(WI-AG '06) Nickolaus: [Ballots] Not Intended To Be A Factual Statement

[Cieran_WI]

So, on Monday I saw this great diary by yourguide about irregularities in Waukesha county going back to 2004.

Among irregularities including 96% turnout in Waukesha (holy voting pride, batman!) I noticed a gem in that diary about the Nov 2006 election votes exceeding the total ballots reported, and I knew that it needed to be highlighted so I started this diary on Monday.

To paraphrase:
Waukesha county lists 156k ballots cast, but more than 176k for Governor and 174k for Attorney General (a race that Walker-lackey Van Hollen won by only 8859 votes statewide). Well by Tuesday the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel had picked up on the story and asked Kathy Nickolaus for comment. On Tuesday, Kathy claims: Oops! Not Intended To Be A Factual Statement!

*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.

Naturally, I was skeptical.

Elections without asterisks, where votes do NOT exceed ballots
There are elections listed which have ballot totals, but the amount of votes DO NOT EXCEED the total number of ballots. These included EVERY election for 2003 through 2005. Every single election listed for those years (10 of them) has a total number of ballots listed, and it is never eclipsed by the total number of votes for any given candidate. Anyone know exactly what date Kathy Nickolaus started her job as Waukesha county clerk?

April 4, 2006 election
This is one of the asterisk'd elections, but no election data is provided for the April 4, 2006 election. The election data file for the April 3, 2007 election was renamed to: http://www.waukeshacounty.gov/...
and then uploaded as the linked page for the April 4, 2006 election. So the April 3, 2007 election data is shown for both elections.

Where's the election data for April 4, 2006 from Waukesha county? Likely an honest mistake in uploading the wrong file, but yet another sign of incompetence at the very least.

From 2006 on, Waukesha county stops listing ballot totals in results
As noted above, every election prior to 2006 lists the ballot totals. But in 2006, the results from Waukesha county stopped including those ballot totals in every election and merely show total votes now, with exceptions for 3 elections (Nov'06, Apr'07, Feb'10).

Why was the procedure changed in 2006 to no longer include ballot totals in every election's data, and who changed the procedure? What criteria did the Nov '06, Apr '07, and Feb '10 elections meet that allowed the ballot totals to be included on them, but not for every other election from 2006 onwards?

Now, of those 3 exceptions, only one had votes that exceeded the ballots: the Nov 2006 Attorney General's race. The is the ONLY election from Waukesha county that has this glaring discrepancy.

8 asterisk'd elections, but only one has ballot totals
I noticed that Kathy put asterisks next to elections which DID NOT REPORT BALLOT TOTALS.
Why would she put a footnote to indicate that the vote totals may exceed the ballot totals on election results that don't even show ballot totals?

She put asterisks next to 8 election results, but only 1 of those elections have ballot totals listed (Nov '06 AG race), making the footnote unneeded for the other 7 election results (note: April 4, 2006 has an *, but mistakenly shows the April 2007 data as noted earlier so this one is still up in the air).

What's the significance of the asterisks next to those other 7 elections? The 7 extra asterisks, in my opinion, are a case of "Where there's smoke, there's fire."

Hand-entered results
Her explanation for why the votes exceed the ballots is because the number of ballots doesn't include all the ballots that the optical scanners can't read: a person votes for too many people in that contest, a person sends through a blank ballot, or enters a write-in. These are then counted by hand, but not reflected in the ballot total – or so she claims.

But this makes no sense either, because as I've shown, there's TWELVE (12!!!) elections in which votes do not exceed ballot totals. Every single one of those elections, presumably, would have these type of ballots that were not machine-readable and had to be hand-counted. And yet, in those 12 elections, all the hand-counted ballots WERE included in the total number of ballots.

There's only ONE election where there were somehow 17,243 ballots in Waukesha county that needed to be hand-counted, and then NOT included in the ballot totals as in previous and subsequent years. It was the November 2006 election for Attorney General, where Walker's guy Van Hollen won statewide by only 8,859 votes.


Update:
State investigating vote irregularities in Waukesha County going back 5 years
from the Wisconsin State Journal

[inademv]

1. This woman's entire carear just smacks of being highly illegal

[Cieran_WI]

2. Agreed.

And I love the Captain Murphy avatar! :)

[fasttense]

11. Cieran_WI - you asked when the clerk got her job?

I found this on the Brookfield Now local news site (you have to pay for the full article):

1.) County clerk reshapes office in 1st year
Newcomer fights to retain staff and expands public services

"Author: SCOTT WILLIAMS [email protected], Journal Sentinel
Publication: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (WI)
Publish Date: November 14, 2003
Word Count: 770
Document ID: 0FED54F6EE135ADB

At a time when government elsewhere is retrenching and downsizing, Waukesha County's new county clerk is going against the grain.

Kathy Nickolaus, a newcomer to local politics, has marked her first year in office with a blizzard of ideas for expanding services in an office known for issuing marriage licenses and running elections.

She has renewed passport application services, made sample election ballots available on the Internet."

So it looks like her 1st year was 2003 or there about. Hope this helps.

[Ellipsis]

3. Damn glad to have you on the board! Welcome to DU, Yah Kossack you.

[tabatha]

4. Love solid factual investigation.

Welcome to DU. :hi:

The more stuff that sees the clear light of sunlight, the better.

