Five out of six bags of ballots from first batch to be counted out of the City of Brookfield in Waukesha County, WI, today were discovered “almost wide open” during Day 9 of the statewide Supreme Court election “recount.” The bags were open and unsealed, according to both photographic evidence and an eye-witnesses account from the counting room. (Many more exclusive photos posted below.)
“When the ballot bags were taken out and placed upon the counting table, we were literally stunned,” one of the citizen observers, Mary Magnuson, a Kloppenburg volunteer, told The BRAD BLOG this morning. “5 out of the 6 ballot bags were almost literally wide open, and ballots could be clearly seen.”
The ballots in those bags were among the 14,000 said to have been cast in the April 5th election, but left off of Waukesha County’s tally as reported to the media on Election Night.
Earlier this week we offered a detailed report on the status of the statewide “recount,” highlighting a host of disturbing and outright violations of the chain of custody of ballots, including unnumbered and renumbered ballots bags (many of them from Waukesha County); ballots discovered unsecured and/or left out of the original count all together; and exceedingly sloppy record-keeping and reporting of “recount” results by the state’s chief election agency, the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (G.A.B.). In sum, we described the state of the “recount” of the contested election between Republican incumbent Justice David Prosser and his independent challenger Asst. AG JoAnne Kloppenburg, as “a mess.”
Today, after the newest revelations from the Waukesha County counting room, it got a lot messier.
“We are finding significant anomalies, including chain of custody and missing ballots, that we need to shine light on,” Kloppenburg campaign manager Melissa Mulliken told The BRAD BLOG earlier this week, while we were working on our previous story. The anomalies she was referring to, given where today’s unsecured ballots are said to come from, have gotten much more “significant” in the past few hours…
‘Widest gap seen so far’
Magnuson quoted retired Circuit Court Judge Robert Mawdsley — appointed by the G.A.B. to oversee Waukesha’s count in place of controversial County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus, who recused herself in light of several ongoing investigations into her handling of election results — as saying that the opening in one of the ballot bags from the City of Brookfield was “the widest gap we have seen in ANY of the bags so far.”
Moreover, in addition to the open ballots bags, one of them had its serial number crossed out and then replaced by another number to match the one seen on the plastic zip-cord “seal” still attached to the bag — another chain of custody violation. Also, yesterday, ballot bags with six-inch openings in the top, large enough to pull ballots in and out of, were also discovered from Waukesha’s Village of Elm Grove. (See more photos of all below.)
The new anomalies come on top of similarly disturbing chain of custody violations previously discovered in at least eight other “counting units,” mostly in Waukesha, but elsewhere in the state as well.
According to the eye-witness Magnuson today, when the unsecured Brookfield ballots were discovered, legal counsel for Kloppenburg “objected to the ballots even being counted and/or included, due to the extremely evident lack of security insofar as the ballots were concerned.” Nonetheless the Kloppenburg volunteer observer told The BRAD BLOG, “Prosser’s counsel argued in favor of counting the ballots and Judge Mawdsley ruled in favor of counting them.”
Kloppenburg excercised her right to this “recount” after the unverified results of the post-election canvass by all 72 counties in the Badger State found her to be just 7,316 votes shy of Prosser out of some 1.5 million ballots cast in the hotly-contested April 5th election. The 0.488% unofficial margin entitled her to a state-sponsored count, which she requested after learning that some 14,000 votes from the City of Brookfield were allegedly left out of Waukesha County’s originally reported Election Night tally.
It is those votes which were scheduled to be “recounted” today in Waukesha and discovered to have been left wide open in unsecured bags, as documented in photographs taken by Magnuson, who has been observing the count for several days over the past week since counting began last Wednesday.
The ‘Recount’: Verifying questionable results for the first time
The majority of votes cast in Wisconsin are on hand-marked paper ballots, but are then scanned by oft-failed and easily-manipulated electronic tabulating optical-scan computers made by companies like Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia without being checked for accuracy by human beings. Thus, our use of quotes around the word “recount,”
since almost all of the ballots cast in the crucial statewide election have never, until now, been examined for accuracy by any human being.
The stunning announcement of those 14,000 votes from the City of Brookfield, two days after the April 5th election, reversed what had originally been reported as an exceedingly slim (and unverified) “win” for Kloppenburg on Election Night. The Supreme Court race had become a referendum on Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s controversial move to strip rights from citizens to collectively bargain with the state. Supporters of both candidates spent millions on outside advertising in the closing days of the contest.
Brookfield’s game-changing votes were revealed to have been missed during a remarkable press conference on the night of April 7th, held by Prosser’s former colleague and long-time GOP activist, Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus. She is now under investigation for past election irregularities as well, including the recent discovery of some 20,000 more votes reported than the number said to have been cast in the county’s 2006 general election.
Nickolaus waited nearly two days before notifying state officials or her own Board of Canvassers to her discovery of what she described as “human error” in failing to report the Brookfield totals on Election Night. The Kloppenburg campaign has asked for a special independent investigation into the matter.
The unsecured ballots from the City of Brookfield
Below are a number of photographs taken this afternoon in the Waukesha County, WI, counting room, of ballot bags from Wards 1, 2, and 3 in the City of Brookfield.
The plastic orange zip-cord tie attached to each bag is supposed to be a tamper-evident “seal.” Each one has a serial number that is also supposed to match the one written on the bag’s label, which is signed by two witnesses. The numbers are also supposed to match the one on the “Inspector’s Report” filed on Election Night. (In our report earlier this week we detailed bags from the Town of Delafield, also in Waukesha County, which were missing serial numbers altogether or had their serial numbers scratched out and replaced by others.)
