In a stunning development that instantly changed the race for the state Supreme Court, a county clerk's error on election night added 7,582 votes for incumbent Justice David Prosser over challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg.
The additional votes almost certainly will give Prosser the victory in the heated race for the high court. As of early afternoon Thursday, Kloppenburg had been ahead in the race, according to totals compiled by the Associated Press.
The additional votes for Prosser were found after it was determined that all the votes for the City of Brookfield were not included in the initial counts that the county provided to the Associated Press, which has been maintaining a statewide tally of votes.
The revised Waukesha County figures show Prosser with 11,008 more votes than were initially recorded for him, while Kloppenburg picked up 3,426 more votes. The net result is an additional 7,582 votes for Prosser.
Earlier Thursday, unofficial results compiled by the Associated Press had Kloppenburg winning by 244 votes.
Kloppenburg issued a statement Thursday evening saying she will be requesting all relevant records surrounding the snafu.
"Wisconsin voters as well as the Kloppenburg for Justice Campaign deserve a full explanation of how and why these 14,000 votes from an entire City were missed," the statement said.
"We are confident that election officials in Waukesha County will fulfill these requests as quickly as possible so that both our campaign and the people of Wisconsin can fully understand what happened and why," Kloppenburg said. "Just as Assistant Attorney General Kloppenburg has run to restore confidence in the court, Wisconsin residents also deserve to have full confidence in election results."
Prosser said he was "encouraged" by the changing vote totals.
"Our confidence is high, and we will continue to monitor with optimism, and believe that the positive results will hold," Prosser said in a statement. "We’ve always maintained faith in the voters and trust the election officials involved in the canvasing will reaffirm the lead we’ve taken.”
At a press conference Thursday evening, a tearful Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus accepted blame for the error.
Nickolaus said she forgot to press "save" while entering the numbers into a database and because the countywide turnout was so large, the missing votes didn't get noticed. On election night she reported the countywide voter turnout was 42 percent. The revised numbers adding Brookfield's votes increases the countywide turnout to 47 percent, she said.
Nickolaus said on election night she enters the numbers into a Microsoft Access program and then prints them out for the media. Because she didn’t save the numbers, they didn’t get transferred to the unofficial results and the lack of Brookfield votes were not discovered until the canvass took place.
“It’s important to stress this isn’t a case of extra votes or extra ballots being found,” she said. “This is error, which I apologize for, which is common in this process.”
Nickolaus said the county's Board of Canvassers has been meeting since noon Wednesday and the error was found Wednesday. However, she didn’t report it until Thursday after verifying the error was made.
Waukesha County Executive of the missed votes.
“It is an unfortunate situation, but the most important thing is that every vote was counted and was verified and in the hands of the Government Accountability Board," said Vrakas, who like Nickolaus is an active Republican.
Ramona Kitzinger, vice chairman of the Waukesha County Democratic Party and the appointed Democrat on the Waukesha County Board of Canvassers, said she was confident the revised vote totals were accurate, despite the blow to Kloppenburg's bid.
"We went over everything and made sure all the numbers jibed up and they did," Kitzinger said.
After news of the increased Prosser votes leaked but before Nickolaus' press conference, Brookfield City Clerk Kristine Schmidt said she had not been notified by the county of any vote reporting problems.
"The votes that I had on Tuesday night, the votes I reported to the county clerk on Tuesday night, and the votes I turned over to the county clerk on Wednesday were the same numbers in each instance," Schmidt said.
"What they did with those votes afterward I can’t answer," she added.
After watching Nickolaus' press conference, Schmidt said in an interview that she empathized with the error. But she was not happy Nickolaus never told Brookfield about the snafu, even when Schmidt talked to Nickolaus earlier Thursday. Schmidt said she also called the county clerk's office shortly before the press conference but was not told what happened.
"It can be considered a simple mistake, a mistake with wide-ranging results," Schmidt said.
"I was a little perturbed that I was not informed as to what had happened," the city clerk said.
