New Hampshire Recount Update (from Ida)

Hello, everyone. I'm back from the New Hampshire recount -- which wasn't an evil Nader ploy, by the way -- with good news and bad news:

The good news -- we were able to recount eleven precincts in New Hampshire that showed some very strong anomalies.

The bad news -- whatever the problem might be, in New Hampshire its probably not the machines (which have paper trails, and were mainly purchased by the state before Diebold bought the company that produced them).

Honestly, I was hoping for the famous "Eureka!" moment. There wasn't one. For every vote the machines counted, there was a paper back-up, and the small number of votes that were added to the totals (a little over a hundred with 58,000+ votes counted) were not unexpected.

I wish I had something more exciting to report, but *if* there is fraud in New Hampshire, then its happening at a different level than "machine count." There are a couple of other things to investigate (poll tapes, etc.) that the Black Box Voting people will undoubtedly check into, but I don't expect them to find anything. (I could be wrong; its happened before.)

It appears that in New Hampshire, larger populations really are trending conservative (Republican), while the rest of the state is trending liberal (Democrat). Its odd, but from what I saw with the paper ballots, its reality. After the rest of the obvious possibilities are eliminated, I recommend checking into such things as radio programming (think Rush), candidate visits, and media exposure to help identify why Democrats were able to do so well in some parts of the state (double digits on occasion), while the Republicans did so well in the larger population centers. Its a mystery that should be explored.

I put my personal impressions of the trip on the www.invisibleida.com web page, but should warn you that I wasn't overly impressed with the attitude the Democratic leadership in New Hampshire displayed in this quest for knowledge. Between DU and me, I'm wondering if their attitude might have something to do with the state wide results. :(

Overall, I think the New Hampshire recount did some good things: 1) helped to create a process and a network to support recount efforts in other states; 2) showed that the issue really is "voting integrity" versus "get Kerry in no matter what" since Kerry won the state; 3) provided a learning opportunity for what to expect in the way of challenges during a recount (including making sure volunteer staff is adequately trained and available); 4) validated the importance of a PAPER TRAIL; and 5) provided an example to the rest of the country of How To Do It Right -- seriously, the New Hampshire Secretary of State people were AMAZING. We can only DREAM about this level of competence and dedication in states like Ohio and Florida....

I am extremely grateful to Ralph Nader and his team for helping with this issue. I want to be clear that, just because there wasn't a machine problem in New Hampshire, that doesn't mean there aren't machine problems elsewhere. To assume so would be the equivalent of saying, "well, my neighbor's car runs well, so I don't ever have to check the oil in mine" -- in other words, the actions of a fool. The Nader folk continue to support recount efforts in other states, and I appreciate them more than I can possibly express.

The oddness of the exit polls in New Hampshire still aren't clearly explained to me. I still think the numbers are just plain weird. I will continue to do everything in my power to make sure other states are double checked. I've got more data to crunch, and there is this whole laundry thing that needs to happen, so please forgive me for not being around as much to keep you informed.

I hope I have not disappointed all of you too much; I want the truth to be out there, even if its not what I want to see, and hope you all feel the same way, too. Step one, step two -- its the only way to solve the mystery of Votergate 2004. It is a lot of work, but it is worth it. :)

Best, Ida

there still may be some funny biz going on at a different level. Kudos to Ralph Nader for getting the ball rolling.

Thanks for all your hard work, it's truly appreciated!

and thanks for the report. I wish I could understand why the anomalies in NH re the exit polls, it is just plain "weird"

to get this recount. If the repubs knew that the recount would have exposed them, ppl would have started dropping like flies.

Like you suggested as a possiblity, the fraud could very well be at a different level in the voting process.

That's it Ida, and you gave us the truth about NH. Now, onward to Ohio!

:yourock:

What role, if any, might Nader take in either the remaining vote investigations (NM,, NV, FL, OH), or on the issue of voting fairness/security in the future?

n/t

but there have two ideas floated on the boards that might (?) explain disparity:

One - the exit polls in New Hampshire really were fixed. Other states the vote tabs were changed, but in New Hampshire the exit polls were fixed. As in keep 'em busy recounting in New Hampshire where the exit polls differed most from vote tabulations and they won't have time to get to Ohio, Florida, New Mexico. Could the exit polls have been fixed? Remember that the National Election Pool (in charge of reporting exit polls) apparently had direct feed from 1,000 precincts across the country. Hackers may have been able to get into the computers tallying the exit poll results?

