WI Paper Ballot Scanners Failed to Count 1000s of Votes in 'Citizens United' Ballot Referendum

[BradBlog]

Source: BRAD BLOG



WI Paper Ballot Scanners Failed to Count 1000s of Votes in 'Citizens United' Ballot Referendum
Popular, oft-malfunctioning computer tabulator used in WI, many other states, tallied just 16 votes out of 5,350 cast in Stoughton, WI...

Though some 5,350 voters are known to have voted in the city of Stoughton in Dane County, Wisconsin on Tuesday, just 16 of those voters were interested in voting in a local ballot referendum calling for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to help overturn the infamous Citizens United decision --- at least according to the results reported by paper ballot optical-scan computer tabulators there.

"A malfunction with the voting machines in Stoughton Tuesday led to an incomplete outcome of the city's referendum on whether to amend the U.S. Constitution, Stoughton clerk Lana Kropf said," according to a terse and somewhat cryptic report in the Wisconsin State Journal on Thursday.

The city's ES&S DS200 paper ballot optical-scanners (a computer tabulation system plagued with problems in many states over the years) reported zero votes for the initiative in five of the city's six voting wards, and just 16 votes (7 Yes, 9 No) in the other.

"Never in my years working in clerks' offices have I seen something like this," Kropf told the Journal...

FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=10931

Read more: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=10931

[sakabatou]

1. *insert rageface*

[SoapBox]

2. Shouldn't shit like this be enough to require a revote?

Seems like a denial of Citizen Rights.

[Igel]

10. Why?

Shouldn't they finish counting all the ballots officially before proceeding to a revote?


The official vote hasn't been reported yet. Just the unofficial preliminary one.

It's why they have the official canvassing of the voting machines and records at some remove from the early returns. They look over their systems, consult the checks and balances that they have, and reconcile the number of votes recorded with the number of votes cast. Until then, the machines and records are under seal, and as they go through they verify the initial tallies, make and account for any changes to them, and then firm up the official tally for publication.


In fact, every election there's this litany of voting problems that the press reports. What relatively few notice is that the established process for catching errors and correcting them is the very reason we hear these reports. The errors that nobody catches aren't reported because, well, they're not caught.

The problem with some electronic voting isn't that they don't do an official canvas. It's just that the official canvas is very often just reuploading the same information from the same machines using the same process. The checks and balances and reconciliation aren't usually all that useful. However, even in those cases they sometimes catch errors--a machine that uploaded twice, a machine that didn't upload at all, corrupted data flow causing data string offset errors.

[cstanleytech]

3. Seems like a very convenient "malfunction".

[bbgrunt]

4. lots of convenient problems in WI in the past couple of years

[postulater]

5. Those scanners also jam frequently.

The woman in front of me had trouble inserting her ballot into the scanner. The worker said the ballot before her had jammed and "it happens all the time but it's no big deal, all the votes are counted".

Yeah, right?

Really, HOW HARD IS IT TO HAND COUNT THE BALLOTS?

[Odin2005]

6. ELECTRONIC VOTING IS VOTE-RIGGING!

Twice-hand-counted paper ballots NOW!

[HomerRamone]

7. "the...newspaper would be coming up with perfectly believable reasons"--THE PROBLEM ALL THE TIME

"Had this programming error been a simple flip --- telling the machine to count 'yes' votes from 'no' bubbles and vice-versa --- and not the blatantly obvious error it was, the municipal canvass would almost certainly have certified the results without examining even one actual ballot; the Stoughton newspaper would be coming up with perfectly believable reasons why theirs was the first city ever to vote 75% no instead of 75% yes, and a few referendum backers and election-integrity activists would be saying "That's got to be a miscount" to anyone who would listen --which would not be many."

[AleksS]

8. Sounds like the guy that programs the "results"

Sounds like the guy that programs the "results" forgot to enter a line.

Ooops.

[hue]

9. This is prob. just the tip of the iceberg. & I'm sick of peeps saying we voted for Walker & get what

we deserve.

[valerief]

11. How many times must this happen before the billionaire media mentions it at all? nt

[whereisjustice]

12. summary of the likely error - machines are only as good as the people who test them

[CorporatistNation]

13. Living in Florida...

I have dealt with this here as a candidate, contested an election based on evidence and understand full well the "problems" associated with electronic vote recording. I have therefore been an advocate for hand counted paper ballots counted at the precinct by the citizens themselves. That is the only sure way to eliminate this crime. However those in charge, prefer a methodology which allows them to "configure" the vote totals in whatever way that they prefer. When all else fails, money media propaganda then they still have the voting machine option.

So much for democracy.

CorporatistNation is coming....

[sybylla]

14. It's not like this was going to pass without notice.

This is why we have a vote canvass that takes place 7 days after the election. In the canvass, the ballot tallys, the voter registers and all the other secondary materials are reconciled and any errors as well as absentee ballots that arrive after election day are added in.

We are never going to have an error free election day. Shit happens. The question is whether or not we have in place a process that corrects for shit. And in Wisconsin we do.

[BradBlog]

19. Are you kidding?

We are never going to have an error free election day. Shit happens. The question is whether or not we have in place a process that corrects for shit. And in Wisconsin we do.

You are correct. Shit happens and the question is does it get noticed? Don't know if you read to the bottom of the article and/or checked out this story from Palm Beach within it: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9221 ... but we are LUCKY when this kind of stuff is noticed. Happily, it was so obviously absurd it had to be noticed in this case.

