NYTimes: Black Votes for Obama Went Uncounted in NY Primary

[nomorewhopper]

Unofficial Tallies in City Understated Obama Vote

Black voters are heavily represented in the 94th Election District in Harlem’s 70th Assembly District. Yet according to the unofficial results from the New York Democratic primary last week, not a single vote in the district was cast for Senator Barack Obama.

That anomaly was not unique. In fact, a review by The New York Times of the unofficial results reported on primary night found about 80 election districts among the city’s 6,106 where Mr. Obama supposedly did not receive even one vote, including cases where he ran a respectable race in a nearby district.

In the Harlem district, for instance, where the primary night returns suggested a 141 to 0 sweep by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the vote now stands at 261 to 136. In an even more heavily black district in Brooklyn — where the vote on primary night was recorded as 118 to 0 for Mrs. Clinton — she now barely leads, 118 to 116.

Because delegates are awarded proportionately on the basis of the primary vote in each Congressional district, Obama supporters expressed hope that if the official count continued in their favor, they might gain an additional delegate or two.

edited to add link to article: (sorry I forgot)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/16/nyregion/16vote.html?hp

[Barack_America]

1. Harlem? Interesting.

Bill keeps an office there, does he not?

Interesting indeed.

[KittyWampus]

80. We are talking Charlie Rangel and his cronies here. Not happy about this. I love Rangel

but this stinks.

[AtomicKitten]

2. Why doesn't that come as a surprise?

We've had since 2000 to clean up the election process. Why bother going through the machinations, the sweat and tears, the money just to have backroom deals cut and this election shell game bullshit continue? Feh.

[KAZ]

3. Could you please put a link in your OP?

Edit: Thank you nomorewhopper!

[CreekDog]

7. here's a link to the story

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/16/nyregion/16vote.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin

[Yossariant]

9. Maybe the whopper doesn't want us to have the link. LINK:

:rofl:

"City election officials said they were convinced that there was nothing sinister to account for the inaccurate initial counts, and The Times’s review found a handful of election districts in the city where Mrs. Clinton received zero votes in the initial results."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/16/nyregion/16vote.html?ex=1360818000&en=24721a2eaaa6397e&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

[nomorewhopper]

11. thewhopper already edited the OP ^^ with the link (sorry I forgot) :D

sheesh, calm down please its not like i didn't list that the article was printed in the NY Times and it's not like its not linked right on the front page and it's not like I didn't update my damn post like 4 minutes after posting.

[KAZ]

13. No, he/she did just fine. Snark much?

[Yossariant]

19. Gullible much? Oh... never mind.

[Name removed]

24. Deleted message

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[Yossariant]

27. 'Cause, golly, it's just too darn hard to read the article.

:evilgrin:

[alteredstate]

58. Perhaps you can find a tutor in your area.

Good luck!

[JackRiddler]

41. Of course not - it's never sinister!

It just comes out by holy human error that Obama gets zero in 80 precincts and apparently none the other way.

After all, officials said "they were convinced..."

Sinister would be a pain in the ass to the election workers, as we learned in Ohio in 2004 when they sabotaged the random recount sample so that there wouldn't be a full recount.

Sinister doesn't happen in the USA - only in Venezuela, or the Ukraine.

[Peace Patriot]

50. Hey, lay off Venezuela! Their elections put our own to shame for their transparency!

Ask the Carter Center!

Ask the OAS!

Ask the EU election monitoring groups!

Ask the thousands of international election monitors that Venezuela has invited to crawl all over the country during its elections, looking into every aspect of the election system.

Ask me! I haven't been there, but I've done my homework. They have electronic voting in Venezuela, but it is an OPEN SOURCE CODE system--anyone may review the code by which the votes are tabulated--and they hand-count a whopping 55% of the votes as a check on machine fraud.

Compare this to us. In most of the United States, the votes are now counted with TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code--code so secret that not even our secretaries of state are permitted to review it--owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, with virtually no audit/recount controls! Many states do ZERO auditing (hand-count against machine totals), cuz there is nothing TO audit--no ballot. The best of states do an extremely inadequate 1% audit. And this is in a TRADE SECRET CODE system!

Venezuela divides up the code that tabulates the votes among the contending parties and non-partisan observers, and no change may be made to the code without all parties present. Here, the code is written in the tech dungeons of private corporations with close ties to the Republican Party and far rightwing causes, and is kept top secret, even in a case of egregious miscounting by the electronic voting machines, as in FL-13 in 2006, where ES&S 'disappeared' 18,000 votes for Congress in Democratic areas, in an election 'won' by the Republican by a margin of only 369 votes. When the lawyers for the Democrat took the matter to court and asked to review the code--to try to figure out what happened to those 18,000 votes--ES&S arrogantly REFUSED, and argued that their "right" to profit from our elections trumps the right of the voters to know how their vote were counted.--and the Jeb judge agreed with ES&S. So much for the sovereignty of the people in the U.S. of A. Pfsst! Gone!

