Why does the hand count favor Obama and the machine vote goes to Hillary?

[Emit]

I have seen one thread after another since Texas hybrid primary caucus here accusing Obama supporters of intimidating caucus goers, having hired plants in various caucuses, etc.

But, why isn't anyone considering what alternative theories may apply? Why, for example, does the hand counted caucuses and primaries favor Obama, and the machine counted primaries favor Clinton?


I'm really curious about this.

We have touch-screen counted votes and hand counted votes, but we also have something entirely new. In fact this new factor is ( as far as I’m concerned ) the definitive evidence.

Let’s start with Rhode Island. Unfortunately, the state is entirely touch-screen voting. No real paper trail, and no chance of arguing with the machine. However I will point this out. If you exclude the imaginary results we’ve been given, this margin in Rhode Island coincides nicely with the margins we have seen consistently over the previous 11 contests. 58% - 40% is an Obama margin we’ve seen repeatedly.

To illustrate that point, let’s look at Vermont. Here we have an almost identical margin ( 59% - 39% ) except this time it is for Obama. The difference in this state - as you might expect - is that Vermont uses hand counted ballots in the majority of it’s municipalities.

The Texas two-step gives a look at both machine count and hand count. The primary in Texas is all machine count and it gives the win to Clinton 51% - 47%. However the caucus results ( hand count ) reflect the opposite and then some ( 56% - 44% Obama ).

~snip~

But without question, the Ohio results are by far the most interesting.

~snip~

As you can see from the map, the only counties where Obama won are also the counties that had secured, centrally counted, paper ballots.



~snip~

So here we are once again with a situation we’ve seen several times before. Underneath the smokescreen of the kitchen sink strategy we see the real problem. Once again ( when viewing all four contests ), the machine vote goes to Hillary and the paper ballot ( or hand count ) goes to Obama. The fact that Hillary’s actions and reactions have coincided so seamlessly with the Republican, Rovian, Limbaughvian philosophy and tactics, could actually lead one to question if it is coordinated.

~snip~

So before anyone questions whether I wear a tin foil chapeau, ask yourself why United Technologies Corporation is so determined to purchase Diebold ( a company currently under investigation by the DOJ and SEC ) before election day. You can bet Charlie Black ( McCain’s Campaign Director and lobbyist for United Technologies ) has a very good reason for this arrangement.

~snip~

http://billnoxid.wordpress.com/2008/03/06/clinton-comeback-courtesy-of-diebold /


Posted previously, but nobody seems to care who's counting the votes this time:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=5012530&mesg_id=5012530

[bitchkitty]

1. I care

but I cared in 2000, and in 2004 too.

I've stopped being disappointed, I've basically stopped believing, but I still watch the show, I can't seem to help it! :(

[FrenchieCat]

2. Oh we will,

but by then it will be too late.

Obama tried.....but to no avails!

OBAMA'S US SENATE RECORD:

S.1975 : A bill to prohibit deceptive practices in Federal elections.

Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack (introduced 11/8/2005) Cosponsors (4)
Committees: Senate Rules and Administration
Latest Major Action: 11/8/2005 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Rules and Administration.

---------------------

S.4102 : A bill to amend the Communications Act of 1934 to prohibit the use of telecommunications devices for the purposes of preventing or obstructing the broadcast or exchange of election-related information.

Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack (introduced 12/7/2006) Cosponsors (None) Committees: Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation
Latest Major Action: 12/7/2006 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
--------------------

S.4069 : A bill to prohibit deceptive practices in Federal elections.

Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack (introduced 11/16/2006) Cosponsors (4)
Committees: Senate Rules and Administration
Latest Major Action: 11/16/2006 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Rules and Administration.

[dailykoff]

3. Because she couldn't win any other way.

But we're not supposed to notice. Back to you Katie...

[Zynx]

4. Those counties are also obscenely demographically different from the rest of the state.

Btw, here in Madison, they used a machine count based system with optical scans and Obama did just fine here.

[Emit]

5. In what way are those counties different?

[jackson_dem]

7. They are heavily populated urban counties

Obama almost always does well in urban areas. The map for Texas would show a similar thing. He won the counties that included most of the state's major cities but lost practically every other county, like he did in Ohio.

If this were an issue don't you think the Obama campaign would be raising it?

