Olbermann: NH recount OVER, no "significant" discrepancies found.

[crispini]

Just said it on Countdown. No link, sorry.

[tbuddha]

1. I never really looked into NH

but it sure seems suspicious to me. I'm still not really convinced, but it could be a good thing.

[bleever]

2. Could be good news; it shows recounts can validate the vote and

aren't just partisan fishing expeditions. I think this works well for us. :thumbsup:

[ReneB]

3. but what about the exit polls then?

and how many counties did they recount? enough to say there was no "fraud"?

[crispini]

6. They counted specific counties,

some e-voting, some not. DU's own Ida Briggs helped them pick the counties. I'd be really interested to get her take on this.

[crispini]

7. dupe

[merbex]

16. Correct me if I'm wrong; they only recounted 11 precincts

not counties

[BlueDog2u]

4. Yes, except for one troubling tact...

Exit polls in NH showed a much higher margin for Kerry than tabulated votes. So the recount casts serious doubts on the validity of exit polls in this NH election, and by extension it calls into question the entire argument for fraud from the discrepancy between exit polls and tabulations. I wish this weren't so. If its not so, someone with more knowledge of statistical reasoning will correct me.

[jamboi]

9. A friend just suggested the fiendish idea that maybe the exit polls were

sabotaged deliberatly. I rejected it as being too fantastic, but I guess if you wanted to sabotage them you might do it similar to e-voting by messing w/ the central tabulation. Its an awful thought. Zogby has called for full blue ribbon panel investigation into the exit polling with full transparency and openess about methodology, etc. Mitofsky hasn't been supportive of that so far. Hmm...

[BlueDog2u]

31. The idea occurred to me also

It would be nice to know more about who conducted them and what methodologies were employed. I always thought the margins for Kerry seemed a bit absurd. New Hampshire is traditionally a conservative state, and while I'm not surprised that it swung to Kerry, and wouldn't be surprised if it swung to him by a couple more points than the official tally shows, its hard to imagine that an exit poll showing him with a 15% lead could be very plausible.

[TruthIsAll]

36. I said it from the beginning: Watch out for NH. A Rove trap?

This is real tinfoil. But I never believed the Kerry exit poll margins there. Could it have been a ploy in NH to make it appear that ALL other exit polls were off?

And why did they they take so long to call NH for Kerry when he had such a "big" lead?

Remember, NH with it's 5 EV was not the focus. OH and FL were. Bush needed BOTH OH and FL.

I hate to say it. But I still don't trust Nader.

[latteromden]

12. I wonder

I actually have no knowledge whatsoever about, well, anything, but I've been thinking this over. If there was, in fact, deliberate fraud, it could be very easily covered up and made to look like the real result. I've thought for quite a while that if this conspiracy we talk about really DOES exist, if they really ARE messing with the vote, recounts will not do a single thing. Something tells me this might be the case.

[BlueDog2u]

32. Could be...

But we should keep looking, cause there's plenty of other really fishy stuff -- check out the news on Oklahoma, for example, where the Tulsa newspaper reported interim numbers, with 70% of the precincts reporting, showing Kerry with thousands more votes than the official tabulation gave him. Either the paper had a data set which was completely screwy, or the machines started counting backward at some point. Go figure. We really need an answer from someon on that one.

[Stevepol]

22. I remain convinced the NH result had electronic fraud in it somewhere.

The Diebold & ES&S people have had many years to perfect their techniques. Bev Harris caught the Volusia County people throwing away votes just before she came to claim the material she had requisitioned through the FOIA in FL. I don't know how they did it, but I prefer to doubt the authenticity of the Diebold machine count (or the central tabulator count) rather than the authenticity of exit polls or the statistics that show the low probability of the actual election result happening. They did it somehow and they had access I'm sure to the elections offices and rooms thru-out the election and afterwards. My hope is there will be a whistleblower.

[BlueDog2u]

30. You May Be Right

Its quite possible. But my understanding is that the NH recount was based on hand counts of op-scan ballots. So, to avoid any discrepancy it seems to me that you must posit tampering with the paper ballots. Since the repugs didn't know which counties were going to be recounted, this would have to have been done after the announcement of the recount...there was time, given the delay, but I find it a bit difficult to imagine that under the circumstances, with the recount pending, the opportunity would really have existed. Just my opinion. I want nothing more than to prove this election was fraudulent. I think the American people can be stupid, but I prefer to think they are not as stupid as the official results of this election indicate....so I'm disappointed in the results of the NH recount.

[ahyums]

11. that is of course the complete opposite of the original intention

but you're right it's a good piece of spin for us I suppose , well done for looking at the positive.

(Have to say though that I personally was convinced pretty early on by other posts that not much was going to happen in NH so I don't see this as a bi disappointment anyway.)

[rodeodance]

19. Good point

[Goldeneye]

5. I don't know what to make of this.

It seems like it kind of kills the exit poll discrepancy, but at the same time, there were only a few precincts recounted...

[jasmeel]

10. If the recount has something to do with computer hacking

would they be able to tell from the recount they did in NH?

