Wisconsin aftermath: Voters in disbelief over Walker victory

[mojowork_n]

16. The comments following the post bradblog video have a few more details

For anyone scratching their heads, wanting to read more:

Additional text and links at Bradblog.com

The most startling bit of news (for me) was the "arabian nights" New-for-Old deal
made by 46 Wisconsin county clerks. I don't have the details on the sequence of
events, or when they were all selected, purchased and installed but a bargain was
made between a small, 2 or 3-person company in St. Cloud, Minnesota, "Command Central,"
a distributor for "Dominion Systems," Canada, which had earlier swallowed up the
predecessor corporate entities, "ES&S" and "Sequoia Voting Systems," and those
county clerks.

Meet-command-central-the-people-in-charge-of-wisconsin-voting-machines/

reference pertinent details about the history of those earlier
companies' participation in our election process, here:

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2007/2585

... "Command Central" made a deal to swap 3,000 brand-spanking-new touchscreen voting
machines for 1,500 used optical scan voting machines, with those 46 Wisconsin counties. Both
types of election apparatus are eminently 'hackable' but the touchscreen equipment has
the additional advantage that it leaves no paper trail. We all remember the recount for
the Kloppenberg-Prosser Supreme Court election, where all those busted open and unsealed
bags of paper ballots left such an untidy spectacle. That all took place in May of 2011.
The Wisconsin county clerks' conference was held in June, and by July, 2011 those brand new "Command
Central" touchscreen machines were in place in Fox Point (wards 1 - 4) for the epic Sandy
Pasch & Alberta Darling State Senate recall race.

http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Alberta_Darling_recall,_Wisconsin_State_Senate_%282011%29

A few folks were scratching their heads over the results of that one, too. For one thing, the new
machines came equipped with two ePROMs's (programmable read-only memory) that stores
the machine software. There's one ePROM for "testing functions" and another for actual "election
functions," like tabulating votes. That's still how those units are configured, apparently.

In any event, it's probably worth noting that at that annual Wisconsin county clerks conference
in Ladysmith, in June of last year, the chairperson of the Legislation Committee was Waukesha
County's Kathy Nickolaus.

From the Meet-Command-Central Link:

....{The} meeting featured a break-out session entitled, “Mastering Tough Questions from News Media, Directors and Other Audiences”:

Whether it’s a news event, a hostile public hearing or a difficult internal meeting, the knowledge and skills gained in this class will increase our ability and confidence to succeed as mastering the tough questions everyone fears. By understanding the anatomy of ‘tough questions’ you will gain power of them. Learn response techniques and model answers that you can apply to any situation.

Al Guyant, president of Guyant and Associates, a training firm specializing in human communications, conducted the session. Guyant has prepared clients for 60 Minutes, Dateline and other “tough question” formats... ...Another break-out session was scheduled specifically to spend time with the election vendors: Command Central and Dominion. Command Central was represented by Vice President Aaron Storbeck.

In an interview with Barb With from the Wisconsin Citizens Media Co-op, Aaron Storbeck admitted that all software programming for the vote tabulation process was done by one person, his step-mother, Barb Wahl. Ms. Wahl, the investigators at the Wisconsin Citizens Media Co-op found, had previously been discharged from a position as data administrator for another company, ACS Enterprise Solutions, for repeatedly refusing to take a mandatory online ethics exam that required "an employee... to read workplace scenarios and answer questions about ethical workplace behavior."

According to John Washburn, an election integrity investigator and professional software tester, who has filed multiple requests for information and open records with the State of Wisconsin's General Accountability Board (now within the purview of the Walker administration), the agreement by which the 46 county clerks agreed to accept the new 3,000 touchscreen voting machines for the used 1,500 optical scanner paper-trail voting machines, "violates the statutes issued by the GAB for State approved system as described on the Government Accountability Board’s website that requires the inclusion of an Optech Insight Scanner."

So, with all that in mind, there's no reason at all anyone should have the slightest reason to doubt that our election process in Wisconsin is conducted following responsible and transparent procedures and processes. None of the people who are employed by the voting machine companies or the state of Wisconsin or individual counties has anything to hide. Unlike the effort to "verify the recall" when whole battalions of tea party volunteers were able to download and attempt to cross-check signatures and addresses on recall petitions -- we all know how many fictitious names, cartoon characters and anonymous, ordinary, poor and middle class people signed those -- the fact that this race was considered:

• too close to call (despite the over-reliance on land lines over cell phones, in some polls, and other skewed survey techniques)
  
  
• the most recent percentage shifts clearly trended towards the Democrats, and
  
  
• there was near-record turnout in most all the Democratic Party's known precinct strongholds

should have made some difference. But on election day none of that apparently had any effect at all.

FAUX News was able to "project that Walker would survive the recall" at 2:08 pm, the middle of the afternoon on June 5th, election day.

http://video.foxnews.com/v/1675322440001/fox-news-projects-wisconsins-walker-will-survive-recall/

And it was all over after that. (With who knows how many people discouraged from turning out to vote, after work, with the news of that announcement.)

Nothing to see here, move along.....