Second - the crooks who did this had time to 'stuff' the ballot boxes by the time the recounts get started. I really doubt this one, but it has been said aloud, so...

Whatever happens THANK YOU for all of your hard work!

:eyes:

Thanks for having the clarity to ask.

Before the NH recount got underway, someone floated the possibility that perhaps the exit polls were rigged in NH to "throw people off the scent" as it were of the fraud. Perhaps the hope was that there would be a recount in NH and the totals would come up the same, so everyone would throw up their hands and go home.

I think its also worth noting again that it has been mentioned somewhere that the exit polling services servers went down at a critical point - about 11:15pm I think- and weren't up again until 1:45am or so on election night. That one event has triggered my suspicions about the exit poll data. It would be interesting to see how the exit polling moved over various releases throughout the day. Did NH start with a big lead for Kerry and maintain that all day in the polls or was it tight at about the final numbers until the very end? I'm assuming exit polls produce paper trails, so that would be an interesting if unlikely audit target as well.

what about the exit polls? can anyone provide an explanation for the weirdness?
what about spoiled ballots? at least one bozo election official in florida proudly proclaimed she "tossed out a ton" of provisional ballots.

i am not at all disappointed...thank you so much for all your hard work, Ida :loveya:

a little light on the exit polling data. Mind you this is personal observation only, but I imagine that my experience isn't much different than what any other person who stood beside an exit poller for 90 minutes would have seen at any of the precincts in all of NH.

Here is what I saw -

the exit poller was about 19 years old. she had a sheaf of exit polling worksheets/ballots in her hands and stood about 500 yards from the polling place exit. I was 501 yards away, so she was right next to me.

I voted early, I waited in a short line at about 8AM to cast my vote then head out to hold a Kerry/Edwards sign. Pinkerton Academy, our polling place, was very, very busy. Busier than I have ever seen it on election day with an easy 2500 people passing in and out during the first hour.

In the 90 minutes I stood there the exit poller asked five people if they were interested in an exit poll. Three said no and kept walking. Two filled out exit polling information. In that 90 minute span at least 2000 people walked by.

She approached 5.

That's what was wrong with the exit polling data.

Hummm

thanks.

The reason why I ask is that I think there is a bias to what precincts were selected for the Exit Polls. In my area, which is a Democratic stronghold in North FL, they only polled one precinct for the whole county. For some reason, they went to the most conservative precinct that they could find. The SOE told me, "Funny, they used that precinct last time too. I don't know why they like that one so much?"

Keep in mind, that the company that use to do exit polls was disbanded. We have no idea whether or not this 'new' company and their methods are reliable or not.

I don't have hard numbers in front of me, but I'd guess it's about 60/40 repub/dem

I live in new hampshire and never saw a precinct carry that kind of traffic....thats like over 16,000 for a 12 hour poll day....wanna give me specifics???

http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showa.html?article=46510

"Derry, the state's fourth largest community, had 16,000 registered voters before yesterday's Presidential election and only 13,000 ballots. Swanson hoped she wouldn't run out and have to photocopy extra ballots, then sign each one by hand."

:yourock:

-------------------------------------
S.O.S: Save our Sovereignty!
http://timeforachange.bluelemur.com/

You rock!

How hard would it be to swap out ballots?

Did anyone do a poll to determine if the precinct thought it voted the way it voted?

Your number 4 is important. A paper trail everywhere would help.

I'm thinking that those who would tamper with an election would not likely do it where there is such a complete paper trail, especially in a small state.

The issue of exit polls is an odd one that has not been explained.

In addition to believing that there was provable tampering in at least a few states I continue to believe that there was fraud in all states: the RNC and the media fraudulently and dishonested portrayed the incumbent, the issues, and the challenger to the American people. The basis of democracy is a well informed public. The public was not and is not well informed, therefore democracy was compromised.

one state done we'll just have to look into the others now.

