New Hampshire Secretary of State William M. Gardner announced
Friday in
a press release that Democratic candidate Dennis Kucinich and Republican
candidate Albert Howard have requested a recount.
states that the recount will start Wednesday, January 16.
According to the press release on the NH Sec of State web site, “Mr. Howard and Mr. Kucinich have satisfied the requirements for initiating a statewide recount of the Republican and Democratic primary.”
“Secretary of State William M Gardner will estimate the cost of the recounts, which must be paid by the candidate(s) for the recount to proceed.”
“Secretary of State Gardner announced that the recounts will start Wednesday, January 16, 2008. The time and location for the start of the recount process will be announced after the estimate has been completed and payment of the estimated cost has been received.”
A note here, following up on my previous posts about New Hampshire: Notwithstanding media exclusion of every candidate except Clinton and Obama, the New Hampshire results also display an anomaly on the Republican side.
On the Republican side Romney and Giuliani are separated from all the other
candidates. Where votes were tallied by the optical scanning machines, Romney
averaged 33 percent of the total and Giuliani 8.64 percent. Giuliani was not a
factor in the
Where votes were tallied by hand, Romney averaged 25.5 percent and Giuliani
8.14 percent. As on the Democratic side, all of the other GOP candidates came
out better where votes were counted by hand, and worse where votes were scanned
by machine. Romney and Giuliani alone came out better where votes were counted
by machine.
Anomalies like require investigation. Human error is always a factor in elections, but human error is random. Where you have mistakes from poor training or fatigue, you have mixed and sloppy results–not results all pointing in one direction (or in two directions). It would be unconscionable to decline to investigate statistical aberrations, affecting both major parties, in an election.
btw, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews did not mention this story Friday evening. Television has not yet picked up on it. But it will.