Candidates in close races who find themselves contemplating whether to seek a recount of the ballots — and the resolution of related questions about the quality and character of the initial count — need to have some standard for determining when it is reasonable to make the demand. Certainly, if the difference is a handful…
The recount in the state Supreme Court race will begin Wednesday and barring a court-ordered extension, must be finished by May 9. Wisconsin’s nonpartisan Government Accountability Board discussed the recount procedure Monday with local election officials from nearly all 72 counties. Given the rarity of a statewide recount, clerks on the conference call peppered board attorneys…
This is what a recount looks like: An indoor sports arena is filled with poll workers from every municipality in Milwaukee County, each in their own area. At each station, poll workers examine and count ballots one by one. And as they count, campaign volunteers, attorneys and journalists watch their every move – with the campaign…
After announcing she would request a statewide recount in the Supreme Court election earlier this week, challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg and incumbent Justice David Prosser argued in court Thursday to reach a decision as to how the recount would be done. Dane County Circuit Court Judge Richard Ness approved a recount procedure that would include a hand…
Charging that voting “anomalies” were “widespread,” the liberal challenger in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race filed papers Wednesday afternoon requesting a recount in the close election that has her trailing a conservative incumbent by less than 0.5 percent. JoAnne Kloppenburg arrived at the state Government Accountability Board’s office in Madison barely an hour before the…
The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board asked a judge to allow the use of electronic voting memory cartridges to speed the recount in a contested Supreme Court election, even if that use might erase the voting data. The nonpartisan agency filed the lawsuit today in state court in Madison, naming as defendants incumbent Supreme Court Justice…
It’s going to cost Wisconsin’s taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars to more than $1 million to find out who will be the next state Supreme Court justice. Assistant attorney general JoAnne Kloppenburg on Wednesday said she will seek a full, statewide recount of the April 5 election in which she is challenging Justice David Prosser…
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…
Wisconsin’s Asst. Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg has filed paperwork for a statewide, state-sponsored “recount” in the controversial April 5th State Supreme Court election. She has also called for a special investigator be named to examine questions about election results in Waukesha County, where the County Clerk’s procedures have come under fire both before and since…
Wisconsin’s election oversight agency said on Wednesday that the challenger in the close race for a seat on the state Supreme Court has asked for a recount. The April 5 high court contest was widely seen as a referendum on the state’s new Republican leadership and the curbs they have imposed on public sector collective…
The election battle seen as a proxy between Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and foes of his anti-union legislation may end or open a new chapter today. Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate JoAnne Kloppenberg has until 5pm today to request a recount in her very close race with incumbent Supreme Court Justice David Prosser. While the margin…
The state’s top election watchdog agency announced Tuesday that it has satisfied itself that results certified by Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus for the April 5 election are consistent with totals reported by municipalities, though “a few anomalies” were found in a four-day investigation. Those discrepancies involved only a handful of votes. “After completing the review…
Via Eric Kleefeld at TPM… “Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser held a press conference at the state Capitol on Monday, in which he declared victory in his reelection race — and at which his campaign advisers said they would object to any recount that might be requested by Prosser’s opponent, Assistant Attorney General JoAnne…
When Wisconsin voters flocked to the polls on April 5, one of the factors driving the high turnout was the State Supreme Court contest between incumbent Justice David Prosser and challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg. Prosser, whose term ends July 31, often casts the deciding vote on the seven-member court. He is a conservative Republican former Speaker…
The state’s investigation into vote irregularities in Waukesha County will stretch back at least five years, the head of the Government Accountability Board said Thursday. Questions over vote totals in Waukesha have lingered over the past week after County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus announced she failed to report more than 14,000 votes from the city of Brookfield…
Monday’s Wisconsin State Journal editorial, “State needs streamlined count,” calls for a website to fix our vote counting situation. Actually, Wisconsin needs to pay more attention to assuring that the vote count is correct. Wisconsin falls well short of having a reliable end-to-end system. We need to improve the method of appointing the members of the…
The Democratic Party of Wisconsin today asked state elections officials to review the Waukesha County vote tally in the 2006 state Attorney General election, after a liberal blogger pointed out there were about 17,000 more votes recorded than ballots cast. Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus posted an asterisk on the 2006 results on the county’s…
A full week after voters in Wisconsin cast ballots for the State Supreme Court in a volatile, topsy-turvy contest that had become a referendum on the state’s new Republican leadership, the state was still waiting for the final outcome. By Tuesday, Wisconsin’s top election monitors were investigating how more than 14,000 votes had been overlooked…
Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus, under blistering attack by critics since an election night reporting error that temporarily reversed results of the Supreme Court race, on Tuesday rejected calls that she resign. “I will serve the remainder of my term,” Nickolaus said in a written statement. “I understand why people are upset and I am…
I’m still mulling over the recent Wisconsin election in general and the actions of Waukesha County’s County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus in particular. She was the one who forgot to record votes that would have made her former boss, Justice David Prosser, the winner in a hotly contested election. After my first report on this strange…
The Democrat on the Waukesha County Board of Canvassers who was widely quoted as endorsing the county clerk’s official ballot count that flipped the state Supreme Court winner last week said Monday that she was never told about more than 14,000 missing votes from the city of Brookfield until shortly before a Thursday news conference.…
On Tuesday night, I received a voice message from someone in the office of Clerk Kathy Nickolaus informing me of a Wednesday canvass meeting, which I returned the next morning and said I would be able to report into the canvass by noon – which I did. Normally the canvass would begin at 9am on…
The Wisconsin Supreme Court election that could affect a contentious union-rights law just got even messier. On Monday, the 80-year-old Democratic election observer who vouched for the conduct of the Waukesha County Clerk in the April 5 state Supreme Court race said she was kept in the dark and now isn’t sure what happened. Last week,…
Wisconsin’s already-fraught politics got even crazier last week when a bitterly contested, high-turnout state Supreme Court election ended in a near tie. Incumbent Justice David Prosser leads challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg by less than 0.5 percent, which means Kloppenburg has the right to a state-funded recount. We are probably headed toward a long, expensive, law-snarled process…
Justice David Prosser’s campaign said Saturday that it was open to a recount of votes in Waukesha County as the state Supreme Court race remained without a declared winner. “If you need to do a recount in Waukesha (County) and Waukesha (County) alone to satisfy heightened interest, that’s fine,” said Prosser campaign manager Brian Nemoir. “We…
The City of Brookfield submitted the election results from the April 5th Election to the County Clerk at 10:05 p.m. on April 5th and called the County to make sure they received the results and they were in the correct format. We were informed that they were received and in the correct format. The same…
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 JoAnne Kloppenburg and 11,059 for incumbent GOP-backed…
When Kathy Nickolaus, the county clerk in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, spoke to the press on Thursday after revealing that she had failed to count more than 14,000 ballots in the hotly contested state supreme court election, one might have expected her to offer her resignation. Instead, Ms. Nickolaus blamed “human error” for the problem, which resulted…
Suppose the Democratic governor of Illinois had proposed radical changes in how the state operates, and suppose anger over those proposed changes inspired a popular uprising that filled the streets of every city, village and town in the state with protests. Then, suppose there was an election that would decide whether allies of the governor…
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…