Right now there is a diary up by PvtJarHead showing that one ballot bag from Delafield, Waukesha County had lost its chain of custody. One bag won't swing the election or prove fraud, however many bags like this could become a major sign of fraud. Today, another report emmerged of a second bag from Delafield, Waukesha County.
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"Today's new anomaly: Delafield again. 1 of 2 bags had a corrected seal number, matching its new tag and what had been entered in journal, due to a small tear having been made at top of bag by ballots after the original seal and its number had been affixed."
and
the clerk said that the bag wasn't closed properly, so there were openings in the top, through which someone could reach their hand. She also said that the bag was so full that they thought it might tear. So to remedy that situation, they REMOVED THE ORIGINAL SEAL, took the ballots out, put them into a new bag with a new seal, and put that bag back into the original bag with a new seal. WTF???
There is no possible explanation for not just dropping the improperly sealed bag into a new one with new seal and certificate on it with explanation and signatures.
This bag could have something like 500-800 ballots. The one from yesterday (also from Delafield) could have somewhere around 350. If this stuff keeps happening...
Yesterday's bag
"At around 2:15pm, we were ready to open the bags for Delafield. There were three bags total. Bags 1 & 2 were fine. The numbers all matched up. When we got to bag 3, we found out that the bag # was NOT RECORDED ON THE INSPECTOR'S statement...! The Republican canvass person said we could assume that the clerk forgot to write the # down on the inspector's statement and we could proceed. Of course, this is a break in the chain of custody!..."
Yesterday's bag was estimated at around 350 ballots by a DUer that was there.
It might also be prudent to point out this quote from Prosser about where he was the day after the election:
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Prosser says he spent most of Wednesday "...in Delafield, trying to figure out what the hell was going on." He also says that IF he went to Walker's office that night, he never went past the receptionist's desk.
UPDATE:
I am hearing that the Kloppenburg campaign does not have enough volunteers in Waukesha County to watch the recount. If you can, please try to help out.
Donation:
http://www.kloppenburgforjustice.com/
Recount Volunteering:
link
UPDATEx2:
Prosser's campaign office is in Delafield (h/t to 3goldens). That would explain why he was there the day after the election.
UPDATEx3:
h/t to zephyr108
Another chain of custody issue, this time in Verona, Dane County. The 97 ballots went for Prosser by a margin of 30 despite the fact that he had lost there by a 2 to 1 margin. The scariest part is where they were found... inside a folder, unbagged, in the clerk's office...
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On Thursday afternoon official "tabulators" were busily counting ballots from the city of Verona when the votes came up more than 90 short of what the electronic readout from the voting machines said they should. That sent Verona officials on a hunt, and a rubber-banded stack of 97 ballots turned up in the office of Verona City Clerk Judy Masarik.
"There's a table in the clerk's office, and there was a binder and some other papers on top of the ballots," said City Administrator Bill Burns, who found the stack.
...
Burns found the bundle unbagged. They were bagged and he drove them to Madison. The bag had no signatures or initials.
...
But the chain of custody was compromised. Not only did Masarik admit that her office was sometimes left unlocked while she was at lunch, a cleaning person had access to the office after hours.
While the incident didn't change the numbers as originally reported, the ballots in question favor Prosser by 30 votes: unexpected because he took a 2-1 beating in the city overall.
UPDATEDx4
This one from Brookfield, Waukesha County. The number written down for the seal on the bag on election night did not match the number on the seal at the time of the recount. This is another bag that could have been opened and resealed with another seal. However, they suggest that it might have been a transcription error.
As canvassers and tabulators compared a numbered seal on a bag with the number recorded for that bag by a town election inspector who prepared the paperwork on election night, the numbers didn't match.
"What a great way to start," one tabulator said.
Observers from the campaigns of Justice David Prosser and Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg both agreed, however, that the error seemed to be in the inspector's use of a "2" instead of a "3." Numbers on the sealing tag and on the bag did match. Both sides and the Board of Canvassers agreed that the bag should be opened and the votes counted.
I had seen this story before but did not realize the numbers that didn't match could mean another bag losing the chain of custody. What they don't say in that story is whether or not Kloppenburg's watchers objected to the counting of the bag. This makes three bags in Waukesha County so far.