Jeff wrote:A decent documentary this morning on CBC Radio's Sunday Edition, Battleground Wisconsin, can be heard here.
Hey there Jeff that links not working, I'd like to watch that, thanks
Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by seemslikeadream » Sun Apr 17, 2011 4:26 pm
Jeff wrote:A decent documentary this morning on CBC Radio's Sunday Edition, Battleground Wisconsin, can be heard here.
by Jeff » Sun Apr 17, 2011 8:40 pm
by seemslikeadream » Wed Apr 20, 2011 6:37 pm
BREAKING: Kloppenburg Files for Statewide 'Recount' in WI Supreme Court Election Will ask for hand count in several districts; Calls for special prosecutor in Waukesha County...
Wisconsin's Asst. Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg has filed paperwork for a statewide, state-sponsored "recount" in the controversial April 5th State Supreme Court election.
Speaking to supporters at a press conference moments ago in Madison, Kloppenburg pointed to a number of reported irregularities around the state, including in Waukesha County, as well as Racine and Milwaukee and a number of other areas, that led to her decision to ask for such a count. She also mentioned unusually high undervote rates in a number of areas that the campaign had examined.
"I've asked for a recount to determine what the right count is, and also to preserve confidence in the electoral process," she said in response to a question from reporters.
Kloppenburg stated that her campaign would be asking for a hand count of ballots in a number of districts, and will work with the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (G.A.B.), the state's top election agency, to determine which areas should be hand counted. State recount procedures allow for a machine recount of paper ballots unless hand examination is ordered by a court.
Referring to critics of such a post-election examination of results, Kloppenburg was unflinching in her response, saying they've called it "a drama and a circus. Actually, it's called American Democracy."
During her remarks, she also called for a special investigator for controversial Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus, the focus of a number of anomalies that have appeared in election results since Election Night.
"The recount will reveal if there were discrepancies in the Waukesha vote count, but going forward, an independent investigation needs to determine what the clerk did there and why," she explained, while pointing to a number of still-unanswered questions about post-election vote tallies in Waukesha, including why it is that "conservative bloggers" were told about those adjustments before they were announced publicly.
"I don't know what will happen in the recount, but we're asking for a recount to determine what the proper count should be, and to help, from this point forward, to assure that elections are fair," Kloppenburg said, stressing her belief that the count should move forward for the benefit of all voters in Wisconsin...
Results of the Supreme Court election have drawn close scrutiny over the last two weeks, as Kloppenburg's unofficial 204 vote "victory" on Election Night turned into a 7,316 vote "loss" to the incumbent Justice David Prosser after his former colleague and GOP activist turned Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus announced some 14,000+ votes from the city of Brookfield that she says she failed to include in results announced on Election Night.
The election itself had become a proxy battle between supporters of Gov. Scott Walker's controversial legislation stripping union members of their right to collectively bargain with the state, and those who supported the unions. Prosser, a partisan Republican, has vowed to support the state GOP agenda, while Kloppenburg has maintained she planned to be an independent jurist, guided by the rule of law rather than partisan politics. She reiterated again at the press conference today that she would not be aligned with unions or their supporters, but rather would proceed independently on the bench.
The court's balance with Prosser still on it is weighted 4 to 3 in favor of the Right, and would likely change if Kloppenburg were to replace Prosser before Walker's controversial measures make it to the high court where they are sure to be challenged.
After all 72 counties in the Badger State completed their canvass last week, Prosser held a press conference to declare victory and vow to block any verification of the unverified vote count, despite state law which allows for such a post-election verification if a candidate comes within half a percentage point of the reported winner. Prosser currently holds a 0.488% lead over Kloppenburg out of some 1.5 million ballots cast, after all counties have submitted their final canvass report.
It must be noted, however, the counties' post-election reconciliations do not include verification of actual results to assure the oft-failed, easily-manipulated optical-scan computer tally systems used in the majority of the state accurately tallied the hand-marked paper ballots.
State recount procedures [PDF] allow for a hand count of paper ballots only by court order after a candidate demonstrates that such a hand count was likely to change the results of the election. Short of a hand-count, as election integrity advocates have called for, the ballots will be run through the same optical-scanners used to tally them previously. However, campaigns representatives will be allowed to examine each ballot before it is run through the scanner, allowing for a "virtual hand count" of sorts in the process.
by AhabsOtherLeg » Thu Apr 21, 2011 1:48 am
Writing today in the Nation, Mark Ames and Mike Elk reveal that Koch Industries mailed letters to 50,000 employees instructing them on who to vote for in the 2010 midterm elections. The Koch packet given to employees included candidate names, a letter from a Koch lobbyist, and a right-wing screed from the company and the Washington Examiner, an outlet owned by Phil Anschutz, a billionaire who is close to the Koch family.
Corporate coercion of employees is perhaps the most profound repercussion from the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision last year. The Nation spoke to several law experts who noted that “Citizens United frees Koch Industries and other corporations to propagandize their employees with their political preferences.” Before the decision, businesses were prohibited from instructing their employees to vote a certain way.
Not only was Koch active in helping push the Citizens United decision (several of the groups filing amicus briefs supporting unlimited corporate spending were funded by Koch), but Koch actively planned for exploiting the decision. When we exposed a memo outlining the 2010 secret Koch political strategy meeting with fellow right-wing donors, we noted that the summit included a presentation from Karl Crow. Crow is a Koch operative who had penned a memo calling for corporations to exploit Citizens United and aggressively use “employees, vendors, and customers” as tools for advancing business interests in the political sphere.
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/04/20/koc ... elections/
Dear co-worker,
As Koch company employees, we have a lot at stake in the upcoming election. Each of us is likely to be affected by the outcome on Nov. 2. That is why, for the first time ever, we are mailing our newest edition of Discovery and several other helpful items to the home addresses of every U.S. employee...
