FRAUD 12 – Following the Numbers

Numbers Don’t Lie – People Do

The image above features the ghostly images of Kathy Nickolaus and Judge Prosser surrounded by numbers, and crossed over by graphs that challenge their stories, and positions in the ever evolving story of fraud in the Wisconsin Supreme Court Election.

People…..Do Lie

1. “I forgot to save.” Kathy Nickolaus April 7, 2011(On discovering 14,000 votes in Brookfield)

2. “I can’t remember if I went to the Capitol that night.” April 21, 2011 (One of many different responses of Prosser to his meeting with Gov. Walker on the day after the election)

3. The G.A.B. and its staff are committed to ensuring that Wisconsin elections are administered through open, fair and impartial procedures that guarantee that the vote of each individual counts, and that the will of the electorate prevails. (Director Kevin Kennedy of The Government Accountability Board mission statement )

Numbers Don’t Lie

Welcome to the world of numbers.
This is not another TV series, but a real look at some people who have been crunching election numbers for years who have applied their knowledge and research to the Wisconsin Supreme Court Election.

Meet Richard Charnin. Richard’s web site Member of the face book group Election Integrity and author of the book Proving Election Fraud;a detailed analysis of pre and post-election polling data that the mainstream media avoids discussing. The book proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the recorded vote is always different from the True Vote. As a programmer using second-generation computers that took us to the moon, Charnin knows that voting machine “glitches” are not the cause of the failure to properly count the votes. It’s the fault of the humans who program them.

Meet Jim Jacobs Jim’s web site Another number cruncher who has helped bring some truth through numbers through the fog of the Wisconsin Supreme Court Election. His graphs and pictures are filled with colors and lines that point to the truth of the vote count. We’ve heard the lies of the people. Numbers don’t lie. They demonstrate the serious anomalies, the unexplained departures of the vote pattern that defy logic, and raise a foul veil over the Wisconsin we know. They point to election fraud.

Here is the Truth of the Numbers This may look like some lines on paper, it did to me at first glance. These are the lines that cross over the pictures of Kathy Nickolaus, Prosser at the top of the page because they do filter out the dishonesty of their statements. The variance shown in the graph may seem inconsequential to most of us, but to number crunchers, like Jim and Richard, they reek of fraud. They are the cause of nausea and sleep deprivation to them as would a sock filled with rotten egg under our beds. The graph below is little more than the snap shot of a spread sheet showing vote totals in the City of Milwaukee. The Top Graph The spread sheet shows the vote totals of Obama compared to Jim Barrett in 2011 shown by the red line. You see how it runs fairly close to the dotted line or the expected route? The kicker is that you would expect the count of those who voted for Barrett to be close to the count of those who voted for Kloppenburg and run fairly evenly with the red line. NOT even close! The departure is beyond statistical logic. It is demonstrated by the bue line. The only way such a departure can be explained to a statistician is vote fraud! The Bottom Graph Each of the thirteen blue columns represents a Milwaukee voting ward. The higher the column the greater difference is shown between the votes for Obama in 2008 and Kloppenburg. You see that in four of the wards (the tallest columns) that over 50,000 votes shifted – a total of over 200,000 voters who voted for Obama in 2008 turned heel and voted for Prosser in the Supreme Court election? How is that possible? It is not statistically possible . The shift defies all logic except one – election fraud. The chain of custody was broken so that the torn, ripped, and cut bags could have easily been stuffed with Prosser votes. The statistics say there were stuffed. It is the only explanation for the drastic shift in the Milwaukee vote. You can review Jim’s spread sheet for yourself The mission statement of the GAB: 3. The G.A.B. and its staff are committed to ensuring that Wisconsin elections are administered through open, fair and impartial procedures that guarantee that the vote of each individual counts, and that the will of the electorate prevails. is the lie. The truth is in the numbers.

Note: Jim says that the Votes for the Milwaukee Wards are still under analysis.

Darling Disgrace

As we honor those who have given their lives for Democracy and the right to vote, what is Roberta Darling up to?

She is engaged in vote suppression tactics that would be unethical on any day, but on the eve of Memorial Day, her action is nothing less than disgraceful.

ABSENTEE BALLOTS ARE RARELY COUNTED. DO NOT ABSENTEE VOTE!!! From Recall Scott Walker: “Shorewood residents received calls tonight from the Darling camp. Caller ID says Republican Party, phone number is Darling’s HQ, 414-727-4445. Caller … asks for a person by name. Asks if you are voting for Darling or Sandy Pasch. When you say Sandy, they offer to send you an absentee ballot.

The Motive?
Seems obvious she wants to get absentee ballots in the hands of those who would vote against her. Why? I really don’t even want to wander into the hearts and minds of the Republican party when it comes to vote suppression, and election fraud. Your guess is as good as mine, and on the eve of Memorial Day it is irrelevant.

