Questioning Wisconsin's Very High Presidential Election 2016 Turnout Numbers

Richard Hayes Phillips, 11/27/2016

I am pleased that the Green Party will challenge the election results and pay for statewide hand counts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and in the paper ballot counties of Pennsylvania. I have been digging very deeply into the numbers in Wisconsin, and I want to share them with you, particularly as they include some numbers that may require some sort of explanation from officials. My report, as of today, is linked here [PDF].

Ordinarily, in the results reported by most jurisdictions around the country, voter turnout data (total ballots cast, divided by the number of registered voters, expressed as a percentage) is listed right along with the vote counts, precinct by precinct, county by county. Not in Wisconsin. Finding out the total number of ballots cast, county by county, requires a visit to each of 72 county websites and generally requires the investigator to add up the vote counts for all the candidates, which I have now done for every single town in 36 of 72 counties in the state.

Finding out the total number of registered voters for those locations requires periodic visits to the website of the Wisconsin Elections Commission (formerly the state's Governmental Accountability Board or G.A.B.), and these numbers are a moving target, subject to change, because of the state's same-day Election Day voter registration system.

As my report documents, I have plugged in these numbers for every single town in those same 36 counties, and divided these into the numbers for total ballots cast, and then calculated the percentages. Based upon the latest data available for the vote counts as of 9:45 PM EST on Saturday, November 19, 2016, and the latest data posted for the number of registered voters dated November 16, 2016, there are 193 towns with turnout of 90% or better, 25 towns with turnout of 95% or better, and 7 towns with turnout of 100% or better.

The links are provided on this web page, and in my report, so that anyone may verify my work.

These numbers are still subject to change, because not all municipal clerks in the state have finished their data entry for newly registered voters, and they still may not be done with this task for many weeks. But that, in itself, is a problem, because if the county election officials do not know how many registered voters there are, they cannot possibly know if there are too many votes counted. They do not know what they are actually certifying, and neither does the State of Wisconsin.

Maybe it is true that, as some have suggested, a surge of voters showed up on Election Day in rural counties all over Wisconsin, having never before been registered to vote. But there must have been about as many of these as the number of long time voters who failed to show up at the polls or vote by absentee ballot, or else the current turnout numbers could not be approaching 100% as is the case in so many places.

Moreover, these extraordinarily high turnout percentages appear almost everywhere in rural Wisconsin. At last count, 65 of 72 counties had voter turnout above 80% countywide, and 18 of 72 counties had voter turnout above 85% countywide. It is unacceptable that we cannot verify these numbers during the time period within which we must decide whether or not to challenge the election. The number of registered voters is the yardstick against which all other election statistics are measured.

The first seven pages of my report [PDF] explain this matter in detail. The rest of the document is appendices with tables of data to back up and prove what I say.

Those who are involved with the recount in Wisconsin will need to have the latest data. For that, go to the Wisconsin Elections Commission website and do two things: (1) Click on "Election Statistics" in the right hand column, pull up the excel spreadsheet, and search the 72 tabs for the county of interest; this will give you the latest statistics for registered voters, town by town, which are updated about twice a month. (2) Click on "Unofficial, county-level results are available here," and click on the county of interest; this will pull up the county website on which, if you search carefully, you should find the latest unofficial vote counts for the candidates.

- QUESTIONING THE NUMBERS IN WISCONSIN [PDF]

Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D. [Updated November 27, 2016]

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Richard Hayes Phillips is an election fraud investigator with a long established and well earned reputation. After the 2004 presidential election in Ohio, he spearheaded the effort to gather actual forensic evidence. He personally examined and analyzed digital photographs of 126,000 ballots, 127 poll books, 141 voter signature books, ballot accounting charts, voter registration lists, voter purge lists, and other election records, from precincts of his choosing in 18 of 88 counties in Ohio. This resulted in his book, Witness to a Crime: A Citizens' Audit of an American Election, signed copies of which are available in hardcover directly from the author for $30 plus postage.