8/13/10-Officials dispute reliability of Waukesha County clerk's election data system

[kpete]

Election Returns: What Went On in Waukesha?
After Hours of Silence, Embattled Clerk Reports Wildly-High Turnout in Prosser’s Top County
http://www.onewisconsinnow.org/press/election-returns-what-went-on-in-waukesha.html


................

Officials dispute reliability of Waukesha County clerk's election data system

By Laurel Walker of the Journal Sentinel

Aug. 13, 2010 |(24) Comments

Waukesha — Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus' decision to go it alone in how she collects and maintains election results has some county officials raising a red flag about the integrity of the system.

Nickolaus said she decided to take the election data collection and storage system off the county's computer network - and keep it on stand-alone personal computers accessible only in her office - for security reasons.

"What it gave me was good security of the elections from start to finish, without the ability of someone unauthorized to be involved," she said.

Nonetheless, Director of Administration Norman A. Cummings said because Nickolaus has kept them out of the loop, the county's information technology specialists have not been able to verify Nickolaus' claim that the system is secure from failure.

more: http://www.jsonline.com/news/waukesha/100595954.html
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7988

[catgirl]

1. This is unbelievable

Ohio all over again.

[DemReadingDU]

2. Exactly what I was thinking

[bjobotts]

49. Are elections to be decided by the vote "counters"? Where is the scrutiny for election fraud?

[valerief]

83. They always are. nt

[mod mom]

65. Remember how Blackwell had the data routed to a private server run by a GOP firm?

I wonder if signatures will match up to totals. No validation should occur until they do!

[valerief]

84. More importantly, and got away with it. nt

[piggy2000]

88. Don't Forget Florida..

This woman needs to be interrogated just like any other common criminal.

[rzemanfl]

3. She fucking pulled this BEFORE? People here are saying the

additional votes are legit. HORSESHIT! She is a fraud who has been granted immunity in the past. I don't believe her. Sorry. I live in Florida and have seen this shit before.

[RagAss]

8. I live in Florida too...these folks are being naive.

[rzemanfl]

10. I used to live in Wisconsin , that naive attitude comes from

having a football team that wins, I think. Or from cheese.

[RagAss]

11. LOL !

[russspeakeasy]

15. Me too, please buy my house so I can move to a liberal state

like Texas. The votes are never safe.

[TxVietVet]

62. Texas, a liberal state?????

Man, just check out the state congress. It's mostly goofy conservanazis. People here believe all the conservanazi bu$hit. Right now the rethugs have a strangle hold on the budget. What do they want to cut? Education and anything that looks like it will benefit poor, minorities or working people.

Lot's of these rednecks wouldn't know what liberal or progressive was unless their pulpit pimp 'splains' it to 'em. This is thumper heaven. Even the radio preachers spew out the conservanazi lies.

[Wednesdays]

63. Something tells me Russ had tongue stuck tightly against cheek while typing that.

Just a hunch.

[TxVietVet]

68. I figured surely he jest.

:think:

[robinlynne]

90. That was a joke. sarcasm. and the funniest joke I've seen in a while.

[AtheistCrusader]

78. The Republicans howl just as loud here in Washington State

every time there's any sort of election issue. They call it 'recount until you win' in King County.

We had a locked, correctly tagged container of ballots found in an election workers car, when all should have already been delivered to county election commission, and the votes in that box put Gregiore over the top to a win (democrat) and I have heard nothing but BITCHING ever since.

Even though, the people caught voting for dead spouses so far, have been, as far as I can tell, ALL republicans.

[glinda]

26. Yup. Fraud.

[SnakeEyes]

33. Even Nate Silver is saying it's looks legit

If it isnt legit its going to be really easy to find out. An entire city not included in the totals is easily verifiable since all ballots are paper. Just count them up.

[AmBlue]

44. Count the ballots... then compare with the number of voters who voted.

Auditing elections involves ballot accounting, or comparing the number of ballots to the number of voters who voted. They should be the same.