Schmidt said when she talked to Nickolaus earlier Thursday, the county clerk had apologized for being short.
"She said that she was sorry and she was probably upset, that she was having a horrible day, probably the worst day of her life," Schmidt said. "I said I was really sorry to hear that. It must be really difficult to do that (canvass) with people hanging over your heads."
But Nickolaus never mentioned to Schmidt that the county failed to count Brookfield's votes.
On election night, the City of Brookfield reported that Prosser received 10,859 votes from city residents, or 76 percent of the vote, compared to the 3,456 votes cast for challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg. posted about 12:30 a.m. election night.
Schmidt said her office also posted the results on the city's web site before going home on election night.
Nickolaus said that the Waukesha County voting results also changed in two other communities: New Berlin and the Town of Lisbon. The results for New Berlin's Ward 12 was reported as 37 votes for Prosser but the voting machine tape showed 237 votes.
In the Town of Lisbon, a "typing error" reduced the vote totals for both candidates, decreasing Prosser's total by 206 votes and Kloppenburg's by 35 votes.
Nickolaus said she hasn't consulted a lawyer about this issue and would not comment further on potential for legal ramifications because of the error.
Nickolaus came under fire from the Waukesha County Board in the past year for putting election information on her personal computer instead of using county equipment. She said at her press conference that the Brookfield votes error occurred on the county system and had nothing to do with the issue related to her use of a private computer.
Also Thursday in Brookfield, a resident expressed concern that her vote was not counted by the machine after she initially marked her ballot with a red pen she found in the polling station, according to the city clerk's office.
Schmidt said, however, she believes the vote was counted because the machine otherwise would have kicked the ballot back out with an error message.
The woman came to City Hall Thursday to report concerns about her vote Tuesday at the Dixon Elementary School polling site. According to Schmidt:
The woman said she used a red pen she found at the voting station but then stopped and asked poll workers if red would register. They told her to switch to a black pen and write with black over the red marks. The machine accepted the ballot, but the woman said she did not hear the usual beep that sounds after the ballot enters the machine.
Schmidt said the site might have been too noisy to hear the beep.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Nancy_J_Powell/wisconsin-union-law-fight_1_n_841837_82427754.html Also, let me ask you this. Why is it always considered evil when Republicans take funding from any business but not for Dems to do it? Can you give me a breakdown of Public Union money that flowed into Democratic campaigns vs Republican ones? Can you give me a breakdown of Public Union money fl0wing into Democratic campaigns vs the Evil Koch bros? Lastly, Obama is already in campaign mode for 2012, and many pundits from both sides of the aisle are predicting he could spend $1BILLION! He will of course not be taking any money from George Soros, GE, or Wall Street at all though, right?
http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/112005124.html Whenever a Conservative proposes something the left doesn't like, its because they don't have the mental capacity to understand the issue, or they're evil, or beholden to BIG oil, BIG pharma, BIG (insert industry here). When I keep saying the left's Politics have become transparent, it's because anyone who is aware of Rules for Radicals can see the tactics over and over. Hold the other side to their own standards, demonize, embellish, throw a wrench in things, divert attention, and slowy progress by incrementalism. As I mentioned yesterday, when the libs are in charge we on the right at least have the courtesy to let them govern and try to win back a majority. You don't have to like everything the right does or stands for but you should at least let the Govt run on the principals it was founded on.
" However, there isn't any collective take over or communism conspiracy by the left." BULLCRAP.
I sensed in the tone of the fact checking on Walker a definite bias to find what he said was untrue. Well... I have my answer... http://media2.hotair.com/archives/2011/02/10/selection-bias-at-politifact This article really points out what I was smelling... Political bias in the guise of fact checking. Again, the only way in my opinion to get to the truth is to read both sides of an issue and make up your own mind which side sounds like spin and which side is making sense... And it doesn't always lean to Dems or Reps.. Conservative or Liberal...
