats and Independents, that I talked to, the kind that don't pay attention until the last minute, decided to vote for Deukmejian because of Bradley's pro gun control stance.

IMO ~ a deal (Big fucking) was cut with Obama & the gop.

How awkward Olbermann et al making excuses for Hillary's lead.

It was Fun to see Rachel Maddow give Pat buchanan a spanking.

HuffPost doesn't get it...

http://www.huffingtonpos...for-hillary_b_80608.html

Papau asked:

he came in higher than predicted, so was that rigged too, or is it just the Hillary results that are disturbing some of you, Brad?

First, I don't believe I ever said anything was "rigged". But I have asked about what's gone on during the secret voting counting procedures in New Hampshire.

Now the vote counting in Iowa was fairly transparent on the Dem side. But it's completely opaque in the Diebold machine counted counties of New Hampshire.

Couple that with the inexplicable results (unlike prior to Iowa with Obama, there was no known "Hillary surge" under way).

Hope that answers your questions.

Papau again asked (sarcastically):

Did we check if exit polls do not reflect result? - or is it no point checking - wrong person won?

Would be happy to check. Do you have access to that Exit Poll data? The ones that were collected before they were adjusted (as they are, after the election) to fit the election results?

As mentioned in my original post, I'd love to see it. Not sure what a "non-male" or any of the other nonsense you suggest has to do with anything.

Judge of Judges

How about a quid pro quo for someone knowing
04 stunk to high heaven (and could make national news with that information) and was desperate to stop the Obama train?

I wish somebody would have a long talk with Josh Marshall....

Matt #16 -

Was about to add your numbers from the MSNBC Exit Poll data you pointed, as an update, since I agree, they look very much like the final results.

But then when checking the link you gave, it doesn't seem anymore to match the numbers you offered. Did you happen to save a screenshot per chance? Hoping so!

Please note, Exit Polls are traditionally adjusted (believe it or not) to match the final results after the close of polls. It's unclear whether the page linked above has been adjusted or not, since I don't see the numbers you're referring to above. If those were RAW numbers, then yes, I'd agree they seem quite close to the final results.

But the numbers at that page now don't seem to reflect the above at all, unless one of us is looking at the wrong place.

Early WaPo conventional wisdom:

But [Rahm Emanuel] took heart in the energy that emerged for both candidates --- tens of thousands more voters came out to vote for a Democrat yesterday than voted for a Republican.

... he got that right.

And another one:

Most polls accurately reflected the large bloc of likely Democratic voters yet to make up their minds or who said they were open to switching their support in the closing days. On the network exit poll, nearly 4 in 10 said they made their final decision within the last three days; 17 percent said they decided how to vote yesterday. Among those making up their minds on the day of the primary, 40 percent supported Clinton, 37 percent Obama. Clinton did even better among the half of the electorate who settled on their choice a month or more ago.

But the late polls missed on how votes divided by gender. Pre-election polls from CNN-WMUR-University of New Hampshire and USA Today-Gallup showed Obama and Clinton about evenly splitting female voters and Obama winning men by a margin of 2 to 1. But Clinton won among women by 13 percentage points, exit polls showed, and she lost among men more narrowly than suggested, drawing 30 percent to Obama's 42 percent.

Yesterday's result is sure to fuel speculation --- thought finally retired by a strong showing in 2006 --- that polls are less accurate when an African American is in the race. A more likely culprit is voter modeling, with pollsters perhaps over-counting the boost of enthusiasm among Obama supporters following his victory in Iowa. Another possibility is that independents opted at the last minute to vote in the Republican primary, depriving Obama of votes.

Karen ~
I don't have clue of what quid pro quo (horse face trade) could be ...

Brad
I'm sure you've seen this by now, but if not....

http://ronrox.com/paulstats.php?party=DEMOCRATS

Great story, Brad.

About Iowa - We will have a more formal report on Iowa, but here's what happened:

The Democratic Party pulled a last-minute manuever which made it almost impossible to rig the thing without getting caught. They put a new, open source-driven program out from which anyone in America could capture time-slices of every precinct in Iowa every 30 seconds.

On the web site, this wasn't obvious, but John Howard posted a quiet little link on the Black Box Voting forums, which was apparently deducible by those with good technical skills, and simply by clicking this link every 30 seconds you got a statewide data dump of every precinct in Iowa.

And maybe it's better than posting poll tapes and comparing with the result, because you can do the input vs output check from a telephone anywhere in the world. Here's how: Jerry Depew, a resident of Iowa, simply arranged for a friend to TELEPHONE him at the precinct. He reported to his friend the result he saw right in front of him and, while he was still on the phone, his friend confirmed that the results at the precinct matched those published by the Iowa Democratic Party on the Internet.

As I say, darn hard to rig that because they counted in public and had those incredibly detailed time slices downloadable in real time by anyone in the world.

(The Iowa Republican caucus was another matter altogether. They finally got around to posting their results yesterday, and the thing was as opaque as mud.)

New Hampshire, for the Democrats, was the exact opposite of Iowa. They used one of the worst voting systems in America and then handed programming of every memory card in New Hampshire over to a private outfit run by John Silvestro.

First order of business needs to be examining the published precinct results and comparing the hand count locations to the optical scam locations.

The results web site does not make this easy. You have to hover your mouse over each one of about 250 municipalities and then take a screen grab and then type it into a spreadsheet.

So far, no one I know has completed that task.

Here is the site with the municipality results:
http://www.politico.com/...imaries/nhmap-popup.html

Here is a comma delimited data file I created with the municipalities and whether they are hand counted or opscam:
http://www.bbvdocs.org/N...-08-votingsystems-NH.txt

I took the information from the NH Sec State site. A few of the locations do not have the voting system specified; if they have a low population, they are probably hand count.

Whoever gets the handcount vs opscam spreadsheet done gets two points. The tools are in the two links above.

The hand count vs the machine count is here...

http://ronrox.com/paulstats.php?party=DEMOCRATS

Hey, Beesting, just got it and rushed over to post it --- you beat me to it. Now, need to take a closer look.

Jon #19 said -

Brad, here's the issue with the "chicanery" idea, as I see it: this was a primary, not an all-or-nothing election. Even if it had gone according to the polls, the outcome would've shifted maybe one delegate. The Clintons may be political cut-throats, but stealing this one is about like a driver burning his secret rocket engines to beat traffic on the way to the track.

As Brokaw said tonight, the obituaries for the Clinton's were already being written. Going from memory here, but he said one paper was headlined "OVER?" andother "END OF THE CLINTON ERA", etc.

Had they lost big tonight, the media (and naturally, the public along with them) would have written them off. Probably.

That said, none of that means that if there was chicanery here, that the Clinton campaign would necessarily have known anything about it, or even have been the ones behind it.

I say if, of course, because at this hour, there is no actual evidence of any foul play. But certainly a lot of questions.

Given that Diebold and LHS Associates ran the election on hackable systems which use secret software, that only they have control over, there is certainly reason to be concerned.

There are paper ballots here. What say someone actually count them and put these concerns to rest?

And Brad, how is this little nugget of information from today's NYT to be explained away?

One line of attack that Mrs. Clinton has used on Mr. Obama did not appear to work here: that she was more electable in a general election. The survey of voters leaving the polls found that 46 percent of respondents named Mr. Obama as the candidate most likely to defeat a Republican in November; 36 percent said that of Mrs. Clinton.

So basically, voters agreed, by a wide margin of 10%, that Obama is their best chance in November, and yet they voted for Clinton anyway.

An interesting and informative interactive graphic over at NYT with a map of the NH counties, based on actual voting totals and not exit polls.

Yes Rosa, the same thing happened in Iowa: most voters there considered Edwards the most electable - yet they voted with their hearts, for Obama.

Also - yes, the Iowa Demo Caucus is a public head count, no voting machines involved, therefore nearly impossible to rig.

Yes, the Clinton campaign's own internal polling showed them losing, but the exit polls show an unexpectedly huge turnout of women, with them breaking for Hillary much more than in Iowa, where women favored Obama 35-30. That really could be enough to be the difference, guys, I hate to break it to you. Think about it: how many upsets have there been in New Hampshire over the years? A LOT. People there aren't always forthright with the pollsters...and they change their minds a lot, late. Pat Buchanan? John McCain? Eugene McCarthy surprisingly close in 1968? It's been happening for decades in that state.

I hate to rear the race issue, but it could have been a factor of a few points in New Hampshire, something to keep an eye on in the upcoming primary states (shouldn't be an issue in the Nevada caucus).

I work for CBS, and I've looked at the exit polling data, and I don't see anything that makes me suspicious. I'm sympathetic to conspiracy theories, and I know the GOP really wants to face Hillary, not Obama, but sometimes we take the paranoia a little too far....check out my website www.sovernnation.com if you want some raw info and a little bit of fun...

Here is the full data and the differences between the hand count and machine count votes.

Notice almost all candidate lost votes on the machines and Hillary and Romney got massive boosts...

http://ronrox.com/paulst...ts.php?party=REPUBLICANS
http://ronrox.com/paulstats.php?party=DEMOCRATS

So Obama won by 38.7% to 34.8% for Clinton (~4% spread) when counting only the hand-counted votes – those that can actually be verified. The spread is actually about a 7% shift if you take the % of votes Clinton picked up in the machine counts (+4.9%) and the % of votes taken away from Obama (-2.3%).

Maybe there could be a recount of all the ballots that were put thru the scanners. Wouldn’t it be a hoot if that was done and Obama actually won! Problem is, who would call for such a recount? Certainly if Obama did, it would look like sour grapes and why would Clinton ask?

Very strange that when corruptible machines are involved, Obama looses but without the machines counting, he wins. A lot more analysis needs to be done, but something smells pretty bad here.

Very interesting stuff. I have to say you're way off base, though, in saying that Daily Kos is a Clinton website. She polls at about 8% on their straw polls. Edwards is actually the favorite there, with Obama second.

The "Hillary crying" story right before the election should've tipped us off...now the CMSM will have stories all day, "Did Hillary's crying get the woman's vote?" instead of "How can double-digit poll leads disappear in 24 hours?"? So idiots can chew on the "Hillary crying" story instead. When I saw the "Hillary crying" story, I knew our "goose was cooked"!

signed: Cynical Dan

If you squeeze my lizard, I'll put my snake on you. I'm an animal lover and I'm a reptile too.

I'm playing devil's advocate here, but if the "Hillary crying" story didn't come out right before the election, the CMSM would be forced to examine a quite different story: "How did the poll lead vanish"? But, we'll see today on ANBCBSNNX, if they say, "Did Hillary crying bring out the women's vote?". Well, we'll see today, won't we?

The story for the scam? Put out ahead of time? Call me paranoid, but..........how come McCain's poll said he'd win, and he won?

yeah I think it makes sense to just accept the numbers since some corporate controlled exit polls say the same thing as the corporate controlled voter machines. Because in the past 6 years, the people controlling the machines have realized they must also control the exit polls (duh). Even the hand counts (after the election) have issues due to unsecured methods of transport and storage. It is becoming more and more obvious to the Citizens of this country that the machines themselves give a negative return on investment. I mean a real negative return. Kind of like using a depleated uranium drill bit for building a new swing set.

But the most interesting thing of the entire fraud is the hunreds of apologists floating around all the blogs. I mod a few blogs and caught 30 of them just in the past 12 hours. It was wild, they really pulled out all the stops. Whispering nonsensical talking points like...

"well people in New Hampshire are stupid."

"people must have felt that Hillary was finally genuine"

"it goes to show you the polls do not mean anything"

"well America wants stability more than change, and New Hampshire always votes for the establishment"

"maybe a few random acts of fraud happened, but no one can rig so many machines at once"

Anyway, I have seen them here too. After visiting this site for 2 years, I feel 1,000x more confident in Bev and Brad then the obvious apologists for an ever degrading system of non-democratically elected appointees.

We had a discussion a day or so ago on the O-mentum thread, where I said:

The jist of my position is that when we don't know something we should not talk as if we do know that something.

Wafting in and out of presumption upon presumption to discuss the merits of candidates, their base, and extrapolating that to election results is confusion posing as coherent dialogue.

If we don't know which elections were rigged sufficiently to throw them and therefore render them false, then we have no basis for a philosophical discussion of the merits of candidates in terms of why they won or lost!

Which means Amurkan politics is nothing more than a nightmare posing as a wonderful American dream.

(Dredd Sedd, emphasis added). See also in same thread.

Brad #13

You said:

Polls are your only independent source to determine whether election results are accurate.

Historically, that certainly tends to be true for exit polls, but not for MSM, partisan, or party polls which tend to vary depending on the circumstances.

see post #59 too

Why is that Mr. See BS #50, that when the ballotts were hand counted, they all fell within the polling margin but when the Opscams counted the ballots it was outside the polling margin...hmmm?

possible explanation - the effect of message during the debates affecting immediate polling. Hillary targets economy and recession, this resonates with voters in NH.
http://wsws.org/articles...n2008/newh-j09_prn.shtml

I'm bothered by the Edwards result too. Everything I read indicated that enthusiasm and numbers were high at his events. How did he seemingly fail to get any bounce at all out of Iowa? Remember, the Corporate Media and the Corporate Establishment have a lot of reason to fear him and cutting a few points here or there could keep his growing momentum under the radar.

All I am saying is I do not want some fat ass with a laptop sitting in his La-Z-Boy jiggering with election results, I want his fat ass out there stuffing every ballot box that he can waddle over to, then it works for me

Well, I heard on the radio, "Do you think Hillary's crying, showed that she was real?"

NOT..."How could the polls say Obama had a 15% lead?"

Zogby's predicted numbers: Obama 42%, Hillary 29%. So, we're supposed to throw polls out the window, then, right? Then Zogby should be questioned! This isn't even close!

So, WHO did Zogby poll? New Hampshire voters?

I wonder if they use the same kind of systems in South Carolina? Or is New Hampshire one of the last states to primarily utilize diebold equipment?

LOL Big Dan, Maybe they were calling the wrong State

Great job Brad! Nothing about the Hillary upset
makes sense; unless you consider the economic fall out if she had lost. Hillary backers would
dry up, billion dollar national radio and tv campaign money would be cut in half, voter apathy would become overwhelming,mainstream media coverage of the elections and primaries would hit bottom on the Nielson ratings,and George W.'s
massive incompetence would be front page news again. If there is a prosecutorial need for strong motives for rigging the N.H.Primary in favor of Hillary, any and all of the above would be prime motives, to serve an indictment against the entire election process.
Keep up the good work.

L.A.Steel

After the '04 election Ralph Nader wanted N.H. investigated. The phone jamming came out, but I wonder if there was something else? I would think it would be harder to steal in a state with small towns and communities than metropolitan areas. John Edwards won in the race for Senate in N.C. by taping his opponent (who was ahead in the polls) saying "No matter what you say on TV the people of N.C. will believe it." Then he ran that clip on TV. This story is far from over because Edwards is brilliant and it has happened to him before.I'm sure Oprah is highly pissed too.

An exmination of all the hand-count votes v. the machine votes will tell the tale.

I certainly don't think any fraud at all came from Hillary or Bill Clinton. On that score, I absolutely respect their integrity. I think they felt genuinely hurt, dismayed, upset, scared, even a bit passe, when Obama showed a double-digit lead going into the vote. I believe they were bracing themselves, preparing themselves for a battering and strategizing on which upcoming primaries would give her the best chance at succeeding and, at least, restore a bit of saving grace. As far as any vote manipulation goes, I believe they'd feel aghast at the thought of fraud and never would condone any chicanery whatsoever. Be repelled by it.

Anyone at all could have rigged the vote. It's even Rovian. Have Hillary win so they can pummel her later when she's the candidate. (Because in a head-to-head I think Edwards, even Richardson are electable over the GOP candidate in '08. Even Obama because of his charisma, because charisma and hope seem to be enough to satisfy the majority of people and he was ridng a wave.)

