How to fiddle with votes. Enter them, Disappear them and make them reappear
Just tonight, Prosser has called upon Joan Kloppenberg to forego her legal right to a recount. Below is one theory as to why she shouldn't throw in the towel before there is a recount. the people of Wisconsin need to know the real story whichgoing without a recount would not be possible
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/...TPM: Prosser urges Kloppenberg to avoid the "drama" of a recount
I am not a conspiracy theorist. But this county clerk, as Rachel Maddow has shown, has a very extensive histoty of human errors that only go in one direction. Secondly, this is just so convenient. Thirdly all that has to be done to verify this is to recount all the ballots. And now Prosser is trying to pressure the Kloppenburg campaign not to go to a recount. Below I have put forward one way the vote totals could have been manipulated. It is a thought experiment or a math experiment. It merely shows that that manipulating the REPORTING of the Vote totals is possible by manipualting what was reported to the AP and then what was done in the canvas and perhaps in the time in between. I am not saying Ms. Nickolaus did any such thing. I am saying that it is possible to do them.
Part 1
David Dayen just linked to this technical explanation of why, at least on its face, Nickolaus's explanation that when she exported the Brookfield votesthey failed to import. She claims she hadn't she hadn't realized it. He is saying this scenario could not happen with the Microsoft Access program she was using. In essence it says the program she used would have sent up an ERROR message if the data didn't import properly.
It's saying her explanation seems quite improbable. She would have gotten an error message and would have known there was a failure to import. It would not have let her proceed. She couldn't have avoided t.
http://www.pruningshears.us/...
On election night, all the people that were to bring in spreadsheets, they were given a spreadsheet template. They were asked not to change that template. When the city of Brookfield results came in on election night, extra columns were put into that spreadsheet, which would have been a problem if I had tried to import that in. I saved them, but when I imported them into the Access database, I thought that they were saved at that time, and didn’t have any real reason to believe they weren’t.
I have checked with many people who use Access regularly. They say very clearly that Access auto saves. No matter what you import it saves. You actually CAN NOT turn off the auto save feature. You do not have to remember to have to hit SAVE as you do other programs like Word to save. As soon as it's entered it saves. IF THERE IS A PROBLEM YOU GET A BIG ERROR MESSAGE. If there is problem with saving then it keeps popping up error messages and you can not continue.
So how could Kathy Nickolaus say she didn't notice that the Brookfield data was not saved. It save automatically. And if it didn't save it tells you over and over there is a problem. And yo can not continue. So how did it happen that she made this mistake?
Well, maybe it didn't happen.
Of course the best way to test this is and to to verify Waukesha County votes is just to recount it all. If they are all paper ballots they can and should be recounted.
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Part 2
Below is a video and a link to a report from someone who was at the hastily called press conference. A press conference that the Democratic Vice Chair,80 year old Ramona Kitzlinger, did not know was going to happen, a press conference whose purpose she didn't know and a press confernece one at which whe was told to keep quiet.
Once the canvass had been completed and the results were finalized, I was called into Kathy�s office along with Pat (the Republican observer) and told of an impending 5:30pm press conference. It was at that point that I was first made aware of an error Kathy had made in Brookfield City. Kathy told us she thought she had saved the Brookfield voter information Tuesday night, but then on Wednesday she said she noticed she had not hit save. Kathy didn�t offer an explanation about why she didn�t mention anything prior to Thursday afternoon�s canvass completion, but showed us different tapes where numbers seemed to add up, though I have no idea where the numbers were coming from. I was not told of the magnitude of this error, just that she had made one. I was then instructed that I would not say anything at the press conference, and was actually surprised when I was asked questions by reporters.
As many know, Ms. Nickolaus has taken the election counting program off Waukesha's County official computers and put them onto her personal computer. A computer that only she had access to. And one where she got to tally up the votes in private away from the prying eyes of other election officials. Lots of other counties do the election night vote tallies in public and together with all the officials. Not Ms. Nickolaus. She wanted to make sure they were secure and couldn't be tampered with!
So after reading her the press conference notes ( below) and watching the You tube of the press event, one can put that together with the the technical analysis, it becomes pretty clear how there is an easy way for manipulating the data. It's her personal computer, to which only she has the password to. Note that the Democratic county clerk had said ( now she recanted that characterization) said they went over the figures, and that the figures on the submitted spread sheet do jibe. The Brookfield town numbers are the correct she said. HOWEVER unless all the paper ballots counted again the Democratic Clerk can not attest to the fact of whether Brookfield's votes were deliberately caused to be counted twice.
We now know that Ms. Kitzlinger has said:
I was never shown anything that would verify Kathy�s statement about the missing vote, and with how events unfolded and people citing me as an authority on this now, I feel like I must speak up.
However, a big however, it is possible to manipulate the data after she loaded the Brookfield figures into her personal computer. So after they are loaded - at some point in time - it quite possible in the Access program to ZERO OUT the Brookfield numbers. THIS COULD BE DONE after they had been counted and sent onto the AP. And then"found" again. Kathy Nickolaus could have entered them into the Access program Tuesday night Then disappeared them by deleting them sometime Wednesday.