As far as the point that Walker would not win if his positions on public sector unionization were clearly stated before the election... Maybe not. But that depends upon the definition of clearly. The problem is that the concept of why some privileges should be taken away from public sector unions does not fit well into sound-bites or bumper stickers. The argument why it needs to be addressed requires a true discussion/debate of the reasons... something that in today's sound-bite world is very hard to do. So the real question is... would it have been possible to have a clearly articulated statement/debate of the issue without it devolving into political spin? I think not. Just look at how the left is spinning Ryan's proposal... Having people who already have medicare (and are not affected by the proposal) saying that Ryan will take it away... Simply not true, but looks good and is a good political scare tactic. When we finally get to a point (or back to it) where ideas can be discussed... weakness in arguments addressed and debated... maybe we can find some solutions. But as long as the name calling and slapping on labels is the way we "debate", nothing will change.
And yes, the proposal is to leave things unchanged for people over the age of 55 currently. However, there are two problems with that. First of all, it sucks for anyone under the age of 55, and many of us 'lucky' seniors have children and grandchildren we care about. Second, I'm no fool. After about ten years of us Boomers on the old-style Medicare, we'll start hearing mutterings about how expensive we geezers are, and the chipping away will start. Now, that's the truth, not a scare tactic. The problem with Medicare is the recent geometric growth in medical costs for everyone, especially seniors. I think we might want to attack this problem from various angles -- emphasis on prevention, some measures to discourage overuse (seniors who can't afford supplemental insurance have this anyway, since a 20% co-pay is enough to keep them from running to the doctor unless they have to), maybe a rise in the FICA percentage devoted to Medicare. Another important factor is the paperwork waste and the huge administrative costs associated with private insurance plans. It won't help to have everyone, seniors included, on private insurance.
By the way, Politifact didn't think much of that ad with an old dude mowing the lawn using his walker and stripping for a bachelorette party. It was cute, but not very truthful -- at least not yet.
You make far too much sense to be commenting here. What's wrong with you? :-)
The problem with the current revenue streams is that there will be more seniors than people working and paying into the FICA. Another problem is that currently the government administrative cost runs somewhere around 4-5 percent compared with private insurance that costs around 30%. We need to do the fiscally responsible thing and provide national health care to all citizens, from birth to grave. All the current health care premiums paid to private health care companies could be diverted to FICA and more than pay for health care. Health care insurance companies could still sell supplemental health care, dental care and extended care insurance.
The 3rd party adds make the actual candidates spectators at their own elections. very weird time. good discussion though.
I have thought a long time about this. Circumstantially, you have to admit it looks bad (smelly). But why would Nickalous go back and look at every vote, for a day and a half, when she discovered her mistake? Would have to be making paperwork line up with electronic number... what else could it be? Of course, there is a chance there was no fraud. But if there was fraud, how would it look? A computer virus that changed the vote totals on both optical and / or touch screen machines, followed by a rush to input hundreds of names from the voter rolls and draw some lines on ballots. How could such a thing be caught?
@Randy @Seth Before the election and while Walker was Gov-elect the unions were saying -- no concessions... period After the bill was introduced... OK... we always were willing to concede contributions to benefits. Concessions were part of his campaign. The elimination of some bargaining privileges; this is a logical extension of the campaign promise. Think of it like this... If you put the cookie jar on the floor, your typical three year old would gladly help themselves. You can make the 3 year old put the cookies back when you catch them, but until you make them unavailable... they will still grab them. Not that public employee's are 3 yr olds, but the idea that you can get a concession now and they would not circle back and demand it back in 2 or 4 years, with back-pay is naive. Clear statements weren't there, but the promise was meaningless without this. The last 2 points surprise me, certify annually and stopping of the state collecting union dues. These are the only "union busting" steps in the bill. I would argue that the state collect dues, at our expense isn't totally union busting, but cost reduction as well. The annual vote... Could have been barged away, if the 14 senators stayed.