For most of you, we've also enclosed a listing of candidates supported by Koch Industries and KOCHPAC, the political action committee for Koch companies. Of course, deciding who to vote for is a decision that is yours and yours alone, based on the factors important to you. Koch and KOCHPAC support candidates we believe will best advance policies that create the economic conditions needed for employees and businesses such as ours to survive and prosper....
Dave Robertson
President and COO
Koch Industries, Inc.
by Allegro » Thu Apr 21, 2011 2:36 am
[REFER.]Allegro wrote:.
Democrats: McDonald’s ‘intimidated’ workers into voting GOP
The Raw Story
By Daniel Tencer | Saturday, October 30th, 2010 | 7:23 pm
Officials in the Democratic Party in Ohio are calling on officials to investigate the owner of McDonald's restaurants in the state over what they say is an attempt to "intimidate" employees into voting Republican.
Employees at as many as 12 McDonald's restaurants received a letter with their most recent paycheck urging them to vote for Republican candidates, or else future paychecks would be in jeopardy.
"If the right people are elected, we will be able to continue with raises and benefits at or above our present levels," said the letter, as quoted at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. "If others are elected, we will not."
The letter was written on McDonald's stationery and included a pamphlet promoting Ohio Republican candidates John Kasich (for governor), Rob Portman (for Senate) and Jim Renacci, who's running for a House seat.
Ohio Democratic Party chairman Chris Redfern has asked county and federal prosecutors to investigate the letter, AP reports.
More on the story.
by seemslikeadream » Thu Apr 21, 2011 5:10 am
by seemslikeadream » Fri Apr 22, 2011 12:58 pm
By Brad Friedman on 4/22/2011 2:47am
New Details on Wisconsin Supreme Court 'Recount,' Waukesha County Clerk Investigation
Kloppenburg filing for special investigator alleges Prosser met privately with Walker on night after election, Nickolaus may have committed felonies
Both camps agree to hand counts in parts of 31 counties...
On Wednesday, Wisconsin's Asst. Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg announced that she will be exercising her right to file for a statewide "recount" following the April 5th election for state Supreme Court against the incumbent Justice David Prosser. She also said that she intended to ask for a special investigator to be named to look into a number of still-unanswered questions about election results that were misreported by Waukesha County's Clerk Kathy Nickolaus, a former employee of Prosser's when both served in the state's Assembly Republican Caucus.
Kloppenburg's complaints have now been filed, and The BRAD BLOG has been reviewing both them, and several additional points of note since yesterday's dramatic presser, in advance of the count which is scheduled to begin next Wednesday, April 27, according to the WI Government Accountability Board (G.A.B.), the state's top election agency.
Details included in Kloppenburg's request for a special investigator in Waukesha --- including the curious point that Prosser "was observed entering the Governor's Office late in the evening and attending a private, one-on-one meeting with Governor Scott Walker" on the night following the election, on the very same day in which the controversial new GOP Governor publicly stated that there might be "ballots somewhere, somehow found out of the blue that weren't counted before." --- are certainly compelling.
Moreover, information and questions about the "recount" process itself have naturally emerged --- including a noteworthy, video-taped exchange between a citizen activist and the head of the G.A.B. on Wednesday, as well as concerns about which districts will hold court-ordered hand-counts, and which will simply run ballots through oft-failed, easily-manipulated optical-scan computers again (or worse, simply push a button to produce the same printed reported by the same 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting machines)...
WAUKESHA INVESTIGATION: The Call for a Special Investigator
The Kloppenburg campaign's request to the G.A.B. that a special investigator be appointed to look into whatever malfeasance or misfeasance may have happened in Waukesha County is a compelling one. As you likely know by now, on Election Night, Kloppenburg was reported to be ahead of Prosser by a razor-thin 204 vote margin out of some 1.5 million cast. The election itself had become a referendum for Republican Gov. Scott Walker's controversial legislation removing a great number of rights for state employees to collectively bargain with their employer.
Two days later, on April 7th, in a 5:30pm press conference, Clerk Nickolaus announced that she had left some 14,000 votes from the city of Brookfield out of her Election Night tallies as given to the media. With the additional votes from Brookfield, Prosser gained the unofficial lead by some 7,500 votes. After the post-election canvass was completed in each of WI's 72 counties late last week, Prosser's lead was 7,316 votes --- or 0.488% --- over Kloppenburg, entitling her to a state-sponsored "recount" since the margin was less than one-half-of-one-percent.
Though The BRAD BLOG was among the first to note that those 14,000 Brookfield votes seemed to be legitimate (not necessarily the unverified results themselves, but the existence of the votes), as they were independently reported by a local media outlet in Brookfield on Election Night, many questions persist in regard to what happened, why they were not reported by Nickolaus initially, and why it took her a full two days to notify anybody --- and only via a press conference --- about what she described as "simple human error".
We've also detailed (see here and here) a fair amount, though not all, of Nickolaus' checkered history as an election official, as we've been following her various failures --- such as keeping election results only on a personal computer in her office where they cannot be overseen --- for the better part of the last year.
The Kloppenburg request for a special investigator to be appointed by the G.A.B. is based, upon other things, on evidence that the board has a conflict of interest in investigating County Clerks since they, "by necessity, have frequent interactions with all of the county clerks relating to elections."
"It is natural that these frequent professional interactions develop into friendship and a mutual trust between GAB staff and the county clerks," the Kloppenburg complaint states. "The GAB staff have a legitimate business need to maintain their close working relationship with all of the county clerks. This need conflicts directly with the need for a thorough, objective investigation into a county clerk's possible misconduct, abuse of discretion, and violations of state law that could result in civil or criminal sanctions."
The complaint highlights a number of friendly emails to Nickolaus from both other County Clerks across the state, as well as from members of the G.A.B. following her admission of "human error" in the original tallies.
