Massachusetts 'Deja Vu'-Senate Race - Questionable Counts &-Speedy Concessions

[Joanne98]

For OpEdNews: Lynn Landes - Writer

The controversy over Massachusetts Democrat Martha Coakley's quick concession,despite red flags over the use of non-transparent voting technology, regardless of complaints from voters of election day irregularities, and before all the ballots were counted, is a replay of previous hasty 'election concessions'. Stoking the frustration of her supporters was Coakley's apparent victory in the hand-counted paper ballot precincts in Massachusetts over Republican Scott Brown.
On Wednesday, January 20, Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org reported, "According to preliminary media results by municipality, Democrat Martha Coakley won Massachusetts overall in its hand counted locations,* with 51.12% of the vote (32,247 hand counted votes) to Brown's 30,136, which garnered him 47.77% of hand counted votes. Margin: 3.35% lead for Coakley. Massachusetts has 71 hand count locations, 91 ES&S locations, and 187 Diebold locations, with two I call the mystery municipalities (Northbridge and Milton) apparently using optical scanners, not sure what kind."
It's almost happened before. Howard Dean nearly won the hand-counted precincts in the New Hampshire presidential primary of 2004 against John Kerry. Martin Bento published an interesting analysis of the primary results based on the voting systems used. According to Bento, Howard Dean lost to Massachusetts Senator John Kerry by only 1.6% when the ballots were hand-counted, 9.7%when ES&S optical scanners were used, and 14.7%on Diebold scanners. (See: http://www.thelandesreport.com/NewHampshirePrimary.htm)


Who knows how many candidates may have won hand-counts over machine-counts?Despite warnings not to concede, not to trust the machine counts, to wait until at least the paper ballots had been counted, Coakley acted as if she couldn't wait to throw in the towel. Brad Friedman wrote,
"Several supporters of Democrat Martha Coakley were injured during her rush to get to the phone as quickly as possible in order to concede the race for the U.S. Senate in MA to Scott Brown even before AP called the race in favor of the Republican. That, while some 25% of the precincts had yet to report even how Diebold's easily-hacked, oft-failed optical-scan machines(which are in violation of federal voting system standards and programmed by a company with a disturbing and criminal background), had even reported their tabulation and, more disturbingly, while 0% of the voters' cast ballots in Massachusetts had been counted or examined by any human being on the face of the earth" http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7656
That'shappened before, too. In a2006 article, I wrote, "Democrats have considerable cause to be concerned about their candidates. Last spring, San Diego Democrats were flabbergasted when Francine Busby conceded the election to Republican Brian Bilbray before all the ballots were counted. She left thousands of absentee ballots uncounted, more than enough to win her the election." http://www.thelandesreport.com/2006MidtermElections.htm

Continued>>>
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Massachusetts-Deja-Vu-Se-by-Lynn-Landes-100125-498.html

[Botany]

1. Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org reported

'nuff said

[Lochloosa]

2. +1000

[TankLV]

3. I trust Bev - so far she's been CORRECT and we have done NOTHING

to secure our VOTE!!!

more than I can say for you...