The campaign cannot and should not be distracted by the "data" on her PC. The back-up for that data is ALWAYS the paper ballots COMPARED WITH the voter sign-in sheets from election day. Hopefully the ballots have been impounded and now should be hand counted, then compared with the tallies of the voters that signed in to vote on election day. Absentees and overseas ballots as well. I'd be real curious to know what the security measures for the ballots are in that county.

Her PC's data should absolutely be examined, but the true vote count of the ballots should EQUAL or be the same as the sign-in books (or whatever means they use to check-in voters on election day). If the counts don't match and are significantly more or less than the number of voters that signed in, then that's a big red flag.

THIS is the beauty of paper ballots and why we fought so hard for them.

[mod mom]

99. They need to get a court order to impound the ballots/machines/records!

[ooglymoogly]

104. Can the paper ballots be changed, or other paper ballots be substituted for them?

This woman had the keys to every machine in the place and took her computer home with her to spend more me time with it. And so many fishy excuses. And Gee, she did it before. Duh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[fasttense]

66. Do you have a link? I searched 538 and couldn't find anything on it. n/t

[SnakeEyes]

69. From his twitter account @fivethirtyeight

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

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 15 hours ago via web

So I don't think there's any conspiracy here ... Waukesha's vote total had been slightly lower than you might expect. about 15 hours ago via web

[sybylla]

73. The One Wisconsin Now article in the OP disagrees with Nate Silver

"...estimates put overall turnout near 38 percent, a wild outlier to historical data and the earlier mid-day estimation of Waukesha’s own officials..."

[SnakeEyes]

87. Tweets 1 and 2 disagree

I'm going to go with the statistical guru that is using current numbers and comparing with other relevant current and past data. Rather than just a single number that isn't clearly defined nor is it compared with other numbers as Nate did.

Whatever this 38% refers to, if it were a wild outlier Nate would be all over it. A "wild" outlier would stand out to a stats guru. He's ideologically on our side and wouldn't ignore it..

[SnakeEyes]

93. Newest post from Nate

Sounds awfully convincing :\

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/vote-counting-error-in-wisconsin-points-to-incompetence-not-conspiracy/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

[mistertrickster]

103. He's arguing on statistics alone, which aren't conclusive either way.

He's saying that without the 14K votes, Wauk. Co. was a little lower than usual, but with the votes it's about what you'd expect.

But might the lower vote count simply been all those CONs who were disaffected by Walker?

This is a well-reasoned argument, but it proves nothing.

It's not nearly as convincing as the Clerk saying she "forgot to save," when the program she uses automatically saves even in the event of an electrical power outage.

I think it's much more likely, if honest error is involved, that she counted the city twice.

[SnakeEyes]

116. the table of results during canvassing

showed zeroes. And there are republicans and democrats in the process. Pretty easy to know whether it's true or not.

The city also published their numbers on their website on election night. http://tinyurl.com/3oq3vgr

[ooglymoogly]

118. There are many ways to steal an election than the obvious straw man you erect.

[paparush]

95. Didn't some precintcs "run out of paper ballots" and were switched to touch screen voting?

[jwirr]

96. Is there a link to the past fraud and immunity agreement?

[ooglymoogly]

100. Judging from her past record she is likely to have already, even before

this latest convenient miraculous find cheated the vote to the max. The magic votes found are just enough to avoid a recount; isn't that precious. This woman needs to spend a few years in prison as a felon for tampering with elections.

[femrap]

4. Damn it....I can't take

another stolen election.

ETA: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :wtf: :wtf: :wtf: :wtf: :argh: :argh: :argh: :argh: :argh: :argh: :argh: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

[FeelingBlue]

25. My smilies, exactly. n/t

[SnakeEyes]

34. If that's the case

it will be easy to find out. Good think WI uses paper ballots.

[Nostradammit]

53. Which Kathy Nickolaus keeps locked in her garage, right?

About time to put an end to this bullshit once and for all, I'd say.

[Poboy]

5. recommend.

