For weeks, we’ve been reporting on the mess seen in the statewide “recount” of Wisconsin’s very close and very contentious April 5th Supreme Court election between Republican incumbent Justice David Prosser and his challenger, Asst. Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg.
As The BRAD BLOG obtained evidence of new irregularities this week — to add to previously reported revelations of, among other irregularities, ballot bags discovered “wide open” with mismatched or missing serial numbers as well as ballots discovered completely unsecured, all in violation of the secure chain of custody, and other similar messes and mistallies across the state — we wanted to find out if the state’s chief election agency, the Government Accountability Board (G.A.B.), was able to confirm that the ballots counted during the “recount” were actually the ones cast on Election Day. And, if so, how they could confirm that.
To date, with about 25,000 “recounted” votes still to be canvassed from the now infamous Waukesha County, some 2,690 votes have been discovered during the “recount” to have been originally mistallied. That’s according to the G.A.B.’s own figures, and includes hundreds of thousands of ballots which were simply re-tallied rather than counted by hand during the “recount”, on the same computers which tallied them — either correctly or incorrectly — on Election Night.
31 out of the state’s 72 counties counted some or most of their ballots by hand for the first time during the “recount” (including several of the largest counties). But, given the fact that supposedly “secured” ballot bags were discovered during the “recount” to have been “wide open” and not secured at all, with little or no explanation from officials, after being accessible for weeks by the same untrustworthy and partisan election officials, such as Waukesha’s County’s activist GOP County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus, who screwed up the tabulation in the first place, how is it that anybody knows if the ballots finally counted by human beings are actually genuine? [View photos of insecure bags]
We’ve been trying, with no small amount of frustration, to get a definitive answer from the G.A.B. on that question for the past week, as well as from the campaigns of both candidates in the race.
Full Article: The BRAD BLOG : Tale of the Tapes: Wisconsin’s ‘Dog-and-Pony Show’ Faith-Based Supreme Court Election ‘Recount’.