WI State Senator under recall hammer caught in Supreme Court recount

[kpete]

THU APR 28, 2011 AT 06:38 PM PDT
WI State Senator under recall hammer caught in Supreme Court recount
bynorahc

WI Senator Sheila Harsdorf (R) is facing a recall election. The volunteers have turned in over 23,000 signatures, well over the 15,744 required. Just 3 weeks ago during the Supreme Court election these same volunteers were out at the polls. in addition to voting they were getting the extra signatures so they could turn in 150% of the signatures required for recall.

Election day on April 5th saw many people at the polls. Volunteers with "Recall Harsdorf - Sign the Petition Here" signs and the Republicans with their "I Stand With Sheila" message worked the crowds as people left their polling location. Over 1,200 recall signatures were collected that day alone, as over 38,000 citizens voted that in just that district.

Harsdorf was not at the polls to face voters that day. Instead Harsdorf chose to vote absentee. Voting absentee is quite simple in Wisconsin. A voter requests an absentee ballot then fills it out and places it in the ballot envelope. The voter and a witness are then required to sign their name to the ballot envelope. It seems like reasonable rules, ones that most voters can comply to with no problems. But not Harsdorf. Instead she returned a ballot in an envelope without a witness signature.

This was not caught on election day, her illegal vote was opened and counted in the original certified result of the WI Supreme Court election. Normally the story would end here, but due to the recount the ballot bags were opened and examined in the presence of witnesses and observers from both campaigns. At this point the illegal vote was discovered.

the rest:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/28/971220/-WI-State-Senator-under-recall-hammer-caught-in-Supreme-Court-recount

[patrice]

1. Rules do not apply to Republicans.

[Historic NY]

2. Hoisted on her own petard.......

voting illegally :spray:

[Supersedeas]

3. just how far are they willing to go

[robinlynne]

4. whoa, further down is the real problme. the law says one ballot should be

randomly removed when there are more ballots than voters!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NOW this witness signature phenomena in Wisonsin is interesting. It would be really easy to take a look at a group of envelopes and see if the same witness witnessed a large number of ballot envelopes!

[robinlynne]

5. You know, ballots removed at random when there are extra ballots might

explain that third envelope being counted first that everyone has been talking about today. Random votes are removed in Wisconsin when there are extra ballots. What kind of democracy does that create? All you have to do is add ballots to heavily Dem precincts, and if discovered, random ballots will be removed, which means, in a DEm precinct, that Dem ballots will be removed in addition to the other ballots added. So you get a twofer in this election if you want the republican to win, if you add votes in Democratic leaning precincts.