Also thanks for keeping us updated when you could. i wish I could get out of work and go help more

if you vote on an evoting machine, what exactly happens?
you chose who you vote vor, submit and then GET a paper trail zu verify, or does the voter never see the paper trail?

thanks

You mark the ballot (you produce the paper trail); it's read by the machine.

Another point is lurking here: "the fraud occurred at another level" gets harder to support. Presumably one could check the totals at the precinct level that were reported on election day.

As for another person's post: yeah, they could have managed to make sure these precincts weren't rigged, while others were. This means that they'd have to have a pretty good idea that somebody would count, and count there. Or Nader's campaign is part of the rigging, which I don't buy.

a little over a hundred with 58,000+ votes counted

Does that mean that we can expect 2% more out of Ohio during a recount? Before the shenanagaii kick in?

Is my math bad, or is that like 60K votes in Ohio?

As SAT score proves -- no math genius here...pleeeze help.

states B +90 votes JK +60

sorry, but your math is bad. Its not 2 percent. Its .2 percent (two-tenths of one percent). Very small deviation.

onenote

I didn't want to get excited. I thought 58 votes was 1% of 58K, but it's 580. I really stink at cypherin'! Thanks.

Outstanding effort on your part and very much appreciate your concise reporting of what was found.

What is not clear to me from the Nader effort are the following:

1. 11 precincts were counted. Did anyone review the county and state level central tabulation records for those precincts?

2. Is anyone reviewing the county and state level central tabulating records and comparing them to the actual ballots cast at each precinct?

As you may know, many of us are concerned that the scale of 'red shift' detected in numerous state's would likely be most efficiently achieved by truly 'simple' manipulation of tables at county-level tabulation centers. Is anyone undertaking that level of scrutiny in NH, because along with WA, PN, and CA, NH would be one of the primary places to investigate -- but, again, the investigation would have to be a direct comparison of the 'manually counted' ballots with what currently resides in the county-level central tabulation database.

If that type of analysis is not done for NH then we do not have an adequate basis for 'debunking' the 'red shift' for that state (or any of the others) and we'd best not let anyone try to spin it any other way.

Thank you, again, for your cogent and diligent efforts and your sharing them with all of us.

"Halt, Audit & Prove My Vote Counts, Now"

There are 3 possible conclusions:

1. Election was OK in NH and exit polls were flawed due to problems with random sampling.

2. Election was OK in NH and exit polls were flawed due to people lying to pollsters.

3. Election was fraudulent and exit polls were OK, but the fraud was committed the old-fashioned way, by tampering with the ballots.
----------------------
Possibility one suggests a serious problem with the exit polling methodology. We have to find out how it was done and why it was so incorrect. This could have implications for other states, if the same methodology was used there.

Possibility 2 is probably not realistic, though one Du'er stated that something like this happened with a Sununu race a few years. However, I couldn't substantiate this with google.

Possibility 3 requires corrupt or incompetent election officials.
Corrupt state and local govts do exist in the USA. For example, see the "plunder dome" scandal in RI, and a long history of corrupt officials in LA. Whether this extends to voting is unclear. But someone like Rove with a long list of corrupt local and state officials could in theory carry out vote fraud the old-fashioned way, by manipulating the paper ballots themselves--eg substituting a pre-fabricated batch of ballots with the actual ones. Recounts probably won't reveal this.

....as stated in the post above, a state-wide manual recount of each ballot is done and compared to what resides in the tables at each county- and state-level central tabulation database. NH, with a red-shift > 4, would be a top-candidate for that type of scrutiny.

For the moment, though it's red-shift is 'only' 2.9, WA State may be the place we can force the type of comparison that must be made. Because of the Governor's race, a manual recount will happen (most likely). If every ballot can be checked for Pres/VP, as well, and then the comparison done to the current tables in each County's central tabulation system, we will have the type of data needed to BEGIN to resolve the 'miracle of 2 Nov 2004.'

If that type of analysis were done for each 9 or 16 of the 'red shift' states, so rigorously analyzed by 'truthisall' we'd truly BEGIN to have a basis for either trusting our electoral system or not.

