Do you think we have election fraud in Wisconsin?

[undeterred]

Get involved in election issues: http://www.fairelectionswi.com/

[sybylla]

1. Seems kinda slanted without a "no" answer. n/t

[undeterred]

2. Well, Waukesha is definitely fraud, isnt it?

That's all I am assuming in option 1. And I guess I am biased because I did work on elections in CD5 and I don't think they got the highest voter turnout in the whole country in some past elections without Kathy Nickolaus playing with the numbers.

[sybylla]

5. That's just it.

If we knew about it "for sure" there would be a trial, no?

Seems to me that though we have circumstantial evidence of it, we have no conclusive, without a doubt, eye-witness evidence of it. Without that, what's happened in Waukesha County can be as easily attributed to an arrogant ignorance and incompetence.

I don't necessarily disagree with the "quacks like a duck" philosophy, but I think you're overstating the case for "fraud".

[undeterred]

6. I don't think we'll ever be able to do anything about past elections.

Its almost better not to know.

[PeaceNikki]

7. Having worked the polls and the recount in Waukesha County, I won't buy into this meme.

I think we need people observing at the polls in every election and I am personally working to not only DO that, but organize and train people.

We were in a position to stop any Kathy Nickolaus factor in the recall. Our observers called in precinct totals before Kathy even had them. The DPW was ready to pounce if there was a single variance from the reported numbers to that of the observers.

[undeterred]

8. Do you think there is election fraud in Wisconsin?

And if not, why is it that non wisconsin DUers have the notion that there is?

They just don't see our at least half crazy (red) side?

[PeaceNikki]

9. I don't think there's fraud. I KNOW there are dirty tricks, shitty tactic and a ton of slop.

I'll c&p a piece I said in a GD thread about the recount:

And yeah, there were bags that had issues with seals and not being properly secured and that sucks because it left the possibility of tampering open. HOWEVER, we counted those bags separately. If there was fraud, for that to work, those tampered bags would have had to weigh more heavily for Prosser. They didn't. Not even close. I *wanted* them to so badly, but they didn't. Some even weighed more for Kloppenburg. I *wanted* them to be stuffed with extra ballots and the counts to be way off from canvass. But they weren't. I am a data geek and crunched my lil heart out. The net result I took away: there was a LOT of slop with the handling of ballots but no evidence of any fraud. The preventive and real action I can take is to observe the polls to make sure things are done right. And I am working with MANY others to do just that.

And further, yes - they don't see our at least half crazy side. I assure everyone here, as much as I hate it, Waukesha County is REALLY F'ING RED.

This is a wealthy, affluent, white-collar, private sector, bible-thumping county.

I have never met a Republican from Waukesha who is running from Walker. Not one. In fact, they are more f'ing RABID here than ever. And they vote. The Republican Party in Waukesha County wins awards nationally for voter-turnout.

By and large the Republicans jumping ship are the ones who are public sector workers, there aren't many of those in these parts. Nate Silver parsed the numbers at the county level, and if he went to the city level you'd see those are mostly in 2 or 3 communities here. Brookfield is NOT one.

The other group jumping ship are union workers. Again, very few here. And honestly, even the union workers here are private sector hard-core Republicans who hate public sector workers and will cut off their noses to spite their faces.

This is a Repubican stronghold. The land of McMansions gaudily built on beautiful lakes and megachurches and private academy for their kids and country clubs and gated communities and confederate flags (YES, I swear) proudly waving in the wind on the homes in the "poorer" areas.

[mojowork_n]

27. 'Scuse me for being dumb.

Sorry for the late reply to this, but I read it and thought about it and finally realized that I didn't completely follow the cut-and-pasted explanation:

If there was fraud, for that to work, those tampered bags would have had to weigh more heavily for Prosser. They didn't. Not even close. I *wanted* them to so badly, but they didn't. Some even weighed more for Kloppenburg. I *wanted* them to be stuffed with extra ballots and the counts to be way off from canvass...

By "weigh more heavily" you didn't mean to say that part of the process for checking or verifying suspicious bags was putting them on a scale, did you?

It was the actual ballot count, inside the bag, tipping one way or the other, in excess of expectations... ...from the canvass?


I get the gist of that but still have to ask... How can anyone know the goal post -- the canvass total number, the weight in pounds or kilograms of the bags (whatever it exactly was) that was used as the fudge factor eliminator -- wasn't being moved or manipulated?

I realize you were there and are pretty well positive that nothing hokey or fraudulent could have been happening, but what I'm asking, I guess is the opposite. Instead of relying on an orderly, by-the-numbers, verification of the ballot totals -- is it possible to think like a criminal and find a way to re-shuffle and re-program the data, that would explain a possible election theft, that would not have tripped or set off any 'verification' alarms?

In all honesty, I'd feel better if a panel of experts from the hacking group "Anonymous" (the folks who stood up for WikiLeaks) gave us an OK that everything was kosher, in that election, as opposed to the G.A.B.