The relationship between the G.A.B. and the clerks, as explained by Kloppenburg's campaign attorney, "undermines the Government Accountability Board staff's effectiveness and credibility in conducting an investigation into Ms. Nickolaus' actions relating to the spring election."
As to their specific reasons for requesting a special investigation in Waukesha, the request for a special investigator, filed on behalf of the Kloppenburg camp by campaign manager Melissa Mulliken, is a great read. Here are the facts it lays out "Relating to Nickolaus' Performance of Election Duties for the Spring Election Held on April 5, 2011", in regard to her stunning April 7th press conference announcement giving Prosser a 7,500 vote lead...
Most importantly, why did Nickolaus take so long to notify the Board of Canvassers or the G.A.B. following her discovery of the previously unreported votes?
As to the fact that word of the previously-unreported votes from Brookfield were reported, somehow, by "Conservative media outlets" before Nickolaus' presser and, apparently, before either the Canvassing Board or the state's G.A.B. were notified, that is also a question very much worth investigating. Indeed, we also heard about the news in advance of Nickolaus' April 7th evening presser from a rightwing blog site.
And then, what to make of that private meeting between Prosser (who, during the campaign, promised to "act as a common sense complement to both the new administration and [GOP] Legislature.") and Walker on the night after the election --- on the same day Walker, Prosser's old Republican colleague from the Assembly, felt confident enough to announce that there might be "ballots somewhere, somehow found out of the blue that weren't counted before"?
Was the meeting proper? A sitting Governor can meet with a sitting Supreme Court justice, I guess. But if Barack Obama had a private meeting with Justice Sotomayor (and no other justices) and failed to explain the reasons publicly, would the public have the right to, at the very least, know what the meeting was about? Of course. And an explanation for the Prosser/Walker meeting, if it occurred as described in the Kloppenburg complaint, should be ascertained by whoever investigates this matter on behalf of the G.A.B.
* * *
And on Nickolaus' storied history of problems as both an election official in Waukesha and, prior to that, as a Republican staffer working for the state Assembly, the Kloppenburg complaint summarizes her remarkable string of known failures this way...
Quite a record.
For the summary of the specific felony violations the Kloppenburg campaign is alleging Nickolaus may have committed in the wake of the April 5 election, see their full complaint...
Complaint cover letter [PDF]
Actual complaint [PDF]
Included complaint exhibits [PDF]
THE 'RECOUNT': Preserving the Evidence
A bit of late good news here, in what might have otherwise been a disturbing start to next week's statewide recount. On Thursday, the G.A.B. filed for a declaratory judgment from the circuit court [PDF] requesting permission to erase ballot programming and election results from memory cartridges used with the ES&S Optech Eagle optical-scanner system in 31 counties where those systems are used to scan paper ballots, so that they can be reprogrammed for use in the "recount".
In Wisconsin, unless an order for a hand-count is obtained from the court, the "recount" process involves scanning the same paper ballots (where they exist) through the same optical scanners used to tally them originally on Election Day/Night.
The G.A.B.'s request to the court explains they have "been advised that the memory cartridges no longer are manufactured, insufficient memory cartridges are available from the manufacturer or other sources, and the counties that will use the Optech Eagle for the recount have insufficient reserve memory cartridges in addition to the ones which were used in the April 2011 spring election, which contain the record of the votes cast."
Under state law, those cartridges may not be cleared for 21 days following the election. In truth, those cartridges should be kept for at least as long as paper ballots and other materials are securely maintained. (In federal elections, ballots and others materials are supposed to be retained for 22 months following the election though, incredibly, memory cards are routinely scrubbed in short order after elections are certified, despite years of our imploring otherwise here.)
So, since memory cartridges will be needed for scanners where ever machine "recounts" will be performed, and since extras are not available as the cartridges are no longer manufactured, the G.A.B. must receive permission to wipe them clean so, as per WI's recount procedures [PDF], the cartridges and machines can be reprogrammed to tally just the one race being contested during the "recount".
This, of course, underscores yet another absurdity in using these types of computer systems in our elections. If the contest --- via machine re-tally or hand count --- demonstrates that the optical scan systems tallied ballots incorrectly on Election Day, the forensic evidence necessary to determine whether the mistally was due to either malfeasance, misprogramming or malfunction will likely have been destroyed in the process of clearing the memory cartridges for use in the post-election contest.
The good news is that late on Thursday, according to WisPolitics (and then confirmed by The BRAD BLOG with the Kloppenburg campaign directly), both the Kloppenburg and Prosser camps have "agreed to a hand recount in parts of 31 counties to avoid having to erase data on the original Election Day returns now stored on voting machines. ... The deal includes 34 municipalities in Waukesha County."
And now the not so good news: "For the rest of the state, a machine recount will be used." In those areas, the ballots will simply be fed back through the op-scanners. However, state recount procedures allow that campaigns may examine each ballot before it's fed through the machine which could amount to a "virtual hand count" of sorts --- at least where paper ballots exist.
Meanwhile, across the state, 100% unverifiable Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting systems are also used, mostly for optional use for disabled voters, but also in the case where paper ballots may have run out on Election Day, as they did in a number of districts across the state on April 5, due to higher than expected turnout.
While so-called "Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trails" (VVPATs) are printed along with the votes cast on those systems in Wisconsin, the fact is, those VVPATs are usually not verified for accuracy by voters before the electronic ballots are invisibly cast and, in any case, the VVPATs can also be gamed. (See this video from UC Santa Barbara's Computer Security Group showing just one way to do so, in a video created for the state of California's "Top-to-Bottom Review" of electronic voting systems in the state). Thus, even with the so-called "paper trail", votes cast on those systems are 100% unverifiable.