But, then again, we've had similarly obvious absurdities in Wisconsin that neither election officials nor media seemed to give a damn about. Here's one or two, and you can let me know about the process in Wisconsin that corrected for it:

EXCLUSIVE: CITY OF BROOKFIELD BALLOT BAGS FOUND 'WIDE OPEN' IN WAUKESHA COUNTY, WI

If you're wondering what ever came of that (and much more), here ya go:

EXCLUSIVE: WI State Election Board Failed to Review Minutes from Waukesha County 'Recount' Before Certifying Supreme Court Election Results

[sybylla]

26. Oh I know you are all over this and constantly throw up the one exception the process

that you've found in 10 years - Waukesha county. I am never surprised to see you constantly extrapolate the corruption found there to the rest of the state.

Corruption in one county deriving from one county clerk who is no longer in office doesn't not signify that the whole process if fucked up.

That's why we call it corruption - an action taken outside the normal process for personal benefit.

The vote totals you are pointing to have not been certified. If you want to wig out before the canvass has even begun and before the vote has been certified, I can't stop you. All I can say is that it's equivalent to crying fire before the match has been struck. After a while, it starts to look like crying wolf.

Which is why I long ago stopped paying any attention to your posts in ALL CAPS.

[BradBlog]

29. "One exception"?! You mean "Cascade of Widespread Irregularities" as state Supreme Court Nom said?

Oh I know you are all over this and constantly throw up the one exception the process
that you've found in 10 years - Waukesha county.

"One exception"??? Sounds like you didn't bother to read either the article linked in the original post above OR the ones I posted for you in my reply above.

If you think there has been "one exception" in WI, then you must not being paying attention, or purposely putting your head in the sand. In the election you seem to be referring to (contested state Supreme Court race from 2011), there were far more concerns than simply the ones you cite in Waukesha. As Joanne Kloppenburg said when she ultimately conceded (because, as she told me, she simply couldn't afford the money to continue her challenge), there was a "cascade" of "widespread irregularities" across the state.

If you'd like to ignore that point, and the mountains of evidence I've reported on to back it up, that's up to you.

I am never surprised to see you constantly extrapolate the corruption found there to the rest of the state.

Actually, don't know that I've ever described what happened in Waukesha as "corruption", as I only report what I have evidence to support. While Waukesha's now-former County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus was incredibly incompetent and very partisan, I don't know that I've ever described her failures as "corruption". But, you seem to know my work better than I do, apparently.

Corruption in one county deriving from one county clerk who is no longer in office doesn't not signify that the whole process if fucked up.

Correct. And I've never asserted, argued or reported as much. Rather, as in the article linked in the OP above, I point out that the system that failed in Stoughton is used across much of the state, many other states, and has failed over and over again in other elections (such as in NY in 2010 when the NY Daily News found it dropped thousands of votes). Seems like citizens ought to be concerned about that. You're not. Okey dokey.

But, as the Karen McKim, of the progressive Wisconsin Grassroots Network notes (as quoted in the article you didn't bother to read):

Had this programming error been a simple flip --- telling the machine to count 'yes' votes from 'no' bubbles and vice-versa --- and not the blatantly obvious error it was, the municipal canvass would almost certainly have certified the results without examining even one actual ballot; the Stoughton newspaper would be coming up with perfectly believable reasons why theirs was the first city ever to vote 75% no instead of 75% yes, and a few referendum backers and election-integrity activists would be saying "That's got to be a miscount" to anyone who would listen --which would not be many.

Apparently you disagree with the progressives in WI, and seem to be one of the "not many" she refers to in her post.

You are welcome to keep ignoring the need for citizen oversight and overseeable elections if you like. I'll keep fighting for citizens to both have and exercise that right in the name of representative democracy that voters may some day have confidence in again.

[marions ghost]

23. Sad

you really believe that your process "corrects for shit."

[sybylla]

25. As a Dem who has worked the polls on several election days.

Who has observed canvasses, participated in several recounts and followed closely the regulations governing elections in my state, yes I do.

Getting all wild eyed every time something goes the slightest bit cockeyed only distracts from tracking down and fixing the real threats to election integrity.

[marions ghost]

27. What re the "real threats"

to election integrity.

[Botany]

15. Brad those machines didn't "fail to count the ballots" but were doing what they were ...

.... just doing what they were programmed to do.

2014 was way dirtier then people will ever know.

[Rex]

20. 8 darkhorse wins, all GOP.

Probably horrible odds. I haven't trusted voting since 2000, still do it but my faith was shattered on that day and probably will always be.

[snot]

16. K&R!

[Half-Century Man]

17. This is a perfect opportunity to put to rest the question of digital errors in voting machine tallies

Hand count twice all the ballots cast in Wisconsin, compare those totals to the figures given by the machines.

Proof, one way or the other.

[RobertEarl]

18. Would be the right thing to do; a Hand count

We have found a serious error in the vote counting machines.

Without a hand count of all the votes we will never know how many other errors have occurred.

The only question at this point is: Do election officials want to prove the count is correct?

[Rex]

21. It amazes me, they can spend trillions of dollars on the NSA so they can see if each

American is eating their corn at regular food intake gatherings...but they can't find the money to make sure we have rock solid tamper proof voting. Of course why would they, gerrymandering practically destroyed this country. You don't even hear them care about that problem.

There is so much outrageous bullshit that needs to be fixed, I have no idea where to even start.

[marions ghost]

24. ^^^

...so much outrageous bullshit....

[blkmusclmachine]

22. Rig The Vote

And from the DEMS ---> Crickets!

I wonder WHY???

[eridani]

28. There are paper ballots. So count them already! n/t