Live Free or Die and Other Thoughts on The Granite State

By Chris Tackett

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Just a few things on the radar..., but first if you missed it the first time, please read this. My blog and comments aren't important, but the story I'm linking to needs your attention. We should be ashamed it hasn't been covered by a single US mainstream media outlet.

Moving on...

Making History:

History was made in New Hampshire. Clinton is the first female candidate in US history to win a presidential primary. I think that is something we should all take note of. I’m glad to see it happen, regardless of where she sits on my ranking of preferable candidates. Without considering the implications this win could have on the nomination, I view this is a good thing for women everywhere and our country, in general.

But this also got me thinking. Just as I don’t think people should oppose a candidate only because of their gender or race, I also don’t particularly agree that people should support Clinton or Obama, just because they have the chance to make history. Rather, I think that should be icing on the cake, so to speak. I think people should hope our country gets the best person for the job and if they happen to be a woman or African-American, well, that is just an incredible and historic bonus. Does this make sense? I don’t mean to degrade either of these two candidates or their campaigns, I think both would be far better presidents than we have now or would have with any of the people the Republicans are running, but I just get a slight feeling of uneasiness when I hear too much being made of the historical significance these candidates could have. Let’s first get the right person into the office and then figure out what records were broken. Share your thoughts on this, because as with many things, I’m not convinced I’m viewing this correctly.

Dude, what happened?

If you weren’t watching the results as they came in or haven’t seen elsewhere, the results for the Democrats were very close. Edwards came in third and it was neck and neck between Obama and Clinton for the entire night, with her winning by only 2.7 percent.

Remember that number because I’ll come back to it in a second.

The story everyone seems to be discussing right now is how wrong the polls were in predicting the results in New Hampshire. You can find that coverage here, here or here or a thousand other places, I’m sure. The average from all the major polls had Obama up by more than 8 percent. In some polls he’s was up by as much as 13 percent. Even the numbers from the Clinton campaign had her down to him by 10 to 12 percent.

I’ll touch on those discrepancies again below. But let’s just set that aside for now and pretend that the candidates were perfectly even with one another going into New Hampshire and the results came out just as they did. So in this fictional situation, they are tied going in and like what actually happened, Clinton wins by 2.7 percent.

There are any number of things that could be used to explain a swing of 2.7 percent, but that is an especially note-worthy number when you consider this from the ABC News blog:

“Without a doubt, a big source of the discrepancy between the pre-election surveys and the election outcome in New Hampshire is the order of candidates' names on the ballot and in the surveys.”

"Our analysis of all recent primaries in New Hampshire showed that there was always a big primacy effect — big-name, big-vote-getting candidates got 3 percent or more votes more when listed first on the ballot than when listed last."

More from ABC News:

"This year, the secretary of state changed the procedure so the names were alphabetical starting with a randomly selected letter, in all precincts."

"The randomly selected letter this year was Z."

"As a result, Joe Biden was first on every ballot, Hillary Clinton was near the top of the list (and the first serious contender listed) and Barack Obama was close to last of the 21 candidates listed."

Again, the difference between Clinton and Obama is 2.7 percent and their analysis of ALL recent primaries in New Hampshire showed that there was ALWAYS a big primacy effect and that candidates got “THREE PERCENT or MORE" votes when listed first on the ballot than when listed last!

Geezus. This is an excellent example of why we need uniformity in our election procedures. And I think it should be a topic of national discussion. I wouldn’t expect Obama’s campaign to bring this up, though, because in our controversy-obsessed culture he would be accused of whining or being a sore loser, the media wouldn't let him hear the end of it and his campaign from here on would almost certainly be damaged. But losing by a percentage less than what you likely lost simply due to stupid ballot design has got to hurt and doesn’t bring out feelings of confidence in our democratic process.

I know, I know. I can’t imagine ever going into the voting booth with the intention of voting for one candidate only to switch to another candidate simply because I have difficulty finding his or her name on the ballot. In that situation I, like a lot of people, would ask for help or look hard and long enough to find their name way down at the bottom of the list, but that’s me, a relatively young guy with an occasionally alert and properly functioning brain.

Then I think of this moment with my late-Grandfather from when I was graduating High School. A few moments after we returned from the ceremony and I changed into some different clothes he asked me “when I would finally be graduating” completely forgetting the hours we’d just spent in an auditorium with me in my robe and cap walking across the stage. I’m pretty sure he was a registered voter and always made it to the polls. I know I would think to find Obama on the ballot, but I couldn’t say the same for him were he alive to be voting now.

The point is that race was incredibly close and it sure seems hard to argue that ballot order played absolutely no role.

Anyway, make of that what you will.

