According to the La Crosse County Clerk, new voter ID regulations could mean more paperwork, training and cost for La Crosse County.
County Clerk Ginny Dankmeyer said municipalities will have to pay more for extra poll workers, there would be new voter ID training required for county clerks and additional paperwork for provisional ballots.
State Senate Democrats used a procedural maneuver earlier this week to block the final roll call on the voter ID bill that Gov. Scott Walker and his allies have advanced in order to game the political process to favor their chosen candidates. The Democratic moves delayed the Senate vote until today, when it is likely that the Republican-controlled Senate will approve what can only be described as an assault on Wisconsin tradition of encouraging high levels of voter participation.
The wrangling of the moment between Republicans and Democrats has made this seem like a partisan struggle. But it is not really that. The Wisconsin Republicans of not too many years ago would have joined Democrats in opposing this bill. That’s because Wisconsin has a history of bipartisan commitment to expanding the franchise, not narrowing it.
The Journal Sentinel Editorial Board is entitled to its own opinions but it is not entitled to its own facts. The board’s speculation about my motives regarding the recount of the vote in the Supreme Court election is inaccurate. I appreciate this opportunity to set the record straight.
The recount process in Wisconsin is unfolding as prescribed by Wisconsin law. Votes are recounted in all 72 counties, and an official record is made of that process. When the Editorial Board says the recount is a “mere preamble to the court challenge,” it is wrong on the facts and wrong to prejudge my intentions.
Wisconsin law specifically anticipates that there may be court challenges to the recount, but those challenges can only happen after the recount is done. The recount is not “merely” a preamble to anything: It is a process that proceeds in prescribed ways when an election is this close.
The state Senate is set to finally pass a bill that would require Wisconsinvoters to show photo identification at the polls. Republicans who control the chamber hoped to pass the bill on Tuesday. But Democrats railed against the plan for nine hours before ultimately using a procedural move to delay the vote until Thursday.
Republicans have been working for years to pass the plan, saying it’s needed to fight voter fraud. Democrats maintain serious voter fraud doesn’t exist and Republicans actually want to disenfranchise pro-Democrat groups. Former Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle vetoed the bill three times between 2002 and 2005.
Senate Republicans gave initial approval early Wednesday to a bill requiring voters to show photo ID at the polls, but Democrats blocked a final vote on the measure until Thursday.
Senators signaled their approval of the bill on a voice vote, with Republicans who control the house voting for it and Democrats opposed. That vote came at 12:30 a.m., after more than 10 hours of debate, but Democrats used Senate rules to prevent the final vote.
Kathy Nickolaus, the county clerk at the center of the state Supreme Court election controversy and the focus of an ongoing state elections investigation, has been described by colleagues and acquaintances as headstrong and insular, hardworking and independent.
She came to local public office, where constituents are the boss, from a staff job at the state Capitol, where partisan politics and loyalty to the party caucus fomented team warfare.
“I dont think shes ever gotten past that,” said Pam Reeves, the Republican elected county treasurer two years before Nickolaus arrival at the courthouse. “From the beginning she put up walls: Youre not going to tell me what to do. Then she put up more walls.”
Wisconsin taxpayers so far are on the hook for more than a quarter-million dollars in the recount of votes in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. The statewide recount of ballots in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race will cost the state at least $230,000, according to updated financial data gathered by Wisconsin Reporter.
As of Friday, initial recount cost estimates from 57 of the state’s 72 counties totaled $233,539, county officials said. That’s less than half of the Government Accountability Board’s initial estimate of $500,000, though figures from several of the state’s larger counties, including Milwaukee and Ozaukee, were unavailable.
Five out of six bags of ballots from first batch to be counted out of the City of Brookfield in Waukesha County, Wisconsin today were discovered “almost wide open” during Day 9 of the statewide Supreme Court election “recount.” The bags were open and unsealed, according to both photographic evidence and an eye-witnesses account from the counting room.
“When the ballot bags were taken out and placed upon the counting table, we were literally stunned,” one of the citizen observers, Mary Magnuson, a Kloppenburg volunteer, told The BRAD BLOG this morning. “5 out of the 6 ballot bags were almost literally wide open, and ballots could be clearly seen.”
