miracle in Wisconsin?

[kpete]

Nickolaus was an unfortunate person to be in her position if there's something funny in a Republican's favor. She used to work for the GOP Assembly caucus. She was caught up in a scandal in 2002. She has since had problems with security audits of her office's computers.

An audit of Nickolaus' handling of the 2010 election found that she needed to take steps to improve security and backup procedures, like stop sharing passwords. The audit was requested after the county's director of administration said Nickolaus had been uncooperative with attempts to have county experts review her systems and confirm backups were in place.
Nickolaus was given immunity from prosecution in a 2002 criminal investigation into illegal activity by members of the assembly Republican Caucus. She worked for 13 years as a data analyst and computer specialist for the caucus.

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

UPDATE:

First, another question has come to mind: if all of Brookfield's results were missing, wouldn't that include their local races? Even their results went unnoticed in a statewide election, even for the county, didn't they have local races where mysteriously no one voted? That was a suspicious part of the Siegelman election I mentioned in the footnote. Suddenly 5000 votes turned up for governor, but no other races changed.
http://www.mnprogressiveproject.com/diary/8900/the-reason-for-suspicion-of-prossers-new-votes
........

SCIENTIFIC STUDIES, TESTIMONY & COMMENTS
ON SOFTWARE DRIVEN VOTING SYSTEMS
Consulted in Preparation of Litigation
Contemplated by Election Transparency Coalition
http://re-mediaetc.blogspot.com/
Andrea T. Novick, Esquire
Compiled by Rady Ananda with
Contributions by Howard Stanislevic
July 21, 2008

http://2972595871546368566-a-1802744773732722657-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/remediaetc/home/documents/Scientific_Studies_7-20-08.pdf?attachauth=ANoY7cpeSKyr8RlLB1mGEuBVwCYC8ruQjFM3cOUq6lvZ9jCT1v-aK2WJSnXGaQG6fYxGPTbdhsL9YPkfPIN9izf4oRiCDldJ8DbDSbLCTwj5iHi_ualfezgy--tYvM8fr3nJ7zRB9dYywhGDHCufgDV_eyCWFvABOryfpuPOOJxRT47B71p2nrwnKypFzXG1GJ1OezBifAdByv9qE2ssD3bJKfoYOb1xau2BJoNKWZUNEINtEPIiih8%3D&attredirects=0

..........

- 2011 : There is a story in Wisconsin. It's a miracle! 7583 votes magically found for the Republican candidate (found by a former employee of that candidate) in another "proxy" election with seismic implications. Just exactly enough votes to dodge the mandatory recount that would have revealed . . . who knows? Yet another coincidence? There's a story in Wisconsin. It has the potential to blow the lid off the Big Lie. Anyone want to cover it?

http://www.opednews.com/articles/To-The-American-Media-Tim-by-Jonathan-Simon-110408-959.html

[PeaceNikki]

1. Except we vote on paper here in Wisconsin. As required by law.

The tabulations occur via optical scan, but in the recount, all ballots will be examined by human eyeballs.

[PeaceNikki]

2. In addition, it was 14k votes initially omitted from unofficial #'s, not 7.5k "found". A whole city.

My county Democratic vice-chair checked and confirmed the 14k were not in the #'s released to media.

THIS is why I think the case of the Brookfield votes WAS a mistake. A dumb incompetent mistake. They HAD to know it would launch a full investigation.

GAB is investigating with a fine-tooth comb. The Kloppenburg campaign is investigating with an even finer tooth comb. And there will be a recount in which every ballot is looked at with human eyeballs.

If this asshole wanted to throw the election to Prosser, this is about the stupidest way she could have done it. Anyone with access to city and county vote totals and a calculator would discover it in 5 minutes once the error was announced.

BUT it MUST and WILL be thoroughly investigated. Incompetence to that degree is as bad as fraud. That woman is responsible for *MY* vote and I want answers and I want a fine-tooth comb to see if she's made other mistakes and/or actually acting nefariously. This alleged mistake has opened her up to a deep deep dive that I am sure she didn't want. If she so much as forgot to cross a "t", we'll find it.

[Tippy]

3. Am I mistaken

I heard/read tha the county in question had run out of paper ballots and switched to machines to finish...because it was quicker then waiting while paper ballots were printed. Can you shead any light?

