Guest Blogged by John Washburn
(NOTE: Washburn be appeared today on The Peter B. Collins show, as Guest Hosted by Brad Friedman, to discuss his findings. The archived interview is now available here..)
After a two year interruption, I am beginning to go through the copies of November 2, 2004 election records which were provided to me in the settlement of my lawsuit with the City of Milwaukee Election Commission.
People have asked me: “Why do you still pursue this after two years? Get a life. The election is over and John Kerry carried the state with 11,384 ballots.”
The high minded reasons are:
- Because it is the duty of sovereign citizens to watch public officials vigilantly and eternally. This is a design principle of the American government; Citizens watch those in power.
- Process auditing is the act of verifying written procedures were actually followed as documented. As a software tester process auditing is in my professional “sweet spot.” I thought I could do some process audits of the canvassing done by several cities and share the results with others. I considered this my contribution to the body politic if any of my fellow citizens would want to do the same.
- Election results are important. John Kerry carried Wisconsin by 11,384 ballots out of 3 million cast (2,997,007 to be exact). This is 0.38% of the vote. It is important to know which candidate won such a razor thin election; especially since the State of Wisconsin and the City of Milwaukee in particular were rife with problems.
But, to be brutally honest the answer is it has been primarily spite and anger which has kept me on this like a Jack Russell terrier clamped to the sleeve of a shaking arm. And the results of my initial examination of these records reveal immediately disturbing findings…
Two years ago these records were voluntarily transferred by the City Election Commission to the joint task force headed up by the “loyal Bushie” US Attorney, Steven M. Biskupic, and the Milwaukee County District Attorney, E. Michael McCann. Then that voluntary transfer was cited as the reason the election records were unavailable for inspection or copying when requested under Wisconsin’s open records law. It offended then and continues to offend me now that the most rudimentary oversight of election administration was denied to me and others.
Since the investigation took two years to begin, it’s appropriate that there is a major discrepancy in the paperwork of the very first ward examined. Here is a PDF file of the 4 pieces of paperwork from City of Milwaukee Ward 1 for the November 2, 2004 presidential election. The records are:
- The end of day poll tape generated by the Optech IIIP Eagle optical ballot scanner,
- One of the two signature pages from the poll lists used during the November 2, 2004 election,
- The cover page from the City’s copy of the inspectors’ report, and
- The cover page from the County’s copy of the inspectors’ report.
First, the signatures on the cover pages of the inspectors’ reports look to me to be obvious forgeries. Both the names are bogus (e.g. Joe Doe, Jane Smith) and, in my opinion, are clearly written in the same hand. The hand which “signed” the inspectors’ reports does not match any of the signatures I redacted from the poll book list. Creating false canvass reports is a felony under WI Stats 12.13(2)(b)4.
The person to ask about the signatures, and the inexplicable numbers would be the Executive Director of the Election Commission, Susan Edman. I have called the office of the City Election Commission for comment, but unfortunately, Ms. Edman is out of town at a conference and will not be back until Monday, July 23, 2007.
Second, the numbers do not match. Not candidate totals, but the simple numbers do not match. The numbers concerning the number of ballots handled do not match.
The Optech IIIP Eagle optical scanner claims it scanned 1219 ballots. On the poll book certification page, the poll workers checking in voters and handing out blank ballots claim they handed 1071 ballots to electors. On the Inspectors’ reports with the forged signatures, it is claimed only 981 ballots were handed to electors. If I believe the machine and the poll book, then the ballot box in Ward One was stuffed with 148 extra ballots. If I believe the machine and the apparently forged inspectors’ report, the ballot box is stuffed with 238 extra ballots. If I ignore the machine altogether, the ballot box is stuffed with 90 extra ballots.
This leads to several questions.
- How many ballots are currently sealed in the ballot bag for Ward One; 1219 ballots, 1071 ballots, 981 ballots, or some other number of ballots? Has anyone checked? Ever?
- How is it that this anomaly was never discovered after two years of “investigation” by the Joint Task Force of the FBI, Milwaukee Police department, the Milwaukee county District Attorney and the US Attorney for Eastern Wisconsin? What have US Attorney Biskupic and the County District Attorneys E. Michael McCann and John Chisholm been doing for two years if such clear statute violations were missed?
