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Experts Question Clinton's New Hampshire Primary Win
By Steven Rosenfeld
January 11, 2008
Election integrity activists parsing the precinct-level results from New
Hampshire's Democratic Primary say their early analyses have found
anomalies suggesting vote totals may have been altered to deliver a
Hillary Clinton victory.
The activists, led by the Election Defense Alliance
<http://www.electiondefensealliance.org/>, a nonprofit formed after the
2004 election when exit polls also predicted a victory by a candidate
other then the eventual winner, point to a series of discrepancies when
comparing the official results from hand-counted and machine-counted
paper ballots. Computer scanners, much like a standardized test, counted
80 percent of the ballots.
They begin by noting that Barack Obama won in hand-counted precincts,
which tend to be more rural with fewer voters. In contrast, Clinton won
in the precincts where computers tallied results, which are larger
towns, cities and Boston suburbs. That discrepancy suggested that had
the computer-counted ballots been tallied by hand, Clinton might not
have won a victory defying pre-election polls, the activists said.
Anthony Stevens, New Hampshire's assistant secretary of state, said on
Thursday that the hand count-computer count discrepancy was not unusual.
He noted that in 2004 Democrat Howard Dean largely carried the
hand-count precincts while John Kerry won most of the computer-count
locales.
However, later on Thursday, Bruce O'Dell, an information technology
consultant who is coordinating Election Defense Alliance's analysis,
found the percentages of the vote given to Obama and Clinton, according
to which counting method was used, were mirror images "down to the sixth
decimal place."
"There is a remarkable relationship between Obama and Clinton votes,
when you look at votes tabulated by op-scan (computers) versus votes
tabulated by hand:
Clinton optical scan: 91,717 (52.95%)
Obama optican scan: 81,495 (47.05%)
Clinton hand-counted: 20,889 (47.05%)
Obama hand-counted: 23,509 (52.95%)
"The percentages seem to be swapped," he wrote, in a short piece posted
Thursday on OpEdNews.com. "That seems highly unusual, to say the least."
O'Dell's report has lead many election integrity activists to conclude
that New Hampshire's Democratic primary was "stolen" for Clinton. There
have been numerous emails saying exactly that on a list-serve used by
activists who are parsing the official primary results. Clinton beat
Obama by 7,603 votes, according to the official results.
Interviewed on Friday, O'Dell said it was premature to jump to any
conclusion other than the Democratic primary results were "suspect." He
and others involved in scrutinizing the primary data said activists and
others who were making premature conclusions would undermine their
efforts to investigate the vote count.
"We are trying to be very careful on how we are phrasing this," he said.
Parsing the primary vote
O'Dell said he is focusing on examining the results within New Hampshire
counties, to see if there are variations in candidate percentages in
nearby precincts where ballots were counted by hand and counted by
computer scanners. If there are variations in areas with similar
socioeconomic profiles, he said that would re-enforce "the hypothesis"
that the computerized count was inaccurate.
"This is a data-mining exercise," O'Dell said, adding that by Friday he
and other researchers had narrowed their focus to three counties in
southeastern New Hampshire, where most of the state's population lives.
"We have made a considerable amount of progress," he said.
O'Dell's methodology has precedents. Election integrity activists in
Ohio used it after 2004 to show the uneven deployment of voting machines
in Franklin County caused John Kerry to lose nearly 17,000 votes. That
figure emerged after activist investigators found that some precincts in
Columbus's inner city lacked sufficient numbers of voting machines.
Thus, by comparing voter turnout in the properly supplied precincts to
nearby precincts that lacked machines -- causing long lines and people
to leave -- they projected how many votes were lost. That analysis led a
federal judge to order Ohio counties to preserve 2004 election records.
O'Dell also said he was looking for New Hampshire precincts with spikes
in voter turnout and precincts where Clinton's margin was significantly
greater than in neighboring towns. Spikes and margins, if found, could
suggest vote padding. This methodology was used in Ohio in 2004, notably
by Democratic staff investigators for the House Judiciary Committee, who
found improbably high turnouts and vote margins favoring George W. Bush
in rural counties.
Of course, the bottom line suggested by the Election Defense Alliance's
inquiry is partisans somehow accessed New Hampshire's electronic voting
machines to alter the outcome in Clinton's favor. While O'Dell
acknowledged his findings and inquiry were building a case toward vote
count fraud, he would not speculate how that could happen.
