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Prosser gains 7,500 votes in Waukesha County
In a political bombshell, the clerk in a Republican stronghold released new vote totals adding a net total of 7,403 new votes in the tight state Supreme Court race to Justice David Prosser, swinging the race significantly in his favor.
Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus said Thursday that she failed to correctly enter in her computer and then report 14,315 votes in the city of Brookfield, omitting them entirely in an unofficial tally released after Tuesday's election. The new totals give 10,859 more votes to Prosser and 3,456 more to Kloppenburg, she said.
"I'm thankful that this error was caught early in the process. This is not a case of extra ballots being found. This is human error which I apologize for, which is common," Nickolaus said, her voice wavering as she spoke to reporters.
She said she had reviewed numbers from all the other municipalities in the county to ensure that no other similar errors were made. She said she was not aware of any error of this size being made in any past election in her county.
The fresh numbers provide a new tilt to a race that had appeared to be headed toward the first statewide recount in two decades and as well spring a new surprise on a state that had already faced two months of chaotic politics. But the numbers also seemed almost certain to inject new controversy into an already heated race.
Around the state, elections officials Thursday were tweaking unofficial results from the day before that had put challenger and Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg ahead of Prosser by a razor-thin 204 votes. But the new figures appearing to put Prosser ahead were also far from final, and could change again before the contest is finished.
Neither Prosser campaign manager Brian Nemoir nor Kloppenburg campaign manager Melissa Mulliken could be reached immediately for comment.
At the press conference with Nickolaus, Ramona Kitzinger, the Democrat on the Waukesha County board of canvass said: "We went over everything and made sure all the numbers jibed up and they did. Those numbers jibed up and we're satisfied they're correct."
As a Democrat, she said, "I'm not going to stand here and tell you something that's not true."
Prosser is a former Republican lawmaker seen as a conservative on the court while Kloppenburg is seen as the more liberal candidate.
Kristine Schmidt, the clerk in the City of Brookfield, said in a separate interview that she gave the Associated Press the results on election night.
"The AP was here," she said. "The person reporting to the AP was standing here with my spreadsheet."
"We sent it to the county and called the county to make sure they got it," Schmidt said.
She said she sent the results twice to the county. After the first results were sent she said the county requested a second set of data because they wanted results tabulated in certain columns.
"It's my understanding my caucus cleared," she said of the count during the canvass.
"The fate of the western world does not hinge on this election," she said. "And you can quote me on that."
Once the final official numbers are in, either candidate - but no one else - can request a recount. If the margin between the candidates is less than 0.5% the state charges nothing to conduct the recount.
But the added votes from Waukesha County could push the total far enough toward Prosser that a free recount would no longer be available to Kloppenburg, who on Wednesday had an unofficial 204-vote lead out of nearly 1.5 million votes cast.
If the final margin of victory is between 0.5% and 2% of the vote, the candidate asking for the recount must pay $5 per ward.
Mike Maistelman, an election attorney who often does work for Democrats, said he expected a recount would still happen despite Prosser's large vote gain.
"Nobody knows what's up or what's down," he said. "One day we win and the next day we lost by 10,000 votes? How do we know they did it right this time?"
The Brookfield bombshell was the biggest - but hardly the only - change as counties across the state checked their election results Tuesday:
• In Winnebago County, officials now say Prosser received 20,701 votes to Kloppenburg's 18,887. On Wednesday, the Associated Press - which gathers the votes for most of the media in Wisconsin -- had 19,991 for Prosser to Kloppenburg's 18,421.
• In Kenosha, Prosser picked up 33 votes in the Town of Randall and 27 votes on the Town of Bristol, and the canvass is still going on.
• In Waukesha County, David Prosser picked up 200 votes in New Berlin after a clerical error was discovered.
• In Grant County, Prosser lost 116 votes when officials completed their canvass Thursday. The count was off in part because the Town of Smelser incorrectly reported the count for paper ballots that voters cast after the regular ballots ran out, County Clerk Linda Gebhardt said. The town reported 294 votes for Prosser, but later corrected the figure to 194, Gebhardt said.
The list of changes rolled on in county after county, and reflected the important distinction in such a close election between the preliminary set of numbers and the final set. In most elections, the margin of error is such that it doesn't really matter - there's a clear winner, and that doesn't change days later when the final numbers come in and the state certifies the results.