But to make matters worse, WI's state code allows that "recounts" on DREs do not include an examination/count of the printed VVPATs. Rather, the results from DREs are simply "re-tabulated " by the same electronic system. The button is pressed again, the same report is printed. Garbage in, garbage out.
We have advised the Kloppenburg camp, while we were confirming the hand-counts in those 31 counties, that the preferred --- albeit highly imperfect, for reasons mentioned above --- procedure to deal with "recounting" those DREs, would be to count the VVPATs by hand. They'll likely have to receive a court order to do it, however. Another printout from the same machines is largely meaningless and illustrative of absolutely nothing.
Either way, in the end, if the margin of votes separating winner and loser, after the contest is complete, is lower than the number of votes cast on the touch-screen systems, we'll never know who actually won or lost with certainty. That's just one reason such systems are antithetical to democracy, and should never be used in any election.
* * *
Lastly (or almost) for now. Katy Reeder, of Defending Wisconsin PAC, caught up with Kevin Kennedy, Director and General Counsel of the G.A.B., on the streets of Madison on Wednesday and had a very interesting conversation with him, as caught on video tape by Defending Wisconsin's Jeremy Ryan (Hat-tip to Jeannie Dean in BRAD BLOG comments for flagging it)...
Two points of note in response to the video above.
1) Reeder's questions about reconciling the number of printed ballots --- all of them --- is spot on. Public records requests should be made for invoices from the vendors who printed ballots in the state. Those invoices should detail how many ballots were printed. At the same time, records requests should be made for the paper trail detailing the number of ballots sent to each city and/or ward, and the campaigns should do an accounting of all ballots during the recount procedure to reconcile the number of voted, unvoted and spoiled ballots. All blank, unvoted ballots should be fully accounted for during reconciliation of the election.
2) The point made in the video about trusting the G.A.B. or anybody else. As we have pointed out over and over, for years on this blog, elections are not about trust. They are about oversight by the citizenry. If the citizenry can't see it for themselves, there is no reason to trust it. Kennedy seems like quite a decent fellow, as witnessed by his willingness to chat on the street about these matters with a citizen. But nothing here is about trust. It's about checks, balances, and oversight, as we recently emphasized with some passion in this video on the Wisconsin mess.
Kudos to the two folks at Defending Wisconsin for their good citizen watchdogging and video taping! We could use a million more like 'em on the ground in WI and in every other state!
* * *
Finally, Kloppenburg beautifully expressed the point of such a count during her press conference yesterday when she said: "A recount may change the outcome of this election or it may confirm it, but when it is done, a recount will have shed necessary and appropriate light on an election that, right now, seems to so many people to be suspect."
We agree.
But it looks like Fox "News" doesn't, and have apparently already decided the outcome, as reported on their website in their usual "fair and balanced" manner...
by seemslikeadream » Fri Apr 29, 2011 9:46 am
by JackRiddler » Fri Apr 29, 2011 5:54 pm
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolit ... 86814.html
Waukesha recount starts slowly
Tom Lynn
The Waukesha County Board of Canvassers starts its Supreme Court recount Wednesday at the Waukesha County Administration Center.
First ballot bag has glitch; other areas smoother
By Laurel Walker and Larry Sandler of the Journal Sentinel
April 27, 2011
Waukesha — The state Supreme Court recount got off to a wobbly start in Waukesha County Wednesday.
After more than a half-hour of meticulous instructions and ground rules from Waukesha County's chief canvasser, retired Judge Robert G. Mawdsley, questions were raised about the very first bag of ballots to be counted, from the Town of Brookfield.
As canvassers and tabulators compared a numbered seal on a bag with the number recorded for that bag by a town election inspector who prepared the paperwork on election night, the numbers didn't match.
"What a great way to start," one tabulator said.
Observers from the campaigns of Justice David Prosser and Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg both agreed, however, that the error seemed to be in the inspector's use of a "2" instead of a "3." Numbers on the sealing tag and on the bag did match. Both sides and the Board of Canvassers agreed that the bag should be opened and the votes counted.
Statewide, election officials recounted 36,794 ballots on Wednesday. By the end of the day, Prosser was leading, 19,489 to 17,420 for Kloppenburg, with 65 votes cast for write-ins. That left 1.46 million more ballots to count.
Kloppenburg requested the recount after a canvass showed her losing the Supreme Court race to Prosser by 7,316 votes, a margin of less than 0.5% of the 1.5 million ballots cast. The initial count on election night ended with Kloppenburg up by 204 votes, but that was before Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus announced she had accidentally left the entire City of Brookfield out of her original vote total.
Mawdsley, who retired in 2009 as a judge after 21 years on the bench and now does mediation work, was tapped Friday to sit in as canvass board chairman for the recount after Nickolaus recused herself.
In her letter announcing the decision to County Executive Dan Vrakas, Nickolaus said that the state's elections chief, Kevin Kennedy of the Government Accountability Board, "reminded me of the appropriateness of this method under the current circumstances." The state board is investigating Nickolaus' election collecting and reporting procedures after her 14,000-vote mix-up and will report findings within 60 days.
No problems marred the opening of Milwaukee County's recount at the county Sports Complex in Franklin, as sheriff's deputies escorted election officials wheeling in bags of ballots.
State officials said the first day of the recount went smoothly in all but two counties. Chippewa County did not receive new voting machine memory units until Wednesday, and Menominee County Clerk Ruth Waupoose told the state board, "I was unable to begin the canvass today because I had to go over to the School District and get the election material." Both counties will start their recounts Thursday.
The recount in all 72 counties faces a deadline of May 9.
Three blips in the Town of Brookfield's records came to light Wednesday in Waukesha County, and while Kloppenburg's lead campaign observer, Darcy Gustavsson, said the issues raised concerns, neither side filed any official objections. Prosser's lead representative at the Waukesha County recount referred questions to campaign headquarters.
