Wisconsin aftermath: Voters in disbelief over Walker victory

[midnight]

#!

[CrispyQ]

1. Here's what I don't understand.

They said a lot of dems were against the recall & so voted for Walker. If I had been against the recall, I would simply have not voted - I would NOT have voted FOR Walker. I just don't get it. :shurg:

[Greybnk48]

2. There are MANY here in Wisconsin scratching our heads

over the results. It's puzzling.

[Botany]

3. To me it does not pass the smell test at all

You people hit every metric for turn out and in getting the recall petitions
signed in a number of red counties you had more people signing up to get
Walker kicked out then voted for him in 2010.

The cover story that "people wanted to send a message that they were against
the recall" strikes me of Ohio in 2004 where bush's "win" was attributed to
values voters who were against gay marriage.

Call the race quick and time to move on because their is nothing to see there.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10843597

[Greybnk48]

11. I agree that it smells funny.

But we all know from experience that even if we have evidence of election fraud, nothing will happen. I'm just sick.

[itsrigged]

50. Big Money rigged the voting machines

Last edited Fri Jul 20, 2012, 03:24 PM - Edit history (1)

Believe it... see recent posts in places Minnesota and on this thread... shady out of state two party outfit as third party vender operating shady and shadily from a strip mall with only a P.O. box in control of over 3000 voting machines in 46 districts throughout Wisconsin... called command central... the women in charge of programming the machines refused to take an ethical test required by a potential previous employer and was thus let go... you will find more links in recent posts including Bev's discovery that 400,000 votes are missing in Wisconsin and that the Prosser the chokers vote tally has evidence of fraud that is not being addressed...

Consider also my reply to DM on my first post in places state being Minnesota... below is a copy of that reply.


Even then, if the machine was rigged the paper taped roll could have been altered to match the rigged data stored on the memory cards... you need to view Bes "hacking democracy" documentary from start to finish... its over an hour... it is the full length that HBO aired a while back to understand how even the optic scanners as well as the touch screen machines can be rigged to miss-read the inputs and change a predetermined percentage of votes cast or optically read by a scanner to automatically adjust the reported or printed results to give a desired result and reflect the winner to of won by a pre determined percentage of the total votes cast...

I guess Bev Harris got some negative support and or attacks on what she was earlier trying to get across prior to the movie documentary HBO aired now on U-tube... I gave a link to it further up the thread.

I posted this in Places in MN and DM gave me a little history on Bev but now are giving support... must of seen her HBO full length movie now on u-tube that enabled them to consider taking it more seriously and that Bev Harris was right all along on the seriousness of these big corporate venders selling voting machines that they or others could at anytime rig to control elections... You can find my reply on that Minnesota thread or on a more recent thread on this thread.

[midnight]

4. I had not heard that.... Do you have a source or a link... On election day

Last edited Mon Jun 11, 2012, 03:01 PM - Edit history (1)

I was told an out of work union worker was called and told he didn't have to vote because he signed the recall election petition... I wonder how many of those calls went out? Driving down Barker Road in Brookfield their was a strange sign I saw on election day... It said something about don't vote for the recall...My passenger and I thought the message was skewed enough that it would most likely lead to people not voting...Lot's of disinformation about who should vote...

[CrispyQ]

5. There was a huge campaign based on this message.

I can't find anything at the moment. Since the election the first few pages of Google search are all about the win.

However, the evening before the election I heard Erin Burnett on CNN going on & on about "Why are we having this recall? Elections have consequences & if you don't like your new officials, then you wait until election day & boot them out then." That was very loosely paraphrased, but she spent a good 5 minutes harping on this message. The next day on DU there were a few threads where people said it had been an ongoing campaign since almost the start. I believe it was funded by the right wing. I will continue to look for a link.

The thing is, it's all things combined that dirty our elections - the lying phone calls & postcards saying you don't have to vote, the complicit & compromised media, purging voter rolls of people who may be minorities or democratic voters, paperless voting, encouraging apathy with commentaries like Burnett's.

[midnight]

29. Pages of info. discussing this election are going missing..

I was reading and trying to verify info. with a google check and the pages were missing...

Specifically I was trying to verify Barret's 1percent lead before the 27 day campaign started...

[mzteris]

9. a guy in my office got that call

he laughed at them and said, how stupid do you think people are?

Well, I guess some people were.

Although, I'm of the opinion that the fix was in. The Koch bros can buy ANYTHING.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

40. I cant imagine that made much of a dent in the voter turnout (which was very high statewide) -nt

[NorthCarolina]

13. I wouldn't overlook the possibility of election fraud...

of course nobody will ever know for sure...at least not for years to come.

[L. Coyote]

14. Actually, look at the results, compare the votes for Barrett 2010 and 2012.

Whose got voters in Wisconsin?? BARACK does!!
Obama 1,677,211 vs. Walker 1,334,450

Barrett 2012 = 1,162,785
Barrett 2010 = 1,004,303

McCain 2008 = 1,262,393
Walker 2010 = 1,128,941

I could spend all day trying to keep up with the disinformation floating on DU, and i would never even get close to countering a fraction of it!