As Magnuson explained via email today…
“This morning, at the Waukesha County recount, things began, as usual. We were waiting to count the City of Brookfield, Wards 1, 2 and 3, when a representative from the County Clerk’s office wheeled in the bin of information which included the inventory sheet, various envelopes, and, of course, the ballot bags.
“When the ballot bags were taken out and placed upon the counting table, we were literally stunned. 5 out of the 6 ballot bags were almost literally wide open, and ballots could be clearly seen. This, despite the fact that seals were around the top; still, the sides remained very clearly open with three different colors of ballots within”…
“Also made on the record was that the identifying number (or serial number) on bag 4, had been crossed out and replaced with another (serial, or identifying) number on the bag itself.
“Counsel for JoAnne Kloppenburg made that a part of the record, as well”…
[Update: “Giles Goat Boy” at Daily Kos has a link to the video and a partial transcript of the snap “hearing” that went on in the counting room to determine why the Brookfield ballot bags were open, and what explanation was offered by Brookfield’s City Clerk Kristine Schmidt.]
Late this evening, Magnuson told us, “In the afternoon, six other ballot bags were pulled out when we opened the second bin for City of Brookfield, Wards 4, 5 & 6. Four of those bags had numbers scratched off of little white labels affixed to the bag.”
“When the Kloppenburg representative asked the Brookfield City Clerk Kristine Schmidt for an explanation,” of those labels and scratch-outs, says Magnuson, “she said, ‘I don’t know.'”
Here’s one of those bags…
Elm Grove ballot bags: ‘You could have stuck your entire hand in the damned things, your arm, maybe’…
Three bags from the Village of Elm Grove in Waukesha County, counted yesterday, were also discovered to have been unsecured. Each had “a 6 inch opening on each side” of the impenetrable plastic zip-line “seal” at the top-center of each bag.
Magnuson described those ballot bags to us yesterday as follows…
“This morning, Wednesday, May 4, at the Waukesha County recount, we began, as usual, with the introduction of a bin containing records, ballots, etc; today’s count came from the Village of Elm Grove. The particular ward(s) included in the first count, were wards 5, 6, 7 and 8.
“Kelly, from the County Clerk’s office brought the bin into the room and began to remove the various records, envelopes and ballot bags from the bin for identification purposes.
“At the time the ballot bags were removed from the bin and placed upon the tabulators’ table, it was immediately noted by Judge Mawdsley that each of the three ballot bags, (bag 1 of 3, bag 2 of 3 and bag 3 of 3) were all sealed improperly. Specifically, despite the fact that an official seal had been placed on each bag, the tops of the ballot bags had not been properly folded over and/or tucked in, leaving an approximate six (6) inch gap on each side of the official red seal. Counsel for JoAnne Kloppenburg immediately requested that the condition of the bags be made part of the record; that request was accommodated.
“At one point, Judge Mawdsley referred to the condition of the tops of the bags as ‘wing-like’. Another observer mentioned that she believed someone would have been able to ‘fit their whole arm in there’. Regardless, after these observations, the bags were opened – each at the bottom, with a scissors – and the recount commenced in the normal fashion”…
When we asked the Kloppenburg campaign for comment on the Elm Grove bags last night, campaign manger Mulliken said she did not yet have them on her list of reported incidents.
Earlier in the week, when we’d asked her about the several incidents of broken chain of custody discovered in ballots bags in other Waukesha municipalities discovered previously in the count, Mulliken expressed frustration with what was being found, but confidence in her “team of folks on the ground”:
“In Waukesha,” she told us, “the recount is moving slowly, partly because there have been questions and issues about almost every bag of ballots they’ve opened to recount. We have a great team of folks on the ground and have had an attorney there every day raising objections and making sure the record reflects what is happening and our objections.”
When we queried the G.A.B. about incidents of ballot bags with missing or scratched out numbers from Waukesha’s Town of Delafield, in violation of chain of custody procedures, a spokesperson told The BRAD BLOG they would not be offering a response on such issues until after the “recount” was completed in the county.
“I haven’t been briefed on that situation and so I can’t comment on it at this point,” the G.A.B.’s Reid Magney told us on Tuesday.
“Generally we don’t have information about these things until we get minutes from the county. We don’t get the minutes until the entire county has completed their count,” he explained
A few other late ‘recount’ related items…
Machine counting in Waukesha?
Yesterday, while we were watching the live webstream of the counting room in Waukesha, we noticed ballots being tallied by machine, rather than by hand. Wisconsin “recount” procedures [PDF] specify that paper ballots are to be “recounted” by the same machines which tabulated them in the first place on Election Night, unless a court order is obtained to count them by hand.
Before the counting began, we reported that the Kloppenburg and Prosser campaigns had agreed to count paper ballots by hand in parts of some 31 of the state’s 72 counties, after it had been learned that memory cartridges from theOptech Eagle optical-scan systems (sold by both ES&S and Sequoia), as used for the April 5th election in those counties, would have to be erased to accommodate the “recount.” The memory cartridges, as the G.A.B.’s legal filings revealed, are no longer manufactured and are in short supply. We reported at the time that while ballots in parts of those 31 counties would therefore be counted by hand, “all” of Waukesha’s ballots would be manually counted by agreement of the two campaigns.
So we were curious when we saw the machine counting going on. We queried the Kloppenburg campaign for an explanation last night, and Mulliken told us that the agreement was to count by hand only where the Optech Eagle system was used, and not in the entirety of Waukesha County as we had previously understood. In fact, there are a couple of municipalities in Waukesha which use the Sequoia-based op-scan system and others which use the ES&S op-scan system, but all of those op-scan systems are Optech Eagle according to VerifiedVoting.org’s database, as updated on 1/13/08.
We will, of course, report any additional details on this as we are able to learn them.
