It is my view that Senator Clinton had no input into the "errors" being reported, and wouldn't have anything to do with any sort of election fraud. But...

She has a lot of supporters in NYC, and some of them are not above fraud. Furthermore, any Republicans at the polls would be more likely to want Clinton to win than Obama, if only because they have it in their minds that Clinton will energize their base while Obama is more likely to get those votes for himself. So the idea that "bi-partisanship" will save the day can be thrown out the window.

Regarding human errors in reading the machines, when there are so many "errors," they are all the same (i.e. zero votes for Obama), and they are all in the same direction, it is clear that there is more here than human error or machine problems. There is fraud.

Moving on to PB/OS systems in Ohio: The problem there was not with the machines, but with the way votes were tallied. Either they were tallied in a centralized location rather than at the precincts, or they were tallied in secret. Both cases allow for many different methods for election fraud. The votes need to be tallied in public, at the precincts, with the possibility of a hand count of the paper ballots right on the scene. One suggestion that would work is to videotape the entire process, from printing out the tally to opening the box to recounting the ballots -- first by zeroing out the machine and feeding the ballots in while videotaping, then by hand.

Finally, regarding DREs and recounts: What Mole says is correct, but things are worse than he says. Even if the "paper record" were made the official ballot, it still doesn't work. Studies show that well over 90% of voters don't look at that small slip of paper, and of those who do try many are unable to read the tiny type.

Getting back to Mole's close, I don't blame Clinton or her campaign for the discrepancies, but there's too much smoke there not to have a fire underneath.

..although Mole sort of hints at the right answer. While machines can be a problem, mostly it is human error. 80 year olds who've just worked 15 hour look at little numbers at the end of the day and shout their reading to someone of the same age who then has to put what he heard into a line on a sheet, which is then called in by a cop who couldn't care less to someone who may have the same viewpoint. Stuff tends to happen.

Mostly it doesn't matter. When it's close people send brigades to inspect the machine and monitor the official count. So,while mistakes occur there, they don't occur anytime exactitide could make a difference. You can be that, in those rare instances where the delegate results would have changed if a few votes votes could have made a difference, the campaigns sent people to make sure it was done right

as Jerry Koeonig, Obama's NY petition gur, and a true Ny eclection expert, pointed out, Obama's name on the ballot came after a ong list of dead candidacies, so someone transcribing a long line of zeroes was likely to put in one more in error. Since the transcribibg was done twice, the chances of this were double.

This is not fraud Danny.

A thought occurred to me in one of my "Oliver Stone" moments:

Suppose some back room folks decided not to actually cheat, but to skew the unofficial results? The idea is that the official results aren't completed for a couple of weeks, during which their candidate (Clinton) might get enough of a lift that the shift of a few delegates in New York wouldn't matter. In the mean time, she would show a much-needed enormous victory in her adopted home state.

So they get people to report ridiculous totals in some EDs, knowing that the official results will be legitimate. For two weeks the news is all about Clinton's big victory in New York, and when the official numbers come out it doesn't make the headlines. They can say they're not "cheating," since the official results will be accurate, and they can chalk up the "discrepancies" to simple human error.

Meanwhile, they've helped their candidate get "momentum" following a close Super Tuesday.

I know, there's a lot of Oliver Stone here, but stuff like this can easily happen. The really fun part is that while none of us can prove it, nobody can disprove it either.

However, not necessarily borne out by the results. For instance, in the Harlem ED most commonly cited, Hillary herself was undercounted by 120 votes, which wouldn't comport with your theory.

Moreover, you assume too much about the ability of the "machine" to control such a count; too many intangibles, including poll watchers, other inspectors and the cops. Even if one were purposely skewing the count, you not only would not have to get caught, you would have to count upon the competence of other to ensure your misdeed had actual impact.

Once again, I commend you to Obama's own guy, Jerry Koening. No one, perhaps not even Marty Connor knows this stuff better. His theory of the repeating zeros bears the indicia of decades of experience doing this stuff. since he's a motivated Obama partisan, I think we can take him at his word.

Btw, have you checked the results in the EDs where got Obama zeroed out for what the dead candidates got? I'll bet you Jerry did.

Incidentally, I've my doubts it had any impact on the delegates. In Rangel's CD, where the most cited example took place, the delgate split 50/50; given Obama lost the CD either way, it would take an astromical jump for the results to change. Were any contests for the last delgate even close enough for it to have an impact?

