Op/Ed: 'If You Thought the Primary Was a Mess, Wait Until November!'
By Brad Friedman on 9/22/2006, 3:31pm PT  

We reported last week on the mess in Milwaukee's primary election where a "programming error" is blamed for some 80,000 votes being recorded, when only 45,000 people actually voted. A recount was held to determine what the real vote count was. The city, however, was only concerned with the number of voters, as opposed to whether or not the votes were actually recorded accurately.

An editorial on the whole mess in Wednesday's Shepard-Express concludes this way (with a now-familiar warning):

If you thought there were computer glitches during the light vote in last week's primary, just wait until November with a heavy turnout for the governor's race in Wisconsin and in hard-fought Senate and congressional races across the country.

In November, a third of all precincts in the country will be using brand-new electronic voting systems for the first time.

As we learned in Milwaukee and Waukesha, newly trained poll workers breaking in untested electronic systems will discover so many bugs you'll think the elections are taking place in a tropical flophouse.

Joel McNally co-hosts the "Morning Magazine" show from 6 to 10 a.m. weekdays on 1290 WMCS-AM.

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Article Categories: Election Irregularities, Election 2006, Wisconsin