Error? Or Fraud? (Could it be....SATAN?!?!?)

[farchivist]

In the ongoing saga of the Wisconsin GOP/union battle, a new wrinkle is on the latest battlefield. This past week was the scene of the election of a Wisconsin Supreme Court judge. The incumbent is one David Prosser, a conservative who is generally considered to be aligned with Governor Walker. The challenger was the state Assistant Attorney General

Comments

[chron_job]

#1) Anyone who uses M$ Access for mission critical work product is an idiot. Well, let me soften that... they may not BE an idiot... but they are, at that moment, partaking of idiocy

[rasilio]

"#1) Anyone who uses M$ Access for mission critical work product is an idiot. Well, let me soften that... they may not BE an idiot... but they are, at that moment, partaking of idiocy."

This.

Access is a great tool for what it is but it is not a real database and it is not suitable for enterprise level applications

[telemann]

One state offical stated last night, he's never heard of anything like this, and at best, it's an example of incredible stupidity, and wondered why clerks in positions like this are elected in the first place.

[chron_job]

> and wondered why clerks in positions like this are elected
> in the first place.

For the same reason that 'bureaucrat' is a dirty word. The idea of a technically proficient, nominally non partisan 'middle management' under elected officials is anathema to those who would rally support for shrinking government by assuming and showcasing government incompetence. Thus, "fixing" such situations by making a such a position elected becomes a self fulfilling prophesy, and anti-government sentiment enters a self-reinforcing feedback loop.

[meus_ovatio]

I thought it was strange that 14000 votes were found, giving someone a 7500 vote lead... which means the vote spread would be like 2:1 or something. If it was a 50/50ish split, the margins wouldn't have changed all that much. That's the only variance I see that is suspicious.

[kinvore]

Yeah, I live in Waukesha county and I think I'm the only liberal here.

[farchivist]

Ya'll going to get rid of that Clerk? Because she sounds hoo-boy incompetent, period.

[the_rukh]

Wait what, she took the vote count and put it on her private PC in her office and wouldn't let people access it? And then counted in word? What is this, how does even a preliminary vote count have any weight?

[underlankers]

Frankly this is the kind of error/stupidity that becomes malicious even if not itself intended to be. With people now verging on cutting off pay to troops and the current political football nature of existing major issues that shouldn't be this, I think the Founding Fathers imitated the Roman Republic a little *too* well. This is just one example of that. If this is stupidity, it's a malicious stupidity. If it's blatant voter fraud she's lucky she did that for a Republican, not a Democrat. If it had been for a Progressive the screaming about the Hollywood-Soros-Liberal all-powerful Troika would have triggered a Zombie Apocalypse by now.

[rasilio]

The really sad thing about this is that it should be relatively easy to design an electronic voting system that completely eliminates the possibility of errors like this while simultaneously providing 3 alternative methods of verifying the ballots

[allhatnocattle]

Hmmm... add protections into a tamper-prone system sounds good on the surface. Now you suggest four levels of security. Why not 8? Or 12? or 40? How safe do you want to protect a system prone to tampering. You must work in IT.

Remember logging onto the internet for the first time? We used to worry about virus's then we had virus protection. Then after we had trojans, worms and such we protected against that too. But by now, with all the layers of various protection, the internet is safe as can be.

Lol, I prefer to trust my democracy to a system that's proven not to be prone to tampering.

[mrbogey]

I think we can go a bit simpler and still be extremely secure. Giving the voter too much and having too many steps introduces the risk of human error gumming up the works. Ask any office drone how many tricks they take to bypass security practices that seem well meaning but are so onerous are complex that no one follows them... ie- complex building entrance rules end up with people stuffing a brick in a backdoor to keep it open

[gunslnger]

The really sad thing about this is that it should be relatively easy to design an electronic voting system that completely eliminates the possibility of errors like this while simultaneously providing 3 alternative methods of verifying the ballots.

There is no way to design an electronic voting system that is secure from error of some kind. As I'm currently taking a computer security class from a professor who has done significant research into exactly that subject, I do have some basis for this conclusion. Your checks and balances only appear to be secure, I could go into how they could all be bypassed, but I don't think that's necessary at this point.