During the presidential election recount in Wisconsin a year ago, Liz Whitlock, at the time representing the Green Party, was almost thrown out of a room by an irate Racine County elections official for insisting that ballots be counted by hand because the numbers weren’t adding up.
It turns out that Whitlock’s point was well taken.
Since then, Wisconsin has banned the type of voting machine used in Racine County and elsewhere because the scanners were missing too many ballot markings.
To further prove her point, Whitlock, working with a group called Wisconsin Election Integrity, paid nearly $600 to have county officials retrieve the ballots from six Racine area wards last week so the group could do its own count.
The result? Votes for president on 111 ballots were missed, translating to 2.5% of the total votes cast in those wards. Whitlock, a retired teacher who lives in Pleasant Prairie, isn’t questioning the outcome of the close state vote. "This point is that wrong results were certified because they were not checked," Whitlock says. "And if we're going to have elections like this, that gives cover to anybody who would want to hack an election," she said.
She wants state elections officials to tighten ballot audit requirements. The Wisconsin Elections Commission is scheduled to meet Monday morning and one topic up for discussion is "election security."
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