The strikingly obvious point here is: JUST STOP! Hold off on your self serving, power grabbing, and manipulative behavior for the Memorial Day Weekend. You are disgracing yourself and every family that is remembering a loved one who has served to allow us the prime democratic right to vote.

FRAUD 11 – Pesky Poll Tape

Is a slip of paper the “deep throat” of the Supreme Court Election Fraud?>

Please “blocked” update below

It is peculiar how the smallest, most innocent, observations can become the “straw that breaks the camel’s back”.

An observer of the Waukesha County recount noticed such a small, innocent piece of paper that was spit out of a voting machine in Pewaukee. It was a poll tape from a voting machine on which is recorded your vote. But what caught her eye was the date at the top of the tape: 03-30-2011 or March 30. That was six days before the Supreme Court election of April 5!

I recall the face book messages in the group Election Integrity as she communicated the finding to the group. “Get a picture!”, and she did.

Probably a test?
Ok. You must admit this is well…..suspicious. Her first inquiries about what it was, what it was doing there, and how it came to be in the official recount material, was met with the response, “It was probably a test.” I guess this goes along with the “human error” defense of all that is Waukesha, but look at the time stamp on the tape: 01:10 a.m.!

I know there are dedicated election officials out there, but who would run a test of a voting machine in those wee hours of the morning? Can you imagine the scenario? A person leans over to his/her mate and says: “Honey, I can’t sleep. I’m going down to the Court house and do a quick test of the voting machines”.

No such machine in Pewaukee

The other explanation for the poll tape was something like, “There are not electronic voting machines in Pewaukee,” Response? “Oh. Ok. My mistake. I must not be seeing a poll tape from a voting machine that clearly says, “Pewaukee”. “I must change my medication.” Come on. If there are no such machines in Pewaukee, how did such a poll tape record materialize?

Trying to bury the photos

The people in the Election Integrity group have posted and shared the photos with friends, newspapers, and media and have found something fishy. The links and posts have been deleted from postings or reported to the face book admin as being “inappropriate”. Is someone pulling a “Scott Walker stealing all the papers from his College election” action? There seems to be an attempt to keep the photos out of view and the story hushed.

UPDATE – 3:15 p.m. May 26

This story has been blocked by face book – the message below appeared on a Bloggers Link:

We are on to something……..????

Another Unanswered Question

To date, no one has come up with a plausible explanation for the poll tape that appeared during the recount process in Waukesha, not even the Government Accounting Board GAB (That is BAG backwards!) See GAB Behind the Curtain post.

So why hasn’t the GAB demonstrated some concern in the highly irregular March Poll tapes findings? It turns out that any questions about the integrity of the Wisconsin electronic voting system strikes deep into the heart and history of GAB Director Kevin Kennedy. Jim Mueller has been looking at the integrity of Wisconsin elections for many years, and had this to say about GAB’s Kevin Kennedy. “The fear is that these companies throw money around is such a way that we do not know that people who are in positions of trust have been compromised. Since the Accenture deal occurred, I haven’t felt good about Kennedy’s performance” The Accenture Deal Article By Mike McCabe November 26, 2004 Can you believe it? They want to privatize our highways, our university, our museums and now our elections. Egad! Kevin Kennedy, executive director of the state of Wisconsin’s Elections Board, signed a contract with a multi-national calling itself Accenture (it was part of Enron-tainted Arthur Anderson) to create “a total management package to run our elections.” Hello? See Bill Lueders’ column in Isthmus for the full, disturbing story, and then ask, What in the world is wrong with Kevin Kennedy?/

No public hearings were held on the outsourcing of our elections to a company–one that is based in Bermuda to avoid taxes in this country. When I called the Elections Board on Wednesday, I was told that it is, in essence, too late to complain because the contract has been signed. Really? Is it too late to fire Kennedy, appoint a new board, and cancel the contract? I don’t think so. Call the elections Board and demand that they cancel this contract. Believe it or not Mr. Kennedy, the citizens of Wisconsin are quite capable of managing our own elections. Kennedy’s Vested Interest Kennedy has a long history of chummy ties with the Accenture and Electronic Voting Systems. He pitched the system to the legislature. Do you really think he is going to be fair and impartial in answering questions about poll tapes?

The Brad blog has been investigating elections in the country for years, and this is what Brad has to say about the pesky poll tape.

“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?’

The information for this post has come through intensive hard work and investigation by the people of the Election Integrity Group, many of whom have been advocating for fair “every vote gets counted ONCE” elections in Wisconsin for years.

