Dems need to interview the Dem representative to the Waukesha canvass board

[Vinnie From Indy]

What is her story? Does she agree that the mistake was valid? Does she have the skills to make that determination? Anyone in WI know who this woman is?

[PeaceNikki]

1. Chair of my CD is talking to them as I type.

He said "Apparently the count tapes and the machine counts didn't match. This raised the warning flag for the canvass."

[Vinnie From Indy]

2. I hate to pre-judge, but the woman looked extremely old and I wonder if she

has any skills at all with basic database software and other specific software used in the election. Maybe she was simply steamrolled by the clerk and the GOP rep. I would really like for someone to interview her and find these things out.

Cheers!

[pnwmom]

4. But how come yesterday no one noticed that a whole town's votes were missing?

[PeaceNikki]

5. She said they noticed yesterday around noon, called GAB but waited until reviewed line by line with

ballots to go to media.

[riderinthestorm]

21. A woman from Brookfield called Chicago CPT radio show and stated that Brookfield ran out of paper

ballots and went to a DRE machine.

That's what's raising my red flag. Does your Chair have any information about that?

[eowyn_of_rohan]

26. Very interesting. -nt

[monmouth]

3. There will be a serious investigation, right? I mean enough already....n/t

[valerief]

23. Probably three years from now, after the damage is done. nt

[brentspeak]

6. The live feed clearly showed the GOP clerk/idiot shooing the Dem canvass member away from the mic

when the press began to asking more probing questions from the elderly lady.

[KansDem]

7. "...showed her being shoo-ed away ..."

Maybe they didn't want to scare the children...

[dkf]

8. Shouldn't it be easy enough to figure out by comparing past turnouts?

[PeaceNikki]

9. Ward by ward in November 2010 shows about 20k voted in that race in Brookfield.

So 14k for this race jives.

[karnac]

10. nate silver's opinion. via twitter..

http://twitter.com/fivethirtyeight

# So I don't think there's any conspiracy here ... Waukesha's vote total had been slightly lower than you might expect.
about 1 hour ago via web

# Before missing votes were found, Waukesha's turnout had been 7.5% of WI's. Versus 7.8% in Pres '08, 8.7% in Gov '10, 8.7% in Feb. election.
about 1 hour ago via web

# The numbers being floated about missing votes in Brookfield seem reasonable. Would be ~11% of Waukesha vote, same as in Prez election in 08.
about 1 hour ago via web

[dkf]

11. Thanks.

[brentspeak]

12. This was state supreme court election, not a presidential or even a guber election

This kind of election never generates the type of vote totals that the big ones do. Silver is comparing apples and oranges and doesn't know what he's talking about in this case.

[PeaceNikki]

13. There were 20k in November from that city.

The #'s jive.

I know it's not what we WANT to hear, but the Waukesha Democrats are on it.

[Vinnie From Indy]

14. Does the Dem representative that actually witnessed the canvass have ANY

skills with database software? What is her story? What is her name?

Go Waukesha Dems!

[PeaceNikki]

15. Ramona Kitzinger

I don't know her "story", but my the Democratic chair of my CD has spoken with her.

[FBaggins]

16. This wasn't a normal supreme court election - turnout was comparatively high

but that doesn't matter in this case, because that data is just saying what percent of the overall vote the county usually represents (and what percentage of the county vote usually comes from that town).

[karnac]

17. more specific "info" HERE

on how this happened.(i googled Ramona Kitzinger)

http://elections.wispolitics.com/2011/04/waukesha-county-clerk-apologizes-for.html

5:51 PM: Waukesha County clerk apologizes for 'human error' that led to reporting incorrect vote totals

Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus apologized this evening for human error that she blamed for failing to include the city of Brookfield's vote totals in the tally she reported to the media Election Night.

The mistake and two other changes in the county helped net Justice David Prosser 7,583 votes over JoAnne Kloppenburg and swung the race dramatically in his favor.

Nickolaus said she failed to properly save a spreadsheet after inputting the Brookfield numbers Election Night, leading to the error. Once she ran the report to show the aggregate numbers for the county, she assumed incorrectly the Brookfield numbers were included.

more...............

The wild swing in Prosser's favor immediately raised concerns among Dems, who pointed out Nickolaus is a former staffer for the Assembly Republican Caucus who was granted immunity in the investigation into allegations of illegal campaign activities on state time.

Ramona Kitzinger, the Democratic member of the county board of canvass, defended the process. She agreed with Nickolaus that the board "went over everything and made sure that all the numbers jived up, and they did."

"I'm the Democratic vice chair of Waukesha County, so I'm not going to stand here and tell you something that's not true," Kitzinger said.

