Nickolaus said she decided to take the election data collection and storage system off the county’s computer network – and keep it on stand-alone personal computers accessible only in her office – for security reasons.
“What it gave me was good security of the elections from start to finish, without the ability of someone unauthorized to be involved,” she said.
Nonetheless, Director of Administration Norman A. Cummings said because Nickolaus has kept them out of the loop, the county’s information technology specialists have not been able to verify Nickolaus’ claim that the system is secure from failure.
“How does anybody else in the county know, except for her verbal word, that there are backups, and that the software she has out there is performing as it should?” he said. “There’s no way I can assure that the election system is going to be fine for the next presidential election.”
Cummings stressed that the voting process at local polling places is not in question. However, municipal clerks send their election night results by dial-up modem to the county clerk, where they are tabulated and stored.
…
Several years ago, Nickolaus discontinued reporting election results on her county website for individual municipalities, as was done under the prior clerk.
Hopefully, the citizens and county administrators in Waukesha County, Wisconsin (adjacent to Milwaukee) will realize how completely insane it is to allow one person, County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus (R), to have complete, unfettered, un-observable, un-overseeable control of such public information, and are willing to do something about it.
For the record, for just one tiny reason why election officials are not to simply be “trusted” (as the very best ones will tell you), here’s the story of former Monterey County (CA) Clerk Tony Anchundo. And, if that’s not enough, feel free to peruse the story of Clay County (KY) Clerk Freddy Thompson. Just let us know if you need more.
What part of ‘public official’ and ‘public elections’ to these sorts of folks not get???
[Hat-tip to Milwaukee’s election integrity watchdog and periodic BRAD BLOG guest blogger John Washburn]
it really would be hilarious if it wasn’t so serious. While everyone moans about politicians and uses this as an excuse to do nothing.
‘We’re quite lucky that we’ve got political freedoms. We should be using them.’
Mark Thomas
This is a problem but the real tragedy is that the voters regardless of how many people are in charge of looking after the apparatus simply aren’t permitted to take part in genuine elections. “Pick you favorite conservative” doesn’t count as an election any more than “Vote whether Saddam Hussein is doing a 1.splendid job; or 2.an excellent job.” American elections are fake as can be. The whole process could be under a microscope and it will STILL be as phony as pro wrestling until private money is completely removed from American politics. Anybody suggesting publicly funded elections? Unfortunately I hear crickets chirping.
Brutal Truth @2 said:
Yes, of course. Me and this blog. For years.
What’s your point? That there should be no citizen oversight of elections, so long as you don’t care for the two candidates representing the two largest parties? (If you bother to vote, you’ll likely notice there are often many other candidates to choose from, if you you wish to do so.)
Um, Brad, how do you get “there should be no citizen oversight of elections” out of me saying “This is a problem…”?
No, what I’m saying is that there is NOBODY TO VOTE FOR and this is precisely because the only candidates that the billionaires will fund are conservatives. I guess if I was a conservative I’d be happier than a pig in shit because I could throw darts at the ballot and be guaranteed to get an elected official that suits my interests. “Many other candidates to choose from”. Right. Like Ralph Nader? The “third party” candidate whose phones were being answered by Republicans? Brad, the two-party system is set up the way it is for a reason and the reason certainly isn’t that it makes for a genuine democracy. The candidates that win are the candidates that outspend their opponent and can afford to bombard the electorate with campaign ads. These would be candidates from either of the two hardly-dissimilar parties which both suck.
No, I am 100% for citizen oversight of elections. All I was saying is that all the citizen oversight in the world won’t amount to shit without first having removed private money from politics. Otherwise you will have transparent but still phony elections. You will be sure your vote for whichever conservative you’re allowed to choose between is duly counted.
Brutal Truth @ 4 said:
As I said in response to your nearly identical comment in a previous thread, I am more than happy with all of those I have had the opportunity to vote for. (See the other reply for more details, and please try to avoid the same comments on every thread if you’d be so kind.)
Of course, we have decried the two party duopoly here for years. Perhaps you have not noticed. Nonetheless, that has little to do with whether the choice of the people for a candidate and/or ballot issue is counted as they intended.
If you don’t like the choices, and don’t feel a ballot issue is worth voicing your opinion on, don’t vote for any of the above. I couldn’t care less.
But to suggest that because YOU (and I) don’t care for the choices frequently offered by the two parties and their corporate media stooges is a reason to NOT fight to ensure votes are counted correctly is ridiculous.
To help you, I’ll make this argument (for illustration purposes only): Why should we bother fighting for publicly funded elections or for better candidates or to end the two party duopoly or to reform the media who plays along with them when, even if we had all of the above, our votes may not be counted accurately or transparently?
Your argument is the same, lame argument that I used to hear from those whose top issue was fighting for access to the polling place and against voter suppression. My response was that even if every legal voter who wanted to vote was able to exercise their right to vote, what good is it unless their vote is counted accurately and transparently?
In other words: Yes, we need to fight for accurate and transparent elections. Yes, we need to fight for access to the polls by all legal voters, and against voter suppression. Yes, we need to fight for publicly-funded elections to get the corporate interests out of our democracy. Yes, we need to fight to end the two party duopoly. Yes, we need to fight for reform of the corporate mainstream media.
