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Wisconsin Common Cause: Count Every Vote
Many voters went to sleep in Wisconsin and thought they woke up in Florida on Friday after a "Republican activist" county clerk announced that she discovered an extra 14,315 votes in a hotly contested Supreme Court race. Not surprisingly, the votes went to the conservative candidate giving incumbent justice David Prosser a 7,500 vote lead over challenger Joanne Kloppenburg. Oddly, 7500 was the exact number of votes Prosser needed to avoid a statewide recount.
The Supreme Court race has garnered national attention as a proxy vote on Governor Scott Walker's radical proposal to end collective bargaining in the state and cut a billion dollars from public schools.
Long Time Republican ApparatchikThe county clerk in question is long-time Republican apparatchik Kathy Nickolaus. Nickolaus got her start in GOP politics in 1995, when the Republican Speaker of the Assembly was -- that's right -- David Prosser. She worked for Prosser's Republican Assembly Caucus, one of four GOP and Democratic legislative groups that were shut down following a criminal investigation for illegal campaign activity on state time.
Nickolaus first came to public attention in 2001, when she was granted immunity from criminal prosecution in exchange for testimony against her bosses at the Assembly Caucus. The case resulted in unprecedented convictions of Democratic and Republican legislators on felony counts of misconduct in office and arranging for illegal campaign contributions. Both Democratic and Republican leaders were sentenced to jail time.
In the caucus, Nickolaus was the person who ran the numbers, creating databases for illegal donations, partisan mailings and the like. When she escaped criminal prosecution, she hightailed it to Waukesha where she ran for county clerk in the conservative county in 2002.
She later botched a 2006 vote and stirred controversy by placing the entire voting system on her own personal computer. Prompting the County Corporation Counsel to charge: "If she wants to keep everything secret, she probably can."
On Thursday of this week, she called a press conference to announce the new vote totals that put Prosser over the top and blamed "human error." She claimed that the canvass was a "open and transparent" process, yet she found the error at noon on Wednesday and sat on the information for 29 hours, not even telling top election officials at the Government Accountability Board. According to election observers, the issue of 14,315 additional votes from Brookfield was never discussed at the canvass. But, this information somehow made its way to right wing bloggers before her press conference.
Reaction SwiftWisconsin Citizen Action has demanded that federal prosecutors step in, confiscate her computer and start an investigation. "In the current political climate in Wisconsin, only an investigation by a U.S. Attorney can be seen by all citizens of the state as independent and above politics," said Robert Kraig.
The Kloppenburg campaign has demanded "a full explanation of how and why these 14,315 votes from an entire city were missed." As part of the search for that explanation, the campaign plans to file open records requests for relevant documents.
Meanwhile, both Kloppenburg and Prosser have lawyered-up. Kloppenburg is being represented by Marc Elias, the attorney who handled Al Franken's U.S. Senate recount fight in Minnesota. Prosser is being represented by Ben Ginsberg, who served as national counsel to former President George W. Bush's campaigns in 2000 and 2004 and was central to the 2000 Florida recount.
Lessons from Bush v. Gore Florida RecountThe Florida 2000 recount is on the mind of many Wisconsin voters. The big lesson from the nightmarish "hanging-chads" recount "is that you need a total statewide recount. If you only recount select counties the perception is you are only selecting counties that favor you," says Jay Heck, the head of Wisconsin Common Cause.
Heck issued a statement on Friday:
The incredible and almost unbelievable events of the last two days with regard to the reporting of votes in the City of Brookfield in Waukesha County in Tuesday's election for the State Supreme Court warrant a full investigation by the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Department of Justice and the District Attorney of Waukesha County. Furthermore, the Government Accountability should authorize and supervise a statewide recount of all ballots cast in Tuesday's elections and such a recount should be funded by the State of Wisconsin.
Why so many parties? Because this is the same constellation of offices that investigated the 2002 caucus scandal, giving voters more confidence that the manner was being handled appropriately and in a bipartisan fashion.
If Wisconsin is not to irreparably harm its reputation as a functional and relatively noncorrupt state, many Cheeseheads believe that a statewide recount is a necessity.