Look at the Wisconsin SC Recount BALLOT / POLL TAPE Anomalies

A permanent, online web cache of photo stills revealing just *some* of the GLARING and ALARMING ballot “irregularities” recently seen during the STATE WIDE (VIRTUAL) HAND RECOUNT of the SUPREME COURT ELECTION, held on April 5th, 2011. The following was recently compiled through the collective efforts and shared documentation from many wonderful citizen observers from all over the Great Badger State of WI. The Election Integrity community commends them for all their diligence, tenacity and hard work, and thanks them for the important contribution it’s lending to *all* American Voters. This kind of real time photographic documentation of evidence in real time is, to our knowledge completely unprecedented. EI can use all the Facebook love we can muster…thanks!

GAB – Behind the Curtain

Who is/are the GAB?

I went to the web site and found a Welcome to the NEW web site:

We hope you find our new site easy to use and navigate.

The G.A.B. and its staff are committed to ensuring that Wisconsin elections are administered through open, fair and impartial procedures that guarantee that the vote of each individual counts, and that the will of the electorate prevails. The Board uses information technology and the Internet to make information readily available to the public about the financing of political campaigns, elections, lobbying, and financial interests of public officials. The Board and its staff are dedicated to enforcing the election, ethics, lobbying and campaign finance laws vigorously to reduce the opportunity for corruption and maintain public confidence in representative government.
(I didn’t find photo of Kevin Kennedy on the “new” site no biograpgy, no history, so I provided a photo for you on the right)
Kevin J. Kennedy, Director and General Counsel (pictured right)

I learned that:
The Government Accountability Board is comprised of six former judges who serve staggered, six-year terms.

Ok. That might have been fine and dandy information before I new that that Justice Prosser had served 12 years on the Supreme Court while failing to prosecute child abusers, and calling his court colleagues “bitch”. We need to know more about these six judges. Where are the biographies, ruling histories, and political affiliations?

Questions

So many questions remain unanswered. In fact, the recount of the Supreme Court election raised more questions then it answered for most of us. The face book group Election Integrity has raised a few questions, some old and some new.

So this is an introduction to each member of the GAB along with the “full documentation” provided by the “new” site as to their past history, rulings, and affiliations and some lingering, unanswered questions, questions, questions.

Chair – Judge Thomas Barland – Eau Claire -Eau Claire County Circuit Court, 1967-2000 – Term expires – May 1, 2015

Question: From Barbara With – Election Integrity: What was the special software they put on Nickalous’ computer and why did she get it and no one else and what was it for?

Vice Chair – Judge Gerald C. Nichol – Madison – Dane County Circuit Court, 1988-2004 – Term expires – May 1, 2012

Question: From Sheila Parks – Election Integrity – Since she had recused herself, why was Kathy Nickolaus sitting in her office the whole time during the Waukesha recount? Why did she have access to all the ballots, therefore, during the recount she had recused herself from?

Secretary – Judge Gordon Myse Appleton Wisconsin Court of Appeals, 1986-1999 Outagamie County Circuit Court, 1972-1983 – Term expires – May 1, 2011(Guess the site has not been updated?)

Question (regarding election information held on Kathy Nickolaus’ personal lap top computor)- Jacqueline Haessly: I am still curious about the status of the investigation into the computer: Was it taken and placed in a secure place? Is a computer forensics expert examining it? I can’t find any information on this. The topic seems to have disappeared in to the netherworld

Member -Judge Michael Brennan Marshfield Clark County Circuit Court, 1971-2001 Term expires – May 1, 2014

Question – Sharon Swenson/Nelson – Elaection Integrity: Why are there no GAB people at the recounts? Why did Kathy Nicklaus have that job after being in an election scandal before? Why DID the GAB send a victory letter to Prosser 2 days BEFORE the voting Began??? Why is Kathy Nicklaus not following the rules set in place regarding her computer???

Member – Judge Thomas Cane Wausau – Wisconsin Court of Appeals, 1981-2007 – Outagamie County Circuit Court, 1972-1981 -Term expires May 1, 2013

Question – Barbara With – Election Integrity: Why was there a date stamp on the DRE from Pewaukee from march 30, 1:40 AM? If it was just a test, why did they do it at 1:40 AM? If it was a technology mistake, doesn’t think concern the GAB that there could be more flawed technology?

Member – Judge David G. Deininger Monroe -Wisconsin Court of Appeals, 1996-2007 – Green County Circuit Court, 1994-1996 – Term Expires May 1, 2016

Question – Dennis Kern – Election Integrity – WHO is/are the GAB? I have tried to go to the web site only to find a l list of names with no bio or links to their prior professional history or affiliation. No pictures. No transparency. WHO are they?

FRAUD 10 – Wakesha Sequoia

This is the way election machine corporations view your vote.

(Intro to Dominion Data System web site)

Take the boredom and anxiety out of election card programming and multiply your efficiency by a factor of 20. With Dominion’s 20-slot Election Data Exchange System you can rapidly complete the task of writing data to and from election cards Connect directly to your central election database and generate election cards along with labels. For those special applications when you absolutely have to program 80,000 tabulators in a very short time frame, rest easy knowing that you can daisy-chain the units together, turning a virtually impossible task into a relatively easy one.

