With only about half of Waukesha County left to tally, there are still no stunning changes in the numbers. JoAnne Kloppenburg has a net gain of 326 votes in the recount of Wisconsin’s April 5th election for state Supreme Court, according to the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board's updated spreadsheet. She needs more than 7,316 to win.
A lot of attention has been focused on Waukesha County during the recount, for good reasons. Waukesha County is the epicenter of right-wing and Republican political action in Wisconsin and the scene of the most dramatic election miracle in years - the discovery of 14,000 votes that turned conservative incumbent David Prosser from loser to winner two days after the election.
Waukesha's equivalent on the left is Dane County, which includes Madison and the University of Wisconsin and which voted overwhelmingly for JoAnne Kloppenburg. Dane County's recount results were essentially unchanged from their original numbers.
We’ve read about and witnessed (in person and via the livestream of the Waukesha recount) objections raised regarding missing serial numbers, improperly sealed ballot bags, and general sloppiness in the way Waukesha County has administered both the election and their ongoing recount. Is Waukesha County worse than other counties? How do they stack up against Dane County, for example?
Before I begin, let me remind you of why so much attention is being bestowed on Waukesha County. (If you know the backstory, feel free to skip ahead.)
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Waukesha’s county clerk, Republican Kathy Nickolaus, submitted an unofficial vote tally to the Associated Press and other media on election night that should have included vote totals from the city of Brookfield but did not. Her omission led to the conclusion by the media and by Wisconsin voters that JoAnne Kloppenburg had defeated David Prosser by just over 200 votes, pending an almost certain recount that Prosser would have requested.
Nickolaus claims to have discovered her error the next morning, Wednesday, April 6th, but for some reason did not immediately notify the media, the state elections board, or the lone Democrat on the three-member Waukesha County Board of Canvassers. The Board met later that day to begin certifying the election results. Late that afternoon, Kloppenburg held a press conference and declared victory, unaware that the previously unreported Brookfield votes would show her trailing Prosser by 7,316 votes.
The Board of Canvassers, which included the clerk Nickolaus, did not finish its canvass process until the late afternoon of Thursday, April 7th. A few hours before that, word began to leak out from the twitter feed of a right-wing Milwaukee radio host that Waukesha County was going to announce discovery of a 14,000 vote reporting error that would give the lead to Prosser. Nickolaus did not inform the Board of Canvassers’ Democratic member of the election-night error until after the official canvass results were submitted to the GAB, and just before a hastily called news conference. Nickolaus announced the new results, called her oversight “human error”, and apologized, but she gave vague and confusing answers when asked to describe how she submitted the wrong totals to the AP.
It's helpful to know that Nickolaus was given immunity from prosecution in a 2001 corruption probe while she was a state employee assigned to work for the Assembly Republican Caucus. David Prosser was the head of that caucus in 1996 and 1997 when he served in the Wisconsin Assembly, meaning he was Nickolaus's boss for a period of time. Prosser admitted that he directed the use of state resources to conduct partisan political activities but was never charged in the corruption investigation.
Nickolaus was also severely critized last year and earlier this year by the Waukesha County Board of Supervisors for her secretive method of tallying election results. She ignored their audit findings, however.
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The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (GAB) has updated the status of the Supreme Court recount each day on their website. The county-by-county page includes the official minutes for counties that have completed their recount. Dane County’s minutes have some interesting details. There are about 15 instances of ballot bag serial numbers not being entered on the accompanying election inspectors’ statement. Some of the notations do not specify how many bags are improperly documented.
It's difficult to know the exact number. Some precincts include more than one ward and the individual summaries for the wards include the same exact notations. I believe the repeated notation is meant to apply only once to the precinct or the municipality, not to describe a separate incident in each ward. Even so, that is a lot of bags not being properly documented.
I saw 2 notations of improperly matched numbers between the bags and the reports, 1 notation of a missing signature on a ballot bag, and a notation of 2 serial numbers written in the wrong section of the inspectors’ statement. (This is not a comprehensive accounting of the minutes, just descriptions of what I found most interesting.)
