Wisconsin: Prosser open to Waukesha County recount | JSOnline

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 believe it will only affirm the margin of victory we now enjoy.”

In Waukesha County, thousands of votes from the city of Brookfield were not reported by the county clerk on election night but were discovered the day after. Prosser’s margin of victory in Brookfield helped push him ahead of challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg. Kloppenburg’s campaign manager, Melissa Mulliken, said of the proposed Waukesha County recount, “That is their talk. Once again, we’re evaluating the data, looking at what we’ve got.”

Wisconsin: Clarification of Election Night Reporting | City of Brookfield Wisconsin

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 results were sent to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Brookfield Patch and placed on the City of Brookfield’s website.

The  Elmbrook and Waukesha  School Districts were also called with their results. Due to an error at Waukesha County, the votes reported by the City of Brookfield were not included in the totals sent by the County to the Government Accountability Board on April 5.  On Thursday April 7, as a result of its canvass of votes, Waukesha County determined that the votes for the City of Brookfield were not included in its April 5 submission.  The County has included all votes cast in the City of Brookfield in its final submission of canvassed votes to the State, which submission was made on April 7.

Wisconsin: Wisconsin Election Surprise: David Prosser Gains 7,500 Votes After ‘Human Error’ In Waukesha County | Huffington Post

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 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.

Wisconsin: Vote-Counting Error In Wisconsin Points to Incompetence, Not Conspiracy – NYTimes.com

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 in the failure to tally any votes from the city of Brookfield, which accounts for about 11 percent of her county’s voters. Most of the 14,315 uncounted votes were cast for the more conservative candidate, David Prosser.

As a result, Mr. Prosser — who had been about 200 ballots behind JoAnne Kloppenburg in a contest that seemed bound for a recount — had a net gain of more than 7,500 votes, and now has an overall lead of about that size. Although the election may still go to a recount, it is now highly unlikely that the outcome will change, unless another county discovers a discrepancy of the same magnitude, but in Ms. Kloppenburg’s favor. The human who made the error was none other than Ms. Nickolaus, who said she had failed to save a computer file after entering Brookfield’s results.

Editorials: The Ugly Politics of Fitzwalkerstan: Wisconsin GOP Official “Finds” Votes to Reverse Defeat of Conservative Justice | The Nation

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 controlled the state’s highest court. Suppose the results of that election showed that an independent candidate who would not be in the governor’s pocket narrowly won that election.

Then, suppose it was announced by a Democratic election official in Chicago that she had found 14,000 votes in a machine-controlled ward that overwhelmingly favored the candidate aligned with the Democratic governor. And suppose the Democratic official who “found” the needed ballots for the candidate favored by the Democratic governor had previously been accused of removing election data from official computers and hiding the information on a personal computer, that the official’s actions had been censured even by fellow Democrats and that she her secretive and erratic activities had been the subject of an official audit demanded by the leadership of the Cook County Board.

Wisconsin: Prosser Picks Up 7,500-plus Votes in Waukesha County Clerk Snafu | Shoreqood Patch

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.

Illinois: Voting machine screens missing Hammond Illinois city council candidate’s name | Post-Tribune

A glitch inadvertently left a Hammond City Council candidate’s name from showing on the screen of a Lake County voting machine on Monday. Another candidate running against Matthew Kolanowski in the Democratic Primary for the 1st District notified election staff around 11:30 a.m. of the problem. Monday was the first day of early voting for the May 3 primary.

Election Board Attorney Jim Wieser said the glitch occurred when staff members adjusted the machine to leave a space in case Hammond Republican mayoral hopeful George Janiec makes it back on the ballot. Janiec, a School City of Hammond board member, is appealing Lake Superior Court Judge Jesse Villalpando’s decision to keep him off the ballot. Election staff didn’t know of the glitch because it only impacted what showed on the screen.

Kazakhstan: Observers slam Kazakh leader’s 95% election romp | Agence France Presse

President Nursultan Nazarbayev on Monday extended his rule over Kazakhstan into a third decade with a crushing 95 percent victory in elections that observers said fell well short of democratic standards.

The Central Election Commission said the first official results showed the incumbent had won 95.5 percent of the vote on mass turnout of 89.9 percent — both figures beating Nazarbayev’s performance in his last re-election in 2005. The victory gives the 70-year-old — who has ruled Kazakhstan since even before the collapse of the Soviet Union — a third decade of power and keep any uncertainty over who will one day succeed him on the backburner.

Virginia: Montgomery County Virginia electoral officials meet with Attorney General’s office about voting irregularities | roanoke.com

The entire electoral leadership of Montgomery County met Tuesday with state investigators to discuss voting irregularities that took place nearly five months ago. State officials are trying to determine whether any laws were broken when normal voting procedures broke down in the Nov. 2 election.

As expected, investigators interviewed election officials Tuesday at the County Government Center. The meeting was closed to the public and press. It is not known when a decision will be announced. The State Board of Elections asked for an investigation after poll workers in several precincts — hampered by laptops that would not boot up with electronic poll books — let some 700 Montgomery County residents vote before it could be determined they were registered and in the correct precinct.