In this case, the preliminary numbers were so close that the margin of error clearly matters.
Nemoir said earlier on Thursday afternoon before the announcement of the new votes from Waukesha County that he expects the totals to remain fluid.
"Everything we're hearing right now indicates that we're going to be in a recount," Nemoir said. "There's not anything that's going to decide this today or tomorrow."
An editor at the AP said the news service became aware of the discrepancy in Winnebago in the early afternoon Thursday. The AP had last checked figures with Winnebago County at 10:14 a.m. Wednesday, according to the AP. The county adjusted its figures at 2:27 p.m.
Nemoir said that he has an observer in the Winnebago County canvassing reporting a similar discrepancy in the numbers. But he emphasized that other counties will also see changes, noting that Prosser apparently has lost a single vote in Pepin County.
County boards of canvassers began meeting Thursday morning to start the process of checking and certifying election results in the race.
Some counties may send their official results to the state as soon as Thursday, said Kevin Kennedy, a state elections administrator. Others in large counties may go into early next week.
On Thursday morning, Kennedy said he was not aware of many errors, but he emphasized the process was just getting started.
"This is a very human-driven process, and you're going to find those kinds of mistakes happening," said Kennedy, who is the director of the state Government Accountability Board.
A recount could be sought as soon as next week in the race, in which on Wednesday Kloppenburg had her unofficial 204-vote lead. But only after the county canvassers provide an official tally - and an official winner - can a recount begin.
In all of the state's 72 counties except Milwaukee, the county clerk or a surrogate serves on the board of canvassers along with two other people appointed by the clerk, according to the Government Accountability Board's procedures. County clerks in Wisconsin are elected as Republicans or Democrats, but the clerk must appoint at least one person to the board of canvassers who is from a different political party from the clerk.
To check the totals, the boards do tasks such as looking at how many votes were cast in a given location and then checking those totals against the figures on how many voters there were given a number and a ballot by poll workers, said Kennedy
The canvassers will also check election results by looking at printouts from polling place machines such as optical scanners for reading ballots. They check provisional ballots, tally sheets prepared for hand-counted ballots and certifications from election officials that voting machines haven't been tampered with.
The boards have to reconcile and correct any errors or discrepancies. Any returns that are too flawed for the canvass board to interpret are sent back to the municipality that sent them in for clarification. Once the information is checked, the canvass boards sign off on the results and send them to the state.
The close race does not change procedures for the canvass, Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus said. Her office has made only one change in anticipation of a potential recount: The counted ballots from each municipality in the county are being kept in separate bins instead of all being placed in the same one.
In the city of Milwaukee, officials are reviewing ballots in a warehouse on the city's north side, a process that will last into Friday, city election commission Executive Director Susan Edman said.
The high turnout Tuesday for a typically sleep spring election will create extra difficulties in the counting.
Sue Strands, the city clerk in Fond du Lac, said there was 40% voter turnout there, far above a normal spring election.
"It was definitely history making," she said of the turnout.
The city began to run out of ballots at around 5 p.m. at several polling places and voters were offered the opportunity to vote on the touch screen machines provided for those who are disabled, Strands said. Lines backed up. At around 5 p.m., Strands, said, the county clerk offered her the opportunity to use photocopied ballots.
She declined. Strands said she was worried about carrying out a hand count as well as the potential for voters to mistakes filling out the ballot that would not be caught in time for the votes to count.
"How do I get them out there, how do I get instructions, and how do I make sure the photocopy ballots count?" she said.
Near 6 p.m., a Democratic Party attorney showed up at her office to demand the photocopied ballots be used. Eventually, she received a call from the Government Accountability Board telling her that other cities were using the ballots and suggesting that she use them, too.
She said in one area, Ward 14, 95 voters used the touch screen and another 53 cast their votes on photocopied ballots.
The Accountability Board sent a memo to county clerks and other election officials throughout Wisconsin on Wednesday, reminding them of the steps in the process and to avoid potential mistakes.
For instance, erasing or transferring information stored in the memory of tabulating machines isn't allowed.
"We are in unprecedented times in many respects, but particularly with regard to a potential statewide recount, which has not occurred since 1989," the memo from state election administrator Nathaniel E. Robinson reads. "A thorough completion of the County Board of Canvass at this time may reconcile inconsistencies and issues that will likely save you significant time and effort in the pending recount process."