In addition to the misnumbered inspection sheet, another matter was the absence of three applications for absentee ballots - detected when all the "R's" of an alphabetized collection were missing. The applications were summoned from the town hall, and they were reconciled with the absentee ballots, Mawdsley said.
The final question of the morning involved a missing "remade" ballot - a copy of an original absentee ballot that could not be fed through the ballot-reading machines. That occurs, for example, if the voter used pen instead of pencil. The canvass board had five original ballots that could not be fed through machines, but only four copies. Officials were asking the Government Accountability Board for advice.
Mawdsley said no objections were filed by the campaigns, but they could be filed at any time during the recount. Records were kept on every anomaly.
Ellen Nowak, Vrakas' chief of staff, said tabulators did not finish the third of four reporting units in the Town of Brookfield because they found a "few discrepancies" in a poll book, "probably minor," which will be resolved Thursday morning.
Under a settlement reached in Dane County Circuit Court, most Milwaukee County municipalities must count their ballots by hand, because they would have to erase their voting machines' election-night data to use the machines for the recount.
Laurel Walker reported from Waukesha and Larry Sandler reported from Franklin.
Find this article at:
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolit ... 86814.html
by JackRiddler » Thu May 19, 2011 4:40 pm
http://www.printthis.clickability.com/p ... 56273.html
Walker seeks to stop defense of state's domestic partner registry
By Patrick Marley of the Journal Sentinel
May 16, 2011 |(554) Comments
Madison - Gov. Scott Walker believes a new law that gives gay couples hospital visitation rights violates the state constitution and has asked a judge to allow the state to stop defending it.
Democrats who controlled the Legislature in 2009 changed the law so that same-sex couples could sign up for domestic partnership registries with county clerks to secure some - but not all - of the rights afforded married couples.
Wisconsin Family Action sued last year in Dane County circuit court, arguing that the registries violated a 2006 amendment to the state constitution that bans gay marriage and any arrangement that is substantially similar.
Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen refused to defend the lawsuit, saying he agreed the new law violated the state constitution. Then-Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, hired Madison attorney Lester Pines to defend the state.
Walker, a Republican, replaced Doyle in January and fired Pines in March. On Friday, Walker filed a motion to stop defending the case.
"Governor Walker, in deference to the legal opinion of the attorney general that the domestic partner registry...is unconstitutional, does not believe the public interest requires a continued defense of this law," says the brief, filed by Walker's chief counsel, Brian Hagedorn.
Hagedorn told Dane County Circuit Judge Daniel Moeser that if he could not withdraw from the case, he would like to amend earlier filings to reflect Walker's belief that the registries conflict with the state constitution.
Even if Walker is allowed to withdraw from the case, the law would still be defended in court because gay rights group Fair Wisconsin intervened in the case last year.
Fair Wisconsin attorney Christopher Clark said the governor's move raises legal questions.
"It's not clear to me that a defendant in a lawsuit... can simply walk away from a lawsuit or withdraw," he said.
Pines said Walker's aides never gave him an explanation when they told him to stop working on the case. He said he was troubled by the latest court filing.
"The governor of this state has an obligation to defend laws he doesn't like. And for that matter, so does the attorney general," Pines said. "This shows an utter disrespect for the rule of law."
Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie disagreed.
"We don't believe it is in the best interest of the state and its taxpayers to spend additional time and resources defending the legislation," he said in an email.
In 2006, 60% of state voters signed off on changing the constitution to ban gay marriage and a "legal status identical or substantially similar to marriage" for same-sex couples.
Wisconsin Family Action advocated for the amendment. The group first sued the state over the same-sex registries shortly after they were created in 2009, taking its case directly to the state Supreme Court in hopes of getting a quick verdict.
The high court declined to hear the case, and the group then filed a lawsuit last year in Dane County circuit court.
The registries allow same-sex couples to take family and medical leave to care for a seriously ill partner, make end-of-life decisions and have hospital visitation rights. But according to Fair Wisconsin, they still confer only about a quarter of the rights associated with marriage, lacking provisions to allow couples to file joint tax returns or adopt children together.
As of August 2010, about 1,500 same-sex couples had registered with counties.
Find this article at:
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolit ... 56273.html
by JackRiddler » Thu May 19, 2011 4:46 pm
Waukesha County recount nears conclusion
By Laurel Walker of the Journal Sentinel
May 19, 2011 1:12 p.m. |(28) Comments
Waukesha - Waukesha County's Board of Canvass expects to finish its recount in the next day or two, making way for a final state certification next week of the Supreme Court race that began April 27.
All the county's votes have been tabulated, but the Canvass Board was working Thursday to reconcile and accept votes in Muskego and a portion of Waukesha.
On Thursday morning, with 99% of the nearly 1.5 million votes cast statewide now reported to the Government Accountability Board, Justice David Prosser was 2,029 votes behind Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg, according to unofficial recount results posted on the board's website.
In the original canvas, Muskego alone gave Prosser a 3,818-vote win. Statewide, Prosser won by 7,316 votes after the initial canvas.
Retired circuit court Judge Robert Mawdsley, who is leading the recount effort in Waukesha County, said a Friday finish was possible but not certain. The board needs to complete follow-up paperwork for the state after the last ward's vote count is accepted. An unofficial tally by county officials observing the process showed about a four-vote gain for Prosser overall.
by JackRiddler » Tue May 31, 2011 7:28 pm
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8545
By Brad Friedman on 5/30/2011 8:54pm
EXCLUSIVE: WI State Election Board Failed to Review Minutes from Waukesha County 'Recount' Before Certifying Supreme Court Election Results
Mountains of irregularities, more than 800 official exhibits, and objections by candidate's attorneys never examined by top state election authority before razor-thin results for 10-year seat on state's high court certified as 'correct'…
Last Monday, May 23rd, Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board (G.A.B.), the state's top election agency, officially certified [PDF] the controversial results of the extraordinarily close April 5th statewide Supreme Court election and its subsequent "recount."
