Wisconsin Recount - Another Chain of Custody Problem in Waukesha County -This makes *4*

[eowyn_of_rohan]

May 2, 2011

Just after 1:15 p.m., Waukesha County canvassers began the recount for the Town of Genesee, wards 6, 9, and 10. They immediately identified a bag of ballots where the bag and label serial numbers matched each other but did not match the number written on the official inspection report from that precinct. The numbers were off by one. The bag and label ended with an 8 and the report number ended with a 9.

Shortly after that, someone found another version of the inspection report in the accompanying materials from the ballot bags.
One was suggested to be the original and the other a copy, but the original had numbers that did not match the tags and one was a photocopy that had the correct numbers written in by a different person, but after the document had been signed.

That person, presumably an official from the town of Genesee, claimed she made a copy of the report and wrote the correct serial number on the copy the morning after the election when she noticed it was incorrect. She was asked where the ballots were during that time and she answered that they were in a vault at the Genessee town hall.

What's odd is that she was not the official who wrote the number on the original report, but says she winessed the other person writing the original number. The bag and reports were entered as exhibits, and counted separately.

~~~~~~~~~~
More "anomolies" from yesterday's Waukesha Co. counting session from Giles Boat Boy @ Daily Kos
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/02/972357/-Another-Chain-of-Custody-Problem-in-Waukesha-County

WAUKESHA COUNTY RECOUNT - LIVE VIDEO - http://www.waukeshacounty.gov/defaultwc.aspx?id=40097

Something's brewing...

[DCKit]

1. K&R for the continuing incompetence in commiting election fraud.

If they were actually good at stealing elections, we'd be in far more serious trouble.

[PeaceNikki]

2. We also had a bag on Saturday with no signatures on it.

From the Village of Chenequa. There were 233 votes in it. It reconciled to the tapes- though Prosser picked up one. It's a VERY rich, VERY elite community and is was like 204 to 25 or something (a few no votes).

Here's the picture I got of it:

[eowyn_of_rohan]

4. So many human "errors" ....

Replacement of ballots is a possibility - would still reconcile with the tape count.

[PeaceNikki]

6. Only if replaced ballots match altered Optiscan from election night

In order to be fraud, they would have had to alter those and then tamper with ballots to make them match.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

8. That is true. -nt

[PeaceNikki]

12. NOT impossible, just much more difficult to pull off.

And it would involve local clerks from the municipalities as well.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

14. Yes, it would be tricky

and would mean there would have to be a mole in each municipality affected...and/or someone who is able to gain access to these offices.

[FBaggins]

33. It would be an awful lot of work for a very small gain.

The demographics of the precinct appear to imply a heavy "red" slant. If we speculate that some blue votes are replaced with red ones... how many could there be in such an area? If we instead speculate that some votes were entirely invented (adding another layer of fraud), how many fewer voters could there have been in real life?

What I mean is... how many votes could be manufactured here? Twenty? Fifty?

That's an awful large amount of fraud and coverup required to net you a couple dozen votes.

[PeaceNikki]

35. That's where my brain goes in all of this.

Chenequa is a great example. Election night reported 233 votes with only 25 for Kloppenburg. There's no WAY she got much more than that without someone tampering on her behalf. That is a very rich, VERY elite, VERY Republican lil place on the lakes (there's a Sensenbrenner estate there).

BUT... let's pretend it got hit with a liberal hippie bomb on April 5 and she got 100 votes there. Someone would have had to tamper with the Optiscan to pre-program or change the votes to 204/25, pick 75 Kloppenburg votes out of the bag and replace them 75 with properly initialed Prosser votes. That's a stretch. Not impossible, but a stretch.

[jsamuel]

37. So is there documentation of the vote count on the night of the election?

[PeaceNikki]

38. Yes, we reconcile to those tapes.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

44. A change of 10 ballots per precinct in Wisconsin = 36,300 votes

Just sayin'....

[jsamuel]

45. or 75 votes per precinct in Waukesha County (194 precincts) = 14550 votes

[eowyn_of_rohan]

48. Recent Waukesha County election results

Recent Waukesha County election results
2000: Bush gets 65% of the vote
2002: McCallum gets 62% of the vote
2004: Bush gets 67% of the vote
2006: Green gets 63% of the vote
2008: McCain gets 62% of the vote
2010: Walker gets 71% of the vote
2011: Prosser gets 74% of the vote

Quite a jump from 60-ish% to 70-ish % Repub votes in 10 years... I know McCain wasn't appealing to anyone, but Kathy Nickolaus she used her new computer "system" in the 2010 election, and that it worked very well without any problems.

