New Hampshire Recount Shows A Fair Election

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After Hillary Clinton won the Democratic primary in New Hampshire, despite the preceding polls showing her behind Barack Obama, people questioned whether the AccuVote Scanner machines were reliable and some even engaged in conspiracy theories.

Dennis Kucinich paid $27,000 to recount about 40 percent of New Hampshire's Democratic ballots and after that recount is finished, Kucinich, who is due to withdraw from the Presidential race today, will decide whether to pay approximately $40,000 more to recount the rest of the state's Democratic votes.

Percentage wise the changes in results after the week long recount of the New Hampshire votes, were so small that it rounded down to zero, according to the Nashua Telegraph.

Barack Obama gained 27 votes and Dennis Kucinich gained three, while Hillary Rodham Clinton lost 27 and John Edwards lost four.

Three towns near Nashua where there were no differences, however small, were from towns that used the hand count to begin with, but the Telegraph also points out that people aren't perfect either and "Lyndeborough and Wilton hand-counted ballots on presidential primary night, yet missed three votes between them."

You can keep up with the official recount results here.

On Saturday, The Nashua Telegraph did report on the biggest change that came from the recount and it had nothing to do with the machines themselves, but from election officials mistakes.

In Nashua's Ward 5, which voted at New Searles School,the election officials mistakenly included presidential votes that had been cast in the vice presidential column, which cost the three top Democratic challengers a total of 110 votes, a similar error occurred in Manchester's Ward 5.

Republican primary ballots will be recounted at the request of a little-known GOP candidate from Michigan, Albert Howard, who got just 44 votes.

The AccuVote scanning machines do not recognize ballots that haven't had the little oval completely filled in, which accounts for a few of the small changes and yet hand counted ballots also have small changes in figures due to human error.

Neither one of those significantly changed the results from what was reported originally which showed Hillary Clinton winning the New Hampshire Primary.

The polls showing that Barack Obama was in the lead and would carry New Hampshire easily, were wrong and did not adequately account for public opinion.

(Correction made to last paragraph with thanks to gohomelaker)