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Tale of the Tapes: Wisconsin's 'Dog-and-Pony Show' Faith-Based Supreme Court Election 'Recount'

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From the minutes of Door County's Town of Forestville [PDF], where they use the Diebold AccuVote ES 2000 to tabulate paper ballots, and the Diebold AccuVote TSX touch-screen for disabilities voters and others who choose to use them:

Notes: Original Memory Cards opened and TSX ballots recreated as paper was in backwards on Election Day. Tabulators accidentally took original Memory Card and used the original Memory Card for testing recount ballots, thereby, resetting that card to pre-election mode.

Total Number of TSX Ballots Counted at Recount: 20

In other words, it wasn't until the "recount" that anyone even noticed the "paper trails" or "paper records" of voter ballots didn't exist at all and therefore were never verified by voters. Officials simply used the touch-screens memory card to print them in order to count them at the "recount." They either accurately reflect the will of the voters who voted on April 5, or they do not. Nobody can ever know.

The same thing happened in two different towns, with different models of touch-screen machines made by a different manufacturer in Taylor County [PDF], where they use the ES&S Model 150 for optically-scanned ballots, and the infamously-failed ES&S iVotronic Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) system for touch-screen voters.

Taylor County, Town of Cleveland, Ward 1:

A copy of ballots printed from the DRE flashcard was used to tally the votes from the DRE as the election inspectors had put the paper in backwards when changed later in the day and all of the ballots would not have been on the Real Time Audit Log printed on Election Day.

DRE totals were Prosser 36, Kloppenburg 19

Taylor County, Town of Pershing, Ward 1:

A copy of ballots printed from the DRE flashcard was used to tally the votes from the DRE as the election inspectors had put the paper in backwards when changed later in the day and all of the ballots would not have been on the Real Time Audit Log printed on Election Day.

The DRE totals were Prosser 16, Kloppenburg 21

The optically-scanned hand-marked paper ballots cast in Taylor were simply run through the same op-scanners again during the "recount," instead of being counted by hand.

When we called the Taylor County Clerk to ask for more information on the DRE "paper records" that didn't print on Election Day, we were only able to leave a message requesting a call back. We never received a return call. The nice woman who answered the phone at the Clerk's office and who had been at the count the day before, however, told us that "interestingly enough" the results of the recounts from the touch-screen systems were the most accurate of them all!

We took some time to explain why, that the "paper records" are simply a printout of what the computer says the votes are, whether that's what they really were or not. So reprinted "recount" results will always match the results printed on the results poll tapes on Election Night. Garbage in, garbage out, 100% unverifiable, faith-based voting. She had no idea.

'The Machines Will Save Us'

What a difference a few years make. Back after the 2004 Presidential Election, bloggers at the left-leaning Daily Kos website were permanently banned and their diaries purged if they dared discuss irregularities or the possibilities of fraud in that election. We've mentioned that depressing point a number of times over the years (most recently last summer during a radio appearance with Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas.)

Happily, things seem to have changed for the better over there -- at least if the great work and reporting from Wisconsin blogger "Giles Goat Boy" throughout the duration of the Supreme Court election "recount" is any indication.

In a detailed diary last weekend titled "The Machines Will Save Us," he observed some of the similar issues concerning the G.A.B.'s reliance on "poll tapes" as their "gold standard" for election results. He also looked at the conflict of interest for the state's G.A.B. in overseeing the election "recount" carried out by the very same clerks with whom they work closely, and to whom they offer training, throughout the year:

"Any fraud or incompetence the GAB might uncover among municipal and county clerks is an indictment of the GAB's ability to train and oversee those same clerks," he wrote. "The GAB has a huge incentive to avoid discovery of wrongdoing."

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