Just got off the phone with HQ

[time4change]

Kill this recount talk. We need to focus on winning the other primaries. If there is fraud, it will come out eventually.

Yes, it will come out all by its lonesome. Not because of asking questions, or digging deeper, but by sticking your head in the sand.

For the love of God, please let NH go!

Great advice. Let it go. There will be no fraud in other States. New Hampshire is just an anomaly.

New Hampshire is water under the bridge. Time to saddle up for Michigan.

Water under the bridge? Tell that to the people who busted their asses off in NH, expecting their votes to count!

 

[Electric Church]

+1

way to attack these creeps


grrrrrrr

 

[Opiner]

I think that Dr. Ron Paul should not ask for just a recount but for a full investigation. He should clearly state that he intends in making sure all future elections in other states genuine and anybody got caught misrepresenting the results will not be dealt with lightly. I do not like the reaction of the people in the HQs because the whole reason for supporting Dr. Ron Paul is for upholding the constitution and justice. If Dr. Ron Paul cannot take a strong position against injustice now then why should we believe he will do it when he is in office?

 

[deedles]

It's amazing how some people think they can make demands to the official campaign for whatever reason.

Get off your lazy ass and contact the New Hampshire State Elections Board if you feel that strongly about a recount. http://www.doj.nh.gov/elections/complaints.html

The people of New Hampshire should decide for themselves whether they feel their vote has been properly counted. Remember this is all about personal responsibility,

Spamming the campaign with these requests are a waste of time, energy, and resources that otherwise could be used elsewhere.

Should there be a recount? Absolutely, if the people of New Hampshire are legitimately concerned and know for certain of any voting irregularities in their district/counties. Like the one in Sutton for example.

Should the campaign make an official request, demand, or pay for a state-wide recount? No thanks. That is absurd.

Besides, any recount performed should be free of charge since the mistake was made by the State Election Commission, not the people of New Hampshire who rightfully exercised their right in voting for their candidate.

If anything we should get a 31% discount for any recount fee for the 31 votes for Ron Paul that were unaccounted for and MIA.

Either that, or we could go in 50/50 with Obama supporters for a full independent recount, because he was also cheated in my view.

+1

 

[Opiner]

I think it is simpler than we think. The whole election process should be under strict supervision with people from the general public. The most important thing is the final count where they release the results. This is probably where the misrepresentation happens.

 

[alexa doherty]

Because the campaign has been too mellow from the start. We have given them 20 million dollars and they need to spend 60K on a recount!

I agree.

 

[alexa doherty]

I think it is simpler than we think. The whole election process should be under strict supervision with people from the general public. The most important thing is the final count where they release the results. This is probably where the misrepresentation happens.

+ 1 trillion. We need to get rid the vote tabulating machines as well. Just say no to machines.

 

[jawrightbiz]

My question is

On a fundamental level why was one company allowed to provide all of the machines for every single precinct in NH?

 

[alaric]

i don't know whether a recount would substantially change Dr Paul's numbers or his standing. but there is substantial circumstantial evidence that things went wrong.

PARTICULARLY on the Dem side! getting 38.8 to 34.7 in hand-counted ballots and 35.8 to 40.1 in machine-counted ballots is a serious statistical problem. and it would have a VERY LARGE IMPACT on the race. add into the mix the polls going into NH and everyone scratching their heads today about what in world caused Clinton to pull such a big upset.....

i think we should be contacting the Obama campaign and ask them to join with the Paul campaign to ask, if not for a full recount, at least a random audit of 5-10% of the precincts. from what i've read, only official candidates can challenge results and/or request recounts (could be wrong, but i read that somewhere).

Obama's campaign HQ: (866) 675-2008

i called. i asked if they were considering asking for a recount. he said no, it didn't seem like a big deal and they didn't want to seem like sore losers. i started talking about the discrepancies and he said, "you mean the difference between the exit polls and the actual tallies?" i said, "no, i mean the difference between the hand-counted votes and the machine-counted votes. the hand-counted votes put obama clearly in the lead." he said, "really??! this is the first i've heard of this." i told him i was a paul supporter and that i thought it might be good if the two campaigns teamed up to do something and he got real enthusiastic and said he would pass the info on. i also gave him the url: http://ronrox.com/paulstats.php

honestly... i would rather hillary get the nom, because she would be way easier to take down in the general, but right is right and wrong is wrong.

i like this! However Hillary would be harder to beat, simply because she is in control (or knows someone who is) of counting the votes!

