Things don't add up in New Hampshire. I cast my vote for a recount.

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Things don't add up in New Hampshire. I cast my vote for a recount.

Is it really possible that 98 percent of New Hampshire voters rejected single-payer not-for-profit health care in Tuesday’s Democratic primary?

Were all the pre-vote polls identifying health care as the number one priority wrong? Do voters really want more of our tax dollars going to for-profit health insurance companies, to their highly-paid CEOs, and to all those stockholders in the form of dividends, as all but one of the Democratic presidential candidates propose, and NOT to funding a single-payer, not-for-profit government-run plan, Medicare for everyone in America, proposed by Congressman Dennis Kucinich?

That’s what Tuesday’s primary election results in New Hampshire would tell us.

Did 98 percent of New Hampshire voters choose to tell the world that they really DON’T want the troops home from Iraq NOW – or within three months of Dennis Kucinich taking office as President next year? Is it OK with 98 percent of New Hampshire voters that our troops will be in Iraq until 2013 or longer, as the three top vote-getters in this contest have predicted? Are New Hampshire Democrats and independents itching for a confrontation with Iran – since Hillary Clinton, Tuesday’s top vote-getter, is the only Democratic presidential candidate to vote to label the Iranian military a terrorist organization?

Did 98 percent of New Hampshire voters really reject the impeachment of the Bush/Cheney administration, by refusing to support the only candidate in the race who has filed such charges of impeachment?

Do 98 percent of New Hampshire voters really like Bill Clinton’s NAFTA, and don’t want the likes of Dennis Kucinich, as President, withdrawing from that ill-fated treaty?

Are there really only 3,845 people in all of New Hampshire, out of the 278,660 votes cast for Democratic candidates Tuesday in New Hampshire, who expressed their support for marriage equality, restoration of our civil liberties, revoking the Patriot Act – along with the above-mentioned universal health care plan, rejection of war as an instrument of foreign policy, and impeachment of an administration gone wild—by voting for Dennis Kucinich?

Really?

If 98 percent of New Hampshire voters cast ballots for the status quo, for more of the same, are those chants of “change, change, change” just a plea for coins in the cup?

Or are you like me, an observer from the neighboring state of Maine, who thought it was strange that, all night long, from the earliest returns to the last, the percentages reported on TV in this race held constant, never wavering as the hours passed?

-40% Clinton

-36% Obama

-17% Edwards

-5% Richardson

-2% Kucinich/Gravel.

All night long.

That fact says that, for every 100 votes cast, whether in a rural hamlet or in what passes for a big city in New Hampshire, a constant 40 voters went for Clinton, 36 went for Obama, 17 went for Edwards, 5 went for Richardson, and 2 went for either Kucinich or Gravel. Never one up one moment and down the next. Never. All night long. The vote totals changed, and the number of precincts reporting went up as the night went on, but the percentages never changed. What are the odds of that happening?

And the exit polls – they had Obama way ahead. Why were they so wrong?

Or were they wrong?

As I understand it, all New Hampshire voters use paper ballots. In the rural areas, people hand-count the votes. In more urban areas, they use vote-counting machines which scan the ballots and record the votes. That’s as in, unsecure, discredited Diebold vote-counting machines.

We see on the blogs today, the day after the vote, that some people on the ground noticed that the hand-counted ballots in their rural towns of New Hampshire actually had different ratios for Clinton/Obama than the machine-counted ballots in the cities. Obama was odds-on favorite when human eyes did the counting, Clinton was always ahead when the machines spit out the numbers. According to these blogs, unsecure Diebold machines are used to count 81% of the votes cast across the state.

But if the rural hand-counted votes had different ratios, why did the percentages reported as the results came in never change on the TV screen?

Also, according to some blogs, votes for Republican Ron Paul seemed to disappear, even in rural areas, unless questioned, when suddenly a transcription error would be discovered. What’s with that?

Concerns have been expressed for months, all across America, that this election could be stolen, as many believe the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen. Are we seeing the first evidence of that possibility in New Hampshire’s vote?

I think it’s entirely possible. Too many things are not adding up.

There is one way to settle the issue. A statewide recount.

New Hampshire is small enough, and this issue is serious enough, that I think a recount should be done. A supervised, monitored, video-recorded hand-count. Of this entire vote.

The ballots exist, they aren’t electrons on some computer hard-drive somewhere, so this is possible to do.

If you are as concerned as I am, call or email the campaign office of your favorite candidate (whoever he or she may be) and ask the campaign to request/authorize a recount. See what they say. Call the New Hampshire Secretary of State with your concerns. Call your Congressman (after all, this is a federal election) and ask him or her to launch an investigation.

And all you New Hampshire Kucinich supporters, call your local precinct and make sure your vote was counted – as some Ron Paul supporters have done, some of whom haven’t liked what they found out. And if your vote somehow “disappeared,” call the Kucinich campaign and let them know.

A recount can be done quickly, and needs to be done soon. This week if possible. Definitely before February 5, Super-Voting-Tuesday, when Democrats in 22 states vote for their nominee -- many of them on Diebold voting machines.

I hope you’re with me on this. After all, your health care, your job, your civil rights, and the credibility of our government are at stake here.

Authors Bio:

Writer and political activist Jean Hay Bright is now semi-retired, running an organic farm in Dixmont Maine with her husband David Bright. Her two political books are "Proud to be a Card-Carrying, Flag-Waving, Patriotic American Liberal (1996), and "A Tale of Dirty Tricks: Susan Collins v. Public Record" (2002) about Maine's 1996 U.S. Senate race. In 2006, she was Maine's Democratic candidate who ran against U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe. Her 2003 memoir, "Meanwhile, Next Door to the Good Life," about homesteading next to authors Helen and Scott Nearing, was revised in 2013 to include a chapter on Scott Nearing's FBI file.