Sunday, February 24, 2008

Optical Scan Error Rate Exceeds Federal Limit in NH Primary Recount

In a study published by the We The People Foundation, the NH Primary Election recount revealed error rates in machine counted votes far exceeded the error rate for hand-counted votes. Further, the machine error rate was also greatly in excess of federal limits. OpEdNews has a good summary, or go here for the full report. Principal findings:

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.
Has there ever been a better environment from which to draw such comparative data? This is very useful information.

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Coming up this Tuesday between 5-6pm PT I will be making my second appearance on the Election Defense Alliance radio show broadcast through Toginet.

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