Posted on 04/11/2002 3:41:23 PM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
West Bend - A recount of all ballots cast in last week's election for District 23 supervisor on the Washington County Board has confirmed challenger Mark McCune as the winner by 19 votes.
McCune, of Erin, defeated incumbent Helmut Wagner by a final count of 454-435, with the recount showing no change, County Clerk Marilyn Merten said.
Wagner said Wednesday that he would not appeal the recount's findings to the Circuit Court.
Even so, McCune will not be able to take office at the April 16 board meeting, Merten said.
Under state law, Wagner has five business days to decide whether to appeal. Deadline for an appeal would be 5 p.m. April 17, and state law requires the clerk to wait the entire period, she said.
District 23 encompasses all of the Town of Erin and Ward 3 of the Town of Richfield.
Wagner requested the recount after he learned that poll workers duplicated by hand some of the 51 absentee ballots cast in the race. Twenty-eight of the 51 absentee forms could not be counted by the electronic voting machine. So the voters' preferences on those 28 forms were transferred to regular ballots. The duplicates were made by poll workers on election day.
Wagner petitioned the Board of Canvassers to decide whether mistakes were made during duplication that might have changed the outcome of the race.
Merten said Wagner's concern could not be fully resolved. Not all of the duplicates could be compared with the original absentee ballots because some of them were not labeled as duplicates, she said.
It is just #@$%^&^%%$ unbelievable to me that election workers would be allowed to DUPLICATE absentee ballots! We're talking about 28 ballots here (enough to swing a close election) and easy enough to tabulate the old fashioned way. Yet someone gave permission to DUPLICATE them so that they could be read electronically.
And what did they do with the originals? The story doesn't say, but they can't find the duplicates because someone forgot to mark them as duplicates, so the system cannot be audited after the fact.
There oughta be a law! And we all need to sign up to be poll watchers and poll workers to stop this nonsense from happening.
With videocameras and with partners - and cell phones.
There is probably nothing more important than your suggestion. THEY ARE PLANNING MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD - THEY HAVE A FULL BLOWN VOTE THEFT PLAN - AND HAVE BEEN USING IT ALL ACROSS THE COUNTRY ALREADY.
WAKE UP OR LET THE COMMUNISTS HAVE IT ALL.
Conservative or not, we need to insist that the elections are run fairly and by the book. It is astonishing how poorly trained the people at the polls are. They are ripe for people to walk all over them.
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