[Emit]

13. That's weird, because in the caucus here in NV, Obama did very well in the rural counties

Tue, Jan 22, 2008 (2 a.m.)

One intriguing outcome of Saturday’s Democratic caucus is that Barack Obama, a Chicago politician whose appeal nationwide is deep among affluent liberals and college students, broke through in Nevada’s mining and ranching counties.

Obama beat rival Hillary Clinton decisively in nine of 14 rural Republican-dominated counties. In Esmeralda, on the state’s western edge, he won 22 delegates to nine for the New York senator.

Obama’s strength in rural Nevada speaks to the breadth of his appeal and to his campaign’s organizing efforts in Republican strongholds that Nevada’s Democratic Party has traditionally written off. It also indicates a restlessness among voters in rural Nevada that Democrats will try to tap in future elections, including the November presidential contest. ...

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/jan/22/why-rural-voters-broke-obama/

[Zynx]

14. Caucus results are not necessarily reflective of primary results.

It's a much smaller and demographically different electorate, not at all representative of the broader electorate.

Also, why did Hillary win the urban areas that time, by the same logic?

[Emit]

16. I have to chuckle at your first comment, considering the point of the OP

"Caucus results are not necessarily reflective of primary results."

It just seems ironic, although I understand your point, sort of.

Hillary won one urban county (we have what I would consider only 2 urban counties -- Clark and Washoe, and at that, neither are what other states might consider truly urban), which is Clark County, where Las Vegas is. http://www.nvdems08.com/

And remember, Edwards was still a factor then, so I don't know how his votes pulled from either Obama or Clinton.

Bottom line is that, to account for the wins in NV, one would have to look at ground games the candidates had in each of these counties -- there's no apparent pattern.

edit to add 'sort of'

[Zynx]

20. Clark County is far and away the largest urban center.

Washoe is not even close really.

Trying to look at difference between urban and rural votes as voter fraud is the most idiotic exercise in electoral analysis. That's like saying because St. Louis, Missouri votes so much more Democratic than Monroe County, Missouri, there must be voter fraud in Monroe. Could it have anything to do with a shocking difference in demographics?

[Emit]

22. Um...

I never said Clark wasn't urban and noted that Washoe might be considered NV's second 'urban' area. We certainly don't consider ourselves 'rural' here in Reno (Washoe). And at that, I was attempting to compare our 'urban' to that of other states, like Ohio -- the urban areas there would probably consider us rural :).

I concede you may have a point with regard to the article in the OP about urban vs rural votes. However, it is curious that those areas noted on that map in the OP are the same "counties that had secured, centrally counted, paper ballots" and that Obama won them. Probably just coincidence.

Nevertheless, my point about comparing the outcome of rural vs urban here in NV was because you and the other poster brought up demographics in urban vs rural as a reason for vote differences noted in the OP. I wasn't trying to prove anything with my references other than that your logic didn't seem to apply here in my home state. :shrug:

And, by the way, the correct term is election fraud, not voter fraud.

edit typo

[catgirl]

30. Many workers live outside urban areas (Nevada) and travel to work

Obama was supported by workers unions, so it makes sense that he did
well in the rural areas of Nevada

[dailykoff]

32. In NH, he also did well in rural areas

(hand counted) and lost in the cities. :shrug:

[catgirl]

33. That is very suspect

and they used machines, correct?

[Emit]

38. Machines and hand count

... 81% of the votes in the New Hampshire primary were counted on these same Accuvote atrocities… A fact that ( as usual ) has escaped any mention from the endlessly speculating punditry.

New Hampshire ( thankfully ) is not entirely Accuvote however, and the remaining municipalities use paper ballots that are hand counted. ...

So to satisfy my certainty of the fraud I was witnessing, I decided to add up the hand counted ballots and add up the Accuvote ballots to compare the margins and trends. ...

See: http://billnoxid.wordpress.com/2008/01/09/pretend-primary-diebold-strikes-again-2 /

... What this clearly shows however, is where the 14% points some polls indicated Obama was leading by went. As you can see, the ballots that were counted by hand give Obama a 7.5% win while the Accuvote “count” gives Clinton a 5.5% win. The combined “shift” is 13%. Here is where the percentage points disappear that were expected right up to the casting of ballots. Not tears, not lazy young people, right here in this “shift”.