My best guess is that GOP operatives wanted to put the kibosh on the tidal wave Obama was riding because it would change the whole consequent equation. And, it has.

DKos is a bizarro world version of some Reich wing trash site like Free Republic.
Everyone that post there is forced to adhere to whatever that nut bag Markos believes or they are immediately banned and deleted.
Goebbels would be proud.

This NH primary looks very fishy to me and I think it is just a taste of what is to come.
The MSM is busy spinning how exit polls or any polls for that matter are totally unreliable and worthless which is obviously BS.
Exit polls prior to these treasonous war criminals stealing elections were traditionally extremely accurate usually well within +-1%.

If the Reich wing nutbaggery machine wants Clinton to win so that the S-election would be closer in order to make it easier to steal then Clinton is the nominee.
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.
Until we the people can collectively OUST every single last politician from BOTH parties in Congress and replace at least 1/3 of them with Green Party candidates and the rest with anybody but the incumbent then we have zero chance of changing the tide of fascist corruption in this country.

I was saying, the 2004 Dean-Kerry primary was fishy! Back then, no one was talking about hacking primaries, only the general elections.

Then there was the McKinney/"Hackin" Hank Johnson primary with unbelievable fishy results.

The Schmidt/Hackett election.

But this one...> 13% swing? Come on! No one's explaining it! At least, explain it! All we're getting is, "Hillary won".

Were the exit polls done by the networks
lying too? Be a good loser.

Zogby should get a new job then, shouldn't he?

Of course the MSM aren't even entertaining the idea that the machines could have been tampered with - as if the idea that anyone would alter the results of an election for any reason is just beyond the pale. I don't know if they just assume that because this is America, the city on the hill, that kind of thing just *can't* happen here, or what. The fourth estate continues to leave a hell of a lot to be desired...

Obama *should* demand a hand count. But evidently he's just another clueless Dem. that fully accepts "faith based" voting...His loss (and more importantly the country's loss!!!) come November...

Check THIS out:

"Tom Brokaw, somewhat of an elder statesmen of television news, may have said it best on MSNBC around 11 p.m. As Mr. Olbermann’s co-anchor Chris Matthews commented on faulty New Hampshire polls, Mr. Brokaw pointed to a larger fault shared by media organizations, suggesting that journalists should “temper that temptation to constantly try to get ahead of what the voters are deciding:” "

http://tvdecoder.blogs.n...ovel-idea-for-the-media/

IE: Fraud is NOT going to EVER be discussed! Everything under the sun will be discussed, except fraud!

"Faulty polls"...I guess Zogby has some 'splainin' ta do???

She got the "Bush Bounce"
What makes it even worse is we have a name for it

"Daily Kos, of course, is a Clinton-centric website,"

Daily Kos is hardly a Clinton centric website. Do you even read that blog?

Sorry to burst your bubble, but according to the exit polling posted on CNN, the results were almost EXACTLY the same as the exit polls.

http://www.cnn.com/ELECT.../epolls/index.html#NHDEM

Extrapolating from the Male/Female exit polling you get the following:

HRC Male 43 * .29 = 12.47
HRC Female 57 * .46 = 26.22
HRC Total 38.69

BHO Male 43 * .40 = 17.2
BHO Female 57 * .34 = 19.38
BHO Total 36.58

The actuals were HRC 39% and BHO 37%. So the exit polls and the actuals match up.

[The Exit Poll data you point to, has already been adjusted to match election results. You DO know that that's what they do, with exit data, right? Unless you have some information suggesting those numbers are the RAW numbers? --- BF]

Jesus H fucking Christ, did you look at the exit polls after the election was over, or before ?
They are constantly adjusting them to match the "real" vote totals

The important point is that 18% made up their mind that day!!

I really don't think Hillary's crocodile tears would convince more women to vote for her. Women recognize when women are being manuipulitive better than men do

I noticed on the hand-counted versus machine counted, that even Edwards got a higher percentage...

This stinks to high heaven IMO. Where's Rove these days?

Brad, Thank you ! Did you know the ballots in NH had Clinton at the top, Obama at, or close to the bottom ? C-span host mentioned this fact to a guest from the Union Leader. Peter (the host) said "a candidate can get a 3% loss from location" So Brad, who did the ballots...Diebold I suspect. Add in the Diebold op-scan and Clinton wins ! She gets the R's fired up to vote in Nov. and polls are now really a joke. A twofer !

No, the important point is that Mark Penn's old(?) outfit is known for producing off-kilter polls around the globe, one for sure was Venezuela during the recall election.

Go here:
http://southofheaven.typ...008/01/now-and-then.html

to read my suspicions about some of the narrative being laid down prior to the election. The Steinem op-ed in the New York Times, the "Iron My Shirt" incident, the crying, the rude question at the debate, etc. All of these "incidents" laid down the basis for a narrative of a female backlash in support of Clinton, even if the preelection polling numbers didn't justify that any backlash had occurred.

I suggest that while no real backlash probably occurred at the polls, the basis of a divisive gender and race-based campaign is being laid. Qui bono? Not any Democratic candidate.

I love the fact that the machine count is SO wrong. It's the reason why, in America, ANYONE can become president!

Any time - and it rarely happens - that exit polling is different from election results - to the point it changes the outcome - questions need to be raised. Exit polling is extremely accurate.

Do people really believe Hillary's tearful moment on Monday was worth as many as 15 points? What about Chris Matthews' eerily prescient statement on MSNBC Tuesday morning about the establishment striking back? Or Bill Clinton telling Hillary donors that primary would be a lot closer than they think?

It stinks.

Julie at #72 may have hit the nail on the head with: "My best guess is that GOP operatives wanted to put the kibosh on the tidal wave Obama was riding because it would change the whole consequent equation. And, it has."

I was on the phone with Brazil last night, both of us had been watching the news. The story ran in Brazil that Obama won by a 17% margin in New Hampshire at the same time that Hillary was declared the winner here. There was no way to reconcile the two news stories. This was around 10:30Pm eastern time last night.

Stealing this primary WAS important. Big money was set to move to Obama if he had won in a landslide last night. There would have been defections. This was absolutely crucial to the Clinton campaign.

Brad:

First, I've you lived in a place where you've been asked your opinion about ten million times, you might want to keep at least a little something for the privacy of the polling place.

Second, the polls are a lagging indicator. One does not really know what happens in the last 24 hours in a race such as this. The dynamic where there are real, and good, choices are unpollable.

Third, the NH Secretary of State is about as impartial a public official as there is in the country...and you would need an inside job to affect the vote that dramatically. The AccuVote system is a pain in the ass, but there is no likelihood that the change in voting patterns were due to hacking...just good, smart politics.

Fourth, do not underestimate the "Bradley effect." In Iowa, there is no secret ballot. One has to stand up for a candidate. In NH, behind the "curtain," one could do what they wanted. It seems to me that maybe some Dems still don't believe an African-American candidate, right now, can get the prize they desperately seek...1600.

Of course the vote was rigged. Go check out the website of LHS Associates, the company that counts 81% of the votes. OMG, what a joke. It looks like someone threw the site up overnight.
Half the links don't work. And this is the company New Hampshire residents trust with their
votes? What a bunch of dupes.

#82

They match because they matched them. It is just that simple to fool some of the people.

They matched them in Ohio in 2004 too but to match up the final "corrected" exit pole had to require that over 52 million of the voters who voted for Bush in 2000 returned to vote again in 2004. That is a bit hard to believe because no more than 48 and a fraction million of the 50 million who voted for Bush in 2000 would still be alive in 2004. That is why I titled my analysis of the 2004 election linked here

http://customer.wcta.net/roberty/return.htm

"The Return of the Silent Majority". According to the CNN "corrected" exit poll Bush won in 2004 based on the HUGE turnout of Bush supporters who very clearly had to leave the graveyards to get to the polls to cast their votes in 2004.

Sometimes things that “match up” are not exactly believable!

I'll tell you why Obama didn't make a big stink. The same reason Kerry didn't make a big stink when he "lost". He gets marching orders just like the rest(with the exception of Ron Paul and maybe Kucinich) "Keep your mouth shut and there will be a bone for you later"

It is still very hard for Americans to believe a woman can lead. The polls are a sham. Remember Harry Truman's win against Dewey? Check your history. This is nothing new. The news media is bowing down to the stirring speech making of Obama and totally dismissed Senator Clinton who has been "less inspiring". I would vote for any democrate this time but don't be fooled. Obama has the wealthest woman in the U.S. backing him and she even arranged a rally for him in Iowa. Good for him. To win you need money. They both have the money. I would like to see a woman finally get a chance to be president. But I would vote happily for Obama, Clinton, Edwards, etc.
Nothing would make the republicans happier than to divide the country again. Let's not do that folks.

Very good all round, Bradblog. I admire your commitment.

"If I was Barack Obama, I'd certainly not have conceded this election this quickly. I'm not quite sure what he was thinking. And as far as offering an indication of whether he understands how these systems work, and the necessity of making sure that votes are counted, and counted accurately, it does not offer a great deal of confidence at this hour."

Yes, he understands how THE system works. Don't rock the vote-counting boat, don't let the proles wake to the fact it's all a shamocratic process, and who is to be President is not to be decided by the people, voting. Not in the least. Not at all.

These are the approved candidates. You vote. We decide.

Sound familiar?

Since the poll numbers for all the other candidates were spot-on, I would expect the discrepancy in the Obama-Clinton contest to be most likely the result of latent racism on the part of white voters, who wanted to appear "progressive" and billed themselves as Obama voters, but got into the privacy of the voting both and marked the column of the white woman.

Can we get some raw data for exit polling or links to any comments by Zogby or others?

I don't trust the system until we have a random 20% or so recount of all machine precincts. Everybody else loses votes and Hillary gains on the machines only! I don't buy what the MSM is selling me as their latest reason/excuse for the Hillary "surge".

thanks brad - i've watched C-Span programs about voting machines and diebold since after the 2000 debacle in florida...yup... i want each obama voter to mail in an "I Voted For Obama/ Count My Vote" envelope to a PO Box on voting nights to have a verifiable Paper Copy... to make these machines irrelevant...

we WERE mystified - the hillary campaign was READY on friday morning to do their best in 5 days and they did - no question about it... and i think we were so sure that a double-digit obama was assured that some people may have voted for mccain to help him out, with a nod to his effort here in 2000 when bradley enthusiasts voted for him independently -

but there should be NO diebold machines AnyWhere - and this puts the country on notice that we have 10 months to Fix This... a problem C-Span has shined light on for 7 years...

Compare NH Primary 1988 and 2008
"...The actual computer voting machines were introduced on a grand scale in New Hampshire’s 1988 primary. The results were predictable – former CIA director George H. W. Bush won a huge upset over Dole, ..." "...George H.W. Bush was trailing Dole by eight points in the last Gallup poll before the New Hampshire primary. Bush won by nine points..."

The complete passage: (p7-8)
"...Thus, even prior to the touchscreen computer voting machines, there was a tradition of suspected election rigging with computer software and central tabulators. The actual computer voting machines were introduced on a grand scale in New Hampshire’s 1988 primary. The results were predictable – former CIA director George H. W. Bush won a huge upset over Dole, but the mainstream for-profit corporate media refused to consider election rigging. Here’s the Washington Post’s account of the bizarre and unexplainable election results when touchscreens were first used: In 1988,George H.W. Bush was trailing Dole by eight points in the last Gallup poll before the New Hampshire primary. Bush won by nine points. The Washington Post covered the Bush upset with the following headline: 'Voters Were a Step Ahead of Tracking Measurements.'..."

The complete article: Kudzu Effect http://freepress.org/ima...artments/KudzuEffect.pdf

Consider also the missing votes for Ron Paul ( http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/ )
No wonder the Press and Politicians love the New Hampshire Primary! (no offense to the people who live there)

(from http://www.democracyforn...shire.com/node/view/5308 linked from http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0801/S00057.htm )

Since the poll numbers for all the other candidates were spot-on, I would expect the discrepancy in the Obama-Clinton contest to be most likely the result of latent racism on the part of white voters, who wanted to appear "progressive" and billed themselves as Obama voters, but got into the privacy of the voting both and marked the column of the white woman.

If that's the case, why didn't any of the white men get a boost?

When will the obvious answer be recognized??? Counting needs to be done not only in public, but recorded on video. Banks do it, casinos do it. For paper ballots, just use cameras mounted over the table and every vote is visable. This can be broadcast live so anyone interested can observe the count. This allows anyone to do an unofficial recount in a speedy and cost efficient manner. Cameras should also record all activety in the polling place and counting rooms. Electronic results can still be hacked, but video will help make switching cards more difficult, and will help spot suspicious activity in the area of the machines. A return to paper ballots, video security in the polling place,and the use of live video feeds and recorded counts will eliminate the majority of opportunities for counts to be altered or manipulated at local polling places.

"They" will claim it would be too expensive, but I'd rather my tax money be spent this way than on unsecure voting computers that don't allow every vote to be accounted for!!

"exit polling posted on CNN"

Did you see how they "adjusted" their "exit polls" to match the 2004 Kerry-Bush election?

We're talking about the RELIABLE Zogby poll! Not CNN!

I don't buy ANYTHING that begins with, "According to CNN........."

If this chart is close to accurate:

http://ronrox.com/paulstats.php?party=DEMOCRATS

Then this:

I think we were so sure that a double-digit obama was assured that some people may have voted for McCain to help him out, with a nod to his effort here in 2000 when Bradley enthusiasts voted for him independently -

- is nothing more than guesswork to rationalize something that doesn't add up. The vote totals didn't show independents flocking to the Republican primary. They did show them voting for Obama. And BTW he's not my guy.

I work in Concord,NH and just visited SoS office. They are working very hard to finalize vote totals, and will post them on their websit this afternoon. I also got a printout of the towns that used Hand Counted Paper Ballots.
FYI, the "Unknowns" in the C:\Documents and Settings\mschauer\Desktop\2008 New Hampshire State Primary Results - A Closer Look At The Count.htm site are virtually all machine counted. Wentworth and Hart are HCPB, but they were only given 20 ballots each.
You need to keep in mind that the HCPB are used in the smaller towns, the max printed for a town was 2420 for Plymouth. Larger towns all use machines. This could easily explain the discrepancy between HCPB and Machine.
BTW, the only machine counter used was Diebold Accuvote.
Note on the Exit Polls: The MSNBC poll separated votes by 76 catagories! I was not polled, but if faced with that long a poll I would have refused, especially given the way we have been barraged in the last week. This weekend we averaged about 3 calls per hour. It has gotten very tiresome.

... epppie said on 1/9/2008 @ 5:33 am PT...
"I'm bothered by the Edwards result too. Everything I read indicated that enthusiasm and numbers were high at his events. How did he seemingly fail to get any bounce at all out of Iowa?"
---------------
It looks like the pre-election polls and election results were goofy for both Iowa and NH.

In both cases another candidate was pushed up to make Edwards appear much lower. In Iowa Obama got about a 7pt boost and Edwards appeared to be clearly tied with Clinton. In NH Clinton got about a 9pt boost and Edwards was way way down, despite having a recent increase in national polling of about 9pts.

I'd say they don't favor Obama or Clinton so much as they really really don't like Edwards.

However, if Edwards has the money to continue then it will be harder for them to boost South Carolina. It went for Edwards by 15% in 2004 and now neither Obama nor Clinton can claim sole ownership of the lead.

Two other things: first, the early states have so much emotion behind them that there's always going to be a boost to one's support if you win early. Obama's boost is now burst and Clinton has the appearance of some momentum; second, once you get past the early states where cheating is more likely, then it might become more fair for everyone except that a candidate with less money is very unfairly hindered.

What kind of election system do they use in SC? Will Edwards receive a 'favorite son' advantage as Obama had in Illinois and Clinton got in NH? Will it be fair?

Time will tell. But, the race is definitely still on!

