http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8456 The BRADBLOG take. This thing stinks. The election results are only kept on her personal computer? How can that make sense?
If it was a Dem doing this, it would be all over the news. But it seems to be an ignored story across the nation.
In Wisconsin, all election results are kept this way. If they were kept on computers that were connected to the internet, they could be hacked and messed with. This is a simple way of eliminating any such shenanigans.
There are other alternatives, you know. Accountabilty dos not imply shenanigans.
Even in tightly-contested races, it’s common for individual counties to slew heavily one way or the other. Urban counties tend to go heavily Democratic, and rural counties tend to go heavily Republican. Usually, what a tightly-contested race means is that the two balance each other out, not that each individual county is balanced.
And for what it’s worth, Nate Silver says that the numbers favor it being a genuine mistake, not anything crooked. Though I’m not sure why pkbites would be so delighted at clear evidence of incompetence of a Republican campaign worker.
I did not say it should be on the internet. It should be in public on a computer that anyone can see . The only one that can hack her home computer is her. She is a long term Repub who is now involved in something that stinks. This is happening in too many Republican districts nowadays.
In the presidential election the vote counts are kept in an ongoing basis with information about what district has been tallied. As they come in. the Tv announces what area has been counted. That does not allow them to be hacked. It does allow them to be scrutinized though.
I’m not. It’s outrageous.
I am delighted, however, that Prosser has now apparently won and I’m tickled that the left thought they won and had it [legitimately] snatched away from them. This must burn their ass something fierce. It also is an indication of how they’ll fare in their ludicrous recall efforts. (With maybe 1 exception, not very well).
Am I the only one remembering this while reading about the “new” votes for Prosser?
No, they aren’t. You are incorrect.
Nate Silver has done some interesting statistical analysis of the Waukesha irregularities. It does not appear to be shady.
That doesn’t seem to cover the (to me) obvious method of keeping the number of votes constant but modifying who voted for whom. Unless I missed something.
Not her home computer, it’s a PC in her office.
Well, since the controversy seems mostly to be focusing on the finding of the votes themselves, and the fact that it’d be a lot easier to just quietly change votes without drawing attention to them this way, I think Silver is just focusing on that aspect of it.
It is not clear who owns the computer. I have seen several stories claiming the computer is her own personal computer, some saying rather ambiguously that the results were on a PC in her office. I have not seen any specifically saying that the computer was county or state property.
From JSOnline 8/13/2010:
The Milwaukee, Wisconsin Journal-Sentinel reports:
What’s the threshhold for an automatic recount (or is there one)? It’s hard to begrudge a recount for a .5% difference in votes I guess.
The threshold IS .5%, and Prosser’s current lead is just within that percentage. One of the Prosser campaign’s arguments for trying to block the recount is that Kloppenburg is wasting the state’s money in a time of extreme budget problems.
That’s an absurd argument. The law sets thresholds for a reason. Since the vote total is within that threshold, Kloppenburg has every right to say, “I want a recount at the state’s expense.” It’s disingenuous for Prosser to offer up that statement, since every single fair-minded observer knows that if the positions were reversed, he’d be asking for the recount and trumpeting the need to know what the public wants in such a close election with such high stakes for the future of the state, etc etc.
That’s exactly what I said on election night, when it looked like he’d lost by 400 votes. One of my fellow Daily Kos readers commented that he’d probably try to get a recount, the rat! I took him to task because this kind of margin (and even a 7000 vote margin, when it’s less than 0.5%), needs to get a clarification.
Minor nitpick: It’s “bellwether.”