Okay this is the scenario:
You are the County Clerk of Waukesha County in Wisconsin and your friend is in a really tough race. If you predict a large turnout you'll have to deal with a lot of pesky paper ballots that can be checked. If you predict a small turnout it's guaranteed you'll run out of paper ballots and voters will have to use electronic voting machines that can't be checked. On election night you've already reported the totals in the 198 precincts to the AP when you hear he is behind by 200 votes. Remember you also want to make sure your friend's winning margin is big enough to prevent an automatic recount. The chart below shows the actual registered voters in the County of Waukesha by town.
What do you do?
Here's Mine:
I would predict a low voter turnout and have the electronic voting machines ready. On the day after the election I would just take my database program pad 14415 votes across all the precincts except those in the City of Brookfield. I now have a vote total of 110577 coming from all precincts without counting the Brookfield precincts. Now I can miraculously discover the uncounted 14415 votes from Brookfield. I have to be careful though no one is going to believe the entire city of Brookfield voted for my friend so I'll put some in the other column keeping in mind the margin has to prevent an automatic recount. Those electronic voting machines now come in handy as there is no way to verify any of the votes! Yes there are all kinds of holes here but didn't want to get bogged down in the details!
State Of Wisconsin
Registered Voters by Municipality Within County
12/28/2010 3:45:43 PM Page 72 of 77
68171 VILLAGE OF PEWAUKEE 5,181
68181 VILLAGE OF SUSSEX 6,432
68191 VILLAGE OF WALES 2,097
68166 VILLAGE OF OCONOMOWOC LAKE 450
68153 VILLAGE OF MUKWONAGO 4,495
68158 VILLAGE OF NASHOTAH 989
68161 VILLAGE OF NORTH PRAIRIE 1,556
68265 CITY OF OCONOMOWOC 10,004
68270 CITY OF PEWAUKEE 10,658
68291 CITY OF WAUKESHA 40,299
68261 CITY OF NEW BERLIN 28,338
68206 CITY OF BROOKFIELD 27,434
68216 CITY OF DELAFIELD 4,739
68251 CITY OF MUSKEGO 15,922
68004 TOWN OF DELAFIELD 5,828
68024 TOWN OF OTTAWA 2,712
68002 TOWN OF BROOKFIELD 5,480
68032 TOWN OF WAUKESHA 6,684
68030 TOWN OF VERNON 5,385
68022 TOWN OF OCONOMOWOC 5,925
68008 TOWN OF GENESEE 5,778
68006 TOWN OF EAGLE 2,247
68010 TOWN OF LISBON 6,839
68016 TOWN OF MUKWONAGO 5,584
68014 TOWN OF MERTON 6,341
68106 VILLAGE OF BIG BEND 867
68146 VILLAGE OF LAC LA BELLE 250
68136 VILLAGE OF HARTLAND 5,583
68147 VILLAGE OF LANNON 828
68152 VILLAGE OF MERTON 1,936
68151 VILLAGE OF MENOMONEE FALLS 25,329
68128 VILLAGE OF SUMMIT 3,810
68111 VILLAGE OF CHENEQUA 399
68107 VILLAGE OF BUTLER 1,238
68116 VILLAGE OF DOUSMAN 1,469
68122 VILLAGE OF ELM GROVE 4,662
68121 VILLAGE OF EAGLE 1,171
Total Voters 264,939
WAUKESHA COUNTY
SOURCE: Voter Data