[mojowork_n]

17. Yes, of course, and

...if my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle.

If all the votes cast in 2008 could be..... what? Transferred or projected accurately.....
... to mean, what?

One reason that the voter turnout was smaller this year than in the presidential election
year was the nature of the campaign itself. The media bombardment on television, alone,
was enough to discourage many people from voting. I live here, in Miltown, and I can
honestly tell you there were quite a few people I spoke with who wanted nothing to do
with the election. "They're all bastards, I'm not going to vote, this whole election makes
me sick." Instead of skunks, if all you had to rely on for information were the TV ads,
trying to follow this race was the equivalent of prehistoric sauropods having a pissing
contest. (Well, considering the size of the ad budgets, maybe one uber-giant sauropod
against a garden variety tricerotops or diplodocus. But you get the point.)

I think that's a distinct feature of TV negative-ad campaigning. The same thing happened
during the election for Supreme Court between Kloppenberg and Prosser.

It helped to bury the whole purpose and issues of the recall, the point of having the
election in the first place.

[L. Coyote]

19. Indeed, people will sit out recall elections, more on one side than the other

but, you missed the point: Barrett got more votes this time than in 2010. However, Walker turned out even more additional voters this time.

Those are the facts. The votes and their underlying reasoning can be interpreted/characterized in different ways however. And, yes, that is what buying media can accomplish, control of the interpretation of political reality, to the extent that people are reliant on that media. Overthrow that control or the popularity of that media, and it loses power.

[mojowork_n]

20. Television Rules the Nation (Daft Punk)

A musical selection that echoes that theme:

I think this thread is also about the possibility that the tabulated number
of voters, on some level, may have been fabricated, embellished, or
flat out written from somebody's best-possible-case-for-Republicans
script.

Wouldn't it be great if we had some sort of information systems relief
mechanism, that would wash away any and all possible doubts?

[midnight]

30. Do you have a link that says that?

[eowyn_of_rohan]

41. Voter turnout was HUGE in most of the state - record high turnout in a number of areas

MSM started downplaying turnout Wednesday afternoon, ending up saying it was only 57% statewide. No way. I will never believe that - not with all reports to the contrary on Tuesday

[mojowork_n]

45. Here's a link...

...to "just another wordpress.com site," Richard Charnin's blog:

http://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2012/06/09/walker-recall-the-exit-pollsters-mo-never-changes/

A hit that was posted.... I can't remember where. But he's a
numbers guy and has had an interest in elections for a while.

[midnight]

33. Enron was a master of numbers too... Please post a link to where you got the numbers...

[L. Coyote]

34. What, you think I'm posting false election results? ROFLMAO

Did you bother to look them up first, or just blather away?

[mojowork_n]

46. The request was for your source, whatever it was.

Comparing the Obama 2008 totals with this year's may
be entertaining, it may even be worthwhile, but it's such
a superficial comparison -- it's only a starting point.

Have any answers to any of these questions:

Obama had a 56.2% recorded share in Wisconsin and 63.3% in the unadjusted exit poll (2.4% margin of error). Assuming Obama had a 60% True Vote share, then to match the recall vote, Walker needed the following:
1) 81% of McCain and 71% of Obama voters turned out.
2) He needed to win 25% of Obama and 95% of McCain voters.
3) He needed 46% of new voters who did not vote in 2010. The 2012 exit poll indicates he had 45% and that new voters comprised 13% of the total vote.

Not my questions or numbers, THIS is where I found them:

http://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2012/06/06/wisconsin-recall-the-adjusted-final-exit-poll-was-forced-to-match-an-unlikely-recorded-vote/

[L. Coyote]

48. Start with a flawed method

and you end up with a flawed conclusion.

My numbers come from the vote results, of course!! No inference or assumption, just the numbers.

[dotymed]

6. Honestly, I really believe that

because of the crooked voting machines, the results are pre-determined.

Like carlin said:"If voting really mattered, it would be illegal."

I am insane, I too keep voting, hoping to change things...or to at least minimize the destruction...

[dmosh42]

7. Will there be a re-count? And what kind of checking did the DOJ supposedly do?

[eowyn_of_rohan]

42. good question. Maybe they were with the tea party thugs who were harrassing and intimidating vot

countless reports of this in Milwaukee, Madison, Appleton, Wausau, etc...

[HereSince1628]

8. That's a statement of belief, and belief looks for the confirmation it needs to be reified

We see what we look for and interpret it as confirmation of our beliefs.

This is the nature of confirmational bias.

Confirmational bias is a dangerous thing. It is a detour around the meaning hiding in what can be empirically examined.

[mojowork_n]

21. Confirmational bias is something a person can

at least attempt to control on his or her own. As much as possible,
your want to be objective and neutral on what the facts are.

