The official county canvasses have been completed for Wisconsin’s April 5th, 2011 election for state Supreme Court Justice, leaving challenger Joanne Kloppenburg 7,316 votes behind the incumbent, David “Am I The Turd?” Prosser going into the start of tomorrow’s recount. Prosser's campaign began the election season with a statement that Prosser would be a "complement" to Governor Scott Walker and the Republican state legislature. When Walker's bill to end collective bargaining rights for public employee unions resulted in massive protests, Kloppenburg rode a surge of anti-Walker sentiment to establish herself as the more independent, even-tempered candidate and narrow a gap of at least 30 percentage points in the final 6 weeks of the race.
Under Wisconsin law, Kloppenburg is entitled to ask for a recount, and ask she did, while also requesting an independent investigation into election irregularities in numerous Wisconsin counties.
If you’ve ever needed a reason to invest in the angry-village-size jug of Jolly Time, head out to Costco soon. The recount is scheduled to launch in all 72 Wisconsin counties “no later than 9 a.m.” on Wednesday, April 27th. Because the difference in the vote margin is less than one half of one percent, the costs of the recount will be picked up by the local governments and will not be charged to the Kloppenburg campaign. Kloppenburg’s attorney fees, however, will be substantial. You can donate here if you want to help her:
http://kloppenburgforjustice.com/
Here is a portion of Kloppenburg’s statement from last week describing her reasons for requesting the recount:
There are legitimate and widespread questions about the conduct of this election – most visibly in Waukesha County, but also in counties around the state. With a margin this small – less than one half of one percent – the importance of every vote is magnified. And doubts about each vote are magnified as well. We are aware of widespread anomalies that occurred around the state: an undervote in the cities of Milwaukee and Racine; the Waukesha situation; reports of long lines and photocopied ballots in several counties including Fond du Lac; significant changes in the vote totals in Winnebago County. Wisconsin residents must have full confidence that these election results are legitimate and that this election was fair. A recount will establish where votes were incorrectly tabulated and expose if irregularities compromised the electoral process.
Based on various radio and television reports, newspaper articles, and information on the Government Accountability Board’s (GAB) website, here’s how things should go down…
Wisconsin law requires that the first recount of ballots be done using the same machinery that was used on election day. In some counties, however, new memory cartridges used on their optical machines are no longer being manufactured and are not available in sufficient numbers. The only choice would be to reuse the cartridges from the April 5th election, which would wipe out the original data. Because the destruction of the original data so soon after the election would be a violation of another state statute, the GAB successfully filed a petition to the Dane County Circuit Court to allow hand counting in parts of 31 counties. Both campaigns agreed to the amended rules.
On Monday, the GAB held a teleconference with Wisconsin’s County clerks to go over the requirements and procedures for the recount. That conference is archived here on Wisconsin Eye.
More information about the technical and legal aspects of the recount are available on the GAB’s website. The GAB is also requiring each county to provide a daily progress report and has said they will make those daily results available on their site.
For all counties, each ballot will be inspected before being counted and challenges from either side will be allowed. Observers are also allowed, with some reasonable and expected restrictions. For those locations with the obsolete memory cartridges, the ballots will be tallied by hand. For all other locations, each ballot will be fed into the voting machine after being inspected. Touch-screen machines are not used much in Wisconsin. They are available for disabled voters upon request, and are sometimes used if a precinct runs out of paper ballots, which could have happened considering the extraordinarily high turnout for the Spring election. Printouts from the touch-screen machine will be counted by hand and added to the totals.
There were also reports of precincts using photocopies of ballots when they ran out of the standard, pre-printed supply. It’s possible those photocopied ballots might not have been counted correctly by the optical scanners.
Wisconsin law is clear that the intent of the voter is the determining factor on whether a ballot is counted, not whether the elector’s vote complied with the technical elements of the voting apparatus. For example, where I vote, the ballot has a broken arrow next to the name of each candidate. To vote for a candidate, voters use a black marker to connect the arrow by drawing a line between the two parts. The optical scanner “reads” that completed line as a vote for that candidate. If a confused voter circled their candidate’s name (instead of completing the line), that would not have been counted by the scanner on April 5th but should be added to the total for that candidate during the recount. If another confused voter, however, completed lines for two candidates in the same race, or circled two names, those would not have been counted on April 5th and should also not be included in the recount.
By law, the recount is required to be completed by May 9th. If a county cannot complete the count by then, the court would need to issue an order to extend the deadline. That might happen in some of the larger counties, but all clerks have said they plan to meet the May 9th deadline.
So, is everybody ready? This should be fun. I don’t expect any “hanging chad” issues here, but there are sure to be some obscure phrases that gain popularity and some revelations about sloppy or inaccurate vote counting. My guess is the biggest surprises will come from Waukesha County, home of the embattled, ultra-partisan County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus, the miracle worker who found 14,000 extra votes two days after the election, giving the lead to Prosser.