The more folk resist doing this type of analysis, the more reason every citizen of this franchise should say simply 'we have no government because we do not know what happened to our vote.'

Thus, my monmanical focus on "Halt, Audit & Prove My Vote Counts, Now"

This is a state that is known for little more than the civic-mindedness of its residents. The kind of systemic fraud Number 3 would require would be hard to imagine in NH, where practically every person is involved in some type of community leadership role.

This isn't 1950s Chicago where you can go into some random precinct with no local oversite and a disenfrachised electorate and do whatever you want to the ballot boxes.

Besides, we won. If you were going to stuff the ballot boxes, wouldn't you try to win?

>Besides, we won. If you were going to stuff the ballot boxes, wouldn't >you try to win?

This technique is limited to precincts where "special" access is available to the manipulators. This means that depending upon how widespread such access is, it probably can't guarantee wins, but rather only change the count in the direction desired by the manipulators.

As for your other point, NH does have a better general reputation than RI for governmental integrity. But what are the specifics? How prevalent are local govt corruption cases in NH?

Bush was trailing Dole big-time in the primaries. He needed NH or he was a goner. But he trailed Dole badly in the NH polls right up to the primary. Everyone was saying Dole would win it - and go on to be the nominee. He was. In 1996.

You can look it up. Google.

Gov. John Sununu to the rescue. An engineer, he knew about the machines which were used to count the votes.

Bush miraculously pulled out a win. Dole was finished.

Bush went on to become the nominee. Then came Willie Horton. The rest is history. Sununu got a job in the administration.

NH has a history of Repuke fraud. Gore would have won the state and the election were it not for Nader. But even if Nader didn't run in 2000, the Repukes would have found a way to steal those 4 EV's.

I said from the get-go it was a bad place to start a recount.
We were gamed in NH. No question in my mind. But...its all conjecture, of course. I have no proof of anything.

Just a hefty skepticism.

Great synopsis.

:toast:

wanted a re-count here. NH isn't a typical population base. People live here because want to live in a rural society with the abscense of big government. There is no state income or sales tax and our state gov't is extremely light.

This state isn't a true-blue/true-red state. There is a huge independent population. People here value freedom more than anything, and this is why the state went against * in 2004. Even our former governer Benson (a republican) fought the admin on several issues, the biggest being Drug Imports from Canada and the environment (though he wasn't nearly strong enough in the environmental issues). Benson wasn't fiscally conservative enough and this is probably the main reason why he lost.

NH voted for * in 2000 because of our anti-gov't stances and we voted against * in 2004 for the very same reasons (not to mention he's an idiot and taking our country on the path to ruin). In NH, nothing is done by gov't unless you can show how its going to be paid for and you get the people who are going to pay for it to agree. Values schmallues... NH sees right through that crap the GOP is pushing; for gov't it all comes down to $, time and resources.

This state is libertarian when it comes to government and economy, and green when it comes to the environment. As far as social goes, to each their own (the state won't do much for you if something bad happens to you... the state depends heavily on charitable organizations to take care of those who can't take care of themselves; and you know what, it works).

out to prove as a "baseline" if the election there came out close to the recount. Maybe they didn't bother with NH or maybe what they did is so hidden it will take more sleuthing to find. But, at least now we have a "start" and in a way that we can't be accused of being whiners... So, if and when we find the "smoking gun" we will have more credibility because of your and Nader's efforts. Just getting the recount was major and look at all the cooperation we are getting from the "Glibs" now!

Btw..did you ever see any Kerry Lawyers while you were there? I'm curious if there really are any or they are just somewhere in the background and we wouldn't know about them. :shrug:

what you may not know is that the NH legislature is the 4th largest legislative body in the world. So our perceived anti-government tendencies are hilariously overstated. As for charitable organizations taking over the social services where the government doesn't, uh... it doesn't work, at least not well.

The state of NH is in turmoil over education funding because we don't collect sales or income taxes and our property tax base cannot effectively fund the needs of the school system. Sure, Lynch wants to raise tobacco taxes, but that won't alleviate the property tax burder or quell any of the animosity from donor towns, many of which have threatned tax revolt.

