While many Wisconsin counties are reporting very few issues recounting votes from the April 5th election for Wisconsin Supreme Court, Waukesha County continues to have trouble gaining any kind of momentum. The Government Accountability Board is reporting only 12 precincts completed out of 194 in Waukesha County.
The Waukesha County recount is being streamed live here. See my earlier diary about another break in the chain of custody of ballots in Waukesha County discovered this afternoon. Along with the details below of an early morning problem, I am getting the impression that confusion reigns in Waukesha County.
Before that... the numbers for Day 6, courtesy of the GAB spreadsheet:
The GAB has reviewed and reported 2,128 precincts. In the precincts reported, JoAnne Kloppenburg has gained an additional 148 votes. There have been 762 additional votes counted in those precincts. 360 have gone to Kloppenburg, 212 to Prosser, and 190 to write-ins (scattered).
The GAB has a lengthy message on their web site today about problems uncovered during the recount in Waupaca County which explains much of today's Kloppenburg gain:
Waupaca County Discovers Canvass Error
Posted: May 2, 2011 - 2:16pm
Waupaca County officials have discovered two errors in the original canvass of the Supreme Court election. Here is Waupaca County Clerk Mary Robbins' explanation to G.A.B. staff:
Town of Larrabee – discrepancy in count. I have attached our recount notes in regards to the Town of Larrabee. They use both the Edge machine and the Optech Eagle. The Town of Larrabee original tally sheet from the April 5, 2011 election showed a 0 vote count on the Eagle on their tally sheet. (minutes attached) Board of Canvass did not think they could open the ballot bag to count at their April 7th Board of Canvass, we should have done that. The clerk was called (Arlene Kratzke) and she said she just forgot to transfer the numbers onto the sheet. The Board of Canvass should have caught this mistake the tape was attached and I apologize, we must have just read the sheet and didn’t check the tapes, we normally always check the tapes. The call in sheet, also, only shows 70 for Kloppenburg, the tape shows 167, the actual hand count shows 168 for Kloppenburg.
Town of Royalton - discrepancy in count, Kloppenburg original count was 80, Recount final count was 95 votes for Kloppenburg. They use the Edge machine and paper ballots: Original Tally was 80 votes, the Edge machine tape showed 40 ballots, that total matched the tape, they counted the Edge tape 3 times. The hand counted paper ballots were 40 on the original tally sheet (I think they just put 40 in both columns by mistake) Tabulators, counted 3 times for Kloppenburg. The 15 ballots were paper ballots, the recount team counted these ballots 3 times. Clerk had no explanation other than the election officials forgot to count a stack of ballots cast for Kloppenburg when they reported and put all paper ballots into the bag or the person writing the tallies just copied the 40 twice. Since these were paper ballots a recount is the only way these would have been found.
Back to Waukesha: Barb Hansen, a former deputy for the state Government Accountability Board and a 21-year employee of the state Elections Board is assisting the canvass board in the Waukesha County recount. She was hired by the county after County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus recused herself from the board, and Hansen seems to be the person running the show there.
When I took a peek at about 9:15 a.m., all counting had stopped while a group of canvassers stood around an electronic voting machine. They were listening to someone providing telephone tech support (which was audible on the livestream) on how to insert a cartridge and print out a duplicate report. Apparently there was an error on the machine earlier which required the production of the duplicate. Because I tuned in late, I don't have any detail about the error, but none of the observors seemed to have any issue with the production of a new report.
I logged on again at about 10:00 a.m. They were just finishing up with the telephone support but apparently hadn’t completely resolved the issue. The duplicate report contained all electronic votes for that municipality mixed together. They needed only the totals for wards 1, 2 and 5 from the Town of Genesee. They determined they could cross-check with additional information from “Kathy” in order to break out the 193 machine votes by ward.
They finished the counting of the physical ballots and sealed everything up with the expectation they would come back to those wards when “Kathy” was able to provide the information they needed.
What this menat was that it took almost two hours to count 708 votes. When they started on the next precinct, things seemed to pick up a bit, but eventually they received the additional documentation from Kathy and pulled a few people to manually mark and count the machine printout for wards 1, 2 and 5. At one point, Barb Hansen could be heard commenting on the hunt-and-peck ballot counting for those wards. “This is not pretty,” she said after learning there was no other way to filter or sort the electronic report by ward.
It may be that all county canvassing looks as consistently disjointed as Waukesha's, but I don’t think so. Most counties are reporting their results much faster than Waukesha, and there are media reports of counties moving quickly now after they worked out a few early bugs.
If anyone knows if the streaming of the Waukesha recount is being recorded, please let me know. There is something I would like to check - a comment passed between the two Republican canvass board members that, if I heard correctly, would be a bombshell.