There’s no way to legitimately explain why this discrepancy would exist. ... The only difference between these two groups is that one had their votes counted by hand, and the other by Accuvote. One group voted definitively for Obama, and the other definitively for Clinton…

~snip~

Graphs Hand Counts vs Machine Counts:
?w=521&h=4271
?w=521&h=4220

http://billnoxid.wordpress.com/2008/01/09/pretend-primary-diebold-strikes-again-2/

[Zynx]

12. Much larger African American populations than the rest of the state.

Different income levels, education levels, etc. It goes on and on. Compare Cuyahoga and Lawerence Counties.

[dailykoff]

21. How about in Iowa?

Mostly white, all caucus, all Obama.

[Zynx]

27. Wasn't a primary and was also relatively close.

[dailykoff]

31. Right, it wasn't a primary and Obama swept it.

Now whether you believe it's just a coincidence or not, the fact is that Obama has to perform exceptionally well to overcome whatever is causing this, which I imagine will favor McCain in the GE. Kerry couldn't, but Obama might.

[Emit]

35. Speaking of Obama performing exceptionally well where Kerry didn't

I thought this was an interesting analysis:

... Yet there is one major social divide, almost as important in its way as race itself, that Obama has already proved he can bridge, though the significance of his success has gone largely unnoticed. To see it clearly, you have to look closely at the results of the Nevada caucuses, which Obama narrowly lost to Clinton because he failed to carry Clark County, site of Nevada's only big metropolitan city, Las Vegas, with its enormous population of Hispanic voters. But in more rural counties he beat Clinton decisively - 63% to her 37% in Elko, 51% to 34% in Humboldt, 50% to 40% in Washoe (the missing percentages belong to John Edwards). I've been to those counties, their miles of lonely roads where you can drive for half an hour before encountering another vehicle, their scattered ranches and isolated towns, their seasonal creeks marked by lines of spindly cottonwood trees, the overwhelmingly Caucasian cast of their people. Out there in the mountains, sagebrush and high desert, Obama carried the day by far greater margins than his overall loss of the popular vote to Clinton across the state, and came out of the caucuses with one more delegate than she did.

~snip~

So Obama's victory over Clinton in rural Nevada says something important about his ability as the apostle of national reconciliation. To win against Clinton in Elko County (black population: 0.8%), he had to convert not only white Democrats, but a large number of independents and people who had voted Republican until caucus day; a feat he pulled off with dazzling facility. Any Democrat nominee who can do that, deep in Republican country, is likely to gain the presidency; and Obama has proved that he can. Clinton, laden with the moral, cultural and political baggage of the 1990s, is likely to fare as badly in Elko County as Kerry did in 2004, when he collected just 20% of the vote...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jan/31/usa.uselections2008

[flor de jasmim]

6. Remember NH?

Diebold favors Hillary, hand count for Obama
Wed, 01/09/2008 - 05:46 - clark

I used the Comma delimited database: NH municipalities hand count vs use Diebold machines from BlackBoxVoting.org to see if there was a deviation between the results from precincts which used hand counts and those which relied on Diebold machines. The results were astonishing. :

Updated: 5:05 AM (EST) - Results tallied for 209 out of 236 of the municipalities.

By Percentage

Method Hillary Clinton Barack Obama
Diebold Machines 53.23% 46.77%
Hand Count 47.47% 52.53%


By Votes

Method Hillary Clinton Barack Obama
Diebold Machines 82860 72807
Hand Count 18898 20912


By Number of Municipalities Won

Method Hillary Clinton Barack Obama
Diebold Machines 54 33
Hand Count 43 77

Source: http://presscue.com/node/38034

(more evidence on earlier DU threads)

[jackson_dem]

8. From your link: NH's three largest cities all had opitcal scanning

You have to look at where a particular type of vote counting was used before automatically declaring rigging that Obama himself has not complained of.

[flor de jasmim]

10. I grant you that - I can't find the other article I mentioned... (n/t)

[SoCalDem]

11. Which begs the question..

If large municipalities can manage to have paper ballots and hand count them. why do smaller places "need" vapor vote machines & optical scans to count them?

Why not use a standard ballot and counting procedure, statewide..

But then, one would be using apple to apple comparisons and not apple to kumquat, and glaring irregularities would stick out llike a sor e thumb :eyes:

[dailykoff]

17. Tabulated by LHS.

There's the problem.

