In this diary, I take a look at some of the strange numbers in regards to Supreme Court ONLY ballots being cast in counties during the April 5th election. Some interesting differences pop out.
Of particular interest is the high number of Supreme Court ONLY ballots in Waukesha County (14.4% of all ballots). This does not compare well with other counties which all have numbers far below this total.
However, there is some serious strangeness when Milwaukee County is looked at. The county as a whole actually had more votes for the County Executive race than it did for the Supreme Court race. This is the exact opposite of every other county, some of which also had County Executive races. Further creating confusion, the City of Milwaukee had 22,000 more votes for Supreme Court than for County Executive. This means that of the rest of Milwaukee County (less than half of the total votes) had at least 22,000 ballots that voted for County Executive but NOT for the Supreme Court race.
The numbers for each County and the City of Milwaukee are below.
Waukesha
18,000/125,000 = 14.4%
Milwaukee County
-1,500/227,500 = -0.7%
Milwaukee City
22,000/117,000 = 18.8%
Dane
10,000/182,000 = 5.5%
Brown
5,500/60,500 = 9.1%
Marathon
2,700/32,000 = 8.5%
Outagamie
1,500/43,500 = 3.4%
Racine
4,000/51,000 = 7.8%
Sheboygan
800/30,900 = 2.6%
Winnebago
4,700/39,500 = 11.9%
Counties with No Competitive Race:
Crawford, Dodge, Eau Claire, Fond du Lac, Jackson, Jefferson, Kenosha, La Crosse, Manitowoc, Ozaukee, Portage, Rock, Walworth, Washington
This includes all counties with at least 10,000 votes for either candidate.
While I have seen Nate Silver's analysis of turnout, I don't think it addresses any of the issues brought up here. One problem with Nate's analysis is that it relies heavily on Waukesha County turnout in 2010. While he uses that to compare to this race, he suggests that it would be more of an outlier if the Waukesha County turnout was what was reported on election night. However, what he doesn't point out is that the 2010 turnout in Waukesha County was itself an outlier, being much higher than any other county that year and is an outlier when compared to other elections in the same county at different times. When you compare against an outlier, it will make normal data seem like an outlier.
See his image here and you will see that the 2010 turnout for Waukesha County is to the right of any other county, meaning it was an outlier compared to the other counties to begin with. Look at the other charts and you will see that both the election night totals in Waukesha County and the updated totals are not outliers for any other election presented.
My argument here is not to say that there was fraud. I am simply looking at the data and seeing where it goes.
Update:
Thanks to jethrock for pointing this out:
Statement & Account of Ramona Kitzinger, Waukesha Board of Canvassers member since 2004:
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.