[Thunderstruck]

6. Koch theft!

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

20. Koch Robin'.

:think:

[femrap]

7. She needs to be in

dressed in orange....damn it.

[louslobbs]

9. No one gave her authority to do this(sure ok), she did it herself to "protect" the integrity of

the election LOL. Give me a fucking break. This needs to be investigated throughly because there is no way of verifying what she did, (although it looks very suspect), and have a new election in that county, done without Nickolaus involved and overseen by Democratic and Republicon vote watchers. What she did, didn't give her "good security" it has caused red flags to be raised about the legitimacy and integrity of this vote count. Either do it over the right way, or throw out the votes and don't include them in the calculations. This makes me sick, Koch strikes again. She didn't want someone "unauthorized" to be involved so that she could do what the Koch Klan wanted done. She'll probably be driving around in a new Bentley Mulsanne if this works, courtesy of Koch Klan Korp. Another Republicon pig, cheating voters to feed the corporate pig. How come no one else thought of this? Deciding to take the election data collection and storage system off the county's computer network - and keep it on stand-alone personal computers accessible only in her office - for "security reasons". Or perhaps, nefarious reasons? The Brookfield Vote Stealing Debacle. It was just an error and she's sorry.......just said on Rachel Maddow.

Lou

[freshwest]

47. Rachel didn't give this any legitimacy, did she? This is fricking outrageous ballot box theft.

[tomp]

108. i can only assume what she did was illegal.

i mean, there must be a law that prohibits this, that clearly specifies the data chain. is she being charged?

[fishwax]

12. k/r n/t

:kick:

[deacon]

13. She's crooked. Crooked election, period. n/t

[Horse with no Name]

14. So...let me get this straight. She did it before. She was softly reprimanded.

SO...then she does it again?

Is this willful incompetence?

Or what exactly is it?

[rzemanfl]

17. Just helping out the man SHE USED TO WORK FOR! eom

[Name removed]

16. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. 
[link:www.democraticunderground.com/forums/rules.html|Click
here] to review the message board rules.

[Blue Owl]

18. WHOA

This shit ain't even fucking close to being Kosher

[Metta]

19. Rachel had on a WI law prof, former legislator, saying it looked suspicious.

He went into chapter and verse about it.

[freshwest]

48. Good, that answered my reply above.

[tomp]

109. looked suspicious? understatement of the year. nt

[roxiejules]

21. She was a Computer Spec. for the Rep. Caucus

For 13 years, Nickolaus worked for the Wisconsin State Assembly Republican Caucus as a data analyst and computer specialist. She resigned in May 2002.

[glinda]

27. Oh man! Huge flags! Geeze.

[sybylla]

74. Resigned in scandal - after getting an immunity deal.

And she worked for Prosser for 8 years when he was in charge of the Assembly.

[roxiejules]

75. The Dem at press conference was quite elderly

and could have been duped by the Clerk - especially around computer technology.

[robinlynne]

91. That's who we want taking acre of our votes, exactly!

[renegade000]

22. It's a problem when

an honest mistake is potentially indistinguishable from foul play. Without enough oversight/transparency, how can we tell? It's not inappropriate to assume the worst. This is ridiculous.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

23. DREs - Election Results Easily Altered by Outsiders AND Insiders

Whether it is a DRE or an optical scan machine, the opportunity for tampering applies to persons with inside access (including government workers) and to a lesser extent, outside hackers. Therefore framing election tampering issues as "hacking" may not be an accurate framework for public concerns. Within the context of protecting voting rights, it would not matter whether vote alteration was done by an outsider or an insider.

Demonstrated Laboratory Attacks
Attacks have also been performed on both DRE machines and optical scan voting machines, which count paper ballots. (See California study, "Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuBasic Interpreter" <8>).