And, no, none of those issues should be ignored in favor of another.
That said, I can’t write about every single one of those issues in ever single blog item that I write. Sorry. You’ll have to deal with that. And you’ll also have to learn that there are no silver bullets, and paths are laid one stone at a time.
“Trust no one. If it can’t be verified, it can’t be used.â€â€”Ion Sancho, Leon County Supervisor of Elections.
Seems pretty dumb, especially to leave out experienced professionals from the security process. No telling how badly the information can be compromised now.
A bit of background on this clerk. She was an aide to a top Republican legislator about 10 years ago when the pay to play scandals were getting flushed out by local media and people were getting indicted. She supposedly had the goods on some top Republicans and the scandals surrounding them. To shut her up she was given the chance to run for the county clerk’s office in Waukesha, a highly Republican part of the state. The interesting thing is that she got a bunch of corporate monies for that first election from outside the state (why would a company outside Wisconsin fund the election of a county clerk?). With the big war chest she was able to run a bunch of nasty negative ads against her Republican opponent (a friend of mine) who was the clerk of courts for one of the Waukesha County municipalities (a more qualified person). Obviously with no ability to counter the ads in the primary and no Democratic party to speak of in Waukesha, Nickolaus won. Nickolaus is party first when it comes to election integrity issues. She is not to be trusted. Since Waukesha county has gone so solidly Republican it will take a tea party challenge before she will have to expose anything about election results.
She deserves an award for stupidity. Glad to hear that other officials are raising a stink about this.
Alex – Much thanks for that background info!
The audit will proceed.
Waukesha County to audit clerk’s election equipment
From the article:
You are welcome Brad. Not sure what can be done to check on the validity of her elections since the county has gone so solidly Republican for so many years (a non-Republican with a double digit showing win would be an anomoly). She could make up the results with a definitive Republican win and no one would know the difference (or think anything is wrong).
The state is not going to investigate this? If Waukesha is as corrupt as it is that this woman got elected because she the goods on others than why would they really do anything?
Someone that lives and probably register to vote in Waukesha should put in a request for an investigation by the state.
Amazing! The Republicans might as well put out a press release, “We intend to steal the election!” The Democrats will still be too cowardly to do anything. Perhaps it’s because they want the option to steal elections from more progressive candidates. Remember how polling places in areas of Arkansas that supported Blanche Lincoln’s opponent mysteriously disappeared?
In their book, “Was the 2004 presidential Election Stolen”, by Freeman and Bleifuss, they point out that the largest WPD (within precinct discrepancies) were in Republican strongholds, where there would be little chance of anyone doing a vigorous audit, and little suspicion if the precinct or precincts were skewed even more strongly than usual for Republican. And that’s how Ohio was stolen. Places like this are exactly where people need to get out to audit their elections at the local level–push for getting tallies at all levels. If 500 people vote for Obama in the next presidential election, but that turns into a count of 200, and this is done across many counties in a state, in the battleground states, it could all play out again, that there were a number of isolcated “glitches”, things went smoothly, some places had odd results, but hey, once again, presto-change-o we have Republicans back in power.
By the way, Brad, if you happen to read this,
–I am upset that everyone keeps calling it the “ground-zero mosque”, when (1) it’s not at ground-zero, and (2) it’s not even going to be a mosque! Can you help correct fight this meme?
–There was an interview recently, widely quoted on the web, where we see Obama “walking back” his support of religious freedom concerning this issue, but interestingly, we never get to hear the question(s) that led up to Obama’s comment.
This stinks. We need to know what the ‘reporter’ actually asked him leading up to his “Oh, I wasn’t talking about the wisdom of putting it in any particular place”. Think for a sec. that if the question had made the comment even more choice, then the clip would have included the question, so we know going into it that the question was at least neutral. But why are we taking it on faith that the lead-up was just neutral? Suppose the reporter had said, provocatively, “I was surprised that you’d weigh in and take the side of these Arabs who want to put a big mosque right across the street from where the towers fell–because don’t you think you should have just stayed out of it?” A statement/question like that is nothing but a well-laid trap, and I think we deserve to know if it was this kind of trap that Obama fell into. Because this has a kind of Breitbart stench to it, IMHO.
Brad needs his own info time on syndicated Progressive Talk shows! 2-3 minutes a day on Hartmann’s, Norman Goldman’s, Mark Thompson’s (Make it Plain Show), Randi Rhodes and other shows would do so much to enlighten the ignorant folks in this country. (Mike Malloy’s show goes without saying, as I learned of Brad Blog on his show). Keep up the good work Brother Friedman!!
Merle from Michigan
“If you cannot trust the way your votes are counted, nothing much else in politics matters!”
– Marian Beddill, 2003
You are a dumb ass Brad
Brad:
I talked to my friend this last weekend about this story. She says there’s a lot more to the story and the politics surrounding it but she can’t say anything because she is worried it will be obvious it is her that is leaking information. She says she will get back to me when it’s safer to talk. The basic idea is that it’s people with agendas and adults acting like they’re still in middle/high school. Waukesha County is ripe for a major scandal.
Besides having all the election results on her computer (with no checks by anyone, they are moving to touch screen voting. But that’s just the part that is obviously corrupt and dim witted.