But if the "facts" (vote totals) don't square with or conform to all of the
other evidence or known circumstances, what are you supposed
to do? Automatically assume you're imagining things?

I can come up with a whole slew of reasons to second guess the
effectiveness of the effort put forth by Democrats in the recall
election, but that's a separate question from asking, "how were
the votes actually counted," and "how can we know that those
tabulations were reliable and accurate?"

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2007/2585

E-voting machines have already been extensively studied and condemned by a wide range of expert committees, commissions and colleges, including the General Accountability Office, the Carter-Baker Commission, Johns Hopkins University, Princeton University, Stanford University and others. Rigging of a recount in Cleveland has resulted in two felony convictions. The failures of e-voting machines have been the subject of numerous documentary films, including the aptly titled HBO special "Hacking Democracy."

That's an old (2007) post from FreePress.org. What's happened in the interim hasn't
done anything to dispel the doubts or answer the questions, but it has shown that
committees, colleges and commissions -- when pitted against governments and party
mandarins and the party bureaucrats that serve those mandarins -- have just a liiiittle
less clout.

[HereSince1628]

24. Acting on the notion "If I can think it, then someone is doing it" was

Dick Cheney's logic. This alternate reality drove Team B thinking and much paranoia for the past 30 years.

It is fine to conduct surveillance to look for evidence of electronic voting fraud. It is illogical and not fine to believe that it happened without proof.

[dotymed]

27. It has been proven, dozens of times, that

these "voting machines" are easily hacked or programmed to "flip votes." People have been prosecuted successfully for having done so. How much more logic do you require?

[eowyn_of_rohan]

43. i have no time or patience for those who choose to remain willfully ignorant on this...

[mojowork_n]

28. There are two entirely separate questions involved.

Before I even start to compose a reply, let me please un-stuff the words you've put in my mouth.

• I'm certainly not claiming "someone is doing it" -- stealing an election -- because 'paranoid logic' sez it must be so.
  
• I don't 'believe' fraud occurred.
  
• Using "proof" and "electronic voting" in the same sentence is a little fuzzy and meaningless, isn't it?
  

Yes, I have reasons to suspect the accuracy, reliability and security of electronic voting systems. They've been abandoned in favor of a return to paper ballots, in Great Britain, Ireland, and the Netherlands. {See: http://www.libdemvoice.org/evoting-why-it-was-abandoned-in-the-uk-22488.html } (Hey, I don't know, I don't have any idea how complete that list is. It's just what popped up. I've been reading up on this but still have research to do.)

But what I really want to say is, there are TWO separate and distinct questions here.

Question 1 is big, wide-ranging and open-ended. It's asking:

"Gee, what happened in the election?"

What were the issues and messages? Who said and wrote what, and how were those statements disseminated and received, by whom? From the start of the campaign to the last day, how many "political messages" were seen, heard or read by typical voter(s) and what effects did they all have on voters' decision-making? You're not looking for 'proof' of anything, just useful general lessons for the next go-around.

Question 2 is more specific. How were votes recorded, who did the tabulating -- how? -- and who was in charge of making sure that all guidelines and controls were followed.

The most important aspect of that question is, "Is it possible to have any certainty or confidence that the recorded vote numbers were accurate?" (Even if all the guidelines and controls were followed.)

It's always worth asking no matter what kind of voting equipment is used or who's in charge of the election.

This isn't a perfect world and it would be highly unusual for any election to be conducted "perfectly," without any errors. In recent presidential elections, I think it was typical to see more than two million ballots discarded as "spoiled," nation-wide, each time. On a variety of different types of voting equipment.

There are always going to be mechanical errors. Whether you have paper ballots, punch cards, touchscreen machines (voter's finger touched the screen but no signal was generated, or the push was out of sequence or generated the wrong signal), or optical scanners (pencil mark was too light or too thick for the machine to read), some occasional small errors are likely inevitable. Occasionally, voters even spoil ballots themselves, because they can't decide or can't remember or just impulsively rush away to a bathroom or other emergency. (I don't know, I suppose it happens.)

It's only when you see patterns emerge -- such as the disproportionately skewed number of 'spoiled ballots' in Latino, Native American and black precincts in New Mexico, in 2004 and again in 2008 -- that you need to begin to look harder to see what were some of the factors that led to those "errors." For example:

In a precinct-by-precinct analysis of the Florida 2000 race, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission discovered that 54 percent of spoiled ballots were cast by African-Americans. Florida is typical. Nationwide, the number of black votes "disappeared" into the spoiled pile is about 1 million. The other million in the no-count pit come mainly from Hispanic, Native-American and poor white precincts...

http://www.gregpalast.com/kerry-won-ohio-rn-just-count-the-ballots-at-the-back-of-the-bus/

But again, it would be useless to suggest that every single one of the mis-votes that were cast in those Florida districts represented a deliberate act of voter suppression, or electoral ethnic cleansing. That could be an over-reach. (Maybe.)

