Steve Benen: … it looked as if JoAnne Kloppenburg had pulled off a miracle in the the state Supreme Court election in Wisconsin, narrowly defeating conservative Justice David Prosser. Yesterday, an expected discovery of thousands of votes quickly tilted the race in the other direction:
“The tally of a close Wisconsin Supreme Court election, which had come to be a referendum on Republican leadership in the state, turned upside down on Thursday evening: the incumbent justice, viewed as a conservative, took a lead of more than 7,000 votes after a clerk in one Republican-leaning county announced she had initially failed to report some 14,000 votes.”
The discovered votes came from Waukesha County, a suburban GOP stronghold, where county clerk Kathy Nickolaus cited a computer mishap for the error.
… it’s worth noting that Kathy Nickolaus is a Republican donor who’s been involved in a series of controversial elections, including a ballot mix-up in 2004, sample ballots in 2005 that accidentally told voters who to vote for, a 2007 incident involving touch-screen voting, and perhaps most importantly, a 2002 controversy in which Nickolaus was granted immunity as part of a criminal investigation into Republican misdeeds in the State Assembly.
This is the same Nickolaus who yesterday uncovered a net gain of 7,000 votes for the Republican candidate who was trailing in a closely-watched judicial race … Hmm.
Now, before anyone jumps to conclusions, Nate Silver noted that it’s likely nothing nefarious has transpired .. But just for the sake of conversation, I’d love to know what the reaction would be – from Republicans, on Fox News, etc. – if the situation were reversed…
Full article here
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Even if there’s nothing fraudulent going on here, how on earth is a woman with Kathy Nickolaus’s track record allowed to be county clerk?
The Obama Diary 
These newly unearthed 7000+ votes are a bag of crock. This needs to be contested. This is ridiculous. I saw a clip of the woman repug who supposedly made the “mistake” which she called “human error.” It’s a lie. There’s got to be a way to contest this crap. It’s ridiculous. Repugs can’t be trusted: they lie, they cheat and they steal. Just saw a clip on The Daily Rundown, Arizon just passed a law that said that people can walk around on college campuses with guns, oh, with one caveat: they can’t go into the campus buildings with the guns…..oh, way to ensure other people’s safety. I guess someone with a gun who has a problem with another person wont just wait for that person to exit the building to kill them…..What the hell is the world coming to? I mean seriously, these repugs are taking this country to hell in a handbasket.
This person has continuously ‘made mistakes’ and she is still in her job?! This is unbelievable, these people will lie, cheat and steal to stay in power. They are worse than some banana republic dictator. Hope they can investigate this, it’s like Bush and Florida all over again!
Really? Nothing nefarious? The facts are that this woman has a proven history of deceit regarding ballots/voting.. and yet its “likely nothing nefarious has occured”? I’m sorry Nate, in this case I am inclined to lean to the addage that if it walks like a duck… it might well be a damn duck. She needs to be investigated.. there is absolutely no reason to give her the benefit of the doubt when she’s proven several times apparently that she’s quite willing and capable of lying and cheating. I really hope Wisconsin doesn’t fall down for this nonsense.
I agree. And some of the “analysts” who are so quick to jump in and claim nothing nefarious happened have just outed themselves as rooting for Prosser. Because that county clerk apparently lied in her press conference about not “saving” the data she imported in MS Access. MS Access automatically saves everytime a new record is added, and NEVER prompts people to save. This woman is a LIAR, and anyone who doesn’t view this as suspicious is complicit in the fraud – including Mr. Silver.
Nate Silver sold out the minute the NYT gave him a contract. He is not to be trusted. Anyone with half a brain can see that this is a big lie. She’s lying, lying, lying. And the WI dems better fight this all the way. Enough with letting these liars steal our elections. They did it in 2000 and 2004. Enough.
EVERYONE who saw her press conference yesterday (and is honest) thought something was amiss about her body language, what she said, the so-called Democratic official she appointed to corroborate her “story.”
Ditto. To the dems, fight this all the way.
