Jonathan Wand

Michael C. Herron, Walter R. Mebane, Jr., and Wand, Jonathan

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 17(2): 351-374

We address concerns that the reported vote counts of candidates running in the 2008 New Hampshire presidential primaries were affected by the vote-tabulating technologies used across New Hampshire.

• In the Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton was more successful in New Hampshire wards that used Accuvote optical scan vote-tabulating technology than was Barack Obama, receiving 4.3% more of the vote there(40.2%forClintonversus35.9%forObama). Incontrast,Clinton did worse than Obama in wards that counted paper ballots by hand, trailing by 6.1% (33.7% versus 39.8%).
• In the Republican primary, Mitt Romney trailed John McCain by 3.6% in Accuvote wards and by 15% in wards that counted ballots by hand.
• In New Hampshire, the choice of vote-tabulating technology is made ward by ward, and electronic technology was used in wards that typically differ demographically and politically from wards that count ballots by hand. Wards that selected electronic tabulation are disproportionately from the southeast part of New Hampshire, and they tend to be more densely populated and more affluent. Accuvote and hand count wards have also typically produced divergent voting patterns in elections prior to the 2008 primary. This context makes it plausible that most or all of the observed differences between vote-tabulating technologies in the votes candidates received reflect such background differences and not anything inherent in the tabulation methods.
• Using a subset of New Hampshire wards that have similar demographic features and voting histories but differ in their vote-tabulating technologies, we find no significant relationship between a ward’s use of vote-tabulating technology and the votes or vote shares received by most of the leading candidates who competed in the 2008 New Hampshire presidential primaries. Among Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson in the Democratic primary and among Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Ron Paul, and Mitt Romney in the Republican primary, we observe a significant difference only in the votes counted for Edwards, and that difference is small (a deficit of between 0.6% and 3.4% in the hand-counted votes).
• With respect to Hillary Clinton’s surprise victory in the Democratic primary and the differences across vote-tabulating technologies in Clinton’s and others’ votes, our results are consistent with these differences being due entirely to the fact that New Hampshire wards that use Accuvote optical scan machines have voters with different political preferences than wards that use hand-counted paper ballots.