Prediction: The ballots that are recounted will nearly match the machine counts. [View All]

[mhatrw]

And this fact will be used to prop up the reliability of a inherently flawed and insecure system of vote counting.

Do I suspect election fraud in the NH primary? Yes. The pre-election polls, the initial exit polls and the hand counted municipalities said one thing while the machine counted municipalities said something else. Having said that, there are other very reasonable explanations. The pre-elections polls may have been incorrectly modeled, the initial exit polls could have been pegged to these incorrectly modeled polls, the Obama youth vote could have stayed home, and/or the Clinton GOTV effort could simply trumped Obama's especially when you consider how much easier it is to target working women for GOTV than young voters and independents.

From my understanding, the vote counting process in New Hampshire is not centralized. Therefore, if any election fraud occurred, it would probably be targeted to a few large municipalities. And considering the climate of suspicion about election results nationally and the ease of getting a recount in New Hampshire, fraudulent paper ballots may indeed have been part of any election fraud from the start or, if not, may be introduced into whatever pool of ballots are finally recounted.

Of course, in theory, a manual recount is always a good thing. It doesn't cost much and clearly makes election fraud more difficult and risky to undertake. But that's just the theory. In reality, we are engaged in a highly charged propaganda battle between the corporations that assure us that their secret vote counting procedures are perfectly accurate and every informed citizen who seeks grassroots electoral reform.

We have already seen the opening salvos in this propaganda battle. Those who wish to keep controlling our entire democratic process are already demanding that we "stop complaining" if this single recount doesn't uncover significant electoral fraud. Of course, we will still have every informed citizen and all logic on our side regardless of the outcome of any specific recount. The question is whether this will be enough to overcome the corporate media and political establishment framing of election reform as an insignificant, fringe, loser-driven non-issue.