Waukesha recount: No problems found until the first bag of ballots examined.

[Scuba]

http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/120786814.html

<snip>

Waukesha —The state Supreme Court recount got off to a wobbly start here Wednesday.

After more than a half-hour of meticulous instructions and ground rules relayed by Waukesha County's chief canvasser, retired Judge Robert G. Mawdsley, questions were raised about the very first bag of ballots to be counted, from the Town of Brookfield.

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 official tabulator said.


<end snip>


Ha! I'm shocked. Not.

[valerief]

1. Shazam! No one could have seen that coming.

:eyes:

[KeepItReal]

2. Do citizens in Waukesha County have to sign their names on voting day rolls?

If so, will there be a count of total signatures VS number of ballots cast?

If there is election fraud, that would be one way to baseline the total number of votes they should be looking for, right?

[Jackpine Radical]

5. I dunno abt Wauk. in particular, but in most of the state there is no sig.

All you do is come in & give them your name & address & the R & D workers independently scratch your name off on their respective list of registered voters.

The two lists would have to match, though.

Anyway, it seems that the discrepancy isn't in the number of ballots v. number of voters, but in maybe a substitution of mis-voted ballots for the real ones. That is the real significance of the mismatched seal on the very first ballot bagto be counted.

[KeepItReal]

6. I'm worried that the clerk pulled 7K votes out of this air for Prosser

Were there 7k actual votes to be found? Or could she just add 7k to the vote tally in her spreadsheet/database for reporting the numbers?

[SheilaT]

10. That's interesting.

I've voted in five different states so far, and as best as I can recall I've always signed the register. Although, come to think of it, I may not have signed anything the one time I early voted in Virginia in 1980. But every other time, I pretty certain.

[Pacifist Patriot]

13. I've voted in four different states and always had to sign in.

[PeaceNikki]

16. That bag reconciled, for the record.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

18. kind of.

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.

...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.

The election/canvass board members all signed the election inspectors statement that stated the number ended in a "2". Yet the ziptie on the bag ended in a "3".

[PeaceNikki]

19. You C&P'd what I had... I meant that the votes inside were reconciled.

[PeaceNikki]

14. We have 2 sets of poll books.

When we get to poll, we give them our name. They look us up in books and both workers write our # down next to name and give us a sheet with a number. We give that to another worker who gives us our ballot.

The recount is reconciling the books with one another and the total voters marked in books with the total votes cast.

[freshwest]

3. Repuke accountability FAIL

[louslobbs]

4. Not shocked here either Scuba. Not in the least, in fact I expected it.

Lou

[gratuitous]

7. This wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for those meddling Democrats!

Waiting for the Scooby Doo ending where Walker peels off his mask to reveal his true identity.

[Bandit]

8. So what does that mean?

Will they have to throw the entire bag of ballots out or will they just shrug and accept them anyway even though the numbers don't match?

[TalkingDog]

9. Most likely they will check the other bags to see if there was a clerical error

recording the wrong bag number by accident or switching numbers...

If they can't sort it out, they'll count the other ones (that hopefully do match) and probably await further instructions on how to deal with the aberrant bag.

Basic accounting procedures.

[PeaceNikki]

15. Both campaigns and the Board of Canvassers agreed that the error seemed to be in the inspector's use

of a "2" instead of a "3" and all parties (both sides and the Board of Canvassers) agreed that the bag should be opened and the votes counted.

[Blue Owl]

11. Is this the handiwork of ace election clerk Kathy Nickolaus?

n/t

[PeaceNikki]

17. No, it was an error by the election inspector in the Town of Brookfield.

[krispos42]

12. I can see it now

Votes for Al Gore for president, John Kerry for president... all kinds of interesting stuff in the bag.