Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, June 8, 2005

By Greg J. Borowski

While Milwaukee officials blamed computer glitches and data-entry errors for its more-ballots-than-voters-recorded problem, that explanation simply won't fly in the Town of Herman, population 741.

The Shawano County town has no official registration list, and its voter records are kept by hand. Nevertheless, the presidential results in the Nov. 2 election were off by nearly 25%, with President Bush getting 100 extra votes by mistake.

And, in the latest example of how open the election system is to miscounts due to human error and other shortcomings, the problem didn't surface until this week, seven months later.

"That would be highly impossible," Shawano County Clerk Rosemary Bohm insisted, when asked about conflicting numbers by a Journal Sentinel reporter in a telephone interview.

The click and whir of an adding machine were heard, then she returned with a sheepish acknowledgment.

"It appears on my form here there was a typing error of 366 for Bush," she said. "It should have been 266. It was apparently not caught."

The problem, apparently, is due to an error made at the county level. The incorrect tally was then reported to the state, which used it in finalizing Wisconsin's votes, which nearly were the deciding factor in the national presidential contest.

Democrat John Kerry won Wisconsin by about 11,000 votes.

If Ohio had not gone to Bush, Wisconsin could have been the site of a Florida-style recount that would have exposed the errors and flaws in Milwaukee and elsewhere that later were uncovered by the Journal Sentinel.

The new discrepancy surfaced when the firm Wisconsin Voter Lists reached the Town of Herman in Shawano County, one of three Hermans in the state, in its quest to compile a database of everyone who voted Nov. 2.

A hired hand for the firm, who was traveling the state to get photocopies of records - or snap photos of them - found the Herman records showed 416 people came to the polls Nov. 2.

Records also showed 507 votes cast for presidential candidates, however.

That is the same problem identified in Milwaukee, where there was a gap of 7,000 votes, with more ballots cast than people listed. That represented a discrepancy of 2.5%.

A team of local and federal investigators was able to narrow the gap to about 4,600 in their investigation that found evidence that hundreds of voters committed fraud in Milwaukee. While state election officials believe the problem can be explained as sloppy bookkeeping or post-election scanning problems, investigators labeled it a troubling gap.

System susceptible to errors The mistake in Herman would not have changed the outcome of the race. But it underscores how fragile the system for tabulating votes can be, both in Wisconsin and elsewhere.

In Milwaukee, in addition to problems that included hundreds of felons who illegally voted, the final numbers were never double-checked against polling place records by the county Board of Canvassers.

In Shawano County, that apparently is where the mistake - an inaccurate number listed for Bush - was made.

The northern Wisconsin county includes many communities where no official voter registration rolls are kept. Nevertheless, the county provides a printout of people who voted last time to aid poll workers.

Town of Herman Clerk Phyllis Reopelle can rattle the totals off from memory: 266 for Bush, 138 for Kerry, three for other candidates, 407 votes total. It is lower than 416, because some did not vote in that contest.

When told the official results showed 507 votes from Herman, including 366 for Bush, Reopelle expressed shock.

"How can that be?" she asked.

Indeed, while Herman's gap is far smaller than Milwaukee's in votes cast, it is huge as a percentage - off by nearly 25%.

That percentage rivals the problem in Medford, where a computer programming error meant about 600 votes out of 2,256 cast - those done by straight-ticket ballots - were never counted.

Reopelle referred questions to Bohm, the county clerk. Bohm was not involved with the canvass, since her name was on the ballot.

When she pulled the records and worked the adding machine, the error was clear.

Indeed, she said, someone had put a red circle around the number. After more inquiries, she said that meant someone caught the error later and planned to inform the state Elections Board.

"There should never, ever be more votes than voters," Bohm said.

As of Tuesday, though, no letter had been sent to the state Elections Board.

There, attorney George Dunst learned of it only when a reporter called. He, in turn, called Bohm, who Dunst said blamed it on a "call-in mistake" from when the tallies were reported on election night.

Reopelle is sure the numbers called in were correct.

In any case, a problem should have been apparent once 507 votes were written down.

For instance, the presidential total was far ahead of the U.S. Senate race, in which 406 votes were cast.