- Stuffing a ballot box is a felony under WI Stats. 12.13(2)(b)3, removing the stuffed ballots from the ballot box (if discovered) is required under WI Stats. 7.51(2)c, and failing to remove extra ballots stuffed into a ballot box (if discovered) is a misdemeanor under WI Stats. 12.13(2)a. (The felony and misdemeanor definitions for violations of WI Stats 12.13 are found WI Stats. 12.60)
- Who benefits from this? The City of Milwaukee voted largely for John Kerry (72.42% Kerry, 27.58% Bush, 0.83% Badnarik,Cobb, Nader, et. al. among 276,921 total ballots cast in the City). Many in southeastern Wisconsin speculate this and other election anomalies helped create the 11,384 ballot victory for John Kerry. The truth is ballots are anonymous and the correct answer is no one can say for sure who benefited. We can only speculate.
- Wouldn’t it be easier to investigate and prosecute the above election fraud instead of pursuing the more difficult voter fraud case of Kimberly Prude voting illegally? Which has more effect on an election? 200-250 illegal voters or at least 4600 extra ballots stuffed into the ballot box?
For the record, it should be noted that there have been questions about Biskupic vis a vis the US Attorney purge. He had reportedly been on the list of USA’s to be purged, but at some point, he was dropped from that list and allowed to remain on the job. I suppose we can all draw our own conclusions, but it would be nice to know how such a “voter fraud warrior” such as Biskupic could have possibly missed something as obvious as this.
All of this from just a single ward. The first ward I bothered to look into. There are 311 more wards more to go…
My thought is that Bush needed every popular vote that he could get, to have another electoral win without the popular vote, we would have all revolted on the spot
Start ‘er up, Mr. Washburn!
Do ya think maybe somebody was trying to vote illegally in Milwaukee in ’04?
Wonder if there will be anything fishy in the second precinct you look into? I’m also curious about other (down-ticket) races. How did they go in relation to the polls?
Wonder if anybody can look into the ballot boxes themselves to see how many are in there?
Thanks for all you do, Washburn, and keep it up. You’re a hero!
shw
While the Bush administration is so ravenously hunting for illegal aliens and other suspicious persons of color, who are part of a vast, far left-wing conspiracy to prevent the neoconservative agenda from assuming its righteous and pre-ordained spot in U.S. history, it completely overlooks (supports?) its own vast, far right-wing conspiracy to stuff ballot boxes, forge voter signatures, and circumvent the will of the American people.
I want to see people in high places go to jail for this.
That cropped image of the false signatures is the kind of picture that is literally worth 1,000 words. It should be distributed as widely as possible.
Kudos to John for his dogged determination.
It wasn’t just Ohio in 2004 … Wyoming had a 106% turn out ….
we still can’t see the data from Alaska ….. Indiana had 6 or 7
counties where the third party guy got more votes than Kerry
And in freaking Ohio the election returns were run through
Smartech’s computers in Chatanooga, TN ….. Smartech had
3 other clients the RNC, Bush/Cheney 2004, and gwb43.com.
http://www.democraticundergroun...89×467855
Reading this at my office in Milwaukee now… Why am I not shocked? I still hear wack-jobs crying about slashed tires and voter fraud in Milwaukee in ’04. Too bad this will never make it to any MSM, or members of congress; it would be nice to come back to a thug who brings up the specter of slashed tires with this story…and have them know what I was talking about.
Ummmmmmmmmmm……….
…did you say, “US ATTORNEY” Steven Biskupic??? Like, as in “DOJ scandal”, like, in “Greg Palast”, like, as in “Alberto Gonzales”, “Sarah Taylor”, “Monica Goodling”…THAT kind of “US ATTORNEY”? Or is this something completely different?
Seriously, is this linked to the DOJ scandal?
I remember reading, at the time, to check the states KERRY won…like the exit polls said Kerry won Pennsylvania 9% (I live in Pa.), but the “final count” (lol) was 3%. So, “nothing to see here, Kerry won Pa.”…BUT…that’s a helluva lotta POPULAR votes, from just ONE STATE that Kerry won, so Bush could say, “I got a lot of capital, and I’m going to use it.”
What were the exit poll swings to final counts for Bush, in the states KERRY won?
(notice I assume ALL exit poll shifts to “final count” went to Bush…gee, how did I know that?)
The IMPOSSIBILITY of close to 100% of all exit poll vs. “final count” (lol) outside the margin of error, going GOP. Of course, we’ve been saying this for years. It’s just that the CMSM hasn’t been REPORTING ON IT!!!!!!!!!
Hey there Big Dan, now don’t forget vote caging crying timmy griffin, and Ms Contempt herself harriet miers!
Great work, and keep on washing Washburn!
Botany, thanks for posting that link. I’m gonna finally save that one because every time I read it my livid energy goes up 3,000%. Anyone know if Conyers has been made aware of that literal connection yet?