Voila they get counted twice and the turnout goes from a hefty 42% to an astonishing 47%. How is that possible?
I have been told by people who are very familiar with the Access program that if one has adminstrative rights to the program that data, after it is entered, can be changed. Ms. Nickolaus kept the election figures in her own personal computer. Both as county clerk and because it was her computer, she surely would have had administrative rights. Actually no one else but her had access to her computer at all. This would allow you to delete information like Brookfield's vote and it would allow you to reenter them for the Wednesday canvas. No one had access to this record of the vote totals except of coure, Ms, Nickolaus.
She knew there would have to be a canvas after the initial reports were made. If the Brookfield votes were to disappear and then reappear, then of course the Democratic clerk would say the spread sheets jibe. She too would be acting on only the information she knows.
So why would this clerk have made the decision to take electin data off the ocunty records and make them only accessible to herself and no one else. She was so secretive, so unprofessional that even the Republican chairman had rebuked for her sloppy, secretive procedures.
I have seen stories on the internet where some claim that while ethically they think she would engage in such a partisan scheme, whe was just not smart enough to do it. They think that making up thousands of votes out of nowhere is too big for her to concoct. However in this scenario she's not making up new votes, she's just counting them twice thinking no one would ever be able to check. Actually this little scheme I outlined is easy enough for anybody to think up. You just need credulous, trusting people to believe you.
Is it possible everything is on the up an up. Is it possible that Prosser legitimately won by such a large margin. Sure. But the state is obligated to do a legal recount. Now Prosser is calling on Kloppenberg to forego her legal rights and not have that recount. Becuase he says there is no way to make up the difference. But as my little exercise here has shown it is perfectly possible that Prosser himself through person of Kathy Nickolaus had those votes "made" up for him by counting them twice.
The only way to prove how many votes there were in Waukesha County would be count all the ballots again.
http://bluecheddar.wordpress.com/...
7,582 Prosser Votes Discovered in Waukesha County. Clerk Kathy Nickolaus blames human error. My notes from the press conference.
by bluecheddar
I saved them but when I imported them into the access database, I thought they were saved at that time, I had no reason to believe that they weren’t.
We sat through an open transparent meeting for the last day and a half. We sat with people from both side of the aisle. We then proofed those numbers again. We were counting each one of those votes.
(A reporter states: “That’s a huge number!”)
“Normally we get a 30% turnout, I came out with 42% That was an amazing amount of votes. I had no reason to believe I was missing anything. With this change, our turnout in Waukesha was 47%.”
The 80 year Democratic vice chair says she was there as they counted the numbers and she is satisfied they match. However Ms Kitzlinger has now issued a statement saying that she was ill used in this process. She was not informed of the proess conference until it happened and she was not informed what it was for and she was told to say nothing. It seems the people at National Review knew before she did that there were "discrepancies".
http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/...
Waukesha Dem member of the Board of Canvassers: “Shocking & somewhat appalling… I feel like I must speak up.”
No one explained why they were beginning the canvass on Wednesday, just to please report immediately.
Before this telephone call, I had not been contacted as the designated Democratic observer, and I saw no public notice of the abnormal canvass time. … The canvass then proceeded as normal, with no glaring irregularities or mention of a possible 15,000 vote error in Brookfield City. [...]
In retrospect, it seems both shocking and somewhat appalling there was no mention of discovery of this 15,000 vote �human error� that ultimately had the potential to tip the balance of an entire statewide election. How is this possible?
Once the canvass had been completed and the results were finalized, I was called into Kathy�s office along with Pat (the Republican observer) and told of an impending 5:30pm press conference. It was at that point that I was first made aware of an error Kathy had made in Brookfield City. Kathy told us she thought she had saved the Brookfield voter information Tuesday night, but then on Wednesday she said she noticed she had not hit save. Kathy didn�t offer an explanation about why she didn�t mention anything prior to Thursday afternoon�s canvass completion, but showed us different tapes where numbers seemed to add up, though I have no idea where the numbers were coming from. I was not told of the magnitude of this error, just that she had made one. I was then instructed that I would not say anything at the press conference, and was actually surprised when I was asked questions by reporters.
The reason I offer this explanation is that, with the enormous amount of attention this has received over the weekend, many people are offering my statements at the press conference that the �numbers jibed� as validation they are correct and I can vouch for their accuracy. As I told Kathy when I was called into the room � I am 80 years old and I don�t understand anything about computers. I don�t know where the numbers Kathy was showing me ultimately came from, but they seemed to add up. I am still very, very confused about why the canvass was finalized before I was informed of the Brookfield error and it wasn�t even until the press conference was happening that I learned it was this enormous mistake that could swing the whole election. I was never shown anything that would verify Kathy�s statement about the missing vote, and with how events unfolded and people citing me as an authority on this now, I feel like I must speak up.