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Prosser's lead

Posted: Apr 7, 2011

Oops! Looks like they forgot a bunch of ballots. Sad day for liberals.

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Takes Big Lead After County Corrects Vote Count

Published April 07, 2011 | FoxNews.com

A Wisconsin Supreme Court justice has taken a big unofficial lead over a little-known challenger after a conservative-leaning county corrected its vote count Thursday, dealing a crushing blow to opponents of the state's new divisive collective bargaining law.

Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus said Thursday that the votes weren't reported to The on Tuesday due to "human error."

Before the announcement, it was assumed 68-year-old conservative Justice David Prosser's race against liberal assistant state attorney general JoAnne Kloppenburg was headed for a recount.

But Prosser's unofficial 7,500 vote-lead is likely to stand if the new numbers hold up through canvassing in all of Wisconsin's 72 counties.

Opponents of the new law had hoped a Kloppenburg victory would set the stage for the high court to strike it down.

Kloppenburg declared victory on Wednesday when unofficial totals showed her with a 204-vote margin out of nearly 1.5 million cast in Tuesday's election. Prosser's campaign had been expected to request a recount.

But it waited as each county's board of canvassers sought to reconcile the totals, making sure the ballots in hand match the number of people who voted.

It was the most expensive state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin history. As of Tuesday, outside groups had spent a record $3.58 million, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a New York University program that tracks spending on judicial races.

When Democrats thought they were victorious, they warned the race was only a sign of what's to come. Recall efforts have been launched against 16 state senators from both parties for their support or opposition to the bill eliminating most public employees' collective bargaining rights.

On Wednesday, two liberal groups, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy for America, announced they planned to pour another $125,000 into ads supporting recall drives against eight Republican state senators who backed Gov. Scott Walker's bill.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Never underestimate a Republican's sleight of hand - Interesting woman--another Katherine Harris?

[ In Reply To ..]
Waukesha County clerk, board clash over audit
e-mail print By Laurel Walker of the Journal Sentinel
Jan. 17, 2011

Kathy Nickolaus

Jim DwyerWaukesha - Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus' response to audit recommendations aimed at improving election security in her office was not a hit with the County Board leaders Monday.

Nickolaus had said she would take the recommendations "into consideration" - sparking concern from members of the Executive Committee and, at one point, a scolding from County Board Chairman Jim Dwyer over what he later categorized as "smirks" during the discussion.

"This is the only audit in my 17 years where there's no compliance before (the audit reaches) the Executive Committee," he said at the start of Monday's audit review.

An audit of last fall's elections prompted Internal Audit Manager Lori Schubert to conclude that while the clerk's system generally complies with state and federal guidelines and accuracy of election totals was not at issue, Nickolaus should improve security and backup procedures.

For example, Schubert recommended that Nickolaus stop using the same ID and password for three employees, assigning individual ones instead, as required by county policy, so that an audit trail of each employee's work exists.

A "worst case scenario" of a disgruntled employee changing the password and locking others out of the system was possible and has occurred elsewhere in the country, Schubert said.

Nickolaus explained her rationale, saying it would take too much time for one employee to sign off so another employee could sign on to the same programming computer when one is interrupted to wait on a customer at the office counter.

Several committee members said they were uncomfortable with Nickolaus' refusal to adopt the recommendations.

During one part of the discussion, Dwyer erupted in exasperation at Nickolaus' facial expressions.

"There really is nothing funny about this, Kathy," he said, raising his voice. "Don't sit there and grin when I'm explaining what this is about.

"Don't sit there and say I will take it into consideration," he said, asking her pointedly whether she would change the passwords.

"I have not made my decision," she answered. After supervisors continued to press the issue, Nickolaus indicated she would create three different passwords.

"This isn't that big of a deal. It isn't worth an argument," she said. "This is ridiculous."

Nickolaus also said she would make her own assessment of when to back up computer programming for election ballots - and store the more frequent backup in another building, as the auditor recommended.

The audit was requested by the Executive Committee after the county's director of administration, Norm Cummings, said Nickolaus had been uncooperative with attempts to have the county's experts review her systems and confirm that backups were in place.

Because some of her equipment is so dated - such as an 11-year-old modem for transmitting data over the telephone and 1995 software no longer supported - and is not routinely getting security updates, her election systems are not connected to the county's system but are on stand-alone equipment.

Although it was not among the audit recommendations, the clerk's decision to no longer report municipal election results on election night, as many other county clerks do, was questioned by Supervisor David Swan of Pewaukee.

"I'm personally disappointed by that," he said.

Nickolaus said she made the decision after she was once chastised for having the wrong outcome for a local school board on her site when the results were incomplete. Nickolaus said that too often she had staff waiting on municipal results, something she's not required by state law to report.

She said she wouldn't reverse her decision unless required by the state to begin reporting municipal results - something she said voters can find on individual municipal websites.

Need to tell the whole story....Kloppenberg - gained votes too...just

[ In Reply To ..]
not nearly as many.

WASHINGTON -- In a dramatic turn of events on Thursday, the Waukesha County clerk announced that the vote total announced for Tuesday's Wisconsin Supreme Court race had been mistaken -- and that the corrected numbers changed the outcome of the entire election.