[PeaceNikki]

6. You are mistaken. One community in Waukesha ran out an hour before polls closed.

Delafield:

http://www.livinglakecountry.com/lakecountryreporter/119294804.html

Those machines print paper, as required by law and any shenanigans would be caught in a recount which is sure to happen after certification.

Several other communities around the state also ran out. Some "made" ballots which were all counted by hand, others used the DRE.

[drm604]

22. At what point do they print paper?

Does the voter see the paper printed as they vote?

[PeaceNikki]

23. Yes. Before the voter hits "Accept"

GAB Director describes it in this interview from Thursday: http://www.wpr.org/wcast/download-mp3-request.cfm?mp3file=bme110407l.mp3&iNoteID=96721

[drm604]

24. Good

Thanks

[Tippy]

30. Thanks for setting me streight...dam news always makes a mess

of almost every thing they print these days

[Jackpine Radical]

7. I thought I heard that they "made" more ballots, by which I assumed

they simply photocopied one or something when they realized they were running short.

[Jackpine Radical]

4. Seconded.

For once, it actually looks like a throughly corrupt and evil woman with a long history of shady electoral and political transactions made a mistake, even though her "failure to save" excuse is nonsense because she was using auto-saving software. Perhaps she is so used to lying to cover up irregularities that she made this one up to cover up some even greater variety of incompetence rather than to cover up intentional malfeasance. Who knows?

[democraticinsurgent]

8. No Mistake, IMHO

There are too many statistical anomalys that throw these totals into question, as I've read on other threads here.

--Unusually high turnout relative to other counties and the election as a whole--50% for a judicial election?
--Outside the norm % of votes cast ONLY for the Supreme Court race relative to other counties and the election as a whole
--The fact that Nickolaus came up with just about exactly the right number of votes to preclude an automatic recount.

To me, this is another example of right-wing brazen behavior. In the old days, they'd never pull something this obvious. Now, it seems like they get away with everything and they are so bold that they do it in plain site.

[PeaceNikki]

9. Bullshit.

--Unusually high turnout relative to other counties and the election as a whole--50% for a judicial election?
--Outside the norm % of votes cast ONLY for the Supreme Court race relative to other counties and the election as a whole
ALWAYS the case in Waukesha County

Nate has the analysis and verifiable #'s (with supporting link at end)
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/vote-counting-error-in-wisconsin-points-to-incompetence-not-conspiracy/

[Jackpine Radical]

11. Outside the norm for single-candidate voting is disturbing.

But many polling places in WI drew 50% of their respective electorates. This was the most publicized SC race in state history. The media were saturated with (mostly pro-Prosser or anti-JoAnne) ads.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

14. Looks that way to me, too

I welcome the recount. Just want to know that the ballots are being protected. Also I am even uneasy about the Government Accountability Board inspecting things without non-partisan observers in the room - the supervisor, Kevin Kennedy has made some shady deals in the past.

[PeaceNikki]

15. Can you link me to Kevin Kennedy's alleged "shady history"?

Also, Kloppenburg IS observing the canvass.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

16. Well, his illegal deal with Accenture comes to mind.

Union: Accenture Fiasco Just Tip of the Iceberg
By Sue Vilbrandt & Ron Blascoe, WPEC Steward

As controversy continues to brew over the state’s contract with global outsourcing firm Accenture for a new voter registration system, unions are pressing Governor Doyle for tighter controls on contracting out.

Hundreds of unionized state jobs, and hundreds of millions in taxpayers’ dollars, are at stake as the Doyle administration continues its commitment to contracting out and to fulfill the Governor’s campaign promise of eliminating 10,000 state employee jobs.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Following the Florida debacle of 2000, Congress passed the “Help America Vote Act” (HAVA). One of the requirements was for states to have a statewide list of voters. Back in mid-to-late 2004, Wisconsin’s State Elections Board executive director Kevin Kennedy put out a “request for proposal” to potential vendors to create the list.

Here is where the problems started. HAVA requires compliance in seven areas; Kennedy included over 500 criteria for vendors, including a nearly insurmountable requirement that the vendor had done a similar contract with at least one million voters in the past. This made Wisconsin vendors ineligible, and opened the door to only the few companies that could meet the requirement, including Accenture.