Democratic Underground also purged comments of those who questioned the 2004 results and Kerry's acquiescence. Dogmatism, on left or right, is death.

Remember that stat-meister "truth is all"? Where is he when you need him?

http://www.electiondefen...polls_vs_vote_count_2006

2006 Exit Poll Data Screenshot Captures
Once again, as in 2004, the national media and Edison-Mitofsky have colluded in election deception.

http://www.electiondefen...g/2006_EP_Screencaptures

Just reported from Bev at blackboxvoting that Sutton NH which posted 0 (ZERO) Votes for Ron Paul Made a mistake.. He actually recieved 31 votes. It was a human error.( Yeah Right.) you only have 12 names on a list and

Julie in comment #72 said, "It's even Rovian." Sure raises a specter.
The 'dirty trick' structure that Rove so patiently put together no doubt still exists and there must be plenty of ambitious Rove protege wannabes more then willing to set Clinton up and later reveal the chicanery at an opportune time to embarrass Clinton and make her look guilty and ruining the chances of the Democrats. It certainly fits within the past history of Rovian intrigue.

Just speculation but it does fit a pattern of past behavior.

I got here from a dailykos link. Great reading and good luck with the spreadsheets; I'll check back.

Two points from barely computer-capable me:
1. Wish we had a decent women's group that would stand up and say something because the commentary is making women look like idiots or racists, women my age: 40 and up.
2. The system seems to be practically an honor system. This in a state where people went to prison for jamming phones to sway an election. Unless a candidate takes on the onus of demanding a hand count, the result is whatever this LHS company says it is. There are so many interested parties who might very well put out money to sway the results.

In states that use the scanners to count/tally votes, be sure to have poll watchers who can watch every move of the pollsters and workers, including verifying the operation of the machines.

Also, call for a manual count of all votes cast for Democrats within the time required by law.

Here is what waves do - they come in, they crest, they break on the shore and recede. obama roared out of iowa and his numbers fell back just as quickly. why would anyone think those numbers on sunday were solid?

no one is questioning obama's stunning surge in the polls last sunday. but now we question the equally sudden reversal?
people thought better of it. women broke hard for clinton. get over it.

Also, there's raw exit polls and "adjusted" exit polls.

The question is: Why is the Zogby poll 16% off the "final count", just for Hillary & Obama? I'm sure Zogby can explain this? And if he feels his poll is accurate? Has anyone asked Zogby? That's his living to do this!

Are you all delusional? I mean to fail to recognize what our electoral process truely is...a lie...a sham, designed to dupe the masses. Poor fools..."I want my voice to be heard", stated a female voter in New Hampshire...poor woman ...pitiful...I feel like crying. The reality is that Clinton has already been annointed by the high priests of the shadowy ruling elite.

my last post cut out half way through.. (sorry)

to Conclude. Obama needs to demand a recount by hand. How come in over a hundred years only when electronic machines are involved are these polls so statistically wrong?? If they are so wrong all the time why do people pay for them?? Will there be rebates to the people who paid for the Zogby polls? The polls weren't wrong. Obama Demand a recount!!

So, for those of you above "explaining" the discrepancy:

1. When the polls match the count, that's "OK"

2. When the polls DON'T match the count, that's "OK", too!

EVERYTHING'S "OK"! NO MATTER WHAT THE RESULTS!

Listen you guys. You have to be very clear when you give this (faulty) data to the Obama campaign. I KNOW this was rigged because I know NH was rigged against Dean by others who like you can read between the lines. At first I did think it was the Clintons'. But you've convinced me it was the repubs. No matter:

I am not only in favor of Obama but of fair voting results. I think NH has a history, can anyone look into this? re: Dean's loss in 04. Two friends of mine were there for a month and along with Joe Trippi they KNEW the numbers ahead of time and the numbers reported were discrepant. This time it's even worse because of all you note, how the interests that be want to run against Hillary.

I BEG you who are no doubt much younger and much better with numbers than I am to get this out or into NH. This is only the beginning but in another way it's the end if the truth doesn't out. We MUST make this point to those in charge in NH, first and foremost, and then: Let Obama know what you find out, not that he doesn't already know dirt was done, somehow. If you nail that somehow into HOW, you are the real heros here. Yeah, forget MSM, go to NH and dig. Collect money from the rest of us, set up a fund. Let's not be lambs to the slaughter once again. Please follow the ballots and get into those diebold machines. I would give money to any fund that would show they have done this. Go, and fast. Wendy

Iowa is much easier to explain in that people had to show up and caucus at a precise time and it took at least an hour or more.

The pollsters have always had a hard time being precise w/ Iowa because of all the unknown factors.

N.H. pre-election polls were spot on for everyone but Obama and Clinton. It makes no sense.

The rest of the country can say what they want about Iowa, but it's hard to mess up the counts of warm bodies and at least it can't be hacked w/ a click of the mouse.

For a successful hack to take place it would have to be done with as few people as possible. In N.H., with all the Diebold machines, that is VERY possible.

For a hack to take place at the Iowa Caucus would take a huge conspiracy and a massive effort to skew the results right underneath the noses of everyone involved.

I made sure a captain from each viable preference group was looking over my shoulder when I called in the results at my precinct. It was open, no monkey business.

I can't say the same thing about N.H.

I would really like to know ... for all those who raised red flags on Ohio '04, the long lines, the misinformation, the fact that it took the freakin' Green Party to contest the results ... I gotta know, why is the primary illogic in N.H. any different?

It looks like monkey business is afoot. The numbers don't jive and it takes a real leap of faith to manufacture a reason as to why 24 hours made such a huge difference in N.H. for Clinton.

Even she was planning for a loss.

The papers' headlines were practically already written.

Ah, but CNN wouldn't talk about their exit polls until after the polling sites were closed. Gee, I wonder if the '04 exit polls showing Kerry ahead at 4 p.m. EST had anything to do w/ that???

Can't let the exit polls differ from the hacked results from the Diebold machines can we?

Gotta give some time for CNN to tweek the numbers so they explain the hacked results.

To hell w/ their exit polls. They only say what they need them to say.

I hope the legions of Obama supporters who know point blank that their candidate won in their precinct raise some questions and demand answers.

This looks like it could have been really hardcore blatant. If so, it needs to be exposed, I don't care who the candidate is.

Has it only been the last eight years that polls have been so wildly off?

Did problems with polls begin in the eighties?

Is there a correlation between the advent of increased computer counting and polls not matching outcomes?

As for Obama asking for a recount in New Hampshire, his hands are tied because we haven’t yet gotten to the point where his opponents and the media won’t call that rotten apples. Oprah has the money to do it but the apple card is still viable. You’d need New Hampshire democrats to call for a recount and that probably won’t happen. Depending on New Hampshire laws, someone outside the system could ask for it but laws have a tendency to hamper recounts. Were the ballots kept safe or are there chain-of-custody issues?

The bigger fly in the ointment is why a seasoned politician like Hillary would resort to the tears thing. That’s a huge strategic blunder down the road if she becomes the Democratic candidate.

One potential page out of the playbook:

Hillary is the Democratic candidate for President.

She could face any of the GOP nominees but let’s say John McCain.

Hillary will get drowned in those tears, especially by a candidate that survived being a POW. That’s a marketing dream come true for her opposition.

Notice the Tonkin Gulf-like incident just as this primary was happening? I would not assume that the “have to be fearful” card isn’t played for other purposes than just to buoy the current administration. If Bush/Cheney get us into a war or the potential is escalated, gosh, the country just couldn’t have someone breaking into tears when the going gets tough.

Why would voters support someone who couldn’t beat the GOP, according to other polls? That ought to be the kiss of death for Hillary, why isn’t it? Why would women vote for a woman who cries? Give me a break- that plays right into the hands of a “woman can’t be tough enough for the job of President.”

I agree with Brad that it may not have anything to do with the Clinton campaign- except that IMHO, the tear thing plays right into the hands of the opposition down the road quite conveniently. Either Clinton knows that or she’s not as bright as people think. That bothers me and I hope we don’t see more polls going one way and results another because I’ve got a bad feeling about this.

Shades of Kerry “coming out of nowhere”, running a lackluster campaign for President, and refusing to fight for an accurate vote count. That’s one replay I could do without.

Why wait until a presidential election to subvert the people’s choice? Stack the deck now, it’s much safer.

Clinton has played the inevitability card, experience card, 35 years of non-change but she calls it change card, and now the tears card. She's running out of cards and that last card played right into the opposition's hand.

Obama got Gored! I knew that ALL 8 different polls could not be wrong ONLY for Democrats and right for Republicans.

According to the hand count, the corect results are: Obama-39, Clinton-35. McCain-39, Romney-25. This calls for an immediate investigation.

http://ronrox.com/paulstats.php?party=DEMOCRATS

This is why I only trust caucuses, where everything is done in the open. These corporation-owned voting machines are easily manipulated.

http://www.legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_news

5% advantage for Clinton in the machine counts over the handcounts. In the handcount districts, Obama wins 39-35, much closer to some of the final polls that had him with a 5 pt spread.

There's enough here to continue probing this, Bradblog.

The fact that the discrepancy between handcounts and machine counts for Romney is more than 7 points is very suspicious.

reading this stuff makes me angry. Only an idot would assume that an election could be rigged easier thaN SOME POLL. I for one didnt believe that Obama, a no experience politician who only speaks in generalities, would have such an overwhelming edge over everyone else. It didnt make sense at all. So why Brad, who I use to respect, repeats these suppositiotins is beyond me.

[Well, let's see, you're suggesting that votes tallied in secret by a private company (LHS) on machines that use secret source code to count votes on machines that are known to be easily hackable (Diebold) is somehow more reliable than dozens of different, independent pollsters, all of whom make their data completely transparent AND all of whom came up with virtually the same results independently? Ok. Let's talk bridge selling next time we chat. Have a few you may be interested in, Russ. --- BF]

I've been looking at the exit poll data --- at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21225995/, and the LA Times has the same data online, and probably many others besides.

I've run the numbers based on the sex data (easiest to calculate due to their being only 2 sexes), and it all looks copacetic to me.

Clinton, 38.69%; Obama, 36.58%.

That tracks pretty damn close to the final result, within a single percent. I don't think there's any Diebold fraud here.

It's quite simple.. The SOS in NH, in order to give another road test to his -hackable machines-, should call for a 10% -hand verification- of the machine counts, at polling places -he- choses at random.

Someone said he was "impartial", great! then prove it by making sure your screwy machines weren't miscalibrated or, worse, hacked.

And, Brad, you should contact NPR and see if they want to have a -serious- discussion about these machines.. i.e. Joy Cardine here in Wisconsin had that guy from the Times? (wrote an article about "can we count on these machines") and the general statement to the Wisconsin public was "optical scanners are ok, they aren't hackable like the touch screens".. I about puked on my steering wheel.. Had I not been in my car, I'd have called in and corrected them, but I didn't have that option.. I'd LOVE to hear you on WPR (Wisconsin Public Radio) correcting the misconceptions from that earlier show.. including misinformation about "vote flipping" only being from miscalibrated screens. One caller called in and mentioned Clint Curtis, and the guest new nothing about it..

It's not just the difference in the hand count and machine count that is troubling.

For instance McCain beat Romney soundly in the hand count (15%) but by just a couple points on machines.

The hand counts are in rural areas, small towns. I can see them really going for McCain and Romney would be more appealing to city republicans (if he was appealing to anyone)

But Obama? Since when would rural and small town voters like a young, black upstart candidate so much more than urban voters would?
He would do much better in large towns and cities than the rural areas so we don't get a realistic sense of the margin just by assuming he'd do at least equally well with machine counts.

This is just so wrong. Whatever candidate we support this must be looked into.

Brad, I have purged KOS long ago from my computer. It is way too biased and programmed. Hillary cost all of us National Health 10 years ago because of her terrible judgement and terrible controling nature. All we ever needed to do is expand medicare to include everyone; that is a proposal everyone could understand. But instead Hillary did deals in private, and came out with that 1000 page monster plan that the public never understood or supported. But for Hillary we would have had National Health already. If the Dems had gotten national health passed, they would certainly have kept the White House in 2000. Gore would have not gone to war on Iraq, and the entire world would have been in much better shape today.

I found it odd that the percentages never changed much as the vote tally came in from various parts of the state. It was remarkably consistant. On more than one ocaission the vote totals for Hillary ended in 0000. It just strikes me as hard to believe that the percentages in Manchester were the same as in Conway.

What bothered me as I watched the results coming in through the night was that even though the numbers of voters were getting bigger, after a certain point early on, the percentages did not change at all for Clinton, Obama and Edwards. Or for McCain for that matter. That seems strange to me.

"According to the vote tabulators, in the 2004 presidential election George W. Bush won a stunning victory that defied all odds, particularly those applied by unbiased statisticians. He won despite trailing in most state and national polls. He won despite an approval rating of less than 50%, usually the death knell for an incumbent presidential candidate. He won despite trailing in the three National Exit Polls three timelines from 4pm to 12:22 am (13047 respondents) by a steady 48%-51%, miraculously winning the final exit poll (with only 613 additional respondents, totaling 13,660). This poll was “weighted” (altered) to meet the reported election result on the assumption that the reported result was accurate --- quite an assumption. The final poll showed a stunning reversal of the Kerry 51%-48% poll margin, which had been measured consistently all day by the same polling group: major news/networks and polling firm Edison-Mitofsky."

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0507/S00238.htm

This has been going on for quite a while! WAKE UP!

Vote fraud has been confirmed in Sutton, NH which recorded 0 votes for Ron Paul. When several members of a NH Ron Paul Meet-up group stated that they voted for Ron Paul in that district, all of the sudden 31 Ron Paul votes appearred. These elections are being stolen. Rigging votes,yet another infringement on our rights by the gov't. Add it to the ever-growing list of violations:
They violate the 1st Amendment by opening mail, caging demonstrators and banning books like America Deceived (book) from Amazon.
They violate the 2nd Amendment by confiscating guns during Katrina.
They violate the 4th Amendment by conducting warrant-less wiretaps.
They violate the 5th and 6th Amendment by suspending habeas corpus.
They violate the 8th Amendment by torturing.
They violate the entire Constitution by starting 2 illegal wars based on lies and on behalf of a foriegn gov't.
Support Dr. Ron Paul and save us all.

Put on your tinfoil hats. Let me take you through a conspiratorial explanation of what New Hampshire means.

There is a permanent government, pro-corporate. It controls the government and wants to keep on controlling it. It uses the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc., on one level, and it owns most of the media and has commenters and talking heads on their leashes.

They've got a problem. Their current President is so disliked that there is a chance to see a really progressive Congress (comparatively) get elected as well as a Democratic President. What to do? Even though there isn't all that much difference between Obama and Clinton, she is their horse in the Democratic race.

Solution: Create divisions within the Democrats. With the New Hampshire upset a narrative is created that exposes man v. woman and black v. white friction. The Right already hates blacks and wants to keep women down. Why not create a situation that gets the Left to do it to themselves?

A tell or two? The New York Times prints a laughable op-ed by Gloria Steinem, "Women Can't Be Frontrunners," when Hillary has been a frontrunner for all but four days of the campaign. To understand you just have to know Steinem's employment history. Everyone in the MSM announces the end of Hillary's campaign, the better to be impressed and amazed when she pulls this one out (with the help of Diebold). There's the "Iron My Shirt Bitch" poster, as subtle as Lee Harvey Oswald handing out Fair Play For Cuba pamphlets. All these reasons "explain" why women forget issues and political positions and "rush to defend another girl."

The fix is good because it keeps the fight going. Forget turning Demo guns on the Republicans. They'll have to shoot each other all the way to the convention. And the fight? An orchestrated battle to divide the progressive movements within the Left. Expect Tammy Bruce and the like to be getting lots of publicity really soon. Maybe a dead female staffer working for Obama or Edwards will pull in Nancy Grace. Around August or September when you think that the Dems have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory you will have been forewarned.