[Maraya1969]

5. They should have records of the ballots that were disqualified. Add them to

the votes and you should get the total ballets cast. It shouldn't be a problem.

[Scuba]

6. Great post, solid analysis. Welcome to DU.

[druidity33]

7. thanks for staying on this. K&R. nt.

[Viking12]

8. Well done. Thanks for your efforts.

K&R

[mod mom]

9. Federal Investigation! K & R

[eowyn_of_rohan]

10. For what its worth - Elections Board approved new voting equipment in 2006

Where's the election data for April 4, 2006 from Waukesha county? Likely an honest mistake in uploading the wrong file, but yet another sign of incompetence at the very least....From 2006 on, Waukesha county stops listing ballot totals in results

http://elections.state.wi.us/section.asp?linkid=643

Approved Voting Equipment:

Diebold Election System:
System assigned National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) system ID # N-1-06-22-22-001:
TSX DRE Touch Screen and AccuView Printer Module, version 4.6.3 (click here to see a demonstration of this equipment)
AccuVote-OS (model D) Optical Scan, version 1.96.6 (click here to see a demonstration of this equipment);
Global Elections Management System (GEMS) software, version 1.18.24 (click here to see a demonstration of this equipment).
The State Elections Board approved this equipment, along with a series of security recommendations, at the March 22, 2006 meeting.

Election System & Software:
Unity Election Management Suite, version 2.4.3 (click here to see a demonstration of this software), approved under NASED # N-1-02-21-21-002.
AutoMARK ballot marker version 1.0 (click here to see a demonstration of this equipment), approved under NASED # N-1-16-22-22-001.
This equipment was approved by the Elections Board January 18, 2006

System assigned NASED # N-2-02-22-22-005:
Unity Election Management Suite, version 3.0.1.0; AutoMARK ballot marker, version 1.2; iVotronic DRE with Real Time Audit Log, version 9.1.4.0; and, Model 100/150/550/650 optical scan equipment, version 2.1.2.0 (click here to see a demonstration of this equipment).
AutoMARK ballot marker version 1.1.2258 (click here to see a demonstration of this equipment). NASED #: N-2-16-22-22-003
The AutoMARK ballot marker (versions 1.0 and 1.1.2258) was also approved for the following additional uses:
In municipalities that hand count paper ballots if the ballot used and marked by the AutoMARK could also be counted by using ES&S optical scan equipment.
For marking ES&S ballots which would be hand-counted and added to the results generated by voting equipment manufactured by other vendors.
This equipment was approved by the Elections Board April 26, 2006.

Populex: Populex Digital Paper Ballot Voting System, version 2.3 (click here to see a demonstration of this equipment). Approval contingent of receipt of final Independent Testing Agency reports and assignment of NASED system ID number.
The State Elections Board approved this equipment at the May 17, 2006 meeting.

Sequoia Voting Systems: System assigned NASED system ID # N-1-07-22-22-002:
Optech Insight optical scan ballot reader, version. APXK2.10/HPX K1.42 (click here to see a demonstration of this equipment);
AVC Edge with VeriVote Printer DRE system, version 5.024 (click here to see a demonstration of this equipment);
WinEDS 3.1.012 management software.
The State Elections Board approved this equipment at the March 22, 2006 meeting.

Vote-PAD: Voting-on-Paper Assistive Device (click here to see a demonstration of this equipment)
This non-electronic system equipment was approved for use in municipalities that hand-count paper ballots by the Elections Board on January 18, 2006.

Voting Technologies International: VotWare DRE Voting System, firmware release version 5.0.4.1; Ballot Builder v. 5.0.4.1g; Surevote DRE v.5.0.4.1g; EMSTools v.5.0.4.1h, and related system components.
The State Elections Board approved this equipment at the July 19, 2006 meeting.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

12. ES&S Automark informs Wisc. voter that he under voted (NOT)

http://shultzonline.com/vote/
Trouble voting

2010
After the trouble I had using the ES&S AutoMark last year (see below) I brought a real camera with me to vote this year. Again this year I was disappointed with the machine. This was the third time in a row I've had major problems using the machine. Like last year, I found this machine error just by trying to vote, not doing anything funny. This year after selecting a candidate for one of the races, the machine informed me that I had under voted (voted for fewer candidates than I’m allowed). This was strange as I knew I should only be voting for one candidate for that race. I went back to fix my vote, and the candidate was still selected! Something was clearly wrong with the machine. After playing around with the machine for a bit, I figured out that the candidate was highlighted, but not selected. What must have happened was the machine interpreted me touching the candidate's name as me touching the candidate's name twice (possibly due to slight vibration in my hand). The second tap (almost instantly after the first) de-selects the candidate. Due to the poor user interface, the candidate remains highlighted, making them look selected. Once I figured out what was happening, this was easy to reproduce. I filmed this and it is shown in the video below:

(more troubles described on this site)

[PatSeg]

15. I had an anxiety attack just watching

your video. That was very intimidating. What an awful design. Thanks for documenting it.

[pnorman]

13. K&R!!!!!!!!

n/t

[girl gone mad]

14. k & r

[nashville_brook]

16. wow -- damn good sleuthing!

[arrestblankfein]

17. nice

:applause:

[arrestblankfein]

18. kick

:kick: