Kucinich calling for recount...

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5544

---snip---

DETROIT, MI – Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, the most outspoken advocate in the Presidential field and in Congress for election integrity, paper-ballot elections, and campaign finance reform, has sent a letter to the New Hampshire Secretary of State asking for a recount of Tuesday’s election because of “unexplained disparities between hand-counted ballots and machine-counted ballots.”
...
He added, “Ever since the 2000 election – and even before – the American people have been losing faith in the belief that their votes were actually counted. This recount isn’t about who won 39% of 36% or even 1%. It’s about establishing whether 100% of the voters had 100% of their votes counted exactly the way they cast them.”

Kucinich, who drew about 1.4% of the New Hampshire Democratic primary vote, wrote, “This is not about my candidacy or any other individual candidacy. It is about the integrity of the election process.” No other Democratic candidate, he noted, has stepped forward to question or pursue the claims being made.

“New Hampshire is in the unique position to address – and, if so determined, rectify – these issues before they escalate into a massive, nationwide suspicion of the process by which Americans elect their President. Based on the controversies surrounding the Presidential elections in 2004 and 2000, New Hampshire is in a prime position to investigate possible irregularities and to issue findings for the benefit of the entire nation,” Kucinich wrote in his letter. . .

On Edit:

Note to Mods: This is a duplicate thread, sorry about that -- you may want to combine or delete.

[Renew Deal]

1. Hopefully we'll put the fraud stuff to bed.

Either that, or Diebold will be discredited for good.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

3. The only way to put the question of fraud...

...to bed is to introduce an open and transparent electoral process -- anything less will always be suspect. To me this has to mean paper ballots counted by hand.

[lumberjack_jeff]

17. We can't put the "fraud stuff to bed" all we can do is let 'em know we're watching. n/t

[lvx35]

2. Its good. It it really only $2000?

I heard the republican requesting recount was told there was more after the $2000.

[2rth2pwr]

4. The hand recounting of paper ballots can also be rigged. nt

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

5. And therefore what?

[2rth2pwr]

6. How can the results be trusted? nt

[seriousstan]

7. NEVER!!! Unless I personally verify them.

[2rth2pwr]

13. Exactly. nt

[orleans]

8. get on the election board--go volunteer to work a precinct and stay

there and do some counting, or overseeing the count locally

[2rth2pwr]

14. You trust me in the same room with the ballots?

Can I bring some friends?

[orleans]

16. hey--you & your friends will be monitored by other monitors as well

what is the alternative? don't vote and let bush be king?

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

10. They can be trusted when the process is open, transparent, and verifiable...

...Corporations collecting and then counting our ballots in secret via machines does not even begin to meet these criteria.

A well organized hand count of paper ballots can be made to meet them.

[John Q. Citizen]

11. True, but it's a lot harder than a rigging a computerized count. It requires someone to

physically remove the correct number of actual voter cast ballots at the precinct level and to replace them with fraudulant ballots at the precinct level. That's quite a task, for a whole number of reasons.

[2rth2pwr]

15. Not really that difficult.

"Beachcombers find them on sand dunes west of Point Reyes. Rowers come upon them bobbing in the bay.



The bright red box tops that keep washing up around the Bay Area are floating reminders of a problem in San Francisco, the remnants of ballot boxes that somehow got beyond the control of the city's embattled Department of Elections. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/01/07/MN185094.DTL

The corrugated plastic ballot box lids, each marked with the city seal and the words "Provisional and Absentee Ballots," first raised the concerns of election watchdogs shortly after the city's November election, when eight of them were found near the Golden Gate Bridge by the crew of a U.S. Coast Guard vessel.