[PeaceNikki]

50. I spoke to that a bit here.

I can confirn Waukesha County *IS* that red and *IS* getting redder. I do believe that Republicans here used the April election as a vote of confidence for Walker. We have VERY few unions and VERY few public employees here.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

56. With all due respect, this is your impression but I don't believe it is proven fact

Just for the record, and I hope you can agree on that.

[PeaceNikki]

59. It's proven fact that there are few unions and few public sector employees.

LOL, it's also proven fact to anyone who lives and works here that Waukesha County Republicans are a whole different breed.

This is a Repubican stronghold. The land of McMansions gaudily built on beautiful lakes and megachurches and private academy for their kids and country clubs and gated communities and confederate flags (YES, I swear) proudly waving in the wind on the homes in the "poorer" areas.

[FBaggins]

60. Sure... but how many precincts have there been problems in?

Precincts where republicans control the machines and democrats aren't smart enough to catch it?

[eowyn_of_rohan]

81. Yes. If only we had more volunteers in each county we might know the answer to that

There have been known problems in many precincts. Not all are getting as much attention as those in Waukesha Co. though granted, theirs are the worst.

In Ozaukee County the workers were feeding the ballots back through the machines for the recount. They were supposed to go through them before sticking them in the machine, so that we observers could count our candidate's votes individually (as per statement by GAB supervisor Kevin Kennedy). Instead the workers there were NOT allowing the observers to do that. They were slamming ballots through the machine as fast as they could. Multiple complaints were filed with the Kloppenburg campaign, who assigned an attorney to the site on several occasions. "Reports" have been filed against Ozaukee Co., but what will come of them?

It is getting quite depressing.

[Lefta Dissenter]

73. NO IT WOULDN'T

ONLY THE COUNTY CLERK!!!

The County Clerk provides the programmed prom pack to the municipalities. If she is used to being able to jack the numbers around in the programming and getting away with it, then she might do so, assuming that nobody would ever look at the ballots.

After the election, the ballots are turned over to the County Clerk by the municipalities.

Oh ohhhh, they're going to do a recount! :scared:

Well, if ballot bags are suddenly appearing at the recount with incorrect seals, and rips in the bags, what is one to infer?

all of this is hypothetical, of course...

[eowyn_of_rohan]

79. +1000

hypothetical, of course

[PeaceNikki]

87. OK, in that case, how would they get the total votes to match the poll books?

[gkhouston]

89. What are your poll books like?

Here, they contain voters' signatures and each page of the book is a joined stack of carbon-sensitive forms, so you end up with multiple copies of the signatures. After the polls close, you break the book, i.e., separate the sheets into stacks--one set goes to each party's county headquarters, a set goes to the county clerk, and I can't remember where the fourth set goes but I'm pretty sure there's a fourth set.

[defendandprotect]

88. Is anyone checking them against the original records?

[jsamuel]

27. Is that technically a chain of custody problem?

No signatures = no verification of sealing?

[PeaceNikki]

28. I think so, but I am not an attorney nor do I play one on TV.

:shrug:

[eowyn_of_rohan]

46. Sure is. There is a procedure that is supposed to take place

to document chain of custody. I do not know every step but what I do know is that ballots are placed in a "secure" plastic bag then shut with a numbered zip-tie. The bag has a label indicating what is included - the ward(s) and municipality (among other details??). For each bag, these details, inc the number on the ziptie, are documented on a separate form. Election workers sign that form to testify the number on the form matches that on the bag. The bag itself is also supposed to have the signatures or sets of initials of 2 of the workers.

I wish Lefta Dissenter would come in - She has worked as an election supervisor, and could do a much better job than I am!!

[Lefta Dissenter]

74. hi there!

Lefta has been at the committee meeting for the Voter Disenfranchisement Bill, and is frantically trying to catch up on email and messages! Thanks for the GREAT report, eo!

SEE MY MESSAGE ABOVE. THE COUNTY CLERK PROVIDES THE PROGRAMMED PROM PACKS TO THE MUNICIPALITIES FOR THE ELECTION!!!

The County Clerk is the only one who would need to be involved. It just makes it a little more difficult to have had the hand count requested!

I'm still scanning down this thread.

YES, it's a chain of custody problem - BIG TIME. Of course, the county clerk could have duplicate seals and extra ballots and bags on hand, if she had thought about the possibility of a recount. Those can be purchased from multiple vendors, including the REPUBLICAN, BUSHIE ES&S and Diebold companies.

onward...

[gkhouston]

3. So they've had bags without signatures, bags without seals, and bags whose

numbers don't match the election night roster. I have one question: how many bags of ballots in Waukesha county aren't questionable in some way?