Awww shucks folks. The Rethuglicans manipulated the voting process in New Hampshire to achive the results they wanted in both the REthuglican and Democratic sides.

Surprise, Surprise.

And nobody on the Dem side is going to do a thing about it.

Surprise, Surprise.

I think we need to begin planning for the possible contingency that the Republican ticket in November 2008 will have a "stunning upset" over the Democratic ticket, overcomming a 10-15% (discredited) polling disadvantage going into election day to win 51% to 49%.

We have to stop thinking of how we are going to reform the election system --- it ain't gonna happen Brad, sorry, I wish it was, but without the support of at least ONE of the two major parties, it simply is NOT going to happen.

We have to start thinking of how we are going to RESPOND when they steal what will surely be the last open election of our lifetimes.

Are we going to just turn off the TV, take a swig of booze and continue BLOGGING about it?

Or are we going to take PHYSICAL ACTION and PROTEST and MAKE IT CLEAR that: "We are mad as hell and we aren't going to take it any more."

Support Dr. Ron Paul and save us all.

Ron Paul is a racist homophobic kook who's got you and the rest of your cult-of-personality fooled. Pleases wake up and read his decades of writings; then figure out what his economic and social policies would do to this country.

That said, if the numbers don't add up I have real questions about the counting/recording of votes.

Puhleeze, Brad. On TPM, Zogby has already said he was seeing movement the last day, but the sample size was too small to officially go public.

Isn't it wonderful that there could be an upset not predicted by polls.

How is it that a flock of birds suddenly changes course and all of them move in a different direction. Why is it so hard to believe that we voters could also have an animal instinct that causes us to change directions, suddenly, without notice?

As John Edwards said, it is two down and 48 to go. The decision isn't over. These states, relatively small and not typical were just the first to set a course. Who knows, maybe the herd will suddenly turn Richardson's way.

I don't want to be one to throw the baby out with the bath water, but if the Dems are just as willing to alter elections as the Reps then maybe we need to scrap the two parties, and start over. When we start over we put restrictions on the power of the parties over the political system. Because George Washington's farewell address warning to the nation seems too accurate when he said,
"However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."

Women should be included in this quote.

You are right to be suspicious of election results that differ wildly from all the polls, but remember that there was a highly dynamic and changeable situation in the five days between the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. The brutal, and in my estimation unfair attacks on Clinton (and I am an Edwards supporter who does not particularly like her), may well have led to a last-minute backlash on her behalf. Ditto for the effect of Obama's snide comment to Clinton during the last debate that "you're nice enough." Also, many of the previous responders are correct as to the possible effects of racism. The possible impact of closet racism should never, never be discounted in evaluating U.S. election results when an African-American is on the ticket. This is true regardless of how purportedly open-minded and liberal the jurisdiction is.

(Sorry, I've had trouble getting this post to work) According to the MSNBC Exit polls Clinton did much better than Obama in the under $50K income group. This generalization would still be valid if the numbers were changed to reflect the results. The

{Ed Note:  On this end it just looks as though you're hitting the post button too soon...? --99}

The less than $50K group, in general are going to be in the more populated areas in NH, which are all machine counted. Hand counts were only done in small towns, which, in general, do not have a lot of services for the poor. This is a possible explaination for the difference between the hand-counted towns, and the machine counted towns.
When the SoS posts the final numbers I will try to compare similar towns and get a better comparison of hand vs machine count.

Research shows the voting very close between Obama / Clinton in NH. Most the towns are very close whether Diebold or paper ballot. Three big cities, all Diebold show major differences. Ranging from 40 - 80% favoring Clinton are Manchester, Nashua, and Salem, the three biggest cities in NH.

Thats over 5k votes favoring Clinton in 3 NH cities

I did do a diary but I make no claims to be a expert first off. I am 26 and the only election I have voted in was John Kerry. I do believe in fair elections. I am leaning more towards Edwards or Obama, but I would vote for Clinton if she won.

I do not think Clinton personally would have done something like this, but the establishment in order to keep making money. The tv networks know they make a big amount of money out of the election cycle commericals. Plus news network do not want the election part to in otherwise it won't boost ratings. That is the establishment I speak of.

BTW, I'm not the best diariest or best person on stuff. I have seen bradblog posted before when during with 2004 election. I do check many websites for news related stuff. I'm usually a little bit more at ease on changing stuff if I make a mistake, but I was trying to crosspost. I hope I did a ok job and if I can do better I'll try. I'm still learning.

...sorry Jim H. that you feel that way about Dr. Paul...maybe it's you that needs to read up on facts and not smear campaigns. Is that all his opposition can come up with? I can do the same with Hillary...let's see, I'll just call her a lying traitor lesbian, and a friend of mine said she called a black man a *igger once. The secret service can't stand her (they seem to like Bill just fine)but I am actually stating facts here, aren't I? They really are. These things said about Paul are completely untrue.
Paul is the only one that understands foreign policy needs to change dramatically as well as our economy. The point Paul makes is that our economy and our currency is headed straight for the shitter. IS HE WRONG? You think another trillion dollar "social initiative" program like health care will do us any better if we keep fighting these illegal wars? Where 'ya gonna get the money for that Hillary? From China of course. Bring our troops back home where they belong, stop dumping depleted uranium all over the world, killing innocent children(yes folks that's what we do),then we can work on socialism.

RonPaul2008!

The difference between the handcount districts and the machine count districts is significant, as is the difference between the polls and the results. Partly because it creates an atmosphere of suspicion that undermines the legitimacy of the process. In order to create confidence in the voting a 10-20% handcount of all machine-count precincts needs to be conducted. It can do no harm, and will increase confidence if the handcount matches the machine count. If not, a full handcount needs to be conducted of all ballots. Members of the election integrity community need to focus now on a calm but firm call for this to take place. Contact the Secretary of State in New Hampshire, and write letters to the editor of your paper.

This is a longer entry on my blog.

lulu
writer/director
Holler Back - [not] Voting in an American Town

So we have one documented case of a township in NH claiming Ron Paul got 0 votes while in fact he got 31. The Town Clerk there admitted as much to Bev Harris this morning, blamed it on a human error and now the tallies in Sutton, NH have been changed to reflect the 31 votes.

http://prisonplanet.com/...8/010908_not_counted.htm

There were numerous other townships where Paul got very few votes compared to his polling numbers. I believe Dr. Paul is going to be forced to pay for a recount. If he doesn't, I predict his campaign will be finished. If he isn't willing to fight for democracy now, people have a right to know why.

A caller from Iowa who said he doublechecked the numbers in a precinct there also mentioned that the final numbers didn't add up from what he counted, swinging wildly in favor of Mike Huckster and seeing Dr. Paul's vote total drop by about 40%. That information should be forthcoming soon as well.

They are setting us up for a stolen primary process where Hillary is already the heir apparent. It looks like Obama was really screwed out of votes in NH, and it is strange that he conceeded so early. (Remember John Kerry and Ohio?)

This is not real choice but instead the illusion of choice in order to keep us quiet. This should not be tolarated unless you enjoy living in a police state. Wake up people before it is too late. This isn't in anyone's best interest, no matter who took what last night.

Hey folks,

Remember that e-voting and e-counting is not bad ONLY because it can be hacked. Programming errors and equipment errors can very easily skew results. It's natural to assume foul-play in situations like this, but we've got to condition ourselves, and the media and general public, to realise that these junky machines can screw up all by themselves....

Mac

It is so obvious that something stinks in the whole primary fiasco. The three top candidates are Iraq war mongers while the Dems are hugely against the war. people have to be really gulible to not recognize the we are being bamboozled into a false dichotomy, a false choice.

Wake up America. It's very late. Kucinich is th only candidate with the voting record and the positions on issues that match the wishes of the American people. We are all being hood winked.

WAKE UP!!!!!!!!!

Also,

The problems with electronic voting and counting is only part of the problem. It's way down the line of problems. The first problem is that we have a criminal corporate cabal incharge of the administration , the courts and the congress. they also control the media. We are living in a fascist state right now where any one of you can be taken off the street and sent to a torture camp right now, with no recourse to any help whatsoever. That none of the top candidates have addressed the probelms sith the PATRIOT act is clue enough for any critical thinking citizen.

WAKE UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NH is a small state and it would be relatively easy to recount the votes by hand. Please Brad, start a movement to make a hand count happen!

dailykos is sooo NOT a clinton centric website. wow that is way off the mark. way off. th e dailykos polls have shown OVERWHELMINGG support for Ewards, and then in 2nd Obama. Clinton is bashed around on that web page evry single day. sorry brad but your just wrong on that. furthermore i posted a series of diaries about ohio fraud in 2004 and i was never deleted.

{Ed Note: Obnoxious, anti-semitic comment deleted.}

Brad,

If you haven't already done so, you might consider contacting John Zogby about this.

I read his statement just a moment ago on his thoughts of what happened in NH, and there is ***not one word*** (as per usual from John Zogby) about the voting system(s) used in NH. Here's the link to his statement:

http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1419

His poll turned out to be "wrong" in 2004 as well when he showed Kerry/Edwards winning. Again, at that time, he did not mention a word about easily-hackable electronic voting machines after the fact. From all that I've seen from Zogby, he absolutely refuses to talk about e-voting systems and from what I've seen from him he even refuses to consider the fact that there are "problems" with Diebold, in particular. I've lost a lot of respect for him because of this---what appears to be---denial on his part.

Zogby likes to pretend that we have a legitimate, honest and fair voting system here in the States where all the votes are counted accurately and honestly. That's the impression/message I've gotten from him repeatedly. And because of that, the man frustrates me to no end because of all the credible information available about e-voting, how can any intelligent pollster not even consider the easily-hackable e-voting system the public cast their vote on? And then the pollster (Zogby in this case) wonders why his poll was wrong?! Duh.

I suspect that the reason Zogby seemingly chooses to remain in denial about e-voting is because he doesn't want to be labeled a "loony conspiracy theorist" by those who work in the bush state media for whom he works, and have his reputation tarnished or ruined.

The one to get on the case is Dick Morris and then it goes on Drudge.

Have you seen this:

WASHINGTON (CNN) --- A conservative majority of the Supreme Court appeared ready Wednesday to support an Indiana law requiring voters to show photo identification, despite concerns that it could deprive thousands of people of their right to vote.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/09/voter.id/

Not saying it is or isn't. But just who is fixing (if there is fixing) doesn't necessarily have to be the candidates or their campaigns.

Create a scenario where, say the company who owns the Diebolds is approached by someone who claims to be in the Clinton campaign who goes and asks "How much for ten thousand votes?" And what about the suspicious bumps for Mitt? Would said company owner have one line for Demo bids and one line for Repub bids?

The dynamics of fixing primaries goes beyond just party v. party dirty tricks.

The fix is in!

Brad,

A couple points:

First, as stated by others, you are off in the weeds characterizing Daily Kos as favoring Clinton. From time to time they have run reader polls, and Edwards has always been way out in front, with Obama somewhat behind and Clinton far back. In fact I am not sure if she was doing as well as Kucinich among the Kos community.

Second, what does "conceding" even mean in an early primary? There should be plenty of time to check out the hand counted vs. machine read ballots and adjust the delegate count if it is called for. There was little about Obama's speech that resembled the concession speech that follows an election, as there was little in Clinton's in Iowa.

While I agree it is important to question the various forms of electronic voting and to hold both the voting machine manufacturers and programmers --- plus the public officials --- to a high standard, it's also important when a primary is one in a series for candidates such as Obama to be gracious and only question election accuracy if they really have something. A "poor loser" tag is easy to come by and could adversely affect upcoming primaries.

A "poor loser" tag is easy to come by and could adversely affect upcoming primaries.

I agree with that, but it doesn't stop me from thinking there is something underhanded going on here and pursuing it.

BB2

Well I don't know what went wrong with the tags there - I even used the little "i" button.

Two things:

Point 1:
==========
From:
http://ronrox.com/paulstats.php?party=DEMOCRATS

Small towns are probably (my assumption here, but its in line with Bev Harris's assumption) are probably the 'hand count' precincts.

Medium towns probably have a mix of hand count and machine count.

Large towns are probably mostly machine count.

Small towns track with hand counts that Obama won by 4%. Medium towns have a near tie. Large towns track with machine counts that Hillary won by ~3%.

So although its DEFINITELY worth hand re-counting many of the machine precincts to remove all doubt, I could imagine that demographics explain why Hillary would do better on machine-count precincts.

Point 2:
==========
Its obvious that exit poll data must be RAW data or its meaningless. However, the claim is always made that "historically exit poll data has been very accurate" ..... but what proof is there that such historical 'evidence' is relying on RAW data versus after-the-fact fudged results? Could it be that historical exit poll data has also been significantly wrong but always 'fudged' after-the-fact to reflect the 'accepted' vote totals?

Anyway good work on this. Recounts are definitely in order on this.

From the January 5 report of the University of NH Survey Center
http://www.unh.edu/surve...ter/news/pdf/primary2008
_demprim10508.pdf
Last paragraph on page 2:
"Even though there are only 3 days until the election, only 52% of likely Democratic primary voters say they have definitely decided who they will vote for"

Sounds like a lot of late deciders, not fraud.

This ain't about whether the election was really rigged. This is about COULD IT HAVE BEEN RIGGED.

The answer, sadly, is yes. There is no dispute among those who know this issue that the Diebold machines CANNOT BE TRUSTED.

Did Hillary steal the primary? Some supporter without her knowledge? Were the results genuine?

WHO KNOWS AND WHO CARES!

Of course we cannot prove it if it did happen or if it didn't.

The real important question is, how as a nation we can tolerate that a primary or election of any magnitude whatsoever, can be conducted in this nation on machines like this, without adequate safeguards, and with little to no mainstream media attention to the question?

Its absurd. The fact is, the machines could have been hacked or altered. Another fact is, we have no way of knowing, because some Blackwater like company gets to audit and supervise and we have no idea how are what is behind the scenes for real in every case.

The pre-election polls were right about everything else. They predicted a huge Obama win. Obama won in those counties that counted by hand. But Clinton won big on the Diebold machines.

Those are the facts. Do they mean the primary was stolen? I don't know. Is that the key question? No.

Who cares what happened last night - the important thing is, the crime on our democracy had already been committed before the first ballot was cast.

This Country is better than this. The sanctity and truth of last night's primary is a coin flip at best. We are relying purely on blind faith to protect us from a threat that is real, which we as a country yet again chose to ignore.

Thank you for de-italicing me oh wondrous editor!

BlueBear2 - Have fixed the unclosed italics tagged that you were trying to close. BTW, it wasn't you who left it open. It was an earlier commenter. Thanks!

Rats! Missed it by that much!

I'll say it again for anyone who bothers to actually read to the end...

This is not about Candidate A winning or Candidate B losing. This is solely about the hackable, unsecure voting machines that have been investigated and proven to be crap and yet are still deployed to count the majority of elections in this country.

Whenever and wherever there is a discrepancy with electronic voting machines involved -- no matter how big or small the race, no matter if it's Repub or Dem --- Voting Integrity advocates look into it. It's what they do.

Please do not assume motives or intentions to anyone here that are not EXPLICITLY stated. Brad makes crystal clear that he doesn't care who won or lost, just that the results are ACCURATE. Period.

The site owner is not responsible for the opinions of commenters in this open forum. No endorsement of commenters' opinions is either intended or implied.

See "NOTE" at the end of the 1/9/08 1:40am Update in the original post above. I've retracted my "Clinton-centric" comment concerning dKos, due to the many objections of those who know the site best (for reasons stated in the update, I don't spend a lot of time there myself), and as the comment is largely a distraction from my my point. All noted transparently above, along with my retraction.

Now, back to the far more important point...