Diebold Election Systems AccuVote-TS (Manipulation of the votes by the Princeton University.)<4>
Nedap ES3B (Manipulation of the votes by a citizen group)<5><6>

(wikipedia)

[SnakeEyes]

36. Evidence of DRE used here?

There were comments from people on DU that some places out paper ballots but I can't find a source saying that this area was one of them.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

39. Yes, a DUer posted this tonight::

A woman from Brookfield called Chicago CPT radio show and stated that Brookfield ran out of paper ballots and went to a DRE machine. Thu Apr-07-11 07:48 PM by riderinthestorm

[Ellipsis]

37. Waukesha county uses Opscans... who remebers any more.

They use typically DRES only for the disabled.


At this point, I don't know what to think.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

40. Apparently they ran out of paper ballots for the Opti-scan

and had the rest of the voters use a DRE machine. Please see my post above for the source.

[FeelingBlue]

24. Which is why the votes should be tossed,

and why Waukesha County should fire her.

[glinda]

28. Good resolve.

[freshwest]

50. Yep, call for another election. Don't let the repigs steal this one. Make 'em do it all in daylight.

Taking it to her home and on her personal computer -- my @ss!

[Bound by Honor]

29. I would ask to bring in the VV heavyweights in

and have them audit the entire Waukesha county.

And issue relevant information enough to indict Ms. Kathy Nickolaus for election fraud, electioneering, tampering, and other election-related violations. She needs to spend time behind bars for a very long time.

In fact, if I was President Obama, I would immediately re-start the psychiatric wards for the mentally ill, and order all Republicans transferred and deprogrammed (meaning no Rush, Faux, or any of the right-wing idiots.) Note to self: Invent an implant that will deliver a brain shock when they are tuned to the wrong frequency (i.e., Faux, Rush, etc)

[Bound by Honor]

30. Waukesha County votes should be completely rejected

because she couldn't follow the damn state and federal laws regarding data collection regarding votes.

[SnakeEyes]

35. This is no reason to disenfranchise voters of an entire county

We cant allow Republicans to do it to us nor she we do it to them.

Since WI uses paper ballots with a paper trail there is no reason to throw them all out. Just recount them.

[Kablooie]

31. It also gave her a chance to forget about it until the Democrat won.

If she went to all that trouble, why did she happen to overlook including it in the official election results?

This stinks to high heaven and if they let this go, we are all doomed!

[nolabear]

32. I'm not inclined to be paranoid, but WHY does this never happen with the Dems?

Christ, dealing with the GOP is like trying to straighten snakes.

[DaDeacon]

38. That's what I've been saying!!!

YOU NEVER SEE A MODERN DEM WITH LOST/FOUND/ADDED VOTES! We really need to not take this laying down!

[in_cog_ni_to]

41. They're rotten to the core. Notice that none of these lost and found votes EVER favor

Democrats? Hello!!!!

[Enthusiast]

56. NEVER! nt

[99th_Monkey]

42. Is the the Ghost of Katherine Harris, rearing her ugly head? After all, her name is Katherine. ~nt

[Blacksheep214]

43. Sing Along!

We won't get fooled again! No, No!

It has gotten to the point that we can't trust our government to have clean, honest elections.

Florida 2000, Ohio 2004 and all the investigative reporting which proved we were hosed.

In court, if the police lose the accountability of evidence, it's tainted and inadmissable.

What does one call this? :wtf:

[Nictuku]

45. Access Databases ... Don't have to be 'Saved'

Any IT folks out there who knows the answer to this? I've worked with some MS Access databases, and my understanding is that you do not have to actually click 'save' when data has been input into a form. Data can be lost if you close the program improperly, but you generally are given a message about the data not being saved. So when she said 'she forgot to click on save' I had a few red flags go off in my head.

Can anyone verify this?

I did find this older article: http://allenbrowne.com/bug-01.html

[elbram]

51. I agree

In a database the records/tables update "live" as you enter the data, you do not hit save. I think that 'Save' is only needed for things like report format changes or database structure changes....

[drm604]

102. IT person here. Yes and No.

Once a row has been inserted or updated and then committed than yes, it has been saved to disk. The caveat is in the application written around that database. It's possible that it holds the data somewhere and does not actually write and commit it to the database until there is some operator action such as clicking a "save" button.