Edit Addition:

I realize I'm asking a verrry open-ended question, and you've already addressed it a whole bunch of times. To cut to the chase, I think all I'm asking is would it be worth it to reserve judgement on the validation of the results, and forward the question to someone better equipped to come up with possible answers?

[PeaceNikki]

28. lol, no. Mathematically weigh more heavily for Prosser.

For example, if the tampered bag was 75% for Prosser while the bags with seal in tact was more like 65%, that would have been suspicious. They weren't.

I get that people are suspicious and a healthy dose of that is important. I also understand that my being there and my word will not give others the comfort level that I enjoy, but sybylla's reply here also makes very valid points.

[mojowork_n]

29. Except...

how would you (the recount/verification posse) have any idea what the percentage was before any (conceivable) tampering took place?

If you were a vote thief, would you stuff bogus, extra ballots into bags that were already heavy for Prosser, or would you stuff them into
those that were (to you) over-weighted for Ms. Kloppenberg?

I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing that it might be possible to extract a whole lot of election data from those optical scanning
devices -- who knows, maybe in real time, as the voting is taking place -- so if ballot bags had to be stuffed, *someone* could be
tipped to which bags needed to be "adjusted."

...But I wasn't there so maybe I'm not following something in what you're saying.

[PeaceNikki]

10. In addition...

I am also very careful about not making, spreading or buying into the "ALL OF OUR ELECTIONS ARE STOLEN" assertion because I think it's very dangerous. Making this proclamation will do NOTHING to help voter turnout. In fact, it will keep people from the polls, hence the danger.

Yes, I get defensive when people say the DPW has "no balls" or implying that our great state can't run a fair election or acting like we're idiots who can't run a recount. It was done well, even right here in my home of Waukesha County.

[undeterred]

12. I have no problem with the DPW or the recount of the sc election.

And in general I have confidence in the elections.

But I worry about things that may have been going on for a long time that are not going to be easily discovered. In particular, its the high turnout in Sensenbrenner's CD that I find troubling.

http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/106920063.html

That article is from 2010 but it also happened in 2008 and 2006. Its just taken for granted that this is one of the highest turnout CDs in the country. WHY?

Apparently CD2 and CD5 are two of the highest turnout areas in the country. Living in Madison this makes perfect sense to me- not only is it the state capitol and the home of a major university, its "activist central" and a very politicized area. If you are in Madison on a November election day you know that you can't drive anywhere without seeing people holding up banners. There are lawn signs everywhere. People will knock on your door until the polls close. They will get you out to vote, come hell or high water. That is true all over Dane County, which is the densest part of CD2. Madison knows how to get out the vote.

Is the GOTV that good in CD5? I was out there for 2 weeks in a row right before election day in 2006 (Pewaukee, Menomonee Falls, and Waukesha) and didn't see Republicans doing their thing... never saw anyone going door to door. How do they manage to get out the vote without being seen? To have the best GOTV in the entire country, you'd think they would be all over the place. Is it all done at church? By phone? By mail?

The three highest turnout counties in the state are in this CD if I am not mistaken:

"But the turnout rate in Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington counties was much higher than it was statewide. Ozaukee had the highest turnout in Wisconsin - 66% of voting-age adults - followed by Waukesha at 64% and Washington at almost 60%.

More notably, Washington and Waukesha counties had the biggest jump in turnout from 2006 to 2010. Washington's turnout rate climbed four points, Waukesha's three, Ozaukee's two.

These counties not only voted in droves, but also delivered huge margins for Republicans."

http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/106661438.html

Why are the three highest turnout counties in the state all in the same CD, and all Republican? Did they have a GOTV that accounts for it? Do they get good voter turnout just by mass media advertising in these areas?

[PeaceNikki]

17. You certainly make good points and I won't claim to know the answers.

I think it's obvious that the GOP uses entirely different methods of spreading their twisted messages than we do. In addition to blasting the airwaves with negative ads, and spreading their message in church, we can see how they use pundits like Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Beck and locally Sykes, McBride, "Bob & Brian", Belling, and that crazy guy who was at the McCain town hall whose name escapes me.

In any case, I certainly want to see reform that will remove the possibility of fraud that we see. I think there's some value in exit polls, but it's also intellectually dishonest to say that the data presented thus far by the EDA is enough to surmise ANYTHING other than we need more data.

[undeterred]

21. I confess I don't know a thing about the Republican GOTV.

If they've found something that makes them consistently have the highest turnout in the country, maybe thats worth sending in a few moles. :shrug:

[dembotoz]

26. they are very good at it

sometimes i think dems in republican counties do their best not to offend any republicans and drive up their vote.

In reality,
the republicans are very good at delivering their own vote thank you very much and we run the risk of not giving anyone a good reason to vote dem.

[sybylla]

20. Don't forget Obama Derangement Syndrome

Republicans vote pathologically. They just always vote. Whatever the reasons their party has ginned up. Wealthy, educated Republicans more so.