Last week, Bouldin accused Vito Lopez of elevating petty local politics over issues of national imporatance and thereby costing Hillary votes, which, if true, would be disgusting. Mole, while highly critical of Vito's actions, repudiates the article's main charge.

This week, Jacoby accuses Vito and party leaders of engaing in fraud to help Hillary, which, if true, would contradict Bouldin's allegation that Vito was less than zealous in Hillary's behalf, but would, nonetheless, still be disgusting. Mole, without mentioning Vito, repudiates the allegation.

So, in the course of the week Jacoby contradicts Bouldin, and Mole contradicts each of them.

Can't you guys get your stories straight.

You're starting to look like the Clinton campaign.

..I mean, you and Bouldin probably couldn't agree on lunch.

But, the point was that the machine as an all-encompassing evil enterprise conspiring to ensure Hillary's victory is one that is contradicted by the facts. The line about you guys not keeping your stories straight is only to point out the absurdity of consistently blaming anyone for the things said by their supporters. I mean, does nayone really believe that Bob Kerrey ever consults anyone before blurting out the first idiocy that comes to his mind?

Btw, why not ask Jerry Koening about the plam card cropping. I have no idea what he thinks, but I'd sure be interested in hearing it.

Meanwhile, I can't figure out why the Times found this story so newsworthy. "Election Inspectors Make Errors" is surely the ultimate dog bites man story.

Forget machine issues...or even human 'error'

Here at my voting center in Brooklyn, as local school...EVERYONE who walked in to vote was not even in the book to even make it to the machines.

We all had to fill out a paper ballot, IN FRONT OF THE PEOPLE AT THE DESK, who were well aware of who we all selected (as we all where of each other as well).

If that is not a complete failure of voting infrastructure, i don't know what is.

Who even knows if our ballots every even made it out of the envelope.

Counting Votes In New York
posted by Jerry Skurnik
Sun, 02/17/2008 - 1:08pm
Saturday’s NY Times printed a story about the published results of the New York Democratic Presidential Primary having numerous errors.

While the story made it clear to anyone who read it closely that the errors would actually have no bearing on the allocation of delegates, the inevitable has happened. Numerous conspiracy theorists got to work immediately and claimed that this was another case of an election being stolen.

I was going to post something about this but late on Saturday, I received an e-mail from Doug Kellner, the Democratic Co-Chair of the New York State Board of Elections that explained how the votes are counted in New York much better than I could. Here is Kellner’s report –

Sam Roberts' report in this morning's New York Times is really old news to any experienced New York City politico. At the close of the polls, the election inspectors manually copy the numbers from the voting machines onto the "canvass report," which is prepared in triplicate. One copy goes to the borough office of the Board of Elections together with all provisional and emergency ballots. A second copy is maintained by the local police precinct. A third copy is used by a clerk at the local police precinct who types the numbers into the police department main frame computer, which is immediately available to the Election News Service, a local media consortium, who eventually receive the third hard copy of the official canvass report.

Everyone in New York knows that the election night numbers typed by the police clerks are very unreliable and filled with typographical errors. Most of the local Democratic clubs have watchers present at the close of the polls who record the numbers independently. In this particular race, most clubs had both Obama and Clinton supporters who freely shared their numbers. It has been my experience that the numbers collected by the local political organizations are much more accurate than the numbers distributed to the media through their election night consortium.

The NY Times did accurately note that in New York Clinton had the first column and Obama had the fifth column, with candidates who had dropped out in the second, third, fourth and sixth columns, who often did receive zeroes on the voting machines. Therefore, it was a relatively easy typographical error for the clerk at the Police Department to put a zero in the Obama column, which occurred in a couple of precincts. It has been my experience that almost all of the errors are police clerk typos, rather than transcription errors by the election inspectors who prepare the canvass reports.

The silver lining is that because everyone knows that these election night numbers are filled with typographical errors, no one I know (except the media!) ever relies of these numbers. New York has a mandatory, 100% recanvass, which both election officials and the political candidates generally take very seriously, even when the races are not close.

Although I don't have the exact percentages for this presidential primary, absentee ballots are typically 3.5% of the total and, in New York City, valid provisional ballots are about 2% of the total. It is extraordinarily rare to have any argument over the numbers ultimately certified because the candidates’ watchers and the board officials generally exchange their numbers a make an effort to reconcile them. The candidates’ watchers have access to the lever voting machines, which are removed to the borough voting machine facilities the day after the election, and may look at the paper ballots, during both the initial count after the election and the recount that takes place eight days after the election. Absentee ballots postmarked before election day are valid if received within seven days after the election.