Wisconsin

midnight

(26,624 posts) Tue Sep 18, 2012, 06:52 AM Sep 2012

Wave finds that hand-counts of paper opti. scan ballots differed from elec. night totals...

Two months ago Liberty Tree's Wisconsin Wave project began an historic hand-count of ballots from the June 5th gubernatorial recall election. The premise was simple- with abuse prone machines tallying most of the votes on election night, only a hand-count could prove to what extent official totals reflected the true intent of Wisconsin voters.

Now, almost 1,000 volunteers and hundreds of thousands of ballots later, we are preparing to wrap up this vital campaign and issue a report with our findings.

Your support is urgently needed to allow us to continue this far-reaching work!

What we have found so far includes:
Inconsistent and tamper-prone methods of securing ballot bags
Widespread use of unverifiable touch screen machines in a state where these devices are officially designated as handicap accessible equipment only
And most disturbingly, a number of counties where our hand-counts of paper optiscan ballots often differed from election night totals.
To complete this vital campaign we need your support right now!

What still needs to be done:
Waukesha County- last month we won a huge victory in the fight to count ballots in Waukesha. Infamous county clerk Kathy Nickolaus (of the 2011 Supreme Court race fame) had threatened to illegally destroy the ballots, but backed down in the face of grassroots pressure. However she is still refusing to grant us access to the election materials, and so the fight to count in this hugely important county continues!

Finishing up counts in other high priority counties where discrepancies have been found. The bigger our data set, the more complete our picture of these problems will be.

Compiling what percentage of Wisconsin voters used unverifiable touch-screen voting machines. Unbelievably, this information is not compiled by the state election authority, and so normally is not available to the public (or anyone for that matter).

After we have completed these crucial tasks we will be releasing a report detailing our findings along with action steps to protect the upcoming fall election.

We will also again be putting out the call for nationwide voter assemblies on November 7th (the day after the election) - gatherings that will serve as instant organizing platforms if there is evidence that the fall election was stolen.

Your contribution is needed today to make this important work possible. At Liberty Tree we run our election integrity efforts under the banner No More Stolen Elections- together we can make that battle cry a reality!

Sincerely,

Adam Porton
National Director

This was an e-mail, but here is a link for Wave:http://wisconsinwave.org/news/thom-hartmann-discusses-wisconsin-waves-involvement-citizen-audit-wisconsin-recall

4 replies

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Highlight:

Wave finds that hand-counts of paper opti. scan ballots differed from elec. night totals... (Original Post) midnight Sep 2012 OP

K&R Firebrand Gary Sep 2012 #1

Here is some data from a report issued after all Kathy's mistakes.. midnight Sep 2012 #2

K&R Blue Owl Sep 2012 #3

Midnight kick and rec. chalky Sep 2012 #4

Firebrand Gary

(5,044 posts)

1. K&R

Reply to midnight (Original post)

Tue Sep 18, 2012, 06:56 AM

Sep 2012

midnight

(26,624 posts)

2. Here is some data from a report issued after all Kathy's mistakes..

Reply to midnight (Original post)

Tue Sep 18, 2012, 08:15 AM

Sep 2012

http://media.jsonline.com/documents/electionreport.pdf

"10. LACK OF PROCESS DOCUMENTATION
The WCCO processes need to be documented for each and every election cycle whether a primary or general election, in the spring or fall. Artifacts exist, but the overall start-to-finish flow is a noted gap. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for each election within a two-year process would be a strong foundation upon which to evaluate the needs of a current election process and would capture fundamental knowledge and processes
Mitigation: The entire election (programming, testing, certification, training, etc.) should be documented, and electronically backed-up for the purpose of business continuity.
11. LACK OF DOCUMENTATION FOR BALLOT AND EQUIPMENT TESTING PROCESS
Most of the ballot programming and testing resides in the knowledge and experience of the County Clerk and Deputy County Clerk. Having documentation for these processes, even in a checklist format, would provide a vehicle for proof of completion and ability to sign off that the processes were completed and followed.
Mitigation: In order to create repeatable, reportable, reliable testing, processes should be documented. This is especially important when last-minute testing must occur due to vendor or other unforeseen changes happen late in the process."

"Most of the knowledge of the election processes lies with the Waukesha County Clerk, who has been assigning responsibilities to the Deputy County Clerk.
The majority of the information in this document was provided through formal interviews and validation sessions with the Deputy County Clerk who was able to provide a high-level understanding of the process, but not able to provide details from memory. In these instances requiring detail, the Deputy County Clerk suggested eliciting the information from the County Clerk. Discussions with the County Clerk elicited the details, and demonstrated the vast knowledge of the process the County Clerk is able to access without referring to documentation.
The knowledge silo and minimal cross training for detailed processes is a high risk for knowledge loss."

Lots of info. to look at... For you folks that understand the computer world please let me know what you think..