 

[sbradbury]

If all the people on this forum that spent their time here crying, bitching and making threats went out and did something productive for the campaign(you know, out in that crazy scary REAL WORLD place, omfg) we wouldn't be worried about a few miscounted votes we'd be winning by such a large margin.

 

[alaric]

Both arguments - recount or no - each have their merits, in my opinion. The "fraud" mentioned is, let's be honest, PURE speculation at this point. However, I HAVE heard enough evidence of POSSIBLE fraud that might warrant a recount IF we can get both the grassroots major and campaign to gather the evidence into a plausible argument on its behalf. If some of you REALLY think that a recount is really necessary, then the first step HAS to be fact-finding. Put together a missive; the grassroots, I daresay, will dissect ANYTHING proposed in a matter of hours (or minutes), so don't be bashful if you are truly commited. If the pro-recount argument really holds water, then no one should object to a clear presentation of factual evidence (if such exists).

Regardless, I think both sides of this argument should treat each other with a little more "grassroots comradarie." We're all on the same team, right?

...RIGHT?

AMEN brother! we are on the same team! those who want recounts should state so objectively and those that don't want it to do the same. What good does it do to offend a fellow supporter by nastiness and name-calling.

 

[Swmorgan77]

The person went on to say that if you request a recount that can have blowback and cause voters to think you're a fringe candidate.

So with this blowback we lose what... votes that we don't know will even be counted?

Ok fine, so the campaign doesn't want the bad press of doing it, can an initiative of citizens ask for an pay for a recount?

 

[Zappa's Brain]

You have to see the risks! Vote fraud is a serious accusation. I don't think the evidence is strong enough to proof a significant "misscount".

There are several ways to make us look bad.

1) There is no fraud to begin with.
2) The recounts shows that we have 50 votes more. It's insignificant and will be "human mistakes".
3) There is vote fraud, but those who recount are the same, so we never find out.

All this will make us look like a stupid, conspiracy fanatic, fringe campaign of sore loser.

We can verify 31, 25 and then 600 others in three towns. If you have 25 average "mistakes" in 200 towns or wards, that is 5000 votes we are off by. The evidence is likely destroyed but Obama too has lost 10K to 25K votes so why not get him to do it? We need to show voters who is behind this.

 

[alaric]

here's a report i just got

Where Paper Prevailed, Different Results
By Lori Price, www.legitgov.org
2008 New Hampshire Democratic Primary Results --Total Democratic Votes: 286,139 - Machine vs Hand (RonRox.com) 09 Jan 2008
Hillary Clinton, Diebold Accuvote optical scan: 39.618%
Clinton, Hand Counted Paper Ballots: 34.908%
Barack Obama, Diebold Accuvote optical scan: 36.309%
Obama, Hand Counted Paper Ballots: 38.617%
Machine vs Hand:
Clinton: 4.709% (13,475 votes)
Obama: -2.308% (-6,604 votes)
2008 New Hampshire Republican Primary Results --Total Republican Votes: 236,378 Machine vs Hand (RonRox.com) 09 Jan 2008
Mitt Romney, Diebold Accuvote optical scan: 33.075%
Romney, Hand Counted Paper Ballots: 25.483%
Ron Paul, Diebold Accuvote optical scan: 7.109%
Paul, Hand Counted Paper Ballots: 9.221%
Machine vs Hand:
Romney: 7.592% (17,946 votes)
Paul: -2.112% (-4,991 votes)
The numbers you report in "Where Paper Prevailed, Different Results" (1/9/08) certainly merit further investigation. The next step would be to get standard deviations and do a simple difference of means test. This would tell the probability that these results could have occurred by chance. --CLG reader Brian D'Agostino, Ph.D., New York, NY
The difference between results from hand-counting and machine-counting do not necessarily signify that the machine-counting is wrong. Other factors may be involved. For example, voting machines may have been used in wealthier, more moderate neighborhoods. There may not be a causal connection between machine-counted ballots and differing totals. One cannot assume that machines are necessarily wrong while hand-counting is necessarily right. --Michael Rectenwald
*****
NH: "First in the nation" (with corporate controlled secret vote counting) By Nancy Tobi 07 Jan 2008 81% of New Hampshire ballots are counted in secret by a private corporation named Diebold Election Systems (now known as "Premier"). The elections run on these machines are programmed by one company, LHS Associates, based in Methuen, MA. We know nothing about the people programming these machines, and we know even less about LHS Associates. We know even less about the secret vote counting software used to tabulate 81% of our ballots. [See also CLG's Coup 2004 and Yes, Gore DID win!.]
New Hampshire Primary - ALL Diebold, ALL the Time By Michael Collins 08 Jan 2008 It's been nearly eight years since the debacle of Florida and nearly six since the miracle Chambliss win against Cleland. Surely we have reliable, verifiable voting systems in place? It's been almost four years since the nationwide disaster of the 2004 election with irregularities still emerging. Hasn't all this been fixed? You'd think so. But, the answer is definitely no. Votes are still taken by voting machines produced by vendors highly sympathetic to the Republican Party. The machines are still off limits to those who want to examine how they operate and observe real vote counting.