[Emit]

18. LHS?

Pardon my not knowing, but what is LHS?

[dailykoff]

19. It's an outfit in Methuen, MA that compiles 80% of the NH vote.

Basically the optical scanners feed data to an outsourced vendor who "tabulates" it for the state. That's where the funny business happens.

link: http://markcrispinmiller.blogspot.com/2008/01/lhs-handled-memory-cards-in-nh.html

[Emit]

36. Thanks for the link

I think I had read a post on DU about LHS by Brad at Bradblog a while back

[Window]

9. K/R.

:kick:

[FedoraLV]

15. I've noticed

electoral irregularities corresponding with Sen. Clinton's successes (NM, NH, NY, Los Angels county) -- but if there are ones associated with other candidates, including Sen. Obama, I'd like to know about it.

-FedoraLV

[indimuse]

23. why did they allow repugs to vote for Obama in the cacuses?

I wonder how many fake Id's passed...16...17..year olds...?

[Emit]

25. We are the party of inclusion

and we didn't check ID's either. We did require Repubs and Inds to re-register as Dems, though. But, I'm not sure all the states have open caucuses, and I know some states have open primaries that both the Republicans and Independents were welcome to vote in.

[indimuse]

29. you have no problem with that?

I don't think it represents TRUE Dems...I know were a big tent..but register "for a day' like I saw on one of Barack's flyers in NV...how is that good and accurate?

[Emit]

37. I did at first, but during our caucus chair training, this issue came up for discussion

We were told that the likely impact of Republicans crossing over to vote in our caucus in some nefarious manner was almost nil, and that the effort it would take for them to caucus several hours to do that on their part would likely deter those who wished to hurt the process. I tend to agree, in retrospect, because most of the people who re-registered to participate in our caucus were Non Partisans not Republicans, for one. Secondly, not all people who were re-registering to vote were going over to the Obama side of the room. Many went to Clinton, as well, so my guess is that newly re-registered voters were there for sincere purposes. I know that my own SO re-registered, and isn't planning on voting for anybody but a Dem in the GE, no matter who gets the nod.

Obama was smart to cater to the Repubs and Non Partisans here, and Clinton should've done the same. We relied on a huge cross-over vote in 2004 to try to deliver NV to Kerry. We also have a fair amount of Non Partisans who cannot vote in our primary unless they are Dems, so we didn't want to exclude them.

[Skinner]

24. And then there's the other possible explanation:

Obama tends to do better in Ohio's large cities with a higher concentration of liberals and African Americans, while Clinton tends to do better in more culturally conservative, whiter rural areas of the state.

[Emit]

26. And in NV it was almost the opposite, though

see post #13

But, I'm open to all explanations, or combinations thereof, for the record. ;)

[Skinner]

28. I think the demographics are different.

The African American population in Ohio (11.4%) is nearly twice that of Nevada (6.4%).

Also, the rural white population is likely quite different, with rust-belt Ohio being more blue-collar.

[Emit]

34. The demographics are different, no doubt

Nevada is unique, and the caucus results are interesting.

Clark County has an AA population of 9.08% (2000 Census), and Clinton won in Clark County. I have read she pulled out her victory there due to high Hispanic (26.1%) support and women voters.

Washoe County, otoh, has an AA population of 2.09% and Hispanic (16.58%). Obama won in Washoe County.


As far as the rurals are concerned, the demographics have changed in recent years, but, likely remain fairly blue collar. Nevertheless, the rurals here have seen an influx of white collar workers. Here's an interesting excerpt from a piece in Mother Jones from last year. They highlighted Lyon County as an example of one of the fastest growing counties in NV, where "... the newcomers live in $200,000 tract homes." Clinton won Lyon County.

... In particular, the dnc is taking a chance on the spectacularly rugged, arid country south and east of Reno. Democrats have historically won Las Vegas and environs—liberal and libertine, racially diverse, rapidly growing, and a trade union stronghold. But outside of Clark County, if you were a Democrat, you kept that fact to yourself. "You mention taxes in this county," says Charles Lawson, a cochair of the Democratic Party in Lyon County, a few miles down the highway from Fallon, "and they'll bite your head off."