The votes stolen in Madison by the Democrats far outnumbered any in Milwaukee for the Republicans. This is the usual psycho-ward agitprop from the Mass Psychosis on the ultra-left.
Check the black wards in Milwaukee & see if they over-voted, since that’s what happened in St. Louis, another crime spree for Democrats in ’04.
Okay, is it my computor or is the link not working in Botany’s post?
Keep up the good work. The more energy spent on meaningless investigations the better.
What is the purpose?
Kerry won the state but should have had more votes?
or
Bush really won the state but ballot stuffing gave it to Kerry?
or
Lets just make noise?
http://www.democraticundergroun...89×467855
try that one
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2...1/7/144314/082
or that one
The signatures are very strange. But in looking at the full PDF, I did notice the machine printout, in which some parts are very hard to read, they had a “write in” count of 33 that matches that Inspector’s Statement with the bogus looking signatures for absentee voters, the other number above it seems to be a count of “regular” ballots which is partially blurred but my guess is 1981, which I speculate that when the Inspector’s Statement was filled out by hand, the one was dropped(accidentally?) and became 981.
The 1071 number seems to me to be the number in the voter registration book, of the last voter to vote, not a count of votes.
A simple question for the author to answer:
How many more wards do you have access to? The whole state? A select few? Just the 1? It would be really really important for us for you to say how many more ballot boxes you will be able to look at. Could you update the story with this?
Thanks Botany, the KOS one works but the dem underground doesn’t.
At this time I only have access to the records from the 312 wards of the City of Milwaukee. I have a scattering of records from the November 2, 2004 election for the municipalities of Neenah, Madison, West Allis, Menomonee Falls, and all 4 sets from Germantown. These are from my initial investigation two years ago.
The primary selection critera were one I live there (Germantown), second, I happened to be in town for other business where I could kill an afternoon at the clerk’s office, and third I followed the Willie Sutton principle. The City of Milwaukee is where 10% of the state ballots are cast.
How could this NOT be linked to the DOJ scandal? I’m not saying that all the underqualified christian fundamentalists/extremists now in the DOJ knew about this. Just that the demonstrated ignorance and naivete of so many of them made it possible for a few selectively placed operatives (by Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales, no doubt) to do their dirty deeds.
What a couple of sheisters those two characters are. Are we ever going to get rid of them, so they can both go back to selling beachfront property in Kansas?
Funny, when you get picture perfect evidence the trolls start comming out!
Noticed those trolls myself, Ancient. Nice to know the bad guys are reading Bradblog. Wonder if any of ’em are ever touched in their heart by the knowledge of real patriots looking out for American Democracy…
Naaaaa…
Nice to see a little trolling. Gives me something to laugh at…
shw
There are various motives besides partisanship that explain illegal election fraud. Witness the Cuyahoga recount rigging convictions, in which they wished to avoid the labor of a recount or working during holidays. This was a Democratic area also, but the benefit was to Republican candidates, specifically the presidential race.
Presuming there is access, the best places for Republicans to steal votes are in high Democratic areas, because, among other reasons these will tend not to be exit poll-detectable shifts (in terms of what’s called “red shift”), they will only show up as a gap between the overall exit poll projections and the “real” totals, which can then be argued as an inaccuracy in the exit polls. So, the fact that Milwaukee is Democratic does not tell us who benefited, as Washburn more or less points out in his post.
The reality is that scientifically BOTH exit polls and election returns have to be investigated, but neither were.
Good luck with the further analysis. I hope you can crack open a few more ballot boxes and give us another update. If the results of the next 4-5 wards look the same, you could perhaps do a calculation to extrapolate how that would affect the whole county or state.
It is so frustrating that there are people like you, who basically do this for free (it probably COSTS you money, more likely) and the people who are PAID to do this don’t do their jobs.
If they are “too busy” or whatever to do the job, why not save the tax payer some money and let election integrity experts look at the stuff?
look carefully at the last 3 letters of the two ‘smith’ names- the high dot on the i, the low crossed t intercepting the loop of the h, the the little curl on the end of the h- all these names seem to be written by the same person.
John,
Good work and great determination and patience on your part. It’ll be very interesting to see the results of the other 311.
Is there any chance that what you are finding could lead to prosecutions, or has a statute of limitations already kicked in?
John and Brad,
This stinks to me as very Rovian. I mean no actual ballot stuffing efforts would involve “Smith” and “Doe”. It makes me think this was an emergency backup plan in case Bush were to lose WI or needed one more state to put him over the top.
