Is primary voting valid? (Kerry/Dean upsets)

[4dog]

Oddities in NH voting have been discused on DU previously. Here's one link:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/explodedview/
Kerry Beat Dean in New Hampshire by Only 1.5% When Computers Weren’t Doing the Counting

SNIP.."To bring the matter into sharper focus, here are the percentages by which Kerry’s vote exceeded Dean’s, grouped by tallying method.

VotingTechUsed % Margin
Diebold 58.1%
ES&S 35.0%
Hand 4.7%

New article. This piece discusses the discrepancy between one person's polling and reported primary results in Arizona.

Dean Dunked Deliberately? by Tom Dark

http://www.rense.com/general49/deandeb.htm

<snip>

I spent a month, six days a week, going door to door, talking to real registered Democrats, asking them who they planned to vote for in the Arizona primary, February 3.

<snip>

His results (edited from original to compress):
500 persons talked to
6 for Kerry
4 for Clark
1 for Edwards
225-250 Dean
similar or slightly smaller number undecided

That is,
1.2% for Kerry
at least 50% for Dean

Voting results:
42% Kerry
<21% Dean
other not specified

<end summary, the following is another excerpt from Dark's article>

I'm not ready to point fingers. But from this perspective -- the only honest perspective you ARE going to get, which is, go talk to people yourself and let THEM tell you what they think -- it seemed to me that Howard Dean was a shoo-in in the primary in this county. Now, would this county be so utterly different in character from the rest of the counties in Arizona? A high percentage of retired people, and retired military, for instance? A high percentage of people with spanish last names, for instance? I doubt that, too.

I have two alternatives to consider. Either "people" are so gullible that they take newspaper headlines and TV ploys as post-hypnotic commands, or else there were just lots and lots and lots of "hanging chads" in the ballot boxes here, as it were.

<snip>

Edits: added NH ref, changed title to match.

[madfloridian]

1. This part really slams polling methods from his own experience.

I myself believe the polls are set to define and present the issues to us in the way they want to define and present them. Can I prove it? Will I be slammed for that? I don't care. I think we are living and breathing polls. Here is what that author says:

SNIP...."Imagine my surprise when I heard that Kerry had taken this county with 42% of the vote and Dean not even half that. What happened? Had I, by one of the more stupendous coincidences in state history, stumbled across only the little handful of voters that intended to vote for Dean?

I doubt it. Ten years ago I worked for a poll-taking company called Quantum Consulting of Berkeley, California. I sat there two years, listening to people on either side of me deliberately faking the answers -- watching them put in answers on their computers before questions were asked, and so on. Apart from "loaded questions," I can say as an eye-witness (and so would in court) that phone poll-takers can be as dishonest as the day is long, so long as they divine what kinds of results their bosses want. Furthermore, a senior analyst at the company confessed to me that "we're throwing out 60% of our results, and we're not telling our clients that we're doing this."

Damning, and a one-person view and statement, but the polls are taking us over and defining it all. I don't have a clue if he is right.

[MoonAndSun]

2. I watched a lot of the local news where they interviewed lots of

people, and many people said they liked what Dean had to say, but then they said "but Kerry is electable, he is the only one who can beat bush*". And where did they get that info, from the media onslaught. Kerry won IA & NH and all of a sudden, only Kerry can beat bush*, and Dems everywhere want bush* out of DC so bad they can taste it and they fell for the propaganda.

That's what really happened, IMO.

[On the Road]

3. There Were Some Bizarre Fluctuations in NM, WA, and ME

during the counting, especially in Dean's numbers. I would be interested in hearing anything about it.

I looked at the precinct-level data in NH. The distribution among the candidates is pretty much what I would have expected: geographic advantage for Dean near VT, for Kerry near MA. No 6-sigma deviations or anything. The optical/manual difference seemed to be a function of geography rather than vote tampering.

I don't know what to make of the Tom Dark experience. It does make he mistrust the polls in certain situations. Polls are vulnerable to response variables -- people saying one thing and voting another. They may say a candidate's name just to avoid being ignorant, or say they support the canvasser's candidate just to get rid of them, or avoid reavealing their loyalties if their preferred candidate is unpopular. Often these things cancel each other out, but not always. Dean may have been overrported in the polls at first, but is now underreported.

I find it easy to believe that polls are sometimes dishonest, but many polls put together are usually on the mark.

[jeter]

4. Guys, stop making excuses

Dean lost. That's what happened.

[madfloridian]

8. And Gore won in 2000

I think everyone candidate's supporters should keep and eye on all voting results, and anything to do with voting. If you don't think so, then I think you need to visit a couple of sites such as verified voting and blackboxvoting.

[Padraig18]

10. We won't know fopr sure until the lady in Portland...

... gets around to counting the ballots she has in her freakin' KITCHEN, will we? :wtf:

[maddezmom]

5. primary voting is valid

whether or not the votes are counted correctly is a question no one can answer.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

6. the difference between hand counts and the machiens is STUNNING

I'm not going to say Skull & Bones, but you have to admit it's rather unusual - especially since Dean was polling so well right up until the elections.

[Tweed]

7. People don't like confrontation

Most people won't tell you who they are going to vote for if they disagree with you. I'm guessing that's why this person had 225-250 people for Dean as opposed to an actual number. People probably said "I like Dean, he has passion." and he counted them as for Dean.

[4dog]

9. Pay attention now, be ready for November

If there are real or apparent oddities evident now, you can expect there will be more in November. Since we will not have reliable paper ballots and a system to go with them this year, it behooves everyone who cares about voting - which I would think includes most people here - to be alert. If everyday people stay aware that all sorts of dubious things have happened in past elections and can still happen with our unreliable voting system, we can continue to raise awareness that might lead to substantive voting procedure reform.

[foo_bar]

11. paranoia is the state of not knowing

at least in my clinical experience. Part of everyone's mind is susceptible to religion and creation myths ("tortoises all the way down") to bridge gaps with uncomfortable or missing explanations. Patients who prefer secular explanations, but are incapable of emotionally reckoning them, tend to follow the rabbit hole of externalizing blame to an apparatus that pull all the strings, almost like a God. The result is something like this:

A dramatic rural preference for Dean would be odd, given that his primary demographic is youth, but odd or not, such is not present in the figures, at least not to the extent necessary to explain the data. http://www.livejournal.com/users/explodedview/

It's a potentially odd premise unless you have some working knowledge of New Hampshire. All of the "large towns" that went Kerry (Concord, Manchester, Nashua) are in the southern Massachusetts-bordering quadrant of the state known as the Merrimack valley (http://www.visitn.gov/maps.html?map=me). Folks on the internet examine trends in a vacuum, so maybe Paul McCartney is dead because I have a bulleted list alternately labeled MYTH and FACT.

I'm sorry Dean is losing, but sometimes bad things happen without a father figure making it happen to you.