Neither do we know how officials are mining up additional Obama votes in their official review. In Harlem's 70th Assembly district, for instance, Election Night results gave 141 votes to Clinton and zero to Obama (which made no sense, considering Obama's appeal to African-American voters).

A review since then has put the tally at 118 votes for Clinton to 116 votes for Obama. A Clinton Sweep, in other words, turned into a dead tie.

This would appear to undermine the bullish Clintonian narrative about her strength even in her home state. Hopefully this'll get more attention elsewhere. Can't there be one uniform standard voting machine for the whole country? One that actually works reliably, is hackproof, and delivers accurate, timely results??

Thank you for reporting it, Mr. Manjoo. I hope you're not the only one!

I'm sure they will come up with more ingenious ways to find votes for Obama. Even if Hillary wins, the DNC and the media are determined to coronate Obama.

speaking of "fishy," I'm curious as to why this story isn't on the NYT main web page anymore. and speaking of "understated" (as in the headline, Obama's vote count was understated), the tone of the whole piece was strangely "understated"--took me half-way through to even get what they were talking about. Thanks for taking the time to ask some deeper questions here...

No seriously. Since elections are now officially no more than an opportunity to claim the other side is cheating we should simply do away with elections and appoint a dear leader for life in the model of Hugo Chavez or Oliver Cromwell or some other soft dictator. It's not as if government or governance will make the slightest difference in my day to day life anyway. So fuck it. Let's have a Director of the Realm.

So it's not even a little bit fishy that Obama got 0 votes in some places? And don't forget that Hillary got 0 votes in other places!

Are voting districts this polarized? This isn't fishy? Not even a little bit? This is just a pro-Obama conspiracy?

When I voted in the Illinois primary, I did so on a paper ballot that was scanned into a machine while I watched. Even with the paper trail my vote left behind, I found myself crossing my fingers, hoping that my vote was actually counting.

Regardless of which candidate one supports, the kind of voting discrepancies we're hearing about are insane and inexcusable. This undermines all confidence in the process - no wonder people tune out politics!

You can electronically transfer money around the world, without any ambiguity about the sum. Money simply isn't lost, were there a risk of that, the owners wouldn't use the system. This is because money has value.

Compare how money is treated to how our votes are treated. Knowing the methodology of tallying votes, it is clear that an exact count would be a completely freakish event, and even an approximate count would require a bit of luck.

Clearly somebody gains from this, and it isn't the voters.

I'm sure they will come up with more ingenious ways to find votes for Obama.

You mean like counting them? Odd to hear that coming from a Clintonite (anonymous, of course) -- is actually counting ballots a radical act these days?

Even if Hillary wins, the DNC and the media are determined to coronate Obama.

It's actually the other way around -- the coronation was HR Clinton's to be had, not Obama's. That's why 1) superdelegates lined up at her feet before a single vote was cast, 2) why she led in the polls (again, before a vote was cast), 3) why she was the frontrunner before the race had been run, 4) why she had a campaign war chest that dwarfed everybody else before the race was run.

The coronation was hers to be had, and if not a vote had been cast, the election would've been hers, for sure.

They must be practicing for the November election, so Harlem votes won't be counted!

No matter how much Hillary is winning the popular vote, the press will find a way to hand over the nomination to Obama. Farhad, why don't you write an article on how HRC won in Massachusetts despite Obama's big name (little brain) supporters? Kennedy and Kerry better start worrying about the security of their jobs. Apparently no one in Massachusetts listens to them. I suppose, though, that talking about the reality of HRC's strengths in this race would offend your masculine sensibilities, right Mr. Manjoo?

This is getting some mainstream attention. It's in the NY Times regional selection, and shows up on my Yahoo home page as among the 5 most mailed articles.

The tone of their report is annoying though. It's all like huhhuh, so there were some discrepancies. Big deal. Fodder for conspiracy theorists.

Here's the link:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/16/nyregion/16vote.html?em&ex=1203310800&en=220686c46c068a82&ei=5087%0A&exprod=myyahoo

It seems silly to accuse Mr. Manjoo of pro-Obama bias for reporting this, incidentally.

That's how long it took until you included the fact that some precincts also showed zero votes for Clinton. Shouldn't this fact have been a bit more prominent, given that it turns the story from "Election fraud on part of Clinton partisans" to "major screwup in vote count"?

1.7 million Democrats voted in Florida. But Obama and the DNC don't want to count them. Hmmm...

you know, in november 2004, mr. manjoo was the first person i heard telling the people concerned with election quality to shut the fuck up because we were conspiracy nuts.

shut the fuck up, mr. manjoo. you're a conspiracy nut.

feels awesome, doesn't it?

I had a PoliSci professor who told me once how some voting machines for Nixon ended up at the bottom of the bay in Boston, and how some JFK machines ended up in a browned out field in Chicago, and how both campaigns merely looked the other way and called it a wash. The point being, that just because that both campaigns are not concerned, doesn't mean there wasn't something dubious.