September
2006
Bobot Must Call for a Recount
According to the results posted on jsonline.com, 5,631 more votes were cast in the Democratic primary for Milwaukee County Sheriff than in the Dem primary for Milwaukee County District Attorney. Where did those votes go?
The explanations given so far by the city of Milwaukee about why the turnout numbers were higher than the votes counted for candidates are as clear as a Florida election during a hurricane. The ballots are being handcounted today.
There is enough evidence of cross-party voting to question whether or not some ballots that should have been excluded might have been mistakenly counted.
Sheriff David Clarke's reported victory over Vince Bobot is slim enough to warrant a recount.
Bobot should step up and call for the recount, if for no other reason than curiosity about how exactly all of the various voter equations Tuesday seemed to work in Clarke's favor — if in fact the vote holds up.
John-david Morgan
Clarke Watch, John-David Morgan, Watchdogging Campaigns
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A lot of my votes came from folks who don’t typically vote in Primaries, knew Clarke well enough to vote against him, but knew nothing of the DA Candidates and so left that line blank.
I’d have to agree with Ben. There was little that came in the mail to alert people to what was happening in the DA’s race and the major source of information came through the mainstream media.
John there is a flaw in your reasoning. It seems like you are calling into question the votes that were cast for the Sheriff race but did not vote for D.A. There were 67,781 votes counted in the Sheriff Race and 62,150 for the D.A. race. The difference being 5,631 votes. The difference between Clarke and Bobot was 3,747, so in order to make a difference in the election Bobot would need to have 3,747 votes out of 5,631 thrown out for some reason. That’s over 66% of those “questionable” ballots thrown out! That of course isn’t very likely. If we were talking about 15,000 “questionable” ballots then yes it would make sense but assuming that over 2/3 of those ballots would be thrown out is unreasonable. Yes the difference numerically between Clarke and Bobot were slim but its not like we were counting the turnout in hundreds of thousands of voters. I’m as upset about the Clarke victory as many that have posted here but we need to figure out what our next step is, not focus on something that is already a lost cause.
My question is if there were 62,000 plus ballots counted in the races then how can the committee that just recounted the ballots say only 48,000 ballots were cast. Something is really fishy here.
Bobot, thankfully, is calling for a recount. Like all of us, he\’s just curious about much of what happened Tuesday. And, while Ben (who ran against Herb Kohl) says there were Green and progressive voters who took a pass on the DA\’s race, were there also Republican voters jumping party lines to vote for Clarke who also took a pass, not wanting to vote for Chisolm or MacMac? 5,631 — that still seems like a lot of votes, nearly 10 percent, sitting out the DA\’s race.
The recount isn\’t likely to change the results, but we\’ll know more because of it, and Bobot needs all the attention and all the help he can get — and some campaign contributors — if he\’s going to pull off a write-in candidacy. Bobot\’s campaign is broke, according to JS and Bobot. He didn\’t do any TV in the primary. Can we really say he ran the best campaign?
NOTE: The 67,781 is the county-wide ballots cast. The city of Milwaukee elections commission is now reporting 46,500 ballots cast last Tuesday, but only 35,000 votes cast for Bobot or Clarke. That\’s 11,500 ballots — nearly one out of four — that apparently didn\’t count for Bobot or Clarke. That seems extremely high. What happened Tuesday?
I’m laughing out loud at the sour grapes nature of this re-count argument.
If Bobot wants a re-count, he has to pay for it out of his own pocket, and it’s not cheap to do.
If Bobot wants to run as a write it, he’d better include spelling lessons in every single ad because if someone writes him in and misses/adds a letter, etc, it’s not counted. The name has to be EXACTLY right…and given the intelligence of some of the posters here, I highly doubt many of them could vote for Bobot correctly.
What’s truly sour is the incredible mismanagement of the jail (16,662 violations of the Christiansen consent decree totalling $83.3 million in fines) under Clarke’s incompetent reign, and the contemptible deployment of sheriff’s deputies into utter uselessness. The sheriff’s deputies who truly love mke would like a competent boss.
The recount is warranted. And it’ll happen.
Mark Belling (mkelover) - Is that you writing us from your clearchannel IP?
mkelover, I’m with you. Very sour grapes. If Slobot wants to take a loan out for a recount, only to still lose, be my guest. Any perceived problems with the voting system around here is a result of years of liberal interference with voting reform.
As for the Christensen decree…was that the result of
Sheriff Clarke? Nope. The issues that led up to the lawsuit and subsequent decree occurred YEARS before Clarke was elected. Jail conditions have improved tons since then. Was there a hiccup? Yes. Things happen. Personally, I don’t really care what kind of “deplorable” conditions the inmates are “subjected” to and neither does the majority of the voting public. I have no problem with criminals sleeping on cement floors using toilet paper for a pillow. Good for them, that’s what they get for being a criminal, convicted yet or not. Payback for all the times they got away with something else and weren’t caught.
