By Peggy Breister and Colleen Kottke

City clerks in Fond du Lac and Waupun are disputing voting numbers reported by a private organization and circulated in recent news reports.

Scanning problems might account for a discrepancy between the number of Fond du Lac votes cast Nov. 2 and the number listed in a computerized voter history program, said City Clerk Tess Hochrein.

The scanning problems came in after ballots were cast in a system that looks for which residents voted.

An independent firm that gathers and sells voter history records found the Fond du Lac file listed 20,409 people as voting in the Nov. 2 election. City records indicate 21,110 votes were cast that day -- a difference of 701.

The report stated that only 91.2 percent of Waupun's total 4,334 votes cast in the Nov. 2 presidential election were accounted for.

"This information is flawed," said Waupun City Clerk Kyle Clark, who has managed elections for the city for 22 years. "It completely disregards the facts surrounding the City of Waupun vote totals."

The file used by the organization, Hochrein said, is compiled to keep track of individual voting records and has nothing to do with the election process or the validity of local results.

"This is not voter fraud," she said.

A co-owner of Wisconsin Voter Lists said his agency's findings merely point out discrepancies between the history lists and the number of votes cast in November.

"I do not dispute the election returns," said Alan Fox.

"The city's electronic file which we purchased from the city after receiving assurances that it is complete is not, in fact, complete," he said.

Fox said he uses the number not to look for perfection but as a reality check.

"A city file that is missing approximately 700 of 21,000 voters is not complete and has omissions that I as a buyer of that file want corrected," he said.

The Waupun clerk said the firm reporting the data, Practical Political Consulting, never contacted him.

"They never contacted me to ask if they were reading the data correctly or if they had all the data," Clark said.

The lists available from the voter history records are typically purchased by politicians seeking records of who voted in their district.

"It has nothing to do with the number of ballots cast or the number of voters," Hochrein said. Those numbers indicate no discrepancy: 21,110 ballots were cast in the city by 21,110 voters.

Hochrein said she wasn't aware of any problems with the scanning system or the list until a man who had received a card indicating he hadn't voted, came into the clerk's office to say he had.

When someone on the list hasn't voted in four years, the program notifies the city and the city sends the individual a notice. The individual must then return the notice indicating whether he or she wants to remain on the list.

The city received a handful of cards back from residents who said they voted in November but the computer identified as non-voting.

"In the past this information (whether or not someone had voted) was entered manually," Hochrein said. "Now we have a scan system and there are some glitches with the system."

The computer system, which uses a bar code to scan voting information, did not catch all those who voted.