"The how to me is irrelevant," he said. "I work on IT (information
technology) systems. There is a long catalog of vulnerabilities."
But the "how" question is very significant. Every election official
interviewed for this report, from New Hampshire and other New England
states using the same voting system as was used in New Hampshire's
primary, and some of the nation's top voting rights attorneys, did not
believe Clinton's primary victory was stolen.
While they agreed the mainstream media should do more to stand behind
their exit polls and investigate what happened with the vote count, they
cited other unreported factors that could have led to Clinton's victory,
including last-minute mistakes by Obama's campaign with contacting New
Hampshire voters.
Verifying the vote
While the election integrity activists press on with their analysis --
feeding speculation that a prominent Democrat has now joined prominent
Republicans in "stealing" an important election -- it appears the
political process will address the question.
On Friday, New Hampshire's secretary of state office confirmed that
Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich had formally requested
a recount of the Democratic primary vote. A Republican, Albert Howard,
also requested a recount in his party's presidential primary.
Secretary of State William Gardner did not return a phone call Friday to
comment on the inquiry by the election integrity activists and discuss
the recount. However, an official in his office said that "we will
recount each and every paper ballot," and the process was "completely
public."
Oddly, some activists are opposing Kucinich's recount request, saying
there are "chain of custody" issues concerning the primary's paper
ballots. They also say a private contractor hired by the state to
maintain and program the scanners would be involved in the recount.
Their solution is a more transparent counting process on Election Night,
according to several statements posted online.
Still, it is important to remember there is a paper trail in New
Hampshire that can be used to verify the vote -- if those ballots are
counted by hand, not run through possibly suspect scanners. In South
Carolina, which will hold its primary later this month, all the voting
is on paperless electronic machines. No recount is even possible there.
The timing of the New Hampshire recount is unclear. As of late Friday,
Kucinich's campaign had not yet paid a $2,000 deposit, an official in
the secretary of state's office said. And the campaign will have to pay
for its full cost.
"It will be many thousand dollars," the official said on the phone.
/ Steven Rosenfeld is a senior fellow at Alternet.org and co-author of
/What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the
2004 Election <http://alternet.bookswelike.net/isbn/1595580697>/, with
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman (The New Press, 2006). /
By Steven Rosenfeld
January 11, 2008
Election integrity activists parsing the precinct-level results from New
Hampshire's Democratic Primary say their early analyses have found
anomalies suggesting vote totals may have been altered to deliver a
Hillary Clinton victory.
The activists, led by the Election Defense Alliance
<http://www.electiondefensealliance.org/>, a nonprofit formed after the
2004 election when exit polls also predicted a victory by a candidate
other then the eventual winner, point to a series of discrepancies when
comparing the official results from hand-counted and machine-counted
paper ballots. Computer scanners, much like a standardized test, counted
80 percent of the ballots.
They begin by noting that Barack Obama won in hand-counted precincts,
which tend to be more rural with fewer voters. In contrast, Clinton won
in the precincts where computers tallied results, which are larger
towns, cities and Boston suburbs. That discrepancy suggested that had
the computer-counted ballots been tallied by hand, Clinton might not
have won a victory defying pre-election polls, the activists said.
Anthony Stevens, New Hampshire's assistant secretary of state, said on
Thursday that the hand count-computer count discrepancy was not unusual.
He noted that in 2004 Democrat Howard Dean largely carried the
hand-count precincts while John Kerry won most of the computer-count
locales.
However, later on Thursday, Bruce O'Dell, an information technology
consultant who is coordinating Election Defense Alliance's analysis,
found the percentages of the vote given to Obama and Clinton, according
to which counting method was used, were mirror images "down to the sixth
decimal place."
"There is a remarkable relationship between Obama and Clinton votes,
when you look at votes tabulated by op-scan (computers) versus votes
tabulated by hand:
Clinton optical scan: 91,717 (52.95%)
Obama optican scan: 81,495 (47.05%)
Clinton hand-counted: 20,889 (47.05%)
Obama hand-counted: 23,509 (52.95%)
"The percentages seem to be swapped," he wrote, in a short piece posted
Thursday on OpEdNews.com. "That seems highly unusual, to say the least."
O'Dell's report has lead many election integrity activists to conclude
that New Hampshire's Democratic primary was "stolen" for Clinton. There
have been numerous emails saying exactly that on a list-serve used by
activists who are parsing the official primary results. Clinton beat
Obama by 7,603 votes, according to the official results.
