The thing is, I have doubts. Reasonable, legitimate doubts. Others do too.

I may be crazy. I may be a paranoid freak, but who made me that way? It was due to all the recent voting shenanigans. Due to unverified, demonstrably hackable voting machines and tabulators.

I don't know what the fuck happened, but the only crazy opinion IMHO is to have any CERTAINTY on either side.

If you are CERTAIN there was no funny business, I seriously question where your mind is at.

If you are CERTAIN there was voter fraud, I seriously question where your mind is at.

DOUBT=SENSIBLE=NEED FOR VERIFICATION.

Otherwise we have a very big problem with a significant portion of the American people fearful that their votes are not being counted. And THAT is not acceptable to anyone, I think.

There is no reasonable ground for suspicion that Sen. Clinton's victory yesterday in New Hampshire owes to fraud.

None.

There is plenty of reason to cast reasonable doubt.

As the wise man once said, "If wishes were fishes..."

He/She locked a thread with a poll in it that didn't reflect well on Hillary citing "flame bait". Somehow if the thread was pro-Hillary it wouldn't have been locked. But that aside, I don't think there was fraud either and I will be voting for Obama in my state's primary.

the voting and the actual voting numbers is a reasonable ground for suspicion on its own.

It's a 12-15% difference. Statistically, that is absolutely enormous. There is something funny going on- and it makes one doubt the accuracy of the voting itself, whatever the cause.

Which you are too intelligent and experienced a man to do.

All claims of fraud here must rest the assertion that polling which halted twenty-four to forty-eight hours before the polls, and incorporated a variety of guesses concerning the make up the people who would turn out to vote, was in every detail correct. The thing cannot begin to bear the weight of the charge.

"You would need some indication the votes produced in the counties using machines differed from the votes actually cast in those counties. You have no evidence whatever of that."

We have just that in NH, do we not?

You have areas in which the candidates have differing degrees of support, that in some instances overlap with the use if different means of tabulating votes.

You also have an unexamined assumption in some quarters that a hand count of paper ballots is in all instances perfectly correct, so that any variance from it should be considered suspect. But repetitive hand-work often produces errors, and it is childishly easy for ill-intentioned persons to make a variety of 'deliberate errors' in such a process, depending on what the actual condition of the staff involved is. Sparsely populated rural counties are every bit as rife with corrupt politics and partisan officials as urban centers are.

it is the dispartity combined with the fact they they used hackable machines run by REPUBLICAMS.

One: the Opti-scan Diebold equipment that counted the paper ballots. This equipment is hackable.
If we allow it to be used in the Primaries, then how can we complain when the GE comes around??

Two: the rush to declare victory, with candidates expected to concede within three hours of the polls closing. Clinton's victory was handed to her by NBC News, which declared her the winner at the time that only 66% of the vote was in.

Chris Matthews justified this quickness in getting it over with to the insatiable need of the American populace to have results quickly, as we want our SUperBowl results.

Is our democracy only a SuperBowl? Why should this be the precedent?

It is very dangerous to set the stage for having a THIRD GENERAL ELECTION in which the media again will call the shots with regards to whom the winner is.

The machines can be compromised, that certainly seems to be the case. But that does not begin to support the claim that the certified count results from their being compromised. You might as well say every death reported is a suicide, because some people have died from suicide.

The prediction by the network was not falsified by the official tabulated result. Therefore it was accurate. It was not an official statement, and anyone who chose to take it seriously did so on their own look-out. No candidate concedes on a network announcement, but on the judgement of his or her advisors, in close contact with the official count, and in light of their knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the various candidates in the areas where votes have been counted, and remain yet uncounted.

To do less would be to allow the wolf to guard the henhouse.

I know you are far too intelligent to do such a thing.

Let me know when you get into the rooms where the officials carry out the count....

It's a good thing our founding fathers weren't as reluctant to get involved.

Stopping the insanity?

It is in the cards that we have these instantaneous results. Election Eve Nov 2006, the Talking Heads were already into the meme of: we have to give the populace the results quickly because that is what is required. Then when it was obvious in race after race that the results were not quite what the Talking Heads (and the Powers that Be) wanted, the process went down differently - and both the candidates and the public were given the chance to see the vote tallies close to the 100% point at which time the election results were announced.

That is what the election process in a democracy requires.

But it is not what we are seeing in the Primaries, with none of the candidates saying, "You know what, I am enough of a leader to demand that all votes be counted before I concede."

So when the General Election comes around, the candidates and the public will be already programmed to understand the "rules" of election night - that the networks and not the voters call the shots.

