No Runny Eggs

The repository of one hard-boiled egg from the south suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (and the occassional guest-blogger). The ramblings within may or may not offend, shock and awe you, but they are what I (or my guest-bloggers) think.

Archive for December, 2016

December 12, 2016

The recount is over, to be certified at 3 pm

That is the news from the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which is due to certify the recults at 3. It earlier said that the counting was complete, with only 4 counties yet to submit their official canvass.

Speaking of (unofficial) results, as of Saturday night, 90.8% of the reporting units, representing 91.3% of the votes originally cast for the 7 candidates on the ballot, were recounted. Besides the partial results from the city of Milwaukee, there had been 10 reporting units not recorded in the daily spreadsheets. There had been a total net vote change of +1480, or +0.055%. As Ed Morrissey noted earlier today, that is purer than Ivory soap.

Individually, Hillary Clinton gained 691 votes, Donald Trump gained 628 votes, and Jill Stein gained…wait for it…wait for it…68 votes. I hope the nearly $4 million Stein spent on validating Trump’s win was worth it for her.

Meanwhile, the recount efforts in both Michigan and Pennsylvania, and thus the fever dreams of the Left, were shut down by various judges.

December 6, 2016

Aggrieved? Hacked? Not exactly.

First, a bit of self/cross-promotion – I did what is effectively a weekend update over at RightWisconsin. My analysis of the Presidential recount will be split between there and here.

There was a massive data dump to the Wisconsin Elections Commission last night. With over 55% of the votes originally cast, in 58% of the reporting units, Hillary Clinton managed to gain a net 3 votes on Donald Trump (+142 to +139 vice the county canvasses), while Jill Stein gained 50 votes.

The big news is that a rather massive hole got blasted in the theory that the election was “hacked”. In St. Croix County, which completed its portion of the recount Monday, 5 voting machines in 4 municipalities fell under suspicion after the modems which remotely report results to the county clerk were serviced. However, the Wisconsin Elections Commission investigated and found nothing improper. Indeed, the Stein campaign representatives in St. Croix County, in its own contempraneous review of the recount in various reporting units, agreed with the machine tape in each case.

Meanwhile, the nightmare may be over before it really begins in Michigan. A state appeals court ruled that Stein is not an “aggrieved” candidate and thus should be denied a recount. That state’s board of canvassers, which split evenly on partisan lines on the issue last week, thus triggering the recount is scheduled to meet tomorrow morning to take that under advisement. Also, Stein’s Pennsylvania federal lawsuit is scheduled for a Friday hearing, the timing of which doesn’t appear to bode well for her Clinton’s chances.

December 3, 2016

Wisconsin Presidential recount – Day 3

Just a few quick items after the Wisconsin Elections Commission posted the spreadsheet of day 2 of the won’t-change-a-thing Wisconsin recount:

Jill Stein dropped her attempt to get a court to force a recount in Pennsylvania after her campaign couldn’t come up with the $1 million bond the court required. With that, even without the results from Wisconsin and Michigan, Donald Trump has 280 electoral votes. Maybe the WEC should have got the full $3.9 million from Stein up-front instead of the $3.5 million.

– With 24% of the original number of votes recounted, representing 29.7% of the reporting units, Trump has gained 308 74 votes over the original county canvasses, Hillary Clinton has gained 187 45 votes and Stein has gained 171 41 votes. Projecting that over the remaining ballots, Trump’s lead over Clinton would grow by 121 votes, and his lead over Stein would grow by 137 votes.

– The three biggest errors of the election thus far all came from election officials, not from either “hacked” voting machines or voters not making their intent clear enough to be known on Election Day. In the town of Centerville in Manitowoc County, 24 ballots for Clinton that weren’t counted on Election Day showed up for the recount. In the town of Bashaw in Washburn County, 33 votes that should have been counted for Trump in the canvass weren’t until Thursday. Backing those three incidents (including 17 votes not counted for Stein in Menominee County, found on the first day) out, Trump’s projected leads over Clinton and Stein would grow by 83 votes and 71 votes respectively.

– While the transposition errors in yesterday’s spreadsheet were corrected (which also corrected the issue in Woodland), there were several new transposition errors in today’s spreadsheet. Also, only partial results came from St. Francis. I understand these are unofficial numbers being reported outside the normal and official process, but that can get confusing.

Revisions/extensions (6:22 pm 12/3/2016) – Speaking of transposition errors, instead of reading off the “changes-to-date” line on my spreadsheet, I read off the “projected total change” line. It doesn’t change the stated projected lead changes.