Who is Counting

Before I move off the subject of the odd results, give a moment to consider Brad Friedman’s post about the impact vote count tampering may have played. (NOTE: Friedman makes the crucial point that there is no evidence to suggest anything scandalous happened, he is just bringing it up to note that the possibility is still there).

Friedman points out that the vote in New Hampshire was performed on the Diebold optical scan voting machines that were shown to be shockingly easy to hack in the HBO documentary Hacking Democracy. The entire thing is now available 9-parts on YouTube.

Part 1 of 9 is below. Watch the other 8 parts if you can. Actually, stop reading this and just go watch that right now. You'll get more benefit out of that than I can provide here.

Friedman’s piece is long and hard to quote without quoting all of it, so I would urge you to give it a full read.

But the main point of his blog is mirrored in this opinion-piece by Tribune Media columnist, Robert Koehler.

“…so when she emerged from the Tuesday primary with an 8,000-vote and 3-percentage-point victory over Obama, perhaps — considering the notorious unreliability, not to mention hackability, of Diebold machines — the media might have hoisted a few red flags in the coverage, rather than immediately chalk the results up to Clinton’s tears and voter unpredictability. (Oh, if only more reporters considered red flags patriotic.)

The fact is, whatever actually happened in New Hampshire voting booths on Tuesday, our elections are horrifically insecure. For instance, Bev Harris, of the highly respected voting watchdog organization Black Box Voting, recently wrote that the Diebold 1.94w optical scan machines used in some 55 percent of New Hampshire precincts (representing more than 80 percent of the state’s voters) are “the exact same make, model and version hacked in the Black Box Voting project in Leon County (Florida)” a few years ago. They haven’t been upgraded; the security problems haven’t been fixed.

National, or at least media, denial about this situation doesn’t say much for the strength of our democracy.

What Koehler is referencing in that last sentence about national and/or media denial about voting machines is evident in this piece from the Dallas Morning News, which examines Friedman’s discussion of the possibility of manipulation and how it has the progressive blogosphere in a huff.

First, they write: “Curious about the "wildly inaccurate" polls that put Mr. Obama in a double-digit lead going into Tuesday's primary, blogger Brad Friedman, a Los Angeles-based election-fraud watchdog, questioned the results as soon as they arrived, and all day Wednesday.

"Other folks that I've spoken to, who follow this sort of thing, share my concern at this hour," he wrote on bradblog.com. "If I was Barack Obama, I'd certainly not have conceded this election this quickly. I'm not quite sure what he was thinking.**"

Then later:

Some of the nation's most prominent bloggers sparred over the issue as well. Markos Moulitsas, who runs the popular site DailyKos, called the allegations "a load of bull" from "a bunch of cranks." Mr. Moulitsas, who has said he'll vote for Mr. Obama, also said it was typical of the blogosphere to host a "tiny minority" who pose "wild claims."

Mr. Friedman took issue with that characterization, saying the process should be transparent and trustworthy, and that the polls were "wildly out of whack" with the results – combined with the questionable machines – should be enough to raise concerns.

**To answer Friedman's rhetorical question about what Obama was thinking by conceding in New Hampshire, I think Obama was thinking along the lines of what I said above, that any complaint or questioning about the final results and their legitimacy would have been politically dangerous for his campaign. I think it is a shame that it is so difficult to have an honest discussion about voting machines and their legitimacy without someone accusing someone else of being a sore loser, but it just an example of our sad state of discourse, I’m afraid. And it certainly doesn't help that even within the progressive blogosphere they can't agree that this is something worth fixing.

I also take issue with this from the Dallas Morning News piece:

"Please come back to your senses," one commenter wrote. "What is most disturbing is the fact some people are accusing the fellow Democrats of fraud. Please, dear reasonable Obama supporter, tell those people to stop."

As Friedman correctly points out in his piece, “…if there was skullduggery here, there are plenty of reasons to believe it could have been committed by any number of interested parties, who have nothing to do with the Clinton campaign.”

And again, he isn’t saying it was rigged, just that it is a real possibility with these voting machines and we need to admit that so we can fix it and get as close to transparent elections as possible.

And I agree. If we are going to try and analyze how the polls were off by 16 percentage points between Obama and Clinton, without being wrong on any of the other candidates, and we are going to give time and energy to discussing the possibility that Clinton’s tears or Chris Matthews or the “Bradley Effect” were the thing that tipped the balance, then it seems irresponsible to not also look at the things that have been demonstrated to have an effect, such as the arrangement of names on the ballot or these shitty voting machines, which have been shown to be ripe for manipulation.

These things aren’t as fun to talk about and they differ from the other examples in that they would actually require some real work to fix, whereas the Bradley Effect or sympathy for the emotionally expressive Clinton can just be talked away as something “voters do”. But we can’t keep having elections be overshadowed by the ominous possibility that poor ballot design or hackable machines played a role in the outcome.

Anyway, moving on.

