Paul Malischke: State would fail vote recount test

Paul Malischke  —  5/29/2008 5:57 am

Dear Editor: After the recent broadcast of the HBO movie "Recount," we should evaluate how well Wisconsin would hold up under intense scrutiny. Start with the Government Accountability Board's Recount Manual. It's poorly organized, with no page numbers, no table of contents and no index.

And what of the procedure itself? These important features of Wisconsin law need to be changed:

Under current law, all recounts of optical scan ballots must be done by machine. The programmed memory cards that were used on Election Day are usually used for the recount, so if they made an error on Election Day, they will make the same error for the recount. They are tested before the election, but since Wisconsin has no statewide standards for testing, we have no idea how thorough the testing is.

A flaw of optical scan balloting (used by 85 percent of Wisconsin voters) is that a few voters do not fill out the ballot correctly and it cannot be read by machine. An example is the voter who circles the candidate's name instead of filling in the arrow. The method to handle this flaw is to manually screen for such ballots, and then count these manually. Wisconsin law allows this, but does not make it mandatory, so it is often skipped.

In summary, the Wisconsin Legislature should change the law to allow the option of manual counts of the optical scan ballots, as a cross check of the machine counts. (This was the law from 1982 until 2006.) If machines are used, there should be at least a partial manual count, to verify the machine count. And if machines are used, there should be mandatory manual screening for ballots that the machines will not count.

Recounts must be transparent and thorough, and Wisconsin does not meet this standard.

Paul Malischke

member of Fair Elections Wisconsin

Madison

Paul Malischke  —  5/29/2008 5:57 am