NH Recount In Ward 5 Producing Distrubing Results

That is unnerving...often ~1% error for each of the most "major" candidates (usually uncounted votes).

What perhaps disturbs me more is how the "minor" candidates sometimes still had uncounted votes, even with a small number of total votes.

And what's this one:

Yeah, I have been watching this. I reckon this was Kucinich's point. It may not change the overall results, but dammit, shouldn't the machines have a greater accuracy than this?

Hillary's votes in that Manchester Ward 5 got reduced by almost 10%...

683 -> 619

(683 - 619)/683) = 9.37%

It's simply inconceivable to me that a machine could screw up by that much. Diebold, ESS and Sequoia should be fired - electoral boards should by the systems that the College Board uses. Those seem to do a damn good job reading hundreds of #2 pencil markings on a single sheet of paper, (or if they screw up, it seems to be in my favor, my SATs are pretty respectable) whereas OpScan machines/touch-screen machines are having issues with maybe 10 markings per sheet. (In North Carolina, you connect two bits of an arrow >- -> to be >-===-> to vote for someone. At least, that's what happened maybe 8 years ago, the last time I voted with my mom... But I get to vote this election, and I'm pretty damn pleased.)

The American people should be PISSED. You are getting screwed big time!

Democracy is about to flat line.

I find this odd - based on the numbers so far, each of the 3 major candidates net out to a loss of 12 votes.

WTF????????????????????????
Accountability please. A paper trail is necessary. Protect the electoral process.

wow that is a bad margin of error.

Recounting ballots is equivalent to pointing to the kid across the table and whining "he's got more ice cream than me!"

It appears every state is paranoid and distrust the accuracy of their voting systems ever since the Bush/Gore campaign. They are second guessing themselves and the voters.

So who is doing the recount, how are the accuracy and veracity rates, and are there any observers to this process?
Personally, ballots ought to be 3-part - one for the reader, one for a separate stack in case hand counting is called, and one for the voter to take with him/her.

Who is doing the recount? How are the accuracy and veracity rates? Who is verifying results?
Personally, I think ballots should be 3-part: one for the reader, one for the 'in case of hand recount stack', and one for the voter to take with him/her.

Skeptic 227981 this is a great idea. There should be a way to assign a hidden number to each ballot. But it is my contention that if there is a will to cheat cheat they will. In my state one way to avoid a recount is to remove and replace one of the seals. If the seals do not match the poll book the precinct stands as originally counted. No recount can be done. In my opinion that's the precinct that needs to be recounted.

Gee...I live in New Hampshire and I'm having a hard time seeing anything unusual in these recounts.

Something many of you might not know is that with the exception of the cities most of NH still votes with paper ballots. I am an elected official and have participated in more than a few recounts, the numbers always move.

Paper ballots may have the best audit trail but they're also a bitch to count.

There may be a legitimate reason for the variations,but you need to verify what it is an try to correct it. We had as board of canvassers a very unusual result in one present and it turned out that all of the absentee ballots had not been processed they were still in the Clerk's office. Not good. We were talking 74 vote discrepancy. In another instances there was a problem with the machine picking up a non existing vote for write in and we went through all the ballots and sure enough no one voted in the spot but it was counting write in votes and we had legitimate write in candidates. No good.

I agree a little paranoia is healthy especially in today's society where everyone seems to be cheating or cutting corners.

people need to recognize that paper ballots carry an extremely high systemic burden to count accurately.

Beon, you just can't be serious. I don't care how high the systemic burden is to have an accurate count of the votes. If we don't have that, pretty much nothing else matters.

What difference does it make if people use paper ballots? Their still scanned by Diebold machines. Plus people can still BURN, LOOSE, or CHANGE the paper ballots.

What you need to do is ARREST the bad guys!

luckydog

Well, we certainly could abandon technology to do this but I am not convinced we have to.

But why cling to it if it's not necessary? It is a little expensive after all. Why not do the least expensive, most effective thing even if it's low-tech?

You put all the candidates names on a piece of paper called a ballot, and you put a secure, tamper-proof box nearby to drop the ballot in. You do whatever you have to do to be sure each box and each ballot is treated like a holy relic whose chain of custody is rigorously accounted for, kind of like a nuclear warhead. (Don't anybody say "Minot.") After everybody who wants to vote has voted you count them all, which counting process is also supervised with rigorous integrity. We really do already know how to do this. We knew how to do it even before Diebold did.

Uh guys, um, I've been following the NH recount, and the document has been changed from a few days ago if you go to the main NH government website where they repost the results. Ron Paul was sitting at a recount of 96 last time I checked. Where did all the numbers go? They don't even have all of the Democratic numbers up there anymore...What is going on? Where are the recount totals for the Dems... Will someone please explain? Damnit...this is really starting to get frustrating.

They switched because they have quit freaking counting and it is really hard to hind the previous results from the other county with the significant differences. I don't understand how they ran out of funding. I thought Kuninch already payed them. Will someone explain to me how this works or point me to a website where I can read about the recount process?

Do we smell a Clinton intervention here. Kuninch will take this to court or he will tried to get the Justice Department look into it. He is for reform and he will make some kind of attack on this crap.