Posted on 02/12/2005 6:59:40 AM PST by Timeout
City had trouble getting ballots out and back, task force says
By GREG J. BOROWSKI Posted: Feb. 11, 2005
In a review of the Nov. 2 election, Milwaukee officials on Friday blamed a massive crush of absentee voters for problems in getting ballots to everyone who requested one, and for not getting all the returned absentee ballots to the polls before they closed.
The two problems, which have almost become footnotes amid more recent election questions, are both serious. In the first case, some residents who sought ballots were unable to vote. In the second, 238 ballots that did come almost missed being counted.
It took special permission from the state Elections Board to allow those 238 ballots to be counted, something that did not happen until nearly a month after the hard-fought election.
The officials, members of a task force appointed by Mayor Tom Barrett, are conducting one of several investigations into how the city ran the election.
Legislators this week approved a state audit that will look into problems in Milwaukee and review how other cities handled the election. And a state-federal probe into possible voter fraud is under way.
Both were launched after Journal Sentinel reports on problems in the election - including 1,200 votes cast from invalid addresses; at least 7,000 votes unaccounted for in computer records; and 1,300 registration cards that could not be processed. Many of those were missing names or addresses.
Several members of the task force, made up of city employees and officials, said absentee ballots were accepted until 5 p.m. Nov. 2 and had to be sorted and delivered to the appropriate ward by 8 p.m.
That meant an election night scramble to deliver ballots involving police and firefighters.
But Kevin Kennedy, executive director of the state Elections Board, said the city is able to set the mail-in cutoff earlier, based on when mail is typically delivered, and could have done so. Ballots might explain gaps
Meanwhile, several members of the task force argued that the handling of absentee ballots at polling places may be one reason for gaps reported this week by the Journal Sentinel between the number of ballots counted and the number of the last voter listed at dozens of wards citywide.
Al Campos, a task force member and chairman of the city Election Commission, said some poll workers may not have recorded the absentee ballots properly in the log books.
"So if that isn't done, it could explain a discrepancy," said Sharon Robinson, task force chair and head of the Department of Administration.
"Exactly," Campos said. "A big discrepancy."
No evidence for this as the cause was offered, however.
The Journal Sentinel review found 20 wards, out of 312, where no number was listed for the last voter, an important safeguard against anyone later changing the books or ballots.
In 24 wards, there were gaps of more than 5% between the last voter number listed and a higher number of ballots counted. Only 56 of the wards matched perfectly.
Friday's meeting had one notable absence: Lisa Artison, a task force member and executive director of the city Election Commission. She has been out sick since at least Feb. 1.
The next election is Tuesday, a primary contest in which only the state superintendent of public instruction race is on the ballot in Milwaukee. It was unclear Friday when Artison is expected to return to work.
"She is out sick," said Carlene Orig, a Barrett spokeswoman. "That is all I can tell you. It would be inappropriate for me to say anything more, because it is a personnel matter."
Barrett chief of staff Patrick Curley said Artison has kept the mayor's office and the Department of Employee Relations informed of her status. With Artison out, the top official in the city elections office is Victoria Robertson, election services manager. Absentee backlog
At Friday's task force meeting, Ryan Ranker, absentee ballot coordinator, discussed the process and the Nov. 2 problems.
For Tuesday's election, he said, requests for absentee ballots are being processed the same day they arrive. In November, it was taking several days to do the same task.
He and others blamed the volume of requests, which boomed after both parties and many outside groups pushed their supporters to vote early.
Artison and Barrett also encouraged early voting as a way to cut down on lines at the polls, though voting early actually increases the workload for the staff and can lead to absentee ballots being rejected if forms are not completed properly.
Statewide, the number of votes cast by absentee ballots went from about 6% in 2000 to about 12.5% last fall, said Kennedy.
In Milwaukee, the percentage was lower - less than 10% of the more than 277,000 votes cast. But the volume of absentee ballot requests, nearly 25,000, bogged down the staff, which also had to deal with some 7,925 people voting early at City Hall.
Task force members indicated they may recommend changes, such as a larger workplace for elections staff dealing with absentee ballots. Also discussed: seeking a change in state law to set an earlier cutoff date for absentee ballot requests to be submitted by mail.
Ranker said many of the absentee ballot request forms had missing information, which further delayed the processing.
Later, many of the ballots that were mailed back to be counted also had flaws, such as missing signatures. That, of course, is not a problem faced by those voting in person on election day.
"Incident logs" reviewed by the newspaper showed dozens upon dozens of rejected absentee ballots because signatures were missing on the envelope. In addition, there were cases where ballots were rejected because the person was already checked off as having voted earlier in the day.
In some cases, this appeared to be people voting in person, even though they previously sent in an absentee ballot late, perhaps worried it would not arrive at the polls.
There is no way of knowing, though, whether any ballots were rejected because of names inaccurately recorded in poll lists earlier in the day as having voted, or someone else having improperly voted as the person who actually sent in an absentee ballot.
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I've got to hand it to Borowski. He's been a bulldog on this story.
Note that Lisa Artison is still hiding out from his determined questioning...she's been sick since Feb. 1st. And there's another election coming up TUESDAY! Just what are this woman's job duties??????
Or...hmmmm....could she be coordinating with the mayor, laying the groundwork for her resignation???