Here in Derry just closed a fire station because the money to keep it running isn't there. Which charitable organization will take that over? Which charitable organization will take over for the police officers that Manchester can't hire? Which charitable organization is operating homeless shelters and half-way houses for displaced workers?

Oh, that's right, there aren't any.

But it's good that Manchester can put up the construction cash for an arena, and set up the "Gaslight District" meanwhile teachers at West high school can't get printer cartidges, paper, or pencils.

It's easy to say that we don't have the same problems as other states, but it's wrong, because we do. But, we are better at ignoring them.

I said it wasn't your typical red/blue state. Politics are different here than most states.

You definitely raise valid points. NH certainly has its share of problems. It's the way we deal with them that's not typical. We don't have social programs and we don't have an over-inflated administration and we don't spend money irresponsibly (and we're probably have the purse strings too tight as a matter of fact. Why won't the residents of Derry up the property taxes to fund their fire house? If I lived there, I'd be willing to pay for it. I live in Brookline and we FINALLY, after many failed attempts got Hollis/Brookline to agree to spend money on a much needed expansion of the middle school.

I do feel that the charitable programs in NH are better than those in the majority of states, and that's one thing I think is good about NH. As a resident, I give both time and $ to charity because I know its needed. NH residents give more to their community than most. Another example of this is that you don't have to tell us to recycle... everyone just does it (and it saves your town money). Go to anyother state and you won't see this.

I personally don't feel an income tax is a good idea to fix the education problem. Once we do that I strongly doubt that our property taxes are going to go down. Maybe they could lay off some of those legislative members to pay for the currently unconstitutional funding of our education system :-).

I didn't mean to sound accusatory... but I get a little tired of the myth of New Hampshire's special nature... I grew up in mass where social programs were funded and it drives me mental to see lots and lots of people here who could use a helping hand not getting it.

As for the Derry fire station, our taxes are already at the breaking point of 26.90 per thousand. Half of the town, East Derry, is threatening to secede from Derry proper. And with the surge in property value around here because of the housing boom thousands of homeowners are now facing tax bills that exceed their yearly mortgage payments.

An income tax would go a long way towards equalizing things as even renters would be paying into the system. As it stands now renters suffer with high rents to pay the property tax on the buildings where their apartments or rental houses are, but even they are not keeping up with the new assessments and we don't have the employment base to support the increasing cost of living.

for doing this, whatever the results were. We salute your courage, strategic sense, and perseverance! Please do continue to keep us informed as you learn more.

The only real problem is the exit-poll anomaly that it doesn't seem to explain in our favor. We'll see though.

49 to go (plus the District of Columbia).

Thanks Ida.

DU member Mike Lewis has pointed to a strange phenomenon in Ohio: the rapidly increasing numbers of registered voters during the last years and the possibility that some voters were registered, but not eligible.

This kind of fraud - let's call it "overregistration" - would be very hard to detect by a recount.

I am not familiar with the population data of NH, but this might be an explanation for the discrepancy between exit polls and recount data.

I also would suggest not to forget to take a look at the poll books in Ohio.

People just plain lied to the exit pollsters. While I don't believe that this is what happened elsewhere, I believe it is a possibility in NH:
1) Learn to be guarded and love surprises due to their proud ownership of first in nation primary
2) They did it before -- remember the Smith senate race -- the only time other than FL in 2000 that I recall networks retracting a statewide call
3) Plain old ornery Yankee cussedness -- none of your folks business

As for repubs in big cities -- this is the state that is so phobic about taxes that they rely on sin taxes on neighboring Mass for liquour sales tax and -- this is true -- they even have the state police auction off the fur from road kill to help defray salaries and uniforms.:freak:

Show me the link for the "road kill fur auction" or take it back....thems fightin' words..I'm seeing a LOT of what looks like some weird anti rural predjudice here!!

