Friday, July 20, 2012

Something hinky in the Wisconsin recall...

Thanks to Free Wisconsin for the graphic.
There are at least credible questions about the way the vote was counted in the Wisconsin recall. One of those has to do with the electronic voting machines used in the election.

Another has to do with Walker's history of dirty politicking. According to DailyKos, when Walker ran for office as an undergraduate at Marquette, his college newspaper concluded:
Walker was "unfit for office" due to his being "sanctioned for illegal campaigning on numerous occasions, and brutal personal attacks upon his opponent’s character." Plus, "Walker’s campaign was secretly and systematically (stealing and) throwing out copies of the newspaper that endorsed his opponent" (prior to the "unfit for office" editorial), and newspapers never like that kind of theft.
As far as the electronic voter machines go, the votes were recorded on memory cards. By law, those cards must stay with the counties for 21 days after the election. For some reason they were returned early -- to the for-profit vendor. Free Wisconsin explains:
...memory cards of voting machines used in the June 5 Recall Election were sent back to Command Central early – before the 21 days required by Wisconsin State Statutes. ...  the send back was described as an “offer” from Command Central to store the memory cards, which occupy no more space than your middle dresser drawer.
Command Central is a vendor that has contracts with Wisconsin counties to program machines and tabulate votes. Or as Free Wisconsin explains:
They are free of any oversight by any government agency, elected official(s), or the judiciary. And to had salt to the wound, the corporation has recently shown complete disregard for transparency, and the free flow of information provided by the Freedom of Information Act – and they got away with it! 
Apparently, Command Central is above any oversight and the law. They imposed an exorbitant fees for the replacement of memory cards on the County Clerks who, in turn, passed these costs along to citizens requesting to inspect open records. Citizens were denied the right to the information on “secret” memory cards unless Command Central “edited” the information in private. They also reserved the right to charge $200 for each memory card inspected! Only under these secret and costly restrictions would they reveal information on the memory cards...
It gets worse.

Turns out that certain kinds of machines seemed to have an unusual bias in favor of job-killer Gov. Scott Walker.
...certain types of machines (Accuvote/TSX) and the (OS/AVC Edge) have a mind of their own – “They just don’t like recalls”. They believe that Walker should be allowed to serve out his term. 
You can see for yourself how these AVG Edge machines consistently voted for Walker in the June 5 Recall election. You are about to discover how the Command Central AVC Edge (yep the one where the memory cards were sent back early) performed in favor of Walker when compared to other machines. Barrett had 57% on Opscan/Automark machines (the kind that read your ballot) but just 34-42% on other configurations (like the AVC Edge where memory cards were sent back early. Go to row 100 at the link below, and see for yourself.
Here's the link.