Yeah, I mean why did he even go there? Why would anyone not be remotely suspicious of this and even if they want to be kind and say.. well maybe its all just another coincidence.. why give her a pass? This warrants an investigation at the very least because its a damn election and folks who voted have a right to expect that it proceeds without questionable add-ons such as whats occured. What is Nate even thinking? He’s a numbers guy.. he’s not a judge or a lawyer. He can write all day long his opinion, but why even put it out there that it’s all probably on the up and up when he couldn’t possibly know that. A thorough investigation is the only response to this.. and I really really hope WI demands it be handled thus.
I agree. Many times what a pundit says (or doesn’t say) reveals a whole lot more about the pundit than it does about the subject of his “analysis.”
Had 7000+ votes came up for Kloppenberg, the right wing would be yelling “ACORN! VOTER FRAUD!”
Incompetence needs to be investigated, on both sides of the aisle. There is NO EXCUSE whatsoever for things like this to happen, especially considering this woman already has a bad electoral history.
Whatever the facts, this situation just reeks. She discovered her handy error on Wed. and waited 24 hours to report it? It wasn’t some minor 50 vote discovery, it was monumental, a find that changed the outcome of the election and luckily, the exact amount that negated a recount, and a change that has national implications.
As I’ve noted, this GOP employee may have been the most likely person in America to be involved in an election scandal, given her history. It’s either a brilliant Rovian scheme—nah, why would they use this suspicious person?—-or just a mighty coincidence that she is always front and center when bad things happen during elections.
Or if in fact this was a fraud, someone else in her office might have tampered with the records, and she’s too much of a goofball to have noticed. The August 2010 article reeks of ego and a disaster just waiting to happen: she removed her record-keeping from a shared server and stopped reporting individual municipality results on her website. She thus removed those results from accountability.
I don’t care how sympathetic the picture appears: the entire situation warrants a thorough investigation IMO.
This warrants a re-vote or a thorough investigation by the Kloppenberg camp.
The reason I’m all over this is not only for this particular election (which is also very important for the unions), but for the implications of future elections – including the Presidential election of 2012. If these fraudulent practices are being used as trial runs, and they are deemed to be successful, what is there to prevent a similar scenario on a much larger scale in the Swing states in 2012???
Very good point hopefruit2. Shouldn’t faux news be all over covering this possible election fraud? Oh, I guess they wouldn’t do that if it happens to work in their favor! Rachel Maddow brought this issue up a few weeks back when she reminded us of how faux had a phone number posted on the screen during election day for viewers to report suspected voter fraud issues as they seemed to be trying to make that a big issue/focus.
Spot on Hopefruit, I didn’t even consider that. But I know for a fact, as it happened to my husband and I many years ago (Reagan’s election) that republicans will do anything to keep voters from voting, votes/ballots from being counted. And they do it in such a way that folks often don’t realize it’s even being done to them. It was years before I realized we were kept from voting intentionally.. but it came off as all one little mistake after another.. that ultimately resulted in time running out/ polls closing and we were both kept from voting. My ex husband is African American, we had both just gotten out of the military and came home to CA.. we went to our polling station and were told we had to go to a different polling station- this is San Jose CA.. traffic loads, we went from polling place to polling place, always being told we were in the wrong place and told which one to go to… up until the time when polls closed, and of course we were unable to vote. It has only been in recent years that I realized we were being masterfully prevented from voting.. as it was all rather innocently/dumbly played. I believe now, they took one look at he and I and knew we’d be voting Democrat.. and played their games on us. One voter at a time is how they do it.. thus this lady’s “discovery” of new votes is just too iffy.. and the idea that they won’t pull this stuff during 2012 on Obama would be extremely naive of us.. imo.
The only way they can win is to lie and cheat. We have to be all over this.
I smell a rotten skunk here and it stinks bad. Sounds like another Kathleen Harris(Florida) to me. She helped G.W. Bush steal the election in 2000, and the Supreme Court.
Why is is that no one mentions the fact that this woman also was a former emplyee of the Judge?
If DEMS allow this to go unchallenged or unchecked they desrve to loose.
Grow a pair.
Voter Fraud BTW is a FED issue not a state issue. SO I hope the AG is not timid about this.