[PeaceNikki]

We're only about 10% counted so that's tough to tell at this point.

All but one municipality we've done has had at least one issue.

[gkhouston]

9. Wow. Granted, you've only done 10%, but still. n/t

[PeaceNikki]

13. The total # of votes in those bags is still WAY too small to be alarming...

at THIS point. Now, if in the trend continues and that number increases significantly, something is rotten in Denmark.

Best case scenerio is that there's a LOT of slop. The good news is that the judge on the Board is getting PRETTY pissed at the slop and HE's pointing it out before any observers are now in most cases and encouraging pictures be taken and asking that items be submitted as evidence.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

15. Good that this judge seems to be handling this appropriately! -nt

[gkhouston]

20. Yes, the numbers are small so far, but the odds of all the "problem children"

being encountered in one clump seem low. I'm glad the judge's patience is wearing thin. The first bag or two, you think, "yeah, elections aren't 100.00% accurate, but they're usually nowhere near close enough to matter". This far into the game, they're probably starting to cringe every time they reach for a new bag.

[PeaceNikki]

21. Agreed. But also understand how difficult it would be to coordinate a tamper in every municipality.

Again, not impossible, but would be tough. They'd have to have altered Optiscans on election night and then they would have had to replace ballots to match those.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

22. It hasn't happened in every municipality, though - just 4 as of now

1 in Chenequa, 1 in Town of Brookfield, 1 in Genessee, and 2 in Delafield (home of Prosser's campaign headquarters, site of his election night "Victory" party, town where he spent most of April 6 "trying to figure out what happened" before being driven to Madison to meet with Walker)

Just sayin', it is because of the countless known incidents of hacking and adjusting of Op-scan software that this possibility shouldn't be dismissed here.

edit for typos & because I forgot about Chenaqua. Also, there may be some other method to make this reconcile that we aren't thinking about

[PeaceNikki]

24. I agree, but we've only counted 5 municipalities.

I am not dismissing, just looking at all angles while trying to remain pragmatic and logical. That's why I am going every day, so I can see it with my own two eyes.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

25. We're doing the same thing...

looking at all angles, trying to remain pragmatic and logical. We're just approaching it from opposite sides of the fence. cheers!

[PeaceNikki]

26. Indeed. Multiple perspectives are important.

:cheers:

[jsamuel]

29. which manicupality did you count that didn't have one of these bags?

[PeaceNikki]

30. Eagle.

[jsamuel]

31. Good to know

someone else mentioned that there were also some bags with tears large enough to put ballots through

[PeaceNikki]

32. I saw and photographed small tears in some bags, none big enough for that

but there was one from Delafield (I think) that I heard this to be the case with.

Also, if the just added ballots, the total count would be off and we'd end up with a draw-down. To accomplish what we're seeing, ballots would have had to have been removed and replaced.

[jsamuel]

34. are they also checking the vote counts for other races?

One thing that worries me is that the vote counts are wrong to begin with, although I admittedly don't know how this is all documented. The scenario I have in my head would suggest that they only added votes. This would ether be accomplished by adding a whole bunch of supreme court only votes (would be pretty obvious though) or by just not caring that the other races won't add up during a recount. However, if the recount isn't looking at the counts from other races, no one would notice.

This is just a hypothetical, of course. We will just have to wait and see how this turns out.

[PeaceNikki]

36. No, we're only counting SC race.

Chenequa is a great example of how your theory falls short. Election night reported 233 votes with only 25 for Kloppenburg. There's no WAY she got much more than that without someone tampering on her behalf. That is a very rich, VERY elite, VERY Republican lil place on the lakes (there's a Sensenbrenner estate there).

BUT... let's pretend it got hit with a liberal hippie bomb on April 5 and she got 100 votes there. Someone would have had to tamper with the Optiscan to pre-program or change the votes to 204/25, pick 75 Kloppenburg votes out of the bag and replace them 75 with properly initialed Prosser votes. That's a stretch. Not impossible, but a stretch.

[jsamuel]

39. Maybe. I also don't understand how that original count is documented

and what would be involved in tampering with that. I don't want to go too far into my ideas of what might have happened unless and until there is a much more significant number of anomalies. There is certainly an argument to be made that it just seems like an awful lot of work to rig it that way. But then again, how many millions of dollars are being spent on elections every time?

That bag in particular may not be as big of a problem compared to the others we have seen so far.

[PeaceNikki]

40. Optiscans are run through the machine

It tabulates total votes and counts in each race.

The bag in Chenequa is an example of exactly how one would have to manipulate in order to commit fraud. Every suspicious bag has reconciled with election night/canvass totals.

