Guest Blogged by John Washburn
(NOTE: Washburn be appeared today on The Peter B. Collins show, as Guest Hosted by Brad Friedman, to discuss his findings. The archived interview is now available here..)
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:
- Because it is the duty of sovereign citizens to watch public officials vigilantly and eternally. This is a design principle of the American government; Citizens watch those in power.
- Process auditing is the act of verifying written procedures were actually followed as documented. As a software tester process auditing is in my professional "sweet spot." I thought I could do some process audits of the canvassing done by several cities and share the results with others. I considered this my contribution to the body politic if any of my fellow citizens would want to do the same.
- Election results are important. John Kerry carried Wisconsin by 11,384 ballots out of 3 million cast (2,997,007 to be exact). This is 0.38% of the vote. It is important to know which candidate won such a razor thin election; especially since the State of Wisconsin and the City of Milwaukee in particular were rife with problems.
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...