Sounds more like you are buying an appliance for a quick and easy solution to lawn care, dirty bathtub rings, or pesky bugs.

Vote like a Pac Man

That video display with PacMan on it is supposed to look like this: Yes, that is a voting machine. A voting machine that can be hacked to load PacMan without so much as a whisper of tampering. Via BradBlog: Sequoia’s voting machines, used in some 20% of U.S. elections , employ Intellectual Property (IP) still owned by a Venezuelan firm tied to Hugo Chavez.


If you live in Wisconsin (or Brookfield or Waukesha), the Sequoia/Eagle electronic voting system is most like the machine you used to cast your vote in the last election. Many of the anomalies that have resulted from the recount in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, are the direct result of the Sequoia machine system.

What do open, and ripped bags have to do with a machine?

If the machine software is altered to flip the vote, the flip must be matched with the contents of the bags; your votes. These are the same bags that were stored in Kathy Nickolaus’ office during the long and tedious Waukesha recount. Kathy and her minions had full, complete, and 24hr access to the bags of votes, machines, and software!

But is the Sequoia vote system all the easy to manipulate? Really?

Yes. In fact there is a list of problems with tabulation of votes with the Sequoia system in election after election all over the country.

This is from a “partial list at A “partial” list

Here is an account just one report of Sequoia “problems” in Florida.

November 2004 Palm Beach County, Florida. In addition to seeing voters who had been told to go to the wrong precinct, others who found their polling place closed with no sign telling them where it had been moved, and poll workers giving incorrect instructions, one observer in Palm Beach saw touch screens repeatedly registering incorrect votes and resisting correction.45 Tina [Knight] worked nine hours election day. She talked to a woman who said the voting machine had repeatedly registered the wrong presidential candidate. After 8 or 9 tries, it finally showed the candidate she had selected. “Another lady said when she got to her review screen,” at the end of the voting process, “the opposing presidential candidate was listed. . . . She called the poll worker and demanded it be fixed. The poll worker went back through the screens” and agreed the woman had voted for a different candidate than the review screen showed. “The poll worker said, ‘The review screen is wrong, but just go ahead and punch the confirmation button.’ The woman refused. She made the poll worker cancel out the transaction, and she voted again. But how many people would do that — go against what the poll worker advised?”

The people of New Jersey wanted to find out about the Sequoia “problems” in 2008. The whole battle for answers was well reported and covered by the Star Ledger in that state. Where is the Wisconsin press? Why are they missing the story of the Wisconsin Supreme Court recount?

Jersey disputes report faulting voting machines
Saturday, October 18, 2008
BY DIANE C. WALSH
Star-Ledger Staff

A computer expert from Princeton University has found New Jersey’s voting machines can be easily hacked, while a professor from Carnegie Mellon University scoffed at the findings, according to two divergent reports released yesterday by the Superior Court judge presiding over the case challenging the machines’ reliability.

“It takes about seven minutes, using simple tools” to hack into a voting machine made by Sequoia Voting Systems and install software that could steal votes and throw an election, Appel found. Most of New Jersey’s 3,500 polling places use Sequoia Advantage machines. Appel recommended switching to paper ballots read by optical scanners in the polling places.

The Coalition for Peace Action, which filed the lawsuit in 2004, prefers the optical scanners because, while they are also electronic devices, the system uses paper ballots that create a “verifiable record” that could be rechecked, said Irene Goldman, a chairwoman of the Princeton-based organization.

The media fueled investigation lead to real action

From Wired

Last year, a judge ordered New Jersey election officials to give source code for the state’s Sequoia AVC Advantage touch-screen machines to Princeton University computer scientist Andrew Appel and others for a lawsuit that challenged the integrity of Sequoia’s paperless machines. Voting activists had sued the state to decommission the units out of security and reliability concerns. Appel’s team found several vulnerabilities with the system, but wasn’t able to discuss them publicly.
—————————————-
More from Wired

The Open Source Digital Voting Foundation (OSDV) announced the availability of source code for its prototype election system Wednesday.

The OSDV, co-founded by Gregory Miller and John Sebes, launched its Trust the Vote Project in 2006 and has an eight-year roadmap to produce a comprehensive, publicly owned, open source electronic election system. The system would be available for licensing to manufacturers or election districts, and would include a voter registration component; firmware for casting ballots on voting devices (either touch-screen systems with a paper trail, optical-scan machines or ballot-marking devices); and an election management system for creating ballots, administering elections and counting votes.