Interviewed on Friday, O'Dell said it was premature to jump to any
conclusion other than the Democratic primary results were "suspect." He
and others involved in scrutinizing the primary data said activists and
others who were making premature conclusions would undermine their
efforts to investigate the vote count.
"We are trying to be very careful on how we are phrasing this," he said.
Parsing the primary vote
O'Dell said he is focusing on examining the results within New Hampshire
counties, to see if there are variations in candidate percentages in
nearby precincts where ballots were counted by hand and counted by
computer scanners. If there are variations in areas with similar
socioeconomic profiles, he said that would re-enforce "the hypothesis"
that the computerized count was inaccurate.
"This is a data-mining exercise," O'Dell said, adding that by Friday he
and other researchers had narrowed their focus to three counties in
southeastern New Hampshire, where most of the state's population lives.
"We have made a considerable amount of progress," he said.
O'Dell's methodology has precedents. Election integrity activists in
Ohio used it after 2004 to show the uneven deployment of voting machines
in Franklin County caused John Kerry to lose nearly 17,000 votes. That
figure emerged after activist investigators found that some precincts in
Columbus's inner city lacked sufficient numbers of voting machines.
Thus, by comparing voter turnout in the properly supplied precincts to
nearby precincts that lacked machines -- causing long lines and people
to leave -- they projected how many votes were lost. That analysis led a
federal judge to order Ohio counties to preserve 2004 election records.
O'Dell also said he was looking for New Hampshire precincts with spikes
in voter turnout and precincts where Clinton's margin was significantly
greater than in neighboring towns. Spikes and margins, if found, could
suggest vote padding. This methodology was used in Ohio in 2004, notably
by Democratic staff investigators for the House Judiciary Committee, who
found improbably high turnouts and vote margins favoring George W. Bush
in rural counties.
Of course, the bottom line suggested by the Election Defense Alliance's
inquiry is partisans somehow accessed New Hampshire's electronic voting
machines to alter the outcome in Clinton's favor. While O'Dell
acknowledged his findings and inquiry were building a case toward vote
count fraud, he would not speculate how that could happen.
"The how to me is irrelevant," he said. "I work on IT (information
technology) systems. There is a long catalog of vulnerabilities."
But the "how" question is very significant. Every election official
interviewed for this report, from New Hampshire and other New England
states using the same voting system as was used in New Hampshire's
primary, and some of the nation's top voting rights attorneys, did not
believe Clinton's primary victory was stolen.
While they agreed the mainstream media should do more to stand behind
their exit polls and investigate what happened with the vote count, they
cited other unreported factors that could have led to Clinton's victory,
including last-minute mistakes by Obama's campaign with contacting New
Hampshire voters.
Verifying the vote
While the election integrity activists press on with their analysis --
feeding speculation that a prominent Democrat has now joined prominent
Republicans in "stealing" an important election -- it appears the
political process will address the question.
On Friday, New Hampshire's secretary of state office confirmed that
Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich had formally requested
a recount of the Democratic primary vote. A Republican, Albert Howard,
also requested a recount in his party's presidential primary.
Secretary of State William Gardner did not return a phone call Friday to
comment on the inquiry by the election integrity activists and discuss
the recount. However, an official in his office said that "we will
recount each and every paper ballot," and the process was "completely
public."
Oddly, some activists are opposing Kucinich's recount request, saying
there are "chain of custody" issues concerning the primary's paper
ballots. They also say a private contractor hired by the state to
maintain and program the scanners would be involved in the recount.
Their solution is a more transparent counting process on Election Night,
according to several statements posted online.
Still, it is important to remember there is a paper trail in New
Hampshire that can be used to verify the vote -- if those ballots are
counted by hand, not run through possibly suspect scanners. In South
Carolina, which will hold its primary later this month, all the voting
is on paperless electronic machines. No recount is even possible there.
The timing of the New Hampshire recount is unclear. As of late Friday,
Kucinich's campaign had not yet paid a $2,000 deposit, an official in
the secretary of state's office said. And the campaign will have to pay
for its full cost.
"It will be many thousand dollars," the official said on the phone.
/ Steven Rosenfeld is a senior fellow at Alternet.org and co-author of
/What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the
2004 Election <http://alternet.bookswelike.net/isbn/1595580697>/, with
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman (The New Press, 2006). /