The Assembly late Wednesday approved requiring people to show photo ID at the polls, putting the measure on a fast track to becoming law. The Senate is expected to sign off on the plan Tuesday. The move comes when drivers are about to have to present more documentation to get their licenses and wait longer to get them.
The Assembly passed the bill 60-35 amid shouts from a small group of protesters in the viewing gallery. “Welcome to Wisconsin, Jim Crow!” one of them shouted. The Republican-run Assembly quickly adjourned as the protesters chanted “Shame!” and were led out of the gallery by police officers.
Waukesha County will have until May 26 to finish its hand recount of the state Supreme Court race that sharply divided the state’s electorate, a judge has ruled.
Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess agreed this morning to extend today’s deadline for completion of the historic recount of the race between incumbent Justice David Prosser and challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg.
Voters would be asked for a photo ID in the upcoming recall elections but would still be allowed to vote without one. They would then be informed that a photo ID would be mandatory beginning with the spring 2012 Primary.
The Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee passed an amended version of the photo ID bill Monday, removing a provision that required student IDs to carry correct addresses and moving up the date of implementation to immediately after the bill passes.
“We were all wondering why there’s such a rush on this bill — now we know,” said state Rep. Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse. “It’s about the recall elections. You feel the rules need to be changed right in the middle of the game.”
The fast pace of a bill requiring photo ID at the polls is the latest sign Republicans are moving quickly on their legislative agenda in the face of likely recall elections.
The Joint Finance Committee approved the bill 12-2 Monday on party lines, despite fierce objections from Democrats that the bill was taken up when a key opponent of the bill couldn’t attend for medical reasons. Rep. Robin Vos (R-Rochester), co-chairman of the committee, said the group had to meet Monday because Democrats will likely slow it down when it gets to the floor of the Assembly on Wednesday.
To vote, people would have to show Wisconsin driver’s licenses, state-issued ID cards, military IDs, passports, naturalization certificates, IDs issued by Wisconsin-based tribes or certain student IDs. Those living in nursing homes and the like would be exempt from the law, as would victims of stalking and those opposed to having their photos taken on religious grounds.
Steven Prieve saw a lot of interesting things in his 10 years of running a polling place in Madison. The 59-year-old retired repairman watched as groups of Hmong immigrants arrived with translators in tow. He witnessed droves of students vote in their first elections. And he helped many elderly take part in some of their last.
But despite the thousands of people he helped over the years, Prieve never witnessed someone voting twice or trying to vote under a fake name. “I just don’t see the fraud,” he said. “Not around here.”
Last fall’s Republican wave in Wisconsin featured a surge in straight-party voting. In some places, close to half the electorate used the “straight-ticket” option on the ballot. And in most counties that keep track of it, those straight-ticket voters were disproportionately Republican.
Yet it’s the GOP that is now poised to abolish straight-ticket voting, a longstanding feature of Wisconsin elections that lets voters choose a party’s entire slate of candidates instead of picking individual contestants race by race. What’s the case for ending straight-ticket voting? Which party would benefit? How many people actually vote this way?
You recall the “found” votes in Brookfield City that Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus added to her off-system computer a day after the Wisconsin Supreme Court election results and failed to tell the election canvassers about for two days, right?
Those votes swung the election to the Republican, Prosser, by around 7,000 votes with a total of 14,000 votes being found after Nickolaus forgot to hit “save” after manually inputting the numbers. Nickolaus, who used to be the computer analyst for the GOP assembly, has a sordid history with the law already, having been granted immunity in a criminal investigation resulting from her work for the GOP assembly. Furthermore, her election security process has been roundly criticized even by Republicans. This is not her first rodeo with found votes that swung an election, either.
Instead of spending $2 million or more to implement a voter ID law in Wisconsin, the state should be spending that money on improving the overall voting process in the state. Lawmakers are getting ready to vote on a measure that would require everyone who wants to vote to show a valid identification card with a photo on it before he or she is given a ballot.
