Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David T. Prosser Jr. and challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg agreed to the recounting of some ballots by hand and others electronically to resolve who won the April 5 election.
Lawyers for Prosser and Kloppenburg reached the accord in court today, representatives for both sides said, after the state agency responsible for counting votes sued for permission to do so by mining, and potentially erasing, electronic ballot data.
Kloppenburg yesterday asked the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, for a statewide recount after a review of the election results showed the incumbent Prosser had won by 7,316 votes out of almost 1.5 million ballots cast.
“The quicker we get started, the sooner we will have the election results reaffirmed,” Brian Nemoir, a spokesman for Prosser, said in a telephone interview.
The recount comes while the state’s top court addresses two separate filings addressing challenges to the legality of Republican Governor Scott Walker’s legislation limiting public employees’ ability to engage in collective bargaining. While the Supreme Court contest is nonpartisan, Prosser previously served as Republican speaker of Wisconsin’s lower legislative house, the state Assembly.
Full Article: Wisconsin Supreme Court Election Foes Reach Recount Accord – Bloomberg.