Revisions/extensions part 2 (11:31 pm 12/3/2016) – Thanks for the HotAir-lanche, Ed. I hope this place isn’t too dusty. Also, I added a poll on how many votes Jill Stein will get in this meaningless recount.

R&E part 3 (8:27 am 12/4/2016) – The Stein/Clinton campaign merely switched their Pennsylvania efforts to federal court, where the costs are a lot less.

December 2, 2016

Wisconsin Presidential recount – Day 2

The recount of the Presidential election in Wisconsin is in its second day, and unless one is a Clinton/Stein diehard supporter, things are going right about as expected. The Wisconsin Elections Commission posted the results given to it yesterday, and with a couple of important notes, not much has changed with over 10% of the original vote, and over 13% of the reporting units, recounted. Indeed, the biggest change remains Menominee County’s original failure to report most of the miniscule number of votes cast for the minor-party candidates in the most Democrat-heavy county in the state (17 for Jill Stein, 12 for Gary Johnson and 3 for Darrell Castle).

The WEC’s spreadsheet includes partial totals for various reporting units in the city of Milwaukee, with none of the absentee ballots counted yet, as well as what appears to be 2 partial reports from a reporting unit in Hales Corners and from the town of Woodland in Sauk County. Taking those out of the spreadsheet, 484 of Wisconsin’s 3636 reporting units (or 478 of 3,499 that actually had at least 1 vote recorded) have been recounted, representing what had been canvassed as 299,970 votes for the 7 candidates that were on the ballot. Donald Trump had a net gain of 5 votes, Hillary Clinton had a net gain of 3 votes, and Stein a net gain of 24 votes. Including the other minor candidates, the 459 total vote changes yielded a net change in the number of votes recorded of only +47.

Extending that over the remaining 90% of the vote/87% of the reporting units, Trump’s lead over Clinton would grow to 22,637 (+20 versus the original canvass), and his lead over Stein would shrink to 1,373,248 (-186 versus the original canvass). Of course, that includes the “clerical” error in Menominee County; backing that error out would net Stein only 69 additional votes instead of 235 additional votes. Either way, that would represent one of the most expensive per-vote expenditures in the history of elections for exactly zero net effect as she would still be in a distant 4th place and the Green Party would still have automatic ballot access through 2018 without the recount.

Of note, 308 reporting units, including 302 with at least 1 vote cast, had zero changes. Given the establishment of voter intent is significantly more permissive in a recount than on election day, there is no statistical evidence of mischief by the election officials.

Indeed, Wisconsin has conducted an audit of every type of electronic voting equipment used after every fall general election since 2006, and not even one piece of equipment has failed to meet the federal standard of no more than 1 error per 500,000 ballots. The municipal clerks and the WEC were in the midst of this year’s audit when the recall came about and put at least a temporary hold on that.

In other news, a federal judge declined to issue a temporary restraining order sought by a couple of pro-Trump PACs, though he did schedule a hearing on the case for December 9. Meanwhile, the recount in the 32nd Senate district ended disappointingly, with Jennifer Schilling extending her margin of victory over Dan Kapanke from 56 votes to 61 votes.

Wisconsin is the swingingest swing state that ever swung

Dr. Eric Ostermeier analyzed the history of plurality wins by a Presidential candidate over at Smart Politics. He has a whole host of remarkable numbers, but I’ll highlight a couple of Wisconsin-specific items.

With Trump’s (pending recount) plurality win, one of 14 this cycle, Wisconsin now has the highest percentage of plurality Presidential wins in the nation at 30.2%. That includes 4 straight plurality wins between 1992 and 2004, just one cycle off the record of 5 set by Indiana between 1876 and 1892.

That also makes Wisconsin one of only 3 states to have produced 5 plurality winners between 1992 and 2016, with New Mexico and Florida the other 2. New Mexico also produced plurality winners in the same years as Wisconsin, while Florida produced a plurality winner in 2012 instead of 2004.

That alone doesn’t make Wisconsin the swingingest swing state. It is also the margins of victory that matter, and since 2000, Wisconsin stands alone in that regard. Unless Trump gains a net of some 6,000 votes in the recount (or Clinton somehow gains a net of 29,000 votes or Stein some 1.4 million, neither of which appears likely to happen even after the most-Democrat-leaning county in the state, Menominee County, finished their portion of the recount), this will be the 3rd election of the last 5 to be decided by less than a percentage point.

I’m back

by @ 8:08. Filed under The Blog.

This place sure got dusty in my absence, mostly due to a couple forays onto Twitter (which I am well and truly over). Oh well; you can’t keep a good Egg down forever.

I rather doubt I’ll be doing things on a daily basis, but there’s a target-rich environment out there, and I need the practice.

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