[Goldeneye]

21. No, they wouldn't be able to

so I guess this recount just verified paper ballots in NH...

[loudsue]

8. Why aren't they looking at the PROGRAMMING in the machines??

Was the New Hampshire recount done by hand?

I don't know about other states, but North Carolina has a State Bureau of Investigation (just like the FBI, but State officers). I want to go to the Bd. of Elections in NC and ask for the SBI to investigate the programming, with forensic SBI computer experts.

I want to know what's in the guts of those machines, that they would show bush winning by such a majority here....it just DIDN'T HAPPEN that way!!

:kick::kick:

[mostly_lurking]

13. It was a hand recount. n/t

[rfrrfrrfr]

14. Look for the original Thread

On why we asked Nader to do the recount in Florida. All your questions are answered there. They should have just stickied the darn thing so people could read for themselves rather than having people repost the links to a thread thats almost a month old now.

The questions asked here have been asked a gosh I don't know it seems like a donzen times a day and I am tired of pointing people to the proper thread for their answeres.

[bemis12]

15. So don't put yourself out

and go away.

[righteous1]

28. LOL n/t

[Milo_Bloom]

17. Does anyone know the answer to this...

NH is electronic with a paper trial is many places, correct?

Now, does the person get to inspect the paper and place it in a seperate box OR does the person enter their vote and the machine generate a piece of paper not seen until people want to recount and they retrieve the paper?

If someone implanted nefarous code to swing votes one way or the other, wouldn't a recount of the paper trail simply confirm the e-vote results, since the machine could have altered the vote AFTER the person presses submit. That same machine could then generate a "
recipt" that the person never sees, that shows the person voted for X, when they really voted for Y.

Can someone who has actually used the machines there explain how the paper trail is generated and what chance you have to see it after hitting submit?

[mulethree]

18. all paper trail, hand counts and optical scan

You fill in a circle on a card/paper like for a test at school.
The card is fed into a scanner that counts the votes.

For the recount they counted them by hand and picked up some that
the machine couldn't like when someone circled the circle instead of filling it in.

The rest of the state is hand-counted paper ballots.

I know they did some optical scan districts, I don't know if they did any that had been hand-counted originally.

The districts had been picked because they had suspiciously many Bush votes, urban areas that had more Bush tendancy/swing than rural areas did.

[catnhatnh]

20. Voting in NH

Yep...I voted in Rochester NH.Small city of about 25K.Paper Ballots the size of a diner menu and a good old #2 pencil are all that enter the booth.Where I voted after leaving the booth each voter fed his ballot into a machine the size and approximate configuration of a copy machine which I took to be an optical scanner,but am not sure.High turnout and it LOOKED awful Kerry to me....FYI we also allow same day voter registration at the poll...

[mulethree]

23. Hurray for Paper trails and audits!

I think now the people of New Hampshire are even more confident that their votes, at least, were well counted!

Paper trails and audits for all!
And same-day registration too!

[bemis12]

24. And that the exit poll

was wrong. For whatever reason, it appears to have been wrong.

[IAMREALITY]

26. But

Even if proof came out tomorrow that the NH exit poll was simply wrong, hell, even if proof came tomorrow that ALL wrong exit polls had NOTHING to do with fraud, it wouldn't sway my position an iota.

I still believe the exit poll theory, but even regardless we have amassed farrrrr more evidence then exit polls alone, and the disproval of the exit poll theory, if it were to come (though it won't) wouldn't diminish ANY of the other evidence we have. Sure, the exit polls may have been a big reason many of us started to investigate, but it is what we have uncovered since investigation that now impassions us. So Please, DU, DO NOT LET THIS BRING YOU DOWN!!

[jbnow]

25. If Keith is correct

I am surprised, don't know what to think, especially if there was not a way to rig the recount.

I loved the idea of this recount because elections need to be cleaned up and NH looked wrong. The variance between the exit poll and the final resultwas ~15% in NH compared to about 7% in Florida and 4% in Ohio.

Now...we don't know the numbers and Ida will report (maybe it is another post as I am writing). Are small numerical discrepancies actually bigger then they look if extrapolated to the whole state? Like in Florida they say the variance was small in the partial recounts, but if you look at it going at that rate on a larger scale it would have swung the state.

But my biggest confusion...is the exit poll part. Was it real;ly that unreflective.

I would be glad to learn we don't have fraud (though voter intimidation and so on is clear) and that we just live with stupid people if that was the truth...this should tell me that...but I am not reassured. I am baffled.

OK...I will go look for news on it.

[catnhatnh]

27. Voter suppression...

would be a little tough here....AND easy as hell to find.State population is about 1.1 million and black population is less than one percent,though concentrated in 2 or 3 cities....I know the exit polls say "fraud" but I just don't know where....

[righteous1]

29. All good questions, possible vote rigging but

at risk of having my Nads handed to me, also possible exit poll inaccuracy

[jbnow]

33. An article with more information here

http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041130/REPOSITORY/411300351/1001

Recount finds few changes
The process has cost Nader at least $14,000

By ERIK STETSON
The Associated Press

November 30. 2004 8:46AM

Ballot counters finished work in 10 of the 11 precincts and were due to finish the last, Salem, before noon today.