My guess is that this would have been trotted out to the media to show how Dems are stuffing the ballot boxes (assuming Ward 1 was >70% Kerry).. so it appears media friendly package wrapped in a bow, if you assume this would be for Dems stealing.
Now, to try and make the case that Bush people were behind this, and yet only added a few votes, and then used such a fake name… it doesn’t fly in the media.
Somehow the media is willing to assume (ala ACORN) that Dems are dumb enough to work for crack and register “Mickey Mouse”. So the meme would be that some inner city poll worker libheral must have tried to fake the signatures with “Jane Doe”
Good work. Stuffing the ballot boxes is an intentional crime and not just a mistake, but how could this be done. Certainly limits the field of suspects. Convictions on those who perform these crimes would definitely carry a strong message to others who are considering doing the same thing. Biskupic’s name is starting to get more notoriety in relation to covering up or carrying out partisan voter scandals. Enough so that his integrity is now questionable. Your efforts are appreciated and encouraged. Thanks, we do care.
WHO’S SIGNATURE IS **SUPPOSED** TO BE ON THE FORM?
INDICT THEM!
An swering questions:
#25 I have post the results from the first hundred wards here.
#26 There are many motives of election irregularities. I still want to know how a two year investigation missed this.
#28 The statute of limitations for misdemeanors kicks in on November 2, 2007. This is the three statute of limitation.
#31 I will have to get more records (the list of chief inspectors) in order to answer the question whose name should be on the EB-104 form.
daveinboca said on 7/23/2007 @ 12:33 pm PT…
“The votes stolen in Madison by the Democrats far outnumbered any in Milwaukee for the Republicans… This is the usual psycho-ward agitprop from the Mass Psychosis on the ultra-left.
Check the black wards in Milwaukee & see if they over-voted, since that’s what happened in St. Louis, another crime spree for Democrats in ’04. ”
OK, where’s your proof of this? I’m interested…waiting for you to post your proof………somehow, why do I think you hate blacks???
Yes! That’s it! I cracked the case! Kerry is president, because the black wards stuffed ballot boxes!
Thank goodness for ballots, stuffed or not…
Personally, I feel that stuffed ballots suck balls.
Just a last bit of observations and clarification on 1.) 2.) 3.) and 4.) below…
1.) Took two years to get any results (May 2007?) , and you had to go to court for it who stalled it for all that time.
2.) The statue of limitations runs out 6 months later on November 2, 2007?
3.) If the (chief inspectors or the court) keep on delaying this information beyond the statue of limitations has this become crime all in itself?
4.) Who were the people that were supposed to have their signatures on the EB-104 form.
At a minimum, these people who’s name is supposed to be on the EB-104, should never be trusted with ANYTHING in the government or elections or contracting ever again.
In light of this,
Seems like the ball should start rolling on that immediately with some way of wording it to block these statue of limitations because of the evidence you have found and the delay tactics these people are using against you. Hell the evidence should be seized at this point. If a judge has delayed this he should be indicted for conspiracy as well.
I don’t give a crap about Kerry or Bush, I want these fuckers pounded into the ground fast.
The whole trick they use is to fuck everything up fast electronically, then to reverse that process would seem logically just as fast, but it ain’t, it’s fucking bullshit and these fuckers are the enemy.
Domestic Enemy in my opinion.
Sue them or 99 them with a qui tam. The gadfly party must prevail at the barrister barricades in the 48 election suit … oh what year is this about? 🙂
Meanwhile bushie drops to 25% in the polls they never read or care about.
Qui Tam the hell out of them!
There is said to be a fraud case larger than Enron which was dropped by the Department of
JusticeJust Us because … well … they had to work on some election cases … No?Save us gadfly party.
Jesus, you liberals are nuts. How can the evil Bushitlerites infiltrate heavily democratic Milwaukee voting offices, and do this under the nose of Democrat approved officials? How is it that the Democrat officials investigating it cannot find any GOP connection to this fraud? You know they would be all over it if there was any, but since they are quiet and hiding their inaction under the umbrella of assumed incompetence, you know it must be liberal fraud. It isn’t the GOP that is against voter ID laws you know.
Get a grip, every major vote fraud scandal in the country is democratic dirty laundry. I totally applaud the author if this piece for identifying the fraud details to start with. I can disagree with a liberal and still respect him, but NOT if he is a psychotic, dishonest illogical Bush-Hate freak, like many of you posters.
Martin spewed:
What?!!! Talk about get a grip!