Obama and Experience:

Give this short piece from the Time Magazine blog a read. It certainly doesn’t abide by the false meme that Obama is weak regarding foreign policy experience.

“One of the more extraordinary stories of the Obama campaign has been playing out behind the scenes over the past week as the candidate has been working on a daily basis to try to calm things down in his father's homeland and his grandmother's home, Kenya, where a contested election has led to riots.”

And later:

“On January 3, the day of the caucuses, he had a conversation with Bishop Desmond Tutu, who had flown to Nairobi to see if he could begin negotiations with the factions. In the days since his Iowa victory, Obama has had near-daily conversations with the U.S. Ambassador in Kenya or with opposition leader Raila Odinga. As of late this afternoon, before his rally in Rochester, N.H., Obama was trying to reach Kenyan President Kibaki.”

Just something to absorb.

Edwards’ future:

Tim Dickinson on the National Affairs blog at Rolling Stone brings up the obvious and not particularly astute point that Edwards is in third and without him in the race, that would mean more votes could possibly go towards Obama.

He writes, “Having slept on last night’s results it occurs to me that John Edwards is the only thing keeping Hillary Clinton viable in this race.”

“Here’s 20 percent of the Democratic vote, hanging onto — at this point — a nonviable candidate. And as fervently as they are for John Edwards, they are equally contra Clinton.”

Sorry, but that just isn’t true. First off, Edwards could be doing a lot better, but he is not out yet. And I’m not so sure that all of Edwards’ supporters can be described as “contra Clinton”.

And as for saying Edwards is the only thing keeping Clinton viable, is he serious? Does he really think Clinton would just go away if Barack had won New Hampshire? Does he know how this process works? I'm not sure I do, but I do know that even though there would be a great deal of momentum behind back-to-back wins for Obama, there are 48 states and a lot of delegates left and whether Edwards sticks in the race or not, Clinton has heavy support in just about every state. And she just isn’t going to hang up the hat if two states didn’t go her way. That’s not how Clintons roll.

I agree that were Edwards to pull out and support Obama we would see a chunk of voters move towards Obama, but I don’t think they all would. Dickinson’s argument is just too simplified. Maybe he just wrote it about a month too soon. We’ll see.

Obama Actually Won:

Oh yeah, so all this talk about the legitimacy of the vote aside, it seems Obama actually won in New Hampshire, or that’s what this post by Andrew Sullivan says. And from what I can tell, he’s right, Obama came out of New Hampshire with 12 delegates, while Clinton only 11. Don’t ask me what this means, as I’m trying to wrap my head around that, as well. It’s a learning process folks, hop on board and we’ll figure this out eventually.

Moving forward on the Republican side:

Really the only thing that surprised me was that Ron Paul didn’t do better. In a state with the motto “Live Free or Die”, I thought the Libertarian would scratch up more votes than he did. Though, other than poor performances by crazy uncles, nothing was too surprising. Obviously, the southern Baptist routine doesn’t fly in the Northeast like it does in Iowa. But third is okay for Huck and I’m gonna go out on a limb and say Huckabee wins in South Carolina, or at least in Anderson, South Carolina, which is one of the towns Christian Exodus -- the Christian secessionist group that plans to change the US one local government at a time -- has chosen to start their movement. A poor showing from Fred Thompson should result in him calling it quits. He’s been terrible so far, and South Carolina is his big chance to show he can pull in a southern state. I expect him to blow it. Guiliani and Romney will both do poorly and it’ll come down to McCain and Huck.

Keep an eye and ear out for reports of smear campaigns in South Carolina. Who knows how many of those folks still believe about McCain what Karl Rove fed them in 2000.

Moving forward on the Democratic side:

Everyone will be talking about how Obama does in Nevada and South Carolina. Winning there, as some are predicting he will, would be impressive and show that he can bounce back from the New Hampshire surprise. Andrew Sullivan sums it up perfectly here: “Now Obama has his real adversity moment. And we'll see whether he rises to this challenge. This is what campaigns are supposed to do. They are making them both better candidates.”

Richardson has dropped out. Though look for him to be in the VP discussions later this year.

And finally, More Reasons Why Missouri Sucks:

First this:

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) -- A state senator wants to keep using B.C. and A.D. for dates.

Some have turned away from that system because of its religious connotation. B.C. stands for "Before Christ" and A.D. stands for

"Anno Domini" or "Year of our Lord." Instead, they use B.C.E., or Before Common Era, and C.E., for Common Era.

You know, I don't care what kind of rules people want to make for their private clubs or organizations, but when it comes to the government, can we please try to prioritize?

Also this:

ST. CHARLES, Mo. - What the ...? A St. Louis-area town is considering a bill that would ban swearing in bars, along with table-dancing, drinking contests and profane music.

