60 Senate Seats?

It looks very possible at this juncture:

"There is a strong possibility that Barack Obama will ask Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) to serve as his Secretary of Commerce, Democratic Senate aides tell the Huffington Post. Provided that Al Franken emerges victorious in the Minnesota recount, it would give Democrats in the Senate a 60th caucusing member, as New Hampshire's Democratic governor John Lynch would appoint Gregg's replacement."

New Mexico, New Hampshire Senate Seats go Blue

CNN has declared Thomas Udall the winner in the race for Senator from New Mexico, and Jeanne Shaheen for the same slot in New Hampshire. These wins place the Democratic Senate advantage at 55-45. Five. . .to . . .go. . .

Question of the night (To be answered WAY past MY bedtime) Will Alaska re-elect convicted felon Ted Stevens?

The Great Northwest Territory of New Hampshire

The world according to Sarah Palin:

Sarah Palin drew some boos and shouts of confusion today, when while speaking in New Hampshire she mistakenly claimed that the Granite State was part of the "great Northwest."

"I like being here," she told the crowd in Laconia, "because it seems like here and in our last rally too -- other parts around this great Northwest -- here in New Hampshire you just get it."

Problems in New Hampshire

The ballots in New Hampshire are being reviewed, and the results are quite disturbing:

Ballots that were not read by the op-scan at all. Voters given the wrong pen to use for machines. Unsecured memory cards. Private contractors in charge. . .

From Bev Harris at Black Box Voting:

(1) A reckless reliance on a sole source private contractor. Not particularly bothered that the company has private chain of custody during critical points, no policy or even apparent concern with having convicted felons involved in the voting system.

(2) Use of a system with known defects without even taking any mitigation steps that other states took.

(3) NO REQUIREMENT to even save the memory cards. The explanation is that they get a disk with the "program" on it. VotersUnite attorney Jon Bonifaz questioned the assistant attorney general on this closely today, because federal law requires records retention of 22 months on electronic media.

New Hampshire has a haphazard policy of allowing the memory cards to be kept, or not, with a chain of custody, or not, shipping back to LHS, or not, and it's perfectly okay with New Hampshire if the memory cards are erased altogether the day after the election. They profess to believe that if they just have LHS ship them a disk containing some purported program -- BEFORE the election, when there aren't even any votes registered -- everything is okay. No one could tell us if this is the memory card program, or the GEMS database file, or the optical scan chip. They seem to have no idea what they are doing with this and I would call this wilfull ignorance, not naivete.

(4) Lack of documentation and lack of diligence on keeping documentation or written procedures in key areas

(5) Ballot chain of custody procedures with major holes and a few very creepy areas that will be the subject of a future article.

The upshot will be that New Hampshire could be the role model for the nation, but not until they purge themselves of a limited number of very significant problems.

The problem with chain of custody: You can have a strong, beautiful, stainless steel chain but if one link is broken, the rest doesn't matter.

How many of these scenarios played out in 2000? In 2004? The answer: just enough.

Why are states such as New Hampshire still using such easily hacked machines and not following a strict chain of custody for memory cards? Who's been involved with this vote manipulation - are they still involved? These are questions that we MUST have answers to before the 2008 elections are conducted.

- How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican National Committee Operative

New Hampshire

This is interesting:

Theron Horton and I have confirmed that based on the official results on the New Hampshire Secretary of State web site, there is a remarkable relationship between Obama and Clinton votes, when you look at votes tabulated by op-scan versus votes tabulated by hand:

Clinton Optical scan 91,717 52.95%
Obama Optical scan 81,495 47.05%

Clinton Hand-counted 20,889 47.05%
Obama Hand-counted 23,509 52.95%

The percentages appear to be swapped. This seems highly unusual.

Recall that the specific model of Diebold op-scan [1.94w] and central tabulator in use in New Hampshire are proven by demonstration [Hursti Hack] to be vulnerable to insider manipulation.

Theron Horton and I are proceeding with the intra-county and demographic analysis.

More to come.

Bruce O'Dell
Co-Coordinator for Data Analysis
Election Defense Alliance
Bodell[at]ElectionDefenseAlliance[dot]org

And even more interesting:

Brad, the coincidence is even greater than that. The numbers match to within .0001% !

Optical Scan
Clinton 91,717 52.9507%
Obama 81,495 47.0493%
Total 173,212

Hand Counted
Clinton 20,889 47.0494%
Obama 23,509 52.9506%
Total 44,398

I normally try to avoid "conspiracy theories", but Dennis Kucinich may actually be onto something here. I wonder if Secretary of State David Scanlan is still feeling so confident?

New Hampshire Exit Polls

We've just surpassed the 50% mark on the New Hampshire vote tally. Here are some interesting tidbits from the exit polls thus far:

In a reversal from Iowa, it seems that more women have voted for Hillary than for Barack, while Barack is winning the men.

Barack is winning two-thirds of voters under 25; Hillary is getting almost half of voters 65 and older.

As per Iowa, Hillary is doing better with those who have a high school diploma or less, while Barack is doing better with those who have achieved a higher level of education.

So. . .Hillary is capturing the older and less-educated vote, while Barack is taking in the younger, educated crowd. . .It certainly does appear that one candidate is truly the agent of choice for change, eh?

Obama - The New Hampshire Ads

Obama leading in N.H. Polls

The first post-Iowa poll, by Rasmussen, finds Obama jumping to a 10% lead over Hillary in New Hampshire, with Edwards trailing badly.

Barack Obama	37%
Hillary Clinton	27%
John Edwards	19%
Bill Richardson	8%
Dennis Kucinich	3%
Mike Gravel	1%

Now the American Research Group (ARG) poll, also post-Iowa, may confirm this, showing Obama with a shocking 12% bulge over Clinton at 38% to 26%, with Edwards picking up a fresh 5% and actually threatening Hillary with 20%. That's a 16% swing to Obama since the previous poll.

Most interesting detail deep in the ARG numbers: Hillary actually leads Obama 34% to 32% among confirmed Democrats, while he tops her 49% to 12% among independents, which may make up one-third of the tally. Debate tonight should be interesting....

Top Dogs Slipping in New Hampshire

Bad news for John McCave and Hillary "I'm for change too" Clinton - with only days to go, the numbers are moving away from you in New Hampshire. And those results don't even account for any Iowa bounce for Huckabee and Obama:

In New Hampshire, Clinton's lead over Obama in the Democratic race shrunk slightly to four points, 32 percent to 28 percent. John Edwards, a former North Carolina senator who finished second in Iowa, was in third place with 20 percent.

Among Republicans, McCain's lead over rival Mitt Romney fell by two points to 32 percent against 30 percent. Huckabee, a Baptist minister and former Arkansas governor, gained two points to 12 percent.

"Overall the numbers have not moved that much but there was the beginning of a post-Iowa bounce for Obama and Huckabee," pollster John Zogby said. "We will see more tomorrow but I think we will clearly see them make gains."

Independents, who can participate in either party's primary in New Hampshire, appear to be leaning toward Democrats this year, following a growing national trend. According to Zogby, about 40 percent of the Democratic vote is coming from independents this year while about one fourth of the Republican vote comes from that segment of voters.

Obama, who rode a wave of support for his outsider's message of change to the win in Iowa, leads the Democratic field among independents with 34 percent. Clinton was at 26 percent. On the GOP side, McCain is the top Republican choice for independents at 42 percent, well ahead of Romney at 29 percent.