Since then, despite assurances from city elections Director Tammy Haygood that the box lids merely blew into the bay while election workers cleaned them on a city pier, the issue has resurfaced time and again. "...
_______________________________________________________________________________

Oct. 19--The Broward County Supervisor of Elections office this week mailed hundreds of incomplete absentee ballots to voters in Margate and Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, delaying the casting of early votes for referendum items. Election officials say a new $1 million machine hit a snag in its first attempt to sort and mail absentee ballots. While handling the initial mailing of 35,000 ballots on Monday, the machine failed to include a page of Lauderdale-by-the-Sea ballot questions in the absentee ballots sent to 343 voters. It also failed to send a page with a referendum item to an unknown number of Margate voters
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-153014669.html
___________________________________________________________________________________

In one county, a poll station manager, with
the ballot cards in the trunk of her car, stopped off to see a friend before delivering the ballots and
forgot about them.
http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:LXwroO4tAXYJ:vote.nist.gov/pospapers/Saltman-AuditabilityofDREs(Revised)2003.pdf+ballots+trunk&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=us

[John Q. Citizen]

22. Thank you for demonstrating my point. It's hard to dispose of the evidence. the same

thing happened in Mexico when they found cast ballots at dumps. It showed that fraud probably most certainly occurred. I wasn't all that easy to hide the evidence, apparently. Just as I said. It's harder to get away without a trace when paper ballots are used.

This is exactly what I meant.

See, if an election is manipulated through computer tampering, there are no ballot boxes to wash up on shore. This is why, as I said, It's a lot harder to switch out paper ballots to manipulate an election than to manipulate an election through computer fraud.

Your article from Broward County is completely irrelevant to your argument or to mine. It's an article about a printing error. Once I ordered some checks and the company printing them got my phone number wrong on the checks. I had to send them back and have them redone. Do you think the bank was trying to commit fraud? I don't.

As to the third article, yeah boxes didn't arrive. But In New Hampshire voters mark a ballot, and then a computer reads the ballot right then at the precinct. When they recount, they hand count the ballots. If ballots didn't arrive the discrepancy would be quite obvious. An individual has to remove the correct number of legitimate ballots, dispose of them somewhere, and replace them with other "official" ballots marked by hand. So they also need access to clean unmarked ballots that aren't accounted for. And they need access to where the cast ballots are stored. And they need to remove the correct amount of already marked ballots and replace them with the correct amount of ballots to reflect the individual precinct totals.

As I said, that's a lot harder than computer rigging an election. Possible? Yes certainly. A lot harder? yes certainly. More chances of being caught/discovered? Yes certainly.

[lumberjack_jeff]

18. Rigged to match the previously rigged electronic count?

And they call me a tinfoil hatter.

Rigging a paper ballot count, if the electronic count was not compromised, would still result in a discrepancy which casts doubt on the processes.

[2rth2pwr]

19. If the electronic count wasn't rigged, there would be

no need to rig the paper ballots.

[lumberjack_jeff]

20. ... and no practical way to rig the paper ballots *to match*. n/t

[2rth2pwr]

21. see post #15. nt

[orleans]

9. THANK GOD!

“I am not making this request in the expectation that a recount will significantly affect the number of votes that were cast on my behalf,” Kucinich stressed in a letter to Secretary of State William M. Gardner. But, “Serious and credible reports, allegations, and rumors have surfaced in the past few days…It is imperative that these questions be addressed in the interest of public confidence in the integrity of the election process and the election machinery – not just in New Hampshire, but in every other state that conducts a primary election.”



Also, the reports, allegations, and rumors regarding possible vote-count irregularities have been further fueled by the stunning disparities between various “independent” pre-election polls and the actual election results," Kucinich wrote. "The integrity, credibility, and value of independent polling are separate issues, but they appear to be relevant in the context of New Hampshire’s votes."

(and snip)

“Without an official recount, the voters of New Hampshire and the rest of the nation will never know whether there are flaws in our electoral system that need to be identified and addressed at this relatively early point in the Presidential nominating process,” said Kucinich, who is campaigning in Michigan this week in advance of next Tuesday’s Presidential primary in that state.

http://www.dennis4president.com/go/homepage-items/kucinich-asks-for-new-hampshire-recount-in-the-interest-of-election-integrity/

best fucking news all day! (of course it's early--only 12:40 am)

[Swamp Rat]

12. k&r