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What to expect from a NH Recount and Why
By Mark Crispin Miller (about the author) Page 2 of 2 page(s)
weekend just before the election, wasn't there? And voters are so obviously
easily swayed by those last minute smear campaigns, as evidenced in these
vote flips going from Shaheen to Sununu so unexpectedly.
So let's say Shaheen decides to ask for a recount under NH law and
tradition. (She didn't, unfortunately.) But let's say she begins with
Manchester. She finds that the hand counted paper ballots in most of the
wards give Sununu a few more votes, maintaining his lead.
It's a known fact that every hand count gives each candidate votes, because
there are always some votes that the machines don't count (write ins, or
mismarked, or whatever).
Shaheen does find that a couple of the wards in the recount give her those
votes and in fact make HER the winner in those wards, and not Sununu. But
not by much, and the differential between the hand and machine count is very small, practically statistically insignificant in and of itself. And even so, the differential uncovered in a hand count is easily explained away (write-ins, folded ballots that were miscounted, etc. etc.).
No reason to suspect tampering at all, especially when the other Manchester
wards reveal no change in the outcome.
When she sees this small and seemingly inconsequential differential is found
in one or two areas, Shaheen, per NH tradition and culture, calls off the
recount, not wanting to appear a "sore loser" or to "waste the Secretary of
State's time" or to "waste" money when "clearly" - although the race was
tight, Sununu had the edge.
What she hasn't figured on, is that this is how vote-rigging is done: by
shaving small percentages off the unfavored candidate in lots of different
districts. She hasn't thought through that all those small shifts add up,
and in fact, she WAS the winner, but never knew because she called off the
recount, per NH tradition, and the full number of ballots were never counted
to get the real result.
So let's say I am an election rigger. In the case of Diebold management, I
have learned the bizness at the feet of the best: Watergate burglars and
embezzlers alike. Given our NH traditions, and since it is well known that
NH almost NEVER conducts full recounts for these high stakes federal races
anyway, rigging the machine count is a risk worth taking for anyone smarmy
enough to undertake such a clumsy enterprise as the phone jamming crime of that same election.
Especially since all you need to do is flip a small percentage of votes from
Shaheen to Sununu in several targeted demographically risky areas. It's a
matter of taking your demographic maps, then overlaying them with your
election programming maps. Line it up, and presto, you've got the vote flips
shifting the race from Shaheen to Sununu.
So this is what we are facing. Lots of little ChoicePoints all over the nation. And we have our own right here in NH: LHS Associates. This is not a good thing for NH, and not for our democracy.
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