Missing Votes Swing Election to Prosser

In what has amounted to an electoral mishap not seen since the Florida recount of 2000, 14,315 votes that were not counted in the unofficial vote tallies released to the press on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning were found to be missing from the totals that gave the electoral victory to JoAnne Kloppenburg. All of the missing votes came from the city of Brookfield, and gives the incumbent, Judge David Prosser, a 7,500 vote victory.

This revelation came on Thursday afternoon when Waukesha County Clerk, Kathy Nickolaus, addressed the media saying that the votes from Brookfield were omitted from the totals that were given to the press after the election on Tuesday. She attributed the recounted figures to “human error” as she did not save the final vote tally after she had asked for the totals for Brookfield to be reformatted before the final tally could be processed. The new margin of victory is large enough to avoid the %0.5 threshold that would automatically trigger a recount.  Members from Kloppenburg’s camp stated that they would file an open records request to investigate the reconstituted vote, and have started a campaign to raise money for a recount.

Allegations of fraud and malfeasance have surrounded the announcement of the new vote totals.  The Government Accountability Board has stated that it will investigate to ensure the validity of the vote totals. Nickolaus had come under fire recently from the Waukesha County Board as to the efficiency and security of the county’s voting mechanisms. However it was deemed that everything was in working order for this election. Further, Democratic Canvassers have agreed that the new vote totals are correct and statistical analysis shows that the new totals are in line with past and current trends and points most likely to human error.

Links

New count gives Prosser lead

Corrected Brookfield tally puts Prosser ahead

Waukesha County cleark, board clash over audit

Vote-Counting Error in Wisconsin

The Waukesha Surprise