But I'm trying to understand how she would have missed doing that. Any half decently written app would prompt you if you tried to close it without saving. I'd really like to see the user interface of that app to see if her explanation makes any sense.

[freshwest]

46. In most places employees are not allowed to take public records home; and I suggest she had help.

They were not her property, if they needed to be secured they could have been somewhere locked up. By removing them from proper custody, they have been been tainted and are not reliable.

[Rex]

52. She already committed criminal acts, why does she have a job again?

Oh right...fall gal.

[tavalon]

54. Hmmm, ya think?

IOIYAR.

[Enthusiast]

55. Sorry, I just know something is fishy.

Why would the Koch Brothers allow a free and fair election? They have too much invested. There is a reason these Republican governors are acting so reckless and arrogant. They seem to have no fear. They know something we don't know and it isn't only about Citizens United.

[democrank]

57. K & R

[spicegal]

58. I listened to this woman's comments, and have to tell ya

it didn't give me much confidence. She stated it was "human error". Excuse me, and we're supposed to believe this is all legitimate. Has anyone heard of something like this happening anywhere. It's almost like someone in card game holding their hand under the table, then being allowed to produce it at the last minute, and say see, I won. But since Republicans are running the show, we know anything goes when it comes to making sure their guy wins. That's how we ended up w/Bush. It never ends.

[oldhippydude]

59. yep

kind of had deja vu Rosemary Woods (look it up if your too young for Watergate)

[roxiejules]

72. Rose Mary Woods: On How Nixon's Watergate Tape was Destroyed

THE two enduring mysteries of America’s Watergate scandal were the identity of Deep Throat, the crucial source of the Woodward and Bernstein investigation, and the 18½-minute gap in a key White House tape recording.


Woods was asked to demonstrate in court how she might have inadvertently made the gap while having a telephone conversation, and her contortions, before a disbelieving court, became known as “the Rose Mary Woods stretch”. She had to create receiving a telephone call while transcribing. It involved removing earphones, stretching with her left hand backward to the main desk telephone, lifting the receiver, then with her right hand pressing the tape record button instead of the stop button, while all the time keeping the pedal depressed with her left foot on its forward play side.



http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article506071.ece

[paparush]

60. Lemme guess, it's an Excel Spreadsheet....?

[Nictuku]

85. No, she said Microsoft Access

[paparush]

94. Just heard on the Stephanie Miller show that there is one account for that machine that

is shared among all the office employees so it's virtually impossible to know who logged onto that machine at what time.

[hayrow]

61. Seriously!

This is election fraud at its crudest and most basic. You would have to be a total fool to believe anything from the Waukesha County liar. Will we let them get away with it, is the only issue. Now its up to the people of Wisconsin to stand up, or become the peons that the Koch brothers believe us to be.

[Harriety]

64. It's Not About Voter Fraud, It's About Election Fraud (typicial Repub style)

[SnowCritter]

67. Republicans claim that government doesn't work

Then they're put in control and prove it. Well, actually, they make sure that it doesn't work.

[tcaudilllg]

79. Scientifically verifiable +1

[myrna minx]

70. Wow - Wisconsin is ground zero in exposing all the the Repub dirty tricks.

Unreal.

[FourScore]

82. They are just so uncharacterisctially BAD at it.

If it weren't so infuriating, it would be laughable.

[dpbrown]

71. She clearly manufactured this vote count, and should go to prison for voter fraud

What a load of garbage. "Finding" votes days after the end of the election? After the opponent has declared victory?

Bolder even that Bush's stealing of Florida.

And ironic that the toady right was crowing about voter fraud before this happened.

I guess they don't care so much about voter fraud today, do they.

[tcaudilllg]

76. I agree. Either that, or throw the votes OUT!

This cannot be allowed. Absolutely not.

[SnakeEyes]

110. Found during canvassing

That's usually how it works.