[jsamuel]

41. how do you verify that the print out is the one that was created on election night

is it kept in the bag with the votes that also lost the chain of custody or is it put somewhere else?

[PeaceNikki]

42. It's all part of the chain of custody, yes.

We can't say for sure that the bags were "lost", only that the chain of custody can't be 100% confirmed due to the issues.

But keep in mind that they were verified in canvass the day after election.

[jsamuel]

43. who conduced the canvass the day after?

Was that done by Kathy?

[PeaceNikki]

47. It was the Board of Canvassers.

Which included Kathy and 2 others.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

49. Do you know who the other 2 were?

[PeaceNikki]

51. Yes, I see them every day.

Pat Karcher and Ramona Kitzinger. Wonderfully amazing ladies.

[jsamuel]

52. I am sure they are very nice, but Ramona admitted that she was kind of blindsided by Kathy and the

14,000 extra ballots thing. They also did not apparently catch any of the issues that are coming up in the recount, so the canvass couldn't have been that rigorous. I admit I don't know what is involved in the canvass.

[PeaceNikki]

53. NONE of the issues found in recount have squat to do with canvass errors.

None of them.

Canvass reconciles to tapes, they do not review ballots or bags.

[jsamuel]

54. so the tapes are kept outside of the bags until after the canvass?

so what you are saying is if the tapes were modified (hypothetial) that it would have to have been done between election night and the following day? That is definitely a short time to do this.

[PeaceNikki]

55. They are secured.

I can't speak to specifics beyond that.

[jsamuel]

57. thank you for being so nice and answering my questions

You are already doing so much by volunteering to help with the recount and the time you spend to update us here is really appreciated.

[PeaceNikki]

58. Correct.

Especially if you explode the theory to have the tampering occur in dozens (hundreds?) of different municipalities simultaneously.

[gkhouston]

64. The tapes don't have to be modified after election night.

Not only can you hack a tabulator to count votes in unique and self-serving ways, you can program it to give you a false tape. That's why the chain of custody with the bags (intact bags, properly sealed and numbered, with numbers matching the election night roster) is so vital. If the ballots were tabulated by a machine incorrectly and false numbers were submitted, you'd be none the wiser unless you went back and counted the paper ballots by hand or on an "honest" machine. Most places I've lived, the ballots went to the county clerk's office. If that's also what happens in Wisconsin, it would mean that the ballots for Waukesha county were in the safe-keeping of Nickolaus for some days before the bags were opened.

[jsamuel]

67. i am concerned that false tapes could be produced

rather easily by someone with access to a machine

How many tapes are we talking about? One per bag? One per ward? One per precinct?

[gkhouston]

71. I'm not sure. At least one per tabulator, and I would think that

they tabulate the wards separately, so probably one per ward. Once you've hacked the tabulator, the number of tapes wouldn't be an issue. If it's going to print something bogus, it will print something bogus, regardless of the number of ballots being counted in a batch. Somebody needs to take a good hard look at those tabulators, but given how screwed up things are in Waukesha, I wouldn't be surprised if the tabulators have not been secured properly.

[druidity33]

80. If the tabulator can be hacked...

can't someone go into its "print history" and see how many, when and what its most recent printouts read? Where's Anonymous when you need them?

:shrug:

[Lefta Dissenter]

75. PN,

do you know the total number of ballots affected by these issues? That would be interesting to know...

[PeaceNikki]

86. It's ABOUT 1500 at this point

[eowyn_of_rohan]

7. IMO it is to the point where ballots should not be included if the chain of custody is broken

There has to be some enforcement of the rules, and penalties if they are not followed. Even if the number of ballots reconciles with the number of votes cast, how can we know these are the original ballots? We can't. By human error or malfeasance, these ballots are tainted.

an aside - The unbagged stack of 90+ ballots found on a tabletop in Verona, Dane County, favored Prosser 2 to 1 in a county that voted for Kloppenburg 2 to 1.

[PeaceNikki]

10. Again, the Optiscans from election night would have had to have been altered first.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

11. Again, that is true.

Hack the software then replace ballots. Sounds like a a big job, but it's not impossible.

[Hubert Flottz]

5. There needs to be another election with adult supervision.

[Ian David]

16. Here is how *I* would steal an election (not that I ever would). Please tell me this would not work.

Before election day, fill-out a whole stack of ballots for your candidates.

On election day, have a scanning machine that is placed NEAR the polling place, but not actually IN the polling place.

Throughout the day, periodically scan the ballots into the machine, a few votes per hour.