[Update/Correction: We originally reported that two municipalities in Waukesha did not use the Optech Eagle. In fact, VerifiedVoting.org’s database says they all use the Optech Eagle, at least as of 2008, though in some municipalities they use the ones put out by ES&S and, in others, the ones put out by Sequoia, since both companies used to sell those systems. We’ve corrected the above to reflect that additional information, but remain confused as to why the county seemed to be counting some ballots by machine on Wednesday. We’re still seeking further information and will try to report back if we are able to get any.]
Prosser campaign ‘lies’ about ‘targeting the nuns’
A story fed to the media by Prosser’s camp yesterday, and published uncritically by Charlie Sykes of Milwaukee’s am620 WTMJ under the headline “TARGETING THE NUNS,” charged that a number of absentee ballots from cloistered nuns in Sauk County were missing their witness signatures and were tossed after “the Kloppenburg team argued that the ballots should be thrown out.”
“The canvas board, after a long and somewhat contentious conversation voted to reject the ballots — at the insistence of the Kloppenburg attorney,” according to the published email “from the Prosser folks.” (Sykes failed to identify the name of the “Prosser folk” it came from when he ran it in full on the WTMJ website.)
“This is why Kloppenburg’s goons justify a million dollar (plus) recount…to make sure the votes of nuns are [sic] counted,” the email concludes.
We asked Mulliken about the incident and she was uncharacteristically blunt in quickly describing the Prosser story as “a lie.”
“We did not object, that is a lie,” she said. “It is just untrue. It is inaccurate. It is misinformation. We did not object.”
Mulliken went on to explain that the canvass board and other officials in Sauk County decided not to count them because “that’s the law.”
“Ballots with missing witness signatures have been discovered in the normal course around the state,” Mulliken continued, “and that makes them deficient. That’s the law and that’s the rule and that’s what happened here. Everyone’s vote is equal, whatever your occupation is. If your absentee ballot isn’t witnessed properly it doesn’t count.”
In a statement sent to media in response to the charges yesterday, the campaign said:
A more responsible version of the nun story was published last night by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, explaining…
The Prosser campaign made two appeals to have the ballots counted, including early Wednesday, but they were turned down by the board of canvassers, [counsel for Sauk County Alene] Bolin, said.
$25,000 reward posted for evidence of fraud in WI’s Supreme Court Election
Finally (or almost), election integrity and government watchdog organization VelvetRevolution.us’ Protect Our Elections campaign posted a $25,000 reward notice, for “information leading to the arrest and conviction of any person or persons for election tampering, resulting in reversal of the current outcome of the April 5, 2011 Wisconsin Supreme Court election.”
[FULL DISCLOSURE: The BRAD BLOG is a co-founder of VelvetRevolution.us]
A printable version of the reward notice is posted here [PDF].
Dems charge GOP ‘fraud’ in state Senate recall petition drive…
One more…As we reported earlier today, state Democrats are alleging that Republicans have fraudulently submitted thousands of signatures on petitions for recalls of Democratic state Senators. Currently, signed petitions have been filed with the G.A.B. for recall elections of 6 Republicans and 3 Democratic Senators in the wake of the passage of Walker’s union-stripping legislation. See our earlier report for more details…
the Brookfield open bags should have the ballots fingerprinted and matched with poll books, all of this info should be corroberated
Thanks for update – don’t know why I have to get this from a blog in CA instead of WI or from posters in WI, but no one else fully covers election fraud except you and Black Box Voting.
That bag-of-hot-air, eddie schultz (we got ed my ass!) ridiculed the idea of recount and said, “she lost, get over it!”
I have not listened to that asshat since – he had the audacity to bring a show to madison and pretend to be leading the parade, but he stood down on this issue!
I don’t know what he says now – don’t care – he is fully a media shill/hypocrite/side show carnie.
Some one really should call him this – phone in, see if he will take the call (he wouldn’t when I called and he was loudly poo-pooing the idea).
Please also let me continue to ask readers to share experience, strength and hope:
Economic action – BOYCOTTS, were needed to create virtually all meaningful progressive change in this county; yet much like you were flamed and driven from boards over legitimate election fraud posts, it is impossible to get people to engage in a dialog about meaningful actions.
Please, every remember, our personal decisions to buy or not buy products because of their political affiliations is a start; but if we do not have an open and widespread dialog that there is actually a boycott, it actually means nothing.
I don’t get why we can’t have a rational dialog about action – this is so sad and sick.
Can someone help interject and maintain a meaningful dialog on one of the few “progressive/liberal” blogs that is actually in front of the salient issues of the day? Can we talk about:
THE FACT THAT ELECTIONS ARE STOLEN WITH MONEY PROGRESSIVES AND LIBERALS SPEND WITH CERTAIN CORPORATE AND BUSINESS INTERESTS!
Brad: Take a close look at bag #4. The handwriting for the cross-out and replacement number in felt marker is definitely not that of the individual who wrote “Brookfield” and the original number on bag #4.
Judge Mawdsley’s decision to open the bags and simply dump out the ballots so as to permit a co-mingling of the contested ballots with those that had been in the sealed bags is nothing short of mind-boggling.
The possibly tampered with bags should have been segregated and their contents counted separately, so as to preserve the objection of the Kloppenburg campaign.
About the best that can be said about all this is that where election fraud can be carried out wholesale by a malicious hack of an e-voting system that is kept from public view by a vendor’s claim that their source codes are entitled to trade secret protection, when forced into a hand count, efforts to tamper with the ballot bag seals cannot be hidden.
I’m inclined to agree with those who feel that a U.S. Justice Department investigation may be warranted at this point.
