Guest Blogged by John Washburn
(NOTE: Washburn will be appearing on today's Peter B. Collins show, as Guest Hosted by Brad Friedman, to discuss his findings. See this post for more info, times, call-in number, and listening links.)
After a two year interruption, I am beginning to go through the copies of November 2, 2004 election records which were provided to me in the settlement of my lawsuit with the City of Milwaukee Election Commission.
People have asked me: "Why do you still pursue this after two years? Get a life. The election is over and John Kerry carried the state with 11,384 ballots."
The high minded reasons are:
- Because it is the duty of sovereign citizens to watch public officials vigilantly and eternally. This is a design principle of the American government; Citizens watch those in power.
- Process auditing is the act of verifying written procedures were actually followed as documented. As a software tester process auditing is in my professional "sweet spot." I thought I could do some process audits of the canvassing done by several cities and share the results with others. I considered this my contribution to the body politic if any of my fellow citizens would want to do the same.
- Election results are important. John Kerry carried Wisconsin by 11,384 ballots out of 3 million cast (2,997,007 to be exact). This is 0.38% of the vote. It is important to know which candidate won such a razor thin election; especially since the State of Wisconsin and the City of Milwaukee in particular were rife with problems.
But, to be brutally honest the answer is it has been primarily spite and anger which has kept me on this like a Jack Russell terrier clamped to the sleeve of a shaking arm. And the results of my initial examination of these records reveal immediately disturbing findings...
Two years ago these records were voluntarily transferred by the City Election Commission to the joint task force headed up by the "loyal Bushie" US Attorney, Steven M. Biskupic, and the Milwaukee County District Attorney, E. Michael McCann. Then that voluntary transfer was cited as the reason the election records were unavailable for inspection or copying when requested under Wisconsin's open records law. It offended then and continues to offend me now that the most rudimentary oversight of election administration was denied to me and others.
Since the investigation took two years to begin, it's appropriate that there is a major discrepancy in the paperwork of the very first ward examined. Here is a PDF file of the 4 pieces of paperwork from City of Milwaukee Ward 1 for the November 2, 2004 presidential election. The records are:
- The end of day poll tape generated by the Optech IIIP Eagle optical ballot scanner,
- One of the two signature pages from the poll lists used during the November 2, 2004 election,
- The cover page from the City’s copy of the inspectors’ report, and
- The cover page from the County’s copy of the inspectors’ report.
First, the signatures on the cover pages of the inspectors’ reports look to me to be obvious forgeries. Both the names are bogus (e.g. Joe Doe, Jane Smith) and, in my opinion, are clearly written in the same hand. The hand which "signed" the inspectors’ reports does not match any of the signatures I redacted from the poll book list. Creating false canvass reports is a felony under WI Stats 12.13(2)(b)4.
The person to ask about the signatures, and the inexplicable numbers would be the Executive Director of the Election Commission, Susan Edman. I have called the office of the City Election Commission for comment, but unfortunately, Ms. Edman is out of town at a conference and will not be back until Monday, July 23, 2007.
Second, the numbers do not match. Not candidate totals, but the simple numbers do not match. The numbers concerning the number of ballots handled do not match.
The Optech IIIP Eagle optical scanner claims it scanned 1219 ballots. On the poll book certification page, the poll workers checking in voters and handing out blank ballots claim they handed 1071 ballots to electors. On the Inspectors’ reports with the forged signatures, it is claimed only 981 ballots were handed to electors. If I believe the machine and the poll book, then the ballot box in Ward One was stuffed with 148 extra ballots. If I believe the machine and the apparently forged inspectors’ report, the ballot box is stuffed with 238 extra ballots. If I ignore the machine altogether, the ballot box is stuffed with 90 extra ballots.
This leads to several questions.
- How many ballots are currently sealed in the ballot bag for Ward One; 1219 ballots, 1071 ballots, 981 ballots, or some other number of ballots? Has anyone checked? Ever?
- How is it that this anomaly was never discovered after two years of "investigation" by the Joint Task Force of the FBI, Milwaukee Police department, the Milwaukee county District Attorney and the US Attorney for Eastern Wisconsin? What have US Attorney Biskupic and the County District Attorneys E. Michael McCann and John Chisholm been doing for two years if such clear statute violations were missed?
- Stuffing a ballot box is a felony under WI Stats. 12.13(2)(b)3, removing the stuffed ballots from the ballot box (if discovered) is required under WI Stats. 7.51(2)c, and failing to remove extra ballots stuffed into a ballot box (if discovered) is a misdemeanor under WI Stats. 12.13(2)a. (The felony and misdemeanor definitions for violations of WI Stats 12.13 are found WI Stats. 12.60)
- Who benefits from this? The City of Milwaukee voted largely for John Kerry (72.42% Kerry, 27.58% Bush, 0.83% Badnarik,Cobb, Nader, et. al. among 276,921 total ballots cast in the City). Many in southeastern Wisconsin speculate this and other election anomalies helped create the 11,384 ballot victory for John Kerry. The truth is ballots are anonymous and the correct answer is no one can say for sure who benefited. We can only speculate.
- Wouldn't it be easier to investigate and prosecute the above election fraud instead of pursuing the more difficult voter fraud case of Kimberly Prude voting illegally? Which has more effect on an election? 200-250 illegal voters or at least 4600 extra ballots stuffed into the ballot box?
For the record, it should be noted that there have been questions about Biskupic vis a vis the US Attorney purge. He had reportedly been on the list of USA's to be purged, but at some point, he was dropped from that list and allowed to remain on the job. I suppose we can all draw our own conclusions, but it would be nice to know how such a "voter fraud warrior" such as Biskupic could have possibly missed something as obvious as this.
All of this from just a single ward. The first ward I bothered to look into. There are 311 more wards more to go...