The Republican sponsors of the measure, including Sen. Joe Leibham of Sheboygan, contend voter ID is necessary to ensure that fraudulent votes aren’t cast. The bill’s sponsors make these claims despite only a handful of voter fraud prosecutions in recent years. In order to pass constitutional muster and the ban on a poll tax, the measure provides for the issuance of free ID cards to those who don’t already have an acceptable photo ID. The estimated cost of this provision is $2.7 million.
An observer for Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg objected Thursday to the security of bags holding Supreme Court ballots from the City of Brookfield because of a gap opening on the ballot bags.
They’ve raised similar objections four or five times in Waukesha County since the start of the recount, said retired Circuit Court Judge Robert Mawdsley, who’s overseeing the county recount. In an interview, he agreed with objector Bill Hotz’s observation that the bag opening from Brookfield was the largest seen so far.
Hotz said poorly sealed bags or torn bags appear to be a common problem, but they were evident on five of six Brookfield bags that were counted first thing Thursday. He objected to the counting of those ballots where bags appeared to be open.
Brandon O’Bryon, representing Justice David Prosser, objected to the objection, saying Brookfield voters would be disenfranchised if their votes weren’t counted.
As has been the practice from the start, Mawdsley makes a record of the concerns and each objection should a challenge end up in court.
“There are several bags that appear to be improperly sealed,” Mawdsley said for the record. Kloppenburg’s campaign representatives took pictures of the bags in question. The Board of Canvassers agreed to count the votes, which can be identified separately if necessary.
Brookfield City Clerk Kristine Schmidt said that bags filled with too many ballots tend to tear when they’re picked up. She also said that on bags that she personally seals, she threads the seal through additional holes she makes in the bags so they can be pulled tightly shut and stay that way. Not every poll worker does that, and when the bags are lifted, a gap can open up.
She also testified, “I guarantee you these ballots were put in (a vault in her office) and not tampered with until they left city hall.” She said a highway worker took the ballots to the courthouse the day after the election.
Full Article: Kloppenburg campaign raises ballot bag security concern in Waukesha County recount – JSOnline.
The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board will be asking for an extension in the deadline to complete the recount in the state Supreme Court race.
Board director Kevin Kennedy said Thursday that Dane County has requested a one-day extension to Monday’s deadline. He says Waukesha County has also asked for a deadline and the board is seeking more details about how long it will need.
Wisconsin is no Minnesota. Where Minnesota’s post-election hand count of the 2008 U.S. Senate election between then Sen. Norm Coleman and now Sen. Al Franken was, as we wrote at the UK’s Guardian at the time, “one of the longest and most transparent election hand-counts in the history of the US,” Wisconsin has made it extremely difficult (putting it nicely) to know what the hell is actually going on in their statewide “recount” of the April 5th, 2011, state Supreme Court election between Justice David Prosser and Asst. Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg.
Where Minnesota’s chief election official, Sec. of State Mark Ritchie, oversaw a process to ensure that updated and accurate numbers were easily tracked and transparently shared with the media on a daily basis, Wisconsin’s chief election authority, their Government Accountability Board (G.A.B.), has posted (and even sometimes removed) confusing, misleading, and unclear updates, often with inaccurate information, on various schedules, and frequently with little or no explanation for wholesale changes and deletion of data.
As the Assembly Committee on Election and Campaign Reform passed the Voter ID bill on partisan lines, Government Accountability Board Director Kevin Kennedy criticized it for creating administrative hassle and deterring student voters. The latest draft of the Voter ID bill allows the use of a student ID from an accredited university or college to vote provided that it has a current address, date of birth and signature on it. Few student IDs meet these requirements.
“This is a demographic that has the lowest voter participation rate of all age groups,” Kennedy said in the letter. “In order to cultivate engaged, active citizens, we need to facilitate voting among our youth rather than imposing artificial barriers to participation.”
Justice David Prosser gained 10 votes in the recount of Rock County ballots for the state Supreme Court race. Challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg, meanwhile, gained 47 votes. Rock County Clerk Lori Stottler said those are the preliminary results of the local recount of the April 2 vote. The recount was completed Monday.