Darl – spot on, but what do you want to bet the repugs are now stickin’ there hands in there and doing everything they can to say:
“OF COURSE THERE ARE FINGERPRINT ANOMALIES – WE HAD TO STICK OUR DIRTY LITTLE PIGGY REPUG HANDS IN THERE CUZ WE SAW THE HOLE!”
Too late for fingerprints, Dael. The election judges handled the bags with the bare hands. The better method would be to obtain handwriting exemplars from all of the election staff that had access to the ballots.
Ernest – perhaps you don’t know that, but a congresswoman and the state has been beggin’ obama’s justice department to at least take a look!
These repeated and constant please fall on deaf ears. Please remember, obama is the guy that ran as a “constitutional scholar/professor” and then picked up exactly where dur chimpfurher left off and even proclaimed he has the right to murder US citizens without due process!
Not going to get any help from DOJ, buddy. Not meant disrespectful – sorry if it sounds so.
Folks like me in WI have seen first-hand how this administration has abandoned us on the most critical issues of the day.
And NO! obama turning his back on his base in its most critical time of need was not 11-dimensional chess.
It is further proof that we are now seeing bush’s third term!
The seals on those bags are supposed to be “tamper evident.” Not to make tampering impossible, but to make it clear when the secure chain of custody of the ballots within the bags has been broken. Well, it’s clear the secure chain of custody has been broken. Now, what will be done about it? This is the SAME question that should rightly be asked should the seals themselves reveal that the bags had been tampered with. If no action is taken, what’s the point of those seals, anyway?
Ernest – if they can so successfully continue obstruct the process (and it began BEFORE the elction) her
You can’t actually identify all of those folks and so while you are thinking and being positive (and I am not proclaiming you “wrong”), that isn’t actually likely to help either.
The process is rigged and no one will talk about how they do it: with the money that liberals and progressives spend!091C5
Oh – brad won’t allow comments about how elections are rigged now.
Thanks for being showing that you are just another self-promoting sham-artist just like “big ed”
Perhaps that is why kos and others flamed and banned you – I obviously have that wrong when I believed you that they couldn’t stand your “integrity” and concerns over election fraud.
Now wonder your voices is so quiet and, despite some good posts, you are not actually even a “small dog” on the blog scene.
Is the “Your comment is awaiting moderation” on post 6 a glitch (meaning I owe you an apology) or a “feature” of bradblog?
Not that I see there is actually a dialog worthy of coming back and checking again…
Ernie @ 2 said:
While that might be nice, I’m not sure that they have any jurisdiction here at all. I don’t believe (though I could be wrong) that any of WI’s counties fall under protection of the Voting Rights Act. And the election was a state, not federal election. So not sure under what jurisdiction they’d be able to come into the matter, even if they wanted to (and, you know, of course, they NEVER want to.)
Also, you suggested the ballots from the Brookfield bags were mixed in with all the others. I don’t know if that’s true or not. Just FYI. I’d like to think, as with other instances like this, they would count them, but set those numbers aside in case of challenge later.
Um, SKC, you had been more than welcome to post anything here at all. For the moment, you still are. But your attack on me is decidedly NOT cool, given that your comment fell into momentary auto-moderation due to something or other in the note triggered the spam filter and put the comment into the mod queue until I was able to get to it.
Sky down there, Skippy. Thanks.
Ernie –
Following up my previous response to you, looks like the Journal Sentinel’s coverage suggests the Brookfield ballots were set aside, as such…
Feel better? 🙂
It sounds as though this election should be voided and start all over, keeping that crooked clerk away from the ballots. Might it be time for paper ballots counted in each precinct with oversight.
You know what, after reading comments (not on this site but on jsonline), people don’t care. They would rather sling mud at each other, call each names, and only care that their side won or lost.
What we want to see, oversight, transparent voting, etc, is never going to happen. All people care about is their candidate and to hell with the other one. I’ll bet our Founding Fathers if they read the comments would be crying right about now.
Thank you for the good fight, unfortunately, it’s a losing cause.
Brad @11,
The feds did a jamb up job in the Kentucky “election system”, a state system, by alleging RICO crimes that affected interstate commerce.
People from outside the state were said to be involved in an earlier comments on this fiasco.
Perhaps Ernie is on to something in that context.
the ideas that fingerprint analysis can be played with is naive. It can all be sussed out!
#5
Right.
Looks like the recount is an effort to cover up evidence of wrong doing.
Scott Walker “as long as there aren’t ballots somehow found out of the blue that weren’t counted before”
Well, Brad, I’m pleased to see that they’ve kept the challenged ballots segregated.
When you place this latest development within the context of Nickolaus’ April 7 “surprise” would it be too much to suggest that the Brookfield GOP has attempted to “seal” the deal?
Just another fractured real life tale from The BRAD BLOG.
He said he objected and asked the judge to open the other bags first, and not # 3, but the judge said NO. Bill said it’s in the minutes and we have a record of it. BUT…they started counting the ballots in bag 3 first. By this time the ……media started pouring in.
Darcy said that with this big a municipality …that we’re talking thousands of votes (I think she said 10,000). I don’t know how many votes we’re talking here, but this is very suspicious. Why couldn’t the judge wait? Why did they open # 3 first? Darcy said the judge was in the hall talking to Kevin Kennedy about it. I had to leave, I was too upset.”
ok that is a paste of the quote from first huge breach in custody(day 1 of recount) when town of delafeild presented an inspectors list with 2 bags on it and 3 bags presented to be “recounted”
as you can see kennedy,head of gab was there clearly directing,confering with the judge that has taken nickols place in the ‘recount”
so what does that make this gab statement?i guess technically correct since the spokesman was not there but factual untrue since the head(kennedy) was directing the head of the canvassers
When we queried the G.A.B. about incidents of ballot bags with missing or scratched out numbers from Waukesha’s Town of Delafield, in violation of chain of custody procedures, a spokesperson told The BRAD BLOG they would not be offering a response on such issues until after the “recount” was completed in the county.