Maybe throw-in a few votes for the competition, just so it looks good.

At the end of the day, run over to the polling place and randomly cross-off the correct number of additional people from the books that indicate who voted.

Now, please, PLEASE tell me this plan is somehow fatally flawed and that it cannot be THAT easy.

[PeaceNikki]

17. You'd also have to sneak the tapes from the scanner into the mix.

How would an extra tape for a machine not on site be explained?

[Ian David]

18. What if you wheeled the machine into the polling place during the last hour? n/t

[PeaceNikki]

19. I would hope that the local clerk and/or election inspector and/or poll workers would notice such a

thing. :shrug:

[LiberalAndProud]

23. Maybe it's been sloppy enough that they wouldn't notice an extra set of tapes in the mix?

It's a stretch, but in Waukesha, I have little confidence. Not accusing, just noting that the degree of slop has been disconcerting.

[Ellipsis]

61. Thats just weird!

Only ten percent eh? They will never finish by May 9th. This is turning into one major clusterfuck.


If this keeps up Kloppenburgs attorney will move to nullify the votes in Waukesha county because of Nichols violating chain of custody.

Won't that be wild.

[WinkyDink]

62. Come on! You know the only voter fraud is perpetrated by fake and dead "Democrats"!

[bobthedrummer]

63. Some folks need to be chained and taken into the custody of we, the people imo k&r n/t

[Lefta Dissenter]

76. I'll K&R that post!

:hi:

[Blue Owl]

65. I say give Kathy Nickolaus a lie detector test

Something weird is going on there, something that should not be so ridiculously complicated.

[PeaceNikki]

66. Another weird bag

Set aside to count separately.

[jsamuel]

68. what is wrong with that one?

[PeaceNikki]

69. It's not closed/sealed properly

Ballots can fit through that gap.

[jsamuel]

70. oh, I see

[jsamuel]

72. Thanks for keeping us up to date.

I know this is kind of an awkward thing to ask, but maybe I should mention checking another race's totals on that bag? I imagine that is not within the set out parameters of the recount. However, if the SC votes are correct to the tapes, but another race isn't, that would be a big big finding.

I'll send an email to the campaign suggesting this.

[Lefta Dissenter]

77. BINGO

that's what the election integrity group I've been talking to has been asking for.

It's in the fucking rules that the campaigns and the (republican) GAB agreed to ahead of time - count only the supreme court race.:banghead:

[Cieran_WI]

82. Nikki, is that bag the one from district 3?

I think I heard this bag being discussed yesterday on the live stream, a bag from district 3 (In Oconomowoc I believe, but not sure) that wasn't sealed properly and had a gap large enough to commit ballot stuffing and that they merely taped up and put in a vault with no tamper-evident safeguards. I'd like to make sure this is the one before adding it to my http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/02/972475/-WI-Recount:-Running-tally-of-suspicious-ballots">running tally of suspicious ballot bags in WI.

Also, any info on how many ballots were in this new bag? Is it the number reported below the Waukesha county line, and if so, I can't quite make it out. Looks like maybe 311?

[PeaceNikki]

85. There were 423 ish votes in that bag. It was from

CITY OF OCONOMOWOC Wards 10 - 13, 15, 16, 23 - 25, 27-33.

We counted it separately and it was 288 for Prosser and 131 for Kloppenburg (I may be SLIGHTLY off on these #'s, working from memory). It was slanted slightly more towards Kloppenburg than the sum of the other 2 bags. There was also a DRE tape in it, only 3 DRE ballots from unit - ALL 3 for JoAnne.

[Cieran_WI]

83. deleted, dupe. n/t

[texpatriot2004]

78. Election fraud is not a partisan issue. No transparency = no

Democracy.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

84. I'm heading for Milwaukee for a couple days

for the recount. This will be a big change from observing the Dane Co recount. I sure hope something big happens, somewhere - ANYWHERE- in our favor... We're down to 15 counties that haven't yet finished their counting.

[gkhouston]

90. Milwaukee has a higher than average number of ballots with

no vote recorded for the SC race. Don't know if an invalid vote was cast or vote was unrecognized. It would be nice to know what the situation is. Mind you, we're still not talking about that many votes. I was looking at last night's stats. Many counties don't tell you how many ballots were cast. If you assume that the total number of votes cast equals the total number of ballots cast (which is a conservative assumption, and not a very good one, but all I've got), the statewide average of "no votes" in the SC race was about 1.3%. "No vote" for Waukesha was only .68%, about 1% for Dane, and 1.5% for Milwaukee. It could be that those machines were calibrated in an interesting fashion.