I posted the opinion below in response to Wisconsin Recall: Hijacking or Pilot Error? (June 11, 2012). For election results, I used this article as reference: Wisconsin June 5 recall election results.

I have started a recount petition here: “Re-count The Wisconsin Recall”. Please consider signing.

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Far be it from me to question your analytics of the situation, but I’m disappointed that more people are not asking the more fundamental question which I’ve been asking: Did Walker actually win? It is a truism that when exit polls and election results vary widely, the problem is probably with the election results (See: Ukraine, Nov. 2004). As we saw in 2000 and 2004, that rule doesn’t seem to apply in the United States.

Maybe it should.

While exit polls showed the races for Walker and Kleefisch too close to call, they both ‘won’ by wide margins: Walker by 7% (72,000 votes), and Kleefisch by 6% (46,000 votes).

2,511,585 votes were cast in the gubernatorial recall. 2,454,741 votes were cast in the Lieutenant Governor’s recall. Why did 56,844 more people vote in the Walker recall than in the Kleefisch recall? Did they simply forget?

In an exit poll of a hypothetical race between Obama and Romney, Obama won by 3%. Is it really likely that Obama would win a hypothetical race among actual voters by 3%, while Walker and Kleefisch would win by 6-7%?

As Brad Friedman (“TheBradblog”) often points out, electronically tallied votes are only actually counted when a recall is required. If a race is not close, then the challenger must pay for the manual count. In the Walker/Kleefisch recall, the margin was wide enough that a manual count would have to be paid by the challengers.

Elections aren’t just about counts. They are also, and mainly, about TRUSTING the counts. I may be totally wrong in my conclusions, but I think the observations make the questions justifiable.

I have initiated a petition for a manual vote count in the Wisconsin recall before the ballots can be destroyed. If you wish to sign on, please go to http://signon.org/sign/re-count-the-wisconsin?source=c.url&r_by=443990