Last week, Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board (GAB) posted on their recount web page an article about authenticity of ballots and evidence of fraud. It offered no explanation of what the GAB deems sufficient evidence of ballot tampering, but did claim that “A hole in a ballot bag or a missing security tag is not enough evidence alone to discard the ballots inside. The ability to put a hand into a ballot bag is not by itself evidence of fraud.“
The threshold of proof should be very high before ballots are thrown out. To absolutely guarantee that every ballot counted is legitimate, we would have to toss dozens or even hundreds of ballots that were cast in good faith by eligible voters simply because a clerk or an election inspector made an honest mistake. Wisconsin law and the GAB are very clear that voter intent, if it can be reasonably discerned, trumps clerical errors that are no fault of the voter.
Still, I would ask, what about a ballot bag that had all of the problems mentioned above and more? How much evidence is enough to justify removing ballots from the count?
Perhaps we will find out soon. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting that Waukesha County has finished tabulating votes. The Board of Canvassers is still working on reconciling votes in some of the precincts and they expect to finish up their paperwork "within the next day or two." Unless something unexpected occurs, the answer will be clear: A ballot bag with numerous chain of custody issues is nonetheless considered acceptable by the GAB.
The numbers still favor the incumbent David Prosser. He began with a lead of 7,316 votes. The challenger, JoAnne Kloppenburg, has made only a 308-vote net gain in the precincts reported and reviewed so far.
In the same article, the GAB said this:
G.A.B. staff has created an internal review process to check each ward’s recount totals against the original canvass totals to look for variances of plus or minus 10 votes. Any ward in which 10 more or 10 fewer votes are reported is flagged by staff for follow-up with the county clerk for an explanation of the reason.
The GAB has been updating a spreadsheet each day with the recount totals by precinct. They instituted the review process mentioned above after the first unofficial spreadsheet they posted contained numerous obvious math errors.
Until a precinct has been counted, the recount numbers for that unit are blank in the spreadsheet. After a county reports numbers for a precinct to the GAB, but before the GAB has reviewed them, the spreadsheet notes the following:
This Reporting Unit is under Review
The numbers are not added to the spreadsheet until the GAB review is complete and any discrepancies are presumably explained or corrected. It has generally not taken more than a day for the GAB to catch up, although they have fallen behind a bit on the weekends.
Is there any chance of a last minute surprise from Waukesha? The GAB said in last week’s article that “So far, we have found no significant, unexplained variances of vote totals. Staff will continue to review Waukesha County’s results as they come in each day until the recount is complete.” I have noticed, though, that 2 precincts in Waukesha County have been listed as “under Review” since May 16th.
Many other Waukesha County precincts have been reported, reviewed and their totals added to the spreadsheet since then. What’s up with the two precincts from the village of Sussex?
5/16/2011 WAUKESHA VILLAGE OF SUSSEX WARDS 3, 10, 11, 14, 16, 17, 21, 22 (68181) This Reporting Unit is under Review
5/16/2011 WAUKESHA VILLAGE OF SUSSEX WARDS 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 18, 19 (68181) This Reporting Unit is under Review
It could be just an oversight, a human error. Maybe these units were reviewed on the 16th or 17th but somebody just keeps forgetting to add the numbers to the sheet.
I’m hoping that’s all it is. I assume we would have heard something by now if there were more serious issues, but it still looks strange to me. What’s the problem? Are they following up with the county clerk, Kathy Nickolaus?
If even a few ballots are discounted due to suspicion of fraud, the whole election will be tainted.
I have been critical of the conflict of interest built into our system of having the GAB train elections officials and then review those same officials for possible criminal activities, but for their sake and for the sake of Wisconsin's citizens, I hope there is a simple, verifiable explanation for the delay in publishing the Sussex precincts. Each day that goes by with Sussex still under review makes me wonder just a little more, though.
The GAB director has said that one of his goals in the recount is to maintain Wisconsin's reputation for clean, fair, transparent elections. I have news for him. That reputation was ruined a few weeks ago when Kathy Nickolaus's secretive and audit-proof vote-tallying methods were exposed, and further eroded when live video of the Waukesha recount showed a disorganized and confused process that created more questions then it answered.