The candidates have themselves to blame. The populace lhad themselves to blame.

I got on the computer and searched for this just before bedtime because it's been bugging me all afternoon.

Am I the only one? "The rooms where the officials carry out the count....," with, it seems to me, the implication that you *won't* get in, and, possibly, shouldn't....?

I'm a newbie, got involved when I (more or less immediately, to give myself credit) realized what was going on with the electronic voting frenzy, but is this post saying "good luck, because you can't"?

It seems to me that if the procedure isn't viewable upon demand by any voter in the precinct (which electronic voting *certainly* isn't), it should be.

Isn't it? If not, why not? No good reason occurs to me, but lots of bad ones do....

...play a big role -- how are we to know with private corporations collecting and counting our ballots in secret, without there being any means of openly verifying an honest and accurate count? We simply have to accept whatever they tell us.

Would you accept such an arrangement for your personal finances? No receipts or statements provided for you to use in verifying your account balance? Your balance is whatever the bank tells you it is on any given day, and no documentation is provided and they don't accept any of your record keeping. Would you accept that? I'd guess not. So why would you accept it for the processing of your vote?

Every election result is suspect under such an abhorrent system, clearly designed to make election theft both easy and virtually impossible to detect, irrespective of whether or not pre polling and/or exit polling match well with actual results.

Not one word in that provides the slightest reason to suppose the outcome on Tuesday in New Hampshire owes to fraud. Not one word of it relates to the particular case at hand. You cannot convict a man of robbery by establishing no more than that robberies have been done by men. In this instance, you cannot even establish that robbery has been done at, and cannot present the slightest reason even for a police interview.

...where I alleged fraud? What I said was:

Every election result is suspect under such an abhorrent system, clearly designed to make election theft both easy and virtually impossible to detect, irrespective of whether or not pre polling and/or exit polling match well with actual results.

You seem to be taking the position that the results yielded by an electoral process which is, by design, absent of any openness and transparency that might provide for reasonable independent verification of vote results, should be trusted unless fraud can be proven. This position is ridiculous on its face.

I notice you did not answer any of my questions. Any particular reason for that?

Would you play poker with a dealer who insists on shuffling the deck under the table out of your sight?
This is, in effect, what we're doing when we trust private corporations to collect and count our votes in secret.

It would also appear that a valid point is still a valid point even if ignored.

The Magistrate argues from the position that there is no justifiable reason to claim voter fraud. The poster did NOT claim voter fraud.

That is a strawman and I called it out.

There is no reason not to have better elections. Oregon's elections are run very well and changes are made fairly quickly when good ideas are presented. We still need some registration reform and source code escrow. We need verification.

But that doesn't mean NH was hacked.

deeply suspicious. My girl is supposed to wipe the floor with these wannabes.... So there

Suspicion is essential for a democracy to survive, especially a fragile, large, and bitterly divided one such as that which we unfortunately have.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x489074

Maybe Mary Jo can win with clean elections.

Maybe it was because Hillary got 3rd place and that was OK by some folks.

while they all were caucusing?:evilgrin:

:(

They've gotta be standing on their feet for hours there AFAIK, there's gotta be a little beer/wine break tossed in there.

Obviously because of the disparity between the polls and the results.

There was no such disparity in Iowa. That's why.

What would cameras have to do with anything? Jeezus? Its in the counting, the tabulation. No one believes guys with black masks came in, opened up the machines and spun some gears you know.

And that's the advantage of a caucus-- completely open and transparent. Transparency is the lifeblood of any democracy, and it was missing in New Hampshire, let alone in 2004 and 2006.

don't use the Diebold machines we've been talking about on the DU for years.

Votes have been bought long before Diebold.

I do not think Iowa was rigged... but prove to me it wasn't.

I'm surprised you don't know that.

where people stood and had their heads counted.

No machines involved at all.

If so, contact the SOS and see what your options are.
Otherwise, get involved in your own state and volunteer to be a judge/monitor or however they use election volunteers.

screaming at the top of his lungs with a well rehearsed rant about the election being rigged in NH. I've already posted this once before. This just happened a few minutes ago.

The guy had story after story and kept repeating them.

If doubts really surface, what can be done short of holding the election over...this time only using paper ballots and pencils and being highly supervised and hand counts with a real panel of assigned individuals doing the counts.

If someone, Hillary or Obama or Edwards or other unknown parties have screwed with this election, then we need to postpone the rest of the primaries until this matter is settled.

Of course, the guy doing the screaming had no proof, had no claims of proof, and could not back up his story in any way.

