Paper trail, paper trail, paper trail.

Cleaning out the Wisconsin GOP’s Augean Stables is turning out to be one nasty job. Go get ‘em, JoAnne!

(Side note: Wow, Nickolaus really seems to be a piece of work — both partisan and incompetent. She must really be a favorite of Prosser’s and the Fitzgeralds to keep her job, even in Waukesha.)

The best way to rob a bank is to own one.
The best way to steal an election is to run one.

How do they know the paper records in Waukesha are valid?

If these people have no problem committing fraud, then you all know they have thought this through. So I agree with another poster, the fraud was conducted with votes in another part of the state and this is a misdirect. Somehow they will be able to prove these xtra votes are legit.

as i have been saying the entire system is rigged. For most part does not matter who you vote for as the are all puppets, and on the odd occasion that it does, they just rig the votes

Is everyone waking up now to the fact that we have a corrupt plutocracy and that the corporations and the rich OWN YOU. What are we going do about it. Keep trying to change it through the system they OWN?

i agree

a lot of bad things can take place in 29 hours

Do I understand this to be that the votes were always there. It was the process of letting the AP know the totals that was messed up. The legal reporting of the vote totals goes through a different channel and may not even have occurred yet.

Fraud, perhaps but given the willful ignorance of much of the electorate it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility that Posser did garner enough votes.

I’m asking for information, not trying to make inferences.

If the original vote was by computer, there is no reason why the computer couldn’t have printed a copy of what they voter did for the voter’s record, but printed out a diff version for the govt record. Unless all voters are asked to come back with their paper receipts and compare them with the paper the govt has.

The Ugly Politics of Fitzwalkerstan: Wisconsin GOP Official “Finds” Votes to Reverse Defeat of Conservative Justice; John Nichols; The Nation; 4/8/11

Yes, I’m sure Nickolaus was very careful….and very well paid. She proved her creds in ’06

This really smells and looks very bad.

You can do a lot of bad things in 29 hours

I still think the big problem happen in Milwaukee

the Kloppenburg team needs to also see what happen in Milwaukee

I expect someone to leak, some foul play that happen with this election.

the USA election system is a joke,

Diebold faith base voting machines, make USA elections a comedy show.

here you have paper ballots, however, you can switch out paper ballots in 29 hours.

the idea of misplacing 7000 votes in this election is bizarre, to say the least, especially when you boss needs them? something is not above board here

Even if the entire vote were by paper, there’s no reason why bogus ballots can’t be substituted for the ones the voters actually submitted, as you say.

It’s only if there’s some way for the voters to figure out if their votes were validly recorded in the final tally that such fraud can be prevented.

So yes, you are right that paper ballots are no guarantee against anything.

Next up, 14,000 paper ballots from Waukesha County “mistakenly” destroyed….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldCVBB-ruKY

I have watched this video several times. My gut meter goes off. She looks down. Looks like she is on the edge of tears. It doesn’t fit for me, knowing that she is “for” Prosser, that she would be feeling so sad, and what looks to me like “shame”. She has made her boss happy by finding these votes and yet, she seems very, very upset. Yes, she made a mistake, yes it looks bad. But her level of “shame” seems out of wack. I know, there’s no science here, but as a therapist, I think her non verbal is off somehow. Just my two cents. Don’t know what it means, but it almost felt to me like an abused woman. Like coercion. Like maybe she really did not want to be run under the bus.

Did anyone else have these thoughts watching the video?

Not to mention the fact that she sat on the revelation of the missing votes in Brookfield for 29 hours before revealing it. Nickolaus, incidentally, worked for the Assembly Republican caucus at a time when David Prosser was the Speaker of the Assembly, i.e. her boss.

As, oldfatguy first surmised, I can assure you that this is a distraction to keep Milwaukee County from being scrutinized. Kloppenburg GROSSLY underperformed in Milwaukee County to the tune of 10,000 to 15,000 votes. These votes in Waukesha County were intentionally withheld to keep all eyes there.

What’s in store for the Rethugs if they steal this one and then start back in with their overreaching with a corrupt Supreme Court? I can guarantee you that there will be riots, statewide public sector strikes, and various other guerilla acts of UNcivil disobedience. And it won’t just be Dane County either.

