Just got this from Scott Walker

[AllyCat]

In response to my email to him mid-October. Timely, eh?

December 1, 2004


Thank you for contacting me regarding your concern about the ballot issue that arose during the month of October 2004 in Milwaukee County.

The Milwaukee County Election Commission informed the City of Milwaukee Election Commission that the city would get 679,500 ballots for the November election - instead of the 938,300 that was requested by the city.This number reflected a larger number than was provided to the city in 2000- both on a citywide and ward-by-ward basis. In fact, the total number ofballots provided by the county to the city was more than twice the numberof votes cast in the 2000 Presidential election.

Still, the City of Milwaukee requested the larger number. The Mayor's
Office staff contacted my office and asked for help. We looked into thematter and agreed with the Milwaukee County Election Commission staff. While I did not approve or deny the number of ballots, I thought it was important to defend the decision of the commission and raise concerns about the city election commission's recommendation.

During a meeting I hosted in my office on the issue, Thursday, October 14, 2004, the head of the Wisconsin State Election Board explained that anyone who objected to the decision of the county election commission could appeal the decision to the State Election Board. The Election Board met on Wednesday, October 20, 2004. After the Thursday, October 14, 2004 meeting, staff from the State Election Board made it clear that the board would approve the appeal for more ballots if sent to them by the Wednesday, October 20, 2004 meeting.

My concern had always been to ensure that we could account for all of the ballots and it was not to keep any individual or group of people from voting, I looked at what was likely to happen with the State Election Board as an incentive to guarantee greater accountability for each and every ballot.

With that in mind, I approached the City of Milwaukee with a solution. The City would get the ballots that they requested for each of their 314 wards if Milwaukee County, in turn, could get a guarantee that all of the unused ballots would be returned to the Milwaukee County Election Commission. This is important since the official ballots that are used by voters are recorded in the voting machines, but the unused ballots are not kept. Now, for example, we can see that if a ward is given 3,000 ballots by the county and 1,500 votes are cast (or deemed unusable), the county must receive 1,500 unused ballots after the election.

In other words, our plan allowed every vote to count while ensuring that every ballot was accounted for by the end of the election.

Some have questioned whether I changed my mind on this matter. I would
remind them that the original amount approved by the county election
commission (before I got involved) was 679,500. That number is twice the number of votes cast in the 2000 election and more than 200,000 more ballots than legal voters in the city today. In other words, there was still room for problems there too. Prior to our agreement, there was no way to account for all of the unused ballots. Now, our agreement did not back down from our original concerns, it acted on them and made the oversight of the ballots stronger.

Our agreement insures that all of the ballots are accounted for after the election.

As I write this letter to you, the City of Milwaukee has completed it’s canvassing of all ballots, and Milwaukee County is in receipt of the unused ballots, the estimate of unused ballots at this time is 665,000 ballots. The actual number of ballots cast in the City of Milwaukee for the 2004 Presidential Election held on Tuesday, November 2, 2004 was 277,344 out of 396,600 pre-registered voters.

Again, thank you for sharing your concerns with me and I hope this
clarifies the issue for you.

Sincerely,
(Embedded image moved to file: pic21726.jpg)

Scott Walker
Milwaukee County Executive

[mark414]

1. you should've asked him

why he's such a douchebag

[theshadow]

2. That's almost a rhetorical question.

Here's a scary thought: Walker gets elected governor and Paul Bucher gets elected AG.