It's usually enough to create and continue to tolerate the conditions that tend to cause a higher percentage of vote tabulation errors in those districts. Make sure that the voting machines are older and not as well maintained. Make people stand in longer lines to get to them to create delays and congestion. If the polling place workers are short-staffed and under-supported, but expected to serve a bigger crowd of people, there will likely be a higher percentage of "unreadable" ballots cast no matter what else happens. ....In other words, those kinds of election day voting effects could be just ordinary neglect. They doesn't always have to be the product of a deliberate or malicious purging of the voter rolls. Certain kinds of voters just have more difficulty than others when it comes to registering to vote. Sometimes that keeps them from making it all the way through the line and into the voting booth. When their ballots are mis-tabulated with greater frequency, well, that's just par for the course for 'those people,' isn't it?

(As I said before, we don't live in a perfect world.)

In the recall election in Wisconsin this past week it was also certainly disturbing to see that despite the predictions about a "too close to call" race, the big, big turnout in a lot of places and huge numbers (HUGE) of 1st-time voters, two of the big news channels "called the race" in the middle of the afternoon. That was before a lot of voters had even gotten off work and had a chance to decide if they were even going to make an effort to vote.

So with all of that -- it's certainly a messy process, in a lot of ways, isn't it? -- I'm not close to claiming that I -- or anyone else -- has any "proof" that fraud or election theft took place.

That whole question of "exit polls" taken while the vote's still going on is another separate, distinct issue that also has nothing to do with the type of voting equipment used. No one but the media has access to any of those polls, or any information about when and where they were taken, let alone what the results were.

So we don't know what was going on there. We don't know how many routinely mis-cast or spoiled ballots there might have been, or how many people who might have wanted to vote didn't make the effort because of the early "projected winner" declaration.

On the other hand, what do we know?

Here's the state of Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board "Voting Equipment by County" map. Some text in the middle of the page makes the claim that the information is all up to date (except as noted for Pierce County.)

http://gab.wi.gov/elections-voting/voting-equipment/voting-equipment-use

I opened the pdf to see the more detailed list, by county and municipality, to check something reported at that "Meet Command Central" link to the Wisconsin Citizens Media Co-op website.

John Washburn filed an open records request for data on the touchscreen (2 eProm) voting machines used in Fox Point (wards 1 - 4) in last summer's Senate recall race.

The pdf from the GAB (page 97 of 169; April 21, 2012) lists Fox Point this way:

COUNTY TYPE MUNICIPALITY SYSTEM VENDOR EQUIPMENT ACCESSIBLE EQUIPMENT

VILLAGE FOX POINT Optical Scan ES&S Eagle w/ modem SEQ-AVC Edge II 5.0.24


...Phooey, enough.

STOP

I don't think there's going to be "proof" of anything on the GAB website -- whether it's up to date or accurate or not -- but
wouldn't it be great if there was an actual:

audit verification of ballots that were cast?

Some states require optical scanners for that reason, so that they can do a manual paper audit of a percentage sample of the ballots that went through the machines.

Does the Wisconsin GAB have a requirement that that type of eVoting equipment is supposed to be used?

Is Governor W. in charge of, or does he have oversight over the GAB?

What's his record been when it comes to elections? (Let's forget about his student days at Marquette, that was so long ago.)
But more recently... Doesn't the John Doe investigation, so far, show that there may be reasons to doubt Scotty's ability to walk that fine line, between his responsibility to all of us (as a public official on taxpayer time), and his purely partisan activities campaigning on behalf of that permanent Republican majority?

That meeting in Boehner's office right after President Obama was elected, where the Republican congressional leaders met to plan their strategy for the next four years, and how they were going to work with the President. ("Party first," not "country first," is how I believe that went down. Was Gov. W. copied with those meeting notes?)

[midnight]

31. Nothing illogical about inspecting the source code because that is the evidence...

[sybylla]

37. Thank you.

This is really getting tiring and I appreciate your efforts in the battle against this unmerited assumption.

I spent several days after the recall fighting the "stolen election" meme, but gave up. They just want it too badly to see it didn't happen.

It doesn't matter how much you point out that WI has a random audit system in place for every election, that our SC recount found zero evidence of optiscan hacking or vote manipulation on the DRE's.

You're arguing with the dining room table and I love you for it.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

44. a major problem we have are the clerks and pollworkers who continue to defend voting machines.

and refuse to educate themselves ... zero evidence of vote manipulation on the DREs? That's right, they are designed that way, and it is illegal to inspect the source codes... no evidence of opscan hacking? (Ignore the hundreds of security breaches with ballot bags and election materials...)

[mojowork_n]

47. Sorry.

Does it come down to this, maybe?

Reasonable people can have honest differences of opinion.

But when it comes to machines, to computers, they're only as good as
the information / programming that's fed to them.

