When I got the call today telling me the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board had certified the recall results for all the elections except for the 21st district, I went immediately to the GAB site to check it out. Finally! What I’ve been searching and waiting for since June 6th is finally online for me to thoroughly review so I can put my mind at ease about this whole mess! To say I was excited is a major understatement (which I freely admit at the risk of being called a dweeb :) – my heart was literally racing! But…much to my dismay, what I was hoping to find was not there...
Right after the election,the GAB’s blurb about the recall results directed people to the Associated Press for unofficial results. I called them out on it because AP wasn’t posting anything, and before I knew it they had changed the blurb to say,
“The G.A.B. will not publish official election results until counties certify the results and the deadline has passed for requesting recounts, likely June 23. For unofficial results, please visit websites of Wisconsin newspapers, TV and radio stations, which publish information gathered by the Associated Press.”
– which is what it said until today. Now it says,
“Official results of the June 5, 2012 Recall Election for Governor, Lt. Governor, and State Senate Districts 13, 21, 23 and 29, certified June 27, 2012.”
– but not only do they not post the results, but they only post pre-results for the senate elections. Yeah, disappointing but certainly not enough to stop me from pressing on.
So, after work I decided to dig in. I started with a general search for the certified results or, at least, some sort of press release from the GAB announcing that they have been certified, but my searches on Yahoo and Google produced precisely nothing. Then I tried Associated Press – which the GAB had previous stated were the keepers of the unofficial results. Nada. Zilch. Zip.
Then it hit me - check the Wheeler Report! All important state business is posted there so if it’s anywhere, it will be there. But, again to my disappointment, there was not so much as a mention of the election results being certified. In fact, the only mention of the GAB was from the Wisconsin Reporter about recall voter missing signatures being an administrative error – not exactly what I want to see in light of the fact that the recall election results have been very hard to come by…
So now I narrow my media search to a few local sources: the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel online, the Wisconsin State Journal online, and Channel3000.com. I selected these because they tend to pick up on the recall news fairly quickly. None of them had anything. However, shortly after I did these searches, JSOnline posted a detailed report about the election results, with credit given to Craig Gilbert and links to the GAB recall results page (which, of course, isn’t showing us much of anything). Other than that, no mention of the GAB at all, no mention of the results being certified. Two hours later, the State Journal and Channel3000 picked up the story. Funny thing is, NONE of the 3 mentioned the GAB's announcement of the results being certified, and the latter 2 mentioned the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, but the State Journal credited itself while Channel3000 credited Associated Press. What the heck???
Now I’m thinking, “That’s odd – I just went to the AP and wasn’t able to find anything there – or anywhere using AP its source.” The Journal Sentinel didn’t credit AP. And, come to think of it, the GAB is no longer stating AP is a source of any kind – official or unofficial. So, of course, I'm wondering what’s up – is the AP still the unofficial tabulator of the votes or not, and where did the Journal Sentinel get its information? The GAB made a brief and incomplete announcement on its own site, made an even briefer tweet, …but only the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – which endorsed Walker in the recall election – has any details.
And according to what the Milwaukee Journal posted, comparing to the unofficial totals, Walker picked up 1135 votes and Barrett picked up 1635...No mention of what happened to the Trivedi numbers. Where did the votes come from? THIS is why I want to see the full results, down to the municipality. Madison posted down to the ward. THIS is called TRANSPARENCY. It's what I want for the full state, it's what I expect, and I want to know! Why all the damned secrecy?
I’ve gone from excited to dismayed to disappointed to pissed. WHERE THE HELL ARE THE RESULTS?!? It’s been 22 damned days! If the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel knows enough to publish that detailed a report, we should have that same data available to us once the results have been certified.
So where are they???
* UPDATE *
Helpful reader, HudsonValleyMark, pointed out in the first comment that the links on the GAB recall page ARE the results. The name could be construed as confusing to some, and I was thrown off by they use of the term "Canvass", but it does appear that these are the official results (pre-recount results). (Updated 6:09 AM 6/28/12)