Kucinich calls for recount of N.H. primary

Computerworld - Concerns over possible vote-counting irregularities in Tuesday's presidential primary in New Hampshire have spurred Democratic candidate Dennis Kucinich to ask for a recount of the state's election results.

In an announcement yesterday, Kucinich said he is seeking the recount because of "unexplained disparities between hand-counted ballots and machine-counted ballots."

On Wednesday, a volunteer with e-voting watchdog group Black Box Voting posted a note on the group's blog alleging that election results in the town of Sutton initially gave candidate Ron Paul zero votes but that the total was later corrected to 31 votes. The mistake was attributed to human error by someone who left the 31 votes off a final tally sheet, the blog stated.

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Additionally, he said, the statewide vote percentages for primary front-runners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama "never changed all night, no matter how many precincts came in," and that in all towns where ballots were hand-tallied, Obama won, while in all towns with votes counted by optical-scanning machines, Clinton won.

The issue, Bright said, is that elections have to be accurate, and that voters need to be able to trust the systems used. The problem, he said, is that far too many questions are being asked about the integrity, security and accuracy of the e-voting systems used across the nation.

"With all the talk about whether the election system is good enough or not, this is a good place to start," Bright said. "This has got to be done before November" when the general election will be held.

Kucinich is raising the issue, Bright said, even though he finished a distant fifth in the New Hampshire primary, with 3,901 votes, compared with Clinton's 112,606 votes and Obama's 105,004. The Kucinich campaign wants to be a "catalyst" for mandating more accurate elections and for making a process that can be trusted, Bright said. "Nobody else is standing up for it," he said. "Everybody else is brain-dead on this. This is a matter that's crucial to America. Everybody is talking about it, and nobody is doing anything about it."

To seek the recount, the Kucinich campaign sent a formal request by overnight courier to the office of Secretary of State William Gardner, Bright said. That letter is expected to arrive today before 5 p.m. A $2,000 fee to start the process was also forwarded to the state, but the cost of the recount is expected to be much higher. If a candidate loses by more than 3% of the votes cast in the state, the candidate is required to pay the full cost of the recount.