“How we vote has become just as important as who we vote for,” Miller told the audience of filmmakers and technologists who gathered at the Bel-Air home of film producer Lawrence Bender to hear about the project. “We think it is imperative that the infrastructure on which we cast and count our ballots is an infrastructure that is publicly owned.”

The Sequoia Corp. was finally pushed by the activists and the press to produce the software codes.

Application software for an appliance that tabulates election results from data produced by ballot counting devices. The software counts your vote.
You can find the codes here.Application Software

Now we can sleep easier?

It seems the Wisconsin media thinks so. Yet we know, that as easily as programing software can be opened to the public, it can be rewritten behind the doors of Sequoia Election Data System. In the end, Sequoia determines what is written.

The Sequoia system and the Wisconsin Supreme Court recount

There are enough irregularities in the chain of custody of votes, statistical vote percentage drops, and questionable history of Kathy Nickolaus to warrant a full investigation.

The media in New Jersey covered the questions posed by the voters in that state. Here, in Wisconsin, we are still waiting for the investigative reporting that shook up New Jersey and forced Sequoia to become more transparent in, at least in a “PR” sort of way.

In Wisconsin, the voters are still waiting.

Fraud 9 – Duct Tape (Really!)

The Brad Blog calls the Waukesha recount a “Dog and Pony Show”

“As the count nears its end, more irregularities emerge, including mis-dated poll tapes, unprinted ‘paper trails’, duct taped bags and the state’s unwavering faith in the machine…”

Yet the headline in the
Milwakee Sentinel states: “Prosser Won”

The hard hitting, masterpiece of investigative journalism goes on to say:

“Kloppenburg’s campaign has raised questions about torn ballot bags in Waukesha County. But Geske said a rip in a ballot bag would not be enough for a court to throw out the votes in that bag without more evidence to draw a reasonable inference that fraud had been committed.”

Geske says nothing about duct tape! How could he miss it?

They make it sound the Kloppenburg found a rip in a single ballot bag and are claiming fruad. It wasn’t one bag. It was many bags. Not only did they appear slit, torn, and lapping open the numbering would be an embarrassment to a third grader! To top it off the slit bags were repaired with duct tape!

The ever alert and penetrating analysis of the Journel Sentinel goes on to say:

“The process moved more slowly in Waukesha County, in part because of the intense scrutiny. The recount there was overseen by retired Waukesha County Circuit Judge Robert Mawdsley after Nickolaus recused herself.”

“Recused Herself?”

Nickolaus recused herself alright. She was sitting in her office with all the votes, vote machines, and poll books. It is just as likely that the process moved more slowly so that Kathy could stuff bags to match the bogus vote tallies she hacked into the vote machines!

The in depth, credible, journalistic artistry of the Journal makes it sound as though the suggestion of a ripped (and duct taped) ballot bag is a frivolous piece of evidence that will not hold water any more than it will hold votes. Yet, in all the depth of research exemplified by the Journal, they missed reading the Wisconsin statutes that address just such a piece of evidence.

Wisconsin Statutes regarding bags and ballots

“The board of canvassers shall then examine the container or bag containing the ballots to be certain it has not been tampered with, opened, or opened and resealed. Any irregularities or possible tampering with the container or bag shall be noted.” [9.01(1)(b)3.]

As the count continues, “The board of canvassers or the chairperson or chairperson’s designee shall make specific findings of fact with respect to any irregularity…discovered during the recount.” [9.01(5)(a)]

Oh yeah. They know all to well that Kloppenburg has a case for vote tampering that could slice away votes from their boy, Prosser, like a mat knife through a ballot bag, and all the duct tape in the world will not save him.

FRAUD 8 – WIS. "GAB Government Avoidance Board"

The GAB says the statewide recount effort has gone smoothly, and no incidents of fraud have been found.

From WSN.com

GAB in their own words:

The G.A.B. and its staff are committed to ensuring that Wisconsin elections are administered through open, fair and impartial procedures that guarantee that the vote of each individual counts, and that the will of the electorate prevails. The Board uses information technology and the Internet to make information readily available to the public about the financing of political campaigns, elections, lobbying, and financial interests of public officials. The Board and its staff are dedicated to enforcing the election, ethics, lobbying and campaign finance laws vigorously to reduce the opportunity for corruption and maintain public confidence in representative government.

“Wisconsin has the most decentralized election system in the United States,” Kennedy said. “The system has strong local control coupled with state oversight, resting on the partnership between the Government Accountability Board, the 72 county clerks, and the 1,850 municipal clerks. State law clearly gives each county’s Board of Canvassers the primary authority to conduct the recount, and to decide which ballots should and should not be counted. Recounting votes is an open, transparent process in which each of the candidates may have representatives present to raise objections, and where the public may be present to observe. The G.A.B.’s legal role is to order the recount, to provide legal guidance to the counties during the recount, and to certify the results.(emphasis mine) If either of the candidates disagrees with the results of the recount, the law gives them the right to appeal in circuit court within five business days after the recount is completed. The circuit court is where issues discovered during the recount, but not resolved to the satisfaction of the candidates, are resolved.”

