Wisconsin aftermath: Voters in disbelief over Walker victory

[mojowork_n]

28. There are two entirely separate questions involved.

Before I even start to compose a reply, let me please un-stuff the words you've put in my mouth.

• I'm certainly not claiming "someone is doing it" -- stealing an election -- because 'paranoid logic' sez it must be so.
  
• I don't 'believe' fraud occurred.
  
• Using "proof" and "electronic voting" in the same sentence is a little fuzzy and meaningless, isn't it?
  

Yes, I have reasons to suspect the accuracy, reliability and security of electronic voting systems. They've been abandoned in favor of a return to paper ballots, in Great Britain, Ireland, and the Netherlands. {See: http://www.libdemvoice.org/evoting-why-it-was-abandoned-in-the-uk-22488.html } (Hey, I don't know, I don't have any idea how complete that list is. It's just what popped up. I've been reading up on this but still have research to do.)

But what I really want to say is, there are TWO separate and distinct questions here.

Question 1 is big, wide-ranging and open-ended. It's asking:

"Gee, what happened in the election?"

What were the issues and messages? Who said and wrote what, and how were those statements disseminated and received, by whom? From the start of the campaign to the last day, how many "political messages" were seen, heard or read by typical voter(s) and what effects did they all have on voters' decision-making? You're not looking for 'proof' of anything, just useful general lessons for the next go-around.

Question 2 is more specific. How were votes recorded, who did the tabulating -- how? -- and who was in charge of making sure that all guidelines and controls were followed.

The most important aspect of that question is, "Is it possible to have any certainty or confidence that the recorded vote numbers were accurate?" (Even if all the guidelines and controls were followed.)

It's always worth asking no matter what kind of voting equipment is used or who's in charge of the election.

This isn't a perfect world and it would be highly unusual for any election to be conducted "perfectly," without any errors. In recent presidential elections, I think it was typical to see more than two million ballots discarded as "spoiled," nation-wide, each time. On a variety of different types of voting equipment.

There are always going to be mechanical errors. Whether you have paper ballots, punch cards, touchscreen machines (voter's finger touched the screen but no signal was generated, or the push was out of sequence or generated the wrong signal), or optical scanners (pencil mark was too light or too thick for the machine to read), some occasional small errors are likely inevitable. Occasionally, voters even spoil ballots themselves, because they can't decide or can't remember or just impulsively rush away to a bathroom or other emergency. (I don't know, I suppose it happens.)

It's only when you see patterns emerge -- such as the disproportionately skewed number of 'spoiled ballots' in Latino, Native American and black precincts in New Mexico, in 2004 and again in 2008 -- that you need to begin to look harder to see what were some of the factors that led to those "errors." For example:

In a precinct-by-precinct analysis of the Florida 2000 race, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission discovered that 54 percent of spoiled ballots were cast by African-Americans. Florida is typical. Nationwide, the number of black votes "disappeared" into the spoiled pile is about 1 million. The other million in the no-count pit come mainly from Hispanic, Native-American and poor white precincts...

http://www.gregpalast.com/kerry-won-ohio-rn-just-count-the-ballots-at-the-back-of-the-bus/

But again, it would be useless to suggest that every single one of the mis-votes that were cast in those Florida districts represented a deliberate act of voter suppression, or electoral ethnic cleansing. That could be an over-reach. (Maybe.)

It's usually enough to create and continue to tolerate the conditions that tend to cause a higher percentage of vote tabulation errors in those districts. Make sure that the voting machines are older and not as well maintained. Make people stand in longer lines to get to them to create delays and congestion. If the polling place workers are short-staffed and under-supported, but expected to serve a bigger crowd of people, there will likely be a higher percentage of "unreadable" ballots cast no matter what else happens. ....In other words, those kinds of election day voting effects could be just ordinary neglect. They doesn't always have to be the product of a deliberate or malicious purging of the voter rolls. Certain kinds of voters just have more difficulty than others when it comes to registering to vote. Sometimes that keeps them from making it all the way through the line and into the voting booth. When their ballots are mis-tabulated with greater frequency, well, that's just par for the course for 'those people,' isn't it?

(As I said before, we don't live in a perfect world.)

In the recall election in Wisconsin this past week it was also certainly disturbing to see that despite the predictions about a "too close to call" race, the big, big turnout in a lot of places and huge numbers (HUGE) of 1st-time voters, two of the big news channels "called the race" in the middle of the afternoon. That was before a lot of voters had even gotten off work and had a chance to decide if they were even going to make an effort to vote.

So with all of that -- it's certainly a messy process, in a lot of ways, isn't it? -- I'm not close to claiming that I -- or anyone else -- has any "proof" that fraud or election theft took place.

That whole question of "exit polls" taken while the vote's still going on is another separate, distinct issue that also has nothing to do with the type of voting equipment used. No one but the media has access to any of those polls, or any information about when and where they were taken, let alone what the results were.

So we don't know what was going on there. We don't know how many routinely mis-cast or spoiled ballots there might have been, or how many people who might have wanted to vote didn't make the effort because of the early "projected winner" declaration.

On the other hand, what do we know?

Here's the state of Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board "Voting Equipment by County" map. Some text in the middle of the page makes the claim that the information is all up to date (except as noted for Pierce County.)

http://gab.wi.gov/elections-voting/voting-equipment/voting-equipment-use

I opened the pdf to see the more detailed list, by county and municipality, to check something reported at that "Meet Command Central" link to the Wisconsin Citizens Media Co-op website.

John Washburn filed an open records request for data on the touchscreen (2 eProm) voting machines used in Fox Point (wards 1 - 4) in last summer's Senate recall race.

The pdf from the GAB (page 97 of 169; April 21, 2012) lists Fox Point this way:

COUNTY TYPE MUNICIPALITY SYSTEM VENDOR EQUIPMENT ACCESSIBLE EQUIPMENT

VILLAGE FOX POINT Optical Scan ES&S Eagle w/ modem SEQ-AVC Edge II 5.0.24


...Phooey, enough.

STOP

I don't think there's going to be "proof" of anything on the GAB website -- whether it's up to date or accurate or not -- but
wouldn't it be great if there was an actual:

audit verification of ballots that were cast?

Some states require optical scanners for that reason, so that they can do a manual paper audit of a percentage sample of the ballots that went through the machines.

Does the Wisconsin GAB have a requirement that that type of eVoting equipment is supposed to be used?

Is Governor W. in charge of, or does he have oversight over the GAB?

What's his record been when it comes to elections? (Let's forget about his student days at Marquette, that was so long ago.)
But more recently... Doesn't the John Doe investigation, so far, show that there may be reasons to doubt Scotty's ability to walk that fine line, between his responsibility to all of us (as a public official on taxpayer time), and his purely partisan activities campaigning on behalf of that permanent Republican majority?

That meeting in Boehner's office right after President Obama was elected, where the Republican congressional leaders met to plan their strategy for the next four years, and how they were going to work with the President. ("Party first," not "country first," is how I believe that went down. Was Gov. W. copied with those meeting notes?)