An unexpected revelation from the Wisconsin presidential recount is that the original count was significantly inaccurate relative to declared write-in presidential candidates. The original count for the write-in candidates was much lower than the recounted votes.
Write-in candidate Evan McMullin’s original count was 9,998, but the recount credits him with 11,855. Thus the original count missed 18.6% of his votes.
The changes for the other declared write-ins presidential candidates were:
Michael Maturen went from 243 to 284.
Tom Hoefling went from 68 to 80.
Chris Keniston went from 58 to 67.
Cherunda Fox went from 44 to 47.
Emidio Soltysik, the Socialist Party nominee, went from 26 to 33.
Joseph Maldonado went from 3 to 4.
Marshall Schoenke, alone among the write-ins, dropped. He went from 3 to 1.
The changes for the ballot-listed candidates were far smaller, proportionately:
Donald Trump went from 1,404,440 to 1,405,284, a gain of 844.
Hillary Clinton went from 1,381,823 to 1,382,536, a gain of 713.
Gary Johnson went from 106,585 to 106,674, a gain of 89.
Jill Stein went from 31,006 to 31,072, a gain of 66.
Darrell Castle went from 12,156 to 12,162, a gain of 6.
Monica Moorehead went from 1,769 to 1,770, a gain of 1.
Rocky De La Fuente, along among the ballot-listed candidates, dropped, from 1,514 to 1,502.
Thanks to Walter Ziobro and Thomas Jones for this information.
I think that it’s pretty clear than on election night, many precinct clerks simply disregard the write-in votes.
It appears that the results in Wikipedia have been updated for the Wisconsin recount:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016#Results_by_state
$$$ Trillions for rockets to Pluto, warfare and welfare —
pennies or less for ACCURATE voting machines. It shows.
Is ANY election now *legal* — or some sort of approximate lottery type event ???
Also the obvious — What if ALL of the minor declared and undeclared folks had NOT been allowed ???
i.e. Clinton v. Trump only ???
The gerrymander robot party HACKS in all State legislatures are getting their COMMAND orders from Devil City.
McMullin now breaks 700K total.
ALL folks should look at the final Prez wiki posted above by WZ
— to see the total ANTI-Democracy corruption of the minority rule Electoral College.
Note esp. the rotted ME and NE USA Rep gerrymander district math.
i.e. should be *AL* for at large results instead of CD in the statewide column.
How many E.C. gerrymander RIG-the-Results plots are underway for 2020 ???
Is this due to persons writing in the candidate name AND not filling in the write-in oval as required for those DS 200’s/Insights/Eagles to properly tally the write-in for later human resolution?
Maybe. I don’t know if those write-ins are considered valid or not. In California they were not valid in the past, but a few years ago the law was changed and they are valid now.
It appears to be a combination of not counting write-ins, not tallying write-ins, not detecting write-ins, not tallying them for the correct candidate, reporting the wrong number, etc. Election administration is quite decentralized in Wisconsin, and even within a city all the extra McMullin votes tended to be concentrated in a few precincts.
There were many precincts where McMullin gained 10 or so votes. In some of them, there were no write-ins tallied in the original count, or very few. But there were also precinct where he lost 5 to 10 votes.
The number of scattered write-ins declined by a net of 3238, but this included increases of +3243, and decreases of -6481. The increases might reflect votes that were originally counted as an undervote but were determined to be a valid write-in. The decreases could be write-ins that were attributed to on-ballot candidates or declared write-in candidates. But the increases to declared write-in candidates was about 1/3 of the original scattering.
During the recount, local election officials were reporting the reason for large changes (10 or more votes). But I have not seen anything similar for write-ins, and many of the McMullin changes were of that magnitude.
About 25% of precincts reported changes for Trump and Clinton. Clinton appears to have gained more from ballots marked irregularly, but Trump gained more from large scale mistakes (the largest error was a ward in Milwaukee where Trump received 256 votes, but had originally been reported as 8). But McMullin also had changes in about 25% of precincts, indicating carelessness in counting of write-in votes.
Cherunda Fox apparently had an increase of 3, from 44 to 47. But in the 17 precincts where she had originally received 44 votes, the recount could only find 22 votes, in 7 of the precincts NO votes could be located, and two other precincts had a decline (her best precinct in the original count dropped from 8 to 3 votes).
But on the recount, there were four precincts that went from zero to one vote. And one precinct which went from zero to 21 votes. Fox received 45% of her statewide votes in one precinct. Or they were actually McMullin votes since he was the next candidate on the tally sheet.
*********************
Perhaps write-in votes should be eliminated.
If federal voting centers were established at embassies, consulates, and military installations overseas, then there would not be the need for the 45-day mail out. States are required to provide a single point of contact for overseas voters, so it should be feasible to print ballots on demand, and then return them to the US on an expedited basis.
Registration could also be handled by the federal government – this could also be used by the census in counting overseas residents for the census.
So the deadline for filing could be moved a month later. In addition the filing fee could be converted to a deposit. So let’s take California. Make the petition requirement 0.1% of the presidential vote. So something slightly above 14,000. Make the alternative filing fee 1/6 of that times the minimum wage of $10.50, or $24,606.
That is a deposit. If the candidate receives 1% of the vote, they would get their deposit refunded fully. Others might be pro-rated.
So you no longer have a real need for write-in votes.
14th Amdt, Sec. 2 is still in the dead USA Const —
i.e. how many write-in votes in 1866-1868 ???
Also — fully expect the gerrymander hacks to make it much more difficult to be a *declared write-in* candidate.
Ed S — most States REQUIRE the oval to be filled in — so the scanners can spit out the ballots with write-ins – to be allegedly counted.