“We cannot stress enough our gratitude for the meticulous work conducted by county clerks and their Canvass Board members throughout this historic time,” said Nathaniel E. Robinson, Elections Division administrator. “The recount process has uncovered some issues and corrected some vote totals, but these are to be expected in any recount.”

The above is quoted from GAB site

Just one question Mr. Robinson……..????

If you are so interested in “enforcing the election, ethics, lobbying and campaign finance laws vigorously to reduce the opportunity for corruption and maintain public confidence in representative government”, then why did Kathy Nickolaus have unfettered access to the vote bags, machines, and software during the course of the Waukesha recount?

She admitted in a phone conversation on Thursday May 19 that, not only did she have all the votes stored in her vault, but also made a special area in her office for them.

This is the same Kathy Nickolaus who avoided indictment in 2002 for her testimony. Read KN (Kathy Nickolaus) Factor

No sign of fraud? Open vote bags stored in Kathy Nicholaus’ office? No sign of elephant in room when you are facing the north wall with a south positioned elephant?

And that’s not all. The Brad blog lists, line by line, many of the fraudulent elephants you seem to have missed.

If you don’t see the elements of fraud in the Wisconsin Recount, you can only be recusing yourself from the evidence.

You Can't Vote

“You can’t vote.” This is what many in Wisconsin will be told at the polls in the next election. Why? “You don’t have a photo ID.”

“That won’t happen to me,” you might say, “I have a driver’s license.” You are right. It won’t happen to you, but it ain’t about you. It is about the basic right of all citizens to vote in a Democracy including those who do not have photo ID’s. Many people do not have this new document that is now required by Wisconsin State law to enable you to vote in the next election.

Of course you know about this new legal requirement by now, since you are here. You are reading a blog on the web. You probably even have a face book page and have noticed all those wacky liberals and Democrats posting links and pics about this law. So you know about it. But still, it doesn’t seem all that important. I mean, it wasn’t on the local news or a major story in the newspaper you read. So why do I bother to write about this on a blog, on the internet, only to preach a message to the informed choir? Believe me, I ask this question every day.

I have a valid Wisconsin driver’s license. I can vote.

But, the picture on the right is one of my “Grandma Rose”. There are better and more formal pictures of her, but that one is my favorite. She took care of me as a child while my mother worked in our family business. She always kept a large garden, but never drove a car in all of her 86 years. She did not have a photo ID. I am ashamed, as I look at her picture, to tell her that I live in state where – “You can’t vote.”

I have a valid Wisconsin driver’s license. I can vote.

But, in my small village, a man walked into an office yesterday. I was sitting in a chair as he shuffled up to a counter. He described himself, “I have one step in the grave, and the other on a banana peal.” He asked us to guess how old he was. We started at 80. He shook his head. We went to 90. He said, “I am 92, and I know who I am not going to vote for in the next election.” I did not have the heart to tell him that he might be told, “You can’t vote”. But Wisconsin did tell him just that!

I have a valid Wisconsin driver’s license. I can vote.

I know my eight grade English teacher Mrs. Runkle, who is 98 years old and hasn’t driven a car for years. She taught me “Civics” from a thick, gray covered, hard bound book. As of today, she will be told, “You can’t vote.”, at the polls!

When my own mother died a couple of years ago, she did not have a photo ID in her later years and would have been told, “You can’t vote”!

Each and every person who is reading this, can bring to mind at least one or two similar instances of people they know and love from their own family or community who would be told in the next election, “You can’t vote.” You all know a family member, or a person in your community that could go to polls and vote yesterday, but who will be told today, “You can’t vote!”

So, that is why I write this on this blog, on the internet, and will post it on my face book page – because people who I know and love are being hurt and deprived of the very right they taught me to honor and respect!

How did the press, the Governor, the legislature – how did WE ever allow this to happen in the State of Wisconsin?

FRAUD 7 – KN (kathy nickolaus) Factor

Now that the Wisconsin Supreme Court vote recount is finally winding down, might be a good time to review the workings and wanderings of Wisconsin’s favorite County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus. Now that time has passed since her “human error” press conference of April 7, we can take another look at her words with the benefit of hind site.

As you may know, Kath recused herself from the recount process in Waukesha, but not so much as you might notice. She has been sitting in her office during the process with ready access to the vote bags, vote machines, and poll books from her county, even after the series of questionable actions, mistakes, lies, and blunders that have permeated her stewardship of the Waukesha vote that swung the election into the arms of her former boss.