BTW Kos made a post at Dailykos today that he will vote for Obama. Although I might have been attacked my diary I do not take it out on all people there. Dailykos is a very large website. There are many good people there and some that you would want to ignore. Do not say all of them are that way. I have been there for a long time and seen my fair share of recommends and nasty comments. It just comes with the blogsphere. I think we all need to remain civil on that part.

#'s 171 &172

Thanks!

If anyone reading this has a contact with the Obama campaign in New Hampshire, please contact them and refer them to this page. Only the New Hampshire residents can request a recount. Chris Matthews on Hardball tonight just confirmed that the exit polls confirmed a huge victory for Obama.

http://www.opednews.com/...new_hampshire_electi.htm

article on probability of vote fraud published at OpEd news

"de-italice", is that that hair growth medication you've been taking, BB2?

Kos PURGED people's writing when they questioned the 2004 results?!

That's just...wow. I'm staying away from that place. Shameful.

From: http://thepage.time.com/...w-hampshire-recount-law/

(I haven't gone through the NH law at the state site and I hope this is accurate)

Looks like the candidate would have to apply. In some states the party or a qualified group may apply.

State or Presidential Primary Recounts
Section 660:7

660:7 Application. – Any person for whom a vote was cast for any nomination of any party at a state or presidential primary may apply for a recount. The application shall be made in writing to the secretary of state and shall be submitted no later than the Friday after the primary for a recount of all ballots cast for such nomination. Each candidate requesting a recount shall pay the secretary of state fees as provided in RSA 660:2. Source. 1979, 436:1. 1981, 510:2. 1983, 175:6; 426:20. 1994, 4:22. 1995, 69:5, eff. July 8, 1995.
Section 660:8

660:8 Notice of Conduct. – Notice shall be given and the recount shall be conducted as provided for in RSA 660:4 and 660:5. Source. 1979, 436:1, eff. July 1, 1979.
Section 660:9

660:9 Declaration of Result, State Primary. – If the recount after a state primary election shall show that some candidate other than the one declared nominated upon the original canvass of votes has the greatest number of votes cast for the nomination, such candidate shall be declared nominated and shall be placed upon the official ballot at the following election unless appeal is taken to the ballot law commission in accordance with RSA 665:6, I. If the person who applied for the recount was thereby shown to be the one chosen as the candidate of the party, the person shall also have any fee paid returned. Source. 1979, 436:1. 1981, 510:3, eff. Aug. 28, 1981. 2003, 151:5, eff. Jan. 1, 2004.
Section 660:9-a

660:9-a Declaration of Result, Presidential Primary. – If the recount after a presidential primary election shall show that the applying candidate qualified under RSA 659:93 for at least one more delegate than the original count indicated or that such candidate did qualify for federal election funding, such candidate shall receive such funding or shall be apportioned delegates to the national party convention in accordance with RSA 659:93 unless appeal is taken to the ballot law commission in accordance with RSA 665:6, I. If the person who applied for the recount was thereby shown to be entitled to federal funding or at least one more delegate under RSA 659:93, the person shall also have any fee paid returned. Source. 1981, 510:3, eff. Aug. 28, 1981. 2003, 151:6, eff. Jan. 1, 2004.

BD #179

LOL I guess I forgot a syllable there!

Comment #159:

"I suspect that the reason Zogby seemingly chooses to remain in denial about e-voting is because he doesn't want to be labeled a "loony conspiracy theorist" by those who work in the bush state media for whom he works, and have his reputation tarnished or ruined. "

His reputation will be tarnished or ruined if he DOESN'T speak about e-voting! The only other explanation, otherwise, is that he STINKS and shouldn't be in the business!

If Zogby doesn't come out with a statement on why his polls are of 16% and only on Hillary/Obama, then why is he doing polling?

And the statements in the media, "it looks like the polls got it wrong"...they only got Hillary/Obama wrong. Ever single major poll between Iowa & New Hampshire got it wrong?

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to the New Hampshire primaries, where Senator Hillary Clinton pulled off an unexpected victory last night, narrowly beating Senator Barack Obama. Clinton won despite being behind in every major public opinion poll taken since her third-place finish in the Iowa Caucus last week. The race between Clinton and Obama was so close, it took the network’s two-and-a-half hours after the polls closed to call.

So what's up with the disinfo reporting about the paper ballots?

Still trying to make us believe they don't work?

I have a theory how a perfectly legitimate outcome that is different from the polls can be explained. All polls suggest that independents preferred Obama over Clinton and McCain over the rest of the Republicans. All the media hype suggested that Obama would win easily, so I think that many independents, believing their vote wasn't needed to insure an Obama victory, decided at the last moment to vote for McCain. His margin over Romney was about 13,000. Clinton's margine over Obama was around 6,000. If only 3,000 of the McCaine voters had stuck with Obama thinking their vote was needed, then Barrack would have won (very narrowly) and McCaine would have still won too.

Another prospect that intrigues me is that many Democrats, fearing that the independents were going to elect the nominee of their party for them, decided at the last moment to go out and vote. Both factors could have worked enough in Clinton's favor to give her the victory. (Sorry conspiracy lovers, but it doesn't have to be a sinister explanation for the results we saw in New Hampshire.)

At 48 I have only recently entered the blogasphere
Like the Colt Peacemaker, blogs like this, level the playing field between the fourth estate and the rest of us.

I grew up and live "inside the Beltway", and like most "boomers" who grew up in DC, I can spot a political fraud from a mile a way.

The NH primary was SOOOO Rigged !!!!

Here are a few truths I know to be fact:

1. The sun will come up tommorow.

2. If I let go of my keys, gravity will cause them to fall to the ground

3. Hillary could not have made those "cattle future trades" herself.

4. Zogby and Rassmussen don't miss that big! Just don't happen (period)

The upside is that alot of people are watching now. I don't think the Clinton machine could pull this off again.

Pax to all

What people aren't taking into account is the voting machines vs hand count:

http://ronrox.com/paulstats.php?party=DEMOCRATS

http://www.legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_news

Sorry, but EVERONE's polls can't be that off.

Big exit poll news was revealed on Hardball. Matthews was given the raw exit poll data at 5:30 PM election night (he stressed for informational purposes only) and it showed Obama had a substantial lead that matched the pre-election polls.

If the Zogby poll was even 5%, now THAT'S a "stunning victory", but 16%??? Come on! This is BULLSHIT!

Where do we draw the line? What if it was 47%-24% Obama, would you still be explaining that? "Well, 47%-24% is a stunning turnaround, but not 42%29%!". What if it was 52%-19%? So, 42%-29% final/closest to the vote Zogby poll, you're "OK" with that?

So, that tells me Zogby should find another job and all major polls are INCORRECT AND NEVER TO BE LISTENED TO! Even when they match, because you can't have it both ways: It's "OK" when they match the count, when they don't that's "OK", too.

So, if Zogby is "right on" for the next state, we'll forget about him being 16% off here? Do you think Zogby just started doing this, and he has a 25% +- margin for error?

I merely wish to comment from a long (73 yrs) life of political scepticism: The two parties are owned by the printers of the money - the Federal Reserve Banks - and their international businessmen facilitators. We ARE a fascist state right now. It doesn't matter which person you believe is liberal enough or conservative enough to suit your political ideology, they will disappoint you in bed.
Then there are the two who might be different: Dr. Ron Paul and Mr. Kusinich. I know that Dr. Paul isn't anybody's stooge. I think the same may be true of Kusinich. It appears that we are having another fixed election, one of many since the days of my youth, but now with the benefits of modern technology. I don't see a solution. It is very disheartening. Perhaps it is time for mass secession, letting DC govern itself alone (were it only possible).
Personally, I like Dr. Paul, as I believe the Constitution should be the rule, not the exception.
Bill, the school bus driver

And "funny" it's Hillary! "Funny" Kucinich didn't have a 16% swing! Or Richardson! Or even Obama! Why didn't Obama win 50%-24% with a 16% swing in HIS favor???

Obama's not a fighter, and it would have killed his whole "unity" message. This is what you get when you base your campaign on not fighting, and when you run against the Democratic base, which Obama did.

Obama was derisive about fighting the vote totals in Ohio in 2004 too--"gnawing that bone" --- http://casadelogo.typepa.../11/deafening_silen.html

Do not ever expect any fight out of Obama--especially on voting.

Wooohoooo ... another long thread based upon uncertainty ... why are the threads with the most posts those based upon uncertainty?

I guess bloggers can't be faulted when even the top lawyers in the nation, who are supposed to be able to answer questions about their position, divert to something else instead when pointedly questioned on their position (e.g. case on voter id law in Indiana heard today - see transcripts of oral argument before SCOTUS).

James at #186, what makes you think the Clinton machine is pulling this off? The Republicans WANT Clinton to get the primary nomination. They can run one of their candidates against her, and pull out all the dirty tricks, and win. They can't do that with a candidate like Obama, or even Edwards.

(This thread is like a C&L thread. It's huge!)

We heard "explanations" for the swings in Bush/Gore & Bush/Kerry, too...and others...it's never that someone actually cheated! That NEVER happens, right? Are you still buying the explanations for Bush/Gore & Bush Kerry, too?

ABC Blog:

There will be a serious, critical look at the final pre-election polls in the Democratic presidential primary in New Hampshire; that is essential. It is simply unprecedented for so many polls to have been so wrong. We need to know why.

http://blogs.abcnews.com...8/01/new-hampshires.html

Not once does the author question the count - it's all about how did the pollsters blow it!
Sheesh!

8:38 p.m. eastern time was the first time I checked the cnn website for exit polls and results. At that time, they showed Obama at 39.44 and Clinton at 38.12. The final result was Clinton at 39 and Obama at 37 with 4% of the precincts left to be counted. This in and of itself constitutes a 3.56% shift from the 8:38 p.m. exit poll to the actual results which is outside the 1% margin of error.

I wish I had saved a screen shot of it, but I did not. In any case, I know that Mitofsky uses (or ends up using) a portion of results in his exit poll anyway, so the exit polls were probably somewhat corrupted from the beginning. Mitofsky did the same thing in the 2004 election. I know all this because I emailed and asked him back in 2004. I wouldn't be surprised if the exit polls they had right at 8 p.m. showed an 8 to 10 point victory for Obama. This election was CLEARLY rigged for Hillary. There is no question in my mind.

Mathews is reporting that the exit polls hd Obama winning by 5%

The exit poll at 8:38 showed 39.44 for Obama and 38.12 for Clinton - just wanted to clarify.

You raise some serious questions here, but it should be possible to show a strong correlation if one exists. The "Machine vs Hand" numbers at ronrox.com (via legitgov.org) are intriguing, since the hand-counted percentages match the expected results and the machine-counted percentages don't.

However, what I'd really like to see is a comparison between exit poll percentages and official percentages district-by-district. If it can be shown that there's a positive correlation between machine counting and deviation from exit polls, that would be compelling enough evidence to justify a hand recount.

As you say, voting fraud doesn't imply that the Clinton camp is involved. There are groups that stand to gain much more if a candidate is nominated against the wishes of the electorate. So finger-pointing doesn't have to play a role in this; the question is far too important to be ruined by squabbling.

The whole discourse today, on the whoredom channel ( MSM 666 ), was to absolutely, under no circumstances, question the results of the machines. Machines are our new democratic absolute!

About the only questioning was: 1) whether on not Clinton's crying phased women, 2) whether the white voters lied and secretly had a racial animus against Obama, 3) lame etc.

When is it ever honest to rule out any potential cause?

For instance EV machine "malfunction" ... defined as failure to accurately reflect the real vote for any number of reasons?

Rigging or software math errors qualify as malfunction you know!

Hey BB2 @ 196
We could put a positive spin on the ABC investigation and say that they will find there was nothing wrong with the polls and they will start looking at the hack boxes ?...nah

BB2: The media never questions the count, they start with the assumption the polls were wrong. Just like Bush/Kerry! Otherwise, that would lead them to reporting about insecure e-vote machines, among other things. The easiest thing for the media to do is to blame the pollsters. If Zogby doesn't stick up for himself, then he shouldn't be doing polls. He's embarrassing himself, otherwise.

Remember Ohio in 2004? Have we fixed things since then? The people "explaining " this discrepancy are implying the whole system has been fixed since 2004! It's all explainable, and it's not the counting! Also, remember all the explanations in the media for Ohio? What happened in Ohio, after CLOSER examination?

The "story " is always that it's never the count...there was a sudden surge of blacks, women, hispanics, nascar dads, soccer moms, Bush got the hispanic vote this time, young people didn't turn out, etc...etc...never the count, the count is always accurate! Until closer examination...

Here is something I just found out about. It's the exit polls which were released on Fox News. This is the first batch of unadulterated exit polls. THESE EXIT POLLS CALL THE REPUBLICAN RACE WITH 100% ACCURACY AND YET SOMEHOW THEY GO THE DEMOCRATIC ONE WRONG?? I DON'T THINK SO!

HERE IS THE EXCERPT I FOUND THAT SOMEONE HAD WRITTEN ON JAY REDING.COM:

"FOX News’ exit poll shows McCain with a 5% lead over Mitt Romney. Interestingly enough, that same exit poll shows that Clinton and Obama are also separated by 5%, with Obama leading 39% to 34%. The early results have been very favorable to Clinton, which would really make this race interesting. If Obama fails to blow out Clinton, that would be a major shot in the arm for the Clinton campaign."

Clint Cooper, that is the weighted polls you are talking about.
One company, Edison/Mitofsky (of 2004 fame) did the poll and gave results to ABC, the Associated Press, CBS, CNN, Fox, and NBC. The raw data was given to the networks but they weren't to be shared beyond a few people. Only weighted polls would be released to the public. (Weighted polls are purposely made to fit results because their purpose is just to show trends)

The raw data was not for release but Matthews on Hardball who saw the data that evening said it showed Obama had a substantial lead that matched earlier polls.

That would not be shown in weighted polls that are for public release.

OH! And how can we forget FBI terror alerts and "moisture" in Ohio, that moisture cloud in the building only where they were counting the Schmidt/Hackett final votes?

Linda @194 .... I am a Republican and am flattered that you acknowledge that my party can and would stoop to such a deed. The only flaw in this:
If or when we would try such a deed, we would not do it now nor would we do it in NH.

I would like Greta Wodele of C-Span to look into this matter and report her findings to me, in person, over dinner at The Palm.

Whadda say Greta?

Maloneyjim@hotmail.com

Dredd #201,

I was noticing that too - not one word in the CMSM questioning the machines! Just a bunch of excuses.
.

Floridiot #202

I had one of those dreams once and woke up in a puddle!
.

BJOY you have no clue what you are talking about. The "weighted" polls include partial RESULTS and are thus not exit polls at all and are thus tainted. THIS IS WHAT MITOFSKY TOLD ME HIMSELF. This is precisely what happened in 2004. And even the first round of so-called "weighted" exit polls showed Obama winning before they were changed again.

Due to the absolutes of our machine age democracy, we can now expect Bush and Clinton to be sent on a diplomatic mission together to make nice with the world?

Sent by the upcoming president Clinton?

Doncha know that America Amurka leads the world in having minority members as national leaders? Right?

Are we hoping to say:

So you nations of the world follow our lead and you guys now have a woman or a black man as president.

If so ...pure machine enabled bullshit eh? What is next a computerized ouija board or ouija board polls?

Here are some posted image-based charts (comparing Diebold v non-Diebold, compared with polling data) from both sides, here:

Democratic Race

Republican Race

Oops --- Democratic one is actually here:

Democratic Race (working)

Dredd

Doncha know that America Amurka leads the world in having minority members as national leaders? Right?

What minority group is that - psychopaths?
.

Scott #213

Thanks for the graphic - let's play with it a little:

End Result: Clinton 39%, Obama 37%.

Now divide 51 by 39 = 1.3077

Multiply 37 by 1.3077 = 48.38

51 to 48 - gee, does that look familiar?????

Hmmmmm! Seems I've seen those numbers before!