So don't make jokes about "sinister" elections in Venezuela. We don't have the right to sneer, and they don't deserve it. Venezuela in fact has one of the liveliest political cultures in the western hemisphere and levels of citizen participation that would make you eat your heart out with envy and admiration. You need to see the Irish filmmakers' documentary "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," about the violent rightwing coup attempt against the elected government in 2002, when tens of thousands of Venezuelans poured out of their hovels, surrounded Miraflores Palace and demanded that their Constitution be restored and their kidnapped president (Hugo Chavez) be returned. They stopped the coup! We could use some of that democratic revolutionary spirit here! (--it's available on YouTube, and at www.axisoflogic.com). I also recommend www.venezuelanalysis.com, as an antidote to the utter crap we get about Hugo Chavez and Venezuela in our corporate "news" monopoly press.

[JackRiddler]

63. Friend: I fully support the democratic government of Venezuela...

I was being ironic, citing two cases in which the U.S. officially pretended to be concerned because it was "commies" who were winning, when in fact it's the U.S. elections that are far more suspicious -- and riggable. We agree.

[Peace Patriot]

74. Sorry, JackRiddler! I read too fast and missed your irony!

And I'm on a tear about Venezuela. I think Rumsfeld has Oil War II: South America all mapped out.

"The Smart Way to Beat Tyrants Like Chávez," by Donald Rumsfeld, 12/1/07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/30/AR2007113001800.html

And what with Exxon-Mobile moving the freeze Venezuela's assets, over a dispute about Venezuela's 60% share of its own oil profit (--a deal that France's Total, British BP, Norway's Statoil, Conoco and even Chevron have agreed to), I feel that the plan is in motion, and that it is urgent that we all become informed about it, because one of the things Rumsfeld recommends is "swift" U.S. action in support of "friends and allies" in South America (i.e., fascist thugs planning coups). We could be in a hot war in South America and never know what hit us.

I suspect they might go after Chavez ally Evo Morales in Bolivia first, to get a foothold (U.S. boots on the ground) among the Andes democracies. Ecuador (another Chavez ally) has promised to throw the U.S. military base out of Ecuador this year--and that date (which I don't know) may be important. Rumsfeld would likely want to make his move while that base is still in operation. However, he has Blackwater mercenaries in Colombia (training and recruiting there supposedly for Iraq), and many rightwing paramiltary, militia and official Colombian security forces (all funded by the Bush Junta) to call upon if he cannot get U.S. forces involved. There are Colombian rightwing paramilitary incursions into Venezuelan border areas already, closely tied to drug trafficking (and to the Uribe government in Colombia--Bush's pals).

They may wait until the Exxon Mobile legal/financial aggression, and other such actions, start to harm the Venezuelan economy, causing unrest and civil disorder (which the rightwing forces in Venezuela would foment or expand), meanwhile working on the rightwing plan in Bolivia of splitting off the oil/gas rich provinces from the central government, perhaps to try to draw Chavez into the fray, and in any case to cripple Bolivia as a Venezuelan ally, and create a fascist enclave in Bolivia.

I wouldn't feel quite so alarmed about this if Rumsfeld hadn't published his op-ed (just after Exxon Mobile walked out of the Venezuelan talks). But that sure looks like a war plan to me (reading between the lines a bit). And now we know what Rumsfeld has been preoccupying himself with, in his "retirement"--finding more oil to steal from the poor, and more chaos and suffering to create, in our own hemisphere.

I DON'T think the dark lords will win this one. But that doesn't mean they can't cause a lot of hell for the South Americans, and for us. And there sure is a lot of evidence that they intend great ill, sooner rather than later.

All of this is to explain why I am so jumpy about disinformation on Venezuela, as to miss your meaning. Sorry again!

[alteredstate]

59. Of course officials are "convinced"

:)

[Johnny__Motown]

4. My God, how can anyone vote for a Clinton? This crap just keeps piling up.

[Yossariant]

12. How can anyone take an Obama supporter at his word is a better question.

Duped again.

[KAZ]

16. Brilliant! Damn. We'll go back and think about that for awhile.

[Johnny__Motown]

32. New York Times can't be trusted because they are Obama supporters?

Is that honestly your point?