"It looks like a pretty accurate count here in New Hampshire," said Michael Richardson, Nader's representative.

Nader campaign officials have said the recount could expand to other precincts, or even other states, based on the results. But no candidate's tallies have changed enough to affect overall percentages so far.

Richardson and state election officials said the vote gains were largely due to typical counting-machine errors. They included voters circling an oval, instead of filling it in, to choose a candidate.


The largest gain for a presidential candidate has been nearly 25 votes, but gains of 10 votes or fewer have been more common. When one major-party candidate gained, the other also tended to gain.

[BlueDog2u]

34. It sure would be nice to get some accurate and specific

numbers. Also, someone on another thread raised the interesting question of whether the recount has been controlled by counting the poll book entries. We'd like to see numbers that add up and confirm the recount impression of no fraud. Just to cover all the bases. Did they do that? If not, we should ask for it.

[m.standridge]

35. Briggs precincts

Well, the poll wasn't broken down into precincts.
Briggs extrapolated that the overall state difference was best explained by the variances in those precincts. But MA residents have moved to some areas of NH.
In other words, the variances were for statewide tallies.
It's not impossible that Briggs' and others "conclusion" (really, possibly hypothesis), that these particular precincts would best explain, is not entirely proven, either.
The statewide variance could have been produced in other precincts.
One thing, too, is that pre-election polls in various states late on Nov 1, were sometimes at some variance to exit polling. In Nevada, SurveyUSA was showing a strong Bush "trend" from 10/30 through 11/1. Yet exit polling seemed to show Kerry carrying the state, only 12 hours later. Vote tallies indicate he didn't, but there are some non-computer issues related to fraudulent vote-registration out there that seem to have affected the tally in Bush's favor.
NH was a "battleground" state, and opinions may have "settled" in odder patterns or places than hypothesized from "logic," statistical or otherwise.
The exit polling cited by Professor Freeman in his "Exit Poll Discrepancy" academic paper at U Penn cites exit polls with a fairly decent sample size for NH. I'm not sure about the OH exit poll's sample size, though. Or PA's. Most of the others, seem fairly good. Yet, you can't say, from that, that "the larger the sample size relative to the state, the more accurate the exit poll was." IA's was pretty good-sized, as was MN's and NH's-- yet were off quite a bit.
It helps if you expand a couple of Freeman's 11 states out into hundredths of a percent. They look closer to the exit polls in some states that way.
For example, CO: Freeman: "Bush predicted 49.9% Kerry predicted 48.1%" "Bush tallied 52% Kerry Tallied 46.8%." Expand this out to hundredths: State tally: CO: 51.957% Bush; 46.87% Kerry. In other words, Bush LESS than 52%, Kerry NEARLY 47%. While this is off, pre-election polls kept showing Bush with a 4 or 5 percent lead in CO. I mean, there's no need to exaggerate the idea that polls in general weren't suggesting this. To some extent, you COULD argue that some recount would almost validate the CO and a couple of other polls by getting it closer. Yet, it's also true that this only works well with just a COUPLE--not ALL--of Freeman's cited states.
Cell phones and "no call" lists have been mentioned as affecting pre-election polls. Maybe cell phones also impacted on exit polling. The latter is, of course, just totally wild speculation. Just don't assume that, because someone was young and on a cell phone coming out of the polls, they were a Kerry voter! After all, cell phones are fairly unpopular with liberals in the NE.
There are also things like last minute things to be considered. For example, I wonder whether the exit polls didn't ere in the other direction here in AR. I mean, when Clinton started campaigning for Kerry here in the state, it was in the last 18 hours before 11/2. Polls showed Kerry on an upswing from over 46%, Bush on a slight decline from just below 51%, right at the last minute. I think it might have gotten closer than that 50.8% to 46.7%, therefore. Clinton's active campaigning for Kerry didn't happen for Gore--at Gore's campaign's request. This helped bridge some gaps in the Demos here. Yet, little doubt of the outcome, just the numbers. That suggests that the exit polls may themselves have been too conservative sometimes--and that vote tallies are REALLY in "error" from what was cast, in some instances.

[TruthIsAll]

37. The MOE is strictly a function of the number polled. Period.

The population size of the state makes no difference.

In other words, a poll of 1000 sample size in NH has the same MOE as a poll of 1000 sample size in CA.

THE SAMPLING MARGIN OF ERROR HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE UNDERLYING POPULATION SIZE. THIS IS A STATISTICAL FACT WHICH IS COUNTER-INTUITIVE.

[organik]

38. only 11 of 301 precincts though...

How can you conclude there were no significant discrepancies with only recounting 11 of 301 precincts. This is FRAUD were talking about here folks, I can't trust that just because nothing was found in 3.6% of the precincts, the rest are legit.

Give me a state wide recount and I'll be convinced.

http://2004electiontheft.com