Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus said last week she believes she has been exonerated even though her office is undertaking numerous changes in how it handles ballots following the nonreporting of 14,000 votes in the spring Supreme Court election. State investigators in September determined that Nickolaus likely broke the law by not reporting the votes in the hotly contested race between Justice David Prosser and challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg, but her conduct was unintentional and not criminal.
… The Government Accountability Board on Tuesday approved numerous changes designed to improve the procedures used by Nickolaus’s office on election night. Both before the meeting and during a break, Nickolaus told reporters that the investigative report vindicated her handling of the votes.
“I’ve been exonerated,” she said. Government Accountability Board director Kevin Kennedy disagreed. “I would not characterize it that way,” Kennedy said. The September report, led by former Dane County prosecutor Timothy Verhoff, found that Nickolaus likely broke state law requiring the posting of all returns on election night.
Investigators said Nickolaus couldn’t explain how she failed to report the votes, but they concluded she probably loaded a blank template into a reporting database rather than a template that contained the vote totals. The flub was unintentional and not an attempt to conceal the votes, the report said.
Kennedy said the public will feel more comfortable with new safeguards enacted by her office in conjunction with the GAB.
Full Article: Waukesha Co. clerk feels exonerated in election flub | Green Bay Press Gazette | greenbaypressgazette.com.