Read this years ago in Yankee Magazine -- and not an April Fools issue-- I am a rural resident in NY and have relatives up there in Sunapee and Portsmouth, who have also mentioned the road kill fur sales-- can try to locate it, and will forward link -- Do you remember the Jeff Smith re-election, where the exit polls had him losing by a mile but he pulled it out:hi:

....but "years ago" don't get it...Actually I would believe it IF it involved tanned hides which would be equally valuable even in Nyc...LOL...Livin' large (if rural) here I felt a small desire to protect my (Adopted) home.We are definitely different and after ten years as a full time resident I would still be hard pressesd to explain it.But I WAS just funnin' you...

http://www.orangepond.com/samples/roadkill.html

Been on Paul Harvey, CBC and elsewhere

Sample text:

By law, New Hampshire's Fish and Game Department collects and stores the carcasses of bears and other furbearers hit on the highways over the course of the year. Each December the animals are sold at auction to raise money for the department and for the state's trapper-education fund. (Deer and moose, the only exceptions, are usually given to the motorists involved in the accidents or else butchered by the state, the meat donated to soup kitchens.) "We're not talking big dollars," says Walt Stevens, a wildlife technician who has been with Fish and Game for 40 years, "but we usually come out a little ahead, and any funds we raise are matched by the federal government." Some years, with proceeds of the auction barely reaching $2,000, after subtracting the cost of collecting and storing, it is unclear whether the state has made a profit at all. Still, the low-key sale has always been eagerly awaited by a small circle of people. Hobbyists and beginning taxidermists can pick up decent specimens for five or ten bucks, and -- though the state doesn't offer the animals for their meat and, in fact, officially recommends against it -- a couple of frugal shoppers each year will buy frozen animals, cheap, for the dinner table.

:pals:

Maybe its just an urban legend

But darn, I was hoping for a surprise.

so again, how is an 11 out 301 precinct recount conclusive? If we're looking for fraud, I think a state wide recount is the only thing that would conclusively show the exit polls were wrong, no?

How can this be conclusive? It reminds me a little of the Miami Herald, no "major" change in 2 1/2 Fl counties = no fraud in Fl story...

Any fraud that took place probably only targeted certain precincts/counties (perhaps with large pops). Also vote tabulations might have been changed after the individual precinct counts or county counts were done.

Yes, I hear you, too, Ms. Briggs:

"...The oddness of the exit polls in New Hampshire still aren't clearly explained to me. I still think the numbers are just plain weird...".

Look funny to me, too. NH's sample size in the paper presented by Prof. Freeman is quite healthy.
And the variance is large (between exit polls and tallies).
Could be that the discrepancy may be in the urban and smaller precincts rather than the larger ones, or perhaps a demographic look could account for this in some urban areas vis a vis MA residents having moved there in past four years.
Even though the larger ones would appear to have the larger discrepancy from the numbers before (i.e., the 2000 election), the fact NH was "battleground" and highly-fluid in pre-election polls, suggest there was a certain "spread" to the numbers, and not just a "depth". That might suggest more rural precincts.
The exit polls weren't divided by precinct although perhaps by urban/rural. Cell phones, and MA residents having moved to NH, perhaps to urban areas, could account for some of this inability to pinpolnt the sources of the discrepancies.
All in all, NH "sort of" deserved a statewide recount, although Diebold not getting into the act is interesting.
There was a certain "volatility" to the numbers this year, in battleground states in pre-election polls, that might explain some of the exit poll seeming errors, too.
That level of volatility suggests something besides the traditional pattern of "urban" (Democratic) being closer, and rural (Republican) being more distant. There's a certain quality about the possible rural Hispanic votes in some states, for example, that makes some of the rural vote somewhat more interesting this time than might be the usual "Democrat strong urban (Popular vote)/Republican strong rural (Electoral College)" clsssic historical pattern. (For example, this in Nevada involved/involves some rural precincts, and there are some weird-looking numbers in some rural Oklahoma precincts.)
But I'm skeptical that cell phones or volatility in pre-election polls in some possibly Hispanic-influenced rural precincts alone explains all of the exit poll discrepancies, or the level of them.
This about the poll tape for that one Ward that was mentioned in the media article about the delay in the Nader recount until after Thanksgiving: I wonder if that was anything? And if it happened elsewhere besides the one Ward that was being followed due to the recount effort? Black Box voting has found this in FL very recently, for example--original poll tapes in trash cans.

....effect an EXIT poll?????

