It is my hope that given the problems in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, those of us who are concerned about the integrity of our elections, specifically the integrity and security of voting machines are not just dismissed as conspiracy theorists or sore losers. There are real concerns about the integrity of voting machines. Brad Friedman at www.bradblog.com, Bev Harris and the folks at www.blackboxvoting.com, and Rep. Rush Holt (R-NJ) have worked tirelessly on these issues, and I would recommend looking into their work if you are not familiar with all the issues around ballot integrity.

Which brings us to New Hampshire. First, I don't subscribe to the notion that the polls going into Tuesday's primary were wrong. In fact, a cursory look inside the polls on the part of Keith Olbermann on Wednesday's edition of Countdown showed very clearly that there were plenty of undecided voters and that even among voters expressing a preference, support for the preferred candidate was pretty soft. The polls were not wrong, just the pundits. The fact is that Senator Clinton changed her approach between Iowa and New Hampshire in ways that made her more accessible and more human. That accessibilty, combined with the viscious reaction to her tears probably made a lot of people give her a second look. That's perfectly plausible explanation for an outcome that turned the pundits' narrative of the election on its head for a day or two. Anyone who is in politics professionally can and should recognize this. In fact, anyone who is in politics profssionally and does not recognize these facts needs to find another job.

So, why is Rep.Dennis Kucinich, along with a local Republican "candidate", calling for a recount? Clinton's not. Obama's not. Kucinich, naively idealistic as he is, is certainly an experienced political professional. Why is he spending the money to pay for a paper ballot recount? The reason is that some questions have come up. (As an aside here, I feel like I should note that research on the websites that I referenced above will turn up a lot more "problems", "discrepancies" and questions than I'm about to detail here. I'm just trying to keep it simple for now. Please do not consider my omission of data from those sites to be a rejection of that data.) Now, like the differences between the pre-election polling and the results, there is a reasonable theory that reflects no mallice or ill-intent.

So what is the issue? Well, apparently, precincts using optical scan electronic voting machines showed victories for Senator Clinton while those that counted paperballots showed victories for Senator Obama. Now, let me be clear. We're not talking about touch screen machines that leave no paper trail. We're talking about machines in which the voter marks a ballot and the machine reads th ballot and transmits the data to the election officials. There is a paper trail, but the returns come from electronic scrutiny of the ballot and is therefore susceptible to code hacking to change the results. Kucinich is calling for a hand recount of all the paper ballots.

Like I said before, there is a logical explanation. That is that the electronic machines tended to be in precincts with a demographic that tended toward Clinton. The paper ballots were in precincts with demograhics that supported Obama. So, like I said, There's nothing sinister here...right? The recount will support the results, Kucinich will pay the fee, and we'll all go on our merry way, leaving the good folks of New Hampshire in peace.

But what if the recount turns up something else? What if the recount turns up a result that show Obama, or even Edwards as the winner? If that's the case, we've got a problem. So let the recount go forward. Either it will confirm the results, and we can move on, or it will warn us of a serious problem long before we entrust our presidential election to flawed voting machines. Either way, the recount is good. We should be ready and willing to ask for them any time we sense that there may be a problem with the vote.

A note on exit polling...exit polling is a good way to see if an election passes the smell test. Exit polls are used all the time by election observers, and a month after the 2004 election, the Bush Administration, in concert with the international community (for once) supported the presumptive loser in Ukraine's election, citing exit polling data that was inconsistent with the election results.