Voting Machines Rigged? Kucinich Calls for NH Recount

Hat tip to SD Moderate!

My man Dennis Kucinich is calling for a recount of Tuesday's New Hampshire primary results. No, he doesn't think the recount will boost his 2% showing (hope springs eternal, but not sheer madness). Kucinich is responding to reports (not to mention burgeoning blog rumors) that Obama beat Clinton 38.7% to 36.2% in precincts that hand-counted ballots, while Clinton beat Obama 40.7% to 36.2% in precincts that used Diebold voting machines.

The Madville Times generally frowns upon conspiracy theories... but our love for Dennis may cloud our judgment this morning. Consider these details:

1. The last pre-primary polls were spot-on about the GOP side of the ballot but were flat wrong about the Dems results.
2. The Republicans have geared their campaigns toward facing Hillary in November, as they are convinced they can beat her.
3. Diebold is run by GOP partisans, like Wally O'Dell, Diebold CEO, who threw lots of support behind President Bush and vowed to deliver Ohio's electoral votes to the President.
4. Kucinich will lose money calling for this recount. It will cost his shoestring campaign big money (New Hampshire law: challengers who lose by 3% or less pay a $2000 fee; other recount-callers foot the entire bill).
5. Kucinich risks losing more support back home by challenging the practices of Ohio-based Diebold.
   

Dennis doesn't need to cry "vast right-wing conspiracy"to justify his call for a recount. He's simply doing what he always does: standing up for principle and the Constitution. He has consistently opposed electronic voting machines because of the chance for ballot-rigging by the corporations controlling the machines. He hears allegations of vote-count chicanery that seem as plausible and as simple (watch out for Occam's Razor!) an explanation for Clinton's surprise victory Tuesday as any of the other statistical contortions and pop-psych theories bandied about. So he calls for a recount to test the suspicions of ill-doing.

If the recount shows no problems, then the only person who loses anything is Dennis... and even he will express relief that democracy has not been hijacked by Diebold. But on the off chance -- and even I will acknowledge it's an off chance -- that the recount turns up some discrepancies, we will at the very least have data that can direct better voting-machine design, if not cause for court action against the plutocracy.

Either way, Dennis proves that he is willing to defend democracy anywhere, anytime... and on his own dime.

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Update 09:50 CST: I love spreadsheets: this site offers tables galore breaking down the hand and machine votes by small, medium, and large towns. The analysis of Dems votes shows a 5.4% advantage for Hillary in machine-vote precincts over hand-count precincts. However, in the big towns, Hillary actually got a higher percentage of votes from hand-count precincts than from machine-count precincts. In the big towns, Obama actually got a higher percentage from machine-count precincts than from hand-count precincts.

Interestingly, over on the GOP side, machine-count precincts in all three areas -- small, medium, and large towns -- consistently favored Romney.

Another independent breakdown of the data at Drunkard's Lamppost... who proceeds to note that the NH exit polls align with the primary results, suggesting there was no Diebold monkey business.