The Cap Times
Jim Mueller
Dear Editor: In your June 20 editorial, you suggested 10 questions that the Legislative Audit Bureau study should answer about “real and potential irregularities.”
You missed the biggest, most important one: Are the machine-tabulated results the actual vote totals?
The best way to detect election fraud (not the nearly nonexistent voter fraud that the right-wingers use to distract us) is to allow our local election officials to legally count the votes and compare the totals to the machine tabulated results.
However, the voting machine companies, through their political allies, have turned our election laws upside down. The GAB has interpreted Wisconsin law to now be that it may be a felony for local election officials to count the votes to compare to the tabulated numbers created by the machines. By state law, optical scan ballots are put through the same machines that provided the tabulated results the first time.
There are numerous incidents of voting machines providing incorrect totals, accidentally and intentionally. In Pennsylvania, two people were convicted of felonies when they rigged the machines used in a “recount” to reproduce the original totals. Now, if a machine has a wireless modem, one person monitoring a “recount” can produce whatever totals they want.
The short-term protection against the election fraud of manipulated vote totals is citizen participation, citizens counting the votes as election officials handle the ballots on election night, at a recount or when citizens inspect the ballots under a public records request.
Over the long term, our laws need to be changed to require full transparency of the programming of the machines and the counting of our votes. The Legislative Audit Bureau should be encouraged to investigate these issues.
Jim Mueller
Wisconsin Counts! Protecting Wisconsin’s Elections
Jim Mueller
You missed the biggest, most important one: Are the machine-tabulated results the actual vote totals?
The best way to detect election fraud (not the nearly nonexistent voter fraud that the right-wingers use to distract us) is to allow our local election officials to legally count the votes and compare the totals to the machine tabulated results.
However, the voting machine companies, through their political allies, have turned our election laws upside down. The GAB has interpreted Wisconsin law to now be that it may be a felony for local election officials to count the votes to compare to the tabulated numbers created by the machines. By state law, optical scan ballots are put through the same machines that provided the tabulated results the first time.
There are numerous incidents of voting machines providing incorrect totals, accidentally and intentionally. In Pennsylvania, two people were convicted of felonies when they rigged the machines used in a “recount” to reproduce the original totals. Now, if a machine has a wireless modem, one person monitoring a “recount” can produce whatever totals they want.
The short-term protection against the election fraud of manipulated vote totals is citizen participation, citizens counting the votes as election officials handle the ballots on election night, at a recount or when citizens inspect the ballots under a public records request.
Over the long term, our laws need to be changed to require full transparency of the programming of the machines and the counting of our votes. The Legislative Audit Bureau should be encouraged to investigate these issues.
Jim Mueller
Wisconsin Counts! Protecting Wisconsin’s Elections
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