There were 3,456 missing votes for Democratic-backed challenger Kathleen Kloppenburg and 11,059 for incumbent GOP-backed Justice David Prosser. Kloppenburg has previously been beating Prosser by just 200 votes of the roughly 1.5 million cast statewide. The new total puts Prosser on a significant path to victory, about 7,500 votes ahead of Kloppenburg.

Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus announced the news in a press conference at 5:30 p.m. local time, sounding nervous and, at times, on the verge of tears. She insisted that there was no foul play in the results and blamed the mess on her own "human error."

Nickolaus cited several reasons for the discrepancies between Tuesday night's unofficial vote totals and the new numbers. In the city of New Berlin, the total for one ward was recorded as 37 votes for Prosser, but it was actually 237, she said. In the town of Lisbon, a "typing error" resulted in both candidates losing votes. The most significant error, however, occurred in the city of Brookfield.

"The spreadsheet from Brookfield was imported into a database that was provided by the Government Accountability Board, but it inadvertently was not saved," Nickolaus said. "As a result, when I ran the report to show the aggregate numbers that were collected from all the municipalities, I assumed that the city of Brookfield was included. It was not. The city of Brookfield cast 14,315 votes on April 5 -- 10,859 votes went for Justice David Prosser, 3,456 went for JoAnne Kloppenburg."

"It is important to stress that this is not a case of extra votes or extra ballots being found," she added. "This is human error, which I apologize for -- which is common in this process."

What would people have her do? Disenfranchise the whole town?? They found an error and owned up to it. If the count was the other way Democrats would be crowing not yelling "sleight of hand."

Good grief, people. The country going down the tubes at a high rate of speed and all you want to do is belittle each other and in the meantime...NOTHING gets done to help us.

There are so many discrepancies - Something smells cheesy

[ In Reply To ..]
Last Census puts this towns population at 39,000 with 30% of those being children below voting age. Leaves 27,000 eligible voters. Of those eligible voters there were 29,600 registeredÂ. ? Of those 29,600 voters seems 54% turned up to vote. (The rest of the state averaged 33%) ? The clerk found the magic votes on her personal computer. The clerk refuses to use the new system the rest of the state uses. She is a computer programmer. She was using MS Access and said she forgot to save the spreadsheet (you don't save spreadsheets to Access--its a database) She is the only one with the password to access the vote data. She was a staffer for the candidate (Prosser) whom the magic votes benefittedÂ. And the 7,000 + vote margin is now just above the limit for a state-paid recount. Coincidence?

Well, it seems to me it would be simple. - Doesn't the town know

[ In Reply To ..]
how many votes it turned in? They are the ones who recorded the votes and turned it in to her. She just didn't get any of their votes uploaded.

OR are you saying the town is in cahoots with her?

It also garnered the apponent over 3000 votes.

Seriously...you want me to believe that the town doesn't have their own records of their own votes that they turned in to her, the county clerk? Seriously??

Apparently the woman has engaged in inappropriate partisan shenanigans in the past - Time will tell how it all turns out

[ In Reply To ..]
The woman needs to be fired. Then there needs to be an investigation of her actions in her office. She was warned to make changes and fix problems and laughed it off. She needs to face the consequences of her actions, and if there is more to the story, we need to know that too. This kind of thing is unacceptable.

What inappropriate partisan shenanigans? - "Apparently'? AGAIN...

[ In Reply To ..]
The opponent also gained 3000 votes from this. It is not like only Prosser gained votes. AGAIN...she did not concoct those votes out of the air, they were just inadvertently left out of the first count. People DO make mistakes. You've made a few, I take it?

It is easy to verify the numbers. The town knows what numbers it turned in to the county clerk. If there was something wrong with the numbers she quoted, the town would know it and would report it. Unless of course you think it is some vast right wing conspiracy...then you should call Hillary.

I also realize that we would not be hearing a word out of you if this correction had benefited the opponent more than Prosser. ;)

Oh, I think he will probably win, because it's an area that would have voted for him heavily - No doubt about that

[ In Reply To ..]
I saw some video of him yesterday. His behavior was deplorable. I feel sorry for the people who will be impacted by decisions he will make.

What did I see posted yesterday chiding - Republicans for not

[ In Reply To ..]
being graceful losers when your side was winning? Is this you being a graceful loser?

Just checkin.

Now, what would you say if it happened in Chicago? - see link

[ In Reply To ..]
http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/editorial/article_be206ecd-4b8d-571a-9fa2-cb4e5bf8e668.html

See post above, which should be the final word - on this and people have

[ In Reply To ..]
failed to mention...the vice chair of the Waukesha County Democratic Party was there during the canvassing. So the Republican had a Democrat looking over her shoulder while the canvassing was taking place.

Read above for what the Democrat had to say.

"human error" not that! - WI MT

[ In Reply To ..]
Like forgetting to count votes for the Republican judge because Waukesha is hugely Democratic? Human error. Please. Call it what it is. Trying to cheat the election.

You know, in WI we don't have to show ID to vote so we really have no idea how many dead people or illegal immigrants or inmates are voting in these elections. No wonder they were trying to reconcile votes with people. More votes than people? HMMM.

If Waukesha had "forgotten" to count votes for the Democrat judge the unions would have probably boycotted that town too. At least the vote counters didn't run away because they felt the votes were going in the favor of the judge they liked.

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