It's very easy to assume that because no human appears to be involved
in something that looks like the *responsibility* of the machine, there's nothing
bogus going on......

F'r instance -- here are the GAB audit rules and procedures:

http://gab.wi.gov/node/1409

"The staff shall use the random number generator in Excel to select 250 reporting units for audit by local election officials."

Is it also a randomly selected copy of the Excel software, on a randomly selected PC?

[Sirveri]

26. If the result was pre-determined, why spend so much cash on ads?

Just plausible deniability? They're paying themselves?

[drm604]

10. The whole claim that people voted for Walker because they were against the recall on principle

strikes me as silly. Elections are all about principles aren't they? They're often about competing principles.

I'm very skeptical that, for large numbers of people, this one particular principle overrode all other principles (union rights, the influence of big business, etc.).

Think about it. The claim being made here is that people have ideas about how democracy should work, and that this recall flew in the face of those ideas.

The claim is that they were so offended by the idea of this recall that they voted the opposite of how they otherwise would have voted (else why claim that this was such an important factor?)

If these people were so concerned about the functioning of democracy (and they should be) then why weren't they concerned about the influence of big money on elections? Isn't that a much bigger violation than actually taking a vote, even if you don't like the timing of that vote?

Would large numbers of people actually abandon their beliefs and what they see as their own self interest to protect some philosophical principle about when recalls are and aren't appropriate? I honestly find it hard to imagine the mass of voters standing on some lofty principle about how the system should work.

[loudsue]

12. EXCELLENT JOB, BRAD!!!!

You covered all the points that needed covering, and you did it so well!

[SoutherDem]

15. Just wondering

I am not from Wisconsin, so the news I get is well spun by the time I hear it.

But, I did hear someone say somethings which made sense.

Barrett lost before, why run the same guy again?

While I realize the need of a primary why was it so late, it gave Barrett only a month or so to campaign.

Also, why wasn't there a back room meeting, where the party worked out a candidate so either no primary was needed or it was just a technicality.

Walker not only had the money he had a long time to campaign. Pryor to the primary the contest was recall Walker but didn't say who would be in his place.

[mojowork_n]

18. Good questions.

The only thing I can think of is what Will Rogers once famously said.

"I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat."

I don't know why that is. When you ask Republicans what they need
to win, the answer is often some synonym for "ammunition." When you
ask Democrats, they say, "information." Republicans have so much less
difficulty staying on message because they're so often arguments by
assertion: "Bidness GOOD, Gubmint BAD;" or "that ***** in
the White House is what's screwin' up this country and our economy."
or any one of the other endless variations on that theme.

A parallel from military history would be undisciplined barbarians (Good
God, did Marcus Bachman have a lesson to teach us?) attacking a
Greek phalanx, or Roman "turtle."

But when the Huns came along, riding their tough little steppe ponies
in cohesive, flexible units, things changed. They had compound bows
that could shoot arrows through armor and it was all over for the
permanent Roman majority.

It's kind of gross comparing perception management/information warfare
with democracy but I'm just trying to say I think I follow your very
important point -- why isn't our side better organized?

In this election, specifically, I can give you just one answer. During the
time that there was no one stepping up against Walker, before the
primary (which had to be held, I think, to allow the Republicans to run
some fake-democrats in the legislative primaries), the focus on our
side was supposed to have been on making the case for the recall,
generally, regardless of who our candidate was going to be.

Procedurally, that could have been our time in "turtle" formation -- all
the arrows flying out from our side, against Walker's actual record as
governer of Wisconsin -- with no one for him to attack directly.

But that didn't really happen. That was also the time that, by law,
according to the rules that were written into the state constitution
by the original Progressives ("Fighting" Bob Lafollette and all the rest
of them) the party being challenged had a right to raise unlimited
funds for their own use, in the recall election. We saw that money
being spent right away, not just on TV ads, but on general perception
management. For example, the state's largest circulation daily, the
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel runs it's own variant on the "Politifact"
franchise. When congresswoman Gwen Moore asserted that Gov.
W. had "gutted" tax credits for the poor and elderly, the savants
who wrote the analysis of her credibility decided her choice of
adjectives was unnecessarily harsh. After a review of actual facts
that showed that, in truth, credits for the poor and elderly were
noticeably lower than they had been formerly, they asked....

"....does that amount to 'gutting' the credit?.... even staunch
advocates of the credit think Moore's 'gutting' description went
too far."

http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2012/may/10/gwen-moore/rep-gwen-moore-says-gov-scott-walker-gutted-tax-cr/

The fact that the credit continued to exist, in an admittedly
reduced form, was enough to discredit Congresswoman Moore's
main point. Which was true.

That same kind of stuff helped to distract from and obscure the
main message of the recall.

