Sniff sniff...Smells like Fish
By way of the Badger Blog Alliance, I find this compelling and scary story of Racine, WI election shenanigans brought to our attention by Stranded on Blue Islands.
So, as you might imagine, we were scrutinizing this polling location pretty closely at this point. I noticed one of the poll workers get up and walked over to the OCR scanners. For those not familiar with this method of voting, the device is about the size of a copier, with a large locked box underneath where the ballots stack up after they are scanned. He unlocked the box, which was less than 10% full. He removed the ballots, and placed them in a plastic bag. I asked him repeatedly why he was emptying a machine which was not anywhere close to full, but he refused to speak to me, nor could any other poll workers tell me why he was doing so.
He put the bag of ballots, unsealed, under the table behind the voting table, which held the pastry and coffee pot. I was able to take the attached photos.the first one shows the open bag of completed ballots, as well as another sealed bag which presumably contained ballots as well. Pictures 2 and 3 show the same bags of ballots.
I had to respond to an issue at another polling location, so I asked theHAVA volunteers to keep close track of the bag of ballots. However, they were swamped again with another surge of voters, and lost track ofthe bag. When I returned later, the bag was not there - and none of the poll workers could tell me what had happened to it.
I can't say conclusively that they were entered twice - but I can't say they weren't either. At the very least, they are guilty of very sloppy handling of the ballots. There was no chain of custody for the ballots, and no accountability whatsoever. At worst, these ballots may have been counted twice, in a ward where Kerry beat Bush by nine to one.
Wow. I thought there were rules and regulations. I thought that was why there were locked ballot boxes. These doors that you open should be locked...with only one key...and only opened when the polls are closed. There are other concerns too. Can't they keep track of how many people vote? Say X number of people show up at the polls and are given ballots. Then, one could total the number of votes for all candidates in any race. If at any time the number of ballots cast for Candidate A plus the number of ballots cast for Candidate B are greater than X, well...methinks you have a problem! Or am I oversimplifying things again?