As much as i hate to lose this, its really simple. When they canvassed the next it was discovered that the table of data had zeroes for an entire city.

And the city posted their results the night of the election: http://tinyurl.com/3oq3vgr

So they'd have had to rig up phony numbers that they provided her with.

[TBF]

77. I'd check her bank account for any recent large deposits -

I smell Koch Bros.

[Hubert Flottz]

80. People who tamper with the will of the people should get life...

without mercy, instead of secret atta-boys from the ones who put them up to it.

The folks up there were probably Blackwelled.

[FourScore]

81. I hope she gets caught and goes to jail. n/t

[SnakeEyes]

111. Doesn't seem to be anything to get caught for

The city posted the same numbers on election night: http://tinyurl.com/3oq3vgr

[ck4829]

86. Wow, just remember that *this was a year ago*. If you don't smell it, get your nose checked. K&R.

[RoccoR5955]

89. Remember all of this in 2012, when the Presidential Election

is held, and the CONs run some loser, who, all of a sudden wins in districts with 1000% turnout and stuff like that.

They are tripping over themselves trying to make things look like they just made "human" mistakes, and had no ulterior motives. This makes my BS meter go off the scale! They cannot win an election legitimately, so they try whatever tricks they can to win.

So remember this in 2012.

[bergie321]

92. This is unbelievable

But the Republicans will, no doubt, get away with stealing ANOTHER election.

[SnakeEyes]

112. It wasn't stolen

The city posted the results on their website on election night: http://tinyurl.com/3oq3vgr

That matches the missing votes.

[AlbertCat]

97. without the ability of someone unauthorized to be involved,

OR the ability of those AUTHORIZED to get involved and check it out.

What, are we to just totally believe a single person (who used to work for the GOP) in this day and age?
Riiiiight.

[SnakeEyes]

113. How about the city being discussed?

They posted their numbers on their website.. match the ones she reports receiving from that city and failed to input them properly into the statewide totals.

http://tinyurl.com/3oq3vgr

[Blue Owl]

98. The votes were not found on state-owned voting equipment

They were found on her PERSONAL LAPTOP.

Um, Hello?

[mod mom]

101. Exactly!

[onethatcares]

105. yes this wasn't a Soduko game or even close

I can't even fathom a county worker taking home the drivers license data base or the tax collector data base on their own computer. The same one they might watch porn on or go to ebay with.

Then to find a non recountable amount of votes two days after the election has been decided has led me to ask; If this person was a Democrat and had worked for the Democratic candidate in the previous 5 years, would the main stream media be so silent about it?

Nah, I don't think so.

[SnakeEyes]

115. Nonrecountable?

Wisconsin uses paper ballots and requires a paper trail. When canvassing the next day it was discovered that the city of Brookfield had all zeroes in the table of results. They went back, looked to see the actual results, and included them. (which is the purpose of post election canvassing)

The city of Brookfield posted their numbers on election night which verifies the numbers being reported: http://tinyurl.com/3oq3vgr

[onethatcares]

117. none of the other elections have a result

close to the Kloppenberg/Prosser race.

I guess the others weren't as glitzy, huh?

I'm just wondering how tha happens, and I understand the overs/unders/not interested.

I'd still like to see the papers.

[SnakeEyes]

119. then you'd have to take that up with the Brookfield election officials

that were responsible for counting the votes and transmitting the final counts to her

[SnakeEyes]

114. The votes were not found on her laptop

Her laptop was the intermediary between the voting machine totals and uploading them to the statewide database of results/totals.

During canvassing the next day, as they went over all the totals they were responsible for, they discovered the Brookfield numbers were all zeroes. The real numbers for Brookfield are the "found" votes.

The city of Brookfield's website even posted the numbers on election night. They match the ones being reported today. http://tinyurl.com/3oq3vgr

[Blacksheep214]

106. Her next job

can be at Koss.

She seems qualified!

[jdadd]

107. "Without the ability of someone unauthorized to be involved,"

= Democrats