However, as The BRAD BLOG has learned, the agency certified those results without reviewing hundreds of official exhibits documenting wholesale ballot irregularities, on-the-record objections from the attorneys of the candidate who filed for the "recount," and thousands of pages of official transcripts and minutes documenting the entire "recount" process from the election's most controversial county.
Even more alarming, the agency doesn't even yet have a copy of the hundreds, if not thousands, of pages which make up the official minutes documenting the nearly month-long "recount" from Waukesha County --- the last of the state's 72 counties to complete its count, and by far the most controversial county following the late discovery there of some 14,000 votes not included in the county's original Election Night results.
"Generally, we don't have information about these things [ballot bag irregularities breaking the secure chain of custody] until we get minutes from the county," the G.A.B. spokesperson told us in early May.
Indeed, the G.A.B. admits, they may not even have those minutes for another two weeks, despite the already-issued certification of the election results, and despite the fact that the statutory deadline for a candidate to file a challenge to those certified results in court is tomorrow (Tuesday).
The official minutes from most of the other 71 counties, as documented during the "recount" of the razor-thin, highly contentious election for a 10-year term on the state's high court between incumbent Republican Justice David Prosser and his independent challenger Asst. Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg, have been posted on the G.A.B.'s website for some time, with the 71st, Milwaukee County, finally posted late last week.
With Kloppenburg set to announce her decision on whether to seek a judicial review tomorrow, Waukesha's lengthy and detailed minutes are not posted for public review with all of the others, despite massive and alarming irregularities discovered during the "recount" process there over the past month (see here, here, and here for just a few of many examples), because the G.A.B. has not been given them by the county, as state officials conceded during phone conversations late last week...
'Can the People of Wisconsin Stand for This'?
While state statutes are very specific on the removal of defective or irregular absentee ballots discovered during the "recount" process --- indeed, irregular absentee ballots were removed from the "recount" results for lack of witness signatures and other such defects --- the handling of irregularities discovered for non-absentee ballots is virtually unspecified in the election code.
The result: the weight of non-absentee ballots, where defects are often ignored, is ultimately greater than those of absentee ballots cast in WI.
When irregular non-absentee ballots --- such as those found in "wide open" ballot bags in Waukesha's City of Brookfield or ballots bags with missing or scratched out or changed serial numbers are discovered, in violation of chain of custody procedures --- objections are to be raised by a candidate's attorney or specified representative, recorded in the minutes for later review, and then ballots are counted and included among the results anyway.
After that count is complete, the G.A.B. is to canvass the new results by, among other things presumably, reviewing the minutes and any objections raised during the process. They then certify that the results as "recounted" are "correct."
During the course of the "recount," The BRAD BLOG was told on several occasions by officials at the G.A.B. that they could not comment on irregularities, such as opened bags, or missing security serial numbers, until after they had the opportunity to review the minutes, exhibits, and objections from the county "recount" in question.
Following G.A.B. certification, according to WI's statutes, a candidate then has just five business days to review all of the results, the documentation of the counting (including the minutes from each county), and all of the objections and evidence on the record, in order to determine if they would like to exercise their right for a judicial review challenging the certified results.
The question of how the G.A.B. is able to "certify" the results as "correct," without having bothered to even review minutes, objections, and hundreds of evidence exhibits in all of the 72 counties, raises yet more serious questions about WI's election processes and the ability to ascertain the will of the voters, even as the results of this election, which will affect the balance of the state's high court for the next 10 years at one of the most turbulent moments in state history.
"When I think of the number of people who interrupted their lives to volunteer to observe the recount, the effort that went into finding, training, and coordinating the volunteers, the money spent by taxpayers and the campaigns to staff and support the recount, and --- most importantly --- the giant hole this leaves in the supposed verification of this election, I feel sick," Emily Levy of Velvet Revolution's non-partisan Protect Our Elections campaign told us after learning that the G.A.B. never even received, much less reviewed, Waukesha's minutes. [Disclosure: The BRAD BLOG is a co-founder of election watchdog and good government advocate VR.]
"How could the G.A.B certify the recount without having seen the reports of irregularities? And how can the people of Wisconsin stand for this? Or will they?" she wondered.
According to Wisconsin election statutes [9.01(5)(a)], the recount "minutes shall include a record of objections and offers of evidence." They go on to state [9.01(5)(bm)] that "Upon the completion of its proceedings, [the] board of canvassers [from each county] shall deliver to the [the G.A.B.] one copy of the minutes of the proceedings."
Indeed, during a phone conversation Levy had late last week with G.A.B. Elections Division Administrator Nathaniel Robinson and Election Specialist Ross Hein, who describes himself as the "project manager for the recount effort," Hein conceded there were some "840 exhibits documented" during the Waukesha count, and that each one must be entered into the minutes.
Further, he explained to Levy, due to the length and detail of the Waukesha count --- the nexus of much focus for Kloppenburg supporters, given the still-unexplained "human errors" blamed for the reporting of election-reversing results announced two days after the election by Republican activist and former Prosser colleague, Kathy Nickolaus, Waukesha's controversial County Clerk --- the county's counsel said three assistants were working "full-time" on compiling the minutes and expected them to be complete and turned over to the G.A.B. "within two weeks" from last Friday.
Nonetheless, the Kloppenburg campaign has a statutory deadline of Tuesday, May 31 (five business days following G.A.B. certification, with the holiday weekend taken into account), to file a judicial challenge to the results if they so choose.
