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NYC's Undercounted Obama Votes on Primary Night
By
Jen Chung
Published Feb 16, 2008
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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By
Jen Chung
Published Feb 16, 2008
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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Photograph of an Obama volunteer in Harlem by Angela Radulescu on Flickr
Your Super Tuesday primary vote did count, although it may not have initially. The NY Times did some digging around after noticing, according to the unofficial results the media relies on, 80 NYC voting districts recorded no votes for Obama, even in neighborhoods with large black populations. The city has now "confirmed some major discrepancies between the vote totals reported publicly — and unofficially — on primary night and the actual tally on hundreds of voting machines across the city."
Some examples: In Harlem, the unofficial results said Hillary Clinton won 141 to 0, but now the vote is 261 for Clinton and 136 for Obama. In Brooklyn, the primary night counted 118 votes for Clinton and none for Obama, but now Clinton has 118 and Obama 116. Why the differences? Probably human error.
The NY Times has a good graphic which explains this, but in a (big) nutshell: For unofficial results on primary night, inspectors examine the voting machines in each of the city's 6,106 districts, each writing down the results on a piece of paper, which each inspector gives to a police officer. The cop then take the paper to the precinct and enters the results into a computer, which distributes the information to the AP (which funnels the information to the other media outlets).
For official results, election officials go back to the voting machines, and "a Republican and Democrat go to each machine and write official results" on a piece of paper, which is then "used to enter data into a computer system by hand, along with a hand count of paper ballots."
Discrepancies are apparently common between unofficial and official results. Even a lawyer for the Obama campaign, Jerome A. Koenig, doubts there was any corruption, telling the Times he thinks some of the issue could be due to the ballot design (Obama's name was further over). Clinton supporter Assemblyman Keith Wright of Harlem said, "I’m sure it’s a clerical error of some sort. Being around elections for the last 25 years, no candidate receives zero votes.”
However, former parks commissioner Gordon Davis, who was an Obama poll watcher in Harlem, has his concerns, "First it was reported at 141 to 0, now it’s 261 to 136 in an Assembly district that went 12,000 to 8,000 for Barack...I was watching like a hawk, but how did I know the machine had a mind of its own?"
Obama's campaign hopes that the official results, which are still being tabulated, may give him another valuable delegate.
Tagged
barack obama
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clinton
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In Harlem
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Super Tuesday
the city
The NY
the ny times
undercounting votes
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Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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