Milwaukee Election Mess

In Election 2000, there was "smokes for votes" and Connie Milstein.

In Election 2004, an inquiry found evidence of fraud. There are too many instances and details to mention, but read more here.

Then, there was this high-profile case. Wisconsin Dem U.S. Representative Gwen Moore's son and Dem former Acting Mayor of Milwaukee Marvin Pratt's son, as well as two others, were charged and convicted for slashing tires on vans that the Republican Party of Wisconsin had rented to transport voters to the polls on Election Day 2004. Read more here.

In Election 2006, there are more problems. These seem to be related to a software issue.

From The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

A day after the City of Milwaukee reported a primary election turnout above 80,000 - more than a quarter of the city's registered voters - a Journal Sentinel analysis found that the number might be inflated by tens of thousands.

Voter turnout figures in nearly two-thirds of the city's 314 wards are suspect, and state officials advised the city late Wednesday to recalculate its numbers. The city missed a 4 p.m. deadline to turn in polling lists and voter information to the Milwaukee County Election Commission.

It was unclear whether the suspect figures signal problems with individual candidate totals.

By the city's calculation, only about half the ballots cast in Tuesday's primary actually included votes in the hottest races - those for sheriff and attorney general. For example, the city reported 78,801 ballots cast in the attorney general race in primaries for the two major parties, but vote totals for the Democratic and Republican candidates combined amounted to only 40,971. By that count, 37,830 ballots did not include a vote in the race - a number that political observers regard as obviously flawed.

In the same manner, the city reported 65,581 ballots cast in the Democratic primary, but only 35,182 votes recorded for the party's sheriff candidates.

State Elections Board chief Kevin Kennedy said Wednesday it appeared a computer programming glitch likely caused inaccurate totals. But the city should painstakingly re-examine its totals, using polling-place records, to be sure no outcome was affected, he said.

...City Election Commission executive director Susan Edman said Wednesday that the Journal Sentinel's questions alerted her to the big gap in vote totals. She also suspected a programming error by the city was to blame.

Edman expressed confidence that the results of any individual race were unaffected. She said city and county election officials would meet today to decide how to verify the results.

...The problems the newspaper found with the city's canvass Tuesday involved multiple wards at the same polling places. At virtually all those locations, the total number of voters was identical across the board in every ward, according to the city's count - a red flag that the totals were bogus.

The wards did show varied numbers of people registered to vote, which resulted in four wards coming in with turnouts inexplicably higher than 100%. The highest was at one Sholes Middle School ward, which showed 746 ballots cast and just 513 registered voters - a turnout of 145.4%.

This SNAFU goes to show that you don't need punch ballots or hanging chads to have a really screwed up election.

Milwaukee must get its act together and assure the integrity of its elections, whether it's by cracking down on cases of fraud or putting functional software in place.

There are serious problems with the city's Election Commission that must be addressed, NOW!

What does Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett have to say about this? His city is getting a lot of bad publicity lately -- horrific crimes, screwed up election results, etc.

Barrett needs to act like a leader, NOW!

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YIPPEE!

It's MANUAL RECOUNT time!

Every ballot bag from every ward in the city of Milwaukee will be reopened for a manual recount of the number of votes cast in Tuesday's primary election, city and county officials announced this morning.

The new count is restricted to the total number of votes cast in the election and won't recount the votes for any individual candidates. It begins at 1 p.m. today at the city's warehouse at 1028 N. Hawley Road and is open to the public.

Officials from the county and city election boards jointly described the recount as a step above the county's usual canvass of city election results, because ballot bags aren't usually opened.

The recount, they said, is a response to the Journal Sentinel's story this morning that revealed the city's reported turnout from Tuesday's election may have been inflated by tens of thousands of votes.

...City Election Commission executive director Susan Edman said her office's initial look at the results indicated the errors seem to be limited to the turnout totals and won't require a new look at any race's outcome.

"We don't see a problem with that," Edman said. "The problem is with the total ballots cast."

I don't trust the City Election Commission to get anything right.

Frankly, I'd rather have fourth-graders count the ballots.