Posted on 11/30/2016 4:57:01 AM PST by afraidfortherepublic
A Democratic Party email calling for temporary workers to man a massive and unprecedented presidential election recall effort in Dane County had Republicans crying foul this week.
The Democratic Party of Dane County advised that County Clerk Scott McDonell was looking for temp workers beginning Thursday to help check over 316,000 ballots cast in this month’s election.
Recount workers could earn $20 an hour, maybe more, on 12-hour shifts, the notice stated.
“We’re asked to forward this to people we think would be up to the job and have time to do this. Please send people to county.clerk@countyofdane.com if interested – or if you’re interested,’ the message said.
While Dane County is one of the more liberal places in the country (more than 70 percent of voters cast ballots for Democrats in the most recent election), Scott Grabins said the email’s suggestion the county government was working exclusively with Democrats to fill the election positions was wrong.
“When I saw that email I was pretty pissed,” said Grabins, chairman of the Republican Party of Dane County. “The way it was worded didn’t explicitly say Scott McDonell asked them to do this, but it inferred a lot.”
McDonell told Wisconsin Watchdog that the whole matter was a “communications problem.”
“I’ll take the blame,” the clerk said.
The problem, he said, was that the Democratic Party did not have lists of their partisan poll workers who could be recruited for the recount effort. Republicans did. He said he wanted to make sure both parties were represented in the hiring process.
In an email to McDonell, Grabins pointed out that the Wisconsin Recount Manual requires election inspectors who worked on Election Day be contacted first to perform the work.
“Are these temp workers to support those who previously worked as Election Inspectors and are there guardrails to ensure that all positions are filled on an equal basis and not just through the Democrat party?” Grabins wrote.
The short answer on Tuesday was, yes, according to McDonell.
The clerk said he has filled the 36 daily positions with experienced representatives from both parties. He said he doesn’t think a single person who responded to the Democratic Party solicitation will be on the recount team because the clerk’s office, as of Tuesday, had enough personnel to fill the slots.
“We have been prioritizing poll workers and chief election inspectors. The Democratic Party didn’t have lists of partisan poll workers like the Republicans did,” McDonell said. “We’re trying to make sure Republicans and Democrats who were poll workers are in those (ballot review) rooms. The emphasis has been on, ‘Have you worked the polls?’”
Grabins said he felt a lot better Tuesday about the situation after making contact with the clerk and seeing some changes made. If it hadn’t been for a Dane County Republican finding the Democratic Party email, Grabins said he wonders if the recount roster would have been much more heavily weighted to Dem poll workers.
“I feel like (McDonell) has been scrambling a little bit today to make sure this does come off as bipartisan. He did email me back today to say they were looking for Republicans,” the GOP chair said.
Earlier, Grabins said he reached out to election workers in the more rural and conservative portions of the county. They had not been asked to help in the recount effort. Some finally were contacted on Tuesday, he said. “Once I reached out (to McDonell) with this email and we have now engaged, he’s been upfront since then,” Grabins added. “I’m very thankful someone thought to forward this. I don’t know if we would have connected with all these positions we needed to fill otherwise.”
It has been near pandemonium since last Friday, when Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and fellow third party candidate Roque “Rocky” De La Fuente filed separate requests with state elections officials seeking a recount of the Wisconsin vote. Republican Donald Trump won the Badger State with more than 22,000 votes. Stein raised the specter of election fraud in battleground states Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania – states Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton expected to win. The fraud proposition, that the “system is rigged,” was an idea widely rejected by the left when Trump suggested as much in the weeks leading up to the election.
Stein captured less than 1 percent of the vote in Wisconsin, but under state law she has the right to call for a recount.
On Tuesday, the Green Party candidate paid the required $3,499,689 charged by the Wisconsin Election Commission to conduct the statewide recount. She has reportedly raised millions more in her campaign to review the vote. Stein complained about the bill.
“While this excessive fee places an undue burden on our efforts, we are committed to paying this cost in order to ensure that the voting in Wisconsin was accurate,” Stein said in a statement.
McDonell said the recount, slated to begin Thursday, is daunting. It’s twice the number of ballots in the bitter recount of the 2011 Supreme Court election. McDonell said 36 positions will be needed for as many as 12 days, with nights and weekends required. Some workers will tabulate ballots, others will check absentee ballot envelopes and verify election poll book information, the clerk said. Observers from the campaigns and parties also will be on hand.
“That’s what’s stressing me out,” McDonell said, “making sure everyone is going to show up throughout the count.” “I’ll know a lot more after a couple of days … we’ll know what we can get done in a day.”
On Tuesday, a Dane County Circuit Court judge rejected Stein’s lawsuit demanding each of Wisconsin’s 72 counties conduct a hand-count of the ballots. Wisconsin has until Dec. 13 to complete the recount or it may run the risk of abandoning its 10 electoral votes.
Each county is free to decide whether it will hand count its ballots, a much more labor-intensive process than via machine. Dane County has opted for the more laborious process.
I know that my little County must spend more than $34,000, according to the local paper.
Now that her manual recount appeal got rejected, Stein can not play her little game up there the way she wanted it to be done.
“but it inferred a lot.”
It inferred nothing but implied quite a bit.
L
Inferred...implied...They ARE synonyms ya know
But of course, the most liberal county chooses to hsnd count their ballots. If these bastards steal Wisconsin, there will be war...
Lasst estimate I saw was $3.9 million and if it exceeds that, she’s on the hook for the excess. According to her website, she has about $6.6 million available. Back $3.9 million off that and she has $2.7 million left. That’s not enough to cover PA and MI - not even close. PA estimates run in excess of $10 million.
But she’s still fundraising.
It’s despicable how cavalier she is toward wasting the hard earned dollars of gullible stooges.
The way Stein is acting during all this reminds me of the way Glenn Close acted in Fatal Attraction.
“Inferred...implied...They ARE synonyms ya know”.
What source did you use that shows them as a synonym? Quite a difference between one word that means “suggest or hint” and another word that means to “deduce or conclude”.
Imply and infer are opposites, like a throw and a catch. To imply is to hint at something, but to infer is to make an educated guess. The speaker does the implying, and the listener does the inferring.
https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/chooseyourwords/imply-infer/
I was born & raised in Dane County. That was when the county was ConservativeRepublican.
I won’t move back there because of it’s current status as a Liberal stronghold.
I was born & raised in Dane County. That was when the county was Conservative Republican.
I won’t move back there because of it’s current status as a Liberal stronghold.
Yes, but that estimate was before a Wisconsin judge said that Wisconsin does NOT have to do a hand recount. It should not cost nearly that to run those optical scan ballots through the counter and then do what they have to do to the remaining touch screens. Then, all they have to do is check the provisional ballots by hand. I think she’ll have money returned.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.