I think Lawrence’s harassment of Last Call is bad enough, but this is just ridiculous.

City officials contend the bill is needed to keep rowdy crowds under control because the historic downtown area gets a little too lively on some nights.

City Councilman Richard Veit said he was prompted to propose the bill after complaints about bad bar behavior. He says it will give police some rules to enforce when things get too rowdy.

Why don’t the police just enforce the laws already on the books? You know, laws that prevent things that we should be worried about, like drunk-driving, assaults, things of that nature? People are just going crazy.

Alright, now time to cleanse the pallet.

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Posted by ihatejohntravolta (anonymous) on January 10, 2008 at 11:01 a.m. (Suggest removal)

One more question I had about the primaries in N.H.--

My very Republican mother and hater of Clinton sent me this in an e-mail Tuesday:

Rush [Limbaugh] had an interesting point.In New Hampshire, all you have to do to vote is claim you might be moving there. I know that the parking lots at her rallies were full of cars from Massachusetts. He pointed out that he wondered how the polls could be so accurate on the Republican side and so far off on the Democratic side. He thinks they bussed the voters in from out of state.

Does anyone know if this is ACTUALLY true?

Posted by OnShakedown (Chris Tackett) on January 10, 2008 at 1:56 p.m. (Suggest removal)

ihatjohntravolta:

the blog crooksandliars has the audio of this call and it isn't very convincing.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/01/10...

Posted by Joel (Joel Mathis) on January 10, 2008 at 5:57 p.m. (Suggest removal)

W/R/T polls:

I understand why campaigns use polls. They want to know what voters care about and how best to calibrate their messages. And if the media used polling to do something similar -- figure out what the heck voters care about and calibrate their coverage accordingly, well good. I suspect that happens to an extent.

But polling about support for candidates seems to add a lot of noise and little of substance to the national discussion. Who is up? Who is down? It contributes to all of that horserace coverage that detracts from looking at what the candidacies are all about.

I know: Horse races are fun.

I blogged about it at my new home: http://redblueamerica.com/blog/2008-01-0...

(Sorry for the self-promotion. People had asked to know where I was going, so this seems the way to do it.)

Posted by unclebiff (anonymous) on January 11, 2008 at 10:06 a.m. (Suggest removal)

none of the canidates are "good" least of all hillary or obama and it has nothing to do with their sex or race. I fear if they don't win we'll never hear the end of how "america just wasn't ready for a woman/black president".

Posted by OnShakedown (Chris Tackett) on January 11, 2008 at 11:18 a.m. (Suggest removal)

unclebiff,

welcome to the blogs. i would be interested in hearing your reasoning for saying none of the canidates (sic) are "good" if you're interested in sharing.

but i do agree that if either Obama or Clinton* are not elected, we will hear that discussion taking place. though, without checking Lexus Nexus, i'm sure the same discussion took place when other female or black candidates have run and not won, so that shouldn't be surprising if/when it happens.

*i've been noticing more and more how Clinton is so often referred to by her first name, where as the male candidates are not. just something to note.

Posted by OnShakedown (Chris Tackett) on January 11, 2008 at 11:20 a.m. (Suggest removal)

and joel,

i've enjoyed the new site, though when i tried to post a reply to your poll blog it said i was flagged for spam and the comment hasn't shown up. any clue what the problem was?

Posted by Joel (Joel Mathis) on January 11, 2008 at noon (Suggest removal)

Nope, but I'll go in and check. Thanks for the heads-up.

Posted by OtherJoel (anonymous) on January 11, 2008 at 1:06 p.m. (Suggest removal)

I caught myself using Hillary instead of Clinton and thought about that question. I don't necessarily think it's sexist (if that was what you were implying). I think it's just that people want to differentiate her from Bill Clinton. Also, her campaign signs say "Hillary" on them, not Clinton.

Posted by booyalab (anonymous) on January 12, 2008 at 4:45 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Apart from the novelty of a first female US primary winner, how is this anything more than a diversion from the issues? In what way has this occasion improved anything concretely? When women were first allowed to vote, the detractors said the political process would be ruined and the supporters said it would usher in a utopian era. But of course, neither of those things happened. Everything stayed the same. The only good thing about that event was the increased equality of process. But that change in process doesn't apply here! Women have been allowed to buy lottery tickets for awhile. Hillary just happened to be one of the lucky ones. Stop playing the gender/race cards, people. If those qualities aren't what make a good president, then start concerning yourselves with the ones that do.

Posted by Mkh (anonymous) on January 14, 2008 at 1:09 p.m. (Suggest removal)

New Hampshire's new state motto should be "Live Free or Diebold".

Posted by DOTDOT (anonymous) on January 15, 2008 at 3:22 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Now THAT is some FUNNY idiot dribble. :>)

Live Free or Die and Other Thoughts on The Granite State

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