[Name removed]

35. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[alteredstate]

60. Then what are you trying to say?

[nomorewhopper]

67. NYTimes endorsed hillary

[RememberWellstone]

5. Bigger signs?

I doubt this an intentional happening.

[Barack_America]

6. ? The votes were cast, but not counted...

Until now. For whatever reason.

[eridani]

48. An error is as bad as a deliberate screwup

That's why there should be mandatory auditing for every race.

[JackORoses]

68. This is not an error. There were 80 precincts where Hillary's votes were counted but Obama's weren't

That is purposeful manipulation of the results.

[eridani]

81. But either way, the result is the same. True, one case is a crime--

--and the other isn't.

[grantcart]

8. If it were intentional they would have put in half the votes not 0

but still it makes you wonder what the real numbers for NY would have been. Probably one guy acting on his own somewhere

[UALRBSofL]

15. Wow the Clintons are involved in voter fraud in NY, California, New Mexico, and Nevada

What kind of underhanded stuff is Hillary trying to pull?

[Yossariant]

18. Obama involved in voter fraud again.

[Barack_America]

21. Lol, by being the VICTIM of it. n/t

[Yossariant]

25. Wrong. Reading comprehension is not big with the Obamatons.

:rofl:

[Barack_America]

26. And apparently facts aren't a strongsuit for Hillary supporters.

Care to provide any evidence there?

[Yossariant]

30. Ya might try reading the article. It ain't rocket science.

"City election officials said they were convinced that there was nothing sinister to account for the inaccurate initial counts, and The Times’s review found a handful of election districts in the city where Mrs. Clinton received zero votes in the initial results."

[Barack_America]

36. How does that show that Obama is "involved in voter fraud", as you claim?

I'd love to know how you get that from the quote you provided.

[Name removed]

42. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[dchill]

10. Look the other way.

NY is not an important state, and besides, Obama is not the victim here. HRC gets all the black and Hispanic votes, anyway. Don't be sexist. Don't race-bait. Don't get your hopes up. It's not about counting votes, it's about solutions.

[ingac70]

14. Hillary bushwacked Obama in NY. n/t

[Yossariant]

17. Obama bushwacked Hillary, by circular firing.

:applause:

[UALRBSofL]

20. She Bushwacked him in California, NM, NV as well

Obama asked for a recount in NM and NV becasue he said Hillary was bushwacking votor fraud.

[Yossariant]

22. The whiner had Kucinich front for him in NH. He lies and cheats and still loses.

Gobama!

:bounce:

[UALRBSofL]

23. I see a pattern here with Obama

Every large state she won he has accused her of voter fraud and voter suppression.

[Barack_America]

28. What was the accusation in CA and NJ?

Pray tell?

[jackson_dem]

29. Latinos were accused of being racists in California for voting for Hil by more than 2:1

[Barack_America]

38. That falls under "voter fraud and suppression"?

I'd love to know how.

[NJSecularist]

45. Link?

If you are going to say outrageous statements like that you are going to need to provide proof where Obama said that.

[Yossariant]

31. They counted the votes.

[UALRBSofL]

33. In California he accused her of suppressing 100,000 votes in LA County

And in New Mexico he asked for a recount because of ballot box stuffing by the Hillary campaign. In Louisiana he accused her of voter suppressing.

[Barack_America]

34. Obama accused Hillary of designing the confusing "double bubble" Dem ballot?

That's news to me.

Could you find me a link for that?

[UALRBSofL]

39. No, I'm going to bed

I'll look for the links tomorrow. Goodnight. :)

Oh, and she defeated him in florida with the hanging chad. :) Just kidding.

[babylonsister]

37. You are full of poop. It happened, not because Obama accused anyone.

All this Obama accusing, prove it or STFU already. :grr:

[springhill]

69. Oh I see............

Accusations against Obama need proof, but any old accusation against Clinton is fact.

[pdxmom]

57. In Louisiana, the Obama camp asked for the SOS to look into why

voters weren't being allowed to vote. There was nothing about Clinton in that request. They were looking to assist all voters that were disenfranchised, regardless of who they were voting for. At least someone was looking out for the voters in that state.

Please prove that he accused Clinton of anything in Louisiana, or retract that statement.

[thoughtcrime1984]

40. This NY thing has been proven to be real, votes were not counted

It might be accidental, we'll see.

[KaryninMiami]

43. Wow- what's odd is how long it took this to come to the surface.

How come no one noticed these oddities sooner? Very bizarre indeed.

[ErnestoG]

44. What a surprise

And I'm sure this just slipped by Ms Five Million

[BluegrassDem]

46. This is why the Clintons HATE caucuses! They can't be maninpulated

Suppressing the black vote is all they got left to do.

