(NOTE: Washburn will be appearing on today's Peter B. Collins show, as Guest Hosted by Brad Friedman, to discuss his findings. See this post for more info, times, call-in number, and listening links.)
After a two year interruption, I am beginning to go through the copies of November 2, 2004 election records which were provided to me in the settlement of my lawsuit with the City of Milwaukee Election Commission.
People have asked me: "Why do you still pursue this after two years? Get a life. The election is over and John Kerry carried the state with 11,384 ballots."
The high minded reasons are:
But, to be brutally honest the answer is it has been primarily spite and anger which has kept me on this like a Jack Russell terrier clamped to the sleeve of a shaking arm. And the results of my initial examination of these records reveal immediately disturbing findings...
Two years ago these records were voluntarily transferred by the City Election Commission to the joint task force headed up by the "loyal Bushie" US Attorney, Steven M. Biskupic, and the Milwaukee County District Attorney, E. Michael McCann. Then that voluntary transfer was cited as the reason the election records were unavailable for inspection or copying when requested under Wisconsin's open records law. It offended then and continues to offend me now that the most rudimentary oversight of election administration was denied to me and others.
Since the investigation took two years to begin, it's appropriate that there is a major discrepancy in the paperwork of the very first ward examined. Here is a PDF file of the 4 pieces of paperwork from City of Milwaukee Ward 1 for the November 2, 2004 presidential election. The records are:
First, the signatures on the cover pages of the inspectors reports look to me to be obvious forgeries. Both the names are bogus (e.g. Joe Doe, Jane Smith) and, in my opinion, are clearly written in the same hand. The hand which "signed" the inspectors reports does not match any of the signatures I redacted from the poll book list. Creating false canvass reports is a felony under WI Stats 12.13(2)(b)4.
The person to ask about the signatures, and the inexplicable numbers would be the Executive Director of the Election Commission, Susan Edman. I have called the office of the City Election Commission for comment, but unfortunately, Ms. Edman is out of town at a conference and will not be back until Monday, July 23, 2007.
Second, the numbers do not match. Not candidate totals, but the simple numbers do not match. The numbers concerning the number of ballots handled do not match.
The Optech IIIP Eagle optical scanner claims it scanned 1219 ballots. On the poll book certification page, the poll workers checking in voters and handing out blank ballots claim they handed 1071 ballots to electors. On the Inspectors reports with the forged signatures, it is claimed only 981 ballots were handed to electors. If I believe the machine and the poll book, then the ballot box in Ward One was stuffed with 148 extra ballots. If I believe the machine and the apparently forged inspectors report, the ballot box is stuffed with 238 extra ballots. If I ignore the machine altogether, the ballot box is stuffed with 90 extra ballots.
This leads to several questions.
For the record, it should be noted that there have been questions about Biskupic vis a vis the US Attorney purge. He had reportedly been on the list of USA's to be purged, but at some point, he was dropped from that list and allowed to remain on the job. I suppose we can all draw our own conclusions, but it would be nice to know how such a "voter fraud warrior" such as Biskupic could have possibly missed something as obvious as this.
All of this from just a single ward. The first ward I bothered to look into. There are 311 more wards more to go...
This is the dope the author wants to let off the hook -
“Prude, a felon under state supervision, was ineligible to vote in 2004. She worked as a volunteer for the John Kerry-John Edwards campaign and cast an absentee ballot after an Oct. 22, 2004 rally that featured Rev. Al Sharpton. Prude claimed she called the election commission and attempted to withdraw her ballot but was told by a person on the telephone that she should not be worried about the vote.
In 2005, a jury convicted Prude of voter fraud and her probation was revoked. Prude had previously pleaded guilty to a state charge of forgery in 2000”