Diebold vote tally irregularities in the New Hampshire primary?! WHEEE!

[thewayne]

"Multiple indications of vote fraud are beginning to pop up regarding the New Hampshire primary elections. Roughly 80% of New Hampshire precincts use Diebold machines, while the remaining 20% are hand counted. A Black Box Voting contributor has compiled a chart of results from hand counted precincts vs. results from machine counted precincts. In machine counted precincts, Clinton beat Obama by almost 5%. In hand counted precincts, Obama beat Clinton by over 4%, which closely matches the scientific polls that were conducted leading up to the election. Another issue is the Republican results from Sutton precinct. The final results showed Ron Paul with 0 votes in Sutton. The next day a Ron Paul supporter came forward claiming that both she and several of her family members had voted for Ron Paul in Sutton. Black Box Voting reports that after being asked about the discrepancy Sutton officials decided that Ron Paul actually received 31 votes in Sutton, but they were left off of the tally sheet due to 'human error.'"

http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/10/1635225

I think everyone in the country should have to go to Washington, D.C. to vote by dropping a pebble in a box for their candidate of choice. Can't be much worse than what we have right now.

Comments

[silveradept]

I think I'd have to vote absentee in a lot of those cases. But finding someone I could trust in the area to carry my pebble? That would be tough work.

[zentraedi-shep.livejournal.com]

I don't understand your stupid voting system anyway... If it is possible to get 85 million people to vote on the same day over here in Germany, why is it not possible to get a rough 300 million in a country over 27 times as big as Germany to vote on the same day???
Also, we don't have pre-votes for candidates. Those things are done within each party individually (we also have far more than just 2 parties)...

[deborak]

The 18th century system in Virginia was so much better. Men went to their county courthouse on election day, where the candidates stood in person before them, announced their vote, and the chosen candidate then bowed and thanked them as the court clerk made a record. At least you had witnessess to your vote!

[zentraedi-shep.livejournal.com]

I guess there were not that many politically, religiously or other...ly motivated assassination attempts in 18th century Virginia...

[thedragonweaver.livejournal.com]

Oh, we have more parties too, but the news media don't tend to cover them.

The reason we don't all vote on the same day for primaries goes back to a) the federal system, in which each state really does have some power to itself, including when it wants to vote, and b) the eighteenth century, in which it would be silly to have all the votes on the same day because there's no way the candidates could get around to campaign.

Each state also gets to pick the way the primaries are run; larger states such as mine have a pretty standard ballot (which means that propositions and other items of interest also get placed on the ballot), while states such as Iowa have caucuses, with people actually showing up and moving around in response to who they want to vote for.

The only way to smooth these differences out woud be to federalize the state voting process, and there are lots of reasons not to do that, beginning with the incredible outrage you'd have to overcome. The things that work for California would not work particularly well for Rhode Island, and vice versa.

Though I do admit that my county's voting system— fill in the bubble with ink, then scan the sucker into the secure box— has the dual virtues of quick tallies and a paper trail, so I don't understand why other places don't do it.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

That is pretty cool! I'd love to see them do that today, especially when one candidate starts losing by a landslide and still has to thank the voters, not to mention something like our mayoral election last November where the vote went back and forth between the mayor and the challenger with the challenger finally winning.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Our system is absolutely insane. I don't mind the primary/general aspect, but I HATE THE FRICKIN' TWO PARTY SYSTEM! It's really a travesty when it comes to representation, it isn't even a choice of the lesser of two evils anymore (IMO): they're all evil.

The best thing they could do is to abolish the two party system. Smaller candidates can't even get into the televised debates because the networks don't think they'll pull enough viewers. Then people argue that if you have a half dozen different political parties in Congress that they won't be able to get anything done. Well... GOOD! It would force the congress-critters to compromise more and perhaps we'd get more reasonable legislation rather than crap like the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act rammed down our throats without Congress having enough time to read it to find out what it's about.

As they say, if con is the opposite of pro, then Congress is the opposite of Progress.

[zentraedi-shep.livejournal.com]

Okay, so this is essentially a piece of tradition, right? With modern media possibilities, there is no excuse like "well, I don't know who the candidates are since they did not come to my county".
People should let go of traditions that no longer work...

As for the federal aspects, Germany is a federal union as well, still we get to vote on ONE day for the federal votes. On another day we vote for individual state/county/communal votes...

[zentraedi-shep.livejournal.com]

As they say, if con is the opposite of pro, then Congress is the opposite of Progress.

Nicely said... The party system here in Germany is degrading to a 2 parties system as well, we have our CDU (Christdemocratic Union) which could be considered our version of your Republicans and the SPD (Socialdemocratic Party of Deutschland (Germany)) which could be seen as your Democrats. Essentially, both are the same, and at the mo' both have the power since they had to form a grand coalition to be able to rule against the opposition of the other parties. The big ones get about 30% each during votes with the 40% remaining being devided among three other bigger parties and myriads of small ones that don't make the needed 5% to enter our federal chamber...

As you can see, in every democracy politics tend to be a (huge) bit like kindergarten...

[fastlearner.livejournal.com]

While it doesn't address that particular Ron Paul instance, there is a pretty good explanation for why the voting machine percentages differ from the hand-counts: the hand counts were almost all in very rural areas, while the machines were in the more populated areas. There's almost always a difference in voting patterns between those.

On the difference between the pre-polling and the results, there are a lot of potentially valid reasons, including the number of people who feel like they should say they'll vote for the black candidate but who won't actually do it in the booth.