IF she’s still within re-call status then this is a mute point me thinks

Didn’t I also read yesterday that election officials in Waukesha said the turnout was normal during the day, so there would have been no reason to have a big spike producing the extra 14K votes Nicolaus claims to have “found”? And that there was silence for several hours when no totals were announced, and then “Oh my, lookie what I found” popped up?

Stinks, and is so obvious that I’m surprised they have the nerve to do something so blatant. Hmmmm, a shiny object to take attention away from fraud elsewhere?

Would an open records request provide the Kloppenburg campaign access to print rolls from computerized voting machines, paper ballots for optical scan machines or other direct evidence of the vote?

And would it deter “accidental” destruction of records?

How is it we are this far into the thread and no one has mentioned that the election results for Waukesha Co were stored on Nickolaus’s personal laptop, and only on that laptop?Not to mention that Nickolaus predicted a 10% voter turnout, many precincts ordered ballots based on that prediction and so many locations ran out of paper ballots and people were forced to use electronic touch-screen machines that haven’t been used since 2006?

Nickolaus was grilled on her decision to hold the results on her laptop, but refused to change this highly unusual technique.

Waukesha had all the firedogs on alert election night as returns were coming in – do the control f thing w/ Waukesha to see what I mean

thanks for the report News Desk

not making any predictions as to how this will turn out – but anyone who thinks the good people who slept on the Capitol floor or stood in solidarity in the snow are going to let this pass hasn’t been paying attention

I would suggest that she stay far away from small airplanes.

Since this really doesn’t pass the smell test, I hope that the forthcoming federal investigation results in indictments, convictions, and, maybe, actual jail time for these fraudsters…

I forgot there for a moment that we live in Obama’s bizarro world America, and that the jellyfish-like spines in his DOJ would be in charge of that “investigation”. Since Obama hates the unions almost as much as the Koch brothers I predict that the fascist nutjob wins and is allowed to keep office long enough to rule in favor of Walker’s law that strips the rights of public service unions to collective bargain- that is if they even find any wrongdoing in the first place.

I knew we were hellbent on the path to banana republic status, I just didn’t think we’d get here so soon.

Thanks DDay and PW for all your efforts on behalf of the Badger State.

If Prosser/Koch brothers/Walker prevails, I fear that they can block/delay a lot of the recall efforts.

With luck, we can turn this to our advantage and over the long haul show how the Koch brothers and the top 1% have bought both parties and all three-branches of government.

Because they said so.

yes! no idea what it is but my thoughts were it most certainly isn’t Katherine Harris’s bluster

Yes,

In fact, a Waukesha City Deputy Clerk said at 1:18pm that turnout was very typical, predicting somewhere between 20 to 25 percent.

Just found out about this when I got to work this morning. This really, really reaks. I’m with you on the whole people of WI will not let this pass without a fight.

The classic work from the Progressive Era describing how to steal with paper ballots is Frank Kent’s The Great Game of Politics.

It is instructive that recent cases of election fraud have been perpetrated by election department heads themselves — purging voting rolls, butterfly ballots, rigged machines, counting “mistakes” — from Theresa LaPore and Katherine Harriss to Ken Blackwell to this case.

I just spread a load of chicken shit on my garden and this election bullshit smells worse.

I’m not a therapist, but I think she is nervous about having to explain her “human error” — notice that she refers to an Access database on “another system” without revealing that it’s her personal computer (according to other reports). She’s been audited in the past and nailed for irregularities. She may just be afraid of how bad this looks costing her her job.

I didn’t watch the whole video, though, so I don’t know what might have been in the Q & A that followed.

“If the original vote was by computer, there is no reason why the computer couldn’t have printed a copy of what they voter did for the voter’s record, but printed out a diff version for the govt record.”

You have the right idea, but the machine actually writes one thing to the “paper trail” for your entertainment and then writes another thing to the electronic records for the entertainment of our lords and masters.

Care to guess which one actually counts?

As for multiple records, there can be only one paper record of a vote and there’s a damn good reason for that which I will explain.

“Unless all voters are asked to come back with their paper receipts and compare them with the paper the govt has.”

“Receipts” are often the first thing newcomers to voting integrity issues think of… and while on the surface it’s easy to think it’s a good idea… it’s actually a deathtrap for your right to vote.

