April 7, 2011
Wisconsin Watch III
According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Waukesha County's initial tally of its election returns didn't include over 15,000 votes that were cast in the Wisconsin election on Tuesday. With those votes added in, David Prosser now has a 7,000+ vote lead over Joanne Kloppenburg in the state supreme court election.
For the record, here's the observation I made at 12:51 on election night...
Well isn't that special. The number of precincts reporting from Waukesha just jumped to 100%, without the overall total jumping from the last time I checked. 96.5% of precincts in, about a 1,900 vote lead for Prosser.I assumed at the time it had to do with the county totals and the total total being updated separately, and that someone had forgotten to punch in Waukesha's county level numbers earlier in the evening, but this may have been around the time that the error occurred.
Good catch, Andrew - we have to make you an official election monitor!
Fascinating development.
Posted by: Monique at April 7, 2011 9:16 PMAndrew scores - there's a question nobody had thought to ask in 36 hours.
I will assume there is no voter fraud involved. Given that, how could a county clerk (an elected Republican) bungle a count that badly? Was she holding back these votes just in case Kloppenburg needed them?
This is, at best (if we buy her explanation that she forgot to hit the save button), an act of gross incompetence.
Whoops...in case Prosser needed the votes. I have made mistakes in my life, albeit not with an election in the balance LOL.
Posted by: bella at April 7, 2011 9:51 PMMost of a 35,000-vote Kloppenburg lead had been erased in the hour before Waukesha was reported as fully counted, so it was plausible to believe at the time that someone had briefly overlooked making the county-level entry.
National Review Online has a link to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article about the Waukesha county-clerk not wanting to update her election management computer system back in August.
www.jsonline.com/news/waukesha/100595954.html
Actually, it seems that substantial vote fraud occurred, but this instance was not part of it.
Wisconsin has been a hotbed of Democrat dirty tricks for years. In 2008 Democrat operatives including the son of one party official slashed the tires of vans which were to be used in the Republicans' GOTV effort. Various forms of fraud are regularly used in every state. If enough concerned citizens can man the polls in 2012 we're likely to get video of it happening here in RI.
Posted by: BobN at April 7, 2011 10:06 PM