Yes, Dredd, like Condi Rice and Alberto Gonzales...

After the Iowa vote Chelsea Clinton had the saddest look on her face...like it's all over. Then after the N.H. "win" there was a clip showing a back slightly side shot of her..making a little Budhist bow and quickly moving aside...she didn't look happy at all.She knows. At DU there was a comment ...before the Iowa vote.."I have a friend working in the Clinton camp who says she will be lucky to come in 3rd or 4th." After Iowa Clinton said she had known for 3 weeks ...the polls weren't good. Did the polls on MSM show that? All I heard was she was way ahead. But the crowds turned out for Obama. That is something to watch. S.C. won't be as easy to steal.Someone from S.C. should keep up with crowd sizes.When they steal votes on a large scale...that is the time to make noise.

James @ #207, for clarification, I was not referring to regular people who are registered as Republicans. I am referring to Republican party operatives. And for the record, I am a former Republican, born and raised, and yes, Republican party operatives most certainly WOULD stoop to such a deed, and they WOULD do it now, and they WOULD do it in NH. By the time enough people catch on to what is going on, and actually organize to the extent that they are able to RESPOND to election shenanigans, it is too late. Then it's all about investigations, and hearings, and inquiries, and before you know it, poof, our free society is gone!

The grandfather of one of my friends was on Reagan's kitchen cabinet that selected Reagan as the representative of the powerful and monied, and then figured out how to package him so that regular people who are registered as Republicans would believe that he was a good president for the people of America.

The Republicans know how to win, and have the stomach to do whatever it takes to do so, regardless of lawbreaking or smearing of reputations or ruining of other candidates and their families who attempt to stand up to them.

The BRAD BLOG
https://bradblog.com/

The BRAD BLOG : NH Primary: Pre-Election Polls Wildly Different Than Results Announced for Clinton/Obama
see
https://bradblog.com/?p=5530#more-5530

Why is the MSM not doing investigative reporting on this critically important issue to the survival of democracy in this country?

Re-posting and reiterating:

This is not about Candidate A winning or Candidate B losing. This is solely about the hackable, unsecure voting machines that have been investigated and proven to be crap and yet are still deployed to count the majority of elections in this country.

Whenever and wherever there is a discrepancy with electronic voting machines involved --- no matter how big or small the race, no matter if it's Repub or Dem --- Voting Integrity advocates look into it. It's what they do.

Please do not assume or assign motives or intentions to anyone here that are not EXPLICITLY stated. Brad makes crystal clear that he doesn't care who won or lost, just that the results are ACCURATE. Period.

The site owner is not responsible for the opinions of commenters in this open forum. No endorsement of commenters' opinions is either intended or implied.

In addition, it should be noted that Brad has not alleged fraud has actually occurred --- only that the possibility of fraud and/or machine malfunction must be considered whenever anomalous results occur in conjunction with the use of Diebold or any electronic voting machine system.

Big Dan #216

Those are/were lackies, not leaders ... eh?

BlueBear2 #208, 214

Good to see you. Wow, this is like the olde Clint Curtis threads of olde ... no?

For the Bradley Effect to work, a large number of Clinton voters (and only Clinton voters) have to be racist liars. Is this something Hillary's supporters are ready to accept?

And, the "exit polls were weighted wrong" argument has to account for these weighting errors on other candidates' numbers. So far, I haven't seen this.

On the other hand, we know that some fraud happened (at least, against Ron Paul) and that Diebold machines are hackable. Let's just be rational and investigate what seems a reasonable suspicion.

Linda @ 218 ......In our neck of the woods Republicans need to get better at rigging elections. Paris Glendening won his first election for govenor of Maryland from the graveyards of Baltimore and Howard County. My father-in-law voted for Glendening (election officials told us) even though he had been dead for three years.

Republicans do not have the market tied up on election fraud!

The old saying here, goes like this:

"when i die,
if I die,
Bury me in Maryland,
because I do so love to vote.

Greta where are you?

Clinton gave the nation's highest civilian award — the Presidential Medal of Freedom — to a man who spent the vast majority of his public career and life as a proud segregationist.

1. Bill Clinton interned for J. William Fulbright in 1966-67, when Fulbright was still a segregationist. Fulbright became Clinton's "mentor."
2. In April 1985, Governor Bill Clinton signed Act 985 into law, making the birthdates of Martin Luther King Jr. (the preeminent leader of the civil-rights movement) and Robert E. Lee (the general who led the Confederate army) state holidays on the same day. Of course, the word "segregation" never passed Clinton's considerable lips, but the (uncoded) message he was sending to certain of his white constituents could not have be clearer.
3. Clinton took no steps during his twelve years as governor to repeal a Confederate flag law: Arkansas Code Annotated, Section 1-5-107, provides as follows:
(a) The Saturday immediately preceding Easter Sunday of each year is designated as 'Confederate Flag Day' in this state.
(b) No person, firm, or corporation shall display an Confederate flag or replica thereof in connection with any advertisement of any commercial enterprise, or in any manner for any purpose except to honor the Confederate States of America. [Emphasis added.]
(c) Any person, firm, or corporation violating the provisions of this section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be fined not less than one hundred dollars ($100) nor more than one thousand dollars ($1,000).

In 1989, then-Gov. Bill Clinton was sued as one of three top Arkansas officials responsible for the intimidation of black voters in his state as part of a legal action brought under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, NewsMax.com has learned.
And a year earlier the U.S. Supreme court ruled that Clinton had wrongfully tried to overturn the election of a black state representative in favor of a white Democrat.
In a related 1988 case, Clinton had tried to replace a duly elected African-American state representative with a white candidate, only to be stopped by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court ruling came as the then-governor was fighting another court battle to preserve racial profiling in his state, a tool that Clinton later criticized while president as a "morally indefensible, deeply corrosive practice."
But a decade earlier he approved the profiling of Hispanics by Arkansas State Police as part of a drug interdiction program in 1988, the Washington Times revealed in 1999.
"The Arkansas plan gave state troopers the authority to stop and search vehicles based on a drug-courier profile of Hispanics, particularly those driving cars with Texas license plates," the Times said.
"A federal judge later ruled the program unconstitutional," the paper reported. "A lawsuit and a federal consent decree ended the practice - known as the 'criminal apprehension program' the next year."
Then-Gov. Clinton, however, not only criticized the profiling ban; "at one point, [he] threatened to reinstate the program despite the court's ruling," the Times said.
Hearing Clinton's condemnation of racial profiling in 1999, Roberto Garcia de Posada, executive director of the Hispanic Business Roundtable, complained that the then-president "had been a strong supporter of racial profiling against Hispanics in the past."
After he was sued in the late 1980s by the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund for failing to enforce the Voting Rights Act in Arkansas, then-Gov. Bill Clinton suggested to a group of pro-segregation whites that they were being unfairly targeted by civil rights laws as a result of the South's loss in the Civil War.
"The meeting turned sour when one of the local whites demanded to know why, in his view, the whites were always made to pay for others' problems. Other whites in the group began to echo his charge. ..." "Bill Clinton, the lead defendant in the case, took to the podium to respond. In a tone of resignation, Clinton said, 'We have to pay because we lost.'" Clinton was referring to the South's Civil War loss.
Bill Clinton spent Wednesday afternoon playing golf at a country club accused of discriminating against blacks and Jews. Jake Siewert, Clinton's rep, confirmed it was the second time Clinton has played at the Indian Creek Country Club about 20 miles north of Miami. He first played there a year and a half ago. Siewert said, "All venues are fully vetted," and dismissed allegations of racism and anti-Semitism as "not true."
"There's no question about it, the club has anti-Semitic policies in place to keep out Jews," said Earl Barber, who was on the club's board for 14 years, and a member for 22. Barber, along with Alvah Chapman, a former chairman of Knight Ridder, and M. Anthony Burns, a trucking magnate, resigned their club memberships because of its "membership policies."
To add insult to injury, 14 of the island's 34 homes are owned by Jews, and although they are denied access to the club, a portion of the residents' property tax is used for the club's upkeep. Miller notes that he refused to meet Clinton during his 1999 visit to Indian Creek because the president was playing at the anti-Semitic club. The snub even made the local news.

When Jeb Bush was slated to pay a visit to the club, Miller informed the Florida governor of the restrictive policies, and Bush cancelled.

Had the outcome in NH been reversed would bradblog still be investigating? Is this "stolen" primary theme based on the machines used or the winner? People lie to pollsters all the time. Re: exit pools. If someone asks me as I'm leaving the voting booth who I voted for I'll lie. Why? It's none of their business. Some people are already so sick of being polled they're just making up things. How do I know?. I've done it. If you're going to investigate for this primary, then do it for ALL of them, where questionable machines are involved, no matter who wins. Now that's fair. Also to be completely fair, shouldn't you look at the Republican side as well?

Brad,

It's the same story all over again. The Final Exit Poll was once again forced to match a corrupted vote count.

This is a good time to review the election fraud in 2004 and 2006.

http://www.geocities.com...ruthIsAllFAQResponse.htm

Updated: Jan. 9, 2007 by TruthIsAll
Election Fraud Analytics is a comprehensive statistical analysis of the 2004 and 2006 elections. In 2000, Al Gore won by several million more than his recorded 540,000 vote margin. In 2004, John Kerry actually won by 8-10 million votes. In the 2006 midterms, a Democratic Tsunami gave them control of congress, but the landslide was denied; they did much better than the official results indicate. And the True Vote does not include the disenfranchised, the great majority of whom are Democratic minority voters.

Excel–based models were developed to calculate the True Vote. Links to the models are provided in this document. They confirm the massive documented evidence of elections which were compromised by a combination of uncounted and miscounted votes. The essential input for the models include state and national recorded votes, pre-election and exit polls, Census total votes cast and mortality rates. Users can enter their own assumptions and then view a “sensitivity analysis” of resulting state and national vote shares and margins. The scenarios are displayed in numeric tables and charts. Many examples are provided in this document.

Bush had a 48.5% average approval rating on Election Day. The Nov.1, 2004 Election Model, based on the final state and 18 national pre-election polls, projected Kerry as the 51.8-48.2% winner of the two-party vote. His expected 337 electoral vote was calculated as the average of a 5000 election-trial Monte Carlo simulation. The projection model was confirmed by the state and national exit polls. Science works by assuming that the explanation that best fits the data is correct - and is tested against new data, which either strengthens those assumptions or causes them to be rejected in favor of a better explanation.

Edison-Mitofsky provided four state exit poll measures. Kerry won the first three; Bush won the Final:

1) WPE 51.8-47.2% (unadjusted)

2) GEO 51.0-48.5% (adjusted to incoming recorded votes)

3) Composite 50.3-49.1% (12:22am-adjusted to pre-election polls)

4) Final 48.5-51.1% (matched to recorded vote)

WPE is the only unadjusted (“pristine”) measure. It was based on the average discrepancy between the exit poll result and recorded vote for all state precincts which were polled. Measures (2) and (3) are adjusted estimates which incorporate pre-election polls and recorded votes. The final state exit polls were forced to match the recorded votes, therefore implying ZERO election fraud. Why should we believe them? And why bother doing exit polls at all if they will just assume that the recorded vote count was the True Vote?

Some say that exit polls are not designed to predict the True Vote but to provide a demographic snapshot of the electorate. But if that’s the case, and the recorded vote count is corrupted, then so are the demographics.

Kerry also had a steady 51-48% lead throughout the National Exit Poll timeline: at 4pm (8349 respondents); 7:30pm (11027); 12:22am (13047) - after the polls closed. Of course, Bush won the Final NEP by 51-48% (13660 respondents) which was posted at 2pm the day after the election. The Final NEP was forced to match the Recorded Vote count with impossible weights and implausible vote shares, so why should we believe it?

The Election Calculator and Interactive Election Simulation models determined that Kerry probably did 1-2% better than the exit polls indicate.

The Election Calculator is an Excel model for analyzing 1988-2004 elections. Users can override the pre-set default assumptions for voter mortality, uncounted vote rates, prior election voter turnout and vote shares of prior and new voters. The base case scenario indicates that Kerry won by nearly 10 million votes with a 53.2-45.4% vote share. Interested readers can download the model, review the base case scenario and then enter their own assumptions. Sensitivity analysis tables provide an instant view of vote shares over a range of input assumption scenarios.

The Interactive 2004 Election Simulation Model (also Excel) enables users to run simulations based on state and national pre-election and exit polls. State exit poll vote shares are based on the following user options: 1) WPE, 2) Best GEO and 3) Composite (12:22am). The National Exit poll data includes the 12:22am update and the 2pm Final. The only pre-election model assumption is Kerry’s projected share of Undecided Voters. The only state exit poll inputs are the method (1, 2, or 3) and assumed cluster effect. A Monte Carlo simulation consisting of 200 election trials generates both the projected popular and expected electoral vote. The probability of Kerry winning the election is the percentage of trials in which Kerry received at least 270 EV. Additional model analysis includes National Exit Poll timeline, Gender vote, exit poll response optimizer, Census data and the Ohio exit poll.

In the 2006 midterms, a Democratic Tsunami gained 31 congressional seats. But they actually did much better than that. A regression trend analysis of 120 pre-election Generic polls (all won by the Democrats) projected they would win by 56-42% and gain over 40 seats. The 7pm National Exit Poll update (55 Dem-43% Rep) confirmed the pre-election trend. But the next day, the Final NEP was once again forced to match a corrupted vote count with implausible weights and vote shares. The Democratic margin was cut in half to 52-46%. The fraud resulted in the loss of 10-20 seats.

"Truth Is All" showed up, great!

Steal , Crime

Whatever - I think we need to save this Racism and Sexsim / etc... for when it might counts...

Why can't we have open public voting? I would readily embrace a show of hands vote over most states current covert dog & pony show. March us in 100 at a time, check our ID's, Ask for a show of hands for each candidate, allow bystanders to witness counts. If at any time a precinct has fewer than 100 voters queued up after a twenty minute time frame make exceptions. Tallies will still be transparent. Smaller precincts may have smaller voting pools. This should be as efficient, time-conserving and accomodating as the voter fraud friendly disgrace most voters currently endure. Demand transparent voting procedures now, it is past time to be debating this issue. Demand a revote in New Hampshire. Ron paul 2008

My guess is that guys like Chris Matthews just can't say much without getting heat from above. Olbermann did try to speak up a bit after the 2004 debacle. I was so glad to hear Matthews speak up tonight, but my guess is, he was just trying to get the information out there, and he probably doesn't feel he can say much without some evidence. I thought he said that Obama was ahead by 8 points in the early exit polls, but maybe I heard wrong... I was making dinner.

Early last night someone on Kos posted: Exit polls, Obama 39, Clinton 34. Must have been off of Fox, as someone mentioned above? I never saw anything showing Obama ahead.

I think that there were probably plenty of establishment types in both parties that were really scared by this Obama tsunami. I think it might have been impossible to stop him if he'd won last night.

JC ~ I catch your drift
I think it might have been impossible to stop him if he'd won last night.

conventionally...

Here's a simple test of this hypothesis: compare the results from similar towns that used electronic and paper voting. Lacking any better data, I looked at total votes cast in a town, as a measure of the size/urbanism of the town. I took the data from the Ron Paul site linked above, massaged it into a nice table, and ran a matching program to find, for each town with electronic voting, the town with the closest size that used paper voting. Matches weren't perfect (the largest cities use electronic voting), but pretty close. The results?

....................Cl .... Ed .... Ob
Electronic.... 39.2%..17.5%..35.8%
Paper ......... 38.5%..18.0%..36.1

This doesn't definitively answer the question, but it suggests that without better data, it will be very hard to find evidence of any difference between the paper and electronic vote counts.

(Anyone who wants the Ron Paul-based tables, just ask here and I can rapidshare it.)

I know it is the knee jerk reaction to say apparent anomaly in the pre-election polling so it must have been rigged.

