Waukesha County, WI Recall Election Results to be Sent Straight to State Agency on Election Night

[Scuba]

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9262

The temporary replacement by her Deputy offered little comfort for Washburn. Prompted by recent disturbing news that elections run on electronic tabulation systems identical to those used in Waukesha County had recently been found to have named several losing candidates as "winners" in elections in a different state, Washburn, a Republican, suggested he had little basis for confidence in whatever reported results might come out of the state's most Republican-leaning county in the upcoming recalls.

...

Concerns about accurate results of the upcoming recall elections in Waukesha have been multiplied of late thanks to a remarkable software failure during a March 13th election in Palm Beach County, FL on the very same model of computerized tabulators as those used in Waukesha (and other counties around the state, as well as some 14 other states across the nation).

During Palm Beach County elections, paper ballot optical-scanners made by Sequoia Voting Systems had incorrectly reported a number of candidates winning their races on Election Night, even though they'd received fewer votes than their opponents. Luckily, the failure was spotted by the Palm Beach Supervisor of Elections during a post-election spot-check of the paper ballots some days later. The correct results of the elections later were determined by a 100% hand-count of those ballots. No such post-election spot-check is carried out after elections in Wisconsin.

Dominion Voting, the Canadian firm which recently acquired Sequoia Voting Systems (and lied about it), has admitted the errors in Palm Beach were caused by programming flaws in all existing versions of their central tabulator systems, the same systems which are still used in Waukesha.

Paper ballots, hand counted, in public, cameras rolling, nothing less.

[SWTORFanatic]

1. Florida havign problems with the same system as Walkershaw? I'm shocked

[sybylla]

2. Brad is partly wrong.

He says "no such post-election spot-check is carried out after elections in Wisconsin," implying that there is no check at all of election results after election night and that we would miss an error in reporting the winners and losers.

While we don't do recounts if mistakes were made, we do what is called a canvass, which verifies that votes were tabulated correctly within and between municipalities and the correct winner is announced. So such an error would be caught in the canvass - even in Waukesha County.

[Scuba]

3. Thank you.

[yourout]

4. Without audits the totals and the canvass mean diddly.

[sybylla]

5. There are audits.

At least in the counties I've been involved in.

Each election they chose a small percentage of municipalities and count the votes again as part of the canvass. Or at least they used to. Perhaps Wanker, FitzOne and FitzTwo have made that kind of oversight illegal now.

[midnight]

6. After going to the GAB site and reading this shenanigans I say we all call Reid Magney and ask

him to explain how saving time is more important than transparent election software. And then ask him to explain to you who wrote it... Mr. Kennedy has already stated that the GAB has no one on staff to write or understand code, and outsourced it to a top Republican in public office...Secretary Mike Huebsch who is known as Walker's power broker:http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/Gov-ScottWalker-Wisconsin-Huebsch-budget/2011/04/24/id/393889

"Waukesha County is asking municipal clerks to report their unofficial results on Election Night using Wisconsin’s Canvass Reporting System (CRS). G.A.B. built CRS using federal grant monies, and launched it in September 2010 to allow county clerks to report official canvass results to the state electronically, several days after the election. When we designed this web-based system, we also built in a tool for municipal clerks to enter unofficial, Election Night results into the system. This is something that is not currently required by law, but which the state may want to consider in the future. It is that Election Night reporting tool that municipalities in Waukesha County are being asked to use.

On Election Night, municipal clerks in Waukesha County will enter their unofficial results into the system for all offices on the ballot. When they are done, they will print a report, sign it and electronically transmit it to the Waukesha County Clerk’s Office, eliminating the need to travel to the Courthouse on Election Night with their results. This should save a significant amount of time in releasing the unofficial Election Night vote totals. Municipal clerks will still physically transport the official results to the Courthouse after the election, as required by law, by 4 p.m. the day after the election.

The Waukesha County Clerk’s Office will be able to create detailed reports from the data entered by municipal clerks, and publish those unofficial results reports in a variety of formats to the county’s website for the public and news media to view and download. The G.A.B. staff is working with Waukesha County’s information technology staff to ensure a smooth transition to the approach to Election Night reporting.

All County Clerks are required to post unofficial election results on Election Night. They use a variety of methods to collect this information so the public has information on Election Night. Several Wisconsin county clerks have used the Canvass Reporting System successfully to tabulate and publish unofficial Election Night results.

As part of the official election canvassing process, the Waukesha County Board of Canvassers will check the Election Night input results against the voting equipment tapes and tally sheets before certifying the county canvass as official."http://gab.wi.gov/node/2339



For more information, contact:
Reid Magney, public information officer, 608-267-7887