I agree with the very first poster. It seems to me that Bush needed to get the popular vote in 2004 or else all hell would have broken loose. Every media chanel and citizen would be wondering what is going on when one of the most unpopular presidents ever (even at that time) could win re-election without majority support. I guarantee the whole country would be questioning what is going on in those top secret voting boxes.
Instead, Bush needed to pad his predetermined victory to make it look like he got the popular vote as well as the win. Keep in mind that we also know that many republican counties had over a %100 turnout. Some claim to have had republican turn out at an unbelievable rate never before seen in history. We also know places like Ohio went into lockdown so a partisan Bush official could count the votes without anyone watching. Problems were rampant and overwhelmingly favoured Bush. Why should ballot stuffing be any different? Kerry had nothing to gain by padding his vote in an areas he would most likely win anyway. But Bush would be able to bump up his total post count in a place nobody would really notice without actually investigating.
re:#29 … None
So Rove has ballot boxes stuffed with Dem votes? Brilliant! That’s so crazy it just might work.
Because it’s inconceivable that Democrats would stuff ballot boxes to overcome the rural areas that vote primarily Republican.
It’s after the 23rd now… Any word from Susan Edman?
I applaud your efforts to get to the bottom of this matter. Let the chips fall where they may.
Phil @ 31 is right. Whoever was supposed to sign these forms should be indicted pronto.
The election fraud was massive
In the Edison-Mitofsky (exit pollsters) Jan. 2005 report, the average WPE (within precinct error) is provided for all the states. Using the WPE to adjust the recorded vote, we can calculate each state’s exit poll vote share. Based on these shares, the weighted average national popular vote is Kerry 51.8-Bush 47.2%.
EVEN ASSUMING A 30% CLUSTER EFFECT TO THE STATE EXIT POLL MARGIN OF ERROR, THE MARGIN OF ERROR WAS EXCEEDED IN 24 STATES FOR BUSH. THE PROBABLITY OF THIS OCCURRENCE IS INFINITESMAL.
HERE IS THE DATA. SCROLL DOWN A FEW SCREENS TO THE DESCRIPTION OF THE MONTE CARLO ELECTORAL VOTE SIMULATION
http://www.geocities.com/electi...StateExitPolls
If you have Excel and would like to run the simulation (it’s easy, just press F9), here is the link:
http://www.geocities.com/electi...ationModel.htm
Based on the Election Calculator model (also Excel), Kerry did much better than 51.8%. The Calculator uses the 12:22am National Exit Poll with adjusted weights. Kerry won by 10 million votes (53.5-45.5%).
Here is the link:
http://www.geocities.com/electi...Calculator.htm
Reply here if you run either model.
Bush had to get the popular vote as well as swing states in order to avoid public outcry about the election from breaking through the MSM firewall.
Big Dan,
Look at the results in New Hampshire. That was the state that had the largest swing in exit poll results vs actual results but Kerry still won “” just barely. According to the poll results, it should have been a landslide.
Paul Lehto, there’s just been no evidence of wholesale ballot box or vote-total tampering in Cuyahoga County. I did the recount and the irregularities being investigated, such as pre-sorting the ballots, had, it was clear, little impact on the vote total.
I believe the scapegoating of Jackie Maiden and Kathy Dreamer, who did nothing wrong and nothing that would have affected the total in any way, happened for a few reasons. One is that elections activists here were angrier and more active than in other parts of the state and set out to attack whatever was at hand, regardless of whether it was the real source of the stolen election in Ohio (which it wasn’t) The other is that the prosecuting Jackie and Kathy deflected attention from the real source of the skewing in Cuyahoga County “” voter suppression “” and the policies that enabled some of the suppression. Those policies emanated from the person who SHOULD have been on trial: the chairman of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections and, probably not coincidentally, chairman of the Ohio state Republican Party, Bob Bennett.
Fortunately, one of the first actions taken by our new Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner was to boot Bennett AND the other three board members, both Republican and Democrat, who sat like lumps and nodded whenever Bennett spoke. Bennett clung for weeks and screamed “partisan!” at the top of his lungs but eventually he slunk away when it was clear Jennifer had all the right on her side. The new board chair here in former Judge Jeff Hastings (Republican) who is extremely respected and has no apparent blots on his record. We’ll be watching…..
In response to Post #44. the response from the executive director, Ms. Edman is to give it to the local DA for criminal investigation.
Here is a short blog article on this development.
Such a referral is part of the duties of a Municipal Clerk (or executive director of an election commission) under WI Stats. 7.15(1)(g).