However, NH is no ordinary state, a prides itself on its contrarian ways, especially in "THE" heated races: a huge portion of voters were still undecided in the last 3 days (10-15x the margin of error on most pre-election polls) almost 20% of the democratic electorate states they decided within the last 24 hours...

So let's start by looking at the polling methodology first and analyze how they were determing their sample...every sample seems to have used likely voters only...were they sampling independents or just democrats...what were the age, gender, race, education levels, economic backgrounds, etc. of their sample? If you have a flawed sample, then you have a statistically irrelevant poll, but then again maybe that is part of the plan?

Then, we can jump to "fraud", the GOP is all to eager to battle Obama because they sincerely believe he is easier to beat and will go down without the ferocious fight that Clinton will put up. Which should raise a whole new level of concern in this discussion.

SO, if there was voter fraud; the intent, the purpose and the methodology could be so buried in a multi-layered chain of events that no one sees the truth until we have been played "yet" again by the GOP hate machine.

Obama will do nothing. Remember John Kerry.

I have a theory how a perfectly legitimate outcome that is different from the polls can be explained. All polls suggest that independents preferred Obama over Clinton and McCain over the rest of the Republicans. All the media hype suggested that Obama would win easily, so I think that many independents, believing their vote wasn't needed to insure an Obama victory, decided at the last moment to vote for McCain. His margin over Romney was about 13,000. Clinton's margine over Obama was around 6,000. If only 3,000 of the McCaine voters had stuck with Obama thinking their vote was needed, then Barrack would have won (very narrowly) and McCaine would have still won too.

Another prospect that intrigues me is that many Democrats, fearing that the independents were going to elect the nominee of their party for them, decided at the last moment to go out and vote. Both factors could have worked enough in Clinton's favor to give her the victory. (Sorry conspiracy lovers, but it doesn't have to be a sinister explanation for the results we saw in New Hampshire.)

As my old friend Barry Gray used to say:

"And if my grandmother had wings she could fly."

Damnit, here we go again! Anyone who doesn't think they won't try to manipulate the vote is naive by now, especially if they come to brad blog. They will, becuase they can.

Yes JC, Tweetie did say that Obama was leading in the exit polls, but I don't know if it was by 8 points.

it's time to get to work again!

Since the poll numbers for all the other candidates were spot-on, I would expect the discrepancy in the Obama-Clinton contest to be most likely the result of latent racism on the part of white voters, who wanted to appear "progressive" and billed themselves as Obama voters, but got into the privacy of the voting both and marked the column of the white woman.

I love this one! So the big Hillary surge came from a bunch of racist cowards. Racist cowards for Hillary? You've got to be kidding. No racists for Edwards or Kucinich? That really hurts their feelings.

Here is another tool for investigating the primary results. It uses only the list of Diebold towns and by-town vote counts, no polls involved. I've tried to factor out the urban vs. rural issue regarding Diebold towns. This work is by a layman-- I encourage anyone capable to do their own analysis.

Looking forward, the only way to slay this beast is through independent exit polling by the public. If anything like that was organized I would volunteer in a second. Unfortunately the early states is where such an effort is most important and most cost effective, so we already blew this election cycle.

So Brad and many think that because Clinton won NH, the vote was rigged? I was thinking that because Obama won Iowa, that was rigged.

...the media has played a huge role in portraying obama running away w/the dem nomination/momentum... because if he becomes the dem nominee, they have so much dirt on him; and frankly --- he either doesn't really have a platform that will take the country anywhere. I see greedy repubs' praying he will take the tnomination --- then they can win again...

I was interested in him *too* as a candidate, until I started doing my homework on his record --- not just what he says his record is... Now, I have no interest in this man --- but: again; if he becomes the dem nominee --- look out: voter fraud will not be needed: I am sure they are already filming *Republican8 attack ads in anticipation... we will lose.

Not everybody has fallen for the Obama miracle --- I almost feel sorry for young college kids for being manipulated *As the Repub's do w/hard-core Christians...

Read - an actual account of his evasion when everybody in the room doesn't love him --- doesn't sound like a hero to me:

The Politics of the Smooth Mood
Obamarama
By RALPH NADER

The Obamarama Campaign Express was roaring down a New Hampshire highway near Nashua when an aide spotted the sprawling No Holds Barred Sports Bar. "Let's stop the bus," she urged, "and do some random schmoozing."

Obama and his entourage poured out of the bus and headed for the front door, over which hung a large sign: "HOME OF THE POLI-BEER: WHERE BOOZE, POLITICS AND SPORTS MIX IT UP!"

Inside the packed bar, the guys and gals were gathering for the Big Game to start. Before the game, however, there was an hour for political talk time. Their eyes widened in amazement when they saw Barack, bounding through the doorway with his secret service detail.

The bar had a big pit, with a huge crackling fireplace, where the patrons have their regular give and take. Obama was ready for some of that.

He started: "I stand for change. They said we set our sights too high in Iowa. They said now is not the time. I proved the cynics wrong in corn country and I'll prove them wrong in the granite state. To show you I mean it, no speech, go at me. Our time for change has come."

Guy number one-"Ok, Barack, you're going for the power in the Big House, the big companies already have the power, how ya gonna make us little people powerful?"

Obama-"Stay tuned. One leap at a time. We are one people. Get me there first."

Gal number one-"You say, CHANGE, well how are you going to cut the bloated military budget full of vast waste, fraud and abuse, when you've specifically said you'll 'expand and modernize the military?' Why, it's already half or more of the government's operating budget, squeezing programs for children, health and all that. I'm an accountant and I know numbers."

Obama-"Exactly. Our time for change has come. I'm going to change the old weapons with new weapons and the old soldiers with the new soldiers. That's real change-at the grass roots."

Guy number two-"You don't seem to have any rough edges, Barack."

Obama-"It's all about the mood, dude."

The crowd was getting agitated and the questions came faster and faster.

"Why are you for nuclear power with taxpayer guarantees?"

"Will you oppose Congress getting pay raises, pensions and health insurance until the American people get the same?"

"Do you favor repealing the anti-union nightmare-the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947?"

"How can you talk about change and take gobs of campaign money from the big corporate lawyers and bosses?"

Obama, smiling: "It's ALL about the mood, dudes. All the rest are details you can look up on my website-obama_is_us.org. We are choosing hope over fear."

Gal number two-"Ok, answer this one that probably isn't on your website. When are you going to meet with Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and campaign in the black ghettos-say Harlem or Watts?"

Obama-"Whoaa, give that tough lady a Poli-beer on me! We are one nation."

Guy number three (with an Obama face mask)-"I'm the old Obama, remember me? I was for single-payer, full medicare for everyone. I was strongly for Palestinian rights and for replacing NAFTA and WTO, not for tweaking them. I was for taxing the super-rich and defending class actions. I was for capping credit-card and loan shark interest rates. What happened to me?"

Obama-"Well, didn't I tell you that I stand for CHANGE?"

Gal number three-"You seem to be for everyone, but not everyone is for everyone. Some are against everyone. Tell me, are the big corporations, the greedy defense contractors, drug, oil and insurance companies, starting to quake in their boots at the thought that you are now the front-runner?"

Obama, lifting his chin-"Well, Ma'am, we haven't ordered our seismometer yet."

Oooohs and boos float around the pit. A few start drifting away.

Guy number four-"You're one of those smart Haavard lawyers, Barack. You were a constitutional law teacher. You were against the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. So, why aren't you putting two and two together-impeachment of the war criminals in the White House followed by conviction in the Senate?"

Obama-"You don't understand (testily), impeachment talk is just more of the same old Washington politics. I stand for change. No need to point fingers. We are one people."

Gal number four-"Hello, Barack. I'm Hermaphrodite and I luv your blended politics of harmony."

Obama-"Great! Then how about a quick dance around the bar before we have to leave," he said, humming to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic-"We are choosing unity over division, we're sending a powerful message, that change is a coming to America, it is all about the mood, dude"

@John at 8:46pm

I had the same idea, though just by hand I looked at a few groups:

Colum 1 is total votes, col 2 is clinton:obama ratio for electronic voting districts, col 3 is clinto:obama ratio for paper voting, and the last two columns are the total numbers of electronic and paper voting districts for that size group.

>1500 .........1.114 1.398 44 2
1000 to 1500..1.202 0.884 17 7
800 to 1000...1.141 0.933 20 6

[oddly, it cut off the second half of my post ... ]

less than 800..........1.067 0.85 16 121

It would indeed seem from this that for all sizes, Clinton did better than Obama in electronic voting districts. However, a better way to do this is not just by groups, but to compare each electronic district with the most similarly-sized paper district, as I did in a post a few up from here. If you do that, you get results that are almost identical between the two groups.

I still have to think about why the two methods get different results, though...

Katherine #240, Diebold optical scanners were not used in Iowa.

I notice some using the term "voter fraud" when it should be called "election fraud"
Brad's explains the difference here:
"But one quick point that we haven't highlighted enough lately: Voter Fraud is the term used to describe voters gaming the system on a retail level by voting twice, etc. It's extremely rare, as bi-partisan reports have shown time and again despite GOP claims (that includes the EAC's own buried and altered reports that von Spakovsky hoped to influence).

Election Fraud, on the other hand, is the defrauding of elections through the administration of those elections, from inappropriate voter roll purges, to gaming of voting equipments, etc. Evidence strongly suggests that the GOP's unevidenced claims of a "voter fraud" epidemic by Democrats may well have been forwarded after 2004 in order to deflect from the now-well-documented evidence showing GOP election fraud in Ohio and elsewhere.

Hope that reminder helps to clarify.
BLOGGED BY Brad Friedman ON 5/22/2007"

Dredd #221,

It's got my blood boiling again!

For all of us who are interested in a recount, there seems to be a real possibility of one. There were 42 candidates on the Dem + Rep ballots and any one of them can request a recount. It seems like Albert Howard, one of those 42, is inclined to do so. If we can contact him and offer to raise the money for recount, he will likely request an official recount. Our chance is now.

See below for the news story about him.

"It was back to reality for presidential candidate Albert Howard of Ann Arbor, back behind the wheel of his Checker cab waiting for passengers at Detroit Metro Airport.

The father of eight savored his 40 votes in the New Hampshire presidential GOP primary. Howard was among 42 also-rans who paid $1,000 to get on the New Hampshire ballot, and he was something of a celebrity, interviewed by Time magazine, the New York Times, Boston Globe and the nightly ABC News.

At one point, his vote total climbed to 178, then dropped. He is asking the New Hampshire Secretary of State for a recount. Howard said he was in awe that even 40 people picked him."
http://www.freep.com/app...0080110/NEWS06/801100364

SECURE, AND COUNT THE PAPER BALLOTS, WITH PUBLIC OVERSIGHT!

Do it FAST!

Am I nuts to think everytime there is big discrepancy prevoting polls and the results say in a state or district that is crutial, Diebolt voting machines are involved. Here's a thought, suppose the machines could be programed on command to change every 7th or 8th vote to elect the canidate you want to win or the canidate you want to run against. Did not the president of Diebolt guarantee a Bush victory in 2004.

All I'm saying, something is very fishy. All of the polls were correct and the answer points to Diebolt. My gut tells me something is very wrong.

Clinton is simply the other wing of the national WarParty. She is being chosen because she "guaranteed" (IMO) Bush will not face any serious investigation for crimes commited by him and his cabal. Clinton has always been nothing but Bush in a dress.

And I ponder this: It took Nixon to "go to China", it took Bill Clinton "to 'reform' welfare and maybe it will take Hillary Clinton to impose the police/security state on America. After all, Bush passed the laws that make this possible but has not "used" them. Clinton did say a while back that she would roll back some of the laws Bush passed in this area but I am still waiting for her campaign to return to tell me which of these laws (specifics please)she meant.

Brad,
That blue and green bar graph you post above, do you know how that was calculated? Is it based on percentages of the total actual vote? I never saw a pre-election poll that showed the actual votes Obama was expecting - just percentages. I went to the link and there was no methodology shown.

Thanks,
Laura PackYourBags @ DU

If you think this was not rigged then you are in criminal denial!!! Hillary was picked long ago by the Bilderberger Corporate Elite long ago. Wake up, it's a dog and pony show and the forces behind the curtain are laughing their asses off at we, the hapless plebs. You are living in a dream world if you think you live in a 'free' country' with 'free elections'. Change will only come when a determined citizenry walks into the polls and smashes these machines and marches in moral outrage in the streets to shake America out of it's apathetic stupor.

Brad,

Let me see if I've got you right, your complaining that there's potentially vote fraud in the NH Primary... Wow that's real news, considering that 81% of the voting machines are controlled by one vendor...

I don't suppose anyone would want some real news...
http://chlamor-deepinthe...tofnowhere.blogspot.com/

"The father of eight savored his 40 votes in the New Hampshire presidential GOP primary. Howard was among 42 also-rans who paid $1,000 to get on the New Hampshire ballot...

At one point, his vote total climbed to 178, then dropped. He is asking the New Hampshire Secretary of State for a recount. Howard said he was in awe that even 40 people picked him."

Anonymous, that is VERY interesting. If that's true, it's very telling. Vote totals don't decrease. Either the program totaling the votes is faulty, or the potential that a skim was going on exists. Taking votes from candidates where no one is supposed to be paying attention. Classic way to fudge an election without "stuffing the ballot box" with more ballots than voters. It's kicking around in my memory that the election that put Arnold in as Governor in California showed some similar shuffling.

Howard should ask for a recount and while he's at it, a recount of ballots cast for ALL the candidates- you don't want them just recounting one person cause they usually reprogram the machines to do that, if you get my drift....

I don't know what the fuss is all about when you are trying to figure these numbers for error. It's simple, it's in the rounding system. Add all the machine #'s up and you will get 2334 on the machine and 3323 on the hand, but in the machine counts the majic #' appear for the winning canidate on the , (let's just say this was a general election since bothe parties were included) Republican side and the majic numbers appear 6.075 the difference between the hand count and the machine count on the democratic side 11.494-5.419=6.075, okay, now in the democratic machine count you have 2334 2+3=5, 3+3=6, 3+4= 7 which is 5&6&7 equal to the and match ing the 6.075 in the number combination and then look at the machine count for the loser on the Democratic side since they had a lower pecentage overall and Obama has the combination of the # 756 a McCain has the combination of the of 50,276 which includes the #'s 576 and the standard default of decimal rounding for counting and measuring is is.75 = 9 inches in a linear foot and .667 is the standard decimal for 100%. the rounding mathmatical table beat in the percentage of feet whic give each of the highest percentage a greater sum of distance and the % table is defaulted to be the most equavallent to the actual count, there fore the count is also increased and decrease from the distance of the spread in inches, not equaling 100% but much smaller and much larger. The majic numbers always appear as your hint and the machine confers the assumption of the advantages and disadvantages leaving a point spread behind however increasing the voter turnout or decresing the turnout in order to confer the numbers and whoever hits the lottery with the majic numbers included in the count on one side and the count in percentage on the other side and the rounding system will always default the majic nuber in the difference in the spread of the program entered in error from the OS of the computer because some knuckle head entered a mismatch mathmatical units for the count and the percentage so the computer is set to round everything to 100%, that why you have a spread of 6.75 from 11.494-5.419 the winner + votes on the democratic side. I have done enough. You can get it from there, it's simply in the OS on the table of units defaulting to 100% miscalculating the convertion and the count turnout. The majic number will not always be the same , but you have to have a hand count verses a machine count to get the majic number by default that will shed the light on the subject in order to figure out the actual winner which was Obama, not hillery sice she received the conference of the + positve rounding count from the highest to the lowest equaling 0 climbing back to the highest at the end of the alphbet. One more note, the advantage of figure in the count was the increased amount of candidates and if there was less candidates it would conceal the factoring mis-equation more than apparent in the difference from the hand count vs.the machine count. It was actualy imple since there was more candidates to take notice to the OS error upon programing and the testing probaly is based on standars count or the avererage counts where its not noticable, so yes the system is flawed in my opinion and I believe Hillary knew that and actually felt bad about it thats why she was worried about where our country was going to go backwars, thats whay Bush v Gore and Bush v Kerry lost, their name ended latter in the alphabet, but it was only two candiddates and not noticable, thats why they don't want a voter verified receipt that the voter confirms that that was the correct data entered at the time of the vote and later the OS confers the miscalculated formula in units as said above and if the voter recepit verified upon printout to the voter and approved the vote was correct then handed into the election office with a ID tracking # then you could prove the machine wrong later, but theres the problem in the formula, I'll leave it to you scientist to take it from here. Quia_Timet

Re-posting and reiterating:

This is not about Candidate A winning or Candidate B losing. This is solely about the hackable, unsecure voting machines (optical scan in NH) that have been investigated and proven to be crap and yet are still deployed to count the majority of elections in this country.