-------------
(link now gone)
Critics say firm has state by neck on deal
Accenture would own voter database software
By PATRICK MARLEY

Madison - Critics of a firm building the state's voter database charged Monday the public would forever be beholden to contractor Accenture because the company will retain the rights to the software's source code.

Although the $13.9 million contract expires in 2010, critics said at a Capitol forum that the state would be forced to sign subsequent deals with Accenture because the state has limited access to the program that is the foundation for the list of 4 million voters.

"This is a contract that will keep on giving," said Mike McCabe, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. "When this contract expires, the state of Wisconsin will have to fall to its knees and beg Accenture to maintain its system or we will have to start from scratch."

McCabe is one of several people who have sued the state over the contract, saying it was illegally awarded to Accenture because Kevin Kennedy, executive director of the state Elections Board, signed the agreement before the board voted on it.

[PeaceNikki]

19. Interesting, thanks.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

26. Kevin Kennedy shilled for Accenture at this RW event in '05 (Theresa LePore was there too)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x380340

"Vendors Wine and Dine Election Officials in Hollywood"
National Conference Beverly Hills/Hollywood August 2005
http://www.ballotintegrity.org/DCForumID1/362.html

Accenture is a very shady company...
Election Systems & Software (ES&S), Diebold, and Sequoia are the companies primarily involved in implementing the voting stations throughout the country. All three had strong ties to the Bush Administration. The largest investors in ES&S, Sequoia, and Diebold are government defense contractors Northrup-Grumman, Lockheed-Martin, Electronic Data Systems (EDS) and Accenture.
-------------
Back-room dealing a Capitol trend - Boston Globe, The - Article - 2004-10-03
Dismayed that the technology company Accenture had located its headquarters in Bermuda, thereby avoiding paying hundreds of millions of dollars in US taxes, the House Appropriations Committee voted 35-17 this summer to strip the firm of a $10 billion Homeland Security contract.

It was a rare moment of bipartisan agreement and an important victory for those who decry corporate tax loopholes. But it didn't last long. The Rules Committee, the all-powerful gatekeeper of the Republican leadership, prevented the measure from reaching the House floor. In a further show of its power to pick and choose what the full House can vote on, the Rules Committee allowed the House to vote on a ban on future Homeland Security contracts to overseas companies -- but let the $10 billion flow to Accenture, which spent $2 million last year lobbying the government.''
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I have reams of notes on this stuff...

[eowyn_of_rohan]

20. I'm glad to know Kloppenburg is observing the canvass -more on KK & Accenture

THE CAPITAL TIMES
John Nichols: Elections chief owes us explanation
By John Nichols
September 22, 2005

Kevin Kennedy, the executive director of the state Elections Board, has gotten himself into a nasty predicament. A year ago, Kennedy was lobbying to award a $13.9 million contract for the creation of a statewide voter database to the controversial technology giant Accenture.

Kennedy was told at the time that the price tag for the project was far too high - Minnesota got its database work done for about $5 million. Kennedy was told that Accenture had a problematic track record - the company's work on voter registration and other technology issues has drawn criticism in states across the country.

In Florida, where officials were trying to clean up their elections after the 2000 presidential recount debacle, the St. Petersburg Times newspaper reported, "The state then turned to Accenture, a huge consulting and technology firm, to create a list that election supervisors were to use this year to screen felons whose voting rights had not been restored. But the list proved inaccurate."
In Kansas, Accenture was hired to develop a voter registration system but the relationship proved so troublesome that the state canceled the contract several months later.

As more was learned about the cost of the project and the company involved, Kennedy was counseled to change course by state legislators, experts in elections and state politics and groups working for clean government. Hundreds of Wisconsinites rallied outside the Elections Board headquarters to urge Kennedy and the board to reject the Accenture contract.

At the same time, Wisconsin vendors warned that the state was being "fleeced" and detailed how the project could be completed - with much of the work being done by current state employees - for far less.

When the board followed Kennedy's recommendation and decided to go ahead with the Accenture deal, officials with election reform organizations, heads of public employee unions and state Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, grew so concerned that they filed suit in an attempt to block the deal.