Source: JS Online
Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus said Thursday that she failed to correctly enter in her computer and then report 14,315 votes in the city of Brookfield, omitting them entirely in an unofficial tally released after Tuesday's election. The new totals give 10,859 more votes to Prosser and 3,456 more to Kloppenburg, she said.
"I'm thankful that this error was caught early in the process. This is not a case of extra ballots being found. This is human error which I apologize for, which is common," Nickolaus said, her voice wavering as she spoke to reporters.
She said she had reviewed numbers from all the other municipalities in the county to ensure that no other similar errors were made. She said she was not aware of any error of this size being made in any past election in her county.
The fresh numbers provide a new tilt to a race that had appeared to be headed toward the first statewide recount in two decades and as well spring a new surprise on a state that had already faced two months of chaotic politics. But the numbers also seemed almost certain to inject new controversy into an already heated race.
Around the state, elections officials Thursday were tweaking unofficial results from the day before that had put challenger and Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg ahead of Prosser by a razor-thin 204 votes. But the new figures appearing to put Prosser ahead were also far from final, and could change again before the contest is finished.
Neither Prosser campaign manager Brian Nemoir nor Kloppenburg campaign manager Melissa Mulliken could be reached immediately for comment.
At the press conference with Nickolaus, Ramona Kitzinger, the Democrat on the Waukesha County board of canvass said: "We went over everything and made sure all the numbers jibed up and they did. Those numbers jibed up and we're satisfied they're correct."
As a Democrat, she said, "I'm not going to stand here and tell you something that's not true."
Prosser is a former Republican lawmaker seen as a conservative on the court while Kloppenburg is seen as the more liberal candidate.
Kristine Schmidt, the clerk in the City of Brookfield, said in a separate interview that she gave the Associated Press the results on election night.
"The AP was here," she said. "The person reporting to the AP was standing here with my spreadsheet."
"We sent it to the county and called the county to make sure they got it," Schmidt said.
She said she sent the results twice to the county. After the first results were sent she said the county requested a second set of data because they wanted results tabulated in certain columns.
"It's my understanding my caucus cleared," she said of the count during the canvass.
"The fate of the western world does not hinge on this election," she said. "And you can quote me on that."
Once the final official numbers are in, either candidate - but no one else - can request a recount. If the margin between the candidates is less than 0.5% the state charges nothing to conduct the recount.
But the added votes from Waukesha County could push the total far enough toward Prosser that a free recount would no longer be available to Kloppenburg, who on Wednesday had an unofficial 204-vote lead out of nearly 1.5 million votes cast.
If the final margin of victory is between 0.5% and 2% of the vote, the candidate asking for the recount must pay $5 per ward.
Mike Maistelman, an election attorney who often does work for Democrats, said he expected a recount would still happen despite Prosser's large vote gain.
"Nobody knows what's up or what's down," he said. "One day we win and the next day we lost by 10,000 votes? How do we know they did it right this time?"
The Brookfield bombshell was the biggest - but hardly the only - change as counties across the state checked their election results Tuesday:
• In Winnebago County, officials now say Prosser received 20,701 votes to Kloppenburg's 18,887. On Wednesday, the Associated Press - which gathers the votes for most of the media in Wisconsin -- had 19,991 for Prosser to Kloppenburg's 18,421.
• In Kenosha, Prosser picked up 33 votes in the Town of Randall and 27 votes on the Town of Bristol, and the canvass is still going on.
• In Waukesha County, David Prosser picked up 200 votes in New Berlin after a clerical error was discovered.
• In Grant County, Prosser lost 116 votes when officials completed their canvass Thursday. The count was off in part because the Town of Smelser incorrectly reported the count for paper ballots that voters cast after the regular ballots ran out, County Clerk Linda Gebhardt said. The town reported 294 votes for Prosser, but later corrected the figure to 194, Gebhardt said.
The list of changes rolled on in county after county, and reflected the important distinction in such a close election between the preliminary set of numbers and the final set. In most elections, the margin of error is such that it doesn't really matter - there's a clear winner, and that doesn't change days later when the final numbers come in and the state certifies the results.
In this case, the preliminary numbers were so close that the margin of error clearly matters.
