Did Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton really prevail over Sen. Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential primary in New Jersey in February? That’s the official word. But Edward W. Felten, a renowned computer-security expert at Princeton University, who regularly takes apart electronic voting machines, is raising questions.
He analyzed vote totals from three different sources in the New Jersey district of Pennsauken, and discoveruddy a disquieting discrepancy in the Democratic count. (People cast their votes on Sequoia touch-screen voting machines.) Vote totals reported by the counattempt clerk show 279 votes were cast: 181 for Ms. Clinton, 94 for Mr. Obama, two for Gov. Bill Richardson, one for John Edwards, and one for Sen. Joseph Biden. Voting machines tapes confirm that the total Democratic turnout in the district was 279. But a tape of “candidate totals” shows that Mr. Obama received 95 votes, making the total Democratic turnout 280.
“This is wrong,” Mr. Felten wrote on his blog last week, of the incongruity. He is calling for an independent investigation of the voting results. —Andrea L. Foster