Whenever and wherever there is a discrepancy with electronic voting machines involved --- no matter how big or small the race, no matter if it's Repub or Dem --- Voting Integrity advocates look into it. It's what they do.

Please do not assume or assign motives or intentions to anyone here that are not EXPLICITLY stated. Brad makes crystal clear that he doesn't care who won or lost, just that the results are ACCURATE. Period.

The site owner is not responsible for the opinions of commenters in this open forum. No endorsement of commenters' opinions is either intended or implied.

In addition, please note that The Brad Blog does not allege that fraud (or "rigging") has actually occurred --- only that the results of any contest that incorporates electronic voting systems should be subject to exacting scrutiny and independent verification prior to certification.

Just listened to NPR All Things Considered. Michelle Norris interviewed Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center about the discrepancy between the polls before AND the exit polls were showing the same anomaly in several different polls. He said there was nothing wrong with the methodology. The answer offered was racism. NO MENTION of actually counting the ballots to double check the accuracy of the machines before accusing New Hamphire Democratic voters of being racist liars, where the Iowans are not.

Zogby on Jon Stewart said he couldn't explain it either. Aren't they at least curious?

Jim H said "Ron Paul is a racist, homophobic, kook who's got you and your cult-of-personality fooled."
So many epithets here it is overwhelming. Let's begin by saying that any candidates' supporters are capable of being described as a cult-of-personality in your usage. Certainly RP enjoys none of the favorable MSM coverage your man does. Most RP supporters held his governance/economic/free enterprise views before RP threw is hat into the ring.

I removed the words racist, homophobic, kook from my lexicon long ago and suggest you do the same. These are smear words used to ostracize dissidents and control public discourse. Is this your intention in using them?
Why do I support Ron Paul? First and foremost, I support Paul because of his stance against the Federal Reserve. G. Edward Griffin explains in his book "The Creature from Jekyll Island" that counter to public perception the Fed. Res. is a privately owned institution granted the unconstitutional monopoly of money issuance. Since it's inception it has overseen the 1929 stock market crash, numerous recessions and a 2000% inflation devaluation. The same banking cartel presided over the German hyperinflation crisis in the 1920's resulting in the Mark's value dropping over a TRILLION times. That tends to sting the pocketbook. Oil just jumped to 100 dollars a barrel, not that long ago it was 30 dollars a barrel. No coincidence. There is a correlation. Secondly Paul has been the vanguard warning against this Middle Eastern war for Empire. Against taking our marching orders from Tel-Aviv. Paul has warned us against the threat to our sovereignty in the North American Union proposed by the SPP act. Paul is the most ardent defender of the Bill of Rights yet to run a candidacy. He railed against the Patriot Act, Military Commissions Act, Patriot Act 2. I don't know how well that plays with big government types but it is very reassuring to me.

I notice your man rallies for change but offers more of the same. We go from a fascist corporate welfare state to a socialist state controlled by the same corporations. I fail to see the difference.
Wake up Jim H. Ron Paul supporters are no fools, we're not confused, we are fed up.

You have know Idea of what you are talking about with these machines. I just emailed brad and he will better understand the default problem, I just wanted to see how smart you was with the hint of error I provided, so I suggest, unless you really have analogy, Don't ll New hanpshire Racist, They Voted for Obama, and I have given the mathmatical explaination to brad via email and its simple and understandable in disguise, not hackable, but faulty from the start.

Don't get rude with me and I will provode the same respect in return. New hampshire Voted overwhelmingly for Obama and I have the explaination and its not the People of New hampshire because Obama won by over 15,000 or more votes, and I know what went wrong and we are going to expose them.

The People of NH deserve an Apology and I will be the first to give it to them, since it is a fact that Obama won in New hamshire and it is now evident upon the correct therm of mathmatical formula. United we stand, divided we fall goto hillary exposed at
http://hillaryclintonobama.blogspot.com/ and followup with http://joinbarackobamawe...opleunited.blogspot.com/

I sometimes vote across party lines. I think the person, rather than the party is what is important. I initially thought that Obama would be a good candidate, however, after reading up on both Obama and his close personal friend and advisor I became extraordinarily concerned about the upcoming Presidential election.

Rev. Wright of the Trinity Church in Chicago is Obama's mentor, advisor and friend. So the question is not only what Barack Obama believes, but "what Reverend Wright believes" and how that will influence our country's well being if Obama is elected.

Please review the material below and make an informed decision when voting.

Web sites are noted below:

"Mr. Wright was making Trinity a social force, initiating day care, drug counseling, legal aid and tutoring. He was also interested in the world beyond his own; in 1984, he traveled to Cuba to teach Christians about the value of nonviolent protest and to Libya to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, along with the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Mr. Wright said his visits implied no endorsement of their views." However, you must stop to consider why he chose those people and places, when at the time of the visit we considered Libya a "terrorist country".
------------
http://www.wral.com/golo/blogpost/2268074/
------------------
http://archive.newsmax.c...es/2007/8/8/194812.shtml

These quotes are from Obama's "close personal friend and spiritual advisor." If Wright were just a casual friend of Obama I wouldn't be posting this information, however, I don't think we separate Obama from the actions and quotes of his mentor.

Wright on 9/11: "White America got their wake-up call after 9/11. White America and the Western world came to realize people of color had not gone away, faded in the woodwork, or just disappeared as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns." On the Sunday after the attacks, Dr. Wright blamed America.

Wright on the disappearance of Natalee Holloway: "Black women are being raped daily in Africa. One white girl from Alabama gets drunk at a graduation trip to Aruba, goes off and gives it up while in a foreign country and that stays in the news for months."

Wright on Israel: "The Israelis have illegally occupied Palestinian territories for over 40 years now. Divestment has now hit the table again as a strategy to wake the business community and wake up Americans concerning the injustice and the racism under which the Palestinians have lived because of Zionism."

Wright on America: He has used the term "middleclassness" in a derogatory manner; frequently mentions "white arrogance" and the "oppression" of African-Americans today; and has referred to "this racist United States of America."?

Please consider carefully who you want for our next President and give Hillary your serious consideration.

All of New Hampshire voted on paper ballots. So, if any of the candidates questions the results, the ballots can be recounted. Also, half of the precincts hand counted the ballots to begin with --- no machines, tainted or otherwise. And, in those precincts the vote breakdown mirrored the final state-wide results. Moreover, the pre-election polls were not widely off the mark when you consider the undecideds (more than 10%) and the unsures (Edwards's 30% or so were not fully committed to him).

If Obama doesn't have the balls to defund a war he supposedly is against, what makes you think he will stand up for transparency in our supposedly democratic process?

Obama's spinelessness has been exposed as much as our banana republc.

I just saw that bradblog has been covering this developing story. I posted late last night on the discrepancies in the poll numbers.

My post repeats what's said and can add some more insights to this very important issue.

It's great to know there are places like bradblog on the blogsphere where people care and aren't just lemmings believing they aren't being played.

I posted my article on smirkingchimp as well as my own site.

The tremendous length of this blog shows a real concern by people who see some importance in a fair representation of all by means of the vote, our only voice keeping the power mongers in check. The upshot of all this can be summarized as follows: we cannot have a democracy in name or in actuality unless we can believe, with complete confidence, that the votes in each election, even those in the so-called "battleground states," are counted accurately and accountably. To whatever of the numerous ends those here have proposed to insure this happy outcome, we all must try, somehow, to force the political powers-that-be in our own communities to act. If we cannot have public funding of elections, surely we can organize to COMPEL, from this moment forward, that elections shall be monitored THOROUGHLY and with FULL TRACEABILITY right through the entire process, with full and independent review by any such agency as who questions the results in part or in whole.

why dont you guys just compare the hand counted votes with the diebold votes?
http://presscue.com/node/38034

hand counted votes do show a respectable lead for obama...

I dont see a problem in polling--the explanation involves the volatility of preferences among the undecideds and the high number of independents flip flopping between Obama and Mccain. These high Obama poll numbers were a blip up after Iowa--a short lived Iowa bounce and said polls did not reflect and long term trend among voters--Clinton was ahead by a substantial margin in New Hampshire on the day after the Iowa caucus just 4 days before the N H promary.

Oh no, not again. This is just too reminiscent of the 2000 election. How about a TV spin-off series of Desperate Politicians?!

All news media said NO BODY EXPECTED SENATOR CLINTON TO WIN IN NEW HAMPSHIRE PRIMARY on the day before the New Hampshire Primary. But it is not true. I was the exceptional. On 01/07/2007 the night before the New Hampshire Primary, I attended to Senator Clinton’s campaign in Manchester. After listened to Senator Clinton’s speech and when she was shaking hands with me, I said to her “YOU WILL WIN TOMORROW’. I have a witness for this.

The following are the reasons why I thought Senator Clinton will win the New Hampshire Primary despite the Poll showed that Senator Obama (42%) was 13% higher than Senator Clinton(29%).

1. Senator Clinton has done many works in the past decades probably starting with the work on Water Gate Event investigation; as the first Lady she was very active in the international activities, very well recoganized by the whole world; plus the tremendous works done in the past seven years as the New York Senator.
I do not know any significant work done by Senator Obama, though he can talk extremely well. Actually Jan 10th morning I saw TV news talking about his house in Chicago bought in 2005. The house was going to be sold by the owner together with a land beside it. As Senator Obama did not want that land, someone bought that land at the price of $625,000. And Senator Obama bought the house at the reduced price of $1.6 M from the original $1.9 M for the housing. So the news said there is question whether some political corruption was involved.

It is not us to investigate if there is a corruption there, and on 01/07/2008 I even did not know this. But my points are, the candidate for the President should:

"DO NOT SHOW WHAT YOU CAN SAY TO THE PEOPLE IN THE COUNTRY; BUT JUST SHOW WHAT YOU HAVE DONE TO THE PEOPLE IN THE COUNTRY"

"IT IS EASY TO SAY SOMETHING THAN TO HAVE SOMETHING REALLY BEING DONE"

"AMERICAN DO NOT NEED A PRESIDENT ONLY GOOD AT SAYING; AMERICAN NEED A PRESIDENT GOOD AT DOING TO MAKE POSITIVE CHANGES"

That was why I thought Senator Clinton was much better than Senator Obama.

2. In the evening of 01/07/2008 I learnt from the National Public Radio that a man said he was going to vote for Senator Obama, and he attended to a Senator Obama’s campaign. He talked to Senator Obama after Senator Obama’s speech and asked Senator Obama what he is going to change; but Senator Obama could not answer his question. So he decided to change to vote for Senator Clinton.

3. I listened to Senator Clinton’s speech on 01/07/2008 evening campaign and really feel the way Senator Clinton’s talk is quite different from Senator Obama’s talk. Senator Clinton is more caring and more accurate on the issues related to the people in the country, she has the plan to make the changes. She is more reliable on what she is saying to the people.

So I really felt that Senator Clinton is the candidate for the Nominee for Democracy Party, and she can win the election. That was why I said confidently to Senator Clinton on 01/07/2008 night: “YOU WILL WIN TOMORROW”.

WVincent
wvinw@yahoo.com

"Also, half of the precincts hand counted the ballots to begin with --- no machines, tainted or otherwise."

But precincts have different populations in them. If one precinct has 10,000 people and another one has 100 people in it, and the precinct with 10,000 people used e-vote machines, you can't say, "half the precints used e-vote machines and half ballots"! More accurate: "10,000 people used e-vote machines, and 100 used ballots." OR "99% of voters used e-vote machines." (for example)

"All news media said NO BODY EXPECTED SENATOR CLINTON TO WIN IN NEW HAMPSHIRE PRIMARY on the day before the New Hampshire Primary. But it is not true. I was the exceptional."

Well, I guess we shouldn't investigate this, then!

who's against a recount?

..When r u folks going to understand what is going on here? The reason why Democrats never complained about stolen elections is because they wanted them to be stolen and,they wanted to be able to use the same system to their advantage when necessary......Obama is not in this race to win,,,he,like Kerry and Gore before him knows that the winner has been chosen and the people are there only to be willing dupes and dopes.Go and watch a wrestling match from beginning to end and you suckers will understand what the republicans and democrats are doing to us the people.I hate them all and will never vote for neither again for the rest of my life.

Big Dan, you are welcome to investigate this. I have a witness for this, who was standing beside me while I was saying this to Senator Clinton "You will win tomorrow". He was in the picture I took that night, so I recoganized him next day 01/08/2008 in the Senator Clinton celebration event. So I asked whether he heard I said "You will win tomorrow"? He told me that he saw that. He also said to me“you took all the credits”.

W Vincent, you didn't have anything to do with counting the votes, did you?

To Hillary: If you want to play with the Big Dogs, you must develop a Big Dog spine, will you cry when Russia or China (Big Dogs)challenges you? I will NOT tell a pollster who I might vote for, don't ask. I will NOT vote for anyone who has taken money from AIPAC.I will NOT vote for a woman because she IS a woman. To Brad: I listened to Rachel Maddow who brought up something no one else on this blog has mentioned. Is it true that historically MA candidates have ALWAYS won NH primaries? Why didn't Romney win? Just asking.

With all the controversy surrounding computerized voting machines, It seems clear that we should go back to a system of hand counting of the ballots. It's not perfect, and it's not foolproof, but we have yet to find a better way.
Election officials watched over by election monitors is a time honored tradition, one that so many Americans have given their lives to protect. Turning the votes over to a corporation and trusting them to do what's right for America is not only stupid, it's anti-American.
America's most treasured right is the right to vote for those of our fellow citizens who will represent us. Without this, none of our other freedoms mean anything.
America has gone from a few simple colonists with a dream, to the incredible power we are today without the aid of any suspect computers or optical scanners, but with Americans volunteering their time to do their part by counting ballots and running elections.
For those nay-sayers (and one would have to wonder at their motives) who say that it would take too long and be too hard to do it the old-fashioned way, I say this:
1. Elections, up until recently,were all hand
counted and there was a lot more oversight
and a lot less questions of fraud.
2. Britain, Israel, India, Switzerland, and
Canada all count their ballots by hand. Canada
counts more than 13,000,000 ballots in
4 hours.
3. When it comes to counting votes, accuracy
and integrity are far more important than
speed.
Although computers have the ability to be
very accurate, they are only as accurate as
their programming.
In my home state of New Mexico, we are going to paying $11,000,000 for new voting machines to replace all of the old ones. And while these new machines will offer a paper receipt, they still don't offer real peace of mind. Better to do it the old-fashioned way. We could put all the millions of dollars we save into getting people out to vote.
Hand counting the ballots doesn't help one political party over the other, but it does help insure that we remain able to trust in our most sacred right. The right to a free and Fair election process.

I live in Downey, Ca and noticed that instead of polling in the usual City building, the polling place was moved to a privately owned Convalescant home in what I beleive was an attempt by the City of Downey to distance itself from this fraudulent Primary election, and to "spread the liability" in the event that irregularities might surface. I am curious as to whether any other voters have experienced this in their respective districts.