NORMAN : MUNI JUDGE RACE NOT OVER

A Milwaukeeworld.com scoop!

By Michael Horne
As of this writing, City of Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director Sue Edman and Assistant Director Neil Albrecht are at the commission's warehouse, and not in their offices as might be expected on the morning after an uneventful election.
Their off-premise activities most likely involve a hand count of ballots from yesterday's sparsely attended primary election for City of Milwaukee Municipal Court Branch 3 Judge. In that race, which has not been decided despite the confident check marks next to the names of Jennifer Havas and Philip Chavez in the newspaper and on the television newscasts, a man whose name is not on the printed ballot, says he will be, once the final vote is counted. Astoundingly, there indeed is a chance that he may be right.
Jeffrey B. Norman, the write-in candidate, tells milwaukeeworld: "I believe I have over 4,000 votes." [ Havas had 4,460 votes and Chavez had 4,012.]
This bold assertion is somewhat buttressed by the city's report of 2,940 write-in votes in the election. However, the city did not provide a breakdown of the votes cast for individual candidates in that category. It is safe to assume that Norman received a great number of these votes, since he waged an aggressive campaign for the seat after he was denied a spot on the ballot for failure to timely file a campaign document. [Use the search engine up there to find related stories. -- Ed.] Norman and his volunteers distributed thousands of stickers with his name and the name of the office for voters to affix on ballots.
Still, the 2,940 write-in votes would not be sufficient to give him a place on the ballot, even if all were cast for him.
Norman, a Milwaukee Police Detective and attorney, points to a discrepancy in the number of votes cast for the only other citywide races on the ballot. Indeed, the numbers are worthy of note. In the race for Supreme Court Justice, there were 19,512 votes cast. For the at-large seat on the school board, there were 18,191 votes cast. Yet only 16,085 votes were recorded as being cast for municipal judge. That discrepancy is significant, and could hold the results of the election, Norman feels.
He also alleges that there were numerous problems at the polling places, with some workers telling voters they could not use the stickers and with others, Norman says, actually removing stickers, and with absentee ballots not being counted. He recollects Neil Albrecht telling a poll worker that stickers may be used; he says his wife convinced a poll worker to poke around in the voting machine to discover uncounted ballots..He states flatly that he believes that in many instances there was no effort to count write-in ballots. Edman and her deputy, at the warehouse, were unavailable for comment. A message has been left for them for when they emerge.
This has been a very strange race, and continues to be so. Until we hear otherwise, it is safe to assume that the commissioner has got another mess on her hands. This race is not over.
Update -- 10:44 a.m. --
Milwaukeeworld has spoken with Ms. Edman who kept us up to date with activities in the warehouse. She said the city should be able to have an accurate count of the number of write-in ballots sometime this afternoon. Right now, election workers are pulling a document filed with ballots from each of the 312 wards of the city. So far 269 wards have been reviewed. These documents include a tally of write-in votes and what she calls "undervotes."
"The machine will not recognize a written in name, or a sticker unless the arrow is completed to the left," she says. This hardly intuitive process may explain the 3,427 discrepancy in votes cast for the only two judicial races on the ballot. It is possible that many of these ballots will have Norman's name or sticker without the requisite arrow.
In short, the 2,940 write-in votes counted by the commission all had the arrow completed, in addition to a name, or a sticker. It is very likely that of the 3,427 ballots cast for Supreme Court but not for Municipal Court, a considerable number -- perhaps the winning margin -- have the name or sticker of a candidate, with the arrow not completed.
What would be done with the "undervotes," as they are called? "This would come down to voter intent," says an attorney familiar with election law. "Kevin Kennedy would rule that the voters indicated their intent for the candidate whose name they wrote, and the votes would count." What a roller coaster!

AN HISTORICAL ANALYSIS
The discrepancy in votes between the offices of Supreme Court and Municipal Court in yesterday's election seems to be an anomaly, lending further likelihood that the quixotic candidacy of Jeffrey B. Norman may not be over.
In the last analogous election, held on April 1st, 2003, the offices on the ballot were the same as yesterday's. Ballots cast ranged from 24,750 for school board; 24,443 for supreme court justice and 24,224 for municipal court judge. That is a variance of 526. More significantly, there was a variance of only 219 votes in the two judicial races, or less than one per cent of votes cast. Less than 250 absentee ballots were cast; and were not a factor in any race.
Contrast this with yesterday's race in which 19,512 votes were cast for supreme court justice while only 16,085 were recorded as being cast for municipal court judge. We must ask ourselves whether 17 per cent of the people who bothered to cast a ballot for a supreme court justice would boycott the municipal court race. Since 18 per cent of the correctly recorded votes for municipal court were write-ins, versus a negligible number the previous election, and since the differential between votes cast in the supreme court and the municipal court elections is also about the same percentage, it is very likely that it will turn out that Mr. Norman's name is on thousands of those ballots. Why we have to futz around today to figure this out is another story. Was this write-in campaign such a surprise to election officials?
Update 1:10 p.m. -- A canvass meeting scheduled for 1 p.m. will begin shortly, according to commission staff.

UPDATE: 3:17 p.m. The members of the election commission, Robert F. Spindell, Jr. [R] and Victoria L. Toliver [D] minus the absent Allen E. Campos [D], certified the canvass of votes in the race and called for a meeting to be held Monday, February 26th at 10 am. Candidates have until 5 p.m. Monday to ask for a recount. Norman will almost certainly ask for the recount, although it could be pointed out that the votes were never actually counted in the first place.
Copyright 2007 M. J. Horne