Thursday, April 7, 2011
5:11 PM: Waukesha County canvass nets Prosser more than 7,500 votes
The Waukesha County canvass netted Justice David Prosser more than 7,500 votes over JoAnne Kloppenburg, swinging the vote total dramatically in his direction.
The clerk's office called a 5:30 p.m. news conference to discuss the results. Ahead of the news conference, it handed out a sheet that showed new vote totals for the Supreme Court candidates without explaining the changes.
The new totals showed Prosser with 92,263 votes in the county, while Kloppenburg had 32,758. That netted Prosser 7,582 votes, compared to the initial tally reported by The Associated Press.
Unofficial returns yesterday afternoon gave Kloppenburg a lead of 204 votes.
http://elections.wispolitics.com/
7500 votes out of about 1.6 million just less than 1.5 million represents just more than 1/2%, or slightly less more than the threshold which would make a recount in have to be paid for by the candidate demanding the recount instead of by the State. (Other canvassing adjustments could, in theory, bring the results back to less than the 1/2% margin). But a 7500 vote margin would be, de facto, far too large to overcome in any plausible recount scenario.
An earlier post from the same site:
The Waukesha County Clerk planned a 5:30 p.m. news conference today to discuss its vote totals amid reports that it failed to include the votes for Brookfield in the results it sent The Associated Press on Election Night.
It could represent a more than 7,000-vote swing in an election that whipped back and forth this afternoon as county canvass totals came in.
Brookfield City Clerk Kris Schmidt said she sent her numbers to the county clerk's office Tuesday night that showed David Prosser with 10,859 votes and JoAnne Kloppenburg with 3,456. She said those numbers did not change in the postmortem she did after the election.
"I have no clue what’s going on. she said. "No one has officially told me what’s going on."
Nate Silver tweets:
So I don't think there's any conspiracy here ... Waukesha's vote total had been slightly lower than you might expect.
Before missing votes were found, Waukesha's turnout had been 7.5% of WI's. Versus 7.8% in Pres '08, 8.7% in Gov '10, 8.7% in Feb. election.
Looks like the Fat Lady has sung.
Update
Madison – In a political bombshell, the clerk in a Republican stronghold is set to release new vote totals giving 7,500 votes in the state Supreme Court race back toward Justice David Prosser, swinging the race significantly in his favor.
The Waukesha County clerk’s office has told state elections officials that they will be adjusting the vote totals to give incumbent David Prosser more than 7,000 new votes, said Mike Haas, staff attorney for the state Government Accountability Board.
“Waukesha will be adjusting their vote totals by 14,000,” Haas said the Accountability Board was told.
The numbers will add some 11,000 votes for Prosser and some 3,000 for Kloppenburg, he said.
http://pajamasmedia.com/...
Update 2. It's really over.
Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus apologized this evening for human error that she blamed for failing to include the city of Brookfield's vote totals in the tally she reported to the media Election Night.
The mistake and two other changes in the county helped net Justice David Prosser 7,583 votes over JoAnne Kloppenburg and swung race dramatically in his favor.
Nickolaus said she failed to properly save a spreadsheet after inputting the Brookfield numbers Election Night, leading to the error. Once she ran the report to show the aggregate numbers for the county, she assumed incorrectly the Brookfield numbers were included.
She said the mistake was discovered yesterday during the canvass.
She stressed it was not a case of votes being found.
"I’m thankful that this error was caught early in the process and during the canvass," Nickolaus said. "The purpose of the canvass is to catch these kinds of errors."
Nickolaus said there were two other changes in municipal vote totals in the county.
In New Berlin, the initial total in one ward for Prosser was reported as 37 when it was actually 237.
In the town of Lisbon, both candidates had lower vote totals after the canvass.
The wild swing in Prosser's favor immediately raised concerns among Dems, who pointed out Nickolaus is a former staffer for the Assembly Republican Caucus who was granted immunity in the investigation into allegations of illegal campaign activities on state time.
Ramona Kitzinger, the Democratic member of the county board of canvass, defended the process. She agreed with Nickolaus that the board "went over everything and made sure that all the numbers jived up, and they did."
"I'm the Democratic vice chair of Waukesha County, so I'm not going to stand here and tell you something that's not true," Kitzinger said.
http://elections.wispolitics.com/