New York state is in the process of replacing its lever voting machines with new voting equipment, but the state revealed recently that it has found problems with 50 percent of the roughly 1,500 ImageCast optical-scan machines (shown in the video above) that Sequoia Voting Systems has delivered to the state so far — machines that are slated to be used by dozens of counties in the state’s September 9 primary and November 4 presidential election. Read the rest of this entry »
In 2006, Ohio became the poster-child for bad election administration when two lengthy reports examining Cuyahoga County’s election procedures uncovered multiple serious problems(the county lost 812 voter-access cards that allow a voter to cast a ballot on machines; it also lost 313 keys to the memory-card compartments where votes are stored on machines and hired taxi drivers to drive to election precincts and pick up the memory cards that contained the votes).
Then in 2007, two election officials in Cuyahoga County were convicted of rigging a recount in the 2004 presidential election by cherry-picking ballots to recount that they knew would match the official count rather than randomly picking ballots.
CONCORD, N.H. | Associated Press — N New Hampshire officials said Friday they will conduct a hand recount of the state’s Democratic and Republican presidential primaries at the request of two minor candidates.
Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, who received less than 1.4 percent of the vote, and Republican Albert Howard of Michigan, who received about 44 votes statewide, are expected to pay a $2,000 fee to start the process, state officials said.
“Mr. Howard has satisfied the requirements for initiating a statewide recount of the Republican primary,” Secretary of State William Gardner said in a statement. Officials said they expected a check from Kucinich to arrive late Friday, satisfying his requirements for the request.
Gardner is preparing an estimate of the recount’s cost, which the requesting candidates must pay before it will begin. He said he expects to start the recount Wednesday, and will announce further details once the payments have been received.
Under state law, if a candidate finished more than 3 percentage points behind the winner, the candidate must pay the cost of a recount. The cost is refunded if the recount finds the requester won or finished within 1 percentage point of the winner.
The last time New Hampshire did a statewide recount of the results of the presidential primary was in 1980.
Kucinich sent a letter to Gardner Thursday requesting the recount, citing “serious and credible reports, allegations and rumors” about the integrity of the primary results.
The top vote-getters in Tuesday’s primary were Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, with 39 percent and Republican Sen. John McCain, of Arizona, with 37 percent.
They program every single voting machine in New Hampshire, Connecticut, almost all of Massachusetts, Vermont, and Maine. But did state officials in five New England states ever do a criminal background check on this company’s executives? Do the laws of these five states even ALLOW them to hire convicted criminals for services paid for by the state? What about over 500 local towns and municipalities?
According to my sources, LHS Marketing and Sales Director Ken Hajjar grew up with owner John Silvestro in Lawrence, Massachusetts. They both moved to Londonderry, New Hampshire, where Ken Hajjar was arrested, indicted, and pleaded guilty to “sale / CND” and sentenced to 12 months in the Rockingham County Correctional facility, and fined $2000. As things go for the politically connected, he was then given a deferred sentence and $1000 of his fine was suspended.
Hajjar doesn’t limit his involvement in the voting machine business to sales. According to an interview conducted by Brad Friedman, Hajjar totes memory cards around in the trunk of his car and defends the boggling concept of swapping out memory cards during the middle of elections. Read the rest of this entry »
Major allegations of vote fraud in New Hampshire are circulating after Hillary Clinton reversed a mammoth pre-polling deficit to defeat Barack Obama with the aid of Diebold electronic voting machines
UPDATE JAN 9 9am PST: TOWN OF SUTTON CONFIRMS RON PAUL TOTALS WERE 31, NOT ZERO.
I just got off the phone with Jennifer Call, Town Clerk for Sutton. She confirmed that the Ron Paul totals in Sutton were actually 31, and said that they were “left off the tally sheet” and it was human error.
This is not an acceptable answer, especially because one of the most common forms of fraud in a hand count system is to alter or omit results on the reporting sheet. Hand count is lovely, transparent. They then fill out another reconciliation sheet, often in front of witnesses, and it looks fine. Then they provide a summary or media sheet with the incorrect results.
A Web site here: http://www.wheresthepaper.org has more on fraud techniques with hand counted paper ballots. You’ll have to dig for it — or Google, and the excellent research on this is Theresa Hommel from the state of New York.
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