PS -- one other observation, sort of along the same lines. Early on,
when the recall was just getting started, I went up to the north
side JCC to listen to John Nichols lay out the message and get
people energized for the petition drives that were still to come.
John went all the way back to before the Civil War. It was a history
lesson on the abolitionists and the very proud tradition of Wisconsin
standing up to oppose injustice, during and after the Civil War and
the Robber Baron era that followed. That was what framed the
whole effort to have rules for recall written in to the state
constitution.

But people back then must have had much better attention spans.

The day before the election, I saw this younger dude crouching
over a copy of our local alternative weekly, "The Shepherd Express,"
which had an article summarizing the reasons for the recall, and why
people should be voting for Barret.

"There's too many words here," he said. "There should be bullet
points. Not so many long paragraphs."

The prose was too dense and I didn't have a word to interject or
a reply to make.

I was one lonely barbarian riding around with my compound bow,
but when I turned to look for an arrow, or another group of
horsemen riding around, or some other resource or ally, I didn't
know where to go.

...I found out later that dude did end up voting for Barret. I think a
whole lot of people made that same decision, privately. I'm just afraid
we'll never really know -- with 100% certainty or reliability -- how
many of them there really were.

[dragonlady]

23. The recall election schedule is set by the Wisconsin constitution

If there had not been a primary, the final election would have been on May 8, six weeks after the petitions were certified. The primary, needed because more than one Democrat chose to run, added another month. The writers of the recall section must have thought that the reason for recall would be serious enough that the election should be as soon as feasible so that the offending officeholder would be gone quickly.

Your observation about Walker (and his allies, the media and the PACs) having more time and money to campaign is a very important part of explaining this situation.

[SoutherDem]

25. Thanks for the answer

Now I understand, up to now it was presented in the news as if the Democrats were infighting as to who would be running against Walker.

[sybylla]

38. Recall timeline determined by our constitution.

Recalls, when they were put into our constitution by the progressives in the early 1900's were intended to be a speedy remedy - just like someone charged with a crime gets a speedy trial.

Why Barrett? He wasn't chosen by the party, he was chosen in an open primary from a list of four possibilities. Could we have had a better choice come forward and put their name on the primary ballot? I believe there was at least one, but they didn't come forward. I partly blame that on the party. I don't think they did their homework very well when it came time to run test polling and recruiting the best candidate. But, when you're running against a 30:1 money disadvantage, WTF are your chances anyway? How many candidates who might have had a better chance saw this as a suicide mission?

Avoid a primary? That's not the Wisconsin/Progressive way. The people chose the candidate. In WI, we do not register to vote by party. The Dem Party is a dues-paying membership based organization - one in which few people actually are members (as a percentage of the voting population). To have the party come forward and make that choice would have been heavy-handed and turned even more people off to the recall. Those who worked to collect the signatures, those who made the recall happen, would have felt betrayed.

That long time Walker had to raise money and to campaign definitely put him at an advantage. But I cannot say the Dem Party and the unions didn't drop the ball here. Knocking doors and talking to voters confirmed the view expressed in exit polling that people didn't like the recall process itself or didn't believe it was warranted in this case. The party and the unions could have spent the last six months spending money on ads and mailers that would have persuaded voters otherwise. They didn't. They let Wanker define the process early and never made an effort to counter his BS.

[mojowork_n]

16. The comments following the post bradblog video have a few more details

For anyone scratching their heads, wanting to read more:

Additional text and links at Bradblog.com

The most startling bit of news (for me) was the "arabian nights" New-for-Old deal
made by 46 Wisconsin county clerks. I don't have the details on the sequence of
events, or when they were all selected, purchased and installed but a bargain was
made between a small, 2 or 3-person company in St. Cloud, Minnesota, "Command Central,"
a distributor for "Dominion Systems," Canada, which had earlier swallowed up the
predecessor corporate entities, "ES&S" and "Sequoia Voting Systems," and those
county clerks.

Meet-command-central-the-people-in-charge-of-wisconsin-voting-machines/

reference pertinent details about the history of those earlier
companies' participation in our election process, here:

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2007/2585

... "Command Central" made a deal to swap 3,000 brand-spanking-new touchscreen voting
machines for 1,500 used optical scan voting machines, with those 46 Wisconsin counties. Both
types of election apparatus are eminently 'hackable' but the touchscreen equipment has
the additional advantage that it leaves no paper trail. We all remember the recount for
the Kloppenberg-Prosser Supreme Court election, where all those busted open and unsealed
bags of paper ballots left such an untidy spectacle. That all took place in May of 2011.
The Wisconsin county clerks' conference was held in June, and by July, 2011 those brand new "Command
Central" touchscreen machines were in place in Fox Point (wards 1 - 4) for the epic Sandy
Pasch & Alberta Darling State Senate recall race.

http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Alberta_Darling_recall,_Wisconsin_State_Senate_%282011%29

A few folks were scratching their heads over the results of that one, too. For one thing, the new
machines came equipped with two ePROMs's (programmable read-only memory) that stores
the machine software. There's one ePROM for "testing functions" and another for actual "election
functions," like tabulating votes. That's still how those units are configured, apparently.

