stephanie
01-16-2008, 01:33 PM
:coffee:
By Marc Sheppard
Anyone surprised by the rumors of New Hampshire Primary election-fixing flowing through the leftie blogosphere since last week doesn't fully appreciate the Moveon.org/Daily Kos mindset. But when Bill Maher suggested on Friday night's Real Time that Republicans had somehow hacked the voting machines in order to assure a Hillary win, I must admit to being quite shocked. Unleashing such an obvious smokescreen in an effort to obscure the recent backlash to Democrat-fueled "identity politics" seemed quite the desperate act, even for a notoriously partisan bore.
Granted, given the unexpected primary results relative to pollster projections, and the fact that 80% of the votes were cast on Dem-detested Diebold's Accuvote optical scan (OS) machines, conspiracy theories were all but inevitable. And whoever first noticed that Hillary received only 34.66%* of the hand-counted vote but 40.12% of those machine tabulated likely thought he had stumbled upon the voting-fraud equivalent of the Zapruder film. Particularly since Obama's numbers followed the opposite pattern - 38.84% of the hand-count but only 35.76% machine.
But, those reflexively crying foul play conveniently ignored a few immutable facts. For one thing, on the Republican side, the disparity in Romney's hand/machine numbers (25.54%/33.04%) was greater than either of the Democrats'. Are we to believe that both contests were fixed? Besides, Romney placed second! If his machine numbers were hacked, he should fire his dreadfully inept programmers immediately.
Then there's the fairly well-known fact that hand-counts tend to take place in smaller, poorer, more rural districts. So why is it so difficult for so many on the left - who are typically quick to categorize us -- to accept that people in small or poor places tend to think and vote differently than those in larger or wealthier ones?
Besides, if you look at the voting details for some of the largest districts, the entire theory falls apart. In Bedford, for instance, with 4,056 votes, computer-tallied percentages were a virtually even 40.19 to 39.79 for Clinton and Obama, respectively. And in Concord, with over 10,000 votes, Obama actually beat Clinton with 39.92% to her 35.63%.
But most of all, the allegations totally ignore the fact that ALL New Hampshire ballots are paper. In districts using the machines, a hand-filled ballot is fed through the optical reader for tallying and then retained as permanent backup. With not a single touch-screen machine deployed in the state, every last vote is documented. So, even if one were to somehow manage to compromise the computer data, the pure ease of recounts make their implementation all but assured when results are challenged. In fact, responding to the action and $2000 fee filed by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, New Hampshire has agreed to begin such a recount of votes for both parties next week.
read the rest..
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/01/democrats_and_conspiracy_theor.html
By Marc Sheppard
Anyone surprised by the rumors of New Hampshire Primary election-fixing flowing through the leftie blogosphere since last week doesn't fully appreciate the Moveon.org/Daily Kos mindset. But when Bill Maher suggested on Friday night's Real Time that Republicans had somehow hacked the voting machines in order to assure a Hillary win, I must admit to being quite shocked. Unleashing such an obvious smokescreen in an effort to obscure the recent backlash to Democrat-fueled "identity politics" seemed quite the desperate act, even for a notoriously partisan bore.
Granted, given the unexpected primary results relative to pollster projections, and the fact that 80% of the votes were cast on Dem-detested Diebold's Accuvote optical scan (OS) machines, conspiracy theories were all but inevitable. And whoever first noticed that Hillary received only 34.66%* of the hand-counted vote but 40.12% of those machine tabulated likely thought he had stumbled upon the voting-fraud equivalent of the Zapruder film. Particularly since Obama's numbers followed the opposite pattern - 38.84% of the hand-count but only 35.76% machine.
But, those reflexively crying foul play conveniently ignored a few immutable facts. For one thing, on the Republican side, the disparity in Romney's hand/machine numbers (25.54%/33.04%) was greater than either of the Democrats'. Are we to believe that both contests were fixed? Besides, Romney placed second! If his machine numbers were hacked, he should fire his dreadfully inept programmers immediately.
Then there's the fairly well-known fact that hand-counts tend to take place in smaller, poorer, more rural districts. So why is it so difficult for so many on the left - who are typically quick to categorize us -- to accept that people in small or poor places tend to think and vote differently than those in larger or wealthier ones?
Besides, if you look at the voting details for some of the largest districts, the entire theory falls apart. In Bedford, for instance, with 4,056 votes, computer-tallied percentages were a virtually even 40.19 to 39.79 for Clinton and Obama, respectively. And in Concord, with over 10,000 votes, Obama actually beat Clinton with 39.92% to her 35.63%.
But most of all, the allegations totally ignore the fact that ALL New Hampshire ballots are paper. In districts using the machines, a hand-filled ballot is fed through the optical reader for tallying and then retained as permanent backup. With not a single touch-screen machine deployed in the state, every last vote is documented. So, even if one were to somehow manage to compromise the computer data, the pure ease of recounts make their implementation all but assured when results are challenged. In fact, responding to the action and $2000 fee filed by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, New Hampshire has agreed to begin such a recount of votes for both parties next week.
read the rest..
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/01/democrats_and_conspiracy_theor.html