|
With an interest in defending the individual's
constitutionally guaranteed Right to have and to know
that his vote is being accurately counted, this
Foundation determined the 2008 New Hampshire Primary
recount offered an excellent, real-world opportunity
to independently assess the statistical performance of
optical scan, electronic vote counting machines
relative to hand counting of ballots.
WTP
has just completed its analysis of the data. Our
principal findings are as follows.
Of
the 347, 905 total ballots processed during the
recount 305,207 (87.7%) came from towns and cities
that use machines to count the votes, and 42,619
(12.3%) came from towns that use People to count the
votes.
New
Hampshire's vote counting machines violate federal
accuracy standards. New Hampshire's machines
experienced an error rate approximately 163 times
greater than the error rate allowed under federal
Election Law.
The
probability that an individual's vote was accurately
counted during the Primary was much greater if his
vote was counted by hand than by machine.
Statewide,
taking into consideration all the ballots that were
included in the recount, the number of machine counts
that were in error by more than 2 votes was 9.81 times
greater than the number of hand counts that were off
by more than 2 votes. The number of machine counts
that were in error by more than 1 vote was 3.37 times
greater than the number of hand counts that were off
by more than 1 vote.
We
identified 38 instances of apparent fraud where votes
were being hand counted.
We
were not able to determine if intentional or
unintentional error was behind the more
substantial discrepancies in machine counts. Nor were
we able to determine the impact of the 21 machines
that failed on Primary Day, or if other machine
failures occurred but were not reported to the
Secretary of State's office.
In
brief, the analysis data supports the conclusion that
not only are machine counts of votes much more likely
to result in error, but the machine errors are of a
significantly larger magnitude and variance than those
observed for hand counting.
When
the much higher frequency of machine-counted errors is
coupled with the statistically disturbing magnitude of
the machine errors, it is not unreasonable to conclude
that the use of optical scan machines to count votes
has robbed many citizens of New Hampshire of their
Right to Vote and their Right to have their Vote
counted accurately.
Our analysis of the state's data and election
practices suggest that there are numerous steps that
the government of New Hampshire can take to bolster
the integrity of its election process - whether votes
are counted by hand or by machine. Although
hand-counting of votes is clearly not yet a perfected
art, in keeping alive the practice of hand-counting,
New Hampshire has served its citizens well. Beyond
this, the state should not subject its People to
further enduring electronic voting machines that
grossly fail to meet even the minimal accuracy
standards mandated by federal law.
We hope our analysis has provided some much needed
light onto a matter that substantially affects the
future of freedom in New Hampshire - and our entire
Republic.
Click
Here To Access the Full WTP NH Recount Report
& the supporting analysis
|