[Bread and Circus]

55. If this is purposeful suppression of the black vote, it makes me very angry.

[nomorewhopper]

64. me too

[TexasObserver]

47. Anywhere Clintonians are doing the counting, you can count on cheating as a potential problem

Los Angeles County, New Mexico, New York

Do they ever win on votes cast?

[MonkeyFunk]

49. You made up that headline out of whole cloth

The article states the votes WERE counted. Initial tallies had errors, but were found and corrected.

Nothing nefarious is suspected by anybody involved.

[anamandujano]

51. If Clinton had a way to cheat, I doubt she would go to predominantly

black districts and steal all the votes. Nobody is that dumb.

Repukes own and operate the voting machines. If there's any finagling, we all know where to look.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

66. have you noticed how she is running her campaign?

consider her campaign before you place confidence in her judgement.

[Onlooker]

52. YOU'RE RIGHT. THE OP LIED. THE ARTICLE IS ABOUT ERRORS THAT WERE CORRECTED.

Liars make me scream!

[nomorewhopper]

61. lied?

um.....i didn't even editorialize

i wanted to show how barack was winning more delegate because of hte error

[psychopomp]

53. This is wrong on many levels

Let's hope more light gets put on the sham election system we have in the United States. It is just too easily rigged!

[TexasObserver]

56. Our elections should have UN monitors to assure democracy has a chance

[jefferson_dem]

54. Paging Charlie Rangel...bigtime Hillary supporter/apologist.

http://www.house.gov/rangel/bio.shtml

[davsand]

62. When I think about all the crap we take for "Chicago" politics I have to giggle.

I guess Little Dick and the Daley Dynasty have nothing up on Tammany Hall even today. They made the win seem bigger than it really was.

You have got to love the mechanizations and PR moves the Clintons use.

Ya gotta love "experience."



Laura

[VolcanoJen]

65. Hmmmm.

:grr:

[MonkeyFunk]

70. Did you read the article?

It appears very few people did, and instead believed the made-up headline the OP created.

[VolcanoJen]

71. I read the article before I came to DU this morning, as a matter of fact.

I wasn't even remotely concerned with the OP subject post. Aren't you making a sort-of, "Hey, look over here" argument?

[MonkeyFunk]

72. I'm making the argument

that the implication that something nefarious was done to benefit Clinton isn't supported by the article.

At all. The votes WERE counted.

[nomorewhopper]

75. oh please

you're missing my point that barack is gaining delegates

i mentioned nothing about cheating, stealing, fraud or anything. i snipped the text that showed how the votes had gone uncounted, were being counted, and the result is a net increase delegates for obama.

nice try though.

and yes, continue to ignore the evidence and shoot the messenger rather than discuss the issues.

[crawfish]

73. The more we find out,

the more I'm convinced that the Clintons are in bed with the neocons.

Rethugs aren't the only cheaters.

[MonkeyFunk]

79. Yet another one

who apparently didn't read the article.

The headline provided by the OP is a lie.

[OzarkDem]

76. Some districts had "zero" tallies for Clinton, too

Looks like a non-story here. There's a reason why they're called "unofficial" results. With a big increase in numbers of people voting, its amazing anyone expects the first results out of the precincts on election night to be accurate. Preliminary counts are always inaccurate, its after all the ballots are collected and tallied that you have real results. With large turnouts, that takes a while.

Surely Obama's campaign can find better ways to motivate their supporters than with this kind of tripe.


From the linked article:


City election officials said they were convinced that there was nothing sinister to account for the inaccurate initial counts, and The Times’s review found a handful of election districts in the city where Mrs. Clinton received zero votes in the initial results.

“It looked like a lot of the numbers were wrong, probably the result of human error,” said Marcus Cederqvist, who was named executive director of the Board of Elections last month. He said such discrepancies between the unofficial and final count rarely affected the raw vote outcome because “they’re not usually that big.”

[nomorewhopper]

77. obama is getting more delegates - that's the story

thats the story, seems that just about everybody missed that part.

and in a close race its just another set of obstacles to overcome.

[OzarkDem]

78. No, Obama supporters are only telling one side of the story

Why are they so dishonest? Don't they think they can win without telling lies?

[noamnety]

82. This is a HELL of a statement.

"Mr. Koenig (a former chief of staff to the State Assembly’s election law committee) said he seriously doubted that anything underhanded was at work because local politicians care more about elections that matter specifically to them. “They steal votes for elections like Assembly District leader, where people have a personal stake,” he said."

That was supposed to give me confidence in the voting system?!!

[KittyWampus]

83. kick