Exit polls are conducted as people are leaving the polling places
I was exit polled once, in 1984. Had I been talking on a cell phone at the time, I might have ignored the exit pollster.
It would have been missed data.
Both no call lists and cell phones were cited as possibly having an impact on PRE-election polling.
It's been wondered if accurate stats were skewed in exit polls as well due to people being on cell phones as they left the polling buildings.
Don't-call lists have no effect on exit polling at all. They might affect pre-election polling.
It's unclear whether the absence of data from given voters in exit polls due to their being on cell phones instead of talking to pollsters, would skew any results. It's just a possibility. But I'm almost sorry I mentioned it, because it's like trying to explain UFOs as swamp gas, when no one really knows what swamp gas is either. In other words, it's an unknown quantity. Cell phones had an effect on exit polls, I nearly know they did. Possibly a new effect. But what effect, I don't know.
I just sent an e-mail to DNC suggesting they consider that successful recounts in AR, IA, and either NM or NV could give Kerry 270 Electoral votes, without either OH or FL. In other words, a third route.
IA was close, as were NM and NV. AR didn't appear that close in the official exit polls, yet graphs were showing it tightening up considerably in the last 12 hours, after Clinton started campaigning in-state for Kerry. Local CBS-TV affiliate in LR, AR, said polls were showing (circa 11/2 early afternoon) a "48 to 48" race in AR, from an earlier 50.8 to 46.4%. So the exit polls could have missed some last minute changes here. (And the exit polls seem to have been in some degree of error, anyway, as we've been discussing.)
We had a power failure in LR on election day. State's office is still taking in statewide data due to "statistical anomalies" that are known already to have affected 50,000 votes in AR, just in two counties out of 75.
Gore asked Clinton not to campaign for him here last time.
We have a sizable disabled vet pop. here, too.
Anti-Vietnam war Demos began to support Kerry as Clinton did, here in state. While disabled vets were also supporting him. It could have gotten into the hundreds of votes difference between them here.

generated by such vote before it is stored to insure that the information it contains is correct. That his/her votes are reflected in the paper trail exactly as they were intended?

....in Rochester NH my paper ballot was fed (by myself) into a device which I believe was an optical scanner,thence never seen again.There is a paper trail-stack of ballots-but NO tie back to the original voter.I believe my vote was counted but if someone both added to the totals and added a stack of "extra" ballots I don't believe this would be detected...

Is it possible that during the downtime something funky happened? I'm not saying it did, but I keep seeing an emphasis on locking things up and such for recounts so it can't happen, and am wondering if there's any chance of that here.???

News, good or bad, from our "celebrities" always is a shot in the arm to us here in the "Blogosphere". One can get to feeling extremely isolated when everything must be viewed through a computer screen. (Hopefully, that fact will work in our favor on Dec 4th and other times when we need people to get out and tackle the problem in person.)

P.S. I don't know how close you work with Kathy Dopp, but I think it is time for the media to make up for past sins by doing a peice *on* UsCountVotes (not just her initial report) and what it is trying to achieve by 2006. I'm sure that DUers and everyone else would be inspired, and would do the best they can to find as prominant a venue/interviewer as possible. Or even if she just wants to drop a note to the Internet at large... I know she is busy, but she's been even more quiet than Bev Harris.

Thank You soooooooo much Ida..i know it was alot of work, but our democracy was well served by you and all others involved in the recount!! bless you!

I'm sure they'd jump at the chance to correspond with you about your experiences in NH.

I'm a newbie here and I don't know if I have PM privileges, but if you could email me or somehow point me to your email, I'll let them know if you can spare the time. You probably have tons of other things to do, but if you could find time for this I'm sure we'd benefit from it for the Ohio recount. Thanks.

nancyATe-earlybirdDOTCOM

Even if there was no Eureka moment, sometimes blind alleys must be travelled before the right way is discovered. We are trying to solve a mystery and it may take considerable time and effort.

I've seen that in my state ...and maybe green isn't looking so bad anymore...

Thanks for your efforts!!!

its too bad you we couldnt have gotten a statewide hand count. i still think that it would have turned up anomalies somewhere.


you did find a couple hundred votes in 11 precints. a couple percent or 3 statewide sure would make the exit polls a little less suspicious.