The New Hampshire election results vs. how the votes were counted

So we had the New Hampshire primary yesterday, and in case you hadn't heard, John McCain and Hillary Clinton came away the winners. Depending upon what corners of the internet you may or may not frequent, you might have heard some griping about Diebold election machines not being secure, or not producing a paper trail, like... cash registers and ATMs. The point is there is a vocal minority in this country that feels the 2004 election was stolen by manipulating Diebold machines in Ohio in favor of Bush over Kerry. That's a whole can of worms you can dig into on your own time.

I'm interested in yesterday's primary because the same stuff is coming up again. A significant portion of New Hampshire's ballots are cast on Diebold machines and electronically counted by a contractor, so people get excited about elections being fixed. In order to put everyone at ease, I've taken the liberty of dividing up the votes in New Hampshire by how they were counted. First the Republican side:

Hand Count DieBold

McCain 0.407135252 0.372577136

Romney 0.267352775 0.337703393

Huckabee0.131181763 0.109349308

Giuliani0.083105442 0.088986452

Paul 0.091747907 0.074386983

Thompson0.01365259 0.011925392

Hunter 0.00582427 0.005071336

As you can see, McCain wins in Diebold districts as well as hand count country. Romney gets a pretty significant pop (about 7%), but not enough to win so most likely no one needs to get excited about thievery, although we'll come back to that 7% in a minute.

Now lets look at the Democrat side:

HandCount Diebold

Clinton 0.349822101 0.408148875

Obama 0.396352206 0.361315898

Edwards 0.174669246 0.170363373

Kucinich 0.018567135 0.012520736

Richardson 0.056651352 0.043876818

Biden 0.002107154 0.00223294

Dodd 0.000604511 0.000216966

Gravel 0.001226295 0.001324396

Umm... ouch, Obama wins handily in the hand count and gets trounced when the votes are counted with a Diebold machine. Okay so that's got a lot of people excited; I don't think it will make CNN but the blogosphere has been abuzz with this stuff since about 3 a.m. this morning. Time to burst the bubble, there is serious reason for concern that we've got an omitted variable here causing some bias. The basic idea would be that there is something about some districts that makes them more likely to like Clinton and more likely to like Diebold voting. When whatever it is is high, Hillary wins on a Diebold, when whatever is low, Barack wins in the handcount.

So, getting to the bottom of the mystery requires coming up with a good candidate for whatever. I think the obvious one is rural vs. urban. Rural districts are more likely to handcount and probably have different voting patterns than the bigger cities. It does seem a little strange to propose that the first Black presidential candidate will do great with the farm vote and poor with the city folk, but its worth checking out. If you break down the results by districts with less than 500 votes (small) and bigger than 500 (Big) we could expect Obama to keep up his small-town prowess and flounder in the bigger cities regardless of how the votes are counted. That would be reassuring.

Trouble is, if you break it down, Hillary only beats Obama in small towns when Diebold is involved, and she only beats Obama in large towns when Diebold is involved, so while a confounding factor may still exist, rural vs. urban is most likely not it:

HandLarge HandSmall DieLarge DieSmall

Clinton 0.3545872 0.3391518 0.408443 0.377682

Obama 0.3941885 0.4011972 0.361330 0.360515

Edwards 0.1746202 0.1747790 0.170061 0.202193

Kucinich0.0180392 0.0197493 0.012549 0.009537

Rchrdson0.0546921 0.0610384 0.043827 0.047687

Biden 0.0022736 0.0017343 0.002240 0.001430

Dodd 0.0005246 0.0007832 0.000214 0.000476

Gravel 0.0010743 0.0015665 0.001332 0.000476

Looking at the Republican side, Romney's pop is at least partially explained this way; he's 4% better in large towns in the hand count, so that should lead to more votes coming out of Diebold machines for him. Obama doesn't have that, it's Hillary that does better in the big cities.
HandLarge HandSmall DieLarge DieSmall

McCain 0.394895825 0.421448304 0.372023608 0.398820692

Romney 0.285647897 0.245958063 0.339336997 0.260251943

Huckabee 0.130470142 0.132013949 0.108648215 0.142589118

Giuliani 0.081248548 0.085276935 0.089320037 0.073170732

Paul 0.090388041 0.093338164 0.073739909 0.105065666

Thompson 0.012702347 0.014763824 0.011860344 0.015009381

Hunter 0.0046472 0.007200761 0.005070891 0.005092469

There's still plenty of room to be unconvinced that Diebold had anything to do with the New Hampshire result other than counting it. The real issue here is that private, closed, insecure, and unverifiable voting erodes confidence in the fundamental function of our country. In The Worthing Chronicles, Abner Doon overthrew an intergalactic society by eroding it's institutions one by one, while leaving the most valued alone at least in public. When he finally exposed the corruption he'd introduced into their most valued institution, they're whole society imploded.

America means a lot of things to a lot of people, but the one overriding safeguard and principle we value is that of representative democracy. Our government serves us, the people, because if it ever doesn't we have the power, using our franchise to vote, to turn things around every two or four years. Our whole system depends very heavily on the condition that the People choose their government. The whole untraceable voting machines thing gives people a reason to disbelieve they have any power at the federal level. Seems like a hefty price to pay to give election officials and the associated press a little convenience.