There are only five towns of any size in Lyon County: the agricultural hub of Yerington (alfalfa, grains, onions, and garlic); Fernley, an exurb whose population has nearly tripled in the past decade; little Silver Springs, lacking even a supermarket to call its own; the proud old Comstock Lode town of Dayton; and Stagecoach, an outpost of 2,300 on Highway 50 (a.k.a. the California Emigrant Trail). In between are large ranches, working mines, a few oases, and lots of sun-singed, scrub-covered mountains. Many of the old-timers here pretty much built their houses from scratch; the newcomers live in $200,000 tract homes and commute to work in Reno and Carson City. Lyon County is a place where rainfall makes headlines and federal mandates on arsenic levels in scarce water supplies can throw people into paroxysms of rage; in the casinos that dot the roadsides, truckers and bored seniors gamble for Wal-Mart vouchers. "People who come out here," Snedeker says, "tend to want to be left alone."

That kind of isolation is getting harder to come by. Thanks to an influx of out-of-staters looking for sunshine, cheap real estate, and jobs (Amazon has a huge shipping center here), Lyon has become one of the fastest-growing counties in the nation. It's not the kind of boom that's made anyone rich—the income per capita is only about 75 percent of the national median. But it's the sort of exurb-meets-country growth that defines the most fluid part of the American electorate.

In 2004, George W. Bush won the nation's rural counties by 19 percent. ...

~snip~

But to secure Nevada, the Dems need to both win big in Sin City (where 79 percent of the registered voters voted in 2004) and minimize the party's losses in the "cow counties," as Las Vegans refer to the hinterlands. The ranching and gold-mining country on the Utah border is a lost cause, but in places like Lyon County, registered Republicans outnumber Democrats only 2:1. If the party can peel off maybe a thousand votes here, a thousand more in each of another few rural counties, and get an additional 5,000 to 10,000 in Vegas, that's the Nevada election—and, under a not-so-unlikely scenario, the presidency.

"Lyon's interesting, because there is a state Democratic organizing effort there," says state Rep. David Bobzien, an up-and-coming Democrat from Reno. "Yerington's the old agricultural Nevada and Fernley's the outer ring of growth—the urban explosion coming out of Reno." And historically, Bobzien says, it's been the newcomers who have shaped the political dynamics of the region. In the 1980s, blue-collar migrants fleeing California shored up the region's Goldwateresque identity; more recently, exiles from the San Francisco housing market have brought more progressive views.

"These communities are just right, or a little bit more, of center, yet they are changing quickly because of the influx of people," says 38-year-old Fernley mayor Todd Cutler,...

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/11/how-the-west-might-be-won.html



When trying to examine the caucus results in NV, I think, as I noted above in response to a related discussion on demographics, perhaps each candidate's ground game had more of an effect on the outcome of the caucuses, as noted here:

... Yet there is one major social divide, almost as important in its way as race itself, that Obama has already proved he can bridge, though the significance of his success has gone largely unnoticed. To see it clearly, you have to look closely at the results of the Nevada caucuses, which Obama narrowly lost to Clinton because he failed to carry Clark County, site of Nevada's only big metropolitan city, Las Vegas, with its enormous population of Hispanic voters. But in more rural counties he beat Clinton decisively - 63% to her 37% in Elko, 51% to 34% in Humboldt, 50% to 40% in Washoe (the missing percentages belong to John Edwards). I've been to those counties, their miles of lonely roads where you can drive for half an hour before encountering another vehicle, their scattered ranches and isolated towns, their seasonal creeks marked by lines of spindly cottonwood trees, the overwhelmingly Caucasian cast of their people. Out there in the mountains, sagebrush and high desert, Obama carried the day by far greater margins than his overall loss of the popular vote to Clinton across the state, and came out of the caucuses with one more delegate than she did.

~snip~

So Obama's victory over Clinton in rural Nevada says something important about his ability as the apostle of national reconciliation. To win against Clinton in Elko County (black population: 0.8%), he had to convert not only white Democrats, but a large number of independents and people who had voted Republican until caucus day; a feat he pulled off with dazzling facility. Any Democrat nominee who can do that, deep in Republican country, is likely to gain the presidency; and Obama has proved that he can. Clinton, laden with the moral, cultural and political baggage of the 1990s, is likely to fare as badly in Elko County as Kerry did in 2004, when he collected just 20% of the vote...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jan/31/usa.uselections2008