Simply put, your vote needs to be both tangible and anonymous. Tangible so that a few stray electrons can’t “accidentally” change the meaning of your vote and anonymous because you really, really don’t want the government you want to vote out of office knowing exactly how you voted… and they will know.

Once it is physically possible to link a voter to their vote nothing can stop third parties from determining how you vote.

A lot of time and money has been wasted by well-meaning reformers in attempts to devise some form of “untraceble receipt”… and they fail. Every time. The logical demands of voting do not permit it.

There are myriad nightmare stories from the bad ol’ days when anonymity wasn’t the law and everyone from the local pols to your employer to the local crime boss knew exactly how you were going to vote… if you knew what was good for you.

Ah, thanks Boo — that is what I saw.

Blackens my day, but I liked the comment above: “not making any predictions as to how this will turn out – but anyone who thinks the good people who slept on the Capitol floor or stood in solidarity in the snow are going to let this pass hasn’t been paying attention.” We HAVE been paying attention. We in Oregon are with you in solidarity, cbl.

But Waukesha Co ordered their paper ballots based on Nickolaus’ prediction of a 10% turn-out and for that reason many locations ran out of paper ballots forcing use of electronic touch-screen machines not used since 2006.

See the link in my comment at #19

As far as I’m concerned any election where a single person had control of the votes on their personal computer is not a fair election. Fair elections require oversight by any and all interested parties. Openness and transparency is absolutely critical at every stage if they are to be trusted. This clearly did not happen in Waukesha. In my opinion that means the results must be thrown out if the election is to be considered fair.

AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…

Citizen David Dayen:

I gotta go ta work in a few minutes ta help set up a new signature table for the recall petition in our district but I want to repeat the call I made on Blue Texan’s upstream thread: we need the progressive blogosphere and the left wing fundraisers to make this criminal election fraud the single issue on headlines today through Monday. The government shutdown is takin’ all the air outta our political atmosphere and we folks in Wisconsin don’t need help in mobilizing votes for recall and turnin’ over the state senate but we need immediate help in gettin’ this issue out nationally to focus attention AND money on exposing the extent and depth of the corruption in this state.

The recall movement here is irreversable and immutable and we WILL get our government back but the larger issue is the corruption of the election system and the courts and given our long national nightmare of 2000, we need to use this moment to connect the dots for people all over the country to make this even larger than the government shutdown which is nuthin’ more than a fight between two factions of the same oligarchy. We need you Brother David and all the other blog brothers and sisters to get this pushed to the front pages before it gets buried this weekend.

You are an extremely talented and effective journatist and postman for the truth and I know that you are only one worker in the hive but do whatchu can to advance this story and get your siblings in the blogosphere to the rally point here…we don’t need no nuance we just need the simple truth.

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, THERE IS NO MIDDLE GROUND IN AN OCEAN OF CORRUPTION!!

Oh thank goodness that they found those uncounted votes. Because you know, I would have thought that the world was coming to an end when we liberals finally made headway on ANY battle. I mean I was starting to wonder if pigs began to fly….

Jesus H. Christ – can’t we ever get a break here? For all our efforts on the blogosphere, led by tireless people like Jane, Glenn Greenwald, etc. – we NEVER ever seem to win anything. All that work over the past 5+ years and what do we have to show for it? Sorry to sound so pessimistic this morning – but I’m so tired of losing. :(

Paper ballots are not an absolute guarantee, but their casting and subsequent custody are much more readily verifiable. And the verification of the process can be performed by lay people. Verification of computer balloting can be done only by a handful of technicians for whom the voters have no basis of trust.

for the record, I am not in WI (although I’d be more than proud if I were)

like many here, just following closely – Wisconsin is an incredible gift to all of us from the Democracy Gods – everything we need to do to retake this country is on display daily – and now we’re gonna see what electoral hinkiness pushback looks like

Thank you.

paraphrasing Maddow last night . . .

‘no one would think there could be a story to rival Shutdown 2011™, but here it is’

back to re tweeting, facebooking everything on this

a human error that should give her secret glee. I don’t know, I think her non verbal looks like fear. Like she is afraid. Maybe to lose her job. Maybe of an investigation. But it seems like more emotion than “usual”. I realize there is no way to take anything concrete from it, I am just saying that something seems off to me.

Thanks. I don’t know much about this subject, so I appreciate your added info.