Most precincts where errors were found had only one or two changes, Stottler said. Orfordville had the most with seven. Stottler said the problem in Orfordville might have been that the voting machine was not properly calibrated, so it was not reading votes correctly.
On Thursday afternoon official “tabulators” were busily counting ballots from the city of Verona when the votes came up more than 90 short of what the electronic readout from the voting machines said they should. That sent Verona officials on a hunt, and a rubber-banded stack of 97 ballots turned up in the office of Verona City Clerk Judy Masarik.
“There’s a table in the clerk’s office, and there was a binder and some other papers on top of the ballots,” said City Administrator Bill Burns, who found the stack. The statewide recount, requested by challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg after her narrow loss to incumbent David Prosser, has the potential to change the outcome, so the Verona situation caused much consternation. On election night, all the ballots were supposed to be secured in sealed bags, which were then supposed to be signed by local elections officials. The seals were supposed to remain intact. Burns found the bundle unbagged. They were bagged and he drove them to Madison. The bag had no signatures or initials.
On Friday, day three of the statewide recount of the Supreme Court race, the Kloppenburg recall effort called in their attorney, Michael Maistelman, to monitor the recount in Waukesha County.
Earlier Friday a clerk discovered that one of the bags full of ballots from the Town of Delafield was not properly sealed. The Kloppenburg campaign said that means there was the possibility that people could have had access to the bag of ballots. On Thursday, a different bag containing hundreds of ballots wasn’t recorded on the poll inspector’s log. That bag was also from the Town of Delafield.
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate JoAnne Kloppenburg declared victory on election night when preliminary, unofficial returns put her 204 votes ahead of Justice David Prosser. Fifteen days later, she sought a statewide recount after the official county-by-county returns showed her trailing by more than 7,300 votes out of 1.5 million cast.
In explaining her decision, Kloppenburg told reporters that a recount may not get her over the top, but would shine a light on “an election that right now seems to so many people to be suspect.” She also went on the offensive, raising questions about the legitimacy of the vote count around the state. “There are legitimate and widespread anomalies,” said Kloppenburg, a state Justice Department attorney, “and widespread questions about the conduct of this election, most visibly in Waukesha County, but also in counties around the state.”
If you’re expecting to see images reminiscent of Florida 2000, you’re out of luck. The first day of the Wisconsin Supreme Count election recount began and ended quietly in Milwaukee County with no protesters, a few citizen observers and about 50 Kloppenburg and Prosser operatives.
No hanging chads – just election canvassers sorting through the paper scan sheets each voter filled out on April 5, putting them into piles designated for Justice David Prosser or Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg. An occasional question as to the marking of an arrow on the ballot brought over county election commission officials, who listened to polite challenges from the observers. Only one magnifying glass was noticed on a table next to a Kloppenburg worker.
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 of votes, no one would argue with seeking a recount.
But what about when the margin is larger, such as the 7,316-vote difference between Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg and Justice David Prosser in the hotly contested race for state Supreme Court? Was it unreasonable for Kloppenburg to seek a recount?
Not if you ask a Republican.
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 with questions about everything from what to do about challenged ballots to what to do with observers seen holding pens that could alter a vote.
Challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg asked for the recount after results showed she lost to incumbent Justice David Prosser by 7,316 votes, roughly one-half of 1 percent of the 1.5 million votes cast in the April 5 election. The recount is the first in a race involving candidates since 1858. The only other one, in 1989, involved a referendum.
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 representatives sometimes challenging the poll workers’ decisions – while sheriff’s deputies stand guard.
It could be the biggest show in Wisconsin. And, with a few variations, it opens next week in every county in the state.
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 recount in 31 counties and allow for electronic voting equipment for the rest of Wisconsin.
Since declaring victory in the race Monday, Prosser’s campaign has been outspoken against having a recount. But Kloppenburg’s campaign manager Melissa Mulliken said she agreed with the judge’s decision.
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 5 p.m. local time deadline by which she had to ask for a recount or concede defeat. According to the vote count finalized by the state last week, she trails Justice David Prosser by 7,316 votes out of nearly 1.5 million cast in the April 5 election.