In 2002, while working for Judge Prosser, Kathy Nickolaus was granted immunity from prosecution for her testimony in the case

From WKOW News

Criminal complaints filed against three republican lawmakers and a republican aide in 2002 made reference to problems with the information technology work of Kathy Nickolaus, whose mistake in reporting unofficial election results in the current state supreme court race has plunged the race into controversy.

In 2002, republican lawmakers Steven Foti, Scott Jensen and Bonnie Ladwig and aide Sherry Schultz were criminally charged and later convicted in connection to using state resources to run political campaigns. Nickolaus was an employee of the assembly republican caucus, one of four state-funded policy-support divisions where illegal campaign work took place.

A criminal complaint in the case states campaign finance reports were assembled using a computer program while employees were on-the-clock for the state. The complaint states one employee “…expressed frustration with a program that ARC employee Kathy Nickolaus had created.”

The complaint also states dissatisfaction with Nickolaus was more widespread: “…legislators were then using a prior existing, but ineffective, campaign finance report software program created by Kathy Nickolaus.”

Nickolaus received immunity from prosecution in the corruption case in exchange for her testimony.

Last week, Waukesha County clerk Nickolaus swung the supreme court case from challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg to justice David Prosser when she revealed she failed to include more than 14,000 votes from the city of Brookfield in unofficial county vote totals she released on election night, blaming a failure to properly save the data on her work computer.

Prosser is a former republican assembly speaker who directed the activities of the assembly republican caucus during part of Nickolaus’ time as an ARC employee.

Posted under Inside Scoop

This post was written by tgalli on April 11, 2011

Kathy Nicholaus was provided with “special” software, that only she possessed or used by the Government Accounting Board

From Politiscoop</a

Madison Wisconsin – Breaking news today in the Prosser/Kloppenburg recount — as it turns out the software that Kathy Nickolaus used the night of the election was written specifically for her. Yes, I am not kidding you. Politiscoop for the last few weeks have been pressing the GAB to explain this. The Fix is on article we published on Sunday, 10 April 2011. Since then we have been asking for answers — we have even emailed the pdf of what we were sent and we have yet to receive an answer from the GAB. Could it be this new revelation played a part in Prosser appearing to have won the election two days before the votes were cast? — We still don’t know and we do not know why there has not been an answer given to us.

Today the website http://www.milwaukeenewsbuzz.com revealed that a through an open records request an email was sent to county clerks around Wisconsin. It stated the following:

The email, by Rusk County Clerk Denise Wetzel and addressed to other county clerks in Wisconsin, including Nickolaus, was sent on April 8, the day after Nickolaus revealed the vote-reporting error in a press conference. It reads, “Please note that the program Kathy uses IS NOT the new canvass reporting program that is in the (Statewide Voter Registration System) that we all have been using as of late. It is a completely different program that was created by GAB for Kathy to accumulate her votes prior to uploading them into the program that the rest of us use.”

Kathy did not reveal the “human error” to a member of her canvas board in Wakesha County before the infamous press conference on April 7

From The Daily Kos

Kathy didn’t offer an explanation about why she didn’t mention anything prior to Thursday afternoon’s canvass completion, but showed us different tapes where numbers seemed to add up, though I have no idea where the numbers were coming from. I was not told of the magnitude of this error, just that she had made one. I was then instructed that I would not say anything at the press conference, and was actually surprised when I was asked questions by reporters.

The reason I offer this explanation is that, with the enormous amount of attention this has received over the weekend, many people are offering my statements at the press conference that “the numbers jibed” as validation they are correct and I can vouch for their accuracy. As I told Kathy when I was called into the room , I am 80 years old and I dont understand anything about computers. I don’t know where the numbers Kathy was showing me ultimately came from, but they seemed to add up. I am still very, very confused about why the canvass was finalized before I was informed of the Brookfield error and it wasn’t even until the press conference was happening that I learned it was this enormous mistake that could swing the whole election. I was never shown anything that would verify Kathy’s statement about the missing vote, and with how events unfolded and people citing me as an authority on this now, I feel like I must speak up.

Kathy’s claim: “She forgot to save.”, is refuted by experienced Access Spreadsheet users.

Nickolaus says repeatedly that she imported the data into Access, but through a process of “human error”, she “forgot to save”. Then come the tears, repeatedly, throughout her presser.

From The Daily Kos
Here’s the problem. Microsoft Access (any version) doesn’t ask you to save. When you enter data into a table, it automatically updates the underlying database. If you close the database accidentally, the data you entered (or imported, in the case of Nickolaus) remains. If you stop to take a phone call from your buddy the governor (for example), your data will still automatically save.

Kathy tries to clarify questions regarding her responsibilities on her own web site, but seems to only dig a deeper hole

From The Democratic Underground

*The Number of Ballots Cast do not reflect all results, only those electronically sent.
(Ballots cast will not be equal to official votes cast)

That was added on Tuesday to the Waukesha county elections website. Obviously, ballots totals Not Intended To Be A Factual Statement. There’s an asterisk up there now, see!

