Waukesha 2004, Bush v. Kerry.
Apparently in 2004 the polls in Waukesha were teeming with voters as the Waukesha County Clerk's office showed a 97.63% turn out. No, that's not a typo. 97.63%
http://www.waukeshacounty.gov/...
Of the 236,642 registered voters in Waukesha on Nov 2, 2004 apparently 231,031 of them came out in a hint of rain and drizzle and did their civic duty.
Just to put this in perspective, Australia has compulsory (mandatory) voting and their turnout is 95%.
The estimated population of Waukesha in July of 2004 was 375,350 with 91,530 residents under the age of 18. (source) Leaving out solely residents under the age of 18 that leaves 283,820 residents that are of voting age (remember that number, it will be referenced again). That's an 83% voter registration number which is well above both the national average and Wisconsin's average.
Kathy Nickolaus bragged about 2004 turnout on the eve of the 2008 election:
http://gazettextra.com/...
WAUKESHA, Wis. (AP) _ Municipal clerks are expecting to work late for this general election because of the huge turnout for early voting.
Absentee ballots are taken to the polls in the district where the voter lives and can be counted as soon as the polls open.
But, Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus says she doesn't expect much of a lull at the polls, so the early votes will have to be counted after the election booths close at 8 p.m.
Nickolaus says people in Waukesha County take their voting rights very seriously, with 96 percent turnout for the last presidential election.
She says given the interest this election has generated, the county might even surpass that percentage this year.
I can't imagine how it's would be within the realm of reality to suggest that turnout could again hit such levels considering the county had well over 250,000 registered voters in 2008 but that's not really pertinent to this diary just yet.
So, in November of 2004 there were 236K registered voters. In the Spring General Election of 2004 the election results showed the registered voter roll at 233,415. (source) So the county picked up a marginal number of voters for a 1.3% increase in the rolls leading into a BIG Presidential election.
Flash forward to The February 15, 2005 Spring Primary in Waukesha. Over a period of about 3 months the voter roll ballooned from the 236K seen in the November 2004 Presidential Election up to 282,390. (source) So in the 8 months leading into the 2004 Presidential Election there was a marginal 1.3% increase in the rolls netting about 3000 additional new voters. However in the 3 months after the election, which showed an anomalous 97.63% turn out, suddenly the rolls surged to the tune of almost 50,000 new voters and upped the rolls 20%. I suppose that's one way to even out a suspiciously high turn out.
Furthermore, remember that first number I told you to hang on to? The 283,820 eligible voters in the county of Waukesha in July of 2004? This new surge in the voter rolls has now pushed total voter registration in Waukesha County to 99.5% of elegible voters being registered to vote by February of 2005. Sure stinks and sure has all the earmarks of election fraud.
Flash forward to the September Primary of 2006. Kathy Nickolaus has what we now know to be a familiar problem:
http://suggest.wi.gov/...
Computer monitors at the county clerk's office late Tuesday briefly showed Lufter winning her race, as county officials scrambled to correct flawed returns from the City of Waukesha.
Final results later showed Lufter losing to fellow Republican Bill Kramer by a significant margin.
County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus said some returns from the City of Waukesha inexplicably had data recorded in the wrong column, which momentarily skewed results.
Nickolaus and her staff resorted to correcting the city's results manually a process that continued until 1 a.m., with staffers poring over a blizzard of numbers on computerized printouts.
"The best thing to do is go back to paper," Nickolaus said of the tedious process. "And that's exactly what we did."
Because there is no summary posted with the September results I've opted just to skip forward to the November 2006 Mid Terms while still flagging problems with the elections just prior to the Mid Terms. As far as I could tell there were no known blips or glitches on the local media's radar in Waukesha during the 2006 Mid Terms but when looking at the data I noticed something even more unusual:
Nov 2006 Waukesha Election Results
WAUKESHA COUNTY, WISCONSIN
NOVEMBER 7, 2006
PRECINCTS COUNTED (OF 211). . . . . 210 99.53
REGISTERED VOTERS - TOTAL . . . . . 0
BALLOTS CAST - TOTAL. . . . . . . 156,804
GOVERNOR/LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR
DOYLE/LAWTON (DEM) . . . . . . . 61,401 34.86
GREEN/HUNDERTMARK (REP). . . . . 112,242 63.73
EISMAN/TODD (WGR). . . . . . . . 2,320 1.32
WRITE-IN. . . . . . . . . . . 149 .08
ATTORNEY GENERAL
KATHLEEN FALK (DEM) . . . . . . . 55,608 31.95
J.B. VAN HOLLEN (REP) . . . . . . 118,342 67.99
WRITE-IN. . . . . . . . . . . 97 .06
SECRETARY OF STATE
DOUG LA FOLLETTE (DEM) . . . . . . 68,302 40.07
SANDY SULLIVAN (REP). . . . . . . 96,199 56.44
MICHAEL LAFOREST (WGR) . . . . . . 5,886 3.45
WRITE-IN. . . . . . . . . . . 53 .03
So, do you see it? In the race for Governor/Lieutenant Governor there were a total of 176,112 votes cast. For Attorney General there were a total of 174,047 votes cast. And for Secretary of State there were a total 170,440 votes cast.
So, look at the 3rd line of the top of that report...Total Ballots Cast: 156,804. So based on those numbers 20,000 extra votes were cast in the election that weren't actually accounted for in the ballots cast. Again, another sign of election fraud.
What's more, the Waukesha County web site reflects almost all of the above reports were pulled to be placed on the website in January of 2008 so those don't appear to be numbers posted in the rush of getting election results up, but were pulled and posted well after the results should have been long settled in the system.
After 2006 the Waukesha County election summaries no longer have the number of ballots cast or the turnout percentage at the top of the reports and I honestly don't have the time to dig through 2008 and 2010 to analyse the turnout, I'd also really like to go back and get the 2002 results.
Anyway, this is my first Kos diary. My very awesome boyfriend posts here a lot so after showing him all this tonight I wanted to post it for everyone else to see.
PS: Someone tell Nate Silver to go further back than 2010.
UPDATE
So I went ahead and put in a call to the Wisconsin GAB to ask if they were aware of the 2006 totals and if there was an explanation for it.
The woman I spoke with said the following: "We are aware of it, we are looking into it, and we cannot comment on it."
I would imagine if there was a "simple" explanation for the "official" totals listed on the Waukesha County Clerk's site the statement "we cannot comment on it" would have been replaced with the explanation.
Stay tuned...
