Missing Verona ballots cause glitch in Supreme Court race recount (#4)

[deminks]

http://host.madison.com/news/local/crime_and_courts/blog/article_5a280216-7220-11e0-b14d-001cc4c002e0.html

Newly appointed Dane County Clerk Karen Peters initially had doubts that the county could finish hand counting some 182,000 Supreme Court ballots within a 13-day deadline. But on Thursday she expressed confidence that it could be done.

But that was before the glitch.

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.

The statewide recount, requested by challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg after her narrow loss to incumbent David Prosser, has the potential to change the outcome, so the Verona situation caused much consternation. On election night, all the ballots were supposed to be secured in sealed bags, which were then supposed to be signed by local elections officials. The seals were supposed to remain intact.

Burns found the bundle unbagged. They were bagged and he drove them to Madison. The bag had no signatures or initials

(end snip)

for the first three instances of breaks in chain of custody of ballots, see here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=988165&mesg_id=990212

[bleever]

1. Verona, where my dad grew up!

Teeny tiny town. I can still smell my grandparent's basement, garage, and bathroom just by thinking about them.

Not that this adds anything to the main discussion, but I couldn't resist sharing.