Kennedy would not listen.In fact, he kept cheerleading for the Accenture deal even as Elections Board employees quietly warned that things were not going well. In July, Kennedy wrote an opinion piece published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel under the headline, "New state voter registration system is right on track." At the time, the Elections Board had already quietly approved an additional $1.4 million in funding for what was already an excessively costly project.Now, just two months later comes a new Journal Sentinel headline: "Voter registration system delayed: Testing finds too many errors to meet deadline."

To the surprise of no one, except perhaps Kevin Kennedy, testing by Elections Board staff and volunteer clerks revealed multiple system errors in the state's new voter registration and election management software. According to the Journal Sentinel report of last week: The system "is not ready, and the deadline to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 won't be met."

A spokesman for the Elections Board acknowledged that he did not know whether missing the Jan. 1 deadline would jeopardize some or all of the $50.4 million the state had hoped to receive as part of the distribution of federal funds to implement the voting act.
Finally, Kennedy admitted that something was awry. Referring to Accenture, he said, "We're not satisfied with their performance. Our contract said they would have software deliverable on July 18, which we got, and that it would work. We've tested it, and it's not working." Notably, July 18 was one day after Kennedy's opinion piece appeared under the headline: "New state voter registration system is right on track."

Kennedy owes Wisconsinites a lot more than a late-in-the-game expression of dissatisfaction. He owes us an explanation for why, when so many people in this state warned him that he was making the wrong deal with the wrong company, he encouraged the board to go ahead with it anyway.

And he needs to explain why, if Accenture's performance has proved unsatisfactory, he continues to refer to the firm as Wisconsin's "partner"? Isn't it time to consider canceling the contract and putting Wisconsin vendors and state employees to work on a simple project that could have been completed months ago at a fraction of the cost?

[PeaceNikki]

21. Yes, I've been Googling since you provided the topic.

You know he called shenanigans on the GOP last fall when they were trying to suppress votes, too, right?

http://uppitywis.org/wi-elect-board-hits-doj-gop-voter-suppression-effort

[eowyn_of_rohan]

28. Yes, I did see that. He keeps his nose clean.

Hard to tell if he is b-partisan or if he makes concessions to the left to appear b-partisan. He basically takes some responsibilities that usually go to secretaries of state (like Katherine HArris of FL and Kenneth Blackwell of OH). The man has a lot of power, and has been in this position a very long time.

[ReturnoftheDjedi]

12. so, these were all Supreme Court only votes?

[PeaceNikki]

13. They are tallied on separate "spreadsheets" (maybe tabs w/in the spreadsheet) and the missing data

was on the SC race.

[ReturnoftheDjedi]

17. you do know that Access autosaves, don't you?

if she entered the numbers, the only way they could have disappeared is if she manually deleted them.

[PeaceNikki]

18. Sure do. In fact, I was one of the first on DU to point out that error.

During the presser: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=439&topic_id=838007#838114

[ReturnoftheDjedi]

29. then we know Nickolaus is a liar. and she's lying about this chain of events.

How can you excuse or ignore that?

[PeaceNikki]

5. To answer your question about local races to added on edit:

No, they use different portions of the data to tally results, the 14k was missing only from the statewide race.

[dragonlady]

25. Not just the Supreme Court votes were missing

This article from Waukesha Patch (online local news site) says the Brookfield votes for judge candidates were not reported to the media by the Waukesha clerk on Tuesday. The total votes on a race for county circuit court increased by 12,356 after the Brookfield votes were added.

http://waukesha.patch.com/articles/waukesha-county-election-fiasco-gives-lloyd-carter-stronger-lead-in-judge-race

Do you have some other source? (This is all so confusing.)

[PeaceNikki]

27. Ah, interesting. No, I heard that on the radio and it must have been speculation.

I would search for program, but I can't recall which one.

It *is* all confusing and hopefully the GAB and Kloppenburg's attorney's will get to the bottom of it.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

10. Related bit from Nickolaus's Thurs. press conference

- A 30% voter turn out had been estimated but the actual turnout was 47% (what a leap...)

- Asked if the results changed in any other Waukesha election races after the canvass, Nickolaus said, "The same winners came out. It didn't change the-uh-the outcome of that race" (she seemed nervous in her response, too)