In any event, it's probably worth noting that at that annual Wisconsin county clerks conference
in Ladysmith, in June of last year, the chairperson of the Legislation Committee was Waukesha
County's Kathy Nickolaus.

From the Meet-Command-Central Link:

....{The} meeting featured a break-out session entitled, “Mastering Tough Questions from News Media, Directors and Other Audiences”:

Whether it’s a news event, a hostile public hearing or a difficult internal meeting, the knowledge and skills gained in this class will increase our ability and confidence to succeed as mastering the tough questions everyone fears. By understanding the anatomy of ‘tough questions’ you will gain power of them. Learn response techniques and model answers that you can apply to any situation.

Al Guyant, president of Guyant and Associates, a training firm specializing in human communications, conducted the session. Guyant has prepared clients for 60 Minutes, Dateline and other “tough question” formats... ...Another break-out session was scheduled specifically to spend time with the election vendors: Command Central and Dominion. Command Central was represented by Vice President Aaron Storbeck.

In an interview with Barb With from the Wisconsin Citizens Media Co-op, Aaron Storbeck admitted that all software programming for the vote tabulation process was done by one person, his step-mother, Barb Wahl. Ms. Wahl, the investigators at the Wisconsin Citizens Media Co-op found, had previously been discharged from a position as data administrator for another company, ACS Enterprise Solutions, for repeatedly refusing to take a mandatory online ethics exam that required "an employee... to read workplace scenarios and answer questions about ethical workplace behavior."

According to John Washburn, an election integrity investigator and professional software tester, who has filed multiple requests for information and open records with the State of Wisconsin's General Accountability Board (now within the purview of the Walker administration), the agreement by which the 46 county clerks agreed to accept the new 3,000 touchscreen voting machines for the used 1,500 optical scanner paper-trail voting machines, "violates the statutes issued by the GAB for State approved system as described on the Government Accountability Board’s website that requires the inclusion of an Optech Insight Scanner."

So, with all that in mind, there's no reason at all anyone should have the slightest reason to doubt that our election process in Wisconsin is conducted following responsible and transparent procedures and processes. None of the people who are employed by the voting machine companies or the state of Wisconsin or individual counties has anything to hide. Unlike the effort to "verify the recall" when whole battalions of tea party volunteers were able to download and attempt to cross-check signatures and addresses on recall petitions -- we all know how many fictitious names, cartoon characters and anonymous, ordinary, poor and middle class people signed those -- the fact that this race was considered:

• too close to call (despite the over-reliance on land lines over cell phones, in some polls, and other skewed survey techniques)
  
  
• the most recent percentage shifts clearly trended towards the Democrats, and
  
  
• there was near-record turnout in most all the Democratic Party's known precinct strongholds

should have made some difference. But on election day none of that apparently had any effect at all.

FAUX News was able to "project that Walker would survive the recall" at 2:08 pm, the middle of the afternoon on June 5th, election day.

http://video.foxnews.com/v/1675322440001/fox-news-projects-wisconsins-walker-will-survive-recall/

And it was all over after that. (With who knows how many people discouraged from turning out to vote, after work, with the news of that announcement.)

Nothing to see here, move along.....

[midnight]

32. This information only supports the fact that of all the tools used in this election nothing was more

securing to walkers win than this control over the machines and it's source code...


"all software programming for the vote tabulation process was done by one person, his step-mother, Barb Wahl. Ms. Wahl, the investigators at the Wisconsin Citizens Media Co-op found, had previously been discharged from a position as data administrator for another company, ACS Enterprise Solutions, for repeatedly refusing to take a mandatory online ethics exam that required "an employee... to read workplace scenarios and answer questions about ethical workplace behavior."

[mojowork_n]

35. That's the 64 bazillion dollar question, the extent to which

the bureaucratic machinery has been politicized. Who made the purchase recommendations
and who approved buying all those touchscreen voting machines? Are they compliant with the
GAB's guidelines (?) and/or requirements (?) for voting recording equipment?

Who was it that decided which voting machines would go where, and how many there would be per polling location. Is the information about equipment used, by county, at the GAB’s website really accurate and up-to-date?

Personally, I have some doubts that the Republicans big smoke-screen, the constant preoccupation about “who is entitled to step in to a voting booth,” hasn't maybe obscured an even more important question:

• What safeguards are in place to prevent someone from walking in to the polling location and
  electronically "flipping" many, many recorded votes? All from a safe distance.
  

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/09/30/researchers-hack-voting-machine-for-26/?test=latestnews

The electronic hacking tool consists of a $1.29 microprocessor and a circuit board that costs about $8. Together with the $15 remote control, which enabled the researchers to modify votes from up to a half-mile away, the whole hack runs about $26.

Two of the takeovers show the researchers controlling the buttons on the keypad despite what the "real" voter enters. But in what Warner called "probably the most relevant attack for vote tampering," the researchers were able to blank the e-voting machine's screen for a split-second after the "vote now" button was pressed. While the screen went dark, they remotely entered their own numbers into the DRE's keypad.

