| Diebold Result |
Hand Count |
|
| CLINTON | 683 | 619 |
| EDWARDS | 255 | 217 |
| OBAMA | 404 | 365 |
From one ward in Manchester, the recount thanks to BradBlog which has the whole story here.
No, there was no dramatic realignment of winners and losers in this batch of under 1500 votes, but there is good reason to go back and find out what the heck. Do we want Diebold to count our votes if this is the kind of accuracy they can guarantee?
... Before you say that's no big deal, we'll remind you that in 2004, had just 6 votes per precinct been registered in Ohio for John Kerry instead of George W. Bush, we'd have a different person sitting in the White House right now.
Then too, consider this: all voting materials must, according to federal law, be kept safe for almost two years after the election. But they're not -- not in New Hampshire.
... The sensitive memory cards containing the programming and tabulation from the Diebold optical-scanners are apparently "missing in action" for the moment. Those cards, as viewers of HBO's Hacking Democracy know by now, may be used to hack an election, such that only a proper hand-count of the paper ballots afterwards will reveal the hack. (See the video of that hack for yourself right here. The same exact machine being hacked in that film was used across the state to count 80% of the ballots in NH in last week's primary.)
And yet, says Bonifaz who spent time today speaking with New Hampshire Secretary of State, Assistant Secretary of State and Deputy Attorney General, nobody seems to have any idea where those cards are and what has become of them.
He says he was told by Secretary of State William Gardner that his office doesn't get involved in tracking what happens to those memory cards. Some have reportedly been returned to LHS, and may have had their memory erased already.
"When you have a private company counting 80% of the votes, and you later learn that the memory cards are unaccounted for, you have a serious question about the transparency and accountability in that process," Bonifaz said.
He notes that federal law requires all materials from elections be preserved for 22 months after the election. So if those materials have already been lost, destroyed, or over-written, there are legal questions that must be addressed.
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