If this is taken seriously, what happens next?

there is no need to hold another election.

Now remind me whats the audit trail for Iowa?

IS THE SUREST SIGN THE CONSPIRACY IS WORKING!!!

:silly:

another caller just now said that would be impossible since this would call for 10K/20K voters which would call for about 400 buses.

Apparently this topic has legs. I believe that you can get the broadcast from the station:

http://www.810.com

The Gene Burns Show

I am not a CT advocate, but we have all these stupid threads about voter fraud and changing totals and the rest that have been posted by a variety of posters all day today. Started early this am. Seems to me we need to find out as quickly as possible.

This whole issue is bullshit.

Happy?

Especially when there really does appear something along the lines of hard numbers with suspicious discrepancies. The Kenyan people are at war with each other over this-- the prospect of vote-tampering in a democracy is an extremely serious issue.

...I think you forgot that part.

IS THE SUREST SIGN THE CONSPIRATORS ARE WORKING!!!

to have legitimacy. Let us just do away with automated voting machines. If there is a paper trail, then recount. Simple as that.

All he has to do is pay for it... So I'd talk to the Obama campaign.... If there's a paper trail (which there is) and there's a question, it's easy to solve.

The candidate asks for a recount, and pays the fee.

Of course it takes money away from the campaign that he could spend elsewhere, but then it's all in your priorities.

He doesn't seem interested in it, so neither should I.

the candidates do.

If Obama wants a recount, he can have one.

Isn't like American Idol like on or something? OMG!

you should start asking him to initiate one. Otherwise quit bitching, you look like a fool.

a stupid fucking attack.

You sound hysterical but not particularly well-informed.

There are ways to go about getting recounts. Every candidate knows them. Each candidate has an path to obtain a recount. Every 'close' election can have one.... they just have to pay for it.

I am underwhelmed by your critique of my grasp of the issue.

But even if it were so, it does nothing to undermine what I am saying.

I still say it would be political suicide and you have not made an argument showing why it would not be.

the 'principle' or the 'image'. Apparently you think 'image' is more important.... okay, that's fine.

I repeat, if Obama wants a recount, he can pay for one and it will happen. If YOU want one, you'll have to persuade a candidate in the race to file for it (even if YOU contribute to personally pay for it).

So, either petition Obama (or one of the others) or move on to something that's more relevant.

Stay in Texas, please.

YOUR CANDIDATE doesn't think your concerns are on target. Quit jumping up and down here like a 3 year old and either read up on the process or go talk to your candidate's campaign to do something about it.

I do not see that I am behaving in any way like a 3 year old, but rather think you are behaving like an 11 year old.

Piss off with the personal attacks before I come to Texas and kick yer ass.

I've also been around long enough to see voter fraud/suppression in more varieties than you can shake a stick at. Paper ballots and all.

You are either 1) new to the process 2) new to politics or 3) new to the concept of logic.

That's what's supposed to happen in a democracy. You seem to be rather new to the concept of transparency.

If you think Diebold is the only problem in counting ballots, you're a novice.

The whole process need vigilance. Ever served as a poll-watcher? Do you even know what one is?

something that I never claimed. Frankly, your dismissive contempt of results-vetting and your 5th-grade level ad hominems make you rather inappropriate to be a poll-watcher or anyone else involved in the tabulation process, which is something that has to be airtight and answer the questions of skeptics. The heart of the matter in NH is that the vote-counting is essentially privatized, and the numbers held in confidence by a private company (Diebold) and cannot be examined except by an official recount which, in such a primary race, is not something that a candidate in the running can realistically call for since it would seem like nitpicking. IOW, there's little in the way of checks and balances on the process, which essentially blocks the transparency that's essential for the results to be trusted. This is deadly for a democracy.

Thanks for the backup. No reason for me to have been insulted over this.

you must live in an alternate universe?

That's not an insult btw. I am startled how many people just dismiss this or mock those with valid concerns when there is so much cause for concern.

It is so much not about the candidate or not liking the result. I am glad the candidates will hone their skills by competing.

But November is coming. How many times do we shrug?

Obama and Clinton got the same number of delegates from NH, and even if a recount put the results in line with the pre-election polling (which we have no reason to believe they would), Obama and Clinton would still get the same number of delegates from NH. Even if this were true, it would be a pretty Pyrrhic fight.

There's something genuinely fishy going on here, and there are numbers to back up the skepticism.

anyone of malfeasance.:evilgrin:

I believe voter fraud is a legitimate issue. I also believe we dilute and minimize that issue every time we cry wolf.