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33 Comments so far
Show AllThis is not the first hint of voter fraud, nor will it be the last I fear. As long as we the people remain asleep and inactive we will continue to be manipulated, used and denied our constitutional rights. It up to you .
The issue of voter fraud only comes up when the election is so "close". We third party voters are a crushed minority to get the corned electorate to budge on the issue.
Hey, this election only shows that cheating works, unethical behavior is a plus, and liars win.
So the doors are open to anyone brave enough to seize the day.
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I have memories of watching black and white television on election night in November 1960. Somehow the votes needed for John Kennedy to take Cook County were finally found by party loyalist, Sam Rat-a-tat-tat Giancana. That gave Illinois to JFK and won the Electoral College. Following this, Attny General Robert Kennedy began a DOJ war upon Organized Crime.
Trylon
Here is an historical footnote I cannot resist. It comes from the UK when Margaret Thatcher was making a bid to become Prime Minister as head of the Conservative Party. The race was extremely close and could be won or lost by only a few votes.
A political cartoonist drew a wicked cartoon. It showed the anguished head of Maggie on a squatting, quivering, large dog that was taking a dump. On each turd was written the term VOTER. The cartoon caption was:"Straining at stool."
I laughed for hours.
Trylon
"That gave Illinois to JFK and won the Electoral College."
*Not* true! Kennedy won by *two* states, and won even without Illinois ...
Kennedy "won" also in two other states that cooked the books, Texas and West Virginia. Nixon, when presented with fairly clear evidence of Democrat voting fraud, decided not to contest the election because, he said at the time, it would be divisive and bad for the nation. Contrast that with that vile and disgusting Gore, who opted for a selective recount that seven out of nine Supreme Court justices (not of course including that slimy little Ginsberg, who looks very much like a dessicated rat) held to be a denial of equal protection.
Wow! Your planet must be a very interesting place. Here on our planet Gore was too decent and conceded when he should not have done so. Bush was not elected in that race, the SC appointed him. Four Justices had relatives working on Bush election committees as well. Recuse anyone?
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The 1960 Electoral College required 269 votes to prevail. In the =fullness of time not on election night= JFK was credited with 309 votes. He WON by 40 votes across 49 states, as Mississippi elected an independent candidate. This was the smallest margin of electoral College victory since 1916, and nicely in keeping with the one tenth of one percent difference in the popular vote.
When Sam Giancana acted in Cook County, all he could see was the nip and tuck popular vote. Texas was still voting. And Sam did what I said he did.
Nixon could not have won 269 votes, even if he had won both Illinois (27) and Texas (24) - which is interesting because he won 26 states while JFK won only 23 states. Doing the peculiar division, the average state won by JFK had 13.4 electoral votes while those for Nixon had 8.5. Nixon lost the election in New York 45) and Pennsylvania (32).
From California, Nixon won his first seat in Congress in 1948 by tarring his female opponent as =The Pink Lady= - - and tricky Dick used dirty tricks his entire political career, ending with the criminal Watergate Burglary.
History show us that the Republicans were as down and dirty as it was possible to be in 1960.
History shows that the SCOTUS decision in Gore v. Bush 2000 was nothing but a political Blow Job. Inside 18 months, each Republican appointee judge had a family member who received a quid pro quo. My faith in the Court has never recovered.
Trylon
The DEA should trace the Koch money Nicolaus is sure to have received.
At least the Democrat who lost in this race will not, unlike Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004, give up without a fight.
JoAnne Kloppenburg is not a Democrat.
I had assumed that she was given the fact that she is hiring the same attorney to represent her who had also represented Al Franken who is, of course, a Democrat. Unfortunately the article only refers to her as a "challenger" [as opposed to Republican candidate Prosser] and, unless I have missed it, never clearly states what her party affiliation actually is.
An article should always be as clear to the reader as possible as to what its intentions are and this article failed to do that at least in regard to what party she belongs to.
Yup, the Katherine Harris Syndrome strikes again: just when all seems lost (or won, depending on who you're rooting for), a devoted party apparatchik pops up to ensure that the fix is in.
Good luck in sorting it out.