After some ridicule about that initial update from her office, Kathy Nickolaus had to re-clarify things on the Waukesha county elections website. Now at the top of the page:

What does Ballot Cast mean in the summary reports?
Ballot Cast is the number of ballots that were fed through the election machines at the polling places and the results were collected using a modem in the office. It does NOT include any hand entered results.
Number of Votes in a particular contest or race is the number of votes certified after canvassing. The results collected using a modem and any results hand entered in the office on election night.

Why would the ballots cast be higher than the number of people that voted in a specific contest or race?
The ballots cast are not adjusted when a person doesn’t vote for that contest, a person votes for too many people in that contest, a person sends through a blank ballot, or when a person writes in a statement instead of a name and is not counted as a vote in the scattering section.

Why would the ballots cast be lower than the number of people that voted in a specific contest or race?
The ballots cast would be lower if a portion of the results were entered by hand.

How can the percentage of turnout be so high?
Waukesha County is known for higher than State average turnout. In addition the turnout is calculated using the number of registered voters, prior to Election Day. As Wisconsin allows for Election Day registration the turnout number would be skewed dependent on the number of people that registered Election Day.

FRAUD 6 – Worth it? Worth it?

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel asks the question “Was it worth it?” about the Wisconsin Supreme Court recount in the following editorial:

So was it worth it? Probably not. As it appeared from the beginning, it appears even more so now that nothing will change in the election for state Supreme Court. With 71 counties recounted — Waukesha County has until May 26 to finish — JoAnne Kloppenburg has reduced David Prosser’s 7,316 vote lead by 355 votes. She won’t pick up the rest in Waukesha County. (The recount Monday at the Waukesha County Courthouse is pictured above.) Kloppenburg had every right to request the recount, but given the cost and the political fallout, it would have been better had she graciously accepted the loss. And — although again she has every right to do so — it would be better if she didn’t challenge the outcome in court, which it appears she will do. In fact, it appears the recount was mere preamble to the court challenge. This is no way to run an election.

This is scary – how can a professional news organization just not “get it”?

They prove they just don’t “get it” in their own words; “nothing will change in the election for state Supreme Court.” Where do they live in a cave? READ MY LIPS – Plenty has changed in the election for the Supreme Court!

They just don’t “get it” because they are stuck in the box of “candidates as winners or losers”. Many of the rest of us are way outside that box. We are looking at “voters as winners or loser”. Do you get the difference?

It is no longer about which candidate wins. It is bigger, better, and exponentially more dangerous than that. Honoring Prosser as a Supreme Court Judge is far and away more palatable than losing faith, confidence, or trust in our election process itself and doubting that the votes cast in the State of Wisconsin are being counted fairly and accurately. This is what has “changed in the election for the Supreme Court”, and what’s more alarming is that you missed it! How dare you?

You are so myopically focused on casting the players as winners and whiners that you completely missed the game. Yes. Things have changed. Anomalies have been investigated, photographed, photocopied, and video taped. It makes little difference which party backs you or which office you are running for if the votes show up in ripped, open, and unlabeled bags. There is no winner in an election where the votes cast have a broken “chain of custody” and cannot be legitimately assigned to any candidate.

So you are challenged to finally “get it”. Conduct a poll of your readers. Ask the question, as I did on face book: “Do you believe that your vote is likely to be fairly counted?” The friends who responded to my little question were from all political leanings and not one responded with a firm “yes” answer. I am willing to wager that you will find the same, and be willing to admit that plenty has already changed in the election for the Supreme Court.

Below is a partial response to the editorial from JoAnne Kloppenburg. Please read the whole response.

The recount has uncovered significant and widespread errors and anomalies in the securing of ballots and recording of votes on election day. There have been changes to vote totals in every county due to miscounted or missing votes. Many bags of ballots have been found to be essentially unsealed or ripped to the extent that ballot security is compromised. A stack of ballots, unbagged, was found in a clerk’s office. Ballots were found in voting machines where they had been left. Seal numbers on ballot bags and tags were not recorded in the inspector’s reports, creating doubt that the bags were properly sealed on election night. Touchscreen voting machine tapes were missing votes, or worse, were entirely blank and had to be reproduced from machine memory to allow a recount of the vote. The most widespread and systemic errors and anomalies have been discovered in Waukesha County. That county was already under a cloud, and this recount has revealed more questions about elections practices there. This election was close, and there were many who have expressed doubts about whether it was clean. The right to vote is fundamental. It is a right that courageous people fight and die for every day. In America, that right carries with it a promise: that elections are fair and open, that election results are untainted by deceit or fraud and that the electoral process provides every eligible voter with an equal opportunity to privately and independently cast a ballot.