Just 'One Vote Per Ward' Could Change the Outcome
As per Wisconsin's "Recount" statutes [9.01], as The BRAD BLOG detailed just over a week ago, during the waning days of Waukesha's counting, challenges to the certified results of the "recount" require the contesting candidate to detail evidence of enough irregularities that, were they to be removed from the results, the outcome of the election is likely to be reversed.
Proving that fraudulent ballots were counted is not a requirement of those statutes.
"Generally, to successfully challenge an election," a helpful footnote in WI's election code reads, "the challenger must show the probability of an altered outcome in the absence of the challenged irregularit[ies]."
For the past several days, Levy has been working with some 50 election integrity volunteers, the majority of the them from Wisconsin, who have been reviewing the minutes from counties across the state to identify documentation of irregularities. Most of the minutes being reviewed are "from counties where we've been led to believe everything went fine," she says.
She explains that the volunteers "are finding all kinds of problems that indicate significant irregularities in the vote count."
She also adds the important observation that "this was a close enough election that if an average of just one vote per ward was miscounted for Prosser instead of Kloppenburg, for any reason, the election outcome would be changed."
The volunteers' ongoing analysis of "recount" minutes from across the state --- some 3,500 pages which, so far, include the documentation of "thousands" of irregular ballots, she says --- does not include the minutes from Waukesha County, since they have not been made available to either the G.A.B. or the public with the rest of the counties' minutes.
'Procedures Neither Adequate Nor Adequately Followed'
On Election Night, challenger Kloppenburg was declared to have been the winner by a razor-thin 204 vote margin.
Two nights later, during a stunning evening press conference, Nickolaus announced 14,000 votes from Waukesha's City of Brookfield which, she says, were not included in her original Election Night totals. The new numbers from the heavily Republican Waukesha County, home of Prosser's election headquarters, flipped the results in the incumbent's favor, giving him a lead by some 7,500 votes out of more than 1.5 million ballots cast. The unverified 0.488% margin over Kloppenburg entitled her to request a state-sponsored "recount" which she called for on April 20th, along with an independent investigation of Nickolaus (who has a long history of questionable election results) and her procedures.
When ballot bags from the City of Brookfield were examined during the "recount" on May 5th, observers were alarmed to discover that many of them, five out of six in the very first batch examined, had been "wide open," as noted by the retired circuit court judge overseeing the counting there, and as detailed in exclusive photographs published by The BRAD BLOG. The Kloppenburg campaign objected to them, the objections were noted for the minutes (the minutes never received or reviewed by the state G.A.B.) and the unverifiable ballots were counted and included in the G.A.B.-certified results anyway.
"This election was far from clean," election integrity expert Levy told us. She has been following reports from "recount" observers closely over the past several weeks, and working with others to organize the volunteers' analysis of the published minutes over the past several days.
"Whether or not there was fraud remains to be seen. But at the very least, the procedures in Wisconsin are neither adequate nor adequately followed," she says. "That is what has been verified by this recount, rather than the results of this crucial election."
During the course of the "recount," some 2,700 votes from the original tally were found to have been counted inaccurately, according to the results posted each day throughout the "recount" by the G.A.B. That number comes as the results of hand counts of paper ballots in just 31 of the state's 72 counties. The rest of the ballots cast were re-tallied by the same oft-failed, easily-manipulated computer systems made by companies like Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia, which tallied them originally, either accurately or inaccurately, on Election Day.
The G.A.B.'s certified results declare Prosser the winner by 7,004 votes, or 0.46%. That margin includes the results from thousands of ballots found to be irregular for various reasons during the count, objected to by the Kloppenburg campaign in each instance, and then included in the results nonetheless, without review by the state agency.
If just over 3,500 "irregular" votes for Prosser, out of the 1.5 million cast overall, might have been cast originally for Kloppenburg instead, that would be enough to change the outcome of the election, as called for by Wisconsin statutes.
Protect Our Election.org's Levy says their still-incomplete analysis of county minutes has, so far, found "far more irregularities than that" --- even without being able to review the unavailable documentation and objections to Waukesha's more than 125,000 ballots where Prosser is said to have won by a nearly 3 to 1 margin.
Key word: 'Abstract'
When we recently inquired how the G.A.B. would be able to confirm that ballots counted during the "recount" were actually the ones cast on Election Day, given the extraordinary number of ballot bags and security procedures which were found to have been in violation of the state's secure chain of custody procedures, they cited the computer printed results from Election Night.
In agreement with statements given to us by the Prosser campaign, the G.A.B. said that if the "recount" numbers generally match Election Night poll tapes printed out by the tabulation computers, they were satisfied that there was no fraud. That, even though The BRAD BLOG has long detailed, as based numerous studies, analysis, and testing by computer science and security experts, how easily electronic tabulation systems can be gamed; how county clerks like Waukesha's Nickolaus had unfettered access to the ballots for some three weeks prior to (and during) the "recount," as of 4pm on the day following the election; and how WI "recount" procedures include no reconciliation of unvoted (blank) ballots which could be used to replace legitimate ones.
But where the G.A.B. feels confident in relying on Election Night poll tapes, we detailed in that same article (with photographs) the discovery of an "Official Results Report" poll tape from Waukesha's City of Pewaukee dated March 30th, seven days prior to the April 5th election. Officials offered no explanation for the misdated tapes.
As well, we quoted documentation from minutes in two other counties (Door and Taylor) detailing three different towns (Forestville, Cleveland, and Pershing) where electronic voting machines never printed voter-verifiable poll tapes at all on Election Day, assuring that it was strictly impossible for voters to have confirmed the accuracy of computer printed vote records before they selected the button to cast their wholly unverifiable electronic ballots.
And yet, those are among the "poll tapes" the G.A.B. says can be relied upon to ensure that the count was accurate, despite all of the irregular ballots and ballot bags discovered and documented in the minutes.
