By John Gideon on 9/14/2006, 2:49pm PT  

Blogged by John Gideon

Today the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that vote totals in three-quarters of the cities 314 wards are suspect.

The paper reports:

By the city's calculation, only about half the ballots cast in Tuesday's primary actually included votes in the hottest races - those for sheriff and attorney general. For example, the city reported 78,801 ballots cast in the attorney general race in primaries for the two major parties, but vote totals for the Democratic and Republican candidates combined amounted to only 40,971. By that count, 37,830 ballots did not include a vote in the race - a number that political observers regard as obviously flawed.

In the same manner, the city reported 65,581 ballots cast in the Democratic primary, but only 35,182 votes recorded for the party's sheriff candidates.

The state is blamming the bogus vote totals on programming problems but they seem to be only concerned with the total number of ballots reported and not the total number of votes given to any particular candidate.

"[City Election Commission executive director Susan] Edman expressed confidence that the results of any individual race were unaffected. She said city and county election officials would meet today to decide how to verify the results."

Apparently this is nothing new for the city and county of Milwaukee as they have been in trouble with the Wisconsin state legislature for not following state canvassing statues for over 5 years.

Maybe this time the city and county will do the right thing and figure out what the problem is finally. It's past due that they do something.

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Article Categories: Election Irregularities, Election 2006, Wisconsin