Friday, January 18, 2008

Early NH Primary Recounts Full of Errors

NH SoS primary recount full of errors so far (click on the pic to enlarge)

I can't see that it would swung the primary for Hillary as many of the conspiracies claim (this is just the first county reporting though so who knows what the rest of the results will bring), or altered the end result in any way, but just look at the recount totals being posted by the NH Secretary of State.

www.sos.nh.gov/recountresults.htm

They are full of errors in most of the precincts/wards reporting so far. Maybe they are errors in these hand recounts. If so, how would you know? I doubt it but it was worth mentioning. I'm not positive whether/which some or all of Hillsborough county's precincts/wards' ballots were hand-counted for the official primary results or whether they were machine read. It's my understanding that some precincts/wards in NH hand-count the official results and others use Diebold's optical scan machines that read paper ballots, not the electronic touchscreens. It's not the bunch of undervotes in Manchester Ward 5 that worries me so much. Those could be a malfunctioning optical reader that has trouble reading the ballots. A serious problem indeed, but it doesn't seem nefarious or like it favored one candidate so much over another.

What worries me is all of the overvotes! (the numbers in blue) How exactly do the machines count votes more than once?

If you ask me, this isn't even close to good enough for any democracy.

* I moved the columns around to put the candidates side by side and added the plus/minus in blue/red respectively.

Bradblog has more

[LATE UPDATE] Partial Primary Recount Ends After Finding Few Errors
Results Don't Change Significantly For Candidates

And again: Bradblog has more (including an updated recount graphic like the one above by yours truly)