Nothing To See Here - Especially Not Voting Records

While up north, I saw an article of interest in the Waupaca County Post (wholly owned subsidiary of Journal Communications), regarding the problem with verifying the recall election results. The gist of the article is that there are a number of groups that have filed open records requests regarding the vote due to the questionable reliability of the electronic voting machines that have been popping up all over Northern Wisconsin and the kind that Kathy Nickolaus has admitted to tampering with. Now there's a new problem:

Robbins told the County Post that she wanted to uphold the integrity of the elections at the lowest cost possible. She said she will need to have staff available when the groups inspect the election materials and she hopes she can schedule both requests at the same time.

Robbins said she is unable to comply with some aspects of the open records request.

According to guidelines provided by the state Government Accountability Board, ballots must be preserved at least 30 days after a state and local election, tally sheets, inspectors' statements and used absentee ballot envelopes for 90 days.

However, the detachable recording units in voting machines must be preserved only for 14 days in a state election.

Robbins has already returned the memory cartridges for the June 5 recall election to Command Central, the private vendor in St. Cloud, Minn. responsible for programming the machines.

It's unbelievable that the most unreliable method of voting has the shorting amount of time to verify it's accuracy, or lack thereof.

It's even more outrageous that this is going on and the mainstream media isn't covering this story, but had dedicated days and weeks to a bunch of liars in Racine making crap up in order to try to cast doubt on the validity of Senator Lehman's recall victory. I am still of the opinion that the right is so upset about Lehman's victory because they thought they had bought that one as well.

For a more in-depth look at the problems with the electronic voting machines and the difficulty in trying to get any verification of their accuracy, check out Free Wisconsin, where the author has been doing a yeoman's job in chronicling his struggles with this very issue.