Or, borrowing a page from the Rats' favorite playbook, will she soon claim she's receiving "death threats"????
vote fraud ping
"There is no way of knowing, though, whether any ballots were rejected because of names inaccurately recorded in poll lists earlier in the day as having voted, or someone else having improperly voted as the person who actually sent in an absentee ballot."
Gee, what makes me think that it's the latter?
In a state where you don't have to show any ID to vote (just mention your name, and if your name appears on the list of registered voters, you get a ballot) this shouldn't be a suprise to anyone.
On the day before the election, a young woman called in during Mark Belling's program on WISN (the local Milwaukee talk radio program), and said that she had tried to vote early. The election judge told her that she had already voted. (In other words, somebody had gotten her name from the voter registration lists, which are public, and used her name to vote in her place.) It was too late to do anything about the ballot of the person who voted for her, so the judge just gave her a ballot too.
I wonder how many times that happened last November?
You're from Wisconsin? Milwaukee?
I have a question I haven't been able to get an answer to.
It has to do with provisional ballots.
In most states, the provisional ballot is used if someone shows up and says they should be registered, but they're not. They are then instructed to vote a provisional ballot until the elections office can research their registration.
But in Milwaukee, from my reading of all the reports, that person would have been told to do a same day registration...eliminating the most common reason for a provisional.
So, who would file a provisional in Wisconsin? Reading past articles I found that they were NOT allowed a provisional if they went to the wrong precinct. What reason is left? How many provisionals were there...I can't find that number. And what reason was given for them?
Do you want to be added to the Vote Fraud ping list?
I actually live in Lake County, Illinois, right across the border from Wisconsin. But since my own state was such a lost cause, I voted early in Illinois and volunteered to be a poll watcher in Racine County, Wis.
You're right, with same day registration in Wisconsin, if people didn't show up as being registered, they were just told to go to the other line and register. So, we really didn't have provisional ballots.
Our biggest problem was students who were registering and voting based upon their current address at the local college,(UW Parkside) even though they may have already voted absentee from their home address. And of course, people who weren't showing ID. (we were asking them anyway)
Sure, put me on.
There were virtually no provisional ballots, since people could register at the polls, with effectively no identification required. The law requires ID for registration, but allows any elector, regardless of whether they've ever laid eyes on someone prior to election day, to "vouch" for that person.
bump
And yet O. Ricardo Pimentel continues to hold blinders over his eyes and earplugs over his ears while baying that nothing illegal went on, and that voting should be even "easier".
I heard that lefty professors were encouraging this across the country. That may partially explain how the Dems did as well as they did in 2000 and 2004. The no ID thing and the motor voter deal being other parts of the puzzle.
Gee...how "lucky" for the Dems that they found those 238 ballots one month after the polls closed. Really, does anyone think people are this gullible? I'd love to know how many people were bused in from Chicago to vote in WI. That would be an eye-opener. I think next election, the feds ought to quarantine IL so their corruption can't be used to elections in WI and MI as well, as their own filthy nest.
Yes, that's why I was asking.
I couldn't find any data showing how many provisional ballots were actually cast by state.
I guess the MEC's recooking isn't going as well as expected. As for Lisa Artison, money says she'll next use up her vacation time, then get quietly fired.
Woooo Hooooo!
Thank you for pointing that out to me. I see it's dated today, so I don't suppose he'll talk about it until Monday. Does he have a large audience? I couldn't find a "listen live" option on WTMJ's site. Can you or someone give me a report on what he says?
I've been posting that story on every blog I could find that is following the WI election story. Lakeshore Laments is the only one that's actually done a story on it. I'd love to know where Sykes picked it up...maybe LL tipped him off.
Anyway, I hope it now gets wide coverage....lots of questions need answering.
How much vacation time can she have? She was only appointed last August! LOL!
I wish Borowski had the resources to watch her house. How much you want to bet she's going about her normal routine...except going to work. Lord forgive me if she's really sick, but it DOES seem awfully convenient. The joint investigation was announced on Jan. 25th and Borowski says she's been sick since AT LEAST Feb. 1st. I take that to mean he called her for comment on 2/1 and they said she was sick. But if he hadn't called in a few days prior to the 1st, he would have no way of knowing the first day she went missing.
Is she getting paid? I guarantee you this is coordinated with Mayor Barrett. I wonder what she's demanding in return for resigning and keeping her mouth shut.
Charlie (among the top shows in the 8:30-noon time slot) won't be back until Monday. Jeff Wagner (who is on after him during the week and on Saturday afternoons unless sports pre-empts him) is pre-empted for Badger basketball for at least the early part of the afternoon. There is a "listen live" link (it requires the SurferNETWORK Player).
I've been posting that story on every blog I could find that is following the WI election story. Lakeshore Laments is the only one that's actually done a story on it. I'd love to know where Sykes picked it up...maybe LL tipped him off.
Quite likely, or Charlie read your comments on there and elsewhere (he does frequently read several Wisconsin blogs, and Lakeshore Laments is one of them). To be fair to the other bloggers, the governor (Diamond Jim "Craps" Doyle; D-Madistan) just introduced a real crapper of a budget that (shock of shocks) the Senate Republicans led by the former "leader" appear ready to fully-cave on, and that's been the top story lately.
I think I mentioned before that she was (apparently) around on the 27th to charge Owen for access to the "fouled" same-day registrations. I'm sure she and Milk Carton Barrett are busy figuring out how to buy her silence.
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