Recently, I saw a program, maybe on cspan, maybe PBS, can’t remember. It was a Yemeni HS voting for reps to a junior parliament. They dropped folded paper ballots into a clear box. Then when all student had voted, they immediately opened the box & counted the ballots in front of all the students.

Short of that, I can’t think of a way to preserve anonymity and avoid cheating.

Exactly. Thank you. Unless there is a secure chain of custody those paper ballots do not constitute evidence of the vote. And as you know, in NY, despite assurances to the contrary, one cannot be assured of a recount even in razor thin races, as exemplified in two recent races for state legislature and senate. Get it right election night.

Don’t mention it.

I consider the Bradblog to the gold-standard as concerns reporting on election fraud.

Brad Friedman is always there, “the firstest, with the mostest” as they say.

No. Maybe consciousness of guilt. she’s got a lot to lose if the fraud is discovered. but there’s such a long line of politicians getting away with this crap, I don’t think she has much to worry about.
She IS a computer programmer you know? She could have made up the ballots out of whole cloth

I hope that they request her phone records as well.

If the clerk ordered ballots based on a 10% turnout and the final turnout was 47% as she claims that sounds like a whole lot of people didn’t vote with the optiscan ballots but rather the touchscreen machines which don’t provide the hardcopies to verify the results.

Sitting on her “news” for 29 hours looks all the more suspicious if my conjecture is accurate.

Citizen eCAHNomics:

It’s simple, really, paper ballots opened and counted in front of observers at each precinct. At this point I think we should make our election system as transparent AND labor intensive as possible at the smallest political subdivisions. It would be faster and safer than the totally corruptable electronic system we have in place now.

I’m not the conspiracy type, but the Magical PC that magically found a whole messa magical votes just doesn’t pass the smell test for me, especially in light of who the particular computer jockey is in this particular case.

I wonder if she was on the recipient list of Brian Hagedorn’s email explaining the republican’s need for an activist judge.

Looks like I’ll be back in Madison tomorrow. It’s the new reality of life in the banana republic of Fitzwalkerstan.

I’m going to go take another shower.

paper ballots opened and counted in front of observers at each precinct

Yup. Dual-Triple-Quadruple custody makes for better controls. Nor is that concept exactly a Revelation From On High. Anything less should be dismissed as laughable. As regards this WI case, state, county and local marshalls should be ordered to immediately step in and deny access until all parties (and plenty of press) are ready to go. Problem is, who is going to do the ordering?

So sorry, I don’t have them now, the dog ate them. Dog error.

If all the accounting is done properly, there would have to be an record of how all the paper ballots were used. The number of ballots cast would have to be equal to the number of voters who signed in the roster.

I wonder how she pulled all the electronic machines out of her ass when paper ballots ran out? I could imagine that she went to the work of preparing the machines as back up, but I also would wonder how it was that she would not have been able to get additional paper ballots or why she was the only clerk unprepared for the high turnout? It is a lot of work to certify the machines, regardless, then deliver them to the sites. So all of this would have had to be done with a lot of forethought.

And of course, this all adds to the irregularity of the storage issue, on her personal computer.

I hope some of the national election integrity eagles are ready to pounce on this. It is hard to thwart the paper ballot system. So this is all highly irregular.

eCAHNomics, Please see the website electiontransparencycoalition.org and the blog at etcnys.org for background on the situation in New York state and also links to explanations and comparisons of voting technologies.

Thanks for the refs. I’m listening to democracynow on another window, so I’ll get to them later.

“Recently, I saw a program, maybe on cspan, maybe PBS, can’t remember. It was a Yemeni HS voting for reps to a junior parliament. They dropped paper ballots into a clear box. Then when all student had voted, they immediately opened the box & counted the ballots in front of all the students.”

And that’s it. It works for a high school and, with appropriate preparation, it has worked for entire nations.

And perhaps the saddest thing is that we paid the oligarchs over 5 billion dollars for the mess we have now… we paid them that for a “solution” to their outright theft of 2000.

I don’t have them now, the dog ate them. Dog error.

“Well, Kathy Nickolaus, you’d better start digging around in the dog shit and find them, then. We’ll just fire up the cameras, stand back and let you get to work…”

By the way, Nickolaus’ “I forgot to save Access” story doesn’t hold water, as every version of Microsoft Access automatically saves whatever data you enter into it.