"Government is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force, and like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful Master" --George Washington

There is no slippery slope toward loss of liberties, only a long staircase where each step downward must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders .--Alan K. Simpson


Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
-- Henry David Thoreau


--

 

[LukeNM]

If we lose the nomination by two delegates then we can request a recount!

 

[Suzu]

Granny Warrior chipin for a recount:

http://grannywarrior.chipin.com/recount

This is not good. ONLY the candidate can ask for a recount. Also, she is saying that we "have a week" and the rules say it must be requested by the Friday after the election. That's tomorrow.

So what happens to the money when we find out that we cannot ask for a recount and we're too late even if we could?

I'll tell you what happens: Paypal just made a small fortune in fees for all those erroneous payments, and we will have accomplished nothing.

 

[peacemonger]

Ok. Ignore my earlier post. Still think we should focus on the the upcoming races but if y'all want to press the fraud issue, you have my full support now.

I just ran simple statistical test of 2 proportions to determine the probability of achieving the vote count we got. I compared the 9.2345% of the hand count to the 7.2332% of the machine count. The procedure revealed a Z score of 14.023 and a probability of less than 0.00001. In other words, there is no way in hell that the vote count is accurate.

A 95% confidence level prediction (standard for statistical outcomes) would have put our machine count percentage at between 9.0918 and 9.3773.

There is less than a 1 in 100,000 chance that this vote count discrepancy could occur naturally.

I used the numbers in this web page. http://ronrox.com/paulstats.php?party=REPUBLICANS

Remarkably, we still didn't do that well in New Hampshire. Even if the vote count is corrected, we still probably come in 4th just barely ahead of Giuliani and still behind Mike Huckabee. I do think this vote was rigged to benefit Romney. Is this effort worth pursuing? I'm still not sure it is the best use of our time.

Even though the vote may have been rigged to benefit Romney, the truth is that McCain still beat him. I think we need to be focusing on getting out message out so that we can do much better next time. Just my opinion.

 

[RickyJ]

I am as mad as anyone here about the voter fraud going on. But the campaign is right. If we start talking about voter fraud now and demanding recounts then it is highly likely the media will spin this into Ron Paul is a whiner and sore loser. Most boob tube watchers will be reminded of Gore doing this in 2000 and won't like it. At least wait until after Super Tuesday to demand recounts.

 

[Opiner]

Ron should mention that the people are concerned about voter fraud. He should address the American people and let them know that it is their responsibility to ensure the integrity of the elections. If each one of us did his part things will be better. The campaign should contact the person in charge of the voting process in each state and pass down the people's concern and inform them that they would expect an impartially executed process and if any negligence was evident that they will be held accountable.

 

[Conza88]

NO RECOUNT - CALL FROM RON PAUL OFFICIAL CAMPAIGN.

That wld be fken STUPID!

You want to look fringe, you ASK for a recount. What good will ASKING do? They'll just decline.. and then you alientate your campaign even more..

NO. ASK FOR A RECOUNT in the name of Obama, lol. Keep RP out of it.