If the fix stays in, the reformers will be reduced to the usual feeble face-saving, morale-boosting arguments: "Actually it was a 'moral victory'!"; "Hey, but we really left a mark!"; "All things considered, we are SO CLOSE to taking back the momentum!"
And the mother of all "anti-defeatist" strategies: Clap harder, or Tinkerbell will die! You don't want THAT on your conscience!
It's a shame.
Yes, let's pursue this - but let's also pursue the entire problem of allowing partisans to count our votes with computers. It's absolutely unnecessary. In Germany, for instance, people vote on paper and then civil servants count the votes in public. They use exit polls to announce the winner, and, unlike in America, the vote count always agrees with them within their margin of error. In other countries, exit polls guard against fraud. In America, they are deemed "wrong" when the computer-controlled vote count disagrees.
Representative government invites corruption.
Direct democracy NOW!
Definitely, count every vote.
That was Al Gore's rallying cry, but of course not what he meant -- a little like his pretense of being green while having a Tennessee home with a larger carbon footprint than, for example, W's Crawford ranch home.
Well, that's what Gore gets for hiring a Rethug attorney (David Boies) to represent him. :-)
I did know that Boies was a Republican. Dubya's lawyer was a Democrat and yet he helped him out vigorously. It would not have mattered who hired who for attorney as it was probably staged and planned earlier that year.
Except, of course, Gore won in Florida.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2001/111201a.html
Had the US Supreme Court not taken the criminal move of inserting itself into state affairs, every vote would have been counted, as per the Florida court''s ruling, and come to the conclusion that yes, Al Gore indeed did win Florida. The exit polls were right, as they'd been for so very long, and Bush with his spend-happy, deficit-inflating right-wing Congress wouldn't have been inflicted on the nation.
Also, by starting where you start, with the court battle, you discount the virulently racist and anti-American disenfranchisment of many, many eligible voters by Katherine Harris well before election day. The fix was already in, and everyone knows it. That you choose to ignore it only speaks to your bias and absolute rejection of reality, a common thing for commondreams posters.
People will remain asleep and inactive as long as their consciousness, intellect and emotional capacity continues to be dulled-down by fluoride, a known poisonous industrial waste product, in the nation's water supply. A normal, alert and timely response is not possible in a drugged nation. See: http://search.mercola.com/search/Pages/results.aspx?k=fluoride%20in%20water
Or as is attributed to Stalin: "They vote, we count".
Are the Republicans neo-Stalinists?
> "Are the Republicans neo-Stalinists?"
As I suggest in another thread, yes they are. I quote an excerpt from this (7 year old) excellent blogpost ( http://seetheforest.blogspot.com/2004_06_01_archive.html#108662392067427640 ) that discusses this in detail. Here's the excerpt:
[quote]We have to realize that we are dealing with an organized revolutionary conspiracy to seize power, enrich the few, and subject us to an ideological/theocratic/imperialist dictatorship. They often describe THEMSELVES as being modeled on the old Communist Party and their methods for infiltrating and seizing power.
"You cannot cripple an opponent by outwitting him in a political debate," he [David Horowitz] explains in The Art of Political War. "You can do it only by following Lenin's injunction: 'In political conflicts, the goal is not to refute your opponent's argument, but to wipe him from the face of the earth.'"
This is an emergency and we must recognize it as such. These people will go to all costs to succeed, including fomenting civil war.[/quote]
I believe the unified war we are seeing against the public sector in so many states all at the same time is the fruit of their long-term strategy. It's not a coincidence that so many legislatures are attempting to pass practically identical laws -- at all costs, seemingly.
They are playing for keeps, and despite the valiant efforts of the citizens of Wisconsin (et al) to oppose them, the cards are definitely stacked in their favor. Just witness how easily the forces of reaction have absorbed and nullified the insurrectionary protests in Egypt from achieving any truly lasting changes. The status quo congeals around the protest and remains triumphant.
If people wish to fight these forces, they will need to channel that spirit of the Egpytians into their own protests. It's hard to imagine anything less than protracted general strikes having any effect, since these class warriors own the law, their interpretation, and their enforcement.
The truth is, they fear nothing less than the guillotine; it's time to bring it out.