I think people outside our state are convinced we have fraud in WI because they don't understand the process here. We have a very open, observable, accountable process that by law includes representatives of both parties. It takes the collusion of many people to commit fraud. It's not impossible, but it would be very obvious and easy to find.

The only exception would be, the counting machines, which would require only one person to commit election fraud by programming the machines to fudge the count. The recount of the SC race proved that's not happening anywhere in the state.

[undeterred]

22. It only proves it didn't happen for that particular race, right?

Proving it didn't happen in April 2011 is not proof of anything that has or has not happened in WI in the past.

[sybylla]

23. True. And yet isn't it the randomness of recounts that keep it from happening.

The fact that recounts can happen at any time and prove the fraud tells me it's not happening if it didn't happen last spring. The penalties are high. It's a federal crime. If you have the power to fudge an election and you don't care about the consequences, then why not fudge every election in your favor? If the penalties matter, you go to a state where there is little anyone can do to detect fraud behind the scenes. You don't give a rats ass about a hard-to-crack, one-horse state like Wisconsin when there are bigger fish to fry.

All of this is why we fought for the paper ballot in the first place. Having an election without a paper ballot is like having laws without police. No one would ever get caught so why follow the law in the first place.

You do realize how many people have to be involved to commit fraud in a statewide race, right?

Even if all the effort at fraud took place in Milwaukee county or Dane county where the numbers are large and large-scale fraud can be hidden, there's still near a hundred people from both political parties (some of them elected) who have to all be on board, willing to put their initials on fake ballots for stuffing, willing to overlook proper procedures, willing to disregard chain of custody and fuck with the programming of the tabulators.

We have a system in place that works very hard against fraud.

Being a recount observer last spring made me even more confident of our elections. Provided we take advantage of the rights to place observers in election halls and in place to watch the counts, we'll be fine.

[PeaceNikki]

24. I agree with every word you said.

And to reiterate a point I've made repeatedly in GD in the same tone as your last statement: We should all become more involved and make elections things we are directly working on. If we work the polls, run for office and inject ourselves INTO our local communities and the ACTUAL the Democratic process, maybe we'll trust it more. It has certainly helped me.

[sybylla]

19. Me either, PeaceNikki

Outright election fraud at the polls requires too many conspirators, from the poll workers (who are supposed to represent both parties) who have to initial the ballots to the municipal clerks to the county clerk. That takes a coordinated machine.

The only place you might find such a "machine" is in Waukesha, and from what the observers on the ground have reported during the recount and now, there's no evidence of it.

[Yon_Yonson]

3. There is shenanigans in Waukesha ... no proof ... just gut feelings

The devil is in the details and I am just puzzled as to why the FED Justice Dept is not involved.

:wtf:

[undeterred]

4. From reading posts in GD it seems that people out of state

think there is fraud more than people in state do. My impression is that most of the elected officials (and election workers) have a pretty good handle on "where the votes are"... how many republicans and democrats live in each district... and if things look too far off they are going to notice it.

They know how many independent voters there are and where they are.

The more difficult issue is if somebody has been cheating the system for a number of years - thats going to be harder to detect.

[Kashka-Kat]

11. OTHER - it needs further investigation, close monitoring, an updated audit process capable of

detecting electronic hacking crimes. Back in 04 I did a lot of reading on this - theres no reason we can't have a voting system that is as secure and verifiable as the banking system - yet we dont - why is that???

[dragonlady]

13. Yes, the possibility of electronic tampering concerns me

If they don't hack the machines, and there is no recount, election fraud will not be found.
If they don't hack the machines, and there is a recount, election fraud will not be found (as in the Prosser/Kloppenburg election).
If they do hack the machines, and there is no recount, election fraud will not be found (has this happened and we aren't aware of it?)
If they do hack the machines, and there is a recount at least of the hand-counted jurisdictions, election fraud will be found. (Will this ever happen and send a shock wave through our political system? Will the hackers, if they exist, miscalculate to the extent that their fraud will be discovered?)

This on top of everything else we have to worry about!

[undeterred]

15. It would be informative do a hand recount of the 3 high turnout counties

in CD5 in 2010 and see if they match the machine count. Anything that stands out from the rest of the state in terms of turnout should really be looked into as a matter of routine.

:hi:

[dragonlady]

18. Yes it could be

On the other hand, I suspect that they were not planning to win (actually wanted to lose and saddle the Democrats with the problems they created) so they didn't bother to do any rigging that time. Next year, though, watch out.

:hi:

[lutefisk]

14. Well, our Republican overlords haven proven themselves to be completely untrustrworthy

So, I'll just guess that they have corrupted every area of government.

[Yon_Yonson]

16. Amen!

[undeterred]

25. Thank you Sybylla and PeaceNikki

for your very informative replies in this post.

As for the post on Wisconsin elections in GD, well, exit polling is a very tricky business. Nothing to get worked up about.

I've always expected that if there were serious election fraud problems in Wisconsin, the statisticians who work for the Democrats who have run in statewide races - like Feingold and Doyle - or those who have run the Presidential campaigns would identify them. They should know exactly where their potential voters are.