Last Monday, May 23rd, the day the G.A.B. certified the Supreme Court "recount" results, they issued a simultaneous announcement in which Director and General Counsel Kevin J. Kennedy is quoted as offering understated recognition of the still-undetermined number of irregularities revealed during the third statewide "recount" in Badger State history.
"As expected," Kennedy said, "the recount process identified issues to address and procedures which can be improved. Each of the 1,500,130 ballots was reviewed during the recount to determine the correct results. Both candidates were able to raise questions and challenge ballots in a completely open and transparent manner. To the extent that either candidate believes any decisions or procedures affected the outcome of the election, they may seek a court review of the results."
Seeking a court review of the results, however, is more easily and expensively (both financially and politically) said than done, particularly as Kloppenburg's independent campaign is not backed by either of the state's two major parties, and as Prosser partisans and their friends in the media have already begun pounding the Asst. Attorney General for daring to try and transparently verify the results of the election in the first place.
Early in the recount process, at the beginning of May, after a ballot bag from the Town of Delafield appeared at the "recount" with a serial number that was not recorded at all on the Election Night "Inspector's Report," along with several bags that were torn and/or featuring scratched out and replaced security serial numbers, we asked the G.A.B. for an explanation of the irregularities after the Kloppenburg camp objected to them being counted, but they were counted nonetheless.
G.A.B. spokesman Reid Magney had not yet heard about the Delafield problems, but said the state board would not be able to comment on such matters until after they had had the chance to review the county's minutes detailing the irregularities.
"Generally, we don't have information about these things until we get minutes from the county," he explained. "We don't get the minutes until the entire county has completed their count."
The Town of Delafield is in Waukesha County. The G.A.B. never reviewed the description or evidence of the still unexplained irregularities we asked them about in early May, before certifying the results as "correct" last week.
The count in Waukesha was completed on May 21. The G.A.B. has not been given the minutes, so cannot possibly have reviewed those irregular ballots bags or the myriad of other irregularities detailed along with them since counting began in Waukesha on April 27. Nonetheless, the G.A.B.'s Chairperson, Judge Thomas H. Barland, certified the results as "correct" on May 23.
How can G.A.B. Director Kennedy assert, and the G.A.B. Chair Barland "certify," that the results were actually "correct" in light of the enormous number of documented irregularities?
The use of the word "abstract" (twice) in Barland's certification [PDF] could be said to be the key:I, Judge Thomas H. Barland, Chairperson of the Government Accountability Board, certify that the attached tabular statement, as compiled from the certified returns made to the Government Accountability Board by the county boards of canvassers of the several counties of the state, contains a correct abstract of the total number of votes given for the election of candidates for Justice of the Supreme Court, at a Judicial Election held in the several towns, villages, wards, and election districts in said counties, on the fifth day of April, 2011, and contains a correct abstract of the total number of votes tabulated for this office at a recount duly ordered on April 25, 2011.
Barland's declaration of the "correct abstract of the total number of votes" for each candidate last week helped set in motion a series of predictable editorials from both Prosser partisans and state media who didn't bother to investigate or report on the mountain of irregularities, so many of which The BRAD BLOG has detailed over at least the last month.
One of those predictable editorials, similar to many others, came from the Wisconsin State Journal, which wrote last week:A careful and lengthy recount of all 1,500,130 ballots cast in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election April 5 is over.
The Government Accountability Board certified Monday that Justice David Prosser defeated challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg by more than 7,000 votes - only a few hundred less than what the original canvas suggested.
It's time to move on.
What that piece, and the others like it, make clear, is that the editorial writers at the state's top media outlets have no idea how their own state's election and "recount" processes work --- or don't. Either that, or they simply don't care.
With an unprecedented number of state Senate recall elections coming up very soon in the Badger State beginning in July --- so far, there will be at least three of them, as confirmed by the G.A.B., with the possibility of another six to be scheduled shortly, another likely for Prosser's colleague and compatriot Gov. Scott Walker next January --- it would be a great service to the state if the media there began to notice and report on just how unreliable and vulnerable their own elections are to manipulation and how difficult, if not impossible, it is for citizens to oversee them in order to ensure true self-governance.
Given all that we have seen and reported during the "recount" process of the WI Supreme Court election debacle, there is little basis for any Wisconsinite to have confidence in their electoral system as it exists today.
* * *
by JackRiddler » Tue May 31, 2011 7:30 pm
Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg said Tuesday that she was conceding the Supreme Court race to Justice David Prosser, ending what had been a contentious campaign that culminated in a rare statewide recount.
Kloppenburg made the concession at a Madison news conference just over a week after the state's Government Accountability Board reported that final count numbers showed Prosser with 7,006 more votes.
Her decision to concede is expected to pave the way for Prosser to begin a new, 10-year term on Aug. 1.
If Kloppenburg had challenged the recount, Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson would have had to name a reserve judge to hear Kloppenburg's court challenge. Court observers say it is likely that Abrahamson and the reserve judge would move as quickly as possible to consider the appeal.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/122872838.html
by seemslikeadream » Tue May 31, 2011 7:33 pm
JackRiddler wrote:However...
These people never go all the way.Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg said Tuesday that she was conceding the Supreme Court race to Justice David Prosser, ending what had been a contentious campaign that culminated in a rare statewide recount.
Kloppenburg made the concession at a Madison news conference just over a week after the state's Government Accountability Board reported that final count numbers showed Prosser with 7,006 more votes.
Her decision to concede is expected to pave the way for Prosser to begin a new, 10-year term on Aug. 1.
If Kloppenburg had challenged the recount, Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson would have had to name a reserve judge to hear Kloppenburg's court challenge. Court observers say it is likely that Abrahamson and the reserve judge would move as quickly as possible to consider the appeal.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/122872838.html
by Pele'sDaughter » Thu Jun 02, 2011 5:00 pm
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