I voted for Kloppenburg and I was disappointed when the data entry error was discovered. But I have been even more disappointed by the reaction in the liberal community. They are spreading the kind of half truths and distortions that I regularly expect from Faux News and the Tea Party crowd.
New votes were not found. A data entry error that omitted all the votes in a single precinct as part of the normal validation count was discovered. The County Clerk responsible for the error has a history of shoddy work, and there were other problems on election night reporting from Waukasha County by either the county or AP. Everyone is jumping to the conclusion that the County Clerk fabricated the votes, but they fail to have noticed that the lead Democratic canvasser attested to the revised total. Folks also seem to have forgotten that each precinct also keeps its records and that many of the precincts would have had to have been involved.
In a case such as this, things are proceeding as they should. The state elections commission is investigating and Kloppenburg has filed an open records request.
If you want to see a good analysis of the Waukesha returns, take a look at Nate Silver's blog on the NYT. But, please stop behaving like the right wing nuts and have some patience for normal procedures to take place.
Finally, I hope that Common Cause is just as concerned that those 14,000 votes are counted if they are valid.
"But, please stop behaving like the right wing nuts and have some patience for normal procedures to take place."
Seriously, take that insult, and shove it.
Bend over.
"Data entry error?" Don't you know by now that numerous computer experts have come forward and said that the Nickolaus's excuse was a lie? Microsoft Access automatically saves data as it is entered, and there is no way to override that function either by mistake or otherwise.
Add to that the fact that she kept the new votes secret for 29 hours, until she could be certain the number was sufficient to avoid an automatic recount.
Add to that the Brookfield City Clerk's announcement that 30% of eligible voters had voted by 5:00 p.m. and she expected total turnout might be more than 40%. We're now told that turnout was 49.4% in Brookfield, meaning that 5,608 people must have swarmed the polling places in the last couple hours — a rush that was not observed. And, compare the alleged 49.4% turnout in Brookfield to the rest of Waukesha county: 41.5%.
Nickolaus's explanation is a lie. Her turnout numbers don't match observations at the polling places and aren't close to turnout in the rest of the county. Her failure to announce the "found" votes for 29 hours is completely unjustifiable and reeks of partisanship. Under the circumstances, the conclusions people are reaching are reasonable.
Sorry, Naturally. But you picked the wrong guy to lecture about how computers work. I spent an entire career in Information Technology. No backup of any kind saves data that is not entered. Did you not read the part of my post that indicated that the Republican klutz failed to enter the total for one entire precinct?
As for Waukesha turnout, you also didn't bother to check out Nate Silver's blog at the NYT, not exactly a conservative blogger or media outlet. Silver examined the voting patterns and found that the revised count and turnout percentages were more in line with recent trends than the unofficial count reported by AP on election night.
The delay would seem to be reasonable in this circumstance. The election night results are unofficial as I indicated. The official vote that each county reports to the state is not begun until well into the next day. Even if the error was caught early in the certification process, that would begin an intensive look into the situation by the canvassers, both Republican and Democratic. If they have any sense whatsoever, they would not report the corrected total to the media until they were very certain especially in a case such as this when they could not help but understand what a furor it would cause.
In case you are interested, several other counties have also reported corrected results, but the magnitude of their errors were smaller. The last I saw, there were still several counties that had not yet completed the certification process.
Stop jumping to conclusions until the normal process has run its course.
None of that is persuasive because it's not even responsive to what I said. You have dodged the the information I provided and pumped in the fog. Not fooling anyone here.
The dunderhead "Naturally" relies on selective data to back up his opinion. It cannot be bothered to take all things into consideration. As far as this election is concerned, it should not have been this close at all. The entire election should be investigated but I do not expect Eric Holder to follow up on Tammy Baldwin's request to do so.
Everyone here needs to check their hard drives. Maybe we can find some Wisconsin Democratic votes on them. That appears to be how it works now. Republicans need votes, BINGO right there on their hard drive. Maybe Dems need to check theirs, you never know...
Criminal and worthy of jail time
When Kloppenburg was winning it was a glorious statement by the angry voters, now that she is losing it is voting fraud, the left just never accepts loss as just that.