One precinct’s bags had broken seals. The municipality spans part of two counties, so the broken seals were explained in this way:
The Tabulators noted that the seals used on the ballot containers were broken. The Clerk stated the seals were broken in order to recount ballots in Jefferson County.
That makes sense, but I’m not sure why Jefferson County didn’t seal the ballots with new tags and document the new serial numbers.
Numerous other anomolies are described in the Dane County minutes, most having to do with a few ballots with missing initials or needing evaluation for voter intent. There are two serious cases of missing ballots described, the one we've probably all read about in Verona, and another where the ballots were eventually found locked away properly but not transported with the others.
Some right-wing bloggers have made note of the fact that there are incidents of torn ballot bags described in the minutes of the Dane County recount, similar to complaints of torn bags in Waukesha County. That is true, but the incidents are not as frequent as those bloggers would have you believe. The minutes are not as specific about those incidents as they could be, but apparently the Prosser campaign did not formally object to the votes being counted.
There are 3 notations of torn ballot bags. The confusion happens because, like the serial number reporting errors, the same incident is described for each of the wards that make up a precinct. Here are the details of each unique event:
City of Madison submitted a chain of custody for all election materials. The Canvass noted that several ballot bags were torn during transportation from the City’s secured facility. There were no objections. Please note – Wards 26, 27, 28, 29 vote at same polling location. Totals between four (4) wards balance. (This description was repeated verbatim in each of the 4 ward summaries but appears to describe only one discovery of “several” bags being torn.)
One bag of ballots was torn and resealed with tape. There was no seal. Please note – Wards 16, 17, 118 vote at same polling location. Totals between three (3) wards balance (Again, this description of one bag was repeated three times.)
One ballot bag had to be recreated and resealed due to damage in transport. The original bag was retained inside, and the original seal was missing. The seal number on the original container certificate and the Inspectors’ Statement match. The new seal number matches the new bag certificate and the City of Madison’s supplemental chain of custody. There was no ward number on either of the certificates on the original ballot bags. There were no election official signatures on the original ballot bags. There were no objections.
That gives us 1 + 1 + SEVERAL. I wish they had given a value instead of the word “several.”
One thing the right-wing bloggers are flat-out lying about is that objections being raised by Kloppenburg representatives are so numerous as to significantly delay the Waukesha County recount. It's simply not true, as anyone watching the livestream can clearly ascertain. The Dane County minutes describe a number of delays and discussions raised by both campaigns, yet Dane County finished 2 days before the deadline despite having more votes to count than Waukesha.
The Dane County minutes are fascinating, sometimes humorous, sometimes distressing. The city of Verona seemed to have the most difficulty securing and tracking ballots. There is definitely a need for some review in their process.
Are Waukesha County’s anomolies more suspicious or more frequent than those in Dane County? It’s hard to compare the Dane County minutes to the the Waukesha County livestream. I have heard from a few observers that there is a significant qualitative difference between the two recounts, though. Waukesha County seems to be less organized and more difficult to follow in person. Perhaps Waukesha's official minutes will shed some light on their error rate compared to Dane County’s.
Clearly, Dane County’s recount effort is not tarnished by the reputation of a secretive, error-prone, super-partisan, ethically-challenged clerk like Kathy Nickolaus. On the other hand, there is ample evidence that part-time elections officials are either confused or inadequately trained in both counties. The handling of absentee, spoiled, remade, and unused ballots is not consistent from precinct to precinct, and the number of ballots in both counties missing the required number of initials from poll workers is astoundingly high.
From my own observations, the decisions of the two canvass boards judging voter intent on these questionable ballots seem consistent.
Shamefully, the Wisconsin legislature is in the process of ramming through a voter ID bill that complicates the voting process even more. The rules for absentee voting, provisional ballots, and voter registration should be simplified. The use of voting machines should be eliminated or at least standardized. Instead, we will be getting new, more confusing regulations, on top of which the already overworked poll workers will now have to check addresses, expiration dates, and photographs on various forms of state-issued ID cards.