Nemoir said earlier on Thursday afternoon before the announcement of the new votes from Waukesha County that he expects the totals to remain fluid.
"Everything we're hearing right now indicates that we're going to be in a recount," Nemoir said. "There's not anything that's going to decide this today or tomorrow."
An editor at the AP said the news service became aware of the discrepancy in Winnebago in the early afternoon Thursday. The AP had last checked figures with Winnebago County at 10:14 a.m. Wednesday, according to the AP. The county adjusted its figures at 2:27 p.m.
Nemoir said that he has an observer in the Winnebago County canvassing reporting a similar discrepancy in the numbers. But he emphasized that other counties will also see changes, noting that Prosser apparently has lost a single vote in Pepin County.
County boards of canvassers began meeting Thursday morning to start the process of checking and certifying election results in the race.
Some counties may send their official results to the state as soon as Thursday, said Kevin Kennedy, a state elections administrator. Others in large counties may go into early next week.
On Thursday morning, Kennedy said he was not aware of many errors, but he emphasized the process was just getting started.
"This is a very human-driven process, and you're going to find those kinds of mistakes happening," said Kennedy, who is the director of the state Government Accountability Board.
A recount could be sought as soon as next week in the race, in which on Wednesday Kloppenburg had her unofficial 204-vote lead. But only after the county canvassers provide an official tally - and an official winner - can a recount begin.
In all of the state's 72 counties except Milwaukee, the county clerk or a surrogate serves on the board of canvassers along with two other people appointed by the clerk, according to the Government Accountability Board's procedures. County clerks in Wisconsin are elected as Republicans or Democrats, but the clerk must appoint at least one person to the board of canvassers who is from a different political party from the clerk.
To check the totals, the boards do tasks such as looking at how many votes were cast in a given location and then checking those totals against the figures on how many voters there were given a number and a ballot by poll workers, said Kennedy
The canvassers will also check election results by looking at printouts from polling place machines such as optical scanners for reading ballots. They check provisional ballots, tally sheets prepared for hand-counted ballots and certifications from election officials that voting machines haven't been tampered with.
The boards have to reconcile and correct any errors or discrepancies. Any returns that are too flawed for the canvass board to interpret are sent back to the municipality that sent them in for clarification. Once the information is checked, the canvass boards sign off on the results and send them to the state.
The close race does not change procedures for the canvass, Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus said. Her office has made only one change in anticipation of a potential recount: The counted ballots from each municipality in the county are being kept in separate bins instead of all being placed in the same one.
In the city of Milwaukee, officials are reviewing ballots in a warehouse on the city's north side, a process that will last into Friday, city election commission Executive Director Susan Edman said.
The high turnout Tuesday for a typically sleep spring election will create extra difficulties in the counting.
Sue Strands, the city clerk in Fond du Lac, said there was 40% voter turnout there, far above a normal spring election.
"It was definitely history making," she said of the turnout.
The city began to run out of ballots at around 5 p.m. at several polling places and voters were offered the opportunity to vote on the touch screen machines provided for those who are disabled, Strands said. Lines backed up. At around 5 p.m., Strands, said, the county clerk offered her the opportunity to use photocopied ballots.
She declined. Strands said she was worried about carrying out a hand count as well as the potential for voters to mistakes filling out the ballot that would not be caught in time for the votes to count.
"How do I get them out there, how do I get instructions, and how do I make sure the photocopy ballots count?" she said.
Near 6 p.m., a Democratic Party attorney showed up at her office to demand the photocopied ballots be used. Eventually, she received a call from the Government Accountability Board telling her that other cities were using the ballots and suggesting that she use them, too.
She said in one area, Ward 14, 95 voters used the touch screen and another 53 cast their votes on photocopied ballots.
The Accountability Board sent a memo to county clerks and other election officials throughout Wisconsin on Wednesday, reminding them of the steps in the process and to avoid potential mistakes.
For instance, erasing or transferring information stored in the memory of tabulating machines isn't allowed.
"We are in unprecedented times in many respects, but particularly with regard to a potential statewide recount, which has not occurred since 1989," the memo from state election administrator Nathaniel E. Robinson reads. "A thorough completion of the County Board of Canvass at this time may reconcile inconsistencies and issues that will likely save you significant time and effort in the pending recount process."
Source: JS Online
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