Brad Friedman at BradBlog provides updates on the lack of integrity in the Wisconsin Recount: Tale of the Tapes: Wisconsin’s ‘Dog-and-Pony Show’ Faith-Based Supreme Court Election ‘Recount’ <read>
What’s the point of having a “recount”, or of using security procedures and physical seals for the ballots after the election, if violations of those procedures and seals are of little concern to the state’s top election agency?
Worse, if the results printed on the poll tapes are the ultimate proof of the accuracy of results, what happens when — as discovered among poll tapes from the City of Pewaukee in Waukesha County late last week — the “recount” uncovers “Official Results Report” poll tapes dated a full seven days before the actual election was held?
Or, worse still, what happens when poll tapes failed to print at all on Election Day, as has been seen in a number of towns across the state?…
Faith-Based ‘Recounts’
“Even if the container or [ballot] bag is somehow opened later, or if the chain of custody is broken,” the G.A.B. wrote on their website in response to the concerns late last week, “election officials have the original print-out tape from the machine, as well as the electronic memory device from the machine. This enables election officials to determine the election night vote count.”
Setting aside that the “recount” process in WI does not include examination of “the electronic memory device from the machine[s]” at all, the print-out tapes from the systems may enable election officials to know what the tabulation machines reported — either accurately or inaccurately — as the “election night vote count”, but do those digital elements actually tell us what the intent of voters was? If they do, then why bother to have a “recount” at all?
“If the ballots had been tampered with between the election and the recount, there would be a break in the chain of custody and an unexplained difference in the results [of the ‘recount’],” says the G.A.B., suggesting that they seem to have little or no idea how election fraud may be carried out under their very own noses…
As if the opened ballot bags, missing and scratched-out serial numbers, and mis-dated poll tapes aren’t enough, the minutes from the “recounts” in three different cities in two different counties have revealed that the so-called “Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails” on touch-screen voting machines didn’t actually print at all, because the paper rolls were inserted backwards.
Most disturbingly, no one noticed or bothered to complain about it during the election! What does that tell us about the validity of the so-called “paper trails” printed out with touch-screen voting machines in Wisconsin, and the many other states which use the exact same unverifiable voting systems?
We are always told we can “trust” the results of 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting machines because voters review the “paper record” before they hit the “Cast Vote!” button. Unfortunately, as we’ve been explaining for years, no, they don’t — and here, once again, is more evidence…
And if these new photos of duct taped ballot bags from the Village of Menomonee Falls in, you guessed it, Waukesha County (as taken by an observer who has asked not to be identified) doesn’t “invoke confidence”, we don’t know what will…
Sadly there is no reason to believe that a full statewide recanvass in Connecticut would generate more confidence than the recount in Wisconsin. Our observations of recanvasses reveals huge variations in the process from municipality to municipality, especially in the quality of the review of ballots for marks that might not have been read correctly by the machines. Also the Coalition observations of post-election audits continue to demonstrate concerns with ballot chain of custody.