A hiccup? Clarke simply ignored the decree and, basically, has been running an illegal booking area since he took office.
The Christensen class action suit was filed in 1996 due to, yes, deplorable conditions in the booking area, where arrested people were packed in for days, treated like cattle and denied medical treatment. There are no beds or showers in the booking area.
People in the booking area have not been charged with crimes, have not gone through intake, have not seen a judge or prosecutor, and are innocent until proven guilty. Many have been arrested driving with suspended drivers’ licenses and other petty offfenses.
The claims made in the suit date back to Richard Artison’s watch as sheriff. When the consent decree was settled in 2001, Lev Baldwin was sheriff. By then a number of changes in the intake area, including the addition of Sunday intake courts and new House of Corrections construction by the state, put the county in a position to meet the requirements of consent decree. Meeting the requirements relied on the sheriff’s department working cooperatively with the courts and the HOC, which is what Baldwin and then HOC superintendent Richard Cox had accomplished.
The County agreed in the decree that no one arrested and brought to the jail would be kept in the booking room (or without a bed) for more than 30 hours. The county also can’t let the population in the booking area exceed 110.
Clarke simply pretended as though the consent decree did not exist. In September 2004, the ACLU filed 13,000 new violations of the court order, and more would be added in the months that followed. That’s no hiccup.
Rather than take responsibilty and start following the law by managing the jail humanely, Clarke pointed fingers at Baldwin and Pete Misko, the guys who brought the county into compliance before he came along. That’s Clarke’s style: refuse to take responsibility and blame someone else — when he has no one to blame but himself.
Nope, sorry, again, I’m not Belling. I love how you assume that it’s Belling writing to you from a Clear Channel IP…don’t you realize that Clear Channel has hundreds of employees in Milwaukee alone and tens of thousands nationwide?
Dems and Bobot need to realize that the voting public (Dems and Reps) does not really care about the conditions in the Milwaukee County Jail, they care about the conditions of where they live…not criminals.
mkelover — Then tell me one good thing that Clarke has done for the county in the way of policing? I am not talking about the $13 million increase in his budget and then coming in at only $11 million and telling us he saved the county money. I am talking about the actual safety and security of the citizins of Milwaukee County. Tell me what he has done.
Maybe it’s time, mkelover, that you help us educate Belling and those 100’s of Milwaukee-based ClearChannel employees about who’s actually in that booking area for 48 hours without a bed or shower, waiting for their intake appointments. To educate Belling, you may have to go to Victor’s.
1) People whose drivers’ licenses have been suspended or revoked. This has been a leading offense of folks being jailed in Milwaukee County for a long time. To have them sit there stewing for days in that booking area with murderers, thugs, rapists and a steady flow of street drug dealers is deplorable.
2) The mentally ill. Criminalizing the mentally ill is another longtime MilCounty problem. Police have some crisis intervention training but no certified special units like they do in Memphis or Portland. Sheriff’s have some training as well, but all too often the mentally ill are tossed in the jail and forgotten, relying on deputies to make high risk medical decisions. They need to be at the Mental Health Complex.
3) Probation/parole revocations. These folks could be in for any number of reasons, any number of original charges — most of what flows through the misdemeanor courts is petty stuff.
4) Many people who are not formally charged, or who later have their cases dropped or dismissed. You’d be surprised how many people who get tossed in jail for a night or two are not convicted.
We understand that it’s difficult to seriously talk about the jail during a political campaign, but referring to everyone in the booking area as a “criminal” is a terrible misrepresentation.
I once wrote a story about a city health nurse, Linda Armstrong, who sat in that jail for 44 hours because she showed up a few minutes late for a family court hearing, had her case decided in her favor, only to have the court clerk forget to cross out the warrant issue that had been marked on Linda’s file. When a Glendale cop pulled her over for a faulty tail light on her car, the warrant was still outstanding and the cop ran her downtown.
Regardless of what the perception of the general public is, managing the booking area and the jail humanely is the legal responsibility of the Milwaukee County Sheriff. Clarke had nothing but contempt for the Christensen court order, an undefensible indictment of his management skills.
In fact, Clarke’s so arrogant he strolled through the booking area and other parts of the jail with a loaded gun, putting the lives of everyone who had the misfortune of being in the same room with him. Later on, he served drinks at a fundraiser carrying a loaded gun (Republican sheriff’s candidate Holt has filed an ethics complaint against Clarke on this).