[Vinnie From Indy]

18. Does Kitzinger have the skills to even make that determination?

She may be convinced the process was fair, but would she really know if she was hoodwinked?

[FBaggins]

19. You mean can she add?

You don't need any database skills for a canvas. You're just comparing the official reports from each precinct to a table and then adding them up.

[PeaceNikki]

20. This ^

[brentspeak]

25. Former chair of the Waukesha Cty Democratic party disagrees with you:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/drsolo/david-prosser-joanne-kloppenburg_n_846434_83625869.html

drsolo 45 minutes ago (9:14 PM)
61 Fans
I was chair of the Waukesha Democratic party for a couple years back in the 90's and I dont think she (Ramona Kitzinger) knows what she is talking about. There have been irregulari­ties in the vote count in Waukesha County for the last 20 years and nobody has really taken a close look at any of it. There are optical scanning machines and paper ballots, they need to be hand counted AND the voter logs need to be checked carefully against the ballot counts. It really is too bad that there arent TIME STAMPS on the ballots as they go thru the machine.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

28. "irregulari­ties in the vote count in Waukesha County for the last 20 years"

I am not surprised. Why people here continue to blindly defend the integrity of elections in their area without truly having a clue, is beyond me. It is also irresponsible.

The Optical scan ballots receive "special treatment" in a Wisconsin recount. Wisconsin requires a court order if you want to count opti-scan ballots by hand - otherwise they are stuck back into the tabulator/computer and recounted via diebold/ES&S software...

[KeepItReal]

29. +1

Check the voter logs to see how many folks actually cast votes

[PeaceNikki]

30. lol, some anonymous dude on HuffPo? I'll trust my Democratic CD chair who was there.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

32. the one who backs up a known Rep crook because the numbers "jive"

great. This is what we have representing us in Waukesha co...

[PeaceNikki]

33. The one who won't disenfranchise a whole city because she doesn't like their votes.

Yeah, her.

[brentspeak]

38. And the name of this Democratic CD chair?

[FBaggins]

31. "Irregularities" is one thing.

An entire missing town is something else entirely.

This one is pretty close to impossible to gimmick. They may be using it to distract attention from something less obvious, but there's no way that we're going to reverse these 7,000 or so.

It really is too bad that there arent TIME STAMPS on the ballots as they go thru the machine.

That would come dangerously close to being able to identify who each voter voted for. Are you this is a democrat proposing that?

[karnac]

22. Well,she IS a lawyer.

( googled that, sorry no link it got kinda scary how much you can find out about her)

All she has to do really is look at the data BEFORE the silly clerk added them up on a spreadsheet and then forgot to save the final result and add it up herself.

It's actually the kind of error I've made myself. not saving the final resulting spreadsheet. Got audited for it one year.

what's annoying to me is that they discovered the error YESTERDAY but kept their mouth shut till today. wish they had given us a heads up.

[zbdent]

24. and wasn't it all of the conservative talkers who were saying

things like "just watch all those liberals ... they're manufacturing votes as we speak" ...

and, I heard on Stephanie Miller this morning, a clip of a RWer saying, not verbatim, "So, you have a bunch of public employees securing the ballots, and a bunch of public employees locking the ballots up, and public employees guarding the polling station where the ballots are stored. I'm sure that you trust that Obama's Department of Justice will investigate the matter thoroughly" (the RWer was definitely using sarcasm here ... it was so heavy with sarcasm that it shorted out my PC's speaker ...)

Where's all their talk about "fraudulent voting" now?

[karnac]

36. Um we are doing it now heh

Actually, for over a decade the Republicans had been trying to prove voter fraud in Wisconsin. Even formed an task force to prove it, particularly in Milwaukee. It could produced so little it eventually disbanded.

Did note something they said though. That it became impossible to prove because voting records were so shoddy AND the personnel in the clerk's were so obviously incompetent. Maybe purposely.

Deja Vu no?

[zbdent]

37. hey ... isn't the person who "found" the votes a ...

PUBLIC EMPLOYEE???

[eowyn_of_rohan]

27. I don't know how easy it would be. This election, though not Presidential

became extremely important and generated record high turnouts in many areas.

[dkf]

34. Wouldn't increased interest be pretty much proportional though?

If turnout was higher in every county except one that would be a red flag surely.

Likewise if lower it would probably be pretty proportional.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

35. In a perfect world - or state

I just wonder if this is reliable enough method given the uniqueness of this election, and potential unknown variables... eg, Waukesha county votes republican for the most part, but let's say that this spring, some who may have voted Repub decided they didnt like what Walker or their party was doing, so they just stayed home.