Who needs accounting when you’ve got A Magical Computer?

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel seems to aim toward validity of the 7500+ net gain for Prosser, as such. However, another issue is, of course, how this came about even if that problem doesn’t affect the final outcome. Kloppenburg is right to request the records.

Also some media are still saying that the updated figures now would place
the results outside recount criteria. What goes?

EXTRACT FROM JS:

. . .’We went over everything’
But at the news conference with Nickolaus, Ramona Kitzinger, the Democrat on the Waukesha County Board of Canvassers, said: “We went over everything and made sure all the numbers jibed up and they did. Those numbers jibed up, and we’re satisfied they’re correct.”
As a Democrat, she said, “I’m not going to stand here and tell you something that’s not true.”
Waukesha County Executive Dan Vrakas, who sat in on Nickolaus’ news conference, said voters can be confident in the results because “all the votes are in that office. If anyone wants to look at them and verify, they can.”
Kristine Schmidt, the clerk in the city of Brookfield, said in a separate interview that she shared the results with the news media on election night. . .

FULL ARTICLE:

http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/119410124.html

AHA….Save that thought!!

When we held the primaries here in Texas for the 2008 race, we also had a caucus once the polls closed. I was a vote verifier for Obama for my precinct and there was a counterpart for Clinton. After all the votes were recorded (there was no anonymity of votes), the pages were all taken to a back room accompanied by those of us counting or verifying. It took awhile but we got everything counted and had clear results that everyone trusted.

My homeowners association is having a board election soon and, again, I will be a vote verifier. Paper ballots put into a box. Box brought in plain sight to the office. Management company accounting staffers who do not work at the office in our community doing the counting with me verifying. The ballots are recounted if the election is close. Everyone will be able to trust the results.

Thanks, I had forgotten this part of the story. Scannable paper ballots can be quite expensive which is another “feature” of optical scan voting machines, so it’s quite easy to justify ordering for a minimal turn-out. In areas like my state where there are mandates for a minimum number of ballots based on a percentage of registered voters these ballot printing costs are budget breaking. Running out of scannable ballots means some voters might have to cast their votes on ballots which may or may not be counted, sometimes depending upon challenges and the decision of a judge. This is one of the many reasons that lever voting machines are more reliable as well as less expensive, less abusive of resources both financial and environmental, and with a life span of fifty years or more. AND they can’t switch votes.

As a Democrat, she said, “I’m not going to stand here and tell you something that’s not true.”

How convenient…isn’t that special….that she’s now a Democrat. Liar, liar pants on fire…

Her body language and her voice betray her.

I wondered about that. It’s what the Journal Sentinel reported. If she weren’t (isn’t) a Dem, one would expect the media to catch that.

This has such a stench of Election Rigging, I can smell it 2000 miles away.

I’m beginning to think that there’s a whole bunch of hinkiness in the whole county, and that only a full recount of Waukesha County is going to get to the bottom of it.

Churn the waters, blur and obfuscate, drag out the process and all the while, the results will stand. Elections in this state can no longer be trusted. This is the Arch Duke Ferdinand moment that GB has been talking about. The thing is, he’s been blaming the wrong side and telling us all along what the right is planning to do.

She was a Republican aide. MSNBC briefly skimmed over that for about 1 second.

Walker really said that on Wednesday? Really.

What, was that his “Go ahead girl,” code to rig the election?

I would be filing FOIA’s now.

Since she is handling public work on a personal PC would that not make the PC legal for a FOIA?

I think I remember someone commenting on the Tuesday night thread that usually the county clerk publishes (or makes available) the precinct by precinct results but she decided that wasn’t necessary. If that’s the case, how convenient.

I’m not saying this is what happened, but what if the total for the county was correct but the total votes cast in the city whose votes were ‘missing’ were allocated as the clerk saw fit to get to the totals she wanted, and then when whatever happened in Milwaukee (as OldFatGuy was pointing out all evening didn’t make sense when based on other races there, the votes were significantly lower for republicans and those cozy with Gov Walker than in the November governor’s race)didn’t yield the needed result of 1) Prosser winning the state and 2) winning with enough of a margin to avoid a recount, then those ‘missing’ (or reallocated) votes were found–just enough to likely put Prosser ahead and beyond the ‘automatic’ recount margin.