“I haven’t been briefed on that situation and so I can’t comment on it at this point,” the G.A.B.’s Reid Magney told us on Tuesday.
“Generally we don’t have information about these things until we get minutes from the county. We don’t get the minutes until the entire county has completed their count,” he explained
/////so from the outside looking in,it seems there are a group of professional “foxes” guarding the waukesha “hen house”
and day after day it gets worse
ty for the reporting brad!
If someone was interested in writing laws that would actually uncover election fraud, one provision would be that in the case of any ballot box (bag, etc.) being found unsecure, all unsecure ballots would be marked, and a full recount of ALL RACES be conducted to verify these were the original ballots.
It is easy to stuff ballot boxes after the fact to match fraudulent-reported totals — if you can get away with breaking the seals. However, it is much more difficult to keep the totals for all the other races the same.
P.S. This same pattern of opened ballot boxes took place during the New Hampshire primary recount of 2008.
Ding Dong The witch Lost. Get over it whiney liberals.
There needs to be an investigation of WHO had the ballots while they were being transported from Brookfield to Waukesha. That is a vital link in the chain custody. not just Brookfield and Waukesha.
Who had a motive to open/tear the ballot bags and risk Brookfield ballots being tossed out. Disenfranchisement on a massive scale!
Hmm. could it be UNIONIZED city highway workers? Oh no, union workers NEVER would do such a thing!
All it would take is an intentional mishandling of the bags. Like a gorilla in the samsonite ad.
ReporterMunchkin said on 5/6/2011 @ 2:58pm PT: [Permalink]The foulest opening is Kloppenburgs mouth.
She should go on tour with Loud Mouth Lena, and Sticky fingers Larson.
All that comes out of their mouths would be best used on a compost heap.
[ED NOTE: This note was written by the same the commenter who more appropriately called themselves “Munchkin” above. “Reporter/Munchkin,” we have very few rules for commenting here at The BRAD BLOG. Among them, you may not use different user names, particular to agree with yourself as you did here. I’m sorry you have so little support for your opinion that you find such a thing necessary, and I’m sorry that you do not know how to respect the rules in someone else’s private property. You will not make that mistake again. You will comment as “Munchkin” from here on out, or you will be gone for good. Thanks. And you’re welcome. – BF]
Munchkin and Reporter:
What’s with the hatred and vitriol? We just like ballots counted correctly, and kept in the proper chain of custody so no cheating goes on at all. What is to hate about that? Why would that make someone so angry?
In a wartocracy this is the way elections are done all the time.
But the problem here, from the wartocracy point of view, is that the election minions did not cover it up with the “quality” a hundred other election locales did.
This fraud was not up to the national standards.
But they can handle a few botched fake elections every once in awhile.
At least it keeps the activists busy for awhile. 😉
“Amazing what ya find when u pay close attn to #WIvote “recount” numbers. Unless more votes than voters & such like ain’t your thing. #Fail”
Please explain your tweet Brad. I havent heard about this.
Dredd sedd @ 16:
The massive Clay County, KY vote buying/selling, e-vote machine rigging scandal you refer to had to do with elections for federal offices, as well as a bunch of narcotics trafficking, sales, as part of a federal investigation that started years earlier and then spread into the election fraud case.
While I’d be all for the feds coming in to investigate the WI mess, I still don’t see the jurisdictional on ramp. (Unless, either something interstate is seen, or one of the counties falls under the Voting Rights Act protections, which I haven’t yet checked into.) I’ll be happy to be shown that I’m wrong, of course. AND, if any of the other elections, which included federal offices, in Waukesha were gamed, then the feds could have their entry.
Karen @ 21 said:
I originally read the report to suggest that Kevin Kennedy (Director, General Counsel of the G.A.B.) was in Waukesha as well. My reporting since then indicates that the G.A.B. was not on scene, and so the reference to “Darcy said the judge was in the hall talking to Kevin Kennedy about it.” likely referred to the judge being on the phone with Kennedy.
So where you say:
…I don’t believe it’s necessary accurate.
In other words, Kennedy may have answered a question on that first day, as to how to proceed, without the G.A.B. being fully read into the issues in Waukesha. Or, without the press spokesman Reid Magney, who I quoted, being read into it, at least.
Again, giving the benefit of the doubt. Which they either deserve or they don’t. I’ll leave that to you.
12 Years of no oversight, no chain of custody, no accountability, and no arrests have left the USA with a tyranny of criminal foreign banksters, and a commercialized police state instead of a constitution.
It’s almost funny how everyone bitches about for profit media not reporting (or censoring), and then turns right around and quote their propaganda. Then they bitch about boycott this and boycott that.
Want activism, or to do something about it?
Blacklist their websites at your firewall, and spread your blacklists around, make them irrelevant because they are untrusted. This is after all why 99% of you vote for the same old D and R candidates you do, you are brainwashed by the psyop controlled for profit media.
If you did this one thing, you would be more informed than the leg crossers on tv. When your armed with facts, officials shut up.
Myself, I don’t see the point of voting at all anymore. Why bother with the emotion crap? It’s done, in 12 years it’s the same crap, each time getting worse. It’s the same people, the same lies, and the same lack of jail. The USA’s main export now is war and death. Might as well enjoy the ride, it won’t be long now.
Giving up or not voting is not a viable option.
#31
You have a point.
I have noticed for many years now that progressive websites discourage election theft information. Some commenters on these websites seem to know a lot! But now the websites are so heavily censored that even the comments are not as good. I will say that Daily Kos is doing a wonderful job…so who knows , maybe the rest of them will follow.