Johnston explained in the video: "When the voter hits the 'vote now' button to register his votes, we can blank the screen and then go back and vote differently and the voter will be unaware that this has happened."

Also -----> http://news.yahoo.com/researchers-hack-e-voting-machine-similar-2012-election-043305069.html


Not to say that there's any "proof" or even to suggest that we "believe" that this kind of vote theft ever occurred here, during last Tuesday's election, but has all the over-emphasis on protecting against a few individuals casting votes they shouldn’t be allowed to cast maybe taken away from any other attempts at oversight. Such as preventing dozens, hundreds, or thousands (or hundreds of thousands?) of votes from being switched? With the properly registered and legal voters who do cast legal ballots completely "unaware that this has happened."

If it would be like those magician's tricks where a distraction ("keep your eye on what the left hand is doing&quot helps the magician to pull off a sleight-of-hand trick with his "free" hand.

…….And on another subject, there's very little about the tabulation, or the vote-counting process, that inspires confidence.

The fact that we really know very little about the pertinent, operational details (would it be fair to say "next-to-nothing," if you consider the info that watchdogs and government departments have on the software programming (two ePROMs???), because it's all 'private and proprietary" -- that just begs the question, how politicized has the Wisconsin G.A.B. (Government Accountability Board) become?

Who was watching the watchers, and how involved in the process were political appointee's?

Why did someone feel it necessary to bring in the public relations experts for those “break-out sessions” with county clerks, to teach them to ‘take control’ of tough questions like they were all going to be interviewed on 60 Minutes?

What’s happened that’s made it less important to emphasize “transparency” in elections, and made “control” paramount?

The paragraph you cited in your post refers only to the 3,000 Command Central DRE touchscreen machines that were part of the “new lamps for old” swap of voting equipment with the county clerks in those 46 counties. Who are the programmers that were responsible for the code in all of the other voting machines that were used in the election? How many were there? How many computers (including Kathy Nickolaus’ world famous Windows 98 personal computer, that all Waukesha County votes are tabulated on (?) does it take to hold a state-wide election? Including optical scanning machines and also the computers that are used to assist clerks in tabulating paper ballots, in those counties that still have paper ballots, what kind of oversight exists? Have any of those folks ever had difficulties answering hypothetical questions online, about ethical behavior? Has anyone ever taken the time to ask? Those are all distinct and separate questions (or separate investigations) from looking in to the possibility that people were hacking votes from individual polling places, from up to half a mile away.

The bottom line seems pretty obvious. There are very good reasons that electronic voting has been abandoned in so many other countries. It just might be worth the time and trouble for people here to make an effort to see how safe and secure our own elections are, and whether or not the Republican drumbeat for “privatization,” in this case, has been penny-wise and bazillion dollar foolish.

[mojowork_n]

36. PS

Brad Friedman was a guest on the Ed Schultz radio program today, which had substitute guest host Tony Trupiano on for Ed.

Brad pointed out that Waukesha County uses the same machines that mis-recorded the results of a Florida election.

I googled “wellington county recount”(which you might want to check for more details), but this link gives the basic summary:

http://www.sunshinestatenews.com/story/state-investigating-palm-beach-county-voting-fiasco

It was only because a spot check of randomly sampled ballots turned up some discrepancies that they had to do a complete, 100% paper recount, which turned the result over to a 'losing' candidate.


...Are we surprised this wasn't a bigger news story? I hadn't heard about it before.

[midnight]

49. Mojowork just saw this.... Thanks... I was aware of this before the election.

"WCCA Legislation Committee chair at the time was Kathy Nickolaus."http://wcmcoop.com/members/meet-command-central-the-people-in-charge-of-wisconsin-voting-machines/


This article is interesting because Barbara Wirth wrote it... She testified last year about finding vote totals with a date that was not an election date and other oddities that brought a spot light to Kathy Nicholas during the state supreme court race with Prosser....

[xfundy]

22. Two things:

Get the money out of politics. Completely. No lobbyists, etc.

It is inherently undemocratic to trust votes to private industry that refuses to release source code. What are they trying to hide? (I have a hunch.)

Voting machines and all phases of voting should be run by the government and looked over by representatives of all parties involved- at the same time, in the same rooms. And, the processes should be televised, or at least put up for review on the internet.

Also, completed vote cards, etc., should be monitored 24/7 via camera and available for anyone, at any time, to watch the (hopefully) boring live feed.

[gregoire]

51. Like Microsoft?

Maybe your sensible demand to release source code should be expanded not just from voting machines but to everything that is in control of our infrastructure. Who in the hell knows what Microsoft is hiding. Even if they're not malicious, since there are serious problems that have been known for over a decade that they haven't fixed, you know there are others that aren't public yet.

[fea5625252fe]

39. shocking