When I saw your comment about this same clerk predicting a 10% turnout–and obviously she has been following what has been going on in the state which pointed to much more interest in this judicial election than normal–and the precincts ordering ballots based on that, then bringing in the old touch screen machines when the turnout was higher….wow, even more convenient.

I suppose those touch screen machines have already been removed and there’s no way to find out if there were any programming issues that could have flipped votes?

This county and this clerk need a lot of investigation, but based on OldFatGuy’s excellent analysis, if there was election fraud, it sure looks like Milwaukee is where a lot of attention needs to be focused. Waukesha may well have been Plan B….and if the media decides nothing except incompetence happened there, Milwaukee will be ignored.

I’m confused now.

Are you referring to Kitzinger on the Canvassing Board, said to be a Dem? Or Nicklaus who made the “mistake” whom we all know to be a Repub?

The JS article cites Kitzinger as a Dem.

She was squirming cause she’s caught. Adolf Walker is gonna have a whole lot of orangutans to wrestle when the citizenry rises up. Go Unions!! General Strike!!

My bad. I thought that she actually is a Dem now but was previously a Repub aide, that is what was reported, so I thought that was what the quote was…oops.

She wasn’t just a Republican legislative aide, she was Prosser’s aide for 8 years, indeed was granted immunity in a criminal case about staff doing campaign work on state time.

I agree, this is an important story to investigate.

Anyone up for some searching? In addition to looking at this specific concern in Milwaukee?

Just to get people going..let’s go back to Mike Connell…

Here are company names tied to his type of work:

R. Rebecca Donatelli

Campaign Solutions

When I look at some of these sights there are posts back in February addressing 7500 votes. I have seen this number multiple times.

Funny in a coinkydinky fashion.

GovTech

Connell Donatelli

New Media

International Republican Institute

DCI Group

SMARTech Corporation

e.Republic

Things did not end well for him.

What you are seeing is her fear that someone will discover that these votes were withheld intentionally to keep the vote stealing in Milwaukee County from being uncovered. “Hey! Look over here!”

Bingo.

Thanks PW!

Shouldn’t she file an open records request for Milwaukee too?

YES!

Caution: This could be a spoof.

Screen grab from the Republican Party of Waukesha County regarding a meeting: “Guest Speaker: Kathy Nickolaus, Waukesha County”.

“Don’t miss this informative discussion of the Wisconsin electoral process, what works, what doesn’t and how interested citizens can become a vital part of the process!”

LINK.

During the Bush/Gore recount in Florida, Fidel Castro offered to send his people up to help us keep our elections honest. Maybe we should take him up on this.

The difference between the 2006 incident and today is that Waukesha does not use touch-screen voting systems any longer

Thank God for that. Those things need to be gotten rid of everywhere.

It’s up to Kloppenburg to pursue answers to each of the above concerns. Let’s hope she does so.

I have never believed in direct elections for anyone in the Judiciary. Term limits?, maybe yes as long as they are several years long. I’ve lived in states where electing judges is the practice (but not WI). It always seems like a circus act even when, on occasion, it’s on the up and up.

It is REAL..it is on the GOP website.

Also, check this out…it might come in handy down the road. It is a list of clerks who have not completed their training….She’s not on it, but I wonder if any of these people were:

http://gab.wi.gov/clerks/education-training/municipal-clerk-non-compliance

http://www.waukeshagop.org/rwwcapr.html

Hey eCAHN! The personal PC should be immediately impounded, if it is not already.

I grew up in Milwaukee (we had a Socialist Mayor then, but that’s a wonderful story for another time) and later lived in several of the surrounding counties. The 5th Cong. District (Sensenbrenner)is gerrymandered to include the wealthiest communities in WI, including Waukesha County. and circles Milw. County to avoid all the black people who live there, guaranteeing only one minority seat.

I wouldn’t be too quick to assume that Kloppenburg would win Milwaukee, the most segregated city in America, because of the many solid white, GOP neighborhoods there.

kock brothers to Gov. whanker, how much more $ to make this go away ?

We type it up and hit submit and it’s on everybody’s screen but with vote counts it’s a lot slower process , like 27 hours to count all those votes (not like we don’t have 10% unemployed available).

Grab karl’s pants for DNA evidence.