Democracy Now used to have a lot of Wisconsin coverage, then the curtain came down. Now they show a few clips of Obama and Hillary every day. I think the real problem has never been addressed. That our govt. is fascist and the news media is, including online, managed. I have noticed with the particular govt. scam that has been the most interest to me…wind farms…
They manage with bribes.
Brad @29,
A read of The Indictment does not indicate charges limited to or primarily related to federal elections, the charges were related to RICO corruption in county elections:
(Indictment, pp 4-5). The Los Angeles Police Department was held to be a criminal enterprise in another RICO case some years back.
The feds can bring federal criminal charges of this type in any election for any state, county, or municipal election if the election is fraudulent.
It does not have to be a federal election (House, Senate, President) for this federal criminal law to be applied. But it can be applied in purely federal elections too.
RE #34,
My point is that the Kentucky charges could have been brought for only one state, county, or city election, where no federal candidate is involved.
That case covered both local, county, state, and federal elections, but the primary thrust of the Indictment was ELECTION CORRUPTION which can happen in any election.
The feds can prosecute in Wisconsin for any similar ELECTION CORRUPTION even though it involves only a state official.
For anyone wanting to familiarize themselves as to how federal prosecutors in the DOJ can prosecute local election officials in any city, county, or state for conducting corrupt elections, read: PROSECUTING PUBLIC OFFICIALS/FIGURES FOR CORRUPTION: THE APPROACH IN THE UNITED STATES (PDF).
uh, commenter #2 — I live in Wisconsin, I voted for kloppenburg, I am a union state employee, I’ve particpated in recount organizing, I spent a few days protesting at the state capital, going through the metal detector & all that. But I also think we should “get over it.” You admit (I think?) you are not from Wisconsin. Therefor you are forgiven for not knowing that the vote totals in Brookfield is about what you’d expect for that (very Republican) area.
I just don’t want to jeopardize the recalls, which I think have a reasonable chance of succeeding in up to 4 cases. Whether justified or not, fighting this battle over the Kloppenburg-Prosser race over technicalities will hurt the other causes, and int he end the result will not change. There comes a time to cut your losses, and move on to focus on things you can still win, and you need the “swing voter” to win. Stubbornly clinging to technicalities in this race will not help the anti-Walker cause, it will hurt.
uh comment #37…Technicalities? Seriously? We have never won anything by making our decisions out of fear. If your worried about how the media will portray it worry no more, we will never win that battle. We dont own them, they dont work for us. They will never spin it or frame it in our favor, let alone just report the facts. The recount is the right thing to do, its shedding light on many “technicalities” as you say as well as serious flaws with the recount itself. I say this as a WI resident, someone who helped the Kloppenburg campaign, spent a night in the capitol and has been protesting numerous times at and around the capitol.
I brought up the Waukesha video stream this morning, and pretty much the first thing I see is them getting ready to start counting the next precinct. Now what should happen is they bring out the sealed bags of ballots from that precinct and check the seal numbers on the plastic bag ‘locks’ (sort of a twist-tie with a number molded into the plastic). They should check that number against that number hand-written with a Sharpie by a poll worker on the bag, and against the number written by a poll worker a piece of paper called the ‘custody record’ or something like that.
There are four bags of ballot for the particular precinct (which if the called out the number of the precinct for the court reporter in the room, I didn’t hear it). None of the four seal numbers is written on the custody record, and one of the four numbers is incorrectly transcribed onto the bag itself. There’s a woman in the room who is walking around more-or-less telling people what to do, so I’m assuming she works for the county clerks office. And she says that she bagged those herself; she can tell by the handwriting and the way she used extra (non-numbered) ties to seal the bag.
Now I guess a person from the clerk’s office could have been an chief poll worker at a particular precinct on election day, but that would be odd. And if she is an employee of the clerks office, you’d think she would have done a better job of recording the bag numbers on the custody record; forgetting to write it on the bags wouldn’t all that bad, but writing the numbers on the custody record is the whole point of having number on the seals in the first place!!
While all this is going on, somewhere in the room, I can hear ballots being fed into ballot scanner/tabulator machine. It is the sound I know to be from an Optech Eagle (though I guess other machines could make similar sounds), as they are used in Madison where I work at the polls. When they finish whatever it is they’re doing, they announce that the count the machine has done is ‘off by four’. A few minutes later, I can hear machine counting again.
What the hell are these people doing!?
So a little further along, I can now hear (repeatedly) the ‘error’ sound of an Optech Eagle, the noise it would make if it found an overvote or a blank ballot. This is a little odd, because overvotes and blanks should have been caught and corrected by voters at the polling place on election day.
But the (sadly) funny thing is one other the other women who has been walking around directing people what to do says out loud “Why is it making that noise!?”
If you’re a poll worker, during election day whatever else you’re doing, in the back of your mind, you’re listening for that noise because if you hear it, somebody has to jump and go to the Optech tabulator and help the voter find out what they’ve done wrong, etc. There should be no question in your mind “Why is it making that noise”. And if you’re a worker in the clerks office, you should know that noise from hours of prepping, testing and “zeroing out” the Optechs in the days before election day.
There were machine counting Brookfield wards 18, 19, 20.
The ‘error’ noises were because they were running a “test deck” through a machine to do some sort of comparison between a pre-election day test deck run on a particular machine – why, I haven’t the slightest idea.
When the finished with wards 18, 19, 20, they removed the memory pack and sealed it away. I have no idea if was the same memory pack that was in the machine on election day (God I hope not).
And now they’re preparing to machine count 21, 22, 23, 24 by running a test deck into an Optech tabulator. That is, they’re doing a machine recount.
