Breaking news?
I just about had this diary done when I read the official posting about the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board certifying the recount.
Prosser: 752,694
Kloppenburg: 745,690
Not unexpected considering the "miracle" that occurred in Waukesha 2 days after the election.
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I've written a bit about my experiences as an observer for Kloppenburg during the Wisconsin Supreme Court recount starting in Milwaukee County and then in Waukesha County. Not only had I worked to elect Kloppenburg, but I was sincerely interested in the recount itself.
Some History: (you can skip this if you've been following the story)
We don't really have recounts here because votes are generally decisive, but this time we knew there would be a recount on election night when Joanne Kloppenburg and RWer David Prosser ran neck and neck during the returns. Early the next morning, with 100% of the precincts reporting, Joanne Kloppenburg was ahead by 206 votes out of more than 1.5 million votes cast.
Then, 2 days after the election, a "miracle" occurred in Waukesha County (their County Clerk and chief runner of elections, Kathy Nichlaus, discovered she had failed to report results for the largest city in Waukesha County) and David Prosser had the lead by 7500 votes.
There was considerable gasping at the "discovery", not the first for the notorious Kathy Nichlaus, who keeps getting re-elected to her office. First was the discovery of the failure to report significantly large election results 2 days after the election and the other was the the margin of apparant victory meant that the requesting campaign would have to foot the bill for any requested recount. It turns out this was not the case - by the most narrow margin it fell within the margin required for a state-funded recount. Of course, there was Republican tsk tsking about the futility and "cost" of such a recount in a state the Governor believes is so "broke" that he had to strip public employees of their benefits, a significant portion of their salary, as well as their unions, but Joanne Kloppenburg asked for a statewide recount as well as an investigation into the entire Waukesha affair.
The Recount: (again, skip this if you've been following along)
Each county elections office was supposed to recount ballots in their county. Hand counts of ballots needed to be done for those areas that use older optical scanner machines where new blank cartridges cannot be obtained (if you re-use the old one, you erase the data from the previous election).
Milwaukee County, despite some sputtering with suburban areas, seemed mostly to have its act together. 2 election workers counted voters in the poll books, then proceeded to verify the seals and open the ballot bags, and count the ballots. A rectification was done to match the number of ballots to the number of voters.
Not so much with Waukesha County. Ballots were brought in the arms of election officials either not in bags or in already opened bags and were distributed in small piles to several tabulators - even at different tables. No one had any idea of the number of voters in the area. I still don't know if voters were even counted, much less reconciled with the number of ballots. It was incredibly difficult to keep an eye on as many as 4 tabulators at once much less people sitting at different tables.
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Final Thoughts and Actions:
Last week I finally emailed the Kloppenburg Campaign itself about the "irregularities" I saw in the Waukesha recount. I was contacted by the campaign manager and discussed my many concerns over the poorly managed, fragmented, and unreconciled number of voters and ballots in each ward during the recount and the fact that I had shared those with both the volunteer coordinator and Kloppenburg lawyer at the Waukesha site. I didn't get much satisfaction other than the knowledge that I had passed on what I saw and the concerns that were generated. They sound weary and ready for everything to be over.
I'm not sure what they plan to do, I don't know if Prosser really won, and I'm certainly not impressed by the Wacky Waukesha Ways, but Kloppenburg overcame a 35% polling deficit to get as close as the final tally showed. I don't know if what happened in Waukesha was yet another in a series of Kathy Nichlaus "human errors" or election fraud to benefit a candidate who was about to be unseated by a previously unknown opponent.
I wanted to observe the recount both as a historical event and to make sure that all our votes count. I'm still not sure they do.
I've been told before that in order for Democrats to win we need to vote in tremendous numbers to overcome the margin of fraud. I believe that's true now more than ever. I've now seen 3 close elections (Bush/Gore, Bush/Kerry and now Prosser/Kloppenburg) that cause me great concerns over the level of shenanigans, "human errors" or just plain incompetence that appear more and more frequently now (Florida 2000, Ohio 2004, Waukesha 2011) that we place so much of our "trust" in punch card or optical scanner machines and those ever so wonky touch screen machines that always seem in need of calibration over the continual vote shifting that has been so well documented by voters who touch one name and have the name of the Republican candidate selected.
If election intergrity issues weren't enough, Republicans have rammed through a voter suppression bill (requiring extended residency requirements, making it more difficult to obtain an abscentee ballot, having voters sign the poll book, and the presentation of a state issued ID card to vote) just in time for our recall elections. It seems that pulling a few thousand votes rabbit out of a hat may not be enough for Republicans in Wisconsin. Now they think they also need to stop "certain kinds" of people (students, minorities, senior citizens, non-drivers, rural residents, and the poor) from voting. Iincreasing the already long lines and wait times at urban polling places may just be an added bonus for them.
Some Good News:
It turns out that the entire recount is coming in at about $260,000, well below the Republican scary estimate of $1.5 million (I wonder who is doing their estimates? Is it the same guy who estimated the cost of damage at the Capitol at a gazillion dollars?).
Attention is now shifting to the campaigns for the recall elections. Good candidates have stepped up to run against Republican State Senators. I'm already on board to volunteer for efforts to elect Sandy Pasch
to replace Republican hard-liner Alberta Darling in the Wisconsin State Senate. We need to win 3 of the recall elections to have Democratic control of that body. Unions and community groups are already gearing up to support those efforts.
Thanks for your continuing interest and support as we try to restore sanity to Wisconsin.