Contempt for his legal responsibilities at the jail. Contempt the ethics of his post. Contempt for his employees. Contempt for his budget realities. It’s a pattern of Clarke contempt for everyone in Milwaukee County.
“… endangering the lives of everyone who had the misfortune of being in the same room with him.”
(I’d fix it above, but it seems every time I edit any of our comments, slashes /// appear with apostrophes and quotes. A wordpress glitch?)
Are you kidding me? Come on, you’ve got to be smarter than this.
Each one of those points that you brought up has nothing to do with Sheriff Clarke or his job. Clarke is not a legislator of laws, he does not decide what is legal and not legal. His job is to enforce the laws that are passed by the legislators in Madison. If you have a problem with petty offenses, driving suspensions, etc, then you need to contact your legislators…Clarke and his deputies have nothing to do with it. If you want to speed the process in the jails so people don’t have to potentially sit there up to 48 hours, then ask your legislator to build more jails to accommodate the overflow or ask your legislator to de-criminalize some of the offenses that you listed above.
If Sheriff’s deupties and Milwaukee Police officers are constantly out there making arrests and throwing them in jail, what can Clarke do with an already-overcrowded jail? It is not his fault that people are being arrested for crimes they commit. Or maybe you think we should enforce the laws that are currently on the books and turn our backs on more of the criminal activity in our city/county?
The problem was you labeled them all criminals and said no one cares whether they sit in inhumane conditions.
Arrests are down, overall crime down but violent crime up — and there are fewer cops on the street in the city now, so they can’t be bringing more people to the jail.
We have plenty of jail space - and 300 probation and parole beds at 10th and State Secure Detention that Baldwin and Cox didn’t have. If you move the different types of offenders to the right facilities - jail - HOC - Secure Det. - Huber - Monitoring - efficiently you clear the jail pods for pre-trail detainees, releasing the bottle-neck in booking and intake. Clarke has a major role in managing all this. Why is that so difficult to understand?
You have pointed to a larger problem: Jail overcrowding used to be something that was worked on in this community. Baldwin and Cox, the state and the county, had fixed many of the problems. Baldwin was acccountable.
You’re very right, things have changed. Under Clarke and Walker, responsibility is routinely shirked. Of course it can’t be THEIR fault.
Why you think we shouldn’t try to hold them accountable is beyond me.
Good luck with Belling.
They are not all criminals, I never believed that. But if you’re arrested for breaking the law, I don’t believe you should expect to be waiting in the lap of luxury. Evidently you did something wrong which you will try your hardest to get out of…some do, some don’t.
The jails aren’t overcrowded? Give me some of what you’re smoking dude! So are no inmates at all sleeping on the floor of cells in the pods with mattresses?
Determining where, ultimately, a person is jailed is up to the COURTS, not Sheriff Clarke. He holds them until they cases are brought to trial, make bail, etc.
Maybe if we had less people breaking the law then we wouldn’t be having this discussion?
The other thing that you have to realize is that the VOTING public really does not care about the conditions in the jail and how long people have to wait…they’re more concerned about their own safety and well-being in their neighborhoods. That’s just the way it is, I’m not saying that’s a good thing, but that’s a fact.
“They are not all criminals.” Absolutely correct. And the sheriff has a lot to say about whether or not they are treated humanely on the front end of the system.
Are they not being fed and kept warm/secure upon entering the jail facility? You’ve got to understand that some voters/supporters of Clarke live in far WORSE conditions than those at the Milwaukee County lockup. Hard for them to have sympathy when their plight and situation is 10x worse than someone incarcerated.
FYI - no Bobot recount. Would have cost him way too much money.
Clarke ain’t the only one who that responsibility should fall on.
It’s Clarke’s jail to run. Used to be, when the jail was overcrowded, Baldwin or Kliesmet would find ways to pressure the courts and county administration to fix the problems. Remember when we used to read about jail overcrowding on the front page of the Journal Sentinel? That was the sheriff, doing his best to manage the jail.
Yes, there are other players in the system, and the sheriff is definitely one of those players.
I reported yesterday morning in this blog that it looks like Bobot is done. http://watchdogmilwaukee.com/blog/john-david-morgan/2006/bobot-drops-recount-plans/
Still looking for more confirmation on this. Journal Sentinel has not reported anything as yet.
The Bobot non-recount was in the paper on Wednesday. Old news dude.
Ignorance once again, If Clarke is to up hold the law that the legislators pass why is he himself breaks them laws. If Clarke isn’t the one that runs the jail then why is it he himself is cutting medical and deputies positions for inside the jail. Hmmmmmm. Oh and I knew I forgot something an 83 million dollar law suit that he says he inherited well to be honest all he didn’t inherit he worsened. But what do you expect from poor saps that can’t see through the wool that has been pulled over their eyes.