Now, the reason that the hand recounts were ordered was that not enough memory “prom packs” could be scrounged up to both preserve the election day memory packs and have enough to do machine recounts. Maybe because other counties have finished (and Waukesha is so far behind), enough memory prom packs have been ‘freed up’ such that Waukesha is switching over to machine counts to speed up? I’m sure Brad will be happy to hear that possibility 🙂
I guess I should say that I can’t actually see the machine to verify that it is indeed an Optech. But I will say that both the ‘good ballot scanned’ sound and the ‘bad ballot scanned’ sound are those of an Optech. As I said, I guess other machines could make the same sounds.
Robert! SO happy to hear you’re on the WAUKESHA LIVE FEED! THANK YOU SO MUCH! …and yah, you haven’t seen *nothin* yet. Every day I’ve tuned in I’ve been aghast…most days I can’t believe what I’m hearing and seeing, sputtering in the FB Groupu comment threads to the volunteers on the ground there, “Wait…did I just hear what I thought I heard?!?”
…Clerks testifying ON THE RECORD that they did not submit their paperwork with those security seal numbers on canvassing report and DON’T RECOGNIZE THE HANDWRITING ON THE RECOUNT SHEETS/ thousands (?) of votes being counted that are *not* on the inspector’s check lists / BAGS WIDE OPEN with the seals still “intact”…the list goes on and on.
The Koch’s REALLY need to bone up on their election fraud skills. You have to RE-SEAL the ballot bags after you stuff them, boys. Amateurs…
Robert *and everyone* – we are actively discussing this at Steve Freeman’s ELECTION INTEGRITY FACEBOOK GROUP, here:
http://www.facebook.com/home.ph...97815633590513
We have WI volunteers on the ground in Waukesha (and from other municipalities) reporting to us directly.
We could really use EVERY ONE READING THIS to please check in w/ the Waukesha Co. livefeed, here: http://www.waow.com/category/20...unt-livestream
Extra eyes and ears are needed there *desperately*…especially BRADVILLIANS who know this issue better than anyone. (oh, and thanks for that, Brad!)
Klopp only has one volunteer lawyer and citizen volunteers (fast becoming EI experts from trial by fire) – they are doing everything right, forcefully objecting exactly where they should – but can’t get enough traction with the judge (who replaced Nicholaus) to STOP THE COUNT on these bags and SEQUESTER them for further examination. He’s just pushing forward and COUNTING THE SUSPECT BALLOTS ANYWAY…
–
Brad @ 30
My interpreted suspicion from reading Karen @ 21 centered around the proximal times, in the coincidence of the arrival of an unlicensed “bag #3” containing ‘thousands of votes’ at the provocative impetus moment when Kennedy-GAB’judge’ confer, coordinate their signals, whether on the phone or tete-a-tete ‘outside in the hall.’
Not all ‘coincidences’ are random or arbitrary and of no ‘suspect’ occurrence, inadmissible to consider; but ‘coincidences’ along a mutual motive are ever suspect and never random.
I suspect the “bag #3,” its pre-conference and its contents, as it appears arriving from the field where only 2 bags were officially sent for collecting official ballots into.
–
On involving federal investigation and prosecution:
The feds could invent a law (as if none already apply) for their entry into the Wisc. fray … if they were pursuing Justice, (domestic tranquilty, General well fare, and that Mission Statement thing).
Consider: What if ‘the feds’ in Office these days (think: Obama, et al.), got their Office __by_the_same__ computer-rigged vote-count public-fraud class-action case(s) which we now expect ‘those feds’ to ‘solve’ and prosecute?
That ‘the feds’ now in Office do NOT solve and prosecute in Wisc. and Ohio and land’s sakes more, proves silent complicity and tacit allowance by the inaction. The feds now in office were rigged vote-counts, or, as an earlier voice put it, “Obama is Bush III,” same old same old 2K and ’04 rigged vote-counting again … ‘not gonna prosecute, wouldn’t be prudent‘ w/apologies Dana Carvey.
I’d especially like to personally invite commenter D. Wilson (#37) to view the livestream from Waukesha. If he / she is really from WI it should be more than enough evidence that the recall elections you’re so worried about won’t mean DIDDLY-DO if you can’t get a clean vote.
Your logic is either back-asswards on this and you don’t seem to notice your own CATCH 22, or you know nothing about what’s really going on when YOUR vote is counted in WI. Popping off at the mouth with any thing even remotely reminiscent of “get over it”…tells us more about you than you meant to reveal.
Giving you the benefit of the doubt, for now.
Please join us in trying to track the minutes / events of this WAUKESHA WONK, where your LOCAL recount mess is revealing more about WI election systems than the gab intended to reveal.
Oh! And if anyone can help us record this livestream from their computer in any way they can – even setting up your vide cam and recording off your monitor. We have confirmed that it is *not* being recorded by the local affiliate that is streaming it. More troubling is that (on certain days) Prosser has his OWN STENOGRAPHERS on the ground in Waukesha nd Winnebego Co. I have *never* heard of this in my life…makes me wonder if Prosser’s peeps are going to try to “challenge” the official county clerk’s minutes somewhere down the road, or worse, release only limited versions of these transcripts via Kathy Nicholaus’ office.
Nicholaus, with her criminal record and history of “election accounting errors” is running around down there, unattended, unwatched, with a full set keys to this recount.
Thanks in advance, Bradblog Tribe!)
Oh. Yah. Forgot to mention – OUTSTANDING JOB, BRAD. THANK YOU. And Ernie, can you check out our FB group when you get a chance? If you can, sir, I know you’re extremely busy, but you’re not going to BEEEELIIEEVE how badly they need bigger legal guns, there, ASAP.
BROOKFIELD COUNT / RECONCILIATION – drawdown for ward 19 for having more votes than voters. Again. From the machine. Sigh.