What’s really up with Brian Deschane and Walker, and why did he really resign today?

Considering I ran a much smaller, but rather complex access DB when I was 13 and working on a boy scout trip, I might expect someone in her position to understand how the program works. But hey, my taxes don’t pay her salary, I just wonder why she wasn’t axed the first time.

I’ve just put up a diary that provides a link to contribute to JoAnne for Supreme Court Justice of Wisconsin. She’s going to need all the help we can give her. For those of us, like myself, who can’t get to Wisconsin, money is a good way to go, for those of us that can.

Kathy Nickolaus needs to go to prison when this is all said and done. Rigging a judicial election is even scummier than rigging a normal political election.

if I were her I wouldn’t get into cars either or walk too near the curb

second that: “computer jockey”ing using one’s personal computer should obviously be taken as an unfair advantage and the votes should, therefore, be discounted.

thanks Kathy for being such an ass!

I just returned and went directly to the end of the Comments…..to remind everyone that, right here on FDL, on the evening of the election, that some FDL-ers were remarking that there were sudden 10,000 vote jumps in tallying, particularly in Milwaukee………I would suggest that the entire Wisconsin voting activity in this election be examined with a fine-toothed comb, not just Waukesha ……*before* any final judgements are registered by the authorities

I’m waiting for the voting machines to be rolled out of the polling places and have some chubby white guy in a hat shoot them in the touchpad with a revolver. Live on FOX would totally round out the scenario.

Watching the video I was struck with the apparent change in her stature after the first weepy confessions: she became more comfortable, swaying and back and forth, taking steps and making animated gestures. It seemed like after speaking the words human error (without confessing until specifically asked some minutes later) crossed the hardest hurdle, she relaxed. I wonder if she hasn’t been coached. If I were an investigator I would be looking into recent known associates.
BOEs are partisan boards, they are not bi-partisan. No Green, socialist, or Independent Party representation is there: it is a closed game for the two party system. Directorship of BOEs bounce back and forth between the parties; the workers have to learn to get along and by human nature some workers are compliant worker bees to whoever welds the most power or is the most intimidating. The pride I have seen among workers at BOEs is paramont. The appearance of honesty is so important that it is internalized and can mask real skullduggery on the part of any individual or small group of workers. I can see how opposing party workers could be assured of the ‘rightness’ of questionable procedures and accept trustingly breaches of the “chain of evidence” etc. There is a feeling of “us and them” but the them is the activist citizen. Observing recounts, I have seen BOE workers stand shoulder to shoulder, defiantly and obviously, directly break legal procedure and lie. All the money spent in this election did not go into advertising.

Even after saying the above: note the Nicolaus did not answer “yes, there was a Democratic worker next to me” when asked for that assurance from a reporter. She skirted the question and said there are “Democrat and….”.

How does the town of Brookfield with 6391 registered voters and a population of about 6500 come up with over 11000 votes?
I am sorry but the math just does not add up. I looked up the population and the number of registered voters in the Wisconsin state records.

There is a Town of Brookfield and a larger city of Brookfield next to each other.

Ms. Nickolaus is also a programmer with 15 years’ experience who has been in this same job for more than one election cycle. She was audited over this same process before; she and the auditors were well versed on its attributes and potential for failure.

This was a tremendously important election for her former/current bosses. She counts the votes in the largest conservative-voting county in the state. She would have been working for weeks, dotting i’s and crossing t’s to make sure it came out right.

The s/w ate my homework excuse is absurd on its face; the human error she describes isn’t plausible. If it is nevertheless true, Ms. Nickolaus is incompetent, or incompetently implemented someone else’s instructions, and she should be relieved of her duties or recalled. If it’s not true, Ms. Nickolaus just committed multiple felonies. The people of Wisconsin, on the right and left, will want to know which of those is true.

It looks to me as if a corrupt operative was pushed by her psychopathic bosses into crossing a bridge too far.

From the descriptions of her behaviour at the press conference it sounds as if she could not contain the emotions brought forward by the necessity of following orders that she seems to expect will result in her career ending in humiliation and infamy.

I’m sure you’re aware that Rove’s IT guru, the one who built the GOP mechanism for stealing the Ohio vote in 2004 died in a small plane crash before he could be fully debriefed by a congressional commitee.