Helgaleena, Dane County

 I watched for 8 hours, 2:30-8:30 PM.  There were only 3 of us at 2:30, so the new person 'floated' between rooms. Now she feels ready to handle a Saturday morning shift on her own.  I would have liked to switch to the 3rd room where they are pre-sorting, but she felt better about having a mentor.The first batch was a combined batch of wards 110 and 120.  Absentee ballots slightly outnumbered regular ballots.  Trump votes regular 132, absentee 193 for total 325. Clinton votes 423 regular, absentee 454, totaling 877.  Votes for Jill totaled 9.Second batch was four wards--114, 114, 116, 103. ONLY WARD 103 had any voters!  I only caught the regular counts for trump-clinton. 36T, 220 C .. there were also 144 absentees and 39 remade e-ballots, grand total 363. Out of these I was kindly told 10 votes were for Jill.third batch was a combo of wards 1, 2 and 123. Again Ward 123 had NO votes.  the other 2 wards had to be separated out, because each ward had different referendum questions, but the poll workers sometimes gave the wrong ballot , Ward 1 voters voting on Ward 2 ballots and vice versa, including, sadly the absentee ballots.  They had to be distinguished by header codes.  A number of header codes turned out to be from neighboring wards!  The machine was not supposed to accept these ballots. I hope they were absentees in that case. rnrnWard1 totals: regular ballots 679, of which 12 were for Jill.  Absentee 497 approx. 200 for Clinton, 0 for Jill. a whopping 125 re-makes, including 3 for Jill.  Grand total 990 of which 15 were for Jill.Ward 1 also had 11 uncounted still in the envelopes, bringing its grand total subsequently up to 1001. I don't know if they included and Jill votes as i wasn't able to see. They were tabulated though. Similar to the uncounted votes discovered in city of Monona.Ward2 totals:  regular 654 Clinton, 141 Trump, 16 Jill.  Absentee approx 230 Clinton, 30 Trump, 1 Jill.  Remakes 64 Clinton, 13 Trump, none for Jill.  Grand total 1551, including 17 Jill.At the beginning of 5:30 shift the one new person left and in came 3 new persons. Bob in the other room and I mentored them once again, 2 in with me catching on quite quickly. We observed together  a combined batch of Wards 43 and 52, both small.  52 had its absentee ballots separated out already, but 43 needed to be pre-sorted before the count.  Two ballots meant to be included in ward 43 also were discovered mixed into ward 52 and sent to the proper table.Ward 43 totals:  regular Clinton 200, Trump 11, Jill 3rnrn                          absentee clinton 150, Trump17, Jill 3rnrnWard 52 totals: regular Clinton 215, Trump 31, Jill 0rnrn                         absentee Clinton 300, Trump 43, Jill 10. The new people took over watching the count of wards 5 and 6 and I was finally able to go to the pre-sorting room 321.There was some confusion going on during processing of a combined batch of wards 74 and 75, from the polling station at Leopold Elementary on Post Rd. Someone there was assigning numbers to absentee ballots and another was remaking all absentee ballots they were given, not just the e-ballots.  Someone quipped that it was a great way to make more votes.once the wards were distinguished from one another Ward 75 was obviously twice as numerous as Ward 74.  the superfluous re-makes were from both wards.  After consultation with the experts in the other rooms, consensus was that any ballots with the 'absentee numbers' (which should not be there)should be put in with the regular ballots if they had no absentee stamps or initials. In other words, they should disregard this innovation. another anomaly of this batch was  a number of 'bad ballot' numbers used on absentee ballots which were not in need of a remake.  I get the feeling that the counting will be a headache.The final batch of the night was a combined ward 64 and ward 82.   it was pretty straightforward separation into 6 categories--  64 regular, 82 regular, 64 absentee,  82 absentee, 64 remade,   82 remade.       The only real surprises were a number of Ward 64 ballots marked '46'   --  also some with no initials at all, rather than the single initial or the double initial of a standard ballot.  The signature free ones tended to have the creases that would inhibit machine reading.Katya Whiterabbit aka