Robert, just read your comments more carefully. GREAT ear!! Yes, you’re hearing the SEQUOIA EAGLE OT Scanner! Gonna repost your comments at the FB GROUP feed…
Oh, also read D.Wilsons comment more carefully…”justified or not” is another tell on you, btw.
Its interesting to me how much weight people put on the “comments” section of “news” articles. Anyway…I’m from WI and the Journal Sentinel is a HORRIBLE news source. The comments do NOT reflect our general feelings about fair elections. Please don’t base your opinions about WI on those comments. I’ve been blacklisted I think for commenting there. JS was bought out in like 2007-2008 from some company that is super slanted to the right.
Meremark @#44 deeeeelighted me when he writes:
RIGHT. That is exactly the point Karen was making, and I was right about to make again, only far less eloquently. Thank you so much!
Her timeline here *is* important, imho.
..deconstructs (potentially) a very big lie.
D Wilson @37 wrote:
The “technicality” you refer to, D Wilson, is called “democracy.”
If we don’t insist on transparent elections wherein everyone can be assured that the candidate who prevails is identical to the candidate who really received the most votes, then ours is not a democracy.
If you had followed these articles, starting with WI Supreme Court Election Virtually Deadlocked, According to the Machines Anyway which Brad Friedman and I wrote at a time when Kloppenburg was “leading,” you would understand that, despite our misgivings about the ethically-challenged David Prosser, our principle concern is election integrity.
The first lesson one should derive from the current mess in WI goes well beyond your state. It is a lesson about the ease with which vote tabulation can be manipulated on any e-voting system.
The second lesson is that, despite a so-called paper record in the form of written ballots fed into optical scan machines, those written ballots do not insure an accurate count because (1) in WI written ballots are not counted absent a court order (in FL it’s illegal to count them at all) (2) failure to insure a proper chain-of-custody opens the door to the possibility that fraudulent ballots will be counted as if they were lawfully cast, and (3) the hand count, in this case, is limited to only a portion of the optical scanners used in the last election.
All of this, not to mention the squandering of public monies on expensive and entirely unnecessary e-voting systems, could have been avoided if we insisted, as the German Supreme Court has insisted, on “Democracy’s Gold Standard:” Hand-marked paper ballots, publicly hand-counted at each precinct upon closure of the polls.
So, while you strive, D Wilson, to recall the Republicans who voted to bust your union, keep in mind that your efforts should either succeed or fail based on the number of votes lawfully cast, and not by means of some insider hack of the system.
Great article with excellent idea! I appreciate your post. Thanks so much and let keep on sharing your stuffs.
The Breaking News
so what happens after the recount? I’m making the assumption that the vote count in this county won’t be off by much,if any, from the orginal count. However, because so many bags were open, the question of them being valid votes is somewhat glaring. Is a lawsuit required ? Does the GAB have an established policy for compromised bags/votes ? and, what was the turn out of registered voters voted in this area, is it abnormally high ? and are there any dead voters or out of area voters in this particular group ? if so, is the vote count adjusted?
Actually, benlomond2 – the GAB recount numbers have changed a LOT. And not from the canvass to the recount, but from the RECOUNT to the RECOUNT. Sort of just depends on the day. (And the shifting columns!)…
But as of tonight, the numbers from the gab website reveal that Kloppenburg is ahead in the recount for the first time – by 33,000 votes – with only Waukesha and parts of Marathon still outstanding. And Waukesha is only about 40% through this slow slog, btw, experiencing so many problems with the condition of their ballot bags / seal numbers not matching / wide open ballot bags / rips / tears 6 inches long and worse etc, – that they have been granted an extension until MAY 26th.
Richard Charnin (posts here as Truth Is All) writes: “Klop gained 73,000 net votes in the past two days. Prosser needs 61,000 out of the approx. 88,000 remaining to be counted in Waukesha to “win” the recount.”
WwooooOOOOT! Saddle UP! This ain’t over. Far from it. Best get on your thigh high rubbers (you know what I mean…not THOSE thigh high rubbers) we’re gonna be neck-deep in the WAUKESHA WONK.
“However, because so many bags were open, the question of them being valid votes is somewhat glaring. Is a lawsuit required ? Does the GAB have an established policy for compromised bags/votes ?”
Great questions! The GAB has said they are “awaiting the results” of the recount before they pursue any investigation (ha! convenient)at the same time (or just after) Kathy Nicholaus was UNDER investigation BY the GAB. So, there’ that.
Meantime, the good folks KLPP recount volunteers (including their VOLUNTEER lawyer) are getting INCREDIBLE breaches of security on the record. I sit at home listening to the livefeed spurting coffee out my nose every time I hear the testimony of so many clerks coming forth w/ so many “irregularites”. I think Waukesha is up to 250 exhibits and I dunno HOW many objections…
But the problem, as you’re pointing out, is a total non-existence of election law enforcement. The judge, Mawdsley, despite the numerous objections raised, is just CONTINUING to COUNT the bad ballots…noting them, but then allowing them to go forward with the process. His line is “what ever happened to those ballots is not up to us to determine in this recount. We’re noting it for the record…” WHaaaAA?
And you’re right also that by the time they’re finished “counting” in Waukesha, the recount numbers won’t APPEAR to be much different than the election night canvass #s (or at least will fall within an “acceptable” margin of error)
…but that might be a hard sell in light their ever changing recount totals and those *god-awful*, wide open ballot bags from, where else…Brookfield.
For anyone who’s interested in following the Waukesha Co. recount for the next THREE WEEKS, they have a livefeed (for now), here